Dave Averts Awkwardness!

Yesterday, a student came to the door of the English Office, looking for his teacher-- but this teacher, a diminutive blonde pixie-like person-- was nowhere to be found, and so I started to make an innocuous joke to the student-- I almost said: "She's kind of small, so sometimes we just totally lose her up in here," but-- in the nick of time-- I did some processing of the situation, caught myself and realized that the student I was talking to wasn't just rather small, he was a genuine little person-- a dwarf-- and I realized that my cavalier-losing-a-little-person-joke might offend him and revised my sentence on the fly, thus avoiding the graceless backpedalling that I usually have to perform in these situations . . . an upset victory over awkwardness!

Trump Supporters Hate Cutters

My students were typically appalled at the moral stance in environmental scientist Garrett Hardin's essay "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor," because-- as the title implies-- Hardin believed that resource distribution is limited, and that the "lifeboat" that contains the developed nations of the world has a limited carrying capacity-- and so the boat should remain sovereign, protect its borders and beware of "boarding parties" which could destabilize the boat and make everyone drown . . . and though the lifeboat could support more people, a buffer should be maintained and the developing countries should be left to fend for themselves, to avoid "the tragedy of the commons"; the logic is a bit blunt and stark, and some of his rhetoric falls into the scare tactics of either/or logic, but the "tragedy of the commons" is a real environmental problem and one that needs to be addressed (though I don't think the solution is as grim as he paints it) but most of my students, who are liberal and despise Trump and his wall-building anti-immigrant posture, needed another way to understand how people could feel this way-- especially since most data indicates that the illegal immigrants in the United States contribute heartily to our economy, providing cheap labor in difficult professions without taking from major government programs such as welfare, food stamps, Social Security and Medicaid . . . and we've installed a system with a tacit understanding between the government and business that such labor will be available-- it's too expensive to deport people established here with jobs, many of whom pay taxes and all of whom contribute to the economy as customers and consumers-- but this is all logical abstraction that doesn't get to the emotional heart of why folks want to build a wall around our lifeboat and voted for Trump . . . so I provided my students with another, more powerful metaphor that I stumbled upon in the newest episode of Hidden Brain, Strangers in Their Own Land: The 'Deep Story" of Trump Supporters; sociologist Arlie Hochschild, a liberal, moved to conservative Louisiana and studied the narrative of conservative, white, heterosexual working-class Americans . . . she wanted to understand the paradox of why these people would vote against their own self-interest, vote against safety nets, vote for tax cuts for the rich and she came up with this deep metaphor: folks are standing in line, on their way up a steep mountain, and at the top of this mountain is the American Dream . . . and though these folks are tired and haven't had much upward mobility, they feel if they keep working, that they will make their way up the hill, but before they get their chance, people start cutting them in line-- blacks with affirmative action, illegal immigrants given a chance at the American Dream with DACA and DAPA, women, brown pelicans-- those damned environmentalists!-- all sorts of foreigners, transgender people, etcetera . . . and President Obama is signalling to those arrogant cutters to "go for it!" while ignoring them, the rule abiding working class white people . . . and, to extend this further, many of the people in the economically sound blue states are on a pretty nice plateau on the way up the mountain . . . we sometimes get annoyed with the folks way up there-- the filthy rich Wall Street elite-- but we don't get particularly angry with the folks below us, because our lives are good enough so we don't begrudge people food stamps or low paying agricultural jobs (even if they're not citizens) but the folks in Trumpland, who are farther down in the valley, are competing with those people cutting them in line, and it's making them outraged; I think this metaphor helped some of my students empathize with the Trump voters, though they don't believe this metaphor is the correct interpretation . . . and neither do I, there's plenty of room in the lifeboat, especially since most of these people climbing in are living in cities, which are greener than the rural areas that supported Trump, and I think these people contribute more to the economy than they burden it, but, of course, I'm not an uneducated white conservative working class dude in Lousianana . . . so what do I know . . . also, the working title for this post was a bit long, so I had to cut it down, but here it is in its entirety:

Trump: Make The United States a Lifeboat So That the Forgotten White Men Can Climb to the Top of the Mountain (Unimpeded by Blacks, Latinos, Illegals, Brown Pelicans, Women, Transgenders, and Other Cutters).

One For the Ladies (Nil for Dave)

The recent Women's March was very effective in empowering my wife-- she took the train to Trenton early Saturday morning, leaving me to do the laundry and the dishes, feed the children and then cart them around town, and I'm certain this scenario played out all over the country (and the globe!) and many men had to do more than their usual share of housework and child-rearing; I must concede that this was tactical brilliance: well played ladies . . . well played.

288 Page Test (Match)

If you're a straight American male and you're going to tackle Aravind Adiga's new novel, Selection Day, you'll have to take a page out of Russell Ziskey's playbook from Stripes . . . the army recruiter asks him and his buddy John Winger if they're homosexuals and Ziskey famously replies: "No, but we are willing to learn"-- while you won't be completely in the dark, as the novel has themes that parallel the U.S. sporting world: the obsessiveness, the statistics, the extreme dedication, the overbearing father, the monetizing of something that should be fun, the byzantine system in which to discover and exploit talent, the depths of corruption and the heights of achievement-- you're going to experience all this through the lens of Indian cricket, an obscure sport with opaque rules; this makes many sporting scenes a challenge to envision (there are some cricket terms in the back, but they don't help much) and the book also explores India, mainly Mumbai, outside of cricket, and this is a  foreign world for the two protagonists, brothers who have been groomed to be professional cricketers since their father's sperm met egg . . . things become even more challenging when Manju, the younger and more talented brother, has homosexual urges: this means one thing in blue state liberal modern America, and something completely different in modern India-- homosexuality is more complex, more taboo, and a more difficult path for a young person, especially a young person of cricketing prominence, to navigate . . . so I recommend this novel if you're "willing to learn," and I guarantee you'll learn a great deal (though I still don't understand the ins and outs of a cricket match, though I often watch folks play it in the parks near my home).

A Serendipitous Postmodern Encounter in My Kitchen

A magical meta-moment occurred on Friday in my kitchen; we were hosting an eclectic crowd: my good buddy Whitney and some other W&M folks, a representative from North Brunswick (Mose!) and the Highland Park regulars-- and my friend Ann, a Sentence of Dave lurker, finally got to meet the prolifically profound Sentence of Dave commenter known as Zman and she professed her profound admiration for his wit, erudition, and verve . . . and then went on to vilify all manner of Dave, my writing style, my choice of topics, my digressions, and my general character; Ann's hypothesis in a nutshell is that the only artistry present on this blog is Zman's commentary . . . she contended that there is an odd symbiotic relationship between us, and if I were to expand on this metaphorically, then I would be the flatulent tick infested rhino and Zman would be my cleaning symbiote, the elegantly marked red-tailed oxpecker, feeding off my bloated body . . . anyway, though it was at my expense, I still took great joy at this serendipitous postmodern encounter between lurker and commenter, because I had contributed doubly to its occurrence, with my prolix prose and the crowd in my kitchen.

The Test 74: These Are People That Died

This week on The Test, the premise is relatively simple: I describe a death and you identify the person that died in this manner . . . but Cunningham and Stacey still figure out a way to steer the show off the rails and into the void; join us for spoonerisms, Marlon Brando impersonations, exploding Stacey, the reason Cunningham wants to kill off multiple endangered species and much much more.

Alex and Ian: The Usual Suspects

Once a week, I've been forcing my kids to watch an oldish movie that I unilaterally select and while they always initially complain, ultimately they end up loving it: we did Pan's Labyrinth (awesome but creepy and violent) and Little Miss Sunshine (funny and mildly inappropriate in a sweet way) and The Usual Suspects (which Alex loved, especially the twist at the end . . . but I still suspect, as I did the first time I saw it, that it's not a particularly good movie, that there's no way to unravel the mystery or the plot, and that it's a something of a one trick pony) and we've got Juno  on tap for tonight, but I'm worried that we're not going to watch it because the boys are involved in some kind of bizarre epic battle that's going to result in both of them being sent to their respective rooms without dinner; Ian put away a pair of pajamas in the pajama drawer, which is in Alex's room and he left a pant-leg hanging out of the drawer and Alex told him to fix it because the hanging pant-leg was bothering him and Ian refused to put the pant leg all the way into the drawer, just to piss Alex off, and Alex sprayed water from the lizard-tank spray bottle onto Ian's bed and unless they can resolve this, they're not going to learn about teen pregnancy.

Litmus Test For Trump: Black Lungs or Clear Water

The Obama administration scrambled to finish the Stream Protection Act, a set of rules that detail how to enforce environmental protection laws already on the books-- the rules are 1200 pages long and fifteen years in the making (for more detail on the story, listen to the new Planet Money) and so now the question is whether Trump will utilize the rarely used Congressional Review Act to repeal the rules; the last time this was used, President Bush repealed Clinton's Workplace Injury rules and the backlash was fairly ugly . . . so keep an eye on this, as it will be a real litmus test as to just what kind of asshole Trump is going to be . . . and remember, there are two kinds of assholes: people who divide folks into two kinds of assholes and people who don't.

Betsy DeVos Is So Dumb She Should Be in a Sci-Fi Sitcom!

Readers of this blog are probably familiar the TV show Battlestar Galactica and the story of Laura Roslin, Secretary of Education of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol: she was 43rd in line for the presidency, but when the Cylons attack, everyone ahead of her on the presidential succession chart dies and she becomes the de facto leader of a ragtag band of FTL (faster than light) spaceships adrift in a hostile galaxy . . . and it turns out-- as these things usually do-- that the Secretary of Education is smart and savvy and principled and becomes a fantastic leader; I would like to pitch the converse version of this show (which would be a sitcom, of course) where the earth is destroyed by aliens that resemble giant grizzly bears and Betsy DeVos (who is undeniably very very dumb) ends up leading a ragtag band of spaceships into a hostile universe, but she allows the ships to do whatever they would like, without regulation, and encourages people to move from ship to ship if they don't like how they are treated-- while she basks in her ignorance and the luxury of her first class accommodations-- and her blissful idiocy is punctuated by occasional alien grizzly attacks but luckily, DeVos has a shitload of guns . . . and there are wacky subplot adventures on the different ships, but DeVos is unaware of anything that's going on, happily smiling in her well-tended bubble, praying to an anthropomorphic God and hoping that he will sort things out (but God turns out to be an alien grizzly bear, and eventually, when her ship travels through a wormhole, she meets Him and He eats her and then shits her out and she returns to the fleet to preach the Truth, because she has been eaten and defecated by the Divine Grizzly, but no one believes her and this just adds to the madness).

Dialing It In (Full of Pins)

I'm too tired to write anything coherent . . . which is odd because instead of exercising this afternoon, I went to the acupuncturist . . . which means I took a nap under a lightweight foil sheet, my body stuck full of pins (and I'm going back tomorrow, so expect more of the same . . . also-- note to self: apparently, I tried acupuncture four years ago, enjoyed some success with it and then promptly forgot that it's covered under my health insurance . . . but I won't forget again, because this lady told me that she does acupuncture on her dog and he loves it-- he even fetches the box of disposable needles and brings it to her-- and if it's good enough for a dog, it's good enough for Dave).

The Dorito Effect: A Good Book You Probably Don't Want to Read

Mark  Schatzker's The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor is a quick and easy read, but while the science is presented simply and effectively, the ideas themselves are not easy to digest . . . especially for a chip lover like me; here are some of the ideas (sans science, if you want that, read the book) in a proverbial nutshell:

1) much of our food has become bland, because we breed for the highest yield, the most pest-resistance and the best supermarket appearance . . . this as true for chicken as it is for broccoli and tomatoes . . . and the stuff in the book on chicken is pretty horrific . . . the chickens we are eating are abnormal genetically altered infants that grow at such a rapid rate that if you put it in human terms a two month human infant would weight 660 pounds . . . because of this the meat lacks flavor and nutrition, the flesh is watery and doesn't contain any of the good fats that more mature meat contains;

2) chicken used to be loaded with flavor-- especially older birds-- and there were varieties of chicken-- some for frying, some for broiling, some for stew-- but now all chicken is flavorless and has to be flavored post-slaughter, marinated and rubbed and coated and spiced;

3) we desire flavor because flavor indicates nutrition, but artificial and added flavors trick our brain into thinking we are getting a variety of food when we are not;

4) our body will keep eating these junk foods because our gut is waiting for the secondary compounds-- the fiber and vitamins and minerals and antioxidants-- which signal that we've had enough . . . you can eat enough McDonalds or potato chips to make yourself sick, but you can't do this with radicchio;

5) there is hope: people are trying to breed heirloom tomatoes for higher yield; it's possible to get a real chicken if you try hard enough; and kale and arugula have become very popular . . . Schatzker's advice is to try new natural foods, even if it's just a nibble of kale or mackerel; seek flavorful real foods; eat meat from pastured animals; avoid synthetic flavor technology; organic doesn't always equal good; use herbs and spices to complement food, not to cover up the blandness; don't pop vitamins; eat dark chocolate, drink wine and craft beer; find amazing fruit and give it to your kids; and demand better tasting chicken, strawberries, broccoli, carrots, potatoes, beef, etcetera . . . if you demand flavor, it will come, and with good flavor comes micronutrients and all kinds of other good things . . . and if you take one thing away from this post, it should be this: the lemon/lime flavoring in Sprite will NOT cure scurvy.

The Test 73: Holy Days, Holidays, and Appliance Shopping

'Tis the season . . . or 'twas the season, and it's never too late to learn something about all the holidays that everyone just celebrated . . . so join us on The Test for some good times-- Stacey provides the questions, and Cunningham and I bumble our way through religious traditions, holiday customs,  and related materialism, touching on topics as diverse as Petra, sneak-pooping, and when the gods believe it's appropriate to shop for an appliance.

Acupuncture and Miracles

I tried to play soccer this morning and I was foiled again-- my left calf and my right upper glute are both knotted up, and it's affecting my hip and I'm a trainwreck . . . but enough about me and my problems, on to the miracle: so I get home from soccer, limping and angry, my body in complete rebellion, my soul descending into the darkness that is midlife for an athlete, and after hearing my lamentations, my wife tells me to make an appointment with her acupuncturist, and I'm at the end of my rope so I actually follow her advice, look up the number, and call the acupuncturist, and after a bit of chatting, she's comfortable enough with me to share a weird revelation . . . apparently when I called her, she was sending a text and a photo-- a text thanking someone for recommending a local soccer program and a photo of her little daughter playing some soccer . . . and she was sending this text/photo to my wife and she said when my call came, her hair stood on end and she wondered if the person calling her could be related to the person she was sending the text/photo . . . and I am!

The Lizard Has Landed!

We finally finished setting up our bioactive vivarium and purchased a crested gecko-- half price at Petco this week!-- which my children named Bossk (after a lizard-like Star Wars character: a male Trandoshan bounty hunter, the son of Cradossk, who was known for hunting Wookies) and Bossk seems to be adapting nicely to his tank . . . if you look closely, you can see him here perched on his cork round.

Fuck John Wooden

Beloved UCLA coach John Wooden famously said: "The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching," but what if you think no one is watching? . . . or-- more precisely-- what if you think no one is listening? because we've got to have some time off from all this good behavior-- it's not like we can maintain perfect character every waking moment-- so I was minding my own business, extricating a bike one of my children had cavalierly chucked into our bike shed, so that I could get my own bike out, and both bikes fell over . . . and my bike shed (custom built by yours truly) is under our porch, so it's a bit cramped in there and so when both bikes fell over, I let out a stream of expletives that would have made a teamster blush-- which was the only way to express my frustration with the state of the shed, the state of my aging body, the carelessness of my children, and my general annoyance with how tangled up bikes can get with one another . . . but, of course, I thought this was fine because I was sequestered away in a safe spot where I was certain no one was listening, but I forgot that my neighbor's porch happens to be rather close to the shed-- two Leyland cypress block the line of site, but they did not block or censor my profanity, and -- of course-- he happened to be on his porch and heard my puerile tirade and so he sincerely and sympathetically asked me if I was okay-- he assumed that I had been gravely injured, but I sheepishly told him I was fine, just frustrated, and if John Wooden hadn't died seven years ago, I would love to give him a serious chewing out, as I'm tired of this surveillance state Panopticon and ready to retire to the deep woods, where a man can reflect on a tangled nest of bikes in any manner he chooses.

Spoiler: It's Better to Watch the Love Grow

There have been a number of academic studies indicating that people enjoy stories more when they are provided with spoilers, and I've got some empirical evidence to support this argument: a student in my Creative Writing class (a rambunctious little senior named Haley) told me that she always checks with Reality Steve to find out who wins The Bachelor before she begins watching, and when I asked why she would want to ruin the drama she gave me an incredibly fulfilling explanation: "then you can sit back and watch the love grow."

If You Have a Brain, Don't Read This . . .

A foreboding contrast in style and logic:

1) President Obama's interview about healthcare on The Weeds: Obama is clear, knowledgeable, logical, and totally candid; he offers a challenge to Republicans-- he would love to endorse a transparent healthcare plan that does things better than the Affordable Care Act; Obama comports himself with intelligence, grace, and style and shows comprehensive understanding of the healthcare system, healthcare markets and economics, and the science of medicine . . .

versus

2) Donald Trump's muddled conspiratorial medical gobbledygook-- he's asked anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. to head a commission on vaccine safety . . . despite the fact that all links between vaccines and autism have been debunked (Jenny McCarthy aside) but Trump also brilliantly avoids looking like a total lunatic, as he has vaccinated his children-- just on his own schedule, a slower, very "conservative" schedule . . . thus claiming his own bizarre, unfounded (but appealing to a certain sort of maverick renegade Trump supporter) middle ground . . .

and these two polemically opposed rhetorical methods illustrate the same lesson as Marshall Curry's excellent political documentary Street Fight . . . disenfranchised folks don't want statistics and numbers and policy debate, they want a compelling narrative that explains why forces beyond their control have conspired against them, and a roguish hero, with the same imperfections they possess, who is willing to fight the forces of academic logic and intellectual elitism, using any means necessary . .  . though he's a Democrat, Sharpe James would be a welcome addition to Trumpland!

Dave Might Be a Wordist!

In the newest Hidden Brain podcast, linguist John McWhorter argues that it is the nature of language to change, and it is the nature of old people to argue that the changes are indicative of degradation and decay . . . but living languages always change-- words, context, diction, usage, style-- there's no stopping the changes because the changes are inevitable, and while it might irk and irritate older people, or people educated a certain way, McWhorter believes that once a critical mass of people are using a certain word or phrase or context, you can't claim that that usage is "wrong," and he thinks that the last vestiges of socially approved prejudice are for language usage-- in civilized society, you can't stereotype people for race, gender, religion, or sexuality-- but you can still make broad judgements based on language usage . . . and he's convinced me; I've always told my students that "language is a river," yet I paradoxically correct people when they use "lay" when they mean "lie" . . . and I used to correct people when they said "nauseous" when they meant "nauseated" . . . I gave up the latter because I recognized that a critical mass had shifted the usage, and I'm going to quit the "lie" and "lay" business as well . . . because I don't want to be a wordist (or an anti-dentite!)

The Internet Is NOT For Porn, It's For Building a Vivarium

Although the broadway puppet comedy Avenue Q proclaims that "The Internet is For Porn," the lyrics are very wrong-- the internet isn't for porn, it's for nerds, and so when Saturday's unexpected winter storm aborted our plan to go lizard shopping, and I started browsing around on the internet, I ended up learning how to build a self-cleaning bioactive small lizard vivarium-- and so now Ian's Xmas lizard has morphed into a much more fascinating project: we ordered lots of weird stuff on Amazon, such as Hydroballs (lightweight expanded clay terrarium substrate) and substrate mesh and New Zealand moss and a magnetic shelf feeding bowl and a UVB bulb and several other layers of substrate and a thermometer and a cork round and I researched the proper plants to put in the vivarium and we're going to eventually add springtails and isopods, which will eat the lizard feces . . . so what I initially thought was going to be a little jail cell for a lizard is now going to be a deluxe crib . . . and all because of those folks willing to nerd it up on the internet . . . check out the above video for some terrarium porn!

The Test 72: Happy Apocalyptic New Year!

This week on The Test, hunker down with the gang and get ready for the inevitable . . . the end of days are near, but this eschatological primer (provided by Cunningham, in the true spirit of the theme, without any technology) will prepare you for what's coming . . . and there is no doubt that we've got our bases covered: Stacey brings the guns, Cunningham purveys the spiritual nonsense, and I provide the useless information.