To The Guy in the Lexus Driving in Front of Me with Ten Inches of Snow on His Roof and Back Windshield:

You can't see me, because your back windshield is covered with snow, but I would like to inform you that I exist, and also that the snow blowing off your roof is creating a miniature blizzard and obscuring my vision, and though -- besides a small hole in your front windshield -- you've made no attempt to remove any of the snow from your car, I'd like to say that I forgive you, because I have been lazy and inconsiderate at times, and it would be hypocritical for me to feel otherwise.

On Milk Related Things

Last Thursday in the English office, I rejected the tastiness of Chantal's kale and banana smoothie because the consistency was too milky, and this led to the inevitable discussion about milk related things, and the fact that I have never drank a glass of milk, not even a glass of chocolate milk, nor have I ever had a milkshake (Kevin thought this was absolutely impossible and wanted me to provide witnesses to verify this patently absurd statement) and when I claimed that I wouldn't even try Nitro Milk Stout beer because -- though I know it contains no milk-- it has the word "milk" in the title and thus makes me think of milky things, Kevin became determined to penetrate my defenses, and he succeeded . . . he thought of the one thing with "milk" in it that I do love: Neutral Milk Hotel.

Gummy For Men

I am embarrassed to admit that I love gummy candy . . . gummy bears, gummy worms, gummy coke bottles . . . you name it, but I rarely indulge in these festive, colorful treats because I feel absolutely absurd eating them; no adult man can maintain any sort of dignity while sucking on a gummy peach ring, and I think there are other men that feel the same way-- other closeted-gummy-men-- and so there must be a market for macho gummy treats: gummy chewing tobacco, gummy seeds, gummy pork rinds, etc.

This is as Close to Archimedes as I Am Going to Get

I am certainly not a physicist in any sense of the word -- my "eureka" moments are usually very abstract -- but last week, while I was coaching a youth basketball game, I figured out how something works in the physical world; my thought process began during a game when our team was slaughtering the opposition, we were really racking up the points, and what surprised me was how often the shots were falling into the basket -- we always seemed to be getting the roll -- but upon further observation, I found that this was often the case . . . little kids make a fair amount of the shots they put up, if they hit the rim . . . and this is my best explanation as to why this is so: when an adult shoots a basketball, the arc of the ball usually rises far above the height of the basket, and then the ball plummets down towards the rim-- it's like the ball is being dropped from five feet above the basket-- and so if it hits wrong, it's got quite a bit of momentum, so it's going to "brick" and bounce wildly from the hoop, but a little kid shot typically just clears the rim . . . the point where the ball is at an actual standstill -- the apex-- is just above the basket, and so it hits the rim with very little impetus and has a much better chance of remaining on the rim, and possibly rolling in.

Kids Aren't Half As Annoying When You Are Playing Ping-Pong With Them

Nothing makes me happier than the fact that my kids are now proficient at ping-pong . . . cracking a cold beer and knocking that ball back and forth is as mindless and stress-free as parenting gets.

If Everyone Else is Juicing, How Can I Compete?

I recently learned that a number of people in my English department are "juicing" and have been at it for quite a while . . . they are drinking daily concoctions of kale, carrots, bananas, berries, yogurt, spinach, lime, and other healthy foods . . . and no one informed me of this shocking development (in fact, I learned about it rather randomly when a perfectly sensible guy said he was thinking about purchasing a $400 dollar Vitamix blender, which astounded me, but I then learned that everyone in the room -- five people -- were all liquefying vegetables and drinking them) and so now I'm wondering if I have to start drinking my vegetables just to keep up with the other teachers, who are obviously going to reap incredible benefits from these glowing green smoothies: clear complexions, full heads of silky hair, super-cognitive speed, boundless energy, the disappearance of hang-overs, and other various superpowers . . . but I don't really want to start slurping kale and carrots for breakfast, so I'm going to hope that it's just a phase, and that everyone will go back to eating normal crap soon.

Roger, Do It For the Children! (Or Most of the Children, But Not the Children in Shakespeare Class)

It's time once again for my annual epistle to Roger Goodell, beseeching him to move the Super Bowl to Saturday, and this year the impact of Super Bowl Sunday is worse than normal . . . typically, I start teaching Hamlet the Monday following the Super Bowl, which is difficult enough, but this year, because we've already had three snow days and the semester is off kilter, the Monday following the Super Bowl is an exam day . . . and a few of my students are stressing out because they have to stay up and watch the Super Bowl and they also have to take two exams the next day (luckily, this won't effect my period two class, though they have their exam on Monday morning at 7:26, because it's my Shakespeare class and they have admitted that they DO NOT watch football . . . when I asked if anyone knew the details of Peyton Manning's cervical fusion surgery, they all looked at me blankly, and a very smart girl said to me, "this is SHAKESPEARE class -- we don't know things like that.")

Lack of Sentence and an Idea for a T-shirt Wrapped into One Half-Assed Fragment of Thought

Last week, I had a really great idea for a sentence while I was talking to Alec at the pub, but the next morning, I couldn't remember it (and while that is an atrocious sentence, as far as content, the theme itself would make a great t-shirt: Dave went to the pub and all I got was this lousy sentence).

Facebook Stock Plummets! Dave Buys New Snowboard!

You don't need to read Dave Eggers' overly long and polemical book The Circle to know that Facebook is a vast evil time-suck that trivializes your life, robs you of your privacy, and makes you very stupid (and -- full disclosure -- I just sold some Facebook stock short, so I'm hoping that the rest of humanity reaches this conclusion too, and rapidly . . . and if this Princeton study is any indication, then -- like an infectious disease -- the Facebook epidemic will soon wane, as folks become immune to its infectious qualities and I will make hundreds of dollars).

FOOD!

Sometimes, I get so hungry that I've got to eat before I sit down to eat.

It's Good to be the Cook

The Danish film A Hijacking taught me three things: 1) if your ship is taken by Somali pirates, everyone on board -- including the pirates -- is held hostage by the ransom negotiations 2) if you're trapped on a boat, nobody in their right mind shoots the cook 3) Somalis and Danes drunkenly singing "Happy Birthday" in English is really creepy.

You Might Only Want to Read 1/2 of this Sentence

The folks at work claim that my braided belt is from the '90's, but that's not true -- my braided belt from the '90's disintegrated long ago, and this braided belt is relatively new and I bought it at Kohls . . . and I really tried to wear a more fashionable belt but the problem with non-braided belts is that there are a limited number of holes, and so if you gain or lose a few pounds, or eat a giant lunch, then there might not be an ideal belt setting for your particular girth at that moment, and I like to buy my pants a little big, and so I actually need a belt to cinch them at the waist, because I'm not buying the pants big for my gut-- which isn't all that big-- I'm buying the pants big for my butt, which is ample and round, and needs room to breathe.

Batting A Thousand (Sort of)

I saw three ex-students out-of-context in the span of three days and nailed all of their names:

1) saw a girl I had many, many years ago at a concert at The Saint in Asbury Park-- where her younger brother was playing drums in a band with one of my colleagues-- and though she is over thirty and has a kid and a house and a mortgage, she was far more surprised that I have kids and a house and a mortgage . . . "Mr. P. is all grown up!" was her reaction;

2) saw a dude I taught a few years ago stocking beer at the fancy beer store -- although I this one was a Texas-leaguer, as I only remembered his last name;

3) and, finally, an easy one . . . I saw a girl I taught last year lurking in the high school parking lot (there's nothing lamer than hanging around the high school once you've graduated, but -- to her credit -- I think she was waiting to give someone a ride).

Not Surprising . . .

Building a cardboard box in which to ship a banjo is harder than you think.

Despite All the F*%king Grading, There Are Some Fun Things About Being a Teacher

One of the great things about being a teacher is that you get to teach people things, and so when I show Marshall Curry's fantastic documentary Street Fight to my students it is ostensibly to teach them about politics, but the actual reason I show the film is so that when Cory Booker's campaign manager compares Sharpe James to former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, I get to pause the film and explain to my students about Marion Barry: who he was, what he did, and how-- despite what he did-- he got elected again (and it's a great excuse to say "crack cocaine" in class, which is always a crowd pleaser among the high school seniors . . . and I must warn you, if you're one of those people who like to watch movies in silence, with no pauses or interruptions, then you should NOT take my class, because I consider showing a movie in class more of a performance art: you are seeing a movie with Dave, who might pause it at any time to comment, or might not even bother to pause it . . . it's the educational version of Mystery Science Theater 3000, without the robots).

A Loooooooong Week for Ian

By Wednesday afternoon of last week, this was the list of Ian's infractions at school, as reported by his very forgiving and patient teacher on his behavior sheet: putting his middle finger down (instead of up, he claims he was taunted into doing this, but he knows better), putting the cap to the glue stick up his butt and then giving it to someone, getting caught erasing the details about the middle-finger episode and the glue stick/butt incident and so not only did his behavior sheet include an addendum (written in pen) describing those two previous incidents, but it also explained that Ian claimed that he "accidentally" erased that part of the note -- though he admitted to me that he did this in order to get in less trouble, and -- finally-- he got into an argument with Lucy and called her a "buttface buffoon."

My Wife and I Agree on How Not To Lose Your Shit

When I go to the gym, I leave my wallet and cell-phone in the glove compartment of my car because I think that there is a greater chance of my gym locker being broken into rather than my run-of-the-mill gray Toyota min-van, and I asked my wife what she does, and she uses the same strategy . . . for the same exact reason (though she drives our run-of-the-mill Subaru) and since my wife and I rarely agree on questions of logic, I am guessing that we are doing the smart thing for this scenario.

Sports: The Reason Why I Don't Invent a Bunch of Cool Stuff for the Internet

While reading George Packer's fragmented and arresting book about the fragmentation of America (The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America) I learned why I am not more like Peter Thiel -- who has a long list of entrepreneurial and technological achievements, among them co-founding PayPal-- because to get hired by Thiel you not only had to be "incredibly smart" but also "without distracting obligations like wives and children or time-wasting hobbies like sports and TV . . . one applicant was turned down because he admitted to enjoying shooting hoops."

If . . . Then . . . But

Wednesday morning . . . 5:45 AM . . . and it's so foggy that I can't see the end of the road-- if I wasn't with my trusty canine companion, it would have been very spooky and that's the great thing about having a dog, you always have someone to accompany you on a walk, no matter the situation -- but, of course I should point out, if it wasn't for my trusty canine companion, I wouldn't have been walking around in the fog at 5:45 AM, I would have been in bed, or indoors, and that's what's not so great about owning a dog.

Layers and Layers of Irony and Failure

Nothing makes me more unhappy that enforced pep (you may remember my difficulties when I was compelled to "Dress Like a Holiday") but rather than suffer the ire of certain female members of my department, I now begrudgingly go along with whatever spirit theme is chosen, and so on Wednesday, I wore the required uniform -- black shirt and pants, glasses, and a beret (I only wore the beret momentarily, for "check in," but that's still pretty spirited for me) -- and our department followed suit . . . we were supposed to be Beatnik poets, but I thought some people looked like French painters and others looked like college graduates . . . but we did well enough with our department unity to tie the business department, and since the math department came up with this contest idea, they administered the tie-breaker . . . a math test . . . mano a mano . . . by someone chosen from the department, and so --ironically -- my department chose me to take the test, because though I am the least spirited member of the department, I am pretty good at math (and even taught it, long long ago) and so this set-up the wonderful possibility that the person who really didn't want to "dress like a holiday" would end up being the department spirit hero . . . and so I e-mailed the math teacher administering the tie-breaker and we set up a time and she told me to bring a calculator . . . and that's when I realized that this might actually be a math test and not some math riddle or math trivia quiz or something fun and spirited . . . as we were dealing with the math department, not the English department, and this made me a bit anxious, and it turned out I was right: I had to take a ten question quiz with algebraic equations and number lines and solution sets . . . and this test, in mathematical terms, was 0% fun, but I still felt confident taking it (which means nothing . . . I always feel confident when I take math tests and I've gotten some really abysmal math grades in my life) and I remembered all my acronyms: SMATO (subtraction means adding the opposites) and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally and FOIL (first outside middle last) and was proudly reciting them to the proctor of the test as I did the problems, and -- for a moment-- I thought I just might be the least spirited department hero ever . . . Cinderella story, underdog victory and all that, but my lack of spirit must have caused some kind of karmic justice; I got a 90% on the quiz-- pretty good, but not good enough, as the guy from the business department got a perfect score (and I really should have got them all right too, but I missed a pair of absolute value bars in the first question, I think I saw them as parentheses, and -- always my problem in math -- I didn't check over my work well enough) but I'm going to try to parlay this ostensible failure into a success . . . I am so distraught and humiliated at my crucial role in our defeat that I can't bear to take part in any other spirit days, or it will remind me of the trauma of this one (that's my story and I'm sticking to it . . . and if there is a moral to my woeful tale, it is this: if the math department says that they are giving you a math test, it's going to be a math test).