Talking to Women is Damn Near Impossible (for Dave)

Last night during dinner preparation, I noticed something out of the ordinary: my wife was listening to some decent music (Andrew Bird) and she had consciously selected this music, so I wanted to compliment her on her choice, but apparently when you compliment someone, not only is the sentiment itself important but you also have to watch your tone . . . she decided there was some sarcasm in my amazement at her great leap forward in musical taste, but when I vociferously insisted that this was not the case, she still thought the compliment was backhanded-- she inverted the statement and considered it a general condemnation of all the other music she listens to (and while she may have been right in this assumption, I readily admit I'm not crafty enough to couch my true intentions with lies and deception) and so then I tried to ameliorate the situation by discussing this nifty chart correlating SAT scores and musical predilection . . . on Google Play Music, if you play Andrew Bird, then the #1 suggestion is Sufjan Stevens, who is associated with high SAT scores . . . I think this tangential internet foray may have blunted the impact of my failed compliment, but the moral here is when you're talking to women about music, you have to watch your step.

Why? Why Why Why Why Why?

Insert Daylight Saving Time rant here (and also, I really hate these people, who obviously don't have a clue about the most important and-- in modern times-- the most neglected element on Maslow's hierarchy: sleep).

Once You Get In, You Never Get Out

Canceling a gym membership is like trying to retire from the mafia.

Sometimes You Eat the Toe, and Sometimes the Toe Eats You

While The Big Leboswki is hands down my favorite movie, I still don't pretend to understand the plot . . . like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, the joy of the story is within the strands . . . the ins, the outs, the complicated what-have-you's and the new shit that eventually comes to light . . . but one thing I thought I knew was that Bunny Lebowski had all ten of her toes . . . until I watched the movie with my kids on Wednesday night; when Bunny drives by in her red convertible and you realize she has definitely not been abducted by nihilists, the camera pans across her feet and I always assumed it was to show all ten of her toes-- and that's because you later learn that the nihilist played by musician Aimee Mann has given her toe to abet the ransom scheme-- but Ian noticed that in the red convertible scene, Bunny's little toe on her right foot appears to be missing-- and if you review the clip, it's really hard to tell, it's a very ambiguous little toe-- and while there is a Reddit strand on this topic, it provides no definite answers . . . so it's time to draw a line in the sand and unravel the truth: is Bunny missing a toe?

Preparing For St. Patrick's Day (and the End of the Anthropocene)

Long after the human race has wound down and gone extinct-- the last of the fossil fuels extracted and burnt; the last of the plastics catalyzed and extruded; the rivers and wetlands polluted and poisoned; the oceans barren and static; the soil-- dry and spent-- blowing in the hot wind; roaches, crows, pigeons, rats, and raccoons the only creatures left to roam the depleted biosphere-- long after this, when some other civilization arises (or visits, from the far reaches of the galaxy) and they examine our digital detritus, they will recognize exactly when the humans stepped off the precipice and plunged into the abyss of frivolity and utter disaster and this moment is when Terry, Cunningham and Liz were in the English Office, looking at someone's phone, and vocalizing superlatives about an Inflatable Irish Pub . . .  for a moment I got sucked into the fun, but then I thought twice-- a difficult action in the time of tweets and and snaps-- and I took a look inside the inflatable pub and I recognized the pub for what it was . . . a waste of plastic, a fruitless endeavor, a giant scam, and a vivid and rubbery air-filled symbol that portends the inevitable fall of man . . . here's why:

1) there is no inflatable floor, so it's not even a bouncy inflatable Irish pub . . . if it were bouncy, you could get some exercise, mosh to The Pogues, perhaps "inadvertently" bounce into that special lass or lad you've had your eye on . . . but nope, this is just a shed made of polymers, similar to the one in my backyard, which I never try to foist off as an Irish pub;

2) there's an inflatable fireplace inside, which is patently stupid because

a) it obviously can't hold a real fire;

b) no one wants to look at a fake fireplace while they're sweating their ass off in an unventilated polyethylene kiln;

3) every Irish pub should have a dart board and this pub does not-- I recognize why it does not have a dart board, as pointed objects would endanger the inflatable nature of the pub . . . but that's the moment when the inflatable Irish pub designers should have stepped back and recognized the idiocy of their project;

4) there are no inflatable leprechauns inside this pub, and while I don't expect leprechauns in a real Irish pub (I am 48 years old) there's absolutely no reason not to have a few blow-up leprechauns in this inflatable abortion, leprechauns you could toss around, punt into the rafters, pretend to hump . . . whatever, in order to differentiate this product from a big plastic lawn tent, which is all it is . . . and so I've decided NOT to attend any parties that host one of these contraptions, in a quixotic (and probably misguided) attempt to take a stand for something, anything, in this absurd economy of ours, and I hope you will do the same.

The Machine Is Not Green

Green activist Paul Kingsnorth has given up, and he explains why in his rather grim, beautifully written, and occasionally cabalistic collection Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays . . . this is a heavy read, bordering on a manifesto, and Kingsnorth does not see a traditionally Green future for our planet; he has no regard for the techno-optimists, who very well might solve the major human environmental problems in our future-- climate change and floods and famines and disasters and feeding the burgeoning population-- but he sees very little hope for the things that used to matter to traditional conservationists: biodiversity and wild places and an appreciation for ecology . . . he doesn't even think education is the answer; many people know the facts and most of those people would still rather escape into sleek digitized worlds of their own creation . . . he does have a few lists of what you can do, if you don't want to jump on the techno-optimism bandwagon, if you feel like you are living inside a giant machine, a machine built to drain your data and your bank account; a machine built to convince you to consume more than you need; a machine that persuades you to spend time in front of screens for more and more hours of the day; a machine that throws off your circadian rhythms, creates endless desires and constant jealousies, makes you care about things that you wouldn't ordinarily care about and makes you lose sight of what is important in life, a machine that keeps you from getting outdoors and enjoying what is left of the natural world . . . here are some things you can do:

1) withdraw . . . withdraw as a moral position and refuse to help the machine advance, withdraw "to examine your worldview"

2) preserve non-human life, in any local way shape or method you can 

3) get your hands dirty and do some physical work 

4) insist that nature has value beyond utility, beyond aiding and assisting the economic growth of mankind . . . and tell everyone this

5) build refuges from the oncoming storm;

and then at the end of the book he has eight principles of "uncivilisation" . . . here is a summary:

1) face the oncoming ecological unravelling with honesty and learn how to live within it

2) reject the paradigm of "problems" and solutions

3) change the modern story of progress we have been telling ourselves, because that has separated us from nature

4) make storytelling more than entertainment

5) recognize that humans are not the point of the planet

6) celebrate art and writing that is grounded in place and time, and not symbolic of the "cosmopolitan citadel"

7) no theories and ideologies, write with dirt under your fingernails

8) "the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop"

p.s. moments after I finished this post, the snowstorm disconnected our house from the machine and we spent an hour in darkness, contemplating "uncivilisation," which means my writing possesses miraculous powers (while I'm probably not the God, I'm certainly a god).

Twelve Fourteen Split

Alex turned 14 last week, while his younger brother is still 12 (they are 14 months apart) and we saw the age gap in action this weekend: Alex went to an afternoon party at a girl's house-- and before he left he fixed the back of his hair so it wasn't all messy, on the advice of his friend's girlfriend; meanwhile, Ian went to his friend's house to play "Nerf" with some guys, a game of warfare, ever-changing rules, and the shooting of enemy combatants with Nerf bullets (and Ian was annoyed that Alex did not attend and instead chose to spend his time at a party with girls).

Is This Normal Small Town Stuff?

Does every town have a crazy white-haired lady with two little white dogs that yells "SLOW DOWN!" when you're driving 27 miles-per-hour in a 25 miles-per-hour zone and-- God forbid-- if you make a rolling stop at a stop sign (because you're creeping up so you can see around the parked cars) then this lady might walk into the middle of the road, creating a barricade because she is flanked by her two little white dogs, and then she might slowly, menacingly stomp toward your car, screaming vehicular epithets and instructions, while your son (who is the front seat) laughs at her?

A Couple of Books That the Unabomber Would Enjoy

Jonathan Moore's The Night Market is a sci-fi crime thriller that blends the byzantine plotting and tone of Raymond Chandler with some William Gibson/Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind type near future technology, and there's also plenty of Philip K. Dick-style paranoia (which is fully deserved) but the real impact of this post-noir San Francisco crime drama is that it is all too real-- the city is a burned out husk, as are most of the people who walk through it, because rampant consumption and a sinister form of advertisement has invaded the consciousness of the city and its inhabitants . . . the conspiracy is far-reaching and just and shallow and greedy as it should be . . . this is a book about giving up and giving in: the apocalypse is here and we are living in it-- and the fact that there is not much difference between the San Francisco in the novel and the world right now is beyond frightening . . . I was already primed for this novel because I've been reading Paul Kingsnorth's new collection of essays, Collections of a Recovering Environmentalist, in which he announces the death of the conservation movement and the promulgation of a new form of neo-liberal economic environmentalism, concerned with carbon sinks, global warming, eco-tourism, and market-based technological solutions for ecological problems, which is in contrast to the old school Green movement, which found intrinsic and sacred value in the beauty of biodiversity and wild landscapes, and celebrated the primal human attachment for natural spaces and places free of human subjugation . . . Moore's The Night Market is the end result of this shift towards data-driven market-based solutions, there is complete consumerism, complete consumption, and a world completely dictated by brands, corporations, markets, and the desire to replace the things that are important with things.

Poetry Birthday Week!

Yesterday, we went to happy hour at the Golden Lion in Milltown to celebrate my birthday and the gang from work gave me some lovely presents, including a laminated original poem in my honor which contains all my favorite allusions . . .  I have hyperlinked them for your perusal:

All who know you, know you've got grit,
you always try your best to stay fit;
you teach your students with cunning and wit,
even Brady admits that your podcast is lit;
and even though you're hairy as shit
some might say you look like a homeless Brad Pitt--

so when you're old and grumbling about the difference between lie and lay
just comfort yourself with the butter you spray!

and they also presented me with my very own bottle of spray butter and a framed photo of faceswap Dave and Stacey where we look like Brad Pitt . . . the best gift was going to the Golden Lion in Milltown for the first time-- it's quite the dive, and has darts, two full sized shuffleboard tables, a nice back room pool table, and fantastic wings . . . I also learned an interesting piece of information: I knew the wings at the Golden Lion were fantastic because years ago, a regular used to bring them to the Park Pub all the time and we would feast on them-- I said as much to the bartender at the Golden Lion and she said, "Yeah, he was stealing those wings . . . that's why he got fired" and then she gave me a high five because I had eaten so many of those stolen wings; anyway, I'd like to thank all that attended, I had a great time and obviously left with my wife at the right moment: I was happily lubricated but not sloshed, and so Alex, Cat and I watched Fargo and went to bed early . . . meanwhile, the ladies closed the place (and we got there at 3 PM) but I guess once you turn 48, if you haven't learned something about alcohol consumption, then you're in serious trouble (the other thing I learned is the worst place to keep a valuable jewel is on a drunk woman's finger . . . why is that a thing?)

Dave and Dr. Seuss Pontificate on the Meaning of Shared Birthdays (in a Universe That May be Experiencing the Nietzschean Eternal Return)

Me and the Seuss,
we share the same date:
coincidence . . .
or an act of fate?
I tend to lean
towards the stochastic
but perhaps our world
is finitely elastic,
so we run the same path
after every big bang
and the Doctor and I
share our groove thang.

Sirius Gives Alex a Birthday Gift

Rollercoaster week for the dog: Monday we had "the talk" with the kids, as Sirius's health appeared to be headed downhill-- he had a couple urination incidents in the house (which never happened before . . . what a dog!) and he was totally lethargic and miserable; after we discussed the reality of his situation, Ian curled into a ball and cried, then he went upstairs to take a nap, I cried when I tried to console him, Catherine cried and hugged me and told me that we'd never have another dog like him (she's had a lot of dogs) and I had a couple of sleepless nights trying to figure out when to put him down (I was hoping he would make it through the week, because today is Alex's birthday and tomorrow is my birthday . . . that's no present) but Sirius must have heard us planning to shuffle him off his mortal coil and decided he'd rather be than not be, because yesterday he started wagging his tail, he greeted me like normal when I got home from work, and he actually ate some dog food, today he properly pooped and actually jumped up when I was getting ready to walk him-- his usual behavior-- and then he wouldn't let me bring him home-- he just wanted to keep walking around the park . . . the vet said that some of these medicines might take a while to work, so we are now cautiously optimistic that something good is happening inside his body and perhaps the kidney infection is abating . . . but at the very least he's not going to head into that undiscovered country on my son's birthday (or mine, I hope).

Fake Weather!

The sentence is cancelled today because of absurdly unseasonable weather . . . I'll get back to you when it's forty degrees and raining.

Sketchy Restaurant Review

This Kids in the Hall skit sums up our experience at Flavors of Manila, a Filipino restaurant Catherine and I went to Saturday night while our kids were playing tennis.

In This Instance, Content Defeats Style

I'm always chastising my wife for beginning her stories with expository topic sentences:

the funniest thing happened!

you won't believe how annoying!

as these kinds of statements not only destroy the drama of the narrative, but they also set up the audience to be in a contradictory position-- we'll see just how funny this thing is . . . so when the boys and I walked in yesterday and she said, "I saw the craziest thing!" I was not only skeptical, but also annoyed at her anecdotal style, but for once the story actually lived up to the opening; the rain finally let up and so Catherine took the dog for a walk in the park, along the river, and she saw a giant tree floating downstream-- the Raritan is tidal by our house, so sometimes-- when the tide is coming in-- the current runs upstream towards New Brunswick, but most of the time it runs downstream towards Perth Amboy and the Raritan Bay, which leads into the Atlantic Ocean; when she took a good look at this giant floating tree, she noticed a seal perched upon the trunk, a seal which apparently got swept up in the storm current and ended up far from the ocean and was now wisely hitching a ride on a makeshift deciduous raft back to its home, unfortunately she did not have her phone and so there's no proof of this bizarre happening, but I believe her because it's too weird a thing to invent.

Mozart Would Love This Shit

I don't like scatological humor but I do feel obligated to take note of the incidents that happened today at lunch; we went to Shanghai Dumpling House, despite the fact that it's impossible to get a table there on a Sunday, and we lucked out-- we were only fifteen minutes early but it was raining and there were a few noobs hanging around that didn't realize that you could go inside before the place opened and a get a handwritten number scrawled on a scrap of paper, as a "reservation," and so Alex went in and got #9, and he counted the tables and thought we might get seated in the first round, depending on the breaks, and we did-- we got the last table, the weird one to the right of the door, by the drink cooler; this table is pretty much inside the kitchen and you can see the old ladies rapidly making dumplings as you eat; Catherine came with us and she was perplexed and amused by the reservation system and the complete insanity surrounding the restaurant as we ate-- the place was packed, there was a big line, and people were jammed everywhere; we ate a lot of food: various dumplings, spicy pork noodle soup, soup dumplings and some kind of sliced beef wrapped in a scallion pancake with plum sauce and Ian was trying to finish off the last steamed juicy bun but he took a bite and then flipped the dumpling the wrong way and the pork meatball fell out, bounced off his plate, and rolled onto the floor . . . and that's when the silliness began; Catherine started singing the "on top of spaghetti" song about the itinerant meatball, Ian joined in, Alex expressed complete embarrassment and said, "Can you guys stop? I'd like to come back here, it's my favorite place"  and then Ian saw where the meatball landed, under the table, and said it looked like a "little poop," and so I ushered everyone out-- as I'd like to return as well-- and Ian looked up the lyrics to the meatball song on his phone and sang it in the car-- which really impressed Catherine because she thought he was doing it from memory (she was driving) and then Alex and Ian recounted their "ten favorite poops," including Taco Bell poop, liquid poop, sharty poop, and ten pound elephant poop . . . and then Catherine added seepage poop and we finally arrived home and I was able to get away from the scatological humor, which is more appropriate for Mozart and the Germans, who both find that kind of filth funny.

Last Gun Thoughts: Grandfather Some Shit

They say sunlight is the best antiseptic and this gun control issue is certainly getting some sunlight; this morning a bunch of dudes of various ages, ethnicities, races and political persuasions in the LA Fitness locker room were discussing guns, so I offered my two cents; I think most were reacting to the news that several armed deputies and guards did not enter the school while the Parkland shooting was underway, and instead hid behind their vehicles with weapons drawn . . . while anecdotal, this is does point to broader statistics that show that "good guys with guns" don't usually have an impact on an active shooter situation, even if they've been trained; these guys that didn't enter the building weren't cowards, they were typical . . . so here are my last thoughts on this issue, my friend Paul thought one of them is brilliant (though we had been drinking when i came up with it)

1) grandfather some shit in . . . tell the gun-owners who have lots of semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 that they have proven responsible and they can keep them; most of these folks are mega-gun owners, who live the gun lifestyle and firmly believe that civilians need military grade weapons to fight the government if it becomes too tyrannical . . . 3% of the population owns 50% of the guns and were just going to have to assume these super-owners are doing a good job with it and we have to divide them from the general populace while the time is ripe; start NOW with semi-automatic laws for new gun purchases . . . the next shooter does NOT necessarily have his gun already, as Parkland vividly proves, so concede the guns to the older owners and start fresh with these younger owners;

2) then, as these gun-collector/nut/super-owners age and die, the government can institute and Australian style buy-back program;

3) don't forget that conservatives can change their minds about things . . . at the start of the millenium, conservatives were all hot and bothered by gay marriage . . . I can remember some relatively intelligent conservative friends of mine using the slippery slope argument about this "abomination" and positing that if you could marry someone of the same sex, then "you could marry anything . . . you could marry a hat!" and this "marry a hat!" attitude was the typical conservative reaction to the suggestion of gay marriage, and then it was like they all collectively shrugged their shoulders and said, "Whatever . . . it's the 2010's . . . gay marriage is fine," and this seems to be the time to change things with gun control laws, even if it's just a start;

4) military gun ownership needs to be grandfathered and stigmatized, like smoking . . . you might let your grandfather smoke in your car, but once he dies of emphysema, that's it for people smoking your car-- when I was in high school, there was a smoking patio-- Patio C-- but we've now collectively decided that's ridiculous and if high school kids want to smoke, they have to do it just off the grounds; high school kids still smoke, but far far fewer and we don't let them do it on school grounds and we've raised the age when they can purchase cigarettes;

5) it will take a long time to change this culture, but eventually maybe some youngsters from this culture will take up other target sports, like darts and cornhole, to replace the void of the gun lifestyle.

THREE! TWO! ONE! CLANG!

There's been a lot of discussion around my school about Trump's proposal to arm teachers so they can prevent classroom massacres and everyone I know with any kind of brain thinks this is a lunatic proposition; for those who don't think that, I have a metaphor that might explain why this gun-lover's fantasy is so preposterous . . . at every basketball practice, at least once a session, there's a kid who counts down  THREE! TWO! ONE! and chucks a half-court shot at the rim; he's imagining the ultimate scenario, of course-- his team is down by two points with .6 seconds left in regulation and he hurls a shot from sixty feet and swishes it, winning the game; while this is a compelling fantasy, in reality the shot inevitably hits someone in the head; ruins the transition from one drill to the next; and sets everyone else off their game . . . while this scenario does occasionally happen in an actual game, it is very very rare, and not something that necessarily warrants practice, and the collateral damage when a kid does this at practice is usually fairly ugly, so coaches discourage it; of course, I empathize with the kids, it's fun to pretend . . . but I don't empathize with adults who indulge in such fantasies: they obviously imagine some perfectly romanticized school shooter scenario where they spot a mad gunman in the distance, lining up innocent school girls in his sights, and this shooter doesn't notice the heroic marksman, the good guy with a concealed weapon, who takes careful aim with his well-maintained, carefully oiled piece, calmly fires, and drops the shooter in his tracks . . . THREE! TWO! ONE! . . . just before the shooter does any damage; I'm not sure if this scenario has ever happened, but I do know for certain that the more guns are the present, the more deaths happen, whether by suicide, accident, or collateral damage, and the chance that even an armed and trained person would come the the rescue is pretty slim . . . so let's leave the fantasizing to the children and recognize that the answer to gun violence is not more guns; there are good people and there are bad people, and-- as Neil Postman reminds us: there are good technologies and bad technologies . . . it took a while to recognize cigarettes as a bad technology, and as much as the 2nd Amendment folks hate to hear it, it's time to admit that guns are not a technology to embrace and worship either

They Can't Remain Innocent Forever

Tonight my wife decided the kids were old enough to know the truth . . . she explained to them that the much anticipated and celebrated "your choice night" is just a euphemism for leftovers.

Cheers to Tennis (in February)

I am drinking some celebratory beer tonight for several reasons:

1) we got through a carnival of a workshop day in school . . . there were twenty teachers from area schools, various administrators and the associate director of the Rutgers Writing Program, all present to watch me and my colleagues teach the Rutgers Writing course; things went off without a hitch, partly thanks to our excellent and competent department chair and my wonderful teammates Brady and Strachan but mainly due to my charm and good-looks . . . a dozen adults sat in one of my classes and then one of my students endured an essay conference with ten random people watching; it was a wild and busy day made more interesting by the threat of a student walk-out and the news vans and helicopter hovering on the periphery of our school because our township decided to put armed police in every building, fueling a media frenzy (I should also note that on Monday-- President's Day-- after playing some tennis with the kids at my school, as I was driving across the empty parking lot . . . as it was a day off from school, a beautiful blonde woman flagged down my van, and so-- being a male-- I stopped to investigate and found that she was just as pretty I surmised, and that's when I noticed the CBS jacket and the microphone . . . I declined to make an official comment but I did chat with her for a while, just to look at her thick lustrous hair, pearly white teeth, and TV quality facial symmetry, I think her name is Natalie Duddridge)

2) despite some grim blood test results, our dog is still eating, walking about, and wagging his tail;

3) though my foot hurts, I taped it up and was able to compete a bit, but the beer might alleviate some of the pain;

4) I'm pretty sure my kids and I played the most outdoor tennis by a central Jersey family in February ever, in the history of planet . . . I played with my buddy Cob after school, Alex played his buddy Liam, then Alex played my brother, then I went out and hit with Ian under the lights, despite the fact that my foot hurt, because I know we won't get this chance again anytime soon.