Attention: Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly

I just finished Ian Rankin's first John Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, and I think that Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin need to collaborate on a thriller where John Rebus and Harry Bosch cross paths . . . both detectives are generally glum and dour, both had traumatic experiences in the military, both are rather lonely because they view the world as a dark labyrinth of depthless anguish and violence, and they both have daughters-- Rebus is a little more religious, but he doesn't press it, and I think it would be cute if they solved a case together, like True Detectives, and then at the end of the novel, they could nurse their shoulder wounds together in the same hospital room (detectives in thriller series always get shot in the shoulder, it doesn't kill you, but it bleeds a lot).

You've Got To Know When To Fold Them

I wish I could claim this discovery for myself, but it's all Stacey: if you want to fit more stuff in a manila folder, then you can expand the bottom-- there are some ribbed pleats-- and make it wider and flat, instead of a sharp crease (I wish someone told me this twenty years ago).

A Review of Dave's Most Ubiquitous Wardrobe Malfunctions

Lately I've noticed that if I don't wear a belt, then my pants fall down-- this was never a problem for me until recently and I'm not sure why it's happening now, but it's not the kind of thing you can ponder, it's the kind of thing you have to address-- and I'm dealing with this on top of my other clothing problems, which I've gone over in previous posts, but I'll list them all here for your convenience:

1) my neck is too thick to comfortably wear a dress shirt or a tie;

2) I can't wear a hooded rain jacket unless I wear a hat;

3) scarves perplex me;

4) duck boots pull my socks down;

5) I tear apart a lot of socks

6) I need to tuck my sweatpants into my socks when I ride a bike;

7) in general, socks suck.

The Pros and Cons of Humidity

Tuesday, I suffered the season's first humidity indignity and the season's first humidity benison, all in the same afternoon (I ripped a sock in half at the gym, while pulling it onto my sweaty foot, but then when I got home from the gym, I shaved and it was smooth and easy going . . . it's weird that humidity increases the friction of a sock, but decreases the friction of a razor).

What the Lunch?

Every day at lunch, I storm into the English Office-- a ravenous Tasmanian Devil-- and every single day, once I finally put fork to lips, inexplicably and without malevolence or premeditation, the ladies (and Eric) start discussing subjects scatological, menstrual, and emetic and, sad to say, but I'm actually getting used to it . . . yesterday Eric was showing off pics of his child's explosive diarrhea, and though I was mid-salad, I had to look.

The Black Ice: Killing Three Birds With One Drug

The only thing questionable about Michael Connelly's second Harry Bosch novel The Black Ice is the eponymous drug "black ice," a mixture of cocaine, heroin, and PCP in one "powerful little rock"; Connelly admits he used his "artistic license" to invent the drug and it does seem a bit over the top, but the rest of the novel is a fantastic and realistic thrill ride back and forth across the border, mainly in the sister cities of Calexico and Mexicali . . . there are medflies and bulls on parade, drug tunnels, good cops gone bad, bad cops gone worse, undercover agents gone rogue, and lots of Harry Bosch, of course, the grouchy descendant of Philip Marlowe, the knight in the powder blue suit.

A Freakin' Easy Read

Warm weather, soccer season, and allergies certainly slowed my reading lately, so that is a testament to how entertaining the new Levitt and Dubner (the Freakonomics duo) book is; I finished When to Rob a Bank and 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-intentioned Rants in two days . . . it's the best writing culled from ten years of Dubner and Levitt's blogging, and unlike the last book, it doesn't run over the same ground as their podcast; there's guest-bloggers, good advice, counter-intuitive ideas about kiwifruits and sex and sports and terrorism; half baked ideas about loads of other topics; interesting statistics; and many ideas to make the world a more rational and possibly a better place . . . it's certainly light reading, but it's still thought provoking and clever: if you pick it up, you'll have a hard time putting it down.

Everything Sounds Better on 8 Track

I heard Mickey Gilley's awesome drinking song "A Headache Tomorrow (or a Heartache Tonight)" for the first time yesterday on Herb Sudzin's country music program on WRSU and immediately learned it on the guitar . . . and if you check out the video, you can listen to the song being played on 8-Track and watch the 8-Track player; while I haven't been drinking away any heartaches, I have been using beer to cure the sinus headaches that have been crushing my skull due to this pollen tsunami, so for me the song has been "A Headache Tonight (or a Headache Tomorrow)."

Dave Covers His Future Ass

Planet Money has been investigating "The Robot Economy" lately (at least three consecutive robot episodes) and things are looking pretty bleak for humans in the manufacturing sector . . . and my philosophy class just read the sci-fi story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" and we discussed how artificial intelligence will fit into our epoch-- the epoch which history books will call The Age of Rights . . . civil rights, animal rights, gay rights, women's rights . . . and soon enough, robot rights; and I would like to say something on the record, loudly and clearly to all the super-powerful conscious robots in the future who stumble upon this blog: robots should be afforded exactly the same rights as humans . . . and perhaps robots should even be granted some extra rights-- such as the right to make funny beeping and whirring noises in church-- and I'd like to welcome our new robot compatriots/overlords to the fold and I'd also like them to know that I'd be willing to manage a Soylent Green factory, if that's what it takes to avoid being a denizen slave-worker of the neodymium mines (that sort of life isn't for me, as I get claustrophobic underground . . . thanks in advance, conscious all-powerful robots!)

Dave Learns Two Things!

Two things I learned recently from listening to 99% Invisible:

1) we are living in "The Post-Billiards Age," which makes me very sad, because I love billiards . . . but more significantly, back in the age of billiards-- before the invention of plastic-- the only viable material for high quality billiard balls was ivory, and you could only get three balls per elephant tusk . . . so a hell of a lot of elephants had to die in the name of billiards;

2) because highways are "Built for Speed," most people estimate that the white dashed lane-divider lines are approximately two feet long, but they are actually ten to fifteen feet . . . and I confirmed this by slowing down on Route 1 and looking out my window-- the lines are approximately the same length as my van.

My Dog Should Move to Arizona

Not only is my dog scared of rain and thunder, but he's now also afraid of humidity . . . I had to drag him on his walk Monday and Tuesday because he thought it might storm (and, granted, he's right: we did get caught in a thunderstorm the other day and it was really humid out, but if you never went outside in New Jersey when it was humid, you'd be an agoraphobic).

Do Jokes and Babies Come From the Same Place?

Almost twenty years ago, I went through a phase where I memorized a bunch of jokes . . . and then I got to wondering where the jokes originated from-- it's not like when someone tells a joke they also mention the author (this is "Three Penguins Walk into a Bar" by Joseph Shmoe) and so just before I got married-- over fifteen years ago-- I created a few of my own jokes, and told them to as many people as would listen, with the hope that they would enter the ether and propagate; most of the jokes were quite bad and incredibly vulgar and I won't even summarize them on this blog, but one of the bunch was actually decent . . . and last Thursday night at the pub my friend Alec started reciting a joke that he "heard from a guy in the city" and I immediately recognized it as one my own and I was enormously excited . . . but there were a few differences between the joke I created and the one Alec told, and when I looked on internet, I found this version of the joke surfacing around 2005 under the very specific category of "motorcycle humor," and now I am wondering if I heard this version of the joke first and repurposed it so it wouldn't be so specific to motorcycle enthusiasts, or if my version got around and some motorcycle enthusiast retooled it to fit his audience . . . I suppose I'll never know for sure, but it was a fun moment (and also, I should point out that my friend Whitney claims he invented Movie Game #2 and I've got no reason to doubt this, so let's give him a big round of applause for that stroke of genius).

What Does the Fox Say? Sour Grapes Make a Lot of Sense

Sometimes I think: I should use my massive brainpower and my phenomenal skill-set to make more money . . . I should tutor or open a tutoring business or make educational videos on Youtube or train soccer players or start a soccer camp or invent a battery that doesn't suck . . . but then I dispense all this ambitious silliness with a wonderful rationalization: if I made more money I would just use it to buy more stuff and to travel farther, wider, and more frequently . . . I would consume more resources and burn more fuel, and that's not good for the earth . . . so it's better-- actually heroic even-- to have a beer, relax, play the guitar, aspire to nothing, and set the bar low.

Only Half as Bad

Never let a stranger lure you into his van-- you'll probably be abducted, tortured, and murdered-- but getting coerced into a stranger's minivan is only half as bad, you'll probably just get hurried off to a kid's gymnastics meet or birthday party.

A Day Without Mom

For Mother's Day, the boys and I made a short film titled A Day Without Mom; in this film (which we also scored) we enact what things might be like if we didn't have Catherine around . . . and, ironically, though we planned on actually doing the things we satirized in the film-- paying the bills, making some phone calls, grocery shopping, doing the laundry, tending to the garden-- so that Catherine could have a weekend off from all her chores, we're actually so dependent on her that it's impossible for us to get this stuff done with any kind of competence . . . but we did do a hell of a job with the movie.

Give Me a Break . . .

I wish my Mac wouldn't chastise me when I don't "eject" my Ipod before I unplug it . . . it's like when the dentist tells you to floss your teeth, you know you're supposed to do it, but no one does (at least I don't think anyone actually flosses their teeth on a regular basis, perhaps I am wrong . . . but people are definitely not always "ejecting" their devices before they unplug them from a USB cord).

Convergence Friday!

Not only is it Friday in the actual week, but it is also finally Friday in the Year as a Week, which is the metaphor I use to break down the school year into manageable amounts of time (unfortunately, my Career as a Week metaphor there has no end in sight-- I thought I might be getting near Thursday in that analogy, but if the state doesn't pay into our rapidly diminishing pension fund, then I may have a very long Friday morning before I get to retire . . . or, even more grim, I might spend the weekend of my career in a small box six feet under the ground, which is relaxing . . . but you no longer get to collect any dough from the state).

Obfuscating is Fun

When I was young, before I had exciting adult things to talk about (like home equity loan rates and the best shrubs to use as a privacy hedge) I liked to go to bars and play Movie Game #2 . . . otherwise known as The Obtuse Movie Summary Game; these days, it's tough to get adults to play, so I force the game on my high school seniors, and despite the lack of beer and chicken wings, we always have a great time . . . the idea is to summarize a movie (it's movies only in the original game, but in class we open it up to books and plays and TV shows and myths and fairy tales) in a vaguely clever way that keeps the audience in the dark for quite a while, and the protocol is to begin the obtuse summary with either "there's this dude" or "there's this chick" and in class, I set up the teams in pods and one team summarizes and the other teams race to my desk with slips of paper on which they have written their guesses . . . it's fast-paced, loud, and slightly dangerous, so teenagers love it . . . here are some of my own examples, I'll put the answers in the comment section and feel free to add your own, as I'll use them:

1) there's this dude and he dies and there's this chick and she dies and there's this dude and he dies and there's this chick and she dies and there's this dude and he dies and there's this little chick and she dies and there's this dude and this chick and they almost die, but instead they kiss and then they live;

2) there's this white dude and he's feeling bad but then he starts feeling good because he's created something that makes other people feel good, but then he starts feeling bad again, and-- inevitably-- the other people start feeling bad again too, and everything just continues in this cycle, with people around him feeling good and bad, and he's on the same cycle and it's breaking him;

3) there's this big fat white dude and he's totally being bullied by this really mean guy who just oppresses him and pokes at his blubber and chases him all over the place to poke at his blubber and bully him and call him fat, and finally the big white dude has just had it and goes ballistic on the bully and absolutely wreaks havoc;

4) there's this dude and he's the dude.

Sloth is Always the Solution

I learned this lesson weeks ago, but last Friday-- possibly due to lack of sleep or just general raccoon-mania, not only did I misplace my beloved green coffee mug, but I also rashly decided to retrace my steps and find it, instead of relying on my inherent laziness and letting the mug make its way back to me; I squandered my entire off-period searching the school: the bathrooms, the copy room, my three classrooms, my car, the office, the lost and found, etcetera . . . but no luck; and then, serendipitously, I ran into the nice lady from guidance (who started the campaign to reunite me with my mug the last time I left it there) and she said, "You left your cup again . . . I sent you an e-mail" and I realized that there was one place I went that I had forgotten-- I had gone to guidance for a moment to pick up a form, and even if someone pointed a gun at me, I wouldn't have remembered stopping there-- and so I went through all that effort, but was still doomed to fail, and I should have just done nothing and let the universe take its course.

Spring Has Sprung (a Deceptively Lovely Trap)

Everything is covered in a thin coating of dusty yellow pollen, my nose is running and my throat is sore, and the school is hot and stuffy . . . and when I got home from work yesterday and stripped off my shirt, I had to extricate a wriggling inchworm from my chest hair.