The American Dream Is Just That

It turns out that Arthur Miller and F. Scott Fitzgerald were right, there is no "American Dream" . . . if you want your children to have a better chance at climbing the ladder of success, the best thing you can do for them is to pack up and move to Norway . . . the Organization for Economic C-Operation and Development found that the U.S. is well below "Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up and down the social ladder" and, the developed world, only in Italy and Great Britain is the correlation between what your parents earn and what you earn greater . . . this could be true in America because of the differences in education or because the rungs on our economic ladder are so far apart (and getting farther apart) but the real point is that Elizabeth Warren and Obama's sentiment "that you didn't build that," is true . . . but it's not true because our country's infrastructure helped you to get where you are, it's because your mommy and daddy did.

It's Not Just Me

Before this year's graduation ceremony, while I was milling around with the other educators, I posed this Final Jeopardy! question and then we got on the subject of the capital of Canada . . . and apparently, nobody knows the capital of Canada-- teachers, administrators, students . . . they were all stumped; I also asked this at a July 4th get together and my favorite answer was: "What? Canada has no capital!"

There Is More Than One Female Singer Hailing From Canada

A few days ago the Final Jeopardy! answer was "THE BESTSELLING ALBUM OF ALL TIME BY A FEMALE IS A 20 MILLION SELLER BY THIS WOMAN WHO STARTED SINGING AT AGE 8 IN ONTARIO" and I confidently yelled "Who is Celine Dion!"-- pleased that I knew she was from Canada-- and all three Jeopardy contestants also wrote down "Who is Celine Dion?" but we were unanimously wrong . . . the answer is Shania Twain, and so once again, I realize Canada is more deserving of my attention and care.

Redefining the Terms

According to Paul Krugman, in his book The Conscience of a Liberal, I should define myself as a "conservative"-- because liberals have now become conservative in that they want to preserve public schools, Medicare, unionized workers, collective bargaining, separation of church and state, Social Security, and government regulations on Wall Street and the environment . . . and I should also define myself as a "progressive," because I think there should be universal health care (and the book really educated me on health care and its costs . . . we pay more than double what Canada, France, Germany, and Britain pay per person on health care, and have the lowest life expectancy among them . . . and a large portion of the costs of healthcare is the bureaucracy of the system, which would vanish if the government was the primary insurer for everyone . . . as it is for Medicare . . . read the book, it's too boring to summarize here) and I am also progressive because I wrote an editorial on how we should preserve our public school system instead of privatizing it and because I think taxes should return to the levels they were at in the 1970's . . . and the current movement conservatives should be defined as "radicals," as they want to dismantle the New Deal, government programs, regulation over finance, public education, Medicare, unions, collective bargaining, the estate tax, and other traditional American programs, and have us enter some weird new version of The Gilded Age.

Alan Moore: Predictable and Amusing (Just Like Me)

DC Comics is planning to release a seven comic book mini-series prequel to the unparalleled comic masterpiece Watchmen, and (according to The New York Times) creator Alan Moore is-- you guessed it!-- outraged and calls the new venture "completely shameless" and the article reports on Moore's typical pompous grouchiness, and explains that he has "completely disassociated himself from DC comics and the industry at large," and this sounds like a lot of fun-- to completely disassociate oneself from something, so here are a few things that I am now involved in that I plan to completely and indignantly disassociate myself from in the future:

1)  doing the dishes
2)  picking up dog poop
3)  tying my children's shoes
4)  wearing underwear
5)  flossing
6)  blogging
7)  canker sores
8)  Boardwalk Empire
9)  driving
10) Canada.

Neal Stephenson Cares About Canada . . . and by the transitive property, so do I

The first seven hundred pages of Neal Stephenson's new novel Reamde take place in exotic locales such as Xiamen, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the MMORPG T'Rain, but the last three hundred pages follow international terrorist Abdullah Jones as he makes his way through the mountains of British Columbia towards the U.S. border-- and though the Canadian portion of the novel is a bit slower paced than the rest, it is well worth the wait until the entire international cast of characters descend on the inaccessible and mountainous border of Idaho and Canada-- Stephenson has a miniature war play out there, and his detailed, steady description of multiple plot threads is so arresting (not to mention that after 1000 pages you're rather attached to the characters) that your heart will race, your palms will sweat, the outside world will vanish, and when you finish the final page, you won't believe that the experience was NOT virtual, not generated by any sort of technology, and simply the result of well-placed squiggles on the white pages of a very thick book.

Pamela Anderson is Canadian?

I'm giving myself several "Caring About Canada" points this week because of the massive amounts of discussion on Canada I have generated recently; this isn't easy because Canada isn't in the news all the time-- Canada isn't media-sexy like Mexico (aside from Pamela Anderson, I learned that she's a Canadian!) and so you don't have easy, controversial topics to fall back on, like the drug wars or hot vacation spots or kidnappings or narcocorridos or snakeheads and coyotes . . . but, despite this, I have forged ahead and I have discovered other educated people who could not name the capital city and I have educated them, I have learned that "Arcade Fire" is from Canada (and so Canada has "suburbs," which is also news to me-- I thought Canada was comprised of cities, hamlets, and moose preserves) and I have completed my first assignment given to me by an actual Canadian-- I learned what "poutine" is, and it sounds delicious (I would start a "poutine" count because it would be a perfect complement to my 2011 Taco Count, but I don't think you can get it in these parts).

Bonus: Stunningly Ironic New Year's Resolution Development!

The 2011 Taco Count is over (I ate my 200th last night) and I have moved on to a more abstract resolution for 2012-- to Care More About Canada-- and I gave myself one "Caring About Canada Credit" simply for writing a sentence about this topic, but apparently-- according to an actual flesh and blood Canadian (Thanks Melody!) I spelled "Ottawa" incorrectly in this sentence where I vowed to profess a sincere interest and curiosity in the giant country just north of us, and this irony is not lost on me, and so I am resetting my Caring About Canada Counter down to zero, where it belongs, and I will humbly proceed from there . . .

O Canada!

Counting tacos was fun, but it did get a bit tedious (plus, I prefer tamales to tacos, and there were a few times when I had the opportunity to order tamales and would have preferred to eat tamales, but I ordered tacos just to up the count . . . the sacrifices I make for this blog!) and so for 2012, I am resolving to do something a bit more abstract, although I will still attempt to assess my progress here at Sentence of Dave . . . and the reason I choose this particular resolution, which I will reveal shortly, is because of an embarrassing conversation I had with my son's soccer coach-- who is Canadian-- in which I revealed a shocking ignorance of Canadian geography and culture, and-- when I was pressed-- I could not name the capital of Canada (and I am not retarded geographically-- I can name loads of obscure capital cities from countries such as Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc. and I present myself as fairly well-traveled individual, which made this exchange even more embarrassing) and so, for my New Year's Resolution in 2012, I swear to Care More About Canada and I will keep a counter of times when I care about something Canadian . . . when I research a fact about Canada or make an attempt to listen to a Canadian musician or watch a Canadian film or TV show or follow some part of Canadian politics or sports or culture . . . and I am confident I can care more about Canada than I did in 2011, when I did not care about Canada even once (I did care about friends that I have in Canada-- I taught with a number of Canadians when I was in Syria-- but that doesn't count . . . I'm going to try to care more about Canada itself, the nation just to our north with which we share a 3,987 mile border).

Can You Even Buy Pants in Florida?

I didn't bring any pants on our trip to Orlando-- just shorts-- despite the fact that I had space in my bag, because I thought we were headed to the tropics . . . but I was wrong, we were headed to the sub-tropics (still, I'm far more knowledgeable than my son Ian . . . when the plane touched down in Orlando he said, "So now we're in Canada?") and I have learned in the past few days that sometimes it gets kind of chilly in the sub-tropics, but it's worth being chilly to see the satisfaction on my wife's face . . . because I briefly tried to persuade her to not bring any pants, but-- wisely-- she ignored my advice, and brought plenty of pants (and she's gotten good use of them) and nothing makes a person happier than being able to say "I told you so," especially if it's about something trivial, like pants, and not something awful and awkward, like, "I told you not to have sex with your first cousin, and now look at that kid!"

6/20/10

I simultaneously read Steve Martin's Born Standing Up and Hampton Sides' Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin and though they both focus on America in the late sixties, you wouldn't know it was the same country; Steve Martin lived an odd life you couldn't invent, getting his start at Disneyland doing patter in the magic shops and slowly evolving his act towards the avant-garde while he drifted through the Flower Power era . . . meanwhile, Dr. King was organizing a general revolution among the poor, hoping to bring them all to Washington to camp out and make the rest of the country understand their plight, and he was being stalked by both J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, as well as a shifty man that went by various names, including Eric Galt and James Earl Ray, who-- after assassinating King, led the FBI on a wild hunt that required detective work across the South, in Mexico, Canada, and, finally, London, where he was captured by Scotland Yard's finest (which annoyed J. Edgar Hoover).

Shouldn't Canadian Geese Live in Canada?

I thought I was going for a relaxing bike ride on the towpath, and in some respects it was-- I saw lots of wildlife: a muskrat, a scarlet tanager, several goldfinches, a heron, and some turtles-- but also had a run in with several Canadian geese, their chicks have just hatched and their nests are right on the side of the path, so the adults-- in order to protect their young-- would block the path when I approached, and so I had to whip stones at them and shove my bike at them and hit them with sticks in order to get them out of the way . . . I saw one jogger do an about face and head back the way she came, her pleasant run truncated by an ornery bird.

The Top Ten Montreal Expos

For no other reason than it has come up in conversation twice in so many months, here is my list of the top ten Montreal Expos:

1) Tim Wallach-- for his comment on summer in Canada: "I went 0 for four";

2) Gary Carter-- for the perm;

3) Tim Raines-- because doing a little blow won't keep you off this list;

4) Andres Galarraga-- for his nickname, El Gato;

5) Andre Dawson-- for being a triple crown contender year in and year out;

6) Otis Nixon-- like I said, doing a little blow won't keep you off this list;

7) Pete Rose -- he wasn't there long, but he did get his 4000th hit in Canada;

8) Al Oliver-- for the mustache;

9) Jeff Reardon-- for the beard;

10) Vladimir Guerrero -- for the talent and the Hispanic-Slavic name.

All the Cute Girls Live in Canada

I've been telling this story to whoever will listen: a teacher who will remain nameless was walking around his class with a spur on his shoe (it had something to do with teaching True Grit) which the class found weird, but one of the girls simply said, "he's a single guy, he can do what he wants" and the teacher-- who is dating another teacher in the department-- said, "Actually, I'm not single--I have a girlfriend," and the girl looked and him and just laughed and laughed, sincere laughter, the laughter of someone who's heard a clever and surprising and completely absurd punch-line, and he said, "No, really, I do" and she said, "Well then, what's her name?" and he was about to say it but then realized they might recognize it was a fellow teacher, and he didn't want to spill that information, so-- and this is my favorite part-- he genuinely stuttered (you can't fake that unless you're a trained actor) and this teacher is NOT a good liar, so after some hemming and hawing, he finally said, "Uh, I can't say" which made everyone laugh even more, and finally he retreated to the classic response when cornered about a girl . . . "uh . . . she lives in Canada."