I'm Really TRYING to Be Enlightened . . . Really, I Am

If you haven't seen the HBO series Enlightened, starring Laura Dern, then be sure to check it out -- it's funny and horribly awkward, and Dern -- who has a nervous breakdown at work in the first episode and attends a life-changing holistic rehabilitation center in Hawaii --returns to her old life, sort of . . . she's been severely demoted and has to move in with her estranged mom, but despite this, she is trying to become a better, calmer, less-materialistic, less bitter, more optimistic and hopeful person -- an "agent of change" -- but most people don't want to deal with this sort of person, and not only that, she's barely holding on to this new persona . . . I often feel this way when I vow not to lose my temper because of my children -- I can usually hold it together a few days (Serenity now!) and then I explode; the show alos reminds me of the Nick Horby novel How to Be Good . . . most of us our trying to be good people, but we wouldn't want to live with one (and I just read that the series was cancelled due to low ratings, despite critical acclaim, and that is actually a perfect end for the show).

Dieting Rule #487

It is not your duty to finish all leftover slices of pizza in the refrigerator.

Am I Misanthropic or Merely Grouchy?

In some respects, I'm glad the weather has finally turned spring-like, but the downside is that all the amateurs crawl out from hibernation and get in the space that has been mine all winter . . . these fair-weather folk clog up the sidewalks and the park and the tennis courts and the ball fields.

Two Very Very Important Questions

The house we rented in Vermont last week had Playstation 3 and Rock Band set-up in the basement, and after many hours of playing (and I must say that I am a pretty good Rock Band guitarist and drummer) two questions come to mind . . . one of which the internet answered: Question #1 . . . Are actual rock stars good at Rock Band? -- and there are loads of YouTube videos proving that actual rock stars usually CANNOT play their own songs on Rock Band . . . Question #2 is . . . Why don't they have a Jazz Band module for Rock Band? and while I love jazz, Bruce McCulloch answered that question long ago: if you like jazz, then you, sir, are my nemesis!

My Children Are Animals (and I am Inured to It)

Yesterday, I picked my kids up from school (plus an extra kid, as a favor) and I made the mistake of trying to talk to a friend for a moment, which gave my kids and their friend time to start wrestling, tackling each other, and slamming each other to the pavement -- which I noticed but didn't really address, because that's how they generally behave -- but because this was right in front of the school, two school aides and a teacher rushed down, to break up the melee, and I had to walk over and claim the children -- two of whom I explained, were "brothers" and then when I tried to finish my conversation, they started in again, and by the end of this round, Ian was kicking Alex in the head -- and my friend had to yell at Ian . . . and while this was horribly embarrassing, it was good for me to see how others view my children's behavior -- behavior which I am so used to that it doesn't faze me -- and all I could see on people's faces were expressions of horror.

I Hate to Say I Told You So . . . or Do I?

I hate to say "I told you so," but I told you so (and actually, like everyone else, I love to say "I told you so") and it wasn't me telling you anyway, it was someone far more respectable -- Diane Ravitch -- and she had the backing of Campbell's Law . . . so no one who reads this blog should be surprised as to what happened at Beverly Hall's school in Atlanta.

The Jungle is Low in Sodium

If you don't want to change your ways, then do NOT read the chapter on diet in Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday . . . like Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, it reveals some eye-opening dietary facts . . . except that Pollan points out the dangers of adopting a modern diet of corn 2 and corn syrup, and Diamond reveals the dangers of staple food laced with sodium and sugar, two ingredients that hunter-gatherers in the jungles of New Guinea do without -- and they have no incidence of stroke, diabetes, heart attack, coronary disease, and many of the other modern illness that plagues civilized man -- so I am going to try to eat less refined sugar and less sodium, which is difficult, because they both seem to be in everything -- but these are the only habits I am going to adopt from hunter/gathers, because while I agree with Wilfrid Oakley that "man may be captain of his fate, but he is also victim of his blood sugar" I don't think I am ready to abandon the elderly in the forest once they cannot move with the tribe, or commit infanticide if a child is born too close in age to the oldest child who is still on the teat, or adopt the treachery ideal of southwestern New Guinea, where it is even better to invite your enemy to share food and kill him than it is to kill him on the battlefield . . . "tuwi asonai makaerin!" (we have been fattening you with friendship for the slaughter!)

Big Announcement!

I loved our vacation in southern Vermont so much that I have convinced my family to abandon their hectic central Jersey lives and move with me to the Green Mountains -- and, of course, we will be living off the grid, growing our own granola and tofu, sugaring our own maple syrup, and doing without the internet . . . so no more Sentence of Dave, instead I will be keeping a daily journal, and I will write this journal with a quill pen, on hand-made vellum, and I will lock this journal in a wooden chest, which I will bury under our sugar-shack, and long after I am dead and gone, perhaps someone will exhume it, read it, and enjoy my posthumous wisdom.

Snowshoeing = Snowshoeing

I went snowshoeing for the first time in my life last week, while we were on vacation in Vermont, and I must say that the experience of snowshoeing is exactly as I imagined it . . . it was no easier or harder than I imagined, and I sank into the snow the exact amount I have always imagined I would sink into the snow while wearing snowshoes, it was exactly as exciting as I imagined (not very, compared to snowboarding, but very practical and relaxing) and so while I recommend snowshoeing -- it's exactly as fun as you imagine it to be -- you don't actually have to get out into the snow and do it, you can just think about doing it and it's pretty much the same experience (besides the cardiovascular benefits, of course).

Circus Peanuts Beware

The Vermont Country Store in Weston is over-priced and full of kitsch, but these minor faults are overshadowed by the vast array of free samples: dips and chips and salsa; local cheeses and pepperoni; fudge and cookies . . . if you're trashy enough, you could skip paying for lunch next door at the Bryant House (the associated restaurant) and just graze your way through the enormous store, which is actually several connected old buildings; the candy section fills one of these structures, and it is a joy to behold, several hundred square feet of every kind of chocolate, sweet, and confection possible -- arranged in a maze of jars and bins and cases . . . and from this horn of sugary plenty -- to avoid gluttony -- we decided to each choose a small scoop of ONE item -- Ian filled his bag with candy blackberries and raspberries; Alex chose candy Lego bricks, Catherine got dark chocolate covered cranberries, and I had a hankering for black licorice -- but there was a LOT of black licorice to choose from: ropes and strands, dog shaped licorice, swirls, rounds, twizzlers, etc. -- I finally decided on some smallish rhombus shaped pieces with the word "ZOUT" stamped on each piece . . . I assumed this was the brand of the candy, but when we got into the car and sampled our treats, I nearly had to spit mine out -- it was incredibly salty . . . and I soon learned, after doing a bit of research, that zout means "salty" in Danish, and I had purchased the infamous Dutch double-salted licorice, which might not be a candy at all, and instead some sort of folkloric remedy for sore throats . . . some folks on the Internet mentioned eating it as a "rite of passage," and all this is fine and good -- you might know that I am a fan of the circus peanut, and not because of the taste of course (circus peanuts taste horrible, like disintegrating Styrofoam) but simply because they exist at all and people continue to buy them and someone must be eating them . . . but I do believe there should be some sort of warning on this Danish double salted stuff, because now I have a bag of them, and the only way to unload them is to foist them off on unsuspecting people who don't speak Dutch.

Bonus Post! Good Friday? The Best Friday

I am about to pour a triumphant local Vermont beer: we survived four days of family snowboarding without mishap (though my children nearly died several times sledding in the yard of our rented "cabin," which is actually nicer than our real house) and while most of the time when I am on vacation, by the end of the week I am getting that "this place is real nice but I'm looking forward to going home" feeling, I am NOT getting that feeling this time -- and that is probably because we lucked out with the weather . . . could be the nicest week of spring weather in the history of Southern Vermont.

Comparing and Contrasting Insane People (with an extra dash of irony)

While I recognize the irony of someone like myself judging lunatics who write lots of words on the internet, I still can't help offering my two cents: last Spring Break we ate an amazing little taco joint in New Paltz called Mexicali Blue, and while the Yelp reviews are generally quite positive, there are also some fascinating narratives sprinkled in the mix, about mischarges for guacamole and enduring loud music -- long competent narratives with loads of details . . . in fact, if they weren't written on a restaurant-review web-site, these people might pass for educated and normal . . . and we spent this Spring Break in Southern Vermont and when I drove through Ludlow, on my way to get some new bindings for my snowboard, I saw a little shack called Taco's Taco's (that's how it is spelled on the sign) and I love tacos, so I checked the Yelp reviews and while I will definitely never visit this restaurant, I am glad I visited the reviews, because while they are bad, they are also wonderfully written, informative, entertaining, and quite funny . . . especially "Tasteless Tacos, Bogus Burritos, and Nasty Nachos," written by David K from Fort Lee, New Jersey, who describes his "first taste of nachos at Rye Playland Ice Skating Rink" and says that they were "totally better" than the nachos at Taco's Taco's . . . he also calls their Spanish Rice "one word: disgraceful" and claims that the rice is not only an insult to Spanish people, but to all people "of Hispanic descent."

A Tough Fruit to Digest

I highly recommend Tyler Cowen's e-pamphlet The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better . . . it is a quick read with a powerful thesis: we are not as rich as we think we are . . . and the stuff that made us feel rich in the first place, the low hanging fruit we grabbed and ate, is pretty much a thing of the past -- there is no more free and cheap land, the major strides in public education happened last century (at the beginning of the 20th century, very few people went to school or university -- intelligent or not --and Cowen argues that we have reached an age of diminishing returns in education . . . now everybody goes to school) and there haven't been many life changing scientific breakthroughs recently -- aside from the internet, which is a special case, because though it eases the shock of the stagnation, it is mainly free, and wonderful for those folks who are "intellectually curious, those who wish to manage large networks of loose acquaintances, and those who wish to absorb lots of information at phenomenally fast rates," and so though we still have our Constitution and relatively cheap fossil fuels, they are only two of the five . . . and in areas of great gain, such as financial innovation, these innovations do NOT translate into gains for the American people (and might translate into losses) as "recent and current innovation is more geared toward private goods rather than public goods," unlike the innovations of the 20th century: refrigeration, transportation, sanitation, mass communication, electricity . . . I agree with this, though the internet is super-neat, it pales in comparison to an indoor toilet, and I will still pay my plumber more to fix my pipes than I will pay for an internet connection.

Transitions? WTF!

Last week, my wife texted me the following message "U need to pick up the boys from your parents' house on the way home; I took out meat meat for tacos for dinner" and I told her I would pick up the kids and then I chastised her for not using a transition between two very different ideas -- thus creating an abrupt non sequitur of a message -- and I sent this message despite receiving advice NOT to send it from the women in the English office . . . because I thought it was humorous, but my wife thought it was "kind of annoying" and so I suppose that transitions are unnecessary in texts and I won't bring it up again (and of course, my wife used a period, not a semi-colon, in her text but I don't want to ruin the integrity of Sentence of Dave and so I made that slight adjustment . . . I apologize to all parties for being "kind of annoying").

Cheap Electrical Fun

Just before I go to sleep on a cold, dry winter night, I strip off my black fleece sweatshirt so I won't get hot once I am under the covers, and the last thing I see before I close my eyes is a pyrotechnical festival of static electricity, caused by the fleece rubbing against my head, made all the brighter because I am inside a tunnel of black fabric . . . and if you haven't experienced this, I suggest you try: it's inexpensive, safe, and a suitably dreamy image before you settle into a cold and comfortable night's sleep (and this is in direct contrast to what happens before bed on a hot, humid summer night . . . I peel a sweaty t-shirt off my hairy torso . . . and instead of receiving a visual treat, I am punished with an odorous olfactory slap in the face).

Saving It . . . Forever

This smart and spot-on post about amateur art by my friend Rob made me realize that the reason I have never actually tried to paint a picture -- though I love the idea of slapping some colors on a canvas -- is because I secretly think I would be an awesome and amazing painter, and I know the only way to ruin this pleasant fantasy is to actually try painting . . . there are several other things in this very particular category of "stuff I am purposefully avoiding so that I don't find out that I'm not as good I would imagine I would be" that I can share with you:  for instance, I just know I would be a natural at curling -- so I'm never going to visit Bemidji, Minnesota and try my hand at the sport . . . I'm also positive that I would be an excellent actor, and the best way for me to preserve this opinion is to never try out for a play . . . and I am as certain as certain can be that if I took the time to buy some new clothes and actually put some effort into dressing myself, that I would be the most fashionable guy around . . . and as long as I continue to wear fleece pants out in public, I'll never have to worry about this theory being refuted . . . so what are you avoiding on purpose so that you don't have to face the sad reality that you aren't a natural at it?

The Human Memory is Strange, Wondrous, and Stupid

Though I most definitely saw the film, if you were to ask me "Do you remember Remember the Titans?" I would have to say no . . . but I do remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Total Recall, and Memento quite well (and Dark City is an odd, in-between case).

I Am Mean (But Not Golden)

My friend Stacy and I each both teach Philosophy this year, and we were talking about Aristotle's Golden Mean . . . Aristotle says for every virtue there is a deficiency and an excess (so for the virtue of courage, the deficiency would be fear and the excess would be recklessness) and he says that it is admirable, but very difficult, to find the "golden mean" of each virtue -- the exact right amount of each thing you should be; we challenge our students to choose a virtue and apply this philosophy, and we usually do one ourselves: I decided that I needed to work on the virtue of "patience" -- and I definitely have a deficiency of patience . . . I lack patience when I drive, when I walk the dog and he won't poop, when I walk through the hallways at school, when I am eating, when I go to live music shows, when I go out to dinner, at the theater, when I am ready to leave a party, when I am tying my kids' shoes etc. etc. and Stacy was nice enough to offer to print out a question sheet for this assignment that she had saved from the previous year . . . and as the paper slid from the offic printer, and she tried to hand it to me, I grabbed it out of her hand, and read it . . . and it said "Please return ASAP" and nothing else, and before I could turn my filter on, I asked my friend Stacy this question: "What kind of asshole are you?" and then I realized that this was simply the flip side of a piece of recycled paper, and that the question sheet was on the other side -- but by this time it was too late . . . luckily Stacy has a great sense of humor, and she thought my horribly rude response was very funny, and not only that, she hopes that I do NOT succeed in improving my patience because she gets great enjoyment from my inappropriate spontaneous and ridiculous behavior, and -- of course -- the irony was not lost on either of us that if I can't be patient even while I am designing a lesson about my own patience, then I am probably not going to imrpove it anywhere else in my life either.

If You're Reading This You Are Probably WEIRD

In his new book, Jared Diamond explains that the human subjects studied in the vast majority of psychology experiments are WEIRD, and that may be skewing the results -- and you are probably WEIRD too . . . Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic . . . and if you are WEIRD, then you might learn a lot from The World Until Yesterday, and I highly recommend it: nine mongongo nuts out of ten.

Setting the Youngsters Straight

Every year, it seems that I have one annoying class . . . it's usually a large class in the middle of the day, just before lunch, when the kids are fully awake, but also have low blood sugar -- and every year, when I am expressing my annoyance to this annoying class, one of the students kindly asks me if I am having a bad day . . . because these students aren't annoying individually, they are annoying as a horde of thirty boxed-in teenagers . . . and so they can't believe that they would ever be annoying; and every year, I have to explain to this annoying class that if I am in a bad mood, and expressing this to them, it is not from some outside influence -- because I am a consummate professional -- and the reason I am in a bad mood is a direct result of their annoying behavior. . . and this always shocks them a bit, and makes them laugh: I think it is human nature to think that if someone is in a bad mood, it's certainly not my fault, there must be some other reason, some reason outside of me, because why would anyone ever be angry at me?