The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
The Irony (and the Stupidity)
This Makes More Sense Than the Whole Dipping A Baby in the River Styx Theory
Monday, Garfield Style
Lola was off-leash, as she always is at that time of the morning, but a couple of joggers and another person walking a large white dog came down the hill-- at 5:45 AM! On a Monday! The audacity.
So I had to put Lola back on the leash, and I didn't get a chance to pick up her poop, and while I was searching for her poop in the darkness, I stepped in it. Firmly. With my absolutely vital plantar fasciitis clogs. So now they're sitting out in the sun on the back porch, and I'll have to clean them when I get home.
While I was walking back up the hill, scuffling in the grass trying to remove the dog poop, I saw Garfield, in my mind's eye, laughing at me-- because I thought I was above his "Monday blues" humor. But he got his, and so did Monday.
During the Pandemic, A Loss is Still a Win
During the pandemic, we're considering every game we play a win-- but today's trip to Middlesex was a tough one . . . it was the third game of the week and varsity got spanked 5 to nil and my JV squad was a wreck; we lost 4-0 and I've never run on and off the field so many times for injuries--many of which were already present before the game and were compounded by extreme effort against an excellent team-- here's a quick rundown: Tyler with an ankle sprain,; Ian got the wind knocked out of him and has plantar fasciitis; Anthony twisted his ankle, Sebastian with a tender hamstring; Theo had trouble with his back and also got close-lined; Max got elbowed in the eye; Jake has turf-toe, and Eric has a pulled groin . . . with only thirteen players on the roster, these numbers don't add up (but it was still better to have an adventure and lose rather than the alternative . . . so despite the drubbing, we're staying positive: at least we are getting games in . . . there are plenty of games being cancelled . . . especially at East Brunswick, where I teach; also, my son Alex played the game of his life at left back . . . it was a full throttle assault from Middlesex because we had no midfield).
Loath and Loathe Revisited
Good Walkers, Spoiled
The Eternal Bronchial Return
Remembering Louie
Dave Accessorizes!
1) with my battery powered headlamp, not only am I a shining beacon of coolness in the 6 AM darkness, but I also don't trip on the uneven pavement near my house (the streetlight on our corner is out) and I'm able to let my dog pursue his interests (chasing deer in the park) without losing him . . . so shine on, you crazy fashionable Dave . . .
Trilemma of Dave
I read to encounter new stories, new ideas, and new words, and I found all of these in Paul Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 . . . I read stories of economic disaster in Latin America, Japan, and Thailand; I read that the global crisis of 2008 might not have been completely caused by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act (which was put in place after the Great Depression and ensured compartmentalization between commercial banks and investment companies) and might have been more the result of a "run" on the completely unregulated "shadow banking system" . . . which wouldn't have been regulated by the Glass-Steagall act anyway; and I read the word "trilemma," which Krugman used to explain the problem with national monetary policy . . . you can either let your money "float" and fluctuate on the exchange rate, which fights recession but adds a great deal of uncertainty to your economy, or you could fix the value of the rate and attempt to guarantee that the currency would never be devalued, or you can maintain an adjustable peg . . . and he explains the defects in all of these and calls the problem a "three-cornered dilemma" . . . a "trilemma" and the only trilemma in my life right now is not particularly exciting . . . it's not like Heidi Klum, Karolina Kurkova, and my wife are all battling for my affections . . . but there certainly are three corners to my problem: I have a knee injury, but it's not a terribly bad injury-- my knee cap popped out of place and I sprained the inner ligaments and my bursa sac is a bit swollen, and so I can either: 1) rest it properly until it heals . . . which is what I should do, but is rather impossible since I have two active boys, a dog, and I am hyper-active 2) I could do light exercise . . . jog, walk, play with my kids, lift weights, bike, and swim . . . which alleviates my hyper-activity but is rather boring, or 3) I can tape myself and wrap myself and brace myself and keep playing basketball and soccer until my knee explodes and my plantar fasciitis returns.
Anti-natalist Chickens
During the latest episode of Waking Up With Sam Harris, David Benatar discusses his philosophical stance "anti-natalism," and how he believes it is sinful to bring new lives into a world dominated by suffering . . . in essence, he believes that it is better to not be born at all rather than to exist, and that once we exist, we attach a sentimental bias to our existence (unless it is so painful and awful that suicide is the only recourse) and so we go on existing even though not existing would have been better in the first place-- he likens this to attending a movie which is pretty awful, but not so awful that you would walk out, but certainly awful enough that you would have not gone to see it if you knew how bad it was (in my mind this movie is The Accountant, which "stars" Ben Affleck as an autistic action hero number cruncher . . . so dumb, but just barely entertaining enough that we didn't leave) and this is the metaphor for life, it is a movie that you would have chosen not to see if you knew how bad it was going to be, but once you've paid for a ticket, you generally decide to see it through . . . but Benatar believes you should definitely not drag anyone else to see the movie, thus you should not procreate and bring children into this awful world-show . . . I tend to disagree (especially since I just got back from circumnavigating the park in the snow, my dog bounding ahead of me from snow pile to snow pile, which-- despite my plantar fasciitis-- is a big check mark on the pro side of existing in the universe) but I still enjoyed employing the term "anti-natalist" in Philosophy class on Friday, when we were discussing Peter Singer and animal rights . . . more specifically, we were discussing the Douglas Adams bit in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe about the cow that wants to be eaten (and can express this desire eloquently) and the ethics of breeding animals that either desire to be eaten or-- even better-- are decerebrated vegetables with no consciousness at all (or perhaps even growing meat in chemical vats) and this leads to the question of whether being delicious and stupid and plump (and essentially of no nutritional value) is a good thing for chicken-kind or a bad thing for chicken-kind; numerically, the chicken species is doing fantastic-- couldn't be better-- as there are zillions of them, but fitness-wise and experience-wise they are doing atrociously . . . and so I think as far as chickens go, I'm an "anti-natalist," because the life of a modern chicken is so chock full of suffering that it's certainly better to have never been born (hatched?) in the first place rather than to have to endure living in a tiny box with fatty legs that can't support your obese chicken body while you're force-fed a disgusting diet full of hormones so that you grow at an exponential rate into a giant infantile avian ripe for slaughter . . . anyway, that's the word of the day over here: anti-natalism.