The E-Reader: Pros and Cons

I am certainly what the tech-world calls a "late adopter," for example: I only recently got a cell-phone, and that's because my wife purchased it for me, brought it home, and said: "You have two kids . . you need a phone," and then handed me a slim, white, lime green gadget that my students described as the phone a "12 year old Asian girl would have"-- and so, well behind the rest of the reading world,  I have finally started knocking around the idea of getting an e-reader . . . but, as I am a disciple of Neil Postman, I always think about the pros and cons of any technology before I allow it access to my life . . . and the pros for an e-reader are pretty obvious:

1) I like to read multiple books at the same time and some of them are hefty, so it would save a lot of space and clutter,

2) I hate small font, and so I could adjust this on an e-reader,

3) my book-light would be attached to the e-reader, so I wouldn't always lose it,

4) when we travel, I like to bring a lot of books . . .

but I have decided, for now, that the cons outweigh the pros, and here they are:

1) I like to take books out of the library because (duh) it's free,

2) I like to buy cheap used books off Amazon and Half.com,

3) I don't want to spill coffee or soup onto an e-reader, while I don't care if I spill coffee or soup onto a library book,

4) this one is the most important: if I read on an e-reader, no one can see what I'm reading, and-- if these things become ubiquitous-- I won't be able to see what other people are reading, and maybe I'm obnoxious, but I like it when people see me reading the new translation of War and Peace, and I liked sharing a knowing glance with the dude I saw last week on the exercise bike at the gym reading Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From . . . and if that dude was a cute female, I might have even said a word or two about how much I liked the book . . . so really what it comes down to is that I have enough trouble making conversation, and I don't need the one topic that I am knowledgeable about taken away from me, made obscure by a convenient technology-- I'm still recovering from the switch from boom boxes to personal stereos . . . who knows what the kids are listening to on those head-phones?

Can Someone Explain This?

I'll go to the gym and exercise until I am sweaty, lightheaded, and about to puke . . . but moments before I leave, I can't work up the effort to carry a laundry basket full of folded clothes up the stairs.

Thomas Ripley: Believe It or Not . . .

So this may be the most cliche thing you can say about a classic novel adapted for film, but-- sorry-- it's true; The Talented Mr. Ripley is a decent movie, but the book is better . . . because in an attempt to make Tom Ripley's actions less calculating and his motives for murdering Dickie Greenleaf less premeditated-- in order for the audience to be able to empathize with him a bit more-- he loses his charm . . . in the film he stumbles on his nefarious plan, while in the novel, part of his charm lies in his calculation, like Shakespeare's Richard III, the fun is that he lets us in on his evil but completely understandable machinations . . . so if you've only seen the movie, and sort of liked it, then I highly recommend the book (by Patricia Highsmith) which is different to a degree in plot, character, and tone and for once in my life I agree with Matt Damon, who said, "I'd like to make the whole film all over again with the same cast and same title but make it completely like the book."

I Draw a Line in the Sand . . . and Then Erase It: Arguments Against The Digital First Down Line

You may think that the digital first-down line is an unassailable target-- that your football watching life is much improved by this benevolent technical wonder-- but I have dismantled venerated targets like this before, so head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog to read my logically sound, rhetorically reasonable, and profoundly persuasive argument on why there should be no digital lines intruding upon our football viewing experience . . . I promise your mind will be changed.

Knobs, Jugs, and Other Titillating Household Items

I was very proud of my post-Christmas sentence entitled "Best Christmas Gift Ever: My Wife Got New Knobs!" because my wife actually got new knobs, but not the silicone kind-- after I went to bed she replaced the pointed cabinet knobs in the kitchen that always ripped my pants with rounded knobs-- and I thought this was not only very thoughtful but it also provided a humorous sentence title . . . except that she didn't get the joke, and when I informed her that "knobs" were not just a cabinetry accessory, but also a slang term for female breasts, she said, "I never heard that one," and this reminds me of a wonderful story from when we taught in Syria; it was 2003, our last year in Damascus, and our school finally had an internet connection, and so the computer teacher, a native Syrian rather unfamiliar with on-line technology wanted to make sure the students couldn't access any pornographic sites, and so he tried to block every pornographic search word BY HAND and once he was done, he confidently went to our director and said that the computers were safe for the children to use and our director went to the computer room and typed the word "jugs" into the search engine and he received a plethora of naked breasts as a reward for his creativity, and the computer teacher said, "Oh, I didn't know that one," and then the director typed in "hotballs" and within moments they were staring at people copulating, and so the director-- also not a computer wiz-- went to my friend Kevin, a young guy, and asked him to make a list of sexual slang terms they should block, and Kevin had the rather awkward job of telling both the director and the computer teacher that there was cheap software that could do what they needed without any hassle or manual listing of offensive terminology.

Pamela Anderson is Canadian?

I'm giving myself several "Caring About Canada" points this week because of the massive amounts of discussion on Canada I have generated recently; this isn't easy because Canada isn't in the news all the time-- Canada isn't media-sexy like Mexico (aside from Pamela Anderson, I learned that she's a Canadian!) and so you don't have easy, controversial topics to fall back on, like the drug wars or hot vacation spots or kidnappings or narcocorridos or snakeheads and coyotes . . . but, despite this, I have forged ahead and I have discovered other educated people who could not name the capital city and I have educated them, I have learned that "Arcade Fire" is from Canada (and so Canada has "suburbs," which is also news to me-- I thought Canada was comprised of cities, hamlets, and moose preserves) and I have completed my first assignment given to me by an actual Canadian-- I learned what "poutine" is, and it sounds delicious (I would start a "poutine" count because it would be a perfect complement to my 2011 Taco Count, but I don't think you can get it in these parts).

Everybody's Doing It . . .

Students and adults alike were recommending Suzanne Collins's novel The Hunger Games, and I figured: if everybody's doing it, then it's got to be cool, right? and I didn't want to feel left out-- that's not good for my self-esteem-- I never got over the year I wasn't allowed to play in The Reindeer Games, that really hurt, and what if everyone was going to play The Hunger Game and I didn't know how? so I bullied a student into giving me her copy and I whipped through it in two days, and certainly enjoyed it, the cliffhangers kept me reading at a furious pace, but the experience was more like playing a video game than reading a novel . . . all the knowledge about the dystopian world of Panem is conveyed through high-octane action, and there is some cheesiness, especially at the end, but the book was intended for young adults, so I really can't be critical . . . I'll give it eight cornucopias out ten (but I should subtract another cornucopia because the idea is a bit of a rip-off of Battle Royale, a Japanese novel made into a fantastic and disturbing film by renowned filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku).

2012: More of The Same . . .

Catherine began the New Year in her own typical fashion: she called our home phone from a park in Milltown and I listened to her message and attempted to call her back, but I couldn't find our land-line handset-- I even pressed the "Find Handset" button, but no luck-- so I called her back with my cell-phone and by this time she was driving back down Route 1, and I asked her about the handset and after a long pause she said, "I think I left it on the roof of the car," and-- miraculously (and I don't use that word lightly) the phone was still on the roof of the car when she arrived home-- it survived two trips on Route 1 and crossed both the Donald and the Morris Goodkind Bridges . . . an astounding journey, especially considering most of the other objects Catherine has left on the roof of our car have not fared so well . . . and devout fans might remember that the first Sentence of Dave dealt with this same topic, all the way back in 2007, and things haven't changed much since. 

Mystery Solved!

So I spent several periods on Thursday wondering why my shoe felt so loose, almost as if I was going to walk right out of it and leave it behind me on the floor . . . I wondered if my right foot had shrunk or if my plantar fasciitis insert was to blame . . . but then-- after a good two hours of this nonsense-- I had the bright idea to actually lift my pant leg up and look at the shoe, and-- wonder of wonders-- it was untied.

Awkward Moment of Connell

One of the nice things about the recurring Awkward Moments of Dave feature is that it encourages my friends and colleagues to confess their own humiliating moments to me: for example, my friend Connell donated this gem to the good of the cause, and he prefaced his story by saying he had just read this sentence, and I'm sure if he hadn't read it, then he wouldn't have been emboldened to tell me his horribly embarrassing moment . . . but here it is, for all of you to savor:  he was walking out of the grocery story with both hands full, and somehow he shifted lanes and unknowingly found himself walking out the "in" door, and as he walked towards the door a person on the other side triggered the electric-eye and the door flung open, and nailed him right in the face-- and, of course, because his hands were full, he was defenseless-- and had to take the full brunt of the door with his face, and then he stepped back, stunned, and looked around for the correct door and his eyes met those of a lowly cart-boy-- who resembled Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys-- and this lowly cart-boy was sitting on a bench, chewing on his tongue, but he paused in his chewing in order to point out the correct door to Connell, and then went back to his tongue-chewing.

I Pass The Lasch Test

I feared what I would find between the covers of The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, Christopher Lasch's classic 1979 indictment of America, and while his criticism of both American style capitalism and the progressive liberal agenda of replacing the traditions and hegemony of the nuclear family with that of the state and government bureaucracy certainly still rings true, I was more concerned with falling into the category of a "pathological narcissist" and then having to stop writing this blog to treat the condition, but apparently I don't fit his definition at all-- he sees the dissolution of traditional values, awareness of others, and civic mindedness a result of "fascination with fame and celebrity, the fear of competition, the inability to suspend disbelief, the shallowness and transitory quality of personal relations, and the horror of the death" and, first of all, I don't have any sort of fascination with fame and celebrity-- in fact the reverse is true-- and I certainly love competition for its own sake and continue to compete for absolutely no reason (his chapter The Degradation of Sport is worth reading as a stand alone . . . he explains how antithetical it is for sports to have ulterior "character building" purposes, when actually-- as Heywood Hale Broun succinctly put it-- "sports don't build character-- they reveal it" and so they have a deeper significance than teaching kids to get along with their peers) and I don't make transitory friendships (nor do I have that ability, as I make a terrible first impression, and a pretty lousy second, third, and fourth impression as well) and I don't see too much horror in death and aging, as my mental age indicates . . . and even though I'm in the clear, I still highly recommend this book: Lasch is regretful in respects to what we have lost as a culture, but he lambastes both liberals and conservatives in how they have attempted to combat this, and his prose is oddly prescient, and reminiscent of Marshall McLuhan-- full of sentences like these: "Modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions-- and our own-- were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time" and "What unifies their actions is the need to promote and defend the system of corporate capitalism from which they-- the managers and professionals who operate the system-- derive most of the benefits . . . the needs of the system shape policy and set the permissible limits of public debate; most of us can see the system but not the class that administers it and monopolizes the wealth it creates."

Know Your Audience

Last Thursday night-- after much celebration-- we were blessed with the opportunity to play with a "musical staircase" at a law office in New Brunswick, and Lynn pounded out an aerobically taxing and rather avant-garde version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and I made this clever joke: "I'm going to be like John Coltrane and skip every other step," in reference to his use of the whole tone scale on his classic album "Giant Steps" but I had forgotten that there were no jazz-heads in this particular group of friends, and so the joke fell flat and had to be explained . . . which is a terribly annoying habit; the next time I'm about to make a joke about an obscure musical scale, I will consider my audience more carefully.

Bonus! 2012: The Year in Review . . .

2012 has been a wondeful year-- full of excitement and drama-- and if you want to read my comprehensive review of the biggest stories, head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog.

More Thoughts on Drinking

So I recently reported that when I stopped drinking beer and ate healthy food for a week that I noticed a number of salubrious effects, but this isn't always a good thing-- because I find that it's easier to play with my kids if I'm a little hungover . . . it's easier to enjoy Bulls-Eye Ball or pulling apart stuck Lego pieces or flying a kite, if you're brain isn't operating at full capacity.

So Funny?

Many people have written about the difficulty in expressing tone in electronic communication, and I will add an example to the list; a few weeks ago my son Ian had to go to the dentist to have an infected tooth extracted and I was too squeamish to accompany him, and so I sent my my wife . . . later that day, while I was eating lunch, I had a moment to check my cell phone and read the text my wife sent: "Ian was really brave but it was pretty bad and there was a lot of blood and he cried some . . . I grayed out from migraine effect and had to lie down . . . so funny" . . . so funny? I didn't think this sounded funny at all, in fact, it sounded horrible-- horrible enough to trigger this absurdity-- but, in retrospect, I guess it could have been worse-- my wife might have blacked out (or, if you are a fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, she could have "browned out") and in the end, Ian was quite proud of himself and the gaping hole in his mouth and his extracted tooth . . . in fact, he was so proud of his extracted tooth-- which he placed in a little plastic box for safekeeping--that he didn't want the tooth fairy to take it from him-- but he did want some money-- so I suggested that he draw a picture of the tooth and put that under his pillow and see of the tooth fairy accepted the drawing as fair currency, and wonder of wonders!-- the tooth fairy did accept the drawing, which raises some serious questions about fungibility in the fairy world.

Bonus: Stunningly Ironic New Year's Resolution Development!

The 2011 Taco Count is over (I ate my 200th last night) and I have moved on to a more abstract resolution for 2012-- to Care More About Canada-- and I gave myself one "Caring About Canada Credit" simply for writing a sentence about this topic, but apparently-- according to an actual flesh and blood Canadian (Thanks Melody!) I spelled "Ottawa" incorrectly in this sentence where I vowed to profess a sincere interest and curiosity in the giant country just north of us, and this irony is not lost on me, and so I am resetting my Caring About Canada Counter down to zero, where it belongs, and I will humbly proceed from there . . .

Loath and Loathe Revisited

Two things I should be loath to admit that I do not loathe: 1) spinning class-- because of plantar fasciitis, I am going light with the soccer and basketball for a few weeks, and so my wife convinced me to try spinning while I am healing, and I must admit the time goes very quickly and the work-out is intense-- though I feel very goofy biking to the beat 2) the Marky Mark song "Good Vibrations," which I was actually pleased to hear during the aforementioned spinning class.

These Might Be The Best Sentences of 2011

Last year I introduced the "These Might Be The Best Sentences" feature, in which a completely biased and rather lazy judge (me) hastily attempts to choose the best sentences of the year . . . and though this year I am still just as biased and just as lazy, I am introducing a number of categories and a Grand Prize Winner to make this feature seem more dramatic and legitimate:

1) in the "Generating The Most Passionate Discussion" category-- all of it vitriolic and all of it directed towards me-- my "miraculous" sentence 'What Balls May Come?" earns a spot on the list;

2) the winner of the "Personal Revelation" category is "I Use Probability to Solve A Marital Mystery";

3) "I May Have Given These Words of Wisdom to My Students" wins the "Pithy Maxim" award;

4) "No Principles=Happiness" is the hands down winner in the "My Wife Is Just A Little Bit Insane" category;

5) The Mystery of the Year is "A Brief But Inconclusive Tale of a Tail";

6) we have a tie in the Best Idea of Dave category between "Dave's Second Best Idea Ever!" and "Peacock Tail= 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Tail Fin";

7) in the Best Idea of Dave That He Can't Remember Conceiving Due to the Influence of Alcohol category, the winner is this gem of a sentence;

8) in the When the Odds Are Against You, Make A Sperm Joke category, the winner is this inspirational tale;

9) in the For Once Dave Actually Deserves an Apology category we have a rather prolix masterpiece, entitled "The Potato Chip Incident";

10) Krystina's Best Idea Ever wins the Best Idea by Someone Other Than Dave;

11) The Most Awkward Moment of Dave is this hypothetical and unusual entry;

and the Overall Grand Prize Winning Sentence (and also the winner of the prestigious Sentence That Made T.J. Make the Same Comment Over and Over Award) is not a single sentence, but instead an over-arching category of sentences that thematically dominated Sentence of Dave in 2011 . . . the award goes to The 2011 Taco Count! (and my wife is making tacos tonight as an appetizer for the party we are attending, and so-- God willing-- I should eat my 200th taco of 2011 sometime this evening).

O Canada!

Counting tacos was fun, but it did get a bit tedious (plus, I prefer tamales to tacos, and there were a few times when I had the opportunity to order tamales and would have preferred to eat tamales, but I ordered tacos just to up the count . . . the sacrifices I make for this blog!) and so for 2012, I am resolving to do something a bit more abstract, although I will still attempt to assess my progress here at Sentence of Dave . . . and the reason I choose this particular resolution, which I will reveal shortly, is because of an embarrassing conversation I had with my son's soccer coach-- who is Canadian-- in which I revealed a shocking ignorance of Canadian geography and culture, and-- when I was pressed-- I could not name the capital of Canada (and I am not retarded geographically-- I can name loads of obscure capital cities from countries such as Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc. and I present myself as fairly well-traveled individual, which made this exchange even more embarrassing) and so, for my New Year's Resolution in 2012, I swear to Care More About Canada and I will keep a counter of times when I care about something Canadian . . . when I research a fact about Canada or make an attempt to listen to a Canadian musician or watch a Canadian film or TV show or follow some part of Canadian politics or sports or culture . . . and I am confident I can care more about Canada than I did in 2011, when I did not care about Canada even once (I did care about friends that I have in Canada-- I taught with a number of Canadians when I was in Syria-- but that doesn't count . . . I'm going to try to care more about Canada itself, the nation just to our north with which we share a 3,987 mile border).

The Second Hardest Working Man

Lest you think I stumble upon all the great books that I review here, or, as I have been accused, simply give a fantastic review to every book I read, let me explain to you how hard I work to find something good to read . . . and I realize this "hard work" is probably easier than changing over the children's clothing, or putting up the Christmas lights, or painting an "accent wall" in the living room-- all of which I neglected to lend a hand with because I was "working hard" on finding a good book to read, but we all have our special skills . . . but before I raced through The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith, which I will a perfect give ten scuttled boats out of ten-- this thriller from 1955 is a hundred times more thrilling than the ubiquitously popular The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and you get to travel to places more scenic than Hedeby and Stockholm . . . Ripley is a combination of Richard III and Dexter-- before reading this masterpiece, I read hundreds of pages in other books, all of which were pretty good but none of which completely captured my imagination and to prove this to you, I offer you a list of Recent Books I Bailed On:1) Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (beautifully written but too many dead turtles); 2) Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search For the Origin of Species (excellent mix of science and the adventurers who made it possible, but too much biographical minutia for my taste); 3) Inferno, The World at War, 1939-1945 (I wanted to read an overview of WWII but this book is for the WWII buff, a massive tome beyond my scope); 4) The Beauty and The Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War (a great concept, tell the story of the war through common people, but again, I need to read a clear overview before I read this one); 5) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (I always love Steven Pinker and this one is no exception, but the font is small and the book is huge, and some of it is a review for me, so I doubt I'll finish it before it's due back to the library); 6) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations (extremely insightful classic from the seventies, but I'm afraid if I finish all 250 depressing pages, and truly understand the book, then that I'll have to stop writing this blog).