Three things happened today that were only interesting because it's winter:
1) my wife insists she heard people playing pickleball at the park this morning-- at 5:30 AM-- which is very weird but not impossible because the courts do have lights-- but it was 18 degrees!-- so those players were some real diehards . . . I did NOT hear the cold-weather pickleball players because I was downstairs and you can only hear the pickleball courts from our bedroom window, which faces the park, and only when it is very quiet and there are no leaves on the trees;
2) I was dealing with my own cold weather dilemma-- Ian came home at midnight last night and our dog Lola wanted to go outside, so he let her out and then he did not close the glass sliding door when she came back in and then Ian went to bed, so when I went downstairs in the morning it was butt-cold, freezing cold-- the thermostat read 54 degrees-- so I had to turn on the space heater to make things bearable;
3) at 4 PM-- right in the middle of writing this sentence-- Ian called and said he had just finished work and the van was dead-- he was over on the other side of town, at the chocolate factory-- so I drove over there and we tried to jump the van with the Mazda, to no avail-- we got the engine running twice but then the van quickly died-- and the battery was so dead you couldn't even shift it into neutral-- so then after a very long phone call with roadside assistance-- they really want a lot of information!-- a tow truck was dispatched towards my location, so I walked up and down the street to keep warm while I waited, and then the tow truck arrived, put the chains on, pulled the van onto the bed, and we drove to Edison Automotive and I filled out the little envelope and hopefully Mike will be able to resuscitate the van tomorrow-- and because I missed going to the gym, I walked home from the auto shop- briskly, becauss it was so cold-- and when I got home, Ian was cooking dinner (because Catherine was upstairs working) and so I had a hot meal waiting for me-- which makes sense because if things come in threes, then the cold pickleball and the cold ground floor and the cold wait for the tow truck satisfied that superstition and so the hot meal was a perfect ending to a day filled with cold incidents.
The last episode of The Curse is so epic it might be worth the whole ordeal of signing up for a free trial of Paramount + just to see it-- and while you should watch the other episodes-- which are strange, slow, awkward, and don't resolve a hell of a lot-- the show is really all building to this last episode, which starts with what seems like a realistic send-up of “The Rachael Ray Show”-- featuring Rachael Ray and Big Pussy from the Sopranos-- and then things get really wild, like really, really wild-- like Stanely Kubrick-star child, Tim burton wild-- and it sort of makes sense in the context of the show and it's certainly allegorical-- but it's also downright fun-- a very advanced, opposite version of "the lead game" . . . and now I've seen Emma Stone do a lot of acting lately-- weird, compelling, not exactly relatable acting-- in this show and in the film Poor Things and while I have no idea how to judge great acting-- other than to know that Kate Winslet is really good at it-- I think Emma Stone has also got an incredible ability to get a lot across without saying anything.
For the first time in quite a while, Lola and I were able to take a snowy hike in the Rutgers Biological Preserve . . . and Lola is also working on a prog-rock album and she needed an album cover so I snapped this photo-- notice the shadows, the detached thousand-yard stare, and the ominous intrigue of what lies beyond the frame-- it's classic.
I've never fully understood the venerated status of The Beach Boys . . . I've tried to listen to The Smile Sessions and all that but the music never quite did it for me-- but I've been listening to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey-- which is apparently one of the most voluminous and epic literary/audio/historical endeavors ever attempted-- and this got me interested in The Beach Boys oeuvre again and I found an album I really like-- Wild Honey-- it's only 24 minutes and it rocks: distills the surfin' psychedelia into garage band tempo . . . if you're like me and you've never understood the fascination with The Beach boys, give this one a shot.
A relatively fun book cover design Creative Writing lesson (inspired by this rather annoying TED Talk) was nearly thwarted by a magic-marker-mystery . . . this morning I went to school dog-tired because last night, instead of sleeping, my wife endured what she described as "the worst pain I've ever felt"-- and she's pushed two children out of her vagina-- but this was some of sort of post-operative nerve pain in her foot and it just wracked her with monumental shooting, fiery agony-- so I didn't get much sleep either (and this sentence is going to reflect that) and when I went to grab my bin of markers and my bin of crayons, off the cabinet, so-- after perusing som excellent book covers and some downright awful book covers-- the kids could draw their own book covers for their current narratives-- to my dismay, my markers and crayons were missing!-- so I ran upstairs and asked the English teachers if they had seen them and I went down to the supply room but they were out of markers, so I borrowed some from Stacey-- and then I used my patented interrogation techniques on my first period class and my homeroom, to ascertain information-- but I highly doubted that a student would steal a bin of markers-- they'd have to carry it around the school!-- so I assumed it was a teacher, perhaps during detention-- and then when I went across the hall to ask the students in there if they had seen them, I saw both bins on the psychology teacher's desk, and I was like "my markers" and he was like "I wondered what these things were doing here" and his answer seemed very sincere-- and he's not the kind of guy to filch some markers without asking, he's as by-the-book as they come-- so while the mystery was half solved, there still some intrigue as to how the bins got across the hall-- janitors?-- who knows . . . I'm too tired to speculate.
My newest episode of We Defy Augury takes the most annoying book I read in 2023 and uses it as a lens to enhance the best book I read in 2023 . . . special guests include: Gandalf, Morpheus, George Costanza, Jerry Seinfeld, Simon Sinek, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
You may have been tough enough to handle the cringeworthy antics of Larry David on Curb, but can you withstand the exponentially uncomfortable dynamics between Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, and Benny Safdie on The Curse . . . my advice is to give it a shot: my wife has bailed out, but I am hooked (and this is the first TV show I'm watching all by my lonesome since Saxondale).
Apparently, my wife likes her breakfast sausage slice in half longways . . . so she has two thin circular sausages with which to put on her egg-and-English-muffin sandwich.
What a week . . . I had to make numerous parent phone calls to discuss AI issues in student work-- and this got in the way of my planning for my four preps and grading the vast amount of writing that needed to be graded, so I pretty much lost my mind and freaked out quite a bit . . . one of the downsides to knowing your work colleagues so well is that you're not afraid to melt down in front of them . . . I probably need to start working at a place where I am only professionally acquainted with my co-workers because I'm way too familiar with the folks at my current job . . . which I guess often happens to veteran teachers-- I also accompanied Ian to meet the orthopedic surgeon to discuss options and schedule his ankle/foot surgery to fix his tendon and the fact that his foot bone is 40% out of the socket-- and we met with the same surgeon who was soon to operate on my wife's foot so then I had to endure the stress and anxiety of knowing that my wife was going under the knife for Morton's neuroma . . . and now she's laid up for a couple weeks until her foot heals so it's up to Ian and me to do the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and general household chores-- but who is going to shave my back hair, which is getting out of control? and then-- hopefully-- my wife's foot will heal and we'll repeat the same ordeal at the end of March with Ian . . . what a week and what a year, already-- and I have made a wise concession to ensure that I can offer aid when necessary: I'm not playing any impact sports than could possibly reinjure my calf (which is feeling great!) until my wife is on her feet again, because if I go down from playing indoor soccer or basketball or pickleball, then we'll really be fucked . . . or maybe not . . . maybe we'll just wallow in our own filth and order lots of take-out, which could be fun.
This morning, my alarm woke me when I was in the middle of a very adult, very realistic nightmare: I walked down the steps into my basement, and it was kind of dark, and I noticed that there was a half-inch of water on the floor-- and I was very annoyed and I figured the hot water heater had malfunctioned again . . . ugh! . . . and then I woke up and did that thing where you say to yourself: it was just a dream, it was just a dream, that didn't really happen . . . it was just a dream.
Today a high school student in my friend's English class revealed the secret method he uses so that he doesn't get caught using AI to write his assignments: "I tell it to write like a seventh grader so it's not too smart."
I apologize for the hyperbolic title, but I'm truly at a loss for words . . . there are no words . . . but fuck it, I'll give it a shot: so let me begin at the beginning: last week, I ran into a spate of uncited AI writing submissions in ALL of the various high school classes I teach-- the same thing happened around the same time last year . . . kids are on good behavior at the beginning of the year, then they get lazy around winter break, then a few kids get zeroes for cheating, and then-- after seeing the consequences-- they shape up again for a few months-- then they get senioritis and fall apart again-- it's a wonderful cycle-- and while some of these uncited AI writing pieces were in my college-level writing classes, which is a serious academic integrity violation and requires all kinds of bullshit: phone-calls with parents; meetings with the students; emails and meetings with guidance counselors; academic integrity forms . . . it's a terrible and tragic timesuck (and both students and parents cry . . . which is both endearing and kind of funny) but I also got a couple of AI-written assignments in Creative Writing class . . . they were downright awful mock-epic stories-- which are supposed to be funny, but AI is NOT funny-- and with these kids I was more lenient-- Creative Writing is a relaxed elective class-- so I admonished them and told them to do the assignment again for half-credit . . . and one of the students who used AI was absent so I sent her a message explaining that I recognized her piece was AI (and so did Chat GPT Zero) and that she needed to rewrite it and this morning, I noticed a reply to my message in my Canvas Inbox and upon reading two or three sentences of this rather long apology for unethical use of AI to write her mock-epic, I noticed that her apology letter for using AI was definitely written by AI and that's when I felt my corporeal body being digitized and sucked into the metaverse-- and I let out a distorted, electronic scream . . . the very same distorted electronic scream that Neo let out when they were locating his corporeal body and he was being digitized and subsumed-- and then, just to make sure, I asked Chat GPT to write an apology note for using AI on an assignment and Chat GPT went right ahead and executed this task, without noting the hypocrisy and irony, and both the message sent by the student and the Chat GPT letter began with the same weird opening:
"I hope this email finds you well,"
and then the student-- or actually the AI, posing as the student-- expresses "deep regret" and then, and this is where I just need to show you the money-- and I should point out that I would normally never exhibit student work for entertainment purposes, that's just lowdown and mean . . . but this is NOT student work, it's written by AI and it's amazing-- and while the message was longer than this . . . because AI is incredibly bombastic and verbose if you don't give it very specific limits-- this is the heart of it and it's amazing:
Your guidance and support have been valuable, and I want to assure you that your message has resonated strongly with me I am committed to ensuring that our communication reflects the genuine connection and respect that our collaboration deserves. Please accept my heartfelt apology for any unintended oversight. I value our partnership and the trust you have placed in me. Rest assured that I am diligently working on the assignment and committed to re-submitting it no later than tonight. I am grateful for your patience, and I look forward to delivering a thoughtful and meaningful assignment.
and so when I talked to this girl after class today-- and, to her credit-- she told me that she wanted to talk to me after class and I agreed that we'd have to do that . . . and when we met, I realized that she sincerely wanted to apologize and she didn't want the rest of the class to suffer for her mistake and she sincerely wanted to explain to me that she was under a lot of stress and pressure and had a lot of other school work to do and she was sorry that she took the easy way out and that she didn't take the time to do the assignment herself and all that boilerplate-student-crap and I was like: "That's fine, no worries, just don't do it again . . . BUT . . ." and then I asked her the million dollar question: I asked her if she used AI to write the apology and she said, "Yes, I just wanted to send you something to show how sorry I was" and I said, "You know the definition of irony, right? You know how crazy this is-- to send an apology for using AI written by AI" and she seemed to understand that this was an absurd action-- but now I'm wondering if she does know the definition of irony-- and I know if I need to explain irony that I now have the best example in the universe . . .and the saddest part of the story is that if she actually recognized the meta-humor in her action and acknowledged the silliness of using AI to write an apology for using AI, I would have thought it was hysterical and lauded her as the greatest creative writer in history-- but it turns out that she sincerely sent me an AI written apology note for using AI on an assignment, not realizing the hypocrisy of this methodology and I'm fairly sure this is the Seventh Seal of the Apocalypse.
If you live in New Jersey, today is not a good day to own a dog-- the rain is torrential and not letting up anytime soon-- but if you do own a dog and you need to step out for a while and leave your dog at home, then you might want to put on "Jon Glaser's Soothing Meditations for the Solitary Dog" so your dog can have a stress-free meditative rest while you are gone (actually, you'll probably want to listen to this brilliant piece of sonic art with your dog . . . but maybe don't listen with young children, as there's quite a bit of profanity).
Early this morning, before sunrise, my dog and I turned left down 2nd Ave for our usual constitutional to the park-- but we had to beat a hasty retreat because a pack of women was walking an even larger pack of dogs (some-- but not all-- of the women were walking two dogs) and I didn't want Lola to start barking maniacally at all these dogs in the early morning darkness-- no one wants to be woken up like that-- so I did the right thing, put the walk in reverse, and walked back up Second Avenue: back towards my house-- and I know the women saw me do this-- but then when they got to the intersection of 2nd and Valentine, they followed me instead going up to the next block and turning-- so I walked Lola up our driveway and had her sit behind the Mazda to wait until they passed and then one lady let her two dogs lead her onto my lawn and across my driveway, and I mumbled some passive aggressive stuff to Lola: You're such a good girl . . . I'm not sure why this lady is walking her dogs towards you when I obviously walked away from them to avoid a bunch of early morning barking-- she must be very stupid, unlike you, you're a good girl--and I don't really understand where this lady is going or if she knows what the fuck she's doing, but you're a good girl and if I see these ladies again maybe I'll be collected enough to tell them what's what with dog-walking-etiquette . . . or perhaps they will stumble on this post-- but when you see someone turn their dog away from your dog to avoid conflict, don't follow that person, and especially don't follow them and then walk onto their lawn and driveway with your dog, unless you want a bunch of early morning barking.
After many pages of politics and politcal strategy-- mainly centered around NY Governor Al Smith vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1928 Democratic primary-- Robert Caro's The Power Broker offers up something slightly different: "Chapter 18: New York City Before Robert Moses" and if you like Depression-era anecdotes, urban decay, Tammany Hall Corruption, and grand plans for improvement, then you will love this chapter- in fact, it's a set piece, and if you have access to a copy of this intimidating tome and you don't feel like reading the whole book, turn to this chapter and enjoy the disaster: half-completed skyscrapers; breadlines; tired and hungry school children; a corrupt and paralyzed city government; a vice-squad involved in racism, bribery, and graft; laid off teachers and other city employees; absolutely disgusting, dangerous, and despicable "parks"; politicians privately using public land for parties, housing, and financial gain; rotting unpaved narrow bridges and roads; extraordinary traffic; playgrounds unfit for children; Central Park full of dung and stumps and weeds and mud; a lavish city casino at the edge of Central Park where the elite and the mayor could frolic while the rest of the citizens starved; and a man with a plan . . . an ambitious, populist plan to link the citizens of the city to refurbished parks, to better roads, to New England and New Jersey . . . a monumental plan to preserve the last open natural spaces of the city and to make them available to the people . . . or particular people: people rich enough to own a car, the middle class, those people who had enough money to burn some fuel.
It's not epic-- it's not even all that impressive-- but it is slippery . . . and for the first time in what seems like (and may very well be) years, it is snowing in Central Jersey and, right now, it's actually accumulating, so there are a few kids on the sled hill, Lola got to frolic in the park, and my afternoon tramp was far more enjoyable than the typical 42 degrees and muddy.
I walked out of my house the other night and there were four teenage vandals on my lawn, tampering with my wife's giant inflatable Christmas decoration (a snowman, penguin, striped pole, and holiday gift tableau) and so I yelled, "Hey, get off our lawn! Don't mess with that . . . it's the holidays for Christ's sake" and then, instead of booking away, the delinquents sheepishly apologized: "sorry sir . . . sorry" and then one of them said, without any prompting: "It's Mason . . . you know my brother Tyler," and I was like: yikes, that was the quickest, least compelled confession in the history of crime.
THREE . . . count them, THREE-- that's right, I generated three great moments in education over the past two days-- for an average of 1.5 great moments per day; so without further fanfare-- because this is already too much fanfare-- here they are:
1) yesterday, a girl in my College Writing class asked me a strange question: she wondered if I knew anything about the PE mid-term . . . and though I told her that I did NOT know anything about the PE mid-term-- why would I know anything about the PE mid-term?-- but I told her I was totally willing to hypothesize about what I thought should be on the PE final, and then I went into an impromptu monologue about something I am fascinated with-- the sundry and miscellaneous rules of in-bounds and out-of-bounds in various sports . . . and while the girl that asked the question tuned out immediately-- before I even finished contrasting tennis and basketball!-- some of the athletic boys in the class got involved, and we went through a number of sports, hashing out when a ball or player was considered in-bounds or out-of-bounds and we agreed that knowledge of these rules would make an excellent PE final and we had a generally excellent time speaking on this topic-- especially because our hypothetical final monumentally annoyed the girl who originally asked the question;
2) in Public Speaking class this morning, we were about to present informational speeches and when I asked for a volunteer to go first, once again-- and this happens all the time-- a girl asked if she could "go second"-- this is a common and logical request in Public Speaking class . . . the kids are great-- they actually signed up for Public Speaking so they like to speak in public . . . but they still don't want the pressure of leading-off, so I'm always getting requests to go second or third-- but someone has to go first . . . and today, in another great moment of teaching, I finally solved that dilemma-- a girl asked if she could "go second" and another student quickly claimed "going third" and someone else actually claimed the fourth spot-- so we were all lined up and ready to roll, but someone needed to go first and then I had an epiphany, a stroke of brilliance and I said: "Ok . . . I will go first" and the kids looked at me like: "Wtf?" and then I drew a line on the board and I said: "Tennis" and, once again, they were like "Wtf?"
3) then I did an informational speech on the topic of "In? Or Out?" and first I went through sports where the ball is "in" if it hits the line-- soccer and volleyball and tennis-- and then I discussed the anomalous nature of basketball, where the ball is "out" if it touches the line-- and we also reviewed how the sides and top of the backboard are in-bounds-- but not the supporting braces up top; we talked about football and the fact that if your foot hits the line, you are out; I outlined the complication of pickleball: the ball is "in" if it hits the line, unless the serve touches the non-volley zone line, then that serve is "out"; I brought up darts and what happens if the dart splits the wire (you get the higher score) and that started a whole debate on if darts and bowling were even sports at all (they are) and then I broke down the weirdness of baseball-- the ball can roll foul but if it rolls back into fair play before the base, then it's a fair ball-- and if it hits the foul pole then it's fair, so yu should call the foul-pole the "fair-pole" and then I actually learned something new from the lacrosse girls in my class-- and this rule seems plumb-fucking-crazy-- in lacross, if the ball goes out-of-bounds after an unsuccessful shot, when the ball crosses the end line, then the team whose player/player's lacrosse stick is closest to the ball is awarded the ball . . . wild stuff-- and now I'm making this extemporaneous informational presentation into a Google slideshow, entitled "Is it IN? Or is it OUT?" so that next semester, when a student asks to "go second" the class will be in for a real surprise (and perhaps no one will ever ask to go second again . . . but maybe I need to prepare a number of these boring and technical speeches, so that any time I don't get a volunteer to go first, the entire class gets tortured . . . there so many great topics I could present on: Transcendentalist Philosophy in American Literature, How to Keep a Salubrious Sleep Schedule, Here Are Some TV Shows Old White Guys Like, Seven Ways to Improve Your Pickleball Game, and -- of course-- How Robert Moses and the Automobile Destroyed Our Once Great Nation).
