Appropriate Meta-Cameo

I rarely recount my dreams here because if I did, I'd be labelled a hypocrite (and because I almost never remember them) but bear with me on this one: I was having a typical spooky nightmare, driving on a dark snowy road in Maine and when I arrived at my house, someone (or something) had jabbed large icicles in a pattern on the door and around the windows and up onto the roof of the house . . . and then Stephen King and I got out of the car to investigate and we were eventually attacked with snow and ice by some delinquent, inbred kids . . . pretty scary stuff, except that I had Stephen King by my side, so I was never all that scared of the situation because no one is scarier than Stephen King and he was my ally (at one point, I even playfully tossed a snowball at him and nearly hit him in the nuts and he laughed about it).

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?

Novels That The World May Be Better Off Without

Just about everyone has the plot of a novel brewing in their head, and a few weeks ago a friend told me his idea: it involved a Jurassic Park-like resurrection of Jesus Christ, using DNA from the Shroud of Turin, and then there was a Godzilla type monster (I can't remember if that was The Second Coming or the devil or what) and while I can't say that it's any worse than this idea, perhaps it's okay if some novels remain pipe dreams . . .

Dave Dreams of Sophomores Past

I recently heard the phrase "row forward looking back" as a metaphorical attitude for heading into the unknown-- and that's how I feel about teaching this year: I have a sophomore class for the first time in many many years, so all my sophomore lesson plans are in manila folders, handwritten-- and while I head into a pedagogical future featuring computer-driven, AI-powered, digital learning models, I am reminded of the school days long ago when I used to teach the sophomores-- when we read novels and out of thick anthologies, took our tests on paper, and relied on human connection and the occasional VHS tape for entertainment-- and I'm trying to instill some of that in my current classroom as I pull on the oars, against the current, the prow of my dinghy headed who knows where, into some technological morass, my gaze searching over the waters I have traveled, my mind borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Aphorism Week Begins!

It's aphorism week here at Sentence of Dave, and here is #1: Follow your dreams, even if they lead you down into a deep, dark and sticky abyss from which there is no escape . . . and once you have fallen down so deep into your own particular dream-pit that there is no way back to the light, once you are trapped, your arms and legs stuck to the walls, and the only possible way to escape is by hacking off your limbs Aron Ralston style, then you know you must continue to follow your delusional fantasies-- to become a world renowned graffiti artist or pass the audition for American Idol or pilot a hot-air balloon around the world-- and so you continue them though you are blind, isolated, and friendless, and you do this until you die, but in the moments before your death you feel great satisfaction that you lived life as your own man, bowing to none, listening to none, forging your own path, and this feeling makes it almost worth the fact that there is no one to mourn your passing, in fact, there's not even anyone to pay for your funeral and you will be buried in a pauper's grave.

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.

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.

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.

Stuck

I grabbed Anneli Rufus's new book Stuck: Why We Can't (or Won't) Move On on an impulse because it has the same title as a new Greasetruck song, and it has essentially the same theme; the reviews on Amazon run the gamut-- some claim she is unsubstantiated and opinionated and other claim that her perspectives are brilliant; I'm somewhere in the middle but I did love reading the book because there was so much to think about-- you end up debating yourself about the choices you have made and the conflict between how stuck you really are and how stuck you perceive yourself (often because of the media) to be-- and essentially, her mantra is "get over it," and I fully agree with this, she rails against the whining and blamelessness and infinite wishing and choice of our society (and I love her take on American Idol, she thinks America is obsessed with the show, because in a land where we tell people,"Anyone can be anything they want, follow your dreams," Simon is a breath of reality, which is what we yearn for but are afraid to tell people-- essentially, you will never achieve your dream because you don't have the skill) and perhaps I like her book because I am essentially happy stuck in my situation: steady job, beautiful wife, healthy (albeit annoying) kids, nice kitchen, one sentence blog, and Greasetruck-- who could ask for more?

A Good Way To Spend All Hallow's Eve

After several hours of trick-or-treating in the cold with my kids, I retired to my bed to read Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's graphic novel Locke and Key, and I can think of no better way to conclude a spooky holiday than this: the story is gripping, the art is mesmerizing, and Sam will inhabit your dreams . . . I wish I could have read it to my kids, but it's way too disturbing and violent: nine abandoned wells out of ten.

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.

Jack Donaghy Demonstrates A Useful Technique

I never remember my dreams, but last night I had a vivid one wherein I hooked a giant marlin and . . . sorry, I almost broke my own rule-- everyone knows there is nothing more boring than hearing a grown man recount an incoherent dream; when Liz Lemon starts to talk about her dream on 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy picks up an imaginary phone and says to her, "Sorry Lemon, I have to take this."

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.

An Analysis of My Netflix Queue

My Netflix queue has swollen to 233 films, and though I'm never going to view these films, they do reveal quite a bit about about my hopes, dreams, personality, and aspirations . . . and if you head over to Gheorghe: The Blog, you can read a Close Reading of the list.

Stop Reading This And Go To Bed!

Here are some of the things I learned while reading David K. Randall's book Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep . . . and while his lessons are often commonsensical, he provides descriptions of how these truisms were scientifically proven:

1) We often dream about what bothers us;

2) We often dream the same thing over and over;

3) While dreams don't have symbolic meaning, they can help us solve actual problems in a creative fashion;

4) Better to sleep than to cram;

5) The West Coast team has an advantage when playing Monday Night Football;

6) You need sleep to synthesize new information;

7) If you are deprived of enough sleep, you die . . . from lack of sleep;

8) Friendly fire deaths in the military are most often caused by fatigue;

9) The biggest hurdle in the military is not technological, it is sleep deprivation;

10) If you didn't get a full night's rest, take a nap;

11) You can kill someone in your sleep, and depending on the interpretation of the law, you might either get life in prison or get off scot-free.

12) Teenagers have different Circadian rhythms than adults;

13) Highschools that pushed their start time to 8:30 had higher SAT scores, better attendance, less fights, and a number of other quantifiable improvements;

14) Some popular prescription sleeping pills don't actually improve sleep all that much, they just give the sleeper temporary amnesia, so that it improves the perception of how one has slept;

15) The electric light, the TV, and the computer are enemies of sleep, because they fool our brains into thinking it is still daylight, and thus ruin our Circadian rhythm;

16) Before the advent of the electric light, the computer, and the TV, humans had two sleeps: a first sleep from when the sun went down until around midnight, then there was an hour or two of wakefulness, where people often ate or fornicated or talked, and then a "second sleep" until morning;

17) Sleep apnea is scary . . .

and the final thing to take away from this book is that sleep is really, really important for humans-- important for our health, our minds, and our stress levels-- yet even though we know this, married couples usually share a bed that is too small for the two of them and sleep together despite snoring, flatulence, kicking, blanket-stealing, late night reading, and general disruptions . . . and studies found that women primarily do this because they want to feel safe and that men do it because you never know when you might get lucky, and nothing improves your luck more than proximity.

American Dreaming

  American Dreaming by The Density

I have often expressed my disdain for dreams and their significance, but when I opened my mind to their artistic and lyrical potential . . . and when I let some of my colleagues open their minds, I ended up with this song-- I promise you that there's something in here for everyone (and I 'd like to thank Shakespeare, Biggie Smalls, Rage Against the Machine, Martin Luther King, Steve Carrell, Bob Dylan, Tracy Morgan, and-- of course-- any of my colleagues who willingly lent their voice to this half-baked project).

You've Got to Have Dreams

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

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).

Like Freddy Krueger, I Appear in Your Dreams

One of my fellow teachers was dreaming last night about how it wasn't a good idea to let me have a bit part on her imaginary talk show-- according to her boyfriend, she sleep-said, "Letting Dave on . . . not a good idea . . . he'll end up being the star . . ."

Dave Sets a Personal Soccer Event Record!

Last week, in one seven day period, I crammed in a dozen soccer events; and while I don't claim that this is any kind of world record, it's pretty impressive for an introvert like me; for posterity, here they are:

1) I coached a JV game on Monday;

2) coached JV practice Tuesday afternoon;

3) coached travel practice Tuesday night;

4) coached a JV game on Wednesday;

5) coached JV practice Thursday afternoon;

6) coached travel practice Thursday night . . . but I still made it to the pub;

7) coached JV practice Friday . . . I probably shouldn't have stayed for the last round Thursday night;

8) coached a travel game on Saturday . . . and our field was flooded so we had to move the goals and basically create a small field on a different field, so this soccer event turned out to more work than usual;

9) attended a Red Bulls game Saturday night with the wife and kids-- a great game, the Red Bulls won 1-0 and we ate at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Newark before the game, a good spot;

10) I played soccer with my pick-up crew Sunday morning;

11) coached my son Ian's travel game later on Sunday;

12) then watched my older son Alex's travel game, which started directly after Ian's game on Sunday;

and the result of all this soccer is that the game invaded my dreams and consciousness, I woke up thinking about it and went to sleep thinking about it . . . and like when you repeat a word over and over again until it sounds like gibberish, there were times when I found my life existential and absurd, but at the end of the week, on Sunday, when both my sons played travel games and they scored all the goals (Ian scored two in a 3-2 loss and Alex scored 1 in a 2-1 loss) which made everything meaningful again, which is ridiculous, but no matter how much I know you should stay detached from your children's athletic success, there's still nothing more exciting than when they score a goal-- especially for my son Alex, who rarely knocks one in . . . and there's more of the same in the coming weeks, so I'm going to have trouble coming up with non-soccer related material.