Loss of Essence

Trying to teach with laryngitis is like being a super-hero with no super-powers.

Sometimes It's Best Not to Know

We had an "energy assessment" done on our house, and apparently it's a big sieve with an ancient leaking furnace underneath it . . . but despite this troubling news, my kids enjoyed the part with the infra-red camera. 

It's Not Like I Know What A Hoosier Is

I wish I liked hockey, but I just can't muster up any interest in the Stanley Cup Finals . . . but I am interested in how many people that do not hail from New Jersey are familiar with the legend of the Jersey Devil . . . and do the people who don't know the legend think that the team is run by a bunch of Satanists?

Redefining the Terms

According to Paul Krugman, in his book The Conscience of a Liberal, I should define myself as a "conservative"-- because liberals have now become conservative in that they want to preserve public schools, Medicare, unionized workers, collective bargaining, separation of church and state, Social Security, and government regulations on Wall Street and the environment . . . and I should also define myself as a "progressive," because I think there should be universal health care (and the book really educated me on health care and its costs . . . we pay more than double what Canada, France, Germany, and Britain pay per person on health care, and have the lowest life expectancy among them . . . and a large portion of the costs of healthcare is the bureaucracy of the system, which would vanish if the government was the primary insurer for everyone . . . as it is for Medicare . . . read the book, it's too boring to summarize here) and I am also progressive because I wrote an editorial on how we should preserve our public school system instead of privatizing it and because I think taxes should return to the levels they were at in the 1970's . . . and the current movement conservatives should be defined as "radicals," as they want to dismantle the New Deal, government programs, regulation over finance, public education, Medicare, unions, collective bargaining, the estate tax, and other traditional American programs, and have us enter some weird new version of The Gilded Age.

The Avengers Are Not As Super As My Wife

The Avengers is certainly action-packed, but the heroes are too super for me . . . when the characters are invincible, there's not much on the line (plus they stole the ending from the movie version of The Watchmen) but my wife, on the other hand (who is a mere mortal) did perform a super-heroic feat while we were watching The Avengers and she did it with everything on the line . . . my son Ian said, "My tummy hurts, I think I'm going to throw up," and in a split second, with her super-human reflexes, my wife whipped out the giant bag of potato chips that she had smuggled into the theater, got it perfectly positioned in front of Ian's face as he yakked-- in the dark! the the fucking dark!-- and then calmly took Ian and the bag of potato chips/vomit to the bathroom, tossed the latter, cleaned up the former . . . and brought him back so he could enjoy the rest of the movie . . . I'd like to see Natalia Romanova pull that off.

The Great Political Paradox

The great mystery in politics is why anyone poor or lower middle class would vote against their own interests-- against social services and public schools and a clean environment and unionization and regulation of big business and more taxes on the wealthy-- but, of course, this happens across broad swaths of our nation, especially in the mid-west and the South . . . Thomas Frank tried to explain it in his book What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, and while it is a great read on how Republicans used so much more than hot-button issues to distract voters from economic realities, and actually built a brand-based belief system and ethos into the party-line; Paul Krugman, in his 2007 book The Conscience of a Liberal, wonders if that is truly the heart of the matter . . . he acknowledges that hot-button issues such as abortion and national security are partly to blame for the paradox, and also details how movement conservatism has galvanized the evangelicals (or is it the other way around? are the evangelicals using the movement conservatives to create a new kingdom of heaven on earth? either way, I'm going to hell) but Krugman feels the nexus of Republican power over the lower class voter stems from race, and explains how race was exploited in the deep South to bring those voters over to the GOP; while this is an awkward issue-- in the 1940's, when Harry Truman tried to create a universal health care system, his main opposition came from the American Medical Association and Southern whites, who feared integrated hospitals . . . and most of the fears of lower class Republican voters-- who are predominantly white-- are fears of redistributing income to undeserving minorities, black or otherwise . . . but America is becoming less racist and America is becoming more diverse and America is becoming economically more unequal . . . and so I am wondering how the GOP will gain these votes in the future . . . Kansas is still Kansas, according to the New York Times, but this movement conservative absurdity-- this radical and bi-partisan divisiveness that is at best a fringe in every other developed nation-- this can't continue forever, can it?

My Sixth Grade Teacher Was Passive Agressive AF

I found my sixth grade "yearbook" and this is what my teacher-- who will remain nameless for her own protection-- wrote to me . . . and notice the tone shift, it's almost like she couldn't help herself:

Dear David,

Good luck next year . . . I'm very happy you were a member of my class . . . you have been a great sport thoughout the year, your sense of humor was a bright spot many times . . . now all you have to work on is your talkativeness . . . we helped your organization (and that was a chore) and I believe you can master your talking mouth . . .

and then she had the gall to write: I'll miss you very much, please come back and visit . . . and when I was younger, I would have probably thought this was a relatively sweet note, but now that I am a master of the female tone, I get the big picture . . . I must have been a royal pain in her ass, but I was too skinny and nerdy to scream at, so she had to express it passive aggressively in that note.

Sometimes Technology Doesn't Improve Things

Art History in Two Pictures

I've got a scanner and I am determined to use it . . . sorry . . . maybe it's just a phase that I will outgrow (or maybe I should stick to scanning my six year old son's art, which is far better than mine).

Rimshot

I had pizza last night, but I'm not going to tell you anything about it . . . it was personal.

Confessions of a Lazy Man

I've finally gotten my new printer/scanner hooked up (check out my six year old son Ian's abstract art-- he could give Marla Olmstead a run for her money) but that wasn't the only package from Amazon that I received that day-- there was another one, a smaller one, and I figured it contained a book or two, but I didn't get around to opening it for a few days and when I did, I found two books inside, neither of which I ordered: An Eyewitness Guide to Spain and a history of Shea Stadium . . . so I looked at the outside of the package, and it wasn't addressed to me, it belonged to the house several doors down, and so I put the package on top of the scanner, informed my wife of this, and went on with my life . . . two weeks later my wife noticed that I never returned the package to the rightful owners and she chastised me (and I didn't tell her what I was thinking: I figured you would return it . . . smart move on my part) and she told me I needed to walk it over to the neighbors immediately, so I took the dog for protection-- because I figured this was going to be embarassing, since I had opened the package and then neglected to return it to them in a timely fashion, and I was hoping Sirius would drag me to safety if things got to awkward (or at least dispel the awkwardness with his powers of cuteness) but luckily no one was home . . . which means they were probably wandering through Spain without a guidebook.

A Fun and Easy Way To Spice Up Your Diction

I learned a technique from a student last week that might be Generation Y's greatest contribution to our culture-- it's not age exclusive, it's more entertaining than Facebook and Lady gaga combined, and it's easy to learn but difficult to master . . . so here it is: you add the acronym "AF" to any statement that would benefit from the additional modifying phrase "as fuck," but by using the acronym, you avoid the profanity and still get your point across . . . and make yourself feel better to boot (although I'm not sure if it has the same effect on pain as actually swearing) because nothing relieves stress like an expletive . . . here are a few examples to get you started:

1) it's humid AF in here . . . I used this one yesterday in class yesterday when my knees started sweating and my pants reflected this . . . really gross . . .

2) it's hot AF in here . . . complementary to #1 and a set-up for #5

2) you're late AF . . . also wonderful to use in class . . .

3) that was rude AF . . . useful in class and all of New Jersey . . .

4) I am hot AF . . . use this immediately after #1 and #2, especially if your pants have knee-sweat stains, and you're sure to get a laugh from teenagers.

Next Time I Will Hire Someone

I'll build a bike shed under the deck, I thought, all I need to do is level out the dirt under there . . . just go under the deck and level out the dirt because it looks like there's a bit of a slope . . . ha!

Old School

There is no question that the world has changed drastically since I was a kid, but some things never change: last week, my son Alex got in trouble in school for shooting spitballs, playing with scissors, and administering noogies.

My Son Ian Says The Right Thing (But Probably For the Wrong Reasons)

Last week, my two sons and I were walking on the Asbury Park boardwalk, in search of a video arcade, and my son Alex said, "I would do anything for video games!" and then his younger brother-- ever the opportunist-- told him, "You shouldn't say that," and then Ian looked at me and said, in his sincerest voice: "I would do anything . . . for my family."

Exciting Technological Times

I am excited to announce that we have a new printer/scanner (but I am loath to admit that it is still inside the box it was delivered in . . . it's been sitting on the kitchen table in that box for nearly two weeks, and though each and every day I announce, "We're going to set up the scanner today!" we never seem to get around to it . . . and my worry is that if I don't do it soon, it is going to become obsolete).

City of Bohane

Even though it meets my definition of true science-fiction, I gave up on Irishman Kevin Barry's new novel City of Bohane, but I did like this bit of description about how the place where you live affects your personality: "too little has been said, actually, about living in windy places . . . when a wind blows in such ferocious gusts as the Big Nothin' hardwind, and when it blows forty-nine weeks out of the year, the effect is not physical only but philosophical . . . it is difficult to keep a firm hold of one's consciousness in such a wind . . . the mind is walloped from its train of thought by the constant assaults of wind . . . the result is a skittish, temperamental people with  tendency towards odd turn of logic," and it makes me wonder how different a person I would be if I was born in Argentina . . . would I have many lovers? be able to dance? wear leather pants? walk around with a rose between my teeth? . . . unfortunately, I will never know . . . there is no escaping the fact that my genes were forged and tempered in that crucible known as Central Jersey.

Canine Economic Boost

Now that we have a dog, our consumption of duct tape has gone way up.

Don't Monkey With the Monkey

Sometimes you've got to shock the monkey . . . unless you actually are a monkey . . . then you are far less likely to shock a fellow monkey, even if it means starving to death . . . while, as Stanley Milgram certainly proved, we humans are quite willing to shock each other, for little or no reward . . . and I certainly won't put myself above this behavior, as I'm quite willing to shock my students-- in fact, one way I like to shock them is by repeatedly playing "Shock the Monkey" while they try to write an analysis of Milgram's experiment . . . especially the part that goes "monkey monkeyeeeeeee," and, I must tell you that kids today find it shocking that "Shock the Monkey" was a popular song that made the charts back in the '80's, but-- of course-- the '80's were a pretty shocking decade,

I Am a Man (and so Is Connell)

My wife and I went out with our friends in Asbury Park last weekend, and if you haven't been there recently, you are in for a surprise-- the boardwalk is renovated, full of attractions, and it is thriving . . . after downing a few beers, we started walking towards the restaurant (Stella Marina-- really good) and we passed one of those old fashioned high striker games-- the strongman test where you swing the mallet and try to shoot the puck up to ring the bell; it was on the boardwalk and unattended-- you were supposed to throw a dollar in the jar for two tries, but the guys in front of us took more swings than that and they were unsuccessful-- and they were big guys-- but the thing was antiquated and looked very rusty . . . Connell and I took turns at it, and after several tries I was able to ring the bell by incorporating a little jump in my swing, and then Connell followed suit, and rang the bell and it's a good thing he did because if I rang the bell and then he didn't, then he would have had low self-esteem for the rest of the evening and his wife would have probably left him, which would have been sad since we were celebrating their anniversary.

Children of the Carp

I was walking the dog last weekend through Donaldson Park, and it was foggy and drizzling slightly, and as we passed the little pond next to the river, I noticed a number of large boils and splashes . . . closer inspection revealed that these were giant fins and tails, brown and gold, breaking the surface all over the pond . . . so I ran home and got my children and we watched the giant carp for a while-- they were leaping and breaching and finning . . . incredibly active for very large fish-- and so we decided we would fish for them the next morning (our poles weren't set up and Alex had a soccer game so we couldn't take immediate advantage of what was happening) but Sunday morning was windy and clear and the carp were gone . . . we missed our chance.