Potpourri

I went to acupuncture Thursday (because I'm a very lucky dad . . . my kids have gotten into the pick-up basketball scene and I'm just good enough to play with them-- I've got to take advantage while I still can, but it's slowly killing me and acupuncture helps to loosen up my back and calves . . . I played for two hours with them this morning and then I planted a shrub on the side of our house . . . a yew, which is supposed to thrive in the shade-- I built a really nice bed with all the stones I've filched from the park and a bunch of topsoil that got dumped by accident in a friend's rental property driveway-- trapping a car in the driveway-- and the police say there's nothing they can do so my friend who owns the property is telling everyone to take the free soil-- and I only live two blocks away, so I've taken six or seven wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the pile-- which has not put a dent in it) and I was hoping to just lie there and relax while Dana stuck some needles in my sore spots-- but Dana is a talker and she had a lot to say-- which is coincidentally and ironically related to my new podcast episode-- there was a horrendous car accident at the edge of town two weeks ago-- my wife saw the wreckage on her way back from Costco-- and it turns out the accident was right in front of the acupuncture office and Dana was right in the midst of the accident, pulling bodies from a car and trying to administer CPR and getting one of the license plates of the two cars that were racing, at 85 MPH in a 35 zone, and it turns out the victims of the crash were the parents of a local family that Dana and I both know and there was a third car that was on fire and one of the cars that was racing was mangled and they had to pull that guy out with the jaws of life-- so that's the story I got, in graphic and gory detail, before Dana stuck some needles in me and knocked me out-- and so I had some very weird and scary dreams while I was in the acupuncture dream-state.

Here We Go Again?

The world is getting weird yet again because of the pandemic; yesterday I was tailgating at the Jets/Tampa game . . . partying with tens of thousands of (mainly unmasked) people, watching Tom Brady shatter dreams once again (he threw a game winning touchdown with 15 seconds left) but today I will be teaching on a computer, as my school has gone virtual (mainly due to lack of staffing, apparently not only do loads of students have COVID, but also loads of teachers and bus drivers and nurses, etc.)

Poker, I Don't Even Know Her . . .

My son Alex and I both read Maria Konnikova's The Biggest Bluff-- and it inspired us to play some poker-- her story is compelling and inspirational, as she goes from not knowing how many cards are in the deck to competing on the world circuit (in a year's time) but be warned-- she's very very smart and has a world class coach (Eric Seidel) and so while her lessons are universal-- the subtitle of the book is "How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win"-- and she also has some specific tips about playing poker-- her main metaphor is to be a good poker player you've got to simultaneously be a detective and a storyteller-- BUT if you really want to know what it takes to succeed on the poker tour you've got to get real and read Phil Gordon's Little Gold Book : Advanced Lessons for Mastering Poker 2. 0 and this will lend a dose of reality to your dreams of becoming a pro-- range vs. range, combinatorics, variance, bankrolls, pot odds, PioSOLVER and HUDS, Game Theory Optimal, etcetera . . . poker competition is fierce and the fish are scarce now-- which makes Konnikova's story all the more impressive.

This Land is Your Land, This Land is Nomadland

Jessica Bruder's book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century is an eye-opener to another America, an America of a wandering people, who-- usually due to some setback-- are houseless (but not homeless) and move through our nation "like blood cells through the veins of our country" in tricked out camper-vans, small RVs, handmade trailers, and converted house-cars . . . these people-- who are mainly white . . . perhaps because it's hard to "boondock" as a person of color-- meet at desert rallies like the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous and move from one grueling temporary job to the next-- the sugar beet harvest, shelving and scanning items at the Amazon warehouse, cleaning the toilets at campgrounds, short order cook at Wall Drug . . . the work is hard and you are reliant on your tribe of van dwellers, your own resilience, Advil, and the ability of ride to endure wind and weather; the financial crash of 2008 sent many of these people on the road, but so did lack of pensions and unions and healthcare, lack of decent lower-middle class jobs and lack of a safety net to care for these folks-- and these are spirited people, many of whom are over sixty, and couldn't bear to live without freedom; Linda May has dreams greater than living in a van, she purchases some desert land in Arizona to build an Earthship homestead-- a self-sufficient, off-the-grid house; she's a grandmother of 64 and wants some place to call her own, but she struggles with how to go about it . . . these are her words:

Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff to impress people I don't like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse for an online supplier. The stuff is all crap made somewhere else in the world where they don't have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen to sixteen hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won't last a month. It is all goin to a landfill. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country where we don't have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. The American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world . . . there is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. 

despite the tone of this section, there is also a pioneering spirit in the book-- there is a shared tone with the favorite pieces of literature of the Rubber Tramp crew; I was proud to say I've read ever book they mentioned as a favorite: Travels with Charley, Blue Highways, Desert Solitaire, Into the Wild, Walden, and Wild; if you don't want to read about all this, definitely watch the movie-- it's a masterful amalgam of the real stories in the book (and the real people) and some quality acting by Frances McDormand . . . and if you don't want to deal with any of this but still want to get the idea, listen to a recent episode of The Indicator wherein they explain that the Simpsons-- once representative of the lower middle class in America-- now live a lifestyle unattainable by that demographic.

Just Do It Donald: Clean Up the Mess Alanis Morissette Made!

I know it's gauche to root for someone to kick the bucket-- even our crass and incompetent President-- so I'm wishing him a speedy recovery . . . but I'm wondering if Trump recognizes that dying of COVID is the gateway to all his dreams . . . certainly all Trump wants is fame and notoriety-- at any cost-- he obviously has no interest in policy, diplomacy, or running our nation . . . if he's ready and willing to give up the ghost from the pandemic that he has denied, mismanaged, and demeaned then he will gain his deepest desire: Trump will be the definition of irony for hundreds and hundreds of years; he will be the one thing that children remember from this era in history: the man who said the virus would disappear and then-- months later-- died from it . . . so consider it Don, forget the good fight and succumb . . . you'll achieve exactly what you want, you'll be remembered for time immemorial, and you'll provide literature teachers far into the future a concise and clear definition of a term that's been muddied by an Alanis Morissette song.

Dreams Are Dumb?

I've always been a proponent of the Anti-Freudian "dreams are dumb and indicate nothing" school-of-thought (and may COVID-19 kill me dead if this blog becomes a dream journal) but I woke up at 2 AM this morning-- possibly because of an earthquake-- in the midst of a particularly vivid and possibly symbolic somnolent vision; here's what happened: 

I was trekking through the jungle at sunset and came to a spot where I could see through the dense foliage and I spotted a hippo in the tall grass, and the hippo's wet skin was reflecting beautiful streaks of red, purple, and orange from the waning daylight and then a jaguar walked out of the jungle and he hopped up on top of the hippo and just stood there, posing (and there was also a random llama in the background) and so I grabbed my phone and took a picture of a JAGUAR ON TOP OF A HIPPO (with a llama in the background) and all three animals were magnificent, iridescent from the setting sun in this wild tableau and then I raced back to camp to show Catherine the miracle I had witnessed and when I tried to find the pictures on my phone, they were gone-- total technical failure-- and it was my fault, I had pressed something and lost them all, the greatest nature photos ever snapped . . . and that's pretty much how school feels so far this year.

Hitchhiker's Guide meets Star Trek Meets a Modern Feminist Perspective . . .

If you've ever wondered what Star Trek would be like if it were written by a woman, check out Becky Chambers sci-fi novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

It's a space-opera with a sociological bent-- and while I like it much much more than Star Trek-- there's an archetypal similarity in the mission. The Wayfarer is a tunneling ship that opens up lanes through hyperspace in the Galactic Commons so that there can be communication and commerce between the affiliated species that live throughout the galaxy.

Instead of five years, the diverse crew of The Wayfarer is on a one year trip, but they are definitely going boldly to seek out new life and civilizations and strange new worlds.

The characters are modern and funny and mainly and manifoldly alien . . . humans are on the low end of the totem pole. The new clerk aboard the ship, Rosemarie, is just trying to fit in, knowing full well that the human race-- mainly by pure luck-- has just passed out of this stage:

Perhaps the most crucial stage is that of “intraspecies chaos.” This is the proving ground, the awkward adolescence when a species either learns to come together on a global scale, or dissolves into squabbling factions doomed to extinction, whether through war or ecological disasters too great to tackle divided. We have seen this story play out countless times. 

Along the episodically plotted journey, Chambers tackles interspecies coupling, AI rights, gene-tweaking, symbiotic sentient viruses, alien diplomacy, specieism, cloning, and moral relativism. But the book is mainly about a well-developed and fascinating group of sentient beings trying to get along in a small space on an epic journey.

I also learned the word "ansible."

Here's how the reptilian Aandrisk feel about children . . .

The death of a new hatchling was so common as to be expected. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around. 

Chambers works with the conceit that life abounds in the universe, that it will evolve towards intelligence, and that it is carbon-based. With limitations, is it any wonder that sentient creatures have more similarities than differences. Even so, Captain Ashby is mired in this mess . . .

As open and generous as Aeluons generally were to their galactic neighbors, interspecies coupling remained a mainstream taboo.

Every alien race has to come to grip that there are others out there, with goals and dreams and culture that has evolved on a grand scale, in some ways parallel to all life, and in some way completely different and unexpected. 

In the middle of the book, there is a wonderful essay on this. The way it is inserted into the novel reminds me of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It is ostensibly written by a sagacious Aandrisk scientist . . . but it's definitely Becky Chambers laying out the reason her story works. I've put it here in its entirety-- thanks to my Kindle-- and because it's so good.

ITEM NAME: Thoughts on the Galaxy—Chapter Three

AUTHOR: oshet-Tekshereket esk-Rahist as- Ehas Kirish isket-Ishkriset

ENCRYPTION: 0

TRANSLATION PATH: [Reskitkish:Klip] 

TRANSCRIPTION: 0 NODE IDENTIFIER: 9874-457-28, Rosemary Harper

When meeting an individual of another species for the first time, there is no sapient in the galaxy who does not immediately take inventory of xyr physiological differences. These are always the first things we see. How does xyr skin differ? Does xe have a tail? How does xe move? How does xe pick things up? What does xe eat? Does xe have abilities that I don’t? Or vice versa? These are all important distinctions, but the more important comparison is the one we make after this point. Once we’ve made our mental checklists of variations, we begin to draw parallels—not between the alien and ourselves, but between the alien and animals. The majority of us have been taught since childhood that voicing these comparisons is derogatory, and indeed, many of the racial slurs in colloquial use are nothing more than common names for nonsapient species (for example, the Human term lizard, to describe Aandrisks; the Quelin term tik, to describe Humans; the Aandrisk term sersh, to describe Quelin).

Though these terms are offensive, examining them objectively reveals a point of major biological interest. All demeaning implications aside, we Aandrisks do look like some of the native reptilian species of Earth. Humans do look like larger, bipedal versions of the hairless primates that plague the sewer systems of Quelin cities. Quelin do bear some resemblance to the snapping crustaceans found all over Hashkath. And yet, we evolved separately, and on different worlds. My people and the lizards of Earth do not share an evolutionary tree, nor do Humans and tiks, nor Quelin and sersh. Our points of origin are spread out across the galaxy. We hail from systems that remained self-contained contained for billions of years, with evolutionary clocks that all began at different times. How is it possible that when meeting our galactic neighbors for the first time, we are all instantly reminded of creatures back home—or in some cases, of ourselves?

The question becomes even more complicated when we start to look beyond our superficial differences to the wealth of similarities. All sapient species have brains. Let us consider that seemingly obvious fact for a moment. Despite our isolated evolutionary paths, we all developed nervous systems with a central hub. We all have internal organs. We all share at least some of the same physical senses: hearing, touch, taste, smell, sight, electroreception. The grand majority of sapients have either four or six limbs. Bipedalism and opposable digits, while not universal, are shockingly common. We are all made from chromosomes and DNA, which themselves are made from a select handful of key elements. We all require a steady intake of water and oxygen to survive (though in varying quantities). We all need food. We all buckle under atmospheres too thick or gravitational fields too strong. We all die in freezing cold or burning heat. We all die, period. How can this be? How is it that life, so diverse on the surface, has followed the same patterns throughout the galaxy—not just in the current era, but over and over again?

We see this pattern in the ruins of the Arkanic civilization at Shessha, or the ancient fossil beds on the now-barren world of Okik. This is a question that scientific communities have wrestled with for centuries, and it seems unlikely that an answer will present itself in the near future. There are many theories—asteroids carrying amino acids, supernovae blowing organic material out into neighboring systems. And yes, there is the fanciful story of a hyperadvanced sapient race “seeding” the galaxy with genetic material. I admit that the “Galactic Gardener” hypothesis has fueled the plots of some of my favorite science fiction sims, but scientifically speaking, it is nothing more than wishful thinking. You cannot have a theory without evidence, and there is absolutely none that supports this idea (no matter what the conspiracy theorists lurking on Linking feeds would have you believe).

For my part, I think that the best explanation is the simplest one. The galaxy is a place of laws. Gravity follows laws. The life cycles of stars and planetary systems follow laws. Subatomic particles follow laws. We know the exact conditions that will cause the formation of a red dwarf, or a comet, or a black hole. Why, then, can we not acknowledge that the universe follows similarly rigid laws of biology? We have only ever discovered life on similarly sized terrestrial moons and planets, orbiting within a narrow margin around hospitable stars. If we all evolved on such kindred worlds, why is it such a surprise that our evolutionary paths have so much in common? Why can we not conclude that the right combination of specific environmental factors will always result in predictable physical adaptations? With so much evidence staring us in the face, why does this debate continue?

The answer, of course, is that the laws of biology are nearly impossible to test, and scientists hate that. We can launch probes to test theories of gravity and space-time. We can put rocks in pressure cookers and split atoms in classrooms. But how does one test a process as lengthy and multifaceted as evolution? There are labs today that struggle to find the funding to keep a project running for three standards—imagine the funding needed to run a project for millennia! As it stands, there is no way for us to efficiently test the conditions that produce specific biological adaptations, beyond the most rudimentary observations (aquatic climates produce fins, cold climates produce fur or blubber, and so on).

There have been bold attempts at creating software that could accurately predict evolutionary paths, such as the Aeluon-funded Tep Preem Project (which, though well-intentioned, has yet to unravel the mysteries of biological law). The problem with such endeavors is that there are too many variables to consider, many of which we remain ignorant of. We simply don’t have enough data, and the data that we do possess is still beyond our understanding. We are experts of the physical galaxy. We live on terraformed worlds and in massive orbital habitats. We tunnel through the sublayer to hop between stellar systems. We escape planetary gravity with the ease of walking out the front door. But when it comes to evolution, we are hatchlings, fumbling with toys. I believe this is why many of my peers still cling to theories of genetic material scattered by asteroids and supernovae. In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.

Quarantine Workouts (Mental and Physical)

I am proud to announce that my son Ian and I completed a set of six sprints up "Deadman's Hill" on Monday. This is one more than our last effort. We're trying to build up to 8 reps. "Deadman's Hill" is a steep incline at the end of our block-- the sprint is a tenth of a mile (528 feet) and (according to Google maps) you gain fifty feet of elevation during the run. That's about a ten percent grade. It's brutal. We always finish morning workouts during double sessions at the hill, and the soccer players do several sets. Coach runs them in class order-- seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshman-- so they get a bit of a rest in between. We did not have this luxury. We ran up, walked down, and did it again. My son Ian (14 years old) is 99 pounds, so he had an easier time than me. I think I maxed out my heart rate and then some. I will provide a video of the final interval the next time we do it. It will be slow and disturbing. 

Tuesday morning, my sixteen-year-old son Alex told me that after everyone went to bed, he got a video call from a tennis player buddy of his. Ten students were trying to do 10,000 push-ups in one day, but they needed help. It was getting late and they weren't going to make it. From 11 PM to 11:45 PM, Alex did 450 push-ups. This put them over the top. A couple kids did over 2000 push-ups in a 24 hour period. Alex is very sore.

My mind is also obviously working overtime to process all the new normal, and I don't have to get up as early as norm, so I'm actually remembering some of my dreams. While I normally never talk about dreams or want to hear other people's dreams, we are in weird times. Perhaps they are premonitions.

Dream #1

I was attending an interminable faculty meeting in the auditorium-- it was dark and boring and I was getting sleepy-- but my only ray of hope was that my friend and colleague Zach had smuggled a baby raccoon into the meeting and he was going to release it at the appropriate moment to cause maximum chaos. I helped concoct the plan, but my friend had the raccoon in a bag. We didn't sit next to each other, to avoid suspicion. I was waiting and waiting for him to release the baby raccoon, the meeting was so boring, but he was stalling. I was frantically signaling to him. Release the raccoon! Release the raccoon!

He finally did and it climbed up the wall, like a monkey, and made it's way to the stage. Everyone freaked out. Pretty sweet dream.

Dream #2

Warning: this one is not as sweet. I was at a funeral, but in an open field, more like a party. It seemed similar to the memorial for an actual fraternity buddy who died in a motorcycle crash many years ago (but it was not for this person). When I inquired about the person who died-- a college friend of mine-- my friend Joe told me that guy's funeral happened the day before . . . I had missed it, gotten the date wrong, and that this funeral was for another college friend (who had died at yesterday's memorial event). I was totally broken up and surprised and sad. I did not like this dream at all. I'm leaving the names of the dead people out of this for obvious reasons, I don't want to hex anyone. I hope I'm not clairvoyant.

Shakespeare vs. Rudy Giulani

The New York Times podcast The Daily recently aired an episode about Rudy Giulani's involvement with the Trump administration. 

At the start of the episode, there was a clip from a speech Giulani made just after 9/11:

RUDY GIULIANI (R), THEN-MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We do not want these cowardly terrorists to have us in any way alter our American way of life. This may go on for some time. We have to end terrorism. I believe the United States government is committed to that. And it's going to require us here in America to go about our way of life and not have them imperil it.

Giulani calls the terrorists "cowardly." He's not the only person to do so. I don't think this is an apt description of a group of of people that hijacked four commercial jet airliners with utility knives and then steered the planes-- kamikaze style-- toward symbolic American targets. While I understand the need to denigrate and insult the terrorists, the last thing they were was "cowardly." It shows a lack of understanding of the enemy.

These people were sanguinary and vengeful and zealous and fanatical and lacking perspective and empathy for other cultures. But mainly, they were true believers, blinded by a certain political position. They were haters, haters of American policy, American military deployment in their Holy Land, haters of American capitalist morality, and American unilateral success on the world stage.

But to call them cowards is to sell them short. It doesn't reflect just how fervently they believed in what they believed. They believed enough to kill and die. In doesn't reflect how dangerous it is to believe in something so strongly that you can't look at other points of view.

Whether it's Islamic terrorists, or our own homegrown right-wing variety of fanatic, you need to accurately assess the motivations of these people. And these people aren't cowards. They are willing to commit violent acts, and often willing to die for their beliefs.

Shakespeare understood this, and Giulani would be well served by re-reading the Bard's most famous soliloquy, the one in Hamlet that begins "to be or not to be."

The context of the speech is that Hamlet is royally fucked up, and he's been royally screwed over. He's been through enough betrayal and heartache that he contemplates suicide. He acknowledges-- correctly-- that his life is a shitshow and that he should probably "take arms against a sea of troubles" and end it. It's "a consummation devoutly to be wish'd."

He doesn't kill himself. In fact, the play goes on another two hours. Hamlet might be a coward-- that's another post-- but more significantly, he recognizes why most people don't commit suicide-- and why he's not going to commit suicide. People don't behave that rashly because of "the dread of something after death."

The unknown.

He doesn't want to rush headlong into the undiscovered country" that "puzzles the will." He's not sure what will happen in the afterlife, "what dreams may come" once his life is over. And he's not going to risk it.

Obviously, he has not heard about the 72 virgins.

Hamlet is religious, but still rationally skeptical. The 9/11 terrorists-- and guys like Patrick Crusius-- do not have this fear. It's scary, how strongly they believe in their convictions. There's no shadow of a doubt in their minds.

Most normal folks-- and even folks like Hamlet, folks that are struggling but still rational-- let their "conscience" turn them cowardly. We lack fervor and unshaking faith, and so our "resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." This cowardice is a blessing in disguise because "enterprises of great pitch and moment . . . lose the name of action."

A lot of these enterprises are downright crazy, and could use reflection and reconsideration. Hamlet takes this to the extreme, and we love him for it.

There are plenty of applicable insults to aim at terrorists. They are rabid and crazed and virulent. But they certainly stand by the courage of their convictions, and that is the problem. They are the anti-Hamlet. They actually complete these suicidal actions, and this -- according to Shakespeare-- is the reverse of cowardly. All us cowards go on living our day to day lives, suffering "slings and arrows," not sure what is to come. That's civilized behavior

Though being devoted is often considered a positive trait, I believe we all need to be a little less loyal, a little less faithful, and a little less principled. It leads down a dangerous road. Instead, let's try to be a little more capricious, a little more detached. Let's be skeptical and occasionally disinterested. Maybe even a little more cowardly. If the terrorists adopted a few of these negative characteristics, the world would be a better place.

The Mountains of Kentucky?

Last night was my first night sleeping at home in a while . . . we were on two vacations, back-to-back, and while they were both epic and excellent, it was good to wake up early to a quiet house; I did have a weird dream last night, and while I normally never talk about dreams, the significance of this one is so obvious that I have to summarize it-- but I won't go into all the surreal and stupid details: the dream began mirroring reality, we arrived home from our two vacations but then it veered into the absurd . . . I totally forgot we had planned another trip, we were heading to the mountain of Kentucky-- are there mountains in Kentucky?-- and it was going to be a ten hour drive and then there was a lot more driving during the vacation, and we had to pack lots of winter clothes, and there was snow . . . and I was really upset that I had planned another vacation after two straight vacations, and this vacation was pretty much all driving, in the mountains . . . and I'll readily admit that this is a real first-world-problem dream, where the monster under the bed is a vacation.

The Mountains of Kentucky?

Last night was my first night sleeping at home in a while . . . we were on two vacations, back-to-back, and while they were both epic and excellent, it was good to wake up early to a quiet house; I did have a weird dream last night, and while I normally never talk about dreams, the significance of this one is so obvious that I have to summarize it-- but I won't go into all the surreal and stupid details: the dream began mirroring reality, we arrived home from our two vacations but then it veered into the absurd . . . I totally forgot we had planned another trip, we were heading to the mountain of Kentucky-- are there mountains in Kentucky?-- and it was going to be a ten hour drive and then there was a lot more driving during the vacation, and we had to pack lots of winter clothes, and there was snow . . . and I was really upset that I had planned another vacation after two straight vacations, and this vacation was pretty much all driving, in the mountains . . . and I'll readily admit that this is a real first-world-problem dream, where the monster under the bed is a vacation.

You're Welcome, David Sedaris!

The new David Sedaris memoir/essay collection Calypso is darker and perhaps more candid and sincere than anything he's written previous; it may be his best work (though not his funniest . ..  that would be Naked or Santaland Diaries or Me Talk Pretty One Day) but be forewarned-- you're going to deal with death and the afterlife and eldercare and mental illness and suicide . . . you'll still laugh and there's plenty of wry observations on mundane events (plus he feeds his benign fatty tumor to a bunch of turtles . . . though not to the exact turtle he wanted to feed his tumor too, the turtle with a tumor on his head because that turtle died before Sedaris could toss his tumor off the bridge) and I'm also pretty sure that Sedaris has either been reading my blog or stealing my thoughts, because his essay "Boo-Hooey" is about how he can't stand people talking about ghosts and dreams and how he does not believe in the significance of either topic and fans of Sentence of Dave know I've been writing about the same for many many years.

More Proof That Dreams Are Meaningless

Just before I went to bed on Thursday, my son Alex showed me the piece of his saxophone which needed fixing, and then I had a very vivid dream that night in which I brought the saxophone to Sam Ash and the tech guy told me it would cost $64 dollars to fix the saxophone and then Friday morning, I actually brought the saxophone to Sam Ash, and the tech said the repair would cost anywhere from $30 to $50 because he had to solder something and then there was no mention of soldering in the dream, and then the tech talked me into getting a $70 tune-up for the instrument-- which I agreed upon because the intersection around Sam Ash is so congested that I didn't want to return to the shop for a long time . . . and this part of the transaction also did not occur in my dream, so my dream was not only mundane and lacking prophetic symbolism, but also economically inaccurate.

Awkward Dave Learns Why Dreams are Stupid and Mean Nothing

I had an incredibly "realistic" dream last night that I ran for governor (absurd) and actually won the election (ridiculous) and then, when I went over to the statehouse to start my term, I learned that the salary was abysmally low (which is patently untrue, New Jersey governors are paid the fourth highest salary in the country-- 175,000 dollars) and so I told them that I couldn't afford to do it; it was embarrassing and awkward-- and everyone was really pissed off at me for wasting their time-- and, as a compromise, they made me do the job for a month while they found someone else, and that really annoyed me because I had to drive to Trenton every day, which ruined my summer vacation (also silly, as the next gubernatorial election in New Jersey will take place on November 7th).

Whitesnake Foretells the Future

I finished two books at the beach yesterday, both on the the theme of human nature, and one was inspirational and disconcerting and the other satirical and reassuring;

1) the disconcerting and inspirational award goes to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari; this is a Guns, Germs, and Steel-style Big History book that cuts a broad swath while telling the story of "an animal of no significance" that emerges from several other hominid species to conquer the earth-- it's one revolution after the next: cognitive, agricultural, religious, scientific, industrial, economic, nuclear, philosophical, and digital-- and we become the most wild and unnatural of all the animals, at first hunting and gathering in small tight-knit groups, but with a desire to create art (the Lion Man is 32,000 years old) and a desire for conquest (we probably took out the Neanderthals and we certainly killed all the megafauna) and this led to something larger and larger, but in no way inevitable or "natural" . . . in fact, according to Harari, there was just as much lost as gained when we settled down and became farmers (peasants ate worse, toiled harder, died of starvation and disease more often, and the great inequalities of wealth and class began) but this paved the way for one revolution after another, eventually leading to out effete, technological capitalist miracle-- fueled by cheap credit and trust in the future-- but, of course, capitalism is efficient but not ethical, so capitalism produced institutions like slavery and led to a devastation of the "natural" world . . . there are 300 million tons of humanity on the planet, and 700 million tons of domesticated factory farmed animals to feed us, but the total tonnage of the surviving large wild animals-- "from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales-- is less than 100 million tons" and so while Harari portrays humanity as progressive, intelligent, conquering beings, he also acknowledges what Whitesnake told us long ago, that we don't know where we're going (though we sure know where we've been) and we're walking, alone down a street of dreams, drifting this way and that, into unknown, unforetold territory, revolution after revolution, looking for answers, and here we go again . . . so get ready to hold on for the rest of your days . . .

2) the second book is a refreshing change from Yuval Harari's big thoughts and philosophical speculations, and it is free on the Kindle and I highly recommend it; Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome is an account of a men's boating holiday down the Thames River, and it is semi-autobiographical, hysterically funny, and was published in 1889 . . . and I shit you not, if you read this book, you'll realize that if you took a time machine back to 1889, you would have no problem hanging out with these folks-- the tone and the jokes and the diction are perfectly modern, and Jerome K. Jerome's observations could have fallen from a Seinfeldian observational comic, here are a few examples:

a) the mildest tempered people, when on land, become violent and blood-thirsty when in a boat;

b) few things, I have noticed, come quite up to the pictures of this world;

c) little was in sight to remind us of the nineteenth century;

d) in a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything . . . Harris's notion was, that is was he alone who had been working;

e) each person has what he doesn't want, and other people have what he does want . . . married men have wives, and don't seem to want him; and young single fellows cry out that they can't get them.

Dreams Deferred, Destroyed, Depressed, Disintegrated, and Damaged

The boys and I just finished watching the epic documentary Hoop Dreams-- it streams on Netflix-- and if you haven't seen it, it's something you have to watch . . . but beware: the film keeps it very real, and the various dreams of the characters in the film are often deferred or shattered . . . and if you're a real glutton for punishment, check out where the main figures in the story are now . . . there are a few bright spots, but also plenty of tragedy; if you're still in the mood for even more depressingly frank anti-dream reality after watching Hoop Dreams, then go see The Big Short-- it has a documentary feel, and documentary-like moments, though it's not documentary, and Christian Bale and Steve Carell do a fantastic job playing real people (Michael Burry and Mark Bain) . . . but be prepared to confront the destruction of the American Dream (and you're also going to need to prepare a bit so you understand the vocabulary and the main concepts, you could either read a bunch of books and watch an actual documentary, or you could read my sentences about them . . . here are my suggestions: The Big Short, House of Cards, The Black Swan, After the Music Stops, Unintended Consequences, Griftopia and Inside Job).

Teach Your Children (Fairly) Well Part II

I am the parent and my children are the children, and if I want to make an arbitrary rule, such as: if you're going to watch TV on a school night, then it has to be a documentary, then they need to abide by the rule and embrace the rule and not give me a bunch of shit about the rule . . . which is why, last week, when we were two minutes into Hoop Dreams, my son Alex said he wanted to go upstairs and read instead of watching and I did something unprecedented in the history of parenting--

I forced my child to watch TV instead of allowing him to read a book

but I had good reason for this . . . Roger Ebert lists Hoop Dreams as the number one movie of the 1990's and my son was being totally close-minded because he was angry about my "documentaries on school nights" rule . . . a rule which my wife and children should realize is never going to last, and if they could simply humor me for a bit and allow me to reign like a lunatic dictator over my tiny realm . . . and Alex ended up liking the film-- you can't not like it, it's great (though not as fast paced and violent and entertaining as Arrow, a show to which my kids are addicted).

Reality vs. Mario Kart 8

This sentence is in no way indicative of the entirety of our Vermont vacation, which mainly consisted of snowy hikes with the kids and dog, browsing the giant book store in downtown Manchester, reading books we bought from the giant book store in downtown Manchester, drinking delicious Vermont beer, board games, a sledding adventure on the Equinox golf course with some friends from Highland Park, and a general reprieve from the business as usual . . . BUT there was a twenty-four hour period of chaotic wackiness that is slightly more interesting: we brought the Wii U along for the trip and by Wednesday night I thought I had gotten good enough competing with the kids at Mario Kart 8 that I could play at the fastest speed (200cc) which I did after the kids went to bed (and I certainly had drank a few of those delicious Vermont beers and playing Mario Kart alone is a whole different beast, infinitely more epic, because instead of looking at a quarter of the screen, you're hurtling into the whole thing) and because of this late night racing, I had an awful night's sleep, my head populated with vivid dreams about the game, my tricked-out buggy caroming off guardrails and slamming into walls, then hurtling through the course as a giant bullet, before being spun in circles by a red turtle shell, and then I woke up and we went to Stratton Mountain to do some snowboarding and skiing, and it was insanely crowded and there were only a couple of runs open, because of the warm weather, and riding down the mountain was exactly like Mario Kart: the conditions were variable, the course was crowded, and you might be on ice on moment and then bouncing off a slushy pile of snow the next . . . and while I have no empirical proof, I think that our Mario Kart sessions may have prepared us for this mayhem, as my kids handled it without a mishap and I didn't have an anxiety attack, despite my claustrophobia, but I have learned my lesson, I'll never play Mario Kart after eight PM again (I had the same sort of dreams when I got obsessed with Gameboy Tetris in college . . . but that's what it takes to achieve the five fiddlers and the space shuttle launch).

More Dreams!

If I can't swing being a professional dog-walker when I retire, perhaps I will be an impersonal trainer, and inspire people to keep in shape through detachment: I don't really care if you do those sit-ups, because I'm watching this golf match on TV and not paying attention to you one bit . . . in fact, your fitness level doesn't interest me in the least, I'm much more concerned with myself, but I've read that doing the plank might be good for your core . . . but whatever, your choice, what do I care if you get in shape?

You've Got to Have Dreams

When I retire, I'm going to augment my pension by being a professional dog-walker!