Case Closed

There's nothing like getting to the bottom of a mystery, especially when you break a man under interrogation and he gives himself up . . . Friday, I noticed that there was a black mark on my pull down projector screen, and this made me angry because I use this screen all the time-- I write things on the white board, and then I pull the screen down and project video or a quiz or an image, and the advantage of having the screen, is that I don't have to erase the stuff that's on the white board; it's very convenient . . . but now this big black mark was going to be omnipresent in everything I projected . . . totally annoying . . . and so when this new guy came into my room period nine (he teaches a class in my room while I have lunch) and pulled down the screen, I said to him "I don't know what happened, but there's a black mark on the projector screen" and he said "I'm sorry, that was my bad, all the other rooms have Smart Boards and I mistakenly thought I was writing on a Smart Board" which was, ironically, very dumb, because you write on Smart Boards with these fake computerized markers, but whatever, I was just glad I had solved the mystery, and once I broke him and got him to confess, I lightened up and said, "at least it wasn't malicious, I thought it might have been a student that did it" and then I painted over the black mark with White Out, pleased that I could put one into the "solved" file.

Fine With Me

I'll never understand why local cops in movies and on TV shows get so upset when "the Feds" take over their case . . . if some folks from a government agency ever swooped in and wanted to teach my classes or grade my papers, I'd be more than willing to let them.

Building a Castle One Grain at a Time

One of the great things about teaching is that if you find something that works, you get to use it over and over on each new batch of students . . . so when we start the narrative unit in Composition class, which is essential for skills to write a good college essay, I always tell them a bad story first, and ask them to tell me what's wrong with it; the example I use is a true story from when I was in high school, and I played golf-- I was having trouble hitting the ball out of the sand, so my father took me to practice over the weekend at the local course, and then in my match on the following Monday, I hit the ball in the sand trap on the first hole, and-- armed with a few hours of practice, I approached the ball confidently and-- miracle of all miracles-- I holed the shot for a birdie-- and this is a true story, but we quickly determine that while it's true, it's also awful, annoying, self-congratulatory, and boring-- no one wants to hear that "practice makes perfect" because we all know this, and no one wants to hear a story where success comes so easily; I use Dan Harmon's story template to illustrate this-- in a good story, the main character needs to pay a heavy price for his success, and this helped me figure out a better (if fictitious) revision to this story, which came to me in the middle of class last week and will now become a part of my curriculum for the foreseeable future: if I had gone with my father to practice sand shots and he lined me up and showed me the technique and then stepped back to assess my progress, and I skulled the shot and hit my father in the temple with the ball and killed him, and then dedicated my life to improving my golf skills to repent for my egregious error because my ineptitude resulted in patricide and then-- after I buried him, mourned and finally went back to the course and I miraculously holed my first shot from the sand, then we all agreed, and only then, would the story would be a good one, because I would have paid a heavy enough price for obtaining my skills with the niblick.

I'm Working Again (and it's more tiring than not working)

You know it's been a long day when you fall asleep during an episode of Orphan Black.

How Would You Like If I Came Into Your Office And Heckled You?

This time, Dave didn't make the situation awkward, someone else did, and I'll keep it vague to protect all parties involved, but I was coaching my junior varsity team to victory the other day (a big deal, since we didn't win a game last season) when the mother of a certain player decided she needed an extended and serious conference with me about her son during the game-- and while those of us who play sports respect the imaginary boundary around the coach and players, even when the game is taking place in a public area, this mom had no problem walking right through that invisible barrier . . . and because of this I thought the matter was pressing-- a heart condition or an allergy or a death in the family-- but she essentially wanted to tell me to tell her son to get his act together or he would no longer be  allowed to play on the team-- which I immediately understood, and told her I would communicate this to her son, but then she wouldn't give up on the story and when I suggested that we could talk after the game, she said that wasn't possible, because she had an exam to study for and then she kept right on talking, while I was trying to sub players in and out, check a kid for a concussion, and change tactics because of a gale force wind-- and though she wasn't exactly heckling me, I still felt like Seinfeld in the episode where Kramer's girlfriend heckles him at the comedy club, and so Jerry goes to her office and heckles her while she's trying to get some work done, but -- in a sense this was my fault, because I should have dealt with her quickly and abruptly, but I'm not very good in awkward situations of conflict, so I finally just turned my back on her and didn't look in her direction for several minutes, and when I finally looked back over, she was gone.

I Should Put This Book in the Freezer

Despite my tendencies towards vasovagal syncope, I am reading Megan Abbott's The Fever, which contains seizures, hysteria, and a mysterious contagion . . . all stuff that makes me dizzy; her last novel, Dare Me, is the scariest novel ever written about cheer-leading (and cheerleaders are pretty intimidating creatures, or at least they were when I was in ninth grade) and this one has the same tone: every sentence has an underlying menace to it.

R.I.P Black Ipod Nano

My little black Ipod Nano finally met its match (it suffered through a full wash and spin cycle in the pocket of my work pants) and-- and I'm sure a number of my fanatical readers will be broken up over his demise, as this durable, reliable and adventurous gadget has been a mainstay on SoD since 2008 . . . so I'll be having a burial in my backyard tonight at 6 PM, if anyone wants to attend (but please don't tell too many people about this, because I think burying electronics in the yard breaks several eCycling regulations and I don't want the EPA breathing down my neck, nor do I want this treasured device torn apart and repurposed by a bunch of Jawas).

Bunny/ Seizure Juxtaposition

At the end of my wife's first day of school, a woman had a seizure in the school parking lot, delaying all the buses, and then a bunch of baby bunnies-- abandoned by their mother, escaped their warren and ran amok in very same parking lot-- but a giant man-- the husband of a Hispanic woman with a kindergartener in the school-- rounded up the bunnies and put them in a box, while the Hispanic woman and her friend told my wife, "we will raise up the bunnies and then let them go by the creek."

Einstein and My Son Both Think Time is Relative

It's really hard to keep a straight face when your ten year old son says, earnestly: "Ian, Ben and I have decided to get the band back together."

Slanging It Around

Sometimes, people use slang but they only know the denotation of the word-- so that the phrase works logically and grammatically-- but when they are told the connotation or the root of the slang, they are shocked by what the phrase actually refers to (e.g. on the first day of school, one of the younger teachers was taking a picture of another teacher for the yearbook, and when she got the photo just right, she said, "that's the money shot!" and we told her that she absolutely could never yell that phrase again in school, and then we told her why; at first she didn't believe us, and said that must be something from "your generation" but once enough unsolicited people gave her the same definition, she realized that though the literal definition of "money shot" was a memorable or impressive picture or image, there was no way to divorce the literal meaning from the derivation of the word).

No Fun No Fun No Fun

I heard P.J. O'Rourke on NPR plugging his new book, which is about the "baby boom" generation, and he explained that his generation really did "use up" all the fun in the '70's -- sex before STDs, drugs before "just say no" and America before complete fragmentation . . . and it if you want a visual example of this, read Mimi Pond's fictionalized autobiographical graphic novel Over Easy . . . the narrator's adventures as a waitress at the hippest diner in Oakland is gender-bending, drug-fueled artsy hippie punk fun . . . and the art is easy on the eyes, and the book is a breeze to read-- it's not dense like reading Watchmen . . . but no disco, please.

There Is No Unanimity About Uniforms

The day of practice when uniforms are distributed is uniformly loved by players and uniformly hated by coaches.

We Are Bested by a Ninja Grandmom

The kids and I went on an ethnic eating adventure Wednesday to the new dumpling place on Route 27 (Shanghai Dumpling House) because it's been insanely crowded with Asian people since it recently opened-- and we probably chose a bad time for the adventure, as it was hot outside, and hot in the restaurant, and we were hot and sweaty-- the kids had soccer camp all morning and I was coaching in the scorching hot sun-- so it wasn't the kind of day where we wanted to wait on line for lunch, but everything looked good, and so, after a moment of discussion, we queued up and waited for some tables to open; meanwhile the little old busybody Asian lady behind us kept making forays around our flanks to assess the seating situation-- she had a party of four and we had a party of three-- and though she feigned pleasantries, and even went so far as to chat with my kids, I knew her ruse, but despite my knowledge of her intentions, she pulled it off anyway, jumping the line and scurrying to a table of six that was occupied by two other old Asians, who she made some small talk with as her party sat down with them-- the boys and I compared her to a Samurai or a Ninja, but then when we looked those up, we found that they are both indigenous to Japan, so she is neither, just a quick and crafty old Asian lady; the ethnic hazing didn't end there, the place was packed but there was only one waiter, and we had a hard time getting his attention, and then they were out of several things that we ordered and we weren't sure exactly what was going on and what kind of food we were going to get, but when we finally got our food, the kids said it was worth the wait: the pork buns were crispy and delicious, the soup dumplings were amazing, and I really liked the wontons in spicy sauce . . . and I'd like to give some props to my children, who certainly have their shortcomings, but they are always up for a cheap ethnic food adventure, and they really held their own on this one, which was epic and annoying (the next time we go, it will not be during the lunch rush).

Grim Semantics

I'm usually a day or two ahead on my sentences and they automatically post in the mornings, so if I continue this project for the rest of my life, when I die, perhaps I will still post a couple of posthumous "death sentences" . . . I'm sure this has happened already on the interweb, and I find it creepy and weird (but not as creepy and weird as what happens in Susan Palwick's sci-fi novel Shelter . . . a rich but very sick man who has been downloading his memories "translates" himself into a digital entity so that he can remain in contact with his family, though he is disembodied and physically dead; his daughter finds this creepy, weird, and annoying, as he is always showing up on whatever on various monitors and embodying cleaning robots and such, in order to "visit" her . . . it's a great book if you're looking for some near-future character-driven sci-fi to read).

Defying the Odds

There should be a name for the disease that I have-- a sickness which defies all statistical logic: whenever I try to switch on a light or a fan, or open a drawer in order to find something in the kitchen, I always choose the wrong option . . . you'd think I'd get it right once in a while, probability dictates that I would get it right once in a while, but I don't.

This Is the Deal

I will entertain some high school students for ten months, as long as my town's school system takes my own children off my hands and entertains them (and I use the words "educate" and "entertain" interchangeable, because in many senses, they are the same).

The Positive Manifold is Annoying

Scott Barry Kaufman, an accomplished cognitive scientist who began his academic career as a special ed student relegated to the resource room, explains in his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness that smart people (typical smart people, not savants or people higher on the autism spectrum) tend to be smart in all subjects, and do well on an entire battery of cognitive tests-- there is a positive correlation between succeeding in French class and being able to do Calculus, between discerning musical pitch and mentally rotating objects . . . and this seems unfair, that the intellectually rich get richer, but what pioneering cognitive psychologist Charles Spearman called "the indifference of the indicator" has now become a psychological law . . . the positive manifold always correlates and though you'd expect "that the more time a student puts into one area of study, the more performance in another suffers" this isn't the case; students who do well in one particular subject tend to perform well in other subjects (and this does not preclude them from being athletic, as kinesthetic sense also positively correlates, so you might not be able to beat them up to punish them for their superior academic performance).

Don't Know Much About History

Greg Grandin's book Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism is giving me a headache-- the Drug War stuff I read revealed the tip of another iceberg, American intervention and meddling in Latin America, and I never learned any of this stuff history class but I feel like I should know the basics; Grandin does lay out some simple cause and effect at the start of the book: "it was in Central America where the Republican Party first combined the three elements that give today's imperialism its moral force: punitive idealism, free-market absolutism, and right-wing Christian mobilization" but then things get complicated, for example "it was Carter, not Reagan who began to increase the military budget at the expense of social services" and it was Jimmy Carter who created the Rapid Deployment Force, to be used "pre-emptively" in trouble spots around the world (he supported the mujahideen six months before the Russians invaded Afghanistan) and it was Carter who vowed to protect the Persian Gulf region "by any means necessary" and, believe it or not, it was Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who blindsided Henry Kissinger and his Realpolitik, and the two of them pushed for a "morality plank" in American diplomacy and a world political view based on "a belief in the rights of man, the rule of law, and guidance by the hand of God" instead of secrecy, coercion, and undue concessions . . . which makes the whole Abu Ghraib thing quite ironic.

Let's Enter the Mind of My Child

So I'm at the Chinese restaurant with my dad and my brother and the waiter brings us little plates for our dumplings, and my little plate is a bit damp (and if I thought about this for a moment, I would surmise that it's damp from being washed, but I don't like to think about things until after I do them) and so I wipe the water droplets off the plate with my shirt, the dirty, sweat soaked shirt I've been wearing all morning at soccer camp so now the plate is dry but filth-encrusted, and I'm totally happy.

The (Slightly Insane) Case of the Missing Teeth

My nine year old son Ian had a rough time at the dentist on Monday; he had two teeth pulled-- or, as his pediatric dentist euphemistically put it, "wiggled out"--  and though he was brave during the procedure, by the time he got home he was crying from the pain, clutching the little orange container which held his two extracted teeth . . . but once he recovered, he realized that he was definitely going to receive some sympathy in the form of pecuniary renumeration . . . i.e. the tooth fairy, and he asked his brother for some advice on whether he should put one tooth under his pillow per night, or stick them both under at the same time, but Alex didn't know what to tell him, and so he asked me . . . though he knows full well that I know that he knows that mom is the tooth-fairy and that teeth aren't fungible currency, and so I told him he'd have to make that decision on his own, and he was laboring over it, because he has an acquisitive nature and couldn't help speculating on which strategy would net him the greater gain . . . but then when it finally came time for bed, it turned out that he misplaced his little orange container full of teeth-- the container he desperately needed in order to get in the money-- and so I helped him look for a few minutes because I wanted to get him to get to bed so that I could watch The Guild, but we couldn't find it, and so I told him not to worry about it and go to bed, that the tooth fairy would still come-- but now he was concerned that he needed to leave something else under his pillow (once he drew a tooth on a sheet of paper and exchanged that for cash, because he wanted to keep his tooth) and then my wife got involved in the search-- she started stomping around the house, angrily looking for Ian's teeth, complaining that he couldn't be trusted with anything of value-- and I was smart enough not to remind her that the teeth actually had no value on any modern commodity or currency market, because she was in some kind of mood and she was using the teeth as a metaphor for all the things that my kids lose on a daily basis (and I don't think that my wife reads this blog very often, so I'll be frank here . . . the whole incident seemed kind of insane to me, especially when she told me that it was "nice to be you, since you don't give a shit" which was totally true, I was fine with giving Ian some coin, even if he didn't have the teeth, as there was plenty of evidence that he lost them: there were two holes in his gums, I saw the teeth earlier in the day, and there were several credible witnesses to the dental procedure) and by the time Catherine finally gave up on the search for the teeth, she was so annoyed that she didn't even want to watch The Guild because she said she "wouldn't enjoy it" and so she just went to bed (and part of this had to do with me not cleaning up any of my mess from dinner, which I meant to do, but I got really engrossed in my book about U.S. interventions in Latin America, so I may have been part of the reason that my wife was annoyed about irresponsible men in our household) and then early the next morning, I found the orange container of teeth amidst some Lego vehicles on the counter in the basement, leading to a paradoxical ending to this mystery; Ian received cash money for the teeth, or for the idea of the teeth, without actually exchanging the teeth, but now the teeth are back in play-- though they have no value in our household-- so Ian's best bet to parlay this into an even greater financial windfall is to sell them to a friend on the black market.