The Test 66: TV Theme Song Escapism
Despite our collective election hangover, Stacey, Cunningham and I got together on Wednesday, November 9th in order to record three episodes of The Test . . . and while we were a bit less chipper than usual, Cunningham did her best to cheer us up with a brand new, totally mindless, completely entertaining TV Theme Song quiz--which the ladies oddly refer to as a TV Theme Show quiz-- so if you're sick of pondering the future, chill out and see if you can identify the seven clips (with the added bonus that you just might learn something . . . and no one will try to grab your pussy).
Desert Truffles
During our three year stint in Damascus, my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed a short period of time in the spring-- just after the desert rains-- when the Bedouins would come into town with sacks of white truffles; they were dirt cheap, as far as truffles go-- four dollars a kilo (and that was the price for a white guy who spoke rudimentary Arabic and was a notoriously bad haggler) and a recent episode of Planet Money: A Trunk Full of Truffles inspired me to do some research about these "desert truffles," which are called "kimmay" in Syria . . . they are not nearly as expensive as Italian truffles (which can cost up to $2200 per kilogram) but white and brown desert truffles do fetch much higher prices than we paid on the streets of Damascus . . . anywhere from $80 to $270 per kilogram; I should point out that truffles are not very dense, and so a kilogram of truffles is a LOT of truffles: we baked them like potatoes, sauteed them like onions, and sliced them thin and put them in salads . . . this is not how you're going to eat truffles in the States, as they are very expensive and the market for them is quite strange-- I highly recommend this episode of Planet Money, as you'll learn about truffle smuggling, truffle depreciation, and why people like the smell of old socks.
Leeroy Jenkins Edges Out Crazy Eddie Antar
If the Bourne Identity series and Good Will Hunting had a child, it would be The Accountant-- a fairly absurd (but also fairly entertaining) thriller about an autistic tax expert who not only has super-numerical abilities, but can also kick some serious ass (thanks to his overbearing, rather hokily insane dad) and while I'm not going to seriously analyze the plot and characters of this convoluted, highly improbable story, I will give the film credit for having the runner-up to the coveted SOD Allusion of the Year . . . Ben Affleck's character Christian Wolff has an epiphany about the bad guys, inspired by his memory of Crazy Eddie Antar's insane attempts at stock manipulation.
Dear President Elect Trump: If You Really Want to Build That Wall, Here's How To Do It . . .
Here's a fun possibility in Trumperica:
Trump scraps NAFTA, the peso tumbles even lower, causing a terrible recession in Mexico, and illegal immigrants actually start flooding across the border to America (despite Trump's baldfaced lies, there's been a net loss of immigration from Mexico in the past few years, but Trump could self-fulfill his own prophecy) and this massive influx of illegal immigrants gets so bad that we actually have to build a wall to curtail the human deluge; I'm sure someone smarter than me has thought of this possibility already, just as the Simpsons imagined that Trump would become president (and bankrupt our country) sixteen years ago . . . but if not, someone should pass this sentence along to the oval office once Trump takes over (and perhaps I'll obtain a cabinet position for my good work).
Bill Bryson Makes Me Nostalgic For Britain
Bill Bryson's new book The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain has dislodged some memories from my own brain . . . sometime after Catherine and I lived in Syria (which is well documented in a series of rambling email updates) and before I started writing this blog, in the sleep-deprived haze of having a new child, I went to England with some English teachers (in lieu of the teacher workshop days that were being held at school, this was back when those sorts of things were permissible) and stayed in the "charming old wool merchant's town" of Chipping Campden, which is located in the heart of the Cotswolds-- an especially scenic part of Britain that has thatched houses, honey colored limestone buildings, and wonderful walking paths; my memory is shit, which is why I now write this blog, but I do vaguely recall a few things from the trip, besides the endless pints of beer at The Volunteer Inn;
1) on the ride from the airport, everyone was tired from the flight except me-- I had taken dramamine, and used a neck pillow, earplugs, and a blindfold to block out all stimuli, and I slept like a baby, and so I bravely volunteered to drive the rental car from Heathrow to our cottage-- I assured the crew that I had some experience driving on the left, which was technically true, but I did not tell them that my experience consisted of driving a motor-scooter in Thailand, and I did a poor job at that (and I have enough trouble driving a car on the right in America) and so when we were driving through a roundabout under construction in Oxford, and I got distracted by some licorice, I ripped the passenger side mirror off the car . . . I can't remember how this was resolved in the end, it might have cost Allie a few bucks at the rental car place;
2) on one of our hikes-- Broadway Tower, Stow-on-the-World . . . I can't remember-- I got us very lost and off-the-map, and I nearly killed Linda, one of the teachers accompanying us, as she's a diabetic-- it was getting dark and we couldn't find out way out of the woods, but the funny thing-- in retrospect-- is that I thought she was in desperate need of insulin, and that I would be brought up on manslaughter charges, because I deprived a diabetic of her insulin due to my poor orienteering skills, but she actually needed food, to increase her blood-sugar . . . and as she was about to lapse into a coma, just as we were finally approaching the end of the hike, I comprehended this and told said: "Food? I've got plenty of food, right here in my bag . . . I always carry lots of snacks and bars and chips when I'm on a hike" and if she wasn't so weak from diabetic shock, then she would have punched me;
3) we confidently participated in Trivia Night at the local pub, assuming five English teachers would crush all comers . . . but we were completely unprepared for the depth of English trivia, and couldn't answer any of the questions-- except one about Iron Maiden . . . I think we also may have resorted to cheating, and getting some answers from one of our local pub friends;
4) we visited Oxford, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's house, and . . . Cropredy . . . the oldest teacher in the group, John, insisted we go to the Cropredy because it hosts the Fairport Convention, a folk festival that he loves . . . and the town was lovely;
5) we ate lunch at pubs and dinner in our stone cottage-- this was long before Brexit and the pound was very strong-- everything cost twice as much as in the States;
6) we made many local pub friends-- the town plumber and the town carpenter and lots of other blue collar types, and they were fun and informative and out at the bar every night-- we learned that only honors students read Shakespeare in England, and we also learned that the pub owner's daughter-- a barmaid-- had married an American man, moved to North Carolina, and then returned to England once she learned that his business trips weren't for business at all, they were to meet a male lover . . . he was gay; Sean and I learned this from the pub owner one night, but his accent was very thick, so it took us a while to comprehend what he was telling us;
7) despite the accents, I found it astounding that we were in a foreign country and people spoke English-- remember, Catherine and I had just gotten back from three years in Syria and so met with daily struggles trying to speak a very difficult language-- and so I talked to everyone about anything, on one of our hikes I asked a pretty British lass directions, occasionally gawking at her and the horse next to her, but mainly looking at my laminated fold-out map of the region, and I thought she was blowing me off a bit and the rest of the group was awkwardly laughing . . . apparently I had interrupted her while she was shoeing this large beast and she was trying to concentrate on affixing the shoe to the horse without being kicked and not on how to give directions to the stupid inconsiderate American;
anyway, enough about me-- the new Bryson book is nearly four hundred pages of rambling anecdotes like this, as Bryson traverses Britain from the southern tip to Cape Wrath, the northernmost point in Scotland, and there is history and description, accounts of beauty and anger at modern development, plenty of getting lost and of difficult travel-- I never knew there were so many places in England, especially so many seaside resorts (in varying states of grandeur and decay) and there is plenty of grouchiness and fairly frequent use of the f-word, much drinking of pints and eating of spicy food (with the usual consequences) and a general appreciation of the small things that make life wonderful and the big things trying to destroy this . . . he mainly basks in the wonder of Britain, it's astounding mass of history and historical sites, all situated in on a small island : "there isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of Great Britain . . . it is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden" but-- and he is a man of my own mind, as I like nothing more than getting up early, taking a hike, having a beer, and then going to bed and doing it again the next day-- and so he describes his vision, which is so appropriate after yesterday's election results, as I concur so completely with this, that I am reproducing here-- with periods!-- while conceding that if any American politician said this, they'd be labeled a radical communist:
May I tell you what I'd like to see? I would like to see a government that said "We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness, it produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes."
and Bryson admits that this will never happen, and he's mainly happy with the parts of Britain that are like this . . . I will do the same in America, and enjoy the pleasant parks, good schools, and enlightened people of my town (and enact my vacation dollar ban on all the states that voted for environmental devastation and Trump . . . that leaves plenty of coast, New Mexico and Colorado as western outposts, and Vermont for snowboarding . . . plenty of wonderful places, I just hope they don't get destroyed in the oncoming storm of deregulation).
1) on the ride from the airport, everyone was tired from the flight except me-- I had taken dramamine, and used a neck pillow, earplugs, and a blindfold to block out all stimuli, and I slept like a baby, and so I bravely volunteered to drive the rental car from Heathrow to our cottage-- I assured the crew that I had some experience driving on the left, which was technically true, but I did not tell them that my experience consisted of driving a motor-scooter in Thailand, and I did a poor job at that (and I have enough trouble driving a car on the right in America) and so when we were driving through a roundabout under construction in Oxford, and I got distracted by some licorice, I ripped the passenger side mirror off the car . . . I can't remember how this was resolved in the end, it might have cost Allie a few bucks at the rental car place;
2) on one of our hikes-- Broadway Tower, Stow-on-the-World . . . I can't remember-- I got us very lost and off-the-map, and I nearly killed Linda, one of the teachers accompanying us, as she's a diabetic-- it was getting dark and we couldn't find out way out of the woods, but the funny thing-- in retrospect-- is that I thought she was in desperate need of insulin, and that I would be brought up on manslaughter charges, because I deprived a diabetic of her insulin due to my poor orienteering skills, but she actually needed food, to increase her blood-sugar . . . and as she was about to lapse into a coma, just as we were finally approaching the end of the hike, I comprehended this and told said: "Food? I've got plenty of food, right here in my bag . . . I always carry lots of snacks and bars and chips when I'm on a hike" and if she wasn't so weak from diabetic shock, then she would have punched me;
3) we confidently participated in Trivia Night at the local pub, assuming five English teachers would crush all comers . . . but we were completely unprepared for the depth of English trivia, and couldn't answer any of the questions-- except one about Iron Maiden . . . I think we also may have resorted to cheating, and getting some answers from one of our local pub friends;
4) we visited Oxford, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's house, and . . . Cropredy . . . the oldest teacher in the group, John, insisted we go to the Cropredy because it hosts the Fairport Convention, a folk festival that he loves . . . and the town was lovely;
5) we ate lunch at pubs and dinner in our stone cottage-- this was long before Brexit and the pound was very strong-- everything cost twice as much as in the States;
6) we made many local pub friends-- the town plumber and the town carpenter and lots of other blue collar types, and they were fun and informative and out at the bar every night-- we learned that only honors students read Shakespeare in England, and we also learned that the pub owner's daughter-- a barmaid-- had married an American man, moved to North Carolina, and then returned to England once she learned that his business trips weren't for business at all, they were to meet a male lover . . . he was gay; Sean and I learned this from the pub owner one night, but his accent was very thick, so it took us a while to comprehend what he was telling us;
7) despite the accents, I found it astounding that we were in a foreign country and people spoke English-- remember, Catherine and I had just gotten back from three years in Syria and so met with daily struggles trying to speak a very difficult language-- and so I talked to everyone about anything, on one of our hikes I asked a pretty British lass directions, occasionally gawking at her and the horse next to her, but mainly looking at my laminated fold-out map of the region, and I thought she was blowing me off a bit and the rest of the group was awkwardly laughing . . . apparently I had interrupted her while she was shoeing this large beast and she was trying to concentrate on affixing the shoe to the horse without being kicked and not on how to give directions to the stupid inconsiderate American;
anyway, enough about me-- the new Bryson book is nearly four hundred pages of rambling anecdotes like this, as Bryson traverses Britain from the southern tip to Cape Wrath, the northernmost point in Scotland, and there is history and description, accounts of beauty and anger at modern development, plenty of getting lost and of difficult travel-- I never knew there were so many places in England, especially so many seaside resorts (in varying states of grandeur and decay) and there is plenty of grouchiness and fairly frequent use of the f-word, much drinking of pints and eating of spicy food (with the usual consequences) and a general appreciation of the small things that make life wonderful and the big things trying to destroy this . . . he mainly basks in the wonder of Britain, it's astounding mass of history and historical sites, all situated in on a small island : "there isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of Great Britain . . . it is the world's largest park, its most perfect accidental garden" but-- and he is a man of my own mind, as I like nothing more than getting up early, taking a hike, having a beer, and then going to bed and doing it again the next day-- and so he describes his vision, which is so appropriate after yesterday's election results, as I concur so completely with this, that I am reproducing here-- with periods!-- while conceding that if any American politician said this, they'd be labeled a radical communist:
May I tell you what I'd like to see? I would like to see a government that said "We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness, it produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes."
and Bryson admits that this will never happen, and he's mainly happy with the parts of Britain that are like this . . . I will do the same in America, and enjoy the pleasant parks, good schools, and enlightened people of my town (and enact my vacation dollar ban on all the states that voted for environmental devastation and Trump . . . that leaves plenty of coast, New Mexico and Colorado as western outposts, and Vermont for snowboarding . . . plenty of wonderful places, I just hope they don't get destroyed in the oncoming storm of deregulation).
Alec Baldwin Wins!
My sources tell me that Alec Baldwin is incredibly thankful to the American people, for providing him four more years to lampoon a self-professed presidential pussy-grabbing anti-vaxxer on SNL . . . Tina Fey is also hopeful, as she believes Trump is just the right kind of stupid to resurrect Sarah Palin's political career, and nobody is easier to ridicule than Sarah Palin: Joseph de Maistre said "every nation gets the government it deserves" and this election has proved that true, but let's look on the bright side . . . we're also going to get the comedy we deserve and it will be very very funny . . . here's to four years of absurd satire, plenty of sentence material for Dave, and a big beautiful Pink Floydian wall!
Last Ditch Effort
This will be my last political post about the presidential election (unless have a Bush/Gore situation) and I already did my best to summarize the policy positions of each candidate, and now I must concede that if you are one of four kinds of people-- listed below-- then you should stop reading this and just vote Trump, but if you are NOT one of those four kinds of people, and you are still on the fence and might vote for Hillary Clinton, but feel some trepidation because of the email "scandal," then please take the time to listen to the new This American Life: "Master of Her Domain . . . Name" or, if you're feeling more ambitious and want something more nonpartisan and much more comprehensive, then go ahead and read "What the FBI Files Reveal About Hillary Clinton's Email Server" in the magazine Politico . . . Garrett Graff read 247 pages of interview summaries of the FBI investigations about Clinton, and while there is some incompetence and some technological bumbling, there is absolutely nothing scandalous in the entire narrative . . . I've decided that Clinton's policies are in line with things I want in our country, and so I'm not going to throw my vote away and support Jill Stein (although my heart is with the Green Party) and so this is it, my sad last ditch effort to convince all you swing voters . . . as I stated earlier, disregard this you are one of the following four types of people, as nothing is going to change your (narrow) mind:
you should vote for Trump, if . . .
1) you are greedy rich person who wants a tax windfall . . . just make sure you're rich enough that you won't need any of the social services that will be cut to generate this handout;
2) you are an angry white racist and/or misogynist; who is also scared of immigrants and thinks we should build a wall to keep them out;
3) you are someone who truly believes Trump will bring back shitty non-unionized manufacturing jobs from China, isolate the U.S. economically and diplomatically, so that-- like North Korea-- we are forced to buy our own crappy products, and this will Make America Great . . . Just Like North Korea is Great;
4) you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes everything is rigged: the election, the FBI, and even the scientific method-- which is why you also don't believe in vaccines and would prefer the return of the plague rather than a society based on rational thought, logic and progress;
happy voting!
you should vote for Trump, if . . .
1) you are greedy rich person who wants a tax windfall . . . just make sure you're rich enough that you won't need any of the social services that will be cut to generate this handout;
2) you are an angry white racist and/or misogynist; who is also scared of immigrants and thinks we should build a wall to keep them out;
3) you are someone who truly believes Trump will bring back shitty non-unionized manufacturing jobs from China, isolate the U.S. economically and diplomatically, so that-- like North Korea-- we are forced to buy our own crappy products, and this will Make America Great . . . Just Like North Korea is Great;
4) you are a crazy conspiracy theorist who believes everything is rigged: the election, the FBI, and even the scientific method-- which is why you also don't believe in vaccines and would prefer the return of the plague rather than a society based on rational thought, logic and progress;
happy voting!
Man Juice
My wife stole some hot peppers from a unkempt plot in the community garden-- she said they were going to go to waste if no one took them-- and while I couldn't definitively identify them-- they were wrinkly, red and pointed, possibly Devil's Tongue or Carolina Cayenne or Hot Paper Lanterns . . . but I did conduct a taste test and they were incredibly hot . . . and I like hot peppers, but these were inedible, and so I infused them in some Espolon Tequila Blanco; I cut up six of them (wearing gloves) and deseeded them, then left them in a mason jar with the tequila for two days, then strained the peppers out, funneled the tequila back into the original container and put it in the fridge (they internet said this would better preserve the vegetal component of the infusion) and then I tried some on the rocks; my lips went immediately numb, I choked, and I nearly spit the stuff out-- but once the ice melted it tasted sort of delicious (although at one point I couldn't figure out what the white strand was in my drink, until I realized it was mucous, which had dripped out of my nose) and now I know how to use this super-powered manly juice: you pour some regular tequila on the rocks, add a bit of water and/or seltzer and then just put a little bit of the infused stuff in-- it's still plenty hot and you still feel plenty manly when you drink it, but then mucous doesn't come sliding out of your nose into your drink (which isn't really a problem anyway, as the tequila sterilizes the germs in the mucous and makes it safe to consume).
Just The Policy, Ma'am
Though I know this is a stupid waste of time, because most people are voting based on what scandal has piqued their ire more-- mishandling email or pussy grabbing-- and apparently network TV has all but abandoned policy discussion . . . but for those few, very silly folks that actually care about what might happen to the country once the scandals are over and done with, I've tried to summarize Trump and Clinton's actual visions for America; I listened to The Weeds episode The Massive Policy Stakes of 2016, and though the folks at The Weeds lean liberal, they are also total policy wonk-nerds, and do a good job of discussing Trump's plans and promises as rational thought, unlike how my friends view his opinions (the random demented rants of a stupid crazy clown-haired racist/misogynist menace) and I also refer to the recent NPR interview with George Packer, who wrote The Unwinding (an incredible account of the gradual unraveling of America's political and financial systems) and now on to the main event:
1) you should vote for Trump if you are anti-immigration, worried about Syrian refugees and Mexican racists and various brown people stealing your job, he's also up your alley if you would like a libertarian deregulation of banking, business, and environmental rules inside our country, and less free trade and more regulations and tariffs for doing business outside our country, you'll probably also like Trump if you're rich, as he's proposing massive tax cuts, mainly for the rich, and a consequential scaling back of social programs for the poor, he also promises to bring back the blue collar factory and manufacturing jobs, which will make his special interest minority group (white folks without a college degree) the backbone of America again, because Trump loves "the poorly educated" and though George Packer thinks his promise to the less-educated white folks is fraudulent and impossible, he also wonders whether Clinton's promise to spend money retraining these workers would work either . . . and nobody is proposing unionization, which makes me sad;
2) if you're a dual earner family, you'll like the fact that Hillary Clinton wants to make our childcare, maternity, and family leave policies more like Northern Europe . . . because America has the worst family leave policies of any developed country, and Clinton wants to bolster our pre-K program and generally make it easier for women and families to work . . . Clinton is tougher on banking regulations than Trump-- though, ironically, she has closer connections with the big banks (I've heard speculation that Trump, who has been denied loans in the past, doesn't want this to happen in the future) and she wants to provide free state college tuition for lower middle class families; reform healthcare and provide it to more people; enact comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path for immigrants to obtain citizenship; she promises she won't raise taxes on the middle class; and she wants to invest tremendous amounts of money into infrastructure, both to create jobs and provide avenues for economic growth . . . Clinton's policies and white papers are detailed and wonky, Trump's are broad, vague, and very short, and while Trump is a typical product of our fragmented media-driven echo-chamber, a polarizing figure that George Packer views as "catastrophic," the problem with Clinton is the reverse, she's a classic backroom politician who wants to make deals and compromises between the two parties using her knowledge and connections, but the country has moved beyond any sort of good-natured diplomacy between the Republicans and the Democrats; the Republicans vow to block all Democratic legislation, deny all Democratic Supreme Court nominees, and to investigate Clinton forever, to obstruct her power-- and the Democrats, view Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, and can't consider the perspective of this special interest group-- uneducated white blue collar voters-- a group that was once unionized, galvanized and potent, and is now marginalized and lost . . . so whatever happens on Tuesday, half the country is going to be incredibly unhappy, and the other half will be more relieved than inspired, and that's not going to change any time soon.
1) you should vote for Trump if you are anti-immigration, worried about Syrian refugees and Mexican racists and various brown people stealing your job, he's also up your alley if you would like a libertarian deregulation of banking, business, and environmental rules inside our country, and less free trade and more regulations and tariffs for doing business outside our country, you'll probably also like Trump if you're rich, as he's proposing massive tax cuts, mainly for the rich, and a consequential scaling back of social programs for the poor, he also promises to bring back the blue collar factory and manufacturing jobs, which will make his special interest minority group (white folks without a college degree) the backbone of America again, because Trump loves "the poorly educated" and though George Packer thinks his promise to the less-educated white folks is fraudulent and impossible, he also wonders whether Clinton's promise to spend money retraining these workers would work either . . . and nobody is proposing unionization, which makes me sad;
2) if you're a dual earner family, you'll like the fact that Hillary Clinton wants to make our childcare, maternity, and family leave policies more like Northern Europe . . . because America has the worst family leave policies of any developed country, and Clinton wants to bolster our pre-K program and generally make it easier for women and families to work . . . Clinton is tougher on banking regulations than Trump-- though, ironically, she has closer connections with the big banks (I've heard speculation that Trump, who has been denied loans in the past, doesn't want this to happen in the future) and she wants to provide free state college tuition for lower middle class families; reform healthcare and provide it to more people; enact comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path for immigrants to obtain citizenship; she promises she won't raise taxes on the middle class; and she wants to invest tremendous amounts of money into infrastructure, both to create jobs and provide avenues for economic growth . . . Clinton's policies and white papers are detailed and wonky, Trump's are broad, vague, and very short, and while Trump is a typical product of our fragmented media-driven echo-chamber, a polarizing figure that George Packer views as "catastrophic," the problem with Clinton is the reverse, she's a classic backroom politician who wants to make deals and compromises between the two parties using her knowledge and connections, but the country has moved beyond any sort of good-natured diplomacy between the Republicans and the Democrats; the Republicans vow to block all Democratic legislation, deny all Democratic Supreme Court nominees, and to investigate Clinton forever, to obstruct her power-- and the Democrats, view Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables, and can't consider the perspective of this special interest group-- uneducated white blue collar voters-- a group that was once unionized, galvanized and potent, and is now marginalized and lost . . . so whatever happens on Tuesday, half the country is going to be incredibly unhappy, and the other half will be more relieved than inspired, and that's not going to change any time soon.
The Nix: A Big Book with a Lot of Stuff Inside (Except Leeroy Jenkins)
Nathan Hill's new novel The Nix is a tour-de-force decade defining portrayal that does for the post-recession twenty-tens what Tom Wolfe did for the '80's with Bonfire of the Vanites, the '90's with A Man in Full and the aughts with Charlotte Simmons, but it's more than hyper-realistic literary fiction-- the multiplicity of tone, from and structure pays homage to David Foster Wallace . . . and you also get plenty of John Irving-like anecdotal flashbacks to the 1968 Chicago demonstrations and riots, which is a hell-of-a-lot to do in one book and a hell-of-a-lot of story to tell, so the book checks in at over 600 pages and while it's often hysterically funny, especially the opening chapters, which detail a satirical World of Warcraft type game and the unlikely players, and an entitled and very persistent college student who has blatantly plagiarized a paper and is attempting to argue her way out of the punishment, and after that compelling and incredibly entertaining kick-off so much happens and there are so many plot strands, that the actual ending feels tacked on and too easy-- but the thing has to come to an end (or does it? War and Peace is over a thousand pages . . . maybe Nathan Hill just needed more pages to get the ending right) and while the actual plot sort of fizzles in its conclusion, the meta-ending is more compelling: a lesson gleaned from video game design . . . people are either "enemies or obstacles or traps or puzzles" and while the characters begin the novel as enemies and then often treat each other as obstacles to success or traps that lead to an existential abyss, by the end, the fictional author in the novel and the actual author realize that everyone is a puzzle, but that solving the puzzle of everyone takes many, many pages and you have to see things from many, many perspectives, from many times and places, and even then it's not enough to understand everyone's motivations and desires, and, as if to further develop this theme, after you finish the last page, if you turn to the Acknowledgments-- and after reading that many pages, I figured I could read two more-- then Nathan Hill does something wonderful to the puzzle of his novel: he lists all the books and articles and radio shows that helped him flesh out all these many many ideas-- Chicago '68 by David Farber and Folktales of Norway and "Microstructure Abnormalities in Adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder" by Kai Yuan and lots of others-- and so he essentially lays the puzzle of the book bare, a brave thing to do . . . although he doesn't mention being inspired by this event, which he certainly was, as it's almost as infamous as the most notorious World of Warcraft moment: Leeroy Jenkins (which Hill definitely should have alluded to, because, when you have the opportunity, you should always allude to Leeroy Jenkins).
The Groundhog Killer Can't Handle Gum
Here is what I learned about my dog today: if I snap my gum while I'm walking him, he turns into a shivering shell-shocked lump of jelly, and has to return home-- in a painfully slow manner-- so he can hide under the desk.
Sometimes Hard Boiled, Sometimes Runny . . .
It comes from a chicken, not a bunny, dummy . . . and, when I do the boiling-- or when I did the boiling-- more often than not it came out runny . . . sad to say, but until a few days ago, I could not successfully cook a hardboiled egg-- I had read this and that on the internet, but the numbers never took hold in my brain, and I often boiled the egg too long and the shell cracked, spitting white solar flares of egg-white into the bubbling water, or once I boiled the egg, when I tried to peel it under cold running water, chunks of egg came away with the shell, and the final product was a cratered, pock-marked mess, or-- what happened most often-- is that I would crack the shell and the egg would still be gelatinous and slimy and I would toss it . . . but those days are over: my wife learned a simple recipe in her cooking class, and not only does it work, but I've figured out a mnemonic device so that I can actually remember what to do, which is equally as important as the fact that the technique works . . . here it is:
1) put the egg in water;
2) boil the water;
3) once the water boils, turn off the heat and cover the pot;
4) let the egg sit in the covered pot for 12 minutes;
5) remove the egg from the water;
and this not only cooks the egg to perfection, but-- for whatever reason-- this method makes the egg very easy to peel, and it's easy to remember because when you buy eggs, they come in packs of twelve, and the number of minutes you need to leave the egg in the water is twelve . . . so as long as you're at sea level (maybe even if you're not at sea level) this is the method . . . buy a dozen eggs, boil the water, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the dozen eggs sit in the water for a dozen minutes.
1) put the egg in water;
2) boil the water;
3) once the water boils, turn off the heat and cover the pot;
4) let the egg sit in the covered pot for 12 minutes;
5) remove the egg from the water;
and this not only cooks the egg to perfection, but-- for whatever reason-- this method makes the egg very easy to peel, and it's easy to remember because when you buy eggs, they come in packs of twelve, and the number of minutes you need to leave the egg in the water is twelve . . . so as long as you're at sea level (maybe even if you're not at sea level) this is the method . . . buy a dozen eggs, boil the water, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the dozen eggs sit in the water for a dozen minutes.
The Miracle of Norman Who?
Those of you familiar with the life and times of Dave know that I am often at the nexus of miraculous activity (which is odd, because I'm not a spiritual person, nor do I believe in fate, mysticism, or any powers greater than my own intellect) and so, I humbly present to you The Miracle of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Because-No-One-Can-Remember-His-Name; for the past few years, at the end of the Philosophy unit on relative and universal ethics, I've played a short video of the acclaimed cognitive scientist Steven Pinker explaining how technology often solves seemingly impossible moral quandaries . . . and while Pinker acknowledges the value in moral crusaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., he reminds us, that in a utilitarian sense, there are far greater heroes-- and then he mentions one of these heroes in particular-- the father of The Green Revolution-- and he points out that no one knows this guy's name, and I've played this video a few times in the past, and I still can't remember the guy's name . . . but then Steven Pinker says the guy's name and I vow to remember his name from this time forward and I make the class swear to remember his name as well, and then I showed my students the lead article in Wired Magazine, which is written by President Obama and is titled "Now Is The Greatest Time to Be Alive" and I pointed out how similar Obama's piece is to Pinker's video . . . an odd coincidence, because I happened to read the article the night before doing the Pinker lesson-- but not a miraculous coincidence, just a coincidence-- but then, as we were reading through the article, which I had projected on the giant screen at the front of the class, I noticed that Obama mentioned the same guy that Pinker referenced . . . but I didn't notice this on Sunday night when I was reading the article, because-- as Steven Pinker pointed out-- no one can remember this guy's name . . . so, with no foresight or planning, in my class on Monday, both Steven Pinker and President Obama mention the Father of the Green Revolution, who--unfortunately-- doesn't have a very catchy name, but deserves to be remembered as a great savior of humanity . . . as Obama eloquently puts it: "without Norman Borlaug's wheat, we could not feed the hungry."
This Halloween Goes to Eleven
I generally like to rant and rave about the idiocy of Halloween, but my son Ian made this year's sugar-laced festivities a bit more tolerable; we shaved his head Sunday night, so he could be Eleven from Stranger Things . . . I did have to bribe him with a small sum of cash, but it was worth it, because he really is the spitting image of Millie Bobby Brown, and I think he was just as excited to slip into the pink dress Catherine bought at the thrift store as I was to see him in it . . . and, he noted this was a one-shot opportunity: "I can only do this once because next year I'll probably have pimples and a mustache."
Dave Should Be a Future Leader (According to Obama)
I was pleased to learn that Hillary Clinton agreed with me on the importance of Robert D. Putnam's new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, but President Obama trumps her with his reading list for future leaders . . . I've read four of the ten:
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert;
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman;
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo;
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari;
and these were definitely some of the best books of the past decade (read my reviews if you're in need of some hyperbole) and so Obama either really loves to read, or he reads my blog and respects my reviews, or perhaps he's got really good reading advisers-- it's probably a combination of the three-- and I realize that this is a political "signal" to release this list, as it indicates that the President values high quality non-fiction, just as Donald Trump could never admit that reading books is necessary, as it would alienate his constituency and mark him as an elitist intellectual communist, which is why he gets his information from "the shows."
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert;
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman;
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo;
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari;
and these were definitely some of the best books of the past decade (read my reviews if you're in need of some hyperbole) and so Obama either really loves to read, or he reads my blog and respects my reviews, or perhaps he's got really good reading advisers-- it's probably a combination of the three-- and I realize that this is a political "signal" to release this list, as it indicates that the President values high quality non-fiction, just as Donald Trump could never admit that reading books is necessary, as it would alienate his constituency and mark him as an elitist intellectual communist, which is why he gets his information from "the shows."
Diving Header > Brain Damage
My son Ian scored his first header goal yesterday-- he launched himself into the air to connect with a line drive corner kick, headed the ball just inside the far post, and landed on his stomach . . . the goal was a big one-- it allowed us to tie a much better team 1-1, and judging by the celebratory jig that Ian did after he got back onto his feet, it was well worth the loss of brain cells.
A Solemn Vow
I hereby declare that next year I will NOT participate in fantasy football, which is not fantastic at all and actually wallows in its mundanity-- the tenderness of Dez Bryant's knee and the merits of Coby Fleener and the injury status of Eric Ebron-- and so I will NOT let these minor thoughts aggravate my valuable and limited consciousness, and, instead, during the time I would have spent shuffling my digital line-up around, I will brush up on my Spanish or learn to play the xylophone or train my dog to skateboard or even simply take a nap, but next fall, I will be doing something slightly more fantastic than fantasy football . . . you hear this Alec?
Dave Loves the Gas Tax (and So Do Economists)
Planet Money Episode 387: The No-Brainer Economic Platform may be four years old, but it's more relevant today than ever-- the show presents a "six plank" platform on which economists from across the political spectrum agree, but the problem is that no presidential candidate will ever espouse these things, as they are political poison; here they are, no particular (or political) order, and I've paraphrased the arguments from Planet Money and added some of my own:
1) get rid of the mortgage interest deduction . . . readers of this blog, who I am guessing are mainly educated, middle class homeowners, will NOT want to hear this one at all, but it's true-- the interest deduction distorts housing prices, it subsidizes mansions and second homes, it encourages people to take risky loans, it doesn't help renters (who are vital when there is a recession because they can move and adjust to changing job markets) and it's generally unfair in its distribution of wealth;
2) reform the tax code . . . eliminate all the loopholes and deductions and, like Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify . . . this would put all the accounting firms out of business, but allow the government to do a much better and more equitable job of collecting taxes;
3) eliminate taxes on corporations . . . progressives hate this one, but it behooves the country to allow corporations to reinvest tax free income into things such as hiring more employees, improving product lines and R&D, instead of hiding it overseas or distributing it as dividends to rich people;
4) decriminalize drugs . . . it's extremely expensive to fight the war on drugs, and it's even more expensive to let underground criminal syndicates collect all the drug revenues . . . plus, it's costly on many levels to keep people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses;
5) stop subsidizing health care . . . health care is not taxed as income for the user, nor is the provider taxed . . . so people who are given health care by their job are incentivized to use as much of it as possible (I have NOT been taking advantage of this, stupidly-- I should be getting acupuncture, going to the podiatrist, getting check-ups and physicals, and generally spending this money that is part of my salary) when there should be various plans, some more expensive, some less expensive, some with higher co-pays;
6) we should stop taxing good things and start taxing things we want to discourage . . . so end the payroll tax and income tax-- because creating jobs and working is good-- and increase taxes on cigarettes and pollution and carbon emissions . . . which is why I'm totally in favor of New Jersey's gas tax increase-- cheers!-- because it might discourage driving, and should help with infrastructure;
sadly, the only candidate who supports several of these measures is Gary Johnson, but he's not into taxing carbon emissions and he doesn't know what's going on in Aleppo . . . and I have an inordinate fondness for Aleppo . . . so I'm not voting for him; anyway, listen to the episode, it's fantastic, especially the fake presidential speeches introducing all these wonderful new reforms, and remember: no one actually wants to fix anything, they just want to act sanctimonious when their candidate trounces the opposition.
1) get rid of the mortgage interest deduction . . . readers of this blog, who I am guessing are mainly educated, middle class homeowners, will NOT want to hear this one at all, but it's true-- the interest deduction distorts housing prices, it subsidizes mansions and second homes, it encourages people to take risky loans, it doesn't help renters (who are vital when there is a recession because they can move and adjust to changing job markets) and it's generally unfair in its distribution of wealth;
2) reform the tax code . . . eliminate all the loopholes and deductions and, like Thoreau said, simplify, simplify, simplify . . . this would put all the accounting firms out of business, but allow the government to do a much better and more equitable job of collecting taxes;
3) eliminate taxes on corporations . . . progressives hate this one, but it behooves the country to allow corporations to reinvest tax free income into things such as hiring more employees, improving product lines and R&D, instead of hiding it overseas or distributing it as dividends to rich people;
4) decriminalize drugs . . . it's extremely expensive to fight the war on drugs, and it's even more expensive to let underground criminal syndicates collect all the drug revenues . . . plus, it's costly on many levels to keep people in jail for nonviolent drug offenses;
5) stop subsidizing health care . . . health care is not taxed as income for the user, nor is the provider taxed . . . so people who are given health care by their job are incentivized to use as much of it as possible (I have NOT been taking advantage of this, stupidly-- I should be getting acupuncture, going to the podiatrist, getting check-ups and physicals, and generally spending this money that is part of my salary) when there should be various plans, some more expensive, some less expensive, some with higher co-pays;
6) we should stop taxing good things and start taxing things we want to discourage . . . so end the payroll tax and income tax-- because creating jobs and working is good-- and increase taxes on cigarettes and pollution and carbon emissions . . . which is why I'm totally in favor of New Jersey's gas tax increase-- cheers!-- because it might discourage driving, and should help with infrastructure;
sadly, the only candidate who supports several of these measures is Gary Johnson, but he's not into taxing carbon emissions and he doesn't know what's going on in Aleppo . . . and I have an inordinate fondness for Aleppo . . . so I'm not voting for him; anyway, listen to the episode, it's fantastic, especially the fake presidential speeches introducing all these wonderful new reforms, and remember: no one actually wants to fix anything, they just want to act sanctimonious when their candidate trounces the opposition.
Sometimes You Need a Moon Safari
For once Google Play Music recommended exactly what I desired-- though I had no clue that I desired this thing-- an album by the French electronica band Air called Moon Safari; I especially love the first track: "la femme d'argent" . . . and while there doesn't seem to be any straightforward way to translate this song title from French (it seems to mean "silver woman" or "woman of silver" or a "gold digger" or perhaps something less insidious) but since I don't know French, I'm going to pretend the song is eponymous with the album, because this song took me on a moon safari: I was walking the dog in the park and the next thing I knew, I was on the moon, wearing a pith helmet, which is just what I needed, because I couldn't listen to any more election podcast shit . . . and usually Google Play Music just recommends some ersatz band in place of the last thing you listened to, e.g. you like Lemon Jelly . . . so why don't you listen to Mr. Scruff (this is an actual example, and I did NOT take Google Play Music up on the offer to listen to Mr. Scruff) and perhaps the algorithm is slowly learning my taste more and more, and there will be excellent recommendation in my future (unless my wife and kids get on it and sabotage all my carefully cultivated selections).
Ira Glass, Futility, and Politics
The new episode of This American Life preaches to the choir, and will definitely not be heard by people that need to hear it (like the people who live behind me-- they are proudly displaying a Trump/Pence sign on their lawn, the only one I've seen in Highland Park) but the candid sincerity in which Ira Glass investigates the lies propagated by the Trump campaign and sad, almost futile conclusions he arrives at will make you wonder what happened to facts, the truth, and the general knowledge of your average American; the show starts with Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement and he ended it, which is so patently ridiculous that it seems to belie further exploration-- aside from the fact that now 1/3 of Americans believe this "fact"-- and worse than this is Trump's assertion that NAFTA was the worst trade agreement in the history of the universe, because before Trump both Democrats and Republicans believed that trade agreements were good for the economy, created new markets, put money in everyone's pockets (because of lower priced goods) and strengthened diplomatic relations between countries . . . but now, despite the fact that 95% of economists (polled by the University of Chicago) believe that NAFTA is good for our economy and 5% are undecided and zero point zero percent of economists believe that NAFTA is bad for our economy, despite this, Clinton has backpedaled on trade agreements and has entertained the idea that manufacturing jobs might actually return to the U.S. (and I'm sure this is just a public position for debating Trump, but it's still disturbing that he could have that much influence over a policy discussion that anyone with any expertise regards as a no-brainer . . . certainly trade agreements cause some specific economic pain, but it's actually far cheaper to pay-off and retrain the people who lost their jobs than it is to punish the entire economy) and so now you've got both major parties taking a contrary position on trade agreements, when that was usually only a radical maneuver-- remember the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle? . . . anyway, the episode doesn't even get into the email "scandal" and the fact that the Bush administration lost five million emails (or 22 million . . . it doesn't make it right, but politicians get rid of emails and politicians use private emails to communicate to avoid the public records act, so unless you're going toss George Bush and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell and lots of other people in jail, Hillary Clinton does not belong in jail) and the episode also didn't discuss the thing that out-trumps all the other Trump stuff, his anti-vaccine stance: this indicates a complete disbelief in the scientific method, peer reviewed experimentation, and logic in general . . . and while disbelief in global warming is typical right wing silliness (Dan Levin just said that there is NO proof whatsoever that there is global warming . . . pretty bold and incredibly dumb, but who cares) not vaccinating children is extremely dangerous and a possible return to plague times is as good a reason as any not to vote for Trump; I'm considering voting for Jill Stein, despite the fact that the Green Platform is against trade agreements, but that's for environmental reasons-- which just might be the right reason to be against trade agreements (despite the fact that trade agreements help foreign countries, though they often use environmentally unsound methods of manufacture, and while helping foreign economies doesn't make America great, that doesn't mean it's an awful thing) but then I heard that Jill Stein is an anti-vaxxer, but it seems the accusations that she's against vaccines were taken out of context so she's still a viable choice for me . . . I don't think I'm going to decide until I get behind the curtain, but the super sad thing, the thing that made Ira Glass so depressed in this episode (especially when he's talking to his Uncle Lenny, an 81 year old plastic surgeon who has consumed a whole host of right wing conspiracies and lies about President Obama and thus will vote for Trump) is that even if Trump is crushed in this election, it isn't going to help the cause for truth, logic, the scientific method, and the facts . . . social media and niche journalism have made it so people on the left and the right (and everywhere in between) can find exactly what they want to hear and then believe it.
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