Excremental Learning

They say an old dog cannot learn new tricks and that might be true, but an old man learned a new trick this morning-- my lower back has been hurting, and so I've been having some difficulty picking up and bagging my dog's stool . . . especially on our morning walk, when my body is not warmed up-- but this morning, I took a very wide stance-- that is the key, widening the stance-- and then I did a semi-lunge to pick up the yucky stuff and it was much easier: an old man learns a new trick!

The Old Man Takes a Day

Twenty years ago, when I took a "mental health day," I would go extreme mountain biking, or hiking, or fly-fishing at the Ken Lockwood Gorge for a run on the beach or something epic, but I am obviously getting old-- today I took the day off because I couldn't sleep last night because of my lower back and hip, so I went and got a massage; then to Costco where I spent an inordinate amount of money on mundane items; and then took an epic nap . . . but now my back and hip feel better and I think I'll be able to carry on tomorrow.

Methought the Kids Knew This Word

Woe is me . . . or perhaps I should say: "sad is me" or maybe "methinks I am sad" because yesternight,  methought that high school seniors knew the meaning of the word "woe" but today, while teaching Hamlet, I learned that the majority of students do NOT know the meaning of the word woe-- or as my fellow Language Arts teacher Denise said: "the distance between the students and the English language keeps growing larger."

Hypothetical Hyperbolic HW Nearly Foments Real Revolution

Last Friday, my senior College Writing class read the first scene of Hamlet, and we learned that the nation of Denmark is worried about an unsanctioned Norwegian invasion, led by a vengeful Young Fortinbras-- who wants to recover the lands that his father lost in a battle with Old King Hamlet (who appears in the play as a ghost) but Young Fortinbras did not get permission from his bedrid uncle to spearhead this invasion so Young Fortinbras has gathered a wild band of desperadoes and organized a rogue mercenary army to do his bidding . . . but the Shakespearean description of this is rather dense and difficult reading, so I always preface it by saying, "Ok, this is your homework over the weekend"-- which piques their interest-- and then the kids are confused but, slowly but surely, we figure out the passage:

Now, sir, young Fortinbras,

Of unimprovèd mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in it, which is no other
(As it doth well appear unto our state)
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost.

and the students finally recognize that I am telling them to collect-- or "shark up"-- their most "lawless" friends and acquaintances and go out and do some vengeance upon their enemies and perform some deeds that "hath a stomach in it" and we chuckle about this absurd suggestion and move on . . . but I now realize that my sarcastic hypothetical hyperbole might have been lost on a few students because a kid from my class passed me by today in the hall and he asked, sincerely, "What was that homework we had to do again? It was confusing," and I was like, "Yikes . . . I was just kidding . . . please don't shark up a bunch of lawless resolutes and form a rogue army and recover any lands by strong hands and then say I had anything to do with it."

How to Prevent Munchausen by Proxy and Stockholm Syndrome

My "robust immune response" to the flu and COVID vaccines has finally dissipated-- and while my symptoms were real, I'm not sure my wife and my friends actually believed me-- and my wife was certainly not controlling me using the Munchausen by proxy method . . . I'm too intolerable when I'm sick, so no one in their right mind would try that bullshit on me-- I also think I'm too annoying to be involved in Stockholm Syndrome (in either direction) and the way to prevent that from happening is also to be really annoying . . . I will keep y'all posted on how to prevent other weird syndromes (e.g. Jerusalem syndrome, Paris syndrome, Capgras syndrome, Stendhal syndrome, the Cotard delusion, and the Fregoli delusion) in the future.

Hypothetical Schadenfreude Alleviates Dave's Misery

Yesterday at school-- for the good of the children, the old people, the country in general, science, and my immune system-- I got both the new COVID booster and the flu shot (COVID booster on my left shoulder, which is still very fucking sore, and flu shot on my right shoulder, which is less sore) and I am unhappy to report that I couldn't sleep last night-- I had the chills and everything I've ever injured in my entire life aches (including my fucking back) and I feel like absolute garbage today and the only thing that will make me happy is if the people at work who neglected to get the vaccines get really sick and have a bad case of vomiting and diarrhea (at school . . . in front of all their students).

Battling Two Vaccine Shots While Writing A Review For One Battle After Another

My wife and I saw One Battle After Another, and all I can say is that I'm proud of Paul Thomas Anderson (and all the excellent actors and actresses in the film) for making such a spot-on, brave, funny, compelling, satirical, dystopian, and incredibly topical film . . . the film seems to be set in a parallel universe that reminds us that we are now living in a Trumpian parallel universe-- how things might have been if they actually got the vote count right in Florida!-- and in this universe, late 60s Black Panther/BLA and early 70s style Weather Underground liberal violent resistance is still happening and is now directed toward undocumented detainment camps . . . and this sort of violent resitance-- freeing detainees, robbing banks, housing undocumented immigrants-- would be difficult because of the amount of digital surveillance (but the film attempts to address this) and the government is portrayed as a parody of our current regime-- everyone sounds like Stephen Miller and Trump-- there is fear and paranoia of the enemy within and the aliens trying to invade . . . but the film also portrays the futility of violent revolution, how it usually ends in imprisonment, betrayals, informants, ratting, snitching, hiding, drug abuse, loss of purpose, difficulty rejoining society and all the rest . . . Leonardo DiCaprio really lenas into his role as Bob Ferguson-- and the film is often laugh-out-loud funny . . . anyway, I'm fading fast, I got both my flu shot and my COVID shot today (fuck you, RFK) so I'll end this review in incoherence, as I think I have a low-grade fever, but remember-- time is a human created construct that doesn't actually exist . . . but it controls our lives.

The Call Is Coming From Inside the Hat!

After I play pickleball, I hang my sweaty baseball caps on the clothesline across our back deck so that they can air out and dry-- yesterday, just before I went down to the park to play, I grabbed a hat off the clothesline, put it on my head, and then I went inside my house to fill a water bottle . . . and while i was filling the bottle, I felt a lump on my head and I felt the top of the hat and there was a bump-- but the bump was inside the hat . . . weird . . . so I took off the hat and felt my head . . . no bump-- very weird-- but then I looked inside the hat and there was a large spider in there, which had been sitting on my head, causing this lump in the hat . . . and, perhaps because I was all alone, I was surprisingly calm, despite my intense dislike of spiders, and I shook the spider into the sink and squashed it (and then checked my head for other spiders, but I was in the clear).

Get Out of Your Car and Regain Ambulatory Autonomy!

When I get to school early, I like to "pull through" and get a spot with my car facing out, and to get one of these coveted spots, I often have to park between two other cars, and I am finding more and more that when I pull between these two cars, there are still people inside the cars and these people continue to sit there while I hop out and grab my stuff and start my day . . . so I asked in the English Office and apparently lots of people like to sit in their cars once they arrive at work-- which seems totally fucked up to me, I can't wait to get out of the car . . . I hate sitting, and I hate being trapped in a little box, and I want to regain ambulatory autonomy-- but evidently these people want to sit in a little metal box and talk on the phone or listen to one more song or listen to some inspirational self-help guru-- I heard that shit emanating from one parked car-- or they're just avoiding going into the building because they hate work or they are introverts or they get anxious-- but my advice to these people is:

1) stop idling and polluting the air;

2) get out of your car and live your life!

Just Give Me Some Time, Dammit!

On the basketball court, I need a fair bit of time to set up for a three-point shot . . . and in the kitchen, I need a fair bit of time to set up to cook a meal.

My Back, Unlike World Liberty Financial, Is In the Red

My back is no longer back in the black-- it's in the red, deep in the red . . . so I should NOT have played three hours of pickleball yesterday, nor should I have read the news-- as far as I understand it, Trump pushed out US attorney Erik Siebert because he refused to pursue "trumped up" charges on James Comey and replaced him with an inexperienced beauty queen named Lindsey Halligan AND Trump also essentially received a quid pro quo bribe from an Abu Dhabi investment fund, to the tune of a 2 billion dollar investment in World Liberty Financial, and then the Trump White House reversed restrictions on the export of Nvidia AI computer chips to the U.A.E.-- though I guess this deal hasn't gone through yet becuase of security concerns, but still WTF?-- and, worst of all, my classroom is especially dank and smelling of mold because it was so unseasonably hot and humid over the weekend . . . such a Monday.

My Back is Back in the Black

I was out of commission for a day, but now my back is back in the black so forget the hearse because I never die-- I played three hours of pickleball today, stiff back and all-- basically, I've got nine lives and I'm abusing every one of them, so look at me now: dinking and slamming and winning hand battles . . . I'm just making my play and I'm hitting a wicked backhand flick as a speed-up as well, so don't try to push your luck, just get out of my way-- perhaps my back is back in the black because I hit the sack early last night-- but even one day of rest is too long for me, it's been too long and I'm glad to be back, with my gang, going out with a bang, looking at the sky and realizing it's time for lunch.

Back to School: Not Great For My F$#king Back

For the first time in a long, long time, my lower back has seized up-- probably from playing basketball yesterday morning and then teaching three 83-minute periods and then going to happy hour at B2 Bistro and sitting on a barstool for several hours . . . who knows? . . . but I am unable to put socks on and will be lying on the couch all day (not the worst sentence for Dave) and I need to start going to acupuncture again.

Sandy Hook, The Mule Barn, Idioms, Lanternflies, Always Sunny . . .

My wife and I had no school on Tuesday (because of Rosh Hashanah) and so we drove our bikes to Sandy Hook and rode the multi-use trail through the old yellow brick army barracks (some of which have been renovated into beachfront rentals) and to the various beaches (one of which is clothing optional, we did not opt to stop) and finally to the new bar/restaurant, The Mule Barn-- which has a lovely patio, but we elected to have a beer indoors because it was hot as fuck out-- the Mule Barn is a great joint, on the water, all the way out on the end of the hook and it serves a variety of New Jersey beers (and apparently the food is good as well) and while we were there, my wife-- who is a mix-master of idioms-- described someone as "loud in the crowd" but then she did not possess the second half of this phrase she invented-- she wanted to say that this person is "loud in the crowd" but shy in smaller groups . . . so I enlisted AI to come up with a rhyming second half but the best it could muster was "loud in the crowd but a mouse in the house" and "loud in the crowd but a bore when it's four"-- I odn't think those are lexical masterpieces-- and then we drove back over the bridge to the Atlantic Highlands for lunch and a beer at The Proving Grounds, where we were swarmed by lanternflies-- I thought those things pretty much died out in New Jersey but apparently they all migrated to the beach to enjoy the waterfront views-- so though our food was great, we beat a hasty retreat once we finished and headed back to our lantern-fly-free but very humid hometown and I walked to New Brunswick with the guys and we went back to Harvest Moon for shitty beer-- why?-- and we sat outside in the humidity--why?-- but I did get to meet up with my son Alex, who had just gotten out of class and he walked back to Highland Park with us, to my friend's house and had a beer with us-- and then we watched two very funny episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia: "Mac and Dennis Become EMTs" and "The Gang Goes to a Dog Track"-- highly recommended . . . a fabulous day off from work.

Malcolm Gladwell: Explaining the Big Picture, Anecdotally

New episode of We Defy Augury up-- "Malcolm F$%cking Gladwell" . . . my thoughts (loosely) inspired by his new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point . . . and while I also delve into his other books and theories-- I try to keep it light and breezy, as would befit a podcast about the master of light and breezy non-fiction writing . . . but eventually I get stuck in the weeds (as one is wont to do when analyzing Gladwell's anecdotal evidence).

The Four Rings of Marriage?

There's an old joke about the "three rings of marriage" . . . 

1) the engagement ring

2) the wedding ring

3) and the suffering

classic stuff . . . but-- if you have a lisp-- there's also "the swallowing" . . . to explain: a few nights ago I stumbled into the bathroom in the dark-- it was probably 2:30 AM-- urinated and then groped for the plastic water cup . . . and I guess I had trouble locating the plastic water cup because I turned on the bathroom light-- and I normally do NOT turn on the bathroom light and I just fill the cup in the dark and drink some-- but for whatever reason, I turned on the light and I thank the Lord of Sun and Light (Amun-Ra?) that I did so-- because just before I drank, I noticed that there were two objects in the water cup-- rings!-- and the water was weird and soapy . . . my wife decided to clean her wedding ring and engagement ring and she ill-advisedly used the grope-in-the-dark-bathroom-water-cup (and placed the cup on the bathroom counter!) and so I came very close to swallowing two of the rings of marriage . . . and then there would have been much gastrointestinal suffering before those things returned to the light of day.

I Am NOT Eating This Chicken! (of the Woods?) or Will I?

This morning, while walking the dog, I encountered this weird brain-like fungus-- and I am proud to say that Lola did NOT eat this thing-- even though I later learned that this fleshy bracket fungus, Laetiporus, is also commonly known as "Chicken of the Woods" because-- if cooked properly-- it tastes like chicken? or chicken brains?-- not sure if that's true and I'm not going to cook this mess and find out . . . I noticed this mound yesterday in an incipient stage, and I hope that by tomorrow morning, it will disintegrate (or that it turns into some sort of "Last of Us" style humanoid creature-- THEN I will kill it and eat it because that means that the shit is going down and I'm going to have to learn to eat and survivie in a fungified world.

I Am Not Mechanical

After my son failed to execute the repair, I watched several videos on how to replace a broken sun visor on a 2012 Honda Accord and then I really tried to follow the instructions-- Ian helped me on the first attempt-- and we failed-- and then I watched more videos and went back out there on my own-- and failed-- and then I gave up, as I am wont to do . . . and then I went back again and twisted and pushed the tab and spun the contraption and wedged it in there and--finally!-- the replacement visor locked in place . . . and I still don't know how I did it.

I'm One in a Million, Baby (and less racist than Axl Rose, I hope)

When our civilization goes belly-up and the world is a hot, flooded, energy-depleted wasteland, I am quite sure one of the reasons for this will be all the massive amounts of power used by cloud storage data farms, which require massive and constant power consumption to run all the IT and AI equipment, and to prevent servers from overheating-- and when some future civilization examines just what data was housed in the cloud, they will find the bulk of it is the stupid text strand I have with my friends where we share how we did on various puzzles-- the NYT mini crossword, Pips, Connections, Wordle, Quordle, Bracket City, Framed, etcetera-- this text strand is decadent and wasteful and treats the incredible technology we have at our disposal cavalierly, and yet I get great joy from from this absurd strand, especially when the NYT Connections bot pronounced me truly distinctive in my Connections style and I have a place to send this incredibly interesting digital information.

Disney Chooses The Easy Way (Which Might Make Things Hard for the Rest of Us)

A few words on the Charlie Kirk shooting and the ensuing political consequences:

1. your thoughts and beliefs are your own and you are free to THINK whatever you want about the Charlie Kirk shooting-- you can be happy about it or sad about it or angry about it or any complex mix of these basic emotions . . . you could think it's a tragedy on par with the J.F.K assassination or you could think he had it coming-- or you could be like me . . . when someone informed me of the shooting, I said, "Huh? Who is that?" and no amount of explaining was going to make me care about him any more than any other victim of gun violence in our great and violent nation (and it's not like Kirk was an elected official who died in office, e.g. Melissa Hortman, the leader of the Minnesota state House Democratic caucus, who was killed alongside her husband, on the same day that a state senator, John Hoffman, and his wife were shot and injured . . . those are actual political assassinations) and I'm not going to pretend that lots of people didn't have lots of awful thoughts when Kirk was killed, but that is within their rights-- just as it is within my rights to root for the Jets only in certain circumstances-- because my friends are Jets fans-- and I will root wholeheartedly for them if the Giants are winning their game, but then if the Giants start losing, in my heart of heart, I hope the Jets lose too . . . because misery loves company-- this is awful and juvenile, but thoughts and beliefs are private and totally protected by the First Amendment, so you can root for whatever outcomes you like in your mind . . . and also realize that your thinking about them does not change anything in the physical world;

2. you are legally allowed to express your thoughts and beliefs abstractly-- in the proper place, at the proper time-- in order to try to change reality . . . now you can't drive around with a bullhorn in a quiet neighborhood at 3 AM and scream your political thoughts, that's not protected by the First Amendment, nor can you specifically call for violence-- you CAN'T say "in retribution for Kirk's death, I am going to release a horde of killer bees upon Jimmy Kimmel next Thursday at 4:00 PM . . . be there!"

3. while you can legally express your thoughts and beliefs and you will not be jailed for them-- with many caveats: as long as you are not slandering or libelling someone or revealing government secrets (nuclear codes, etcetera) or blackmailing or threatening an individual or corporation or soliciting someone to commit a crime or propagating child pornography or engaging in extreme obscenity-- BUT even if you are not doing one of these things that is not protected by the First Amendment, you could still suffer real world consequences for your opinions-- and this is what the MAGA crew is pushing-- cancel anyone who says or does anything defamatory about Kirk and his legacy;

4. the government is not allowed to control the content of the media, nor is blackmail protected by the First Amendment, so when Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said, about cancelling Kimmel, "We can either do this the easy way or the hard way," this was illegal and unconstitutional and, honestly, quite frightening-- and, the fact that Disney caved to this threat is even more frightening (but not as frightening as the fact that Amazon paid 40 million for a Melania Trump vanity doc) and hopefully this will be parsed out in a court of law and Samuel Alito-- as he always does-- will side with Freedom of Speech and realize that sometimes it protects "thought that we hate"

5. the right believes that this autocratic backlash from the Trump administration is a comeuppance for the left, who limited free speech about vaccines during COVID and whose "woke" ideology got people like Dave Chapelle, Kevin Hart, and J.K. Rowling in hot water-- and the threat by the Trump administration to take away tax-exempt status from left-leaning organizations (because they support radical leftist terrorism) is revenge for when the Obama administration used the IRS to target organizations afffiliated with the Tea Party;

6. this bullshit is totally typical . . . when a party is NOT in power and they are the underdog, they usually want unlimited free speech so they can criticize the powers that be-- but once a party takes power, then they squelch free speech and expression and want everyone to tow the party line-- and the Trump administration is going beyond the pale in how they execute this-- more transactional than any recent administration, more bullying, more use of leverage, more blatant blackmail and unconstitional rhetoric . . . it's shameful to use Kirk's death like this, but it's also perfectly normal in politics to "never let a good crisis go to waste."