The Pathetic Fallacy, Pregnancy Edition

Today at work the ladies organized a "sprinkle" for a teacher who is very pregnant with her second child (and leaving at the end of the week) and it took me a couple hours to comprehend the term for the party . . . you have a baby "shower" for the first kid and then for the next kid, it's not as big a deal, so you tone the weather down a bit . . . and I guess for a third kid, you just get a "mist" or a "fog."

Daylight Sucking Time

Everything always feels topsy-turvy the first Monday after Daylight Fucking Saving Time (otherwise known as I Had a Vivid Nightmare Saturday Night That the Government Stole Time From Me and Sunday Morning It Turned Out It Wasn't a Nightmare Day) and so while I was at school and then the gym, I watched the latest political polarized shitshow in reverse chronological order and I think it made more sense that way: first-- in the English Office-- I watched Scarlett Johanssen's SNL send-up of Senator Katie Britt's absurdly melodramatic SOTU response; next, while riding the bike at the gym I actually watched Katie Britt's entire seventeen-minute oddly unhinged, trad-wife, transitionless, tone-deaf kitchen-centric monologue; and then I watched President Biden's fairly energetic and topical SOTU address . . . and I've decided to cryogenically freeze myself until next December so I don't have to live through this stupid rematch.

A Noteworthy Parking Offense?

A few weeks ago, I noticed an egregiously parked car in our school note and left a mildly censorious Post-it note on it-- and while this might have been mildly obnoxious behavior, there was no question that this car was poorly parked. . . ANYONE would agree that the parking job was awful and that this car encroached on BOTH parking spots on either side of the vehicle-- the car was OBJECTIVELY poorly parked; yesterday morning, my wife and I went to pick up the Mazda, which we left on Adelaide Avenue overnight after we took the train to Princeton to meet my brother-- we were several drinks over the limit so we did not drive it home and instead walked from the train station back home on Friday night-- and when we got the car on Saturday morning, we noticed a note tucked into the driver side door handle-- the note said: 

2 Vehicles can fit here. Next time, pull closer to the driveway in front or behind you. 

and while I understand the sentiment-- Catherine parked the car in the middle of a small strip of curb between two driveways-- and obviously the note-writer wanted to park right in front of their house-- but I don't think this parking event was noteworthy for several reasons:

1) Adelaide is a long street with plenty of parking;

2) if my wife had pulled the Mazda all the way up to the next driveway, there might have been enough room to squeeze another car behind it-- but why do this? why encroach on someone's driveway when there is plenty of parking on this street?

3) this is not an objectively poor parking job-- it's a subjective desire by someone lazy and inconvenienced by the fact that they could not park exactly where they wanted;

4) this note is boring and didactic-- 

if the offended party would have written something funny or clever . . . "Pull up or pull out, dick" would have sufficed-- then I might have empathized more with the put-out parker who had to walk eleven yards farther than normal . . . but because of the moralistic tone, I will seek that spot out the next time we drive to the edge of Highland Park and foray into New Brunswick and I will park exactly in the middle of that strip between the two driveways and perhaps I will keep this note and adorn it with dicks and place it on my windshield.

The Holdovers: Old Walleye Does It Again

Chalk it up to Paul Giamatti (pun intended) to portray the most curmudgeonly, yet compellingly human grouch of a private school ancient studies teacher in cinematic history . . . a bitterly disappointed educator with one glass eye, trimethylaminuria, hyperhidrosis, a tendency to drink too much, and a habit of insulting the students with various elevated vitriol-- troglodytes, fetid philistines, hormonal vulgarians, etcetera-- but despite this, and because of Giamatti's brilliance, The Holdovers has just the right amount of sentimentality and just the right amount of angst . . . the tone reminded me a bit of Catcher in the Rye, told more from someone like Old Mr. Spencer's point of view.

Sarcastic Tone Implied

I'm not very good at sarcasm-- I don't have the voice for it-- so I've got to broadcast it . . . here it comes: you know what's fun after teaching English to high school students all week . . . helping your son on Saturday with all the AP English assignments he neglected to complete while he had COVID.

Tone? Term? What? Who?

I realized today why I've been so fried and exhausted at the end of every school day this year-- and it's not the new schedule of 84 minute periods-- the problem is the sensory deprivation: I can't wear my glasses with a mask (they fog up) so I can't really see the students (and it's hard to discern who is who when they are all wearing masks) and I can't really tell who is talking-- every class wide discussion begins as a ventriloquism act because you can't see anyone's mouth moving . . . and even once you figure out where the sound is coming from, you might not be able to parse the words . . . teenagers are often mumblers . . . AND they might not have clearly heard what I said, so that adds to this muffled game of telephone . . . I told them to find a "term" and they were looking for the "tone" and so I had to remember to really enunciate the ending letters of words (and today was hat day, further obscuring any visual recognition-- when you wear a hat AND a mask, there's no much identifiable face showing) but my only solace is that perhaps I'm developing super-sensory powers because of this intense obfuscated sensory training.

Sci-Fi Twofer Tuesday

I read two excellent sci-fi books recently, and they couldn't be more different in tone:

1) The Humans by Matt Haig is one of those "from-an-alien-perspective" stories that begins with ironic detachment-- wow, these humans are silly and they really can't handle technology and they're dangerous to themselves and the galaxy so we've got to deal with them-- but then, with the help of a dog, the humans start to win over the narrator and things get fun and romantic and profound and complicated . . . a compelling plot and great reminders of why humans are absurd and wonderful;

2) Moxlyland by Lauren Beukes is a  cyberpunk novel of the near future set in CapeTown, South Africa . . . and the apartheid is between class, not race; the government and the media is complicit in this and very oppressive and powerful, in a revised Brave New World sort of way . . . I'll just put a few quotes up that I highlighted on my Kindle and you'll get the idea-- but warning, you don't want to read this if you're a vaccine-hesitant-conspiracy-theorist (or maybe you do . . .)

Don’t be fooled by the cosy apartment blocks lining the highway, it’s all Potemkin for the tourists. 

Compared to what the corporates have done? >>10: What do you mean? >>skyward*: corrupting govts with their own agendas, politicians on their payroll, exacerbating the economic gaps. building social controls and access passes and electroshock pacifiers into the very technology we need to function day to day, so you’ve no choice but to accept the defuser in your phone or being barred from certain parts of the city because you don’t have clearance. you tell me how that compares to you hacking an adboard.

“Repeat. Do not be alarmed. The M7N1 Marburg variation is only fatal if you do NOT report to an immunity center for treatment within 48 hours. Repeat. It is NOT fatal if you present yourself promptly for vaccination treatment. Vaccination is 100% effective within three hours with minimal lasting side-effects.

Left is Right?

We were doing ethical relativism and ethical universalism in Philosophy class today and I had a thought that merits further development-- by someone other than me, a simple shed-builder: 

W.T. Stace claims that ethical absolutism is the province of the right, of conservatism and religious folk, but that may not be the truth any longer . . . the right seems more concerned with general libertarianism-- if you want to wear a mask, do so, but don't make me wear one; if you want to be green, great, but don't regulate pollution, etc.-- while the new "woke" movement on the left seems to believe it has the right ideas on race, climate, gender, etcetera . . . of course, there are exceptions and anomalies-- abortion comes to mind-- but perhaps this reversal in tone and attitude has also caused and confused all the polarization and animosity (and the important thing to remember is that nobody knows the best way to do anything, one society's outcast is another society's hero, and there's usually-- but not always-- a range of solutions to ethical problems, and complete faith in ethical relativism is an absolute and thus a paradox).

Man Tantrum

Tuesday afternoon, my wife started preparing two elaborate recipes (Crispy Sour Cream and Onion Chicken and some Ethiopian lentil dish) and then she left to go do some gardening at her elementary school-- she runs the gardening club there and she's always planting stuff on the school grounds-- and then the kids came home from tennis practice (Ian defeated Alex 6-1, 6-3 and so the younger brother is officially first singles) and they were hungry and I was getting hungry as well (and inebriated-- I've been avoiding grains and bread and sugar, for the most part-- so the two beers I had while making salad really went to my head) but my wife lost track of time while she was planting things and I don't think she had her phone on her (or she was ignoring my frantic texts) and so I made an attempt at these recipes but I was quickly overwhelmed by all the ingredients and steps and methods and such so I pretty much gave up and sulked and drank wine on an empty stomach and by the time she arived home I was a frustrated disaster and while I tried not to blame her, she definitely caught my tone and got pissed at the fact that if she's MIA for forty minutes the entire house falla apart and I told her that if it was some simple recipe-- like grill some meat and steam some broccoli, then I'm fine-- but this was advanced culinary arts and she said we should have eaten something else-- and I agreed and apologized and said it was my fault and it definitely made me think of the passage I've included below from Joseph Campbell's Myths to Love By that we are annotating in College Writing-- when Alex and I were alone on our snowboarding trip, away from "completely efficient females," we just ate beans and meat and things were easy . . . and the only thing of value I can offer is the fact that I am slowly but surely constructing a new shed . . . but even that is slow going and harder than it looks.

So much, then, for the mythic world of the primitive hunters. Dwelling mainly on great grazing lands, where the spectacle of nature is of a broadly spreading earth covered over by an azure dome touching down on distant horizons and the dominant image of life is of animal societies moving about in that spacious room, those nomadic tribes, living by killing, have been generally of a warlike character. Supported and protected by the hunting skills and battle courage of their males, they are dominated necessarily by a masculine psychology, male-oriented mythology, and appreciation of individual valor. 

In tropical jungles, on the other hand, an altogether different order of nature prevails, and, accordingly, of psychology and mythology as well. For the dominant spectacle there is of teeming vegetable life with all else more hidden than seen. Above is a leafy upper world inhabited by winged screeching birds; below, a heavy cover of leaves, beneath which serpents, scorpions, and many other mortal dangers lurk. There is no distant clean horizon, but an evercontinuing tangle of trunks and leafage in all directions wherein solitary adventure is perilous. The village compound is relatively stable, earthbound, nourished on plant food gathered or cultivated mainly by the women; and the male psyche is consequently in bad case. For even the primary psychological task for the young male of achieving separation from dependency on the mother is hardly possible in a world where all the essential work is being attended to, on every hand, by completely efficient females. It is therefore among tropical tribes that the wonderful institution originated of the men's secret society, where no women are allowed, and where curious symbolic games flattering the masculine zeal for achievement can be enjoyed in security, safe away from Mother's governing eye. In those zones, furthermore, the common sight of rotting vegetation giving rise to new green shoots seems to have inspired a mythology of death as the giver of life; whence the hideous idea followed that the way to increase life is to increase death. The result has been, for millenniums, a general rage of sacrifice through the whole tropical belt of our planet, quite in contrast to the comparatively childish ceremonies of animal-worship and -appeasement of the hunters of the great plains: brutal human as well as animal sacrifices, highly symbolic in detail; sacrifices also of fruits of the field, of the firstborn, of widows on their husbands' graves, and finally of entire courts together with their kings. The mythic theme of the Willing Victim has become associated here with the image of a primordial being that in the beginning offered itself to be slain, dismembered, and buried; and from whose buried parts then arose the food plants by which the lives of the people are sustained. 

Joseph Campbell

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.

Fast Times at Action Park

Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park is a tribute to a bygone era-- a time when the United States was less litigious; a time when hazing, heckling, and ethnic slurs were still regarded as good fun; a time when New Yorkers were a good deal grittier than they are now; a time of freedom and individuality; and a time when a good-hearted but slightly demented man named Gene Mulvihill could single-handedly build a shrine to action, danger, adventure, drunkenness, good times and fun on a mountain in New Jersey; the story is told by his son and despite the broken bones, open wounds, electrocutions, drownings, paralysis, comas, and death-- or perhaps because of them-- Andy Mulvihill appreciated working at Action Park and taking part in the family business; the bonding that occurred between the lifeguards at the Wave Pool-- in between pulling out twenty to thirty idiots a day-- is legendary . . . Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High type stuff . . . and the chapter by chapter description of the evolution of the park-- from the Alpine Slide to the Cannonball Loop to Motor World to the Wave Pool to an authentic German Beer Hall to Surf Hill-- is the weird history of the obverse Disney World, a place closer in tone to Jurassic Park than the Magic Kingdon . . . this is a book that will make you proud to be from Jersey-- I odn't remember ever going to Action Park itself-- but I did go on an Alpine Slide in the Poconos (which was also installed by Gene Mulvihill) and rode to fast and flew off the chute . . . which can happen, when YOU are in control of the ride . . . the book also reads like a theme park version of Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment . . . there was something about this mix of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans-- many of whom couldn't swim well-- that made them want to ram speedboats into each other, jump off cliffs onto other people's heads, t-bone folks with Lola racers, get drunk, throw garbage everywhere, shit on the floor, race down dangerous slides (water and land-based) and basically ignore danger and forget to assess risk; a must read if ytiou are thinking about travelling back in time to the 80's and opening a shrine to personal autonomy.

It's Comment Appreciation Day!

Yesterday was quite a day for me-- I don't handle changes in routine all that well, and I get very nervous when I'm involved in any kind of "special event"-- although I know other people enjoy "special events" and that once I get involved with the "special event," I tend to enjoy it as well . . . but it just doesn't seem worth the trouble to plan a special event, and there are too many things that can go wrong with a special event and people get their hopes up about the special event and then there's a chance that their hopes might be shattered; I should recognize that people are more resilient than I give them credit for, but-- in the end-- this is why I like normal events that turn out a little bit better than expected-- but despite these feelings, yesterday, for the benefit of my students, I got involved in a special event . . . and while it turned out fabulously in the end, I didn't receive much help or credit from my administration, and so once the day was through-- in true melodramatic Dave fashion-- I indignantly pounded out my story and posted it up and while folks could have taken some cheap shots at my mock-epic tone (or ignored my rant altogether) instead I got some awesome comments from my friends Zman and Rob, award winning comments worthy enough of front page status:

first, zman noticed something ironically wonderful in how I wrote my big takeaway . . .

 zman quoted me . . .

"it's all in the revision and editing . . . very few people do anything good not he first try"

Well said.

then zman reminisced with an excellent anecdote:


zman said...

Parts of this "sentence" remind me of the time I checked into the Fairfield Inn in Raleigh NC, a low-slung place near the airport. I went to my room on the third floor, set my stuff down, started to unpack, and realized that there was a swarm of ants on and around the desk. I brought all my stuff downstairs and told the guy at the desk. He said "Yeah we have ants on the third floor." I asked him why he put me on the third floor given the formic situation and he replied "Well there's no view on the second floor." I told him I would trade the view and the ants for no view and no ants, so he moved me to the second floor. There were no ants in my new room but when I flushed the toilet the bowl didn't fill up and the sink didn't have any water. I called downstairs and the guy at the desk said "Yeah there's no water on the second floor right now." I asked if he had any rooms with water and without ants and he moved me to the first floor. You would think he would've run through all this beforehand.

then I chimed in . . . and Zman graciously gave me permission to do something very weird:

Dave said...

holy shit. i was rushing my post because I had to go to acupuncture . . . i think I may make your comments into tomorrow's post-- they deserve to get front-page treatment that's an exceptional anecdote--i might-- with your permission-- set it to music.


zman said...

You have my permission to make a song out of my experience at the Fairfield Inn. Not only is it near the airport, it's between a Cracker Barrel and a Hooters.

rob said...

i will turn the dial down on my customary snark to say that this is a very cool thing that happened in daveworld and i appreciated hearing about it.

/unsnark


Dave said...

that helps with the setting . . . and thanks for turning down the snark, rob!

his snark goes to 11

thanks guys . . . and understand that these comments have been duly appreciated!

Horror Recommendations for Both the Patient and the Restive

If you're looking for a gothic novel in the vein of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," then give Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger a shot . . . she wrote it in 2009, but you'd never know it-- it's set in the 1940s and impeccably researched and pitch-perfect in tone-- the disintegration of Hundreds Hall and the family that lives in it mirrors the slow and crumbling decay of the noble class in England . . . the proletariat is assuming more political and economic power, at the cost of old and ancient ways, but the dead aren't going to cede power to the working-class quietly; the book is a slow-burn and often frustrating-- especially the budding yet doomed romance-- but I loved it . . . if you don't have the patience for historically accurate neo-Gothicism, then you can check out the Overlord-- it's streaming on Amazon right now-- the film begins as a harrowing WWII action-flick, but soon devolves into a Tarantino-esque Nazi-zombie genre mash-up . . . it's totally entertaining, gross, and fun . . . my son Ian and I both loved it.

The Funhole is No Fun

The Cipher by Kathe Koja is one of the weirdest, darkest, most disturbing things I've ever read. It was originally published in 1991 and it reeks of grunge. The original title was "The Funhole," which is what Nicholas and Nakota have discovered in the storage room down the hall. 

Blackhole fun.

After a series of bizarre experiments with the hole-- spearheaded by Nakota-- Nicholas ends up with a second funhole in his hand. And things keep getting weirder. The tone is dark, dank, and ambiguous. I'm not sure if I recommend this book, but it was impossible to put down.

Here are a few quotations to give you the idea of the tone:

These days she must really be gnawing them, and I wondered if the hand had bitten nails too. I’d read that nails kept growing, after death, a little while. “Who bites the nails of the dead?” I said, silly sonorous voice, and was rewarded with one of Nakota’s rarest smiles, a grin of genuine amusement. “I do,” she said, and went on fishing. 

You can get used to being wrong all the time; it takes all the responsibility out of things. 

I was so tired of hating myself. But I was so good at it, it was such a comfortable way to be, goddamn fucking flotsam on the high seas, the low tide, a little wad of nothing shrugging and saying Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t know it was loaded, I didn’t think things would turn out this way. It’s so easy to be nothing. 

And a moment oddly resonant of now . . .

All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself?

The Biggest Game in the Wildest Town

Though it didn't help my poker game, I really enjoyed Al Alvarez's classic portrait of the 1981 World Series of Poker: The Biggest Game in Town. I recommend it to everyone, whether you play poker or not. It's beautifully written, and it hearkens back to the end of a simpler, wilder time. A time when being a gambler meant loving the action more than knowing game theory.

I've been playing some low stakes poker during the pandemic, and while I'm not proficient yet, I do know a little. This comes from reading a bunch of books, my favorite way of learning. I read Gus Hansen's swashbuckling account of his 2007 Aussie Millions victory Every Hand Revealed and Phil Gordon's informative Little Green Book and a couple strategy books by "Action" Dan Harrington and some mathematical stuff by David Sklansky and Ed Miller.

While these instructional books are competently written, they are pretty boring (aside from Gus Hansen's book . . . his tone borders on adorable; he uses lots of exclamation points).

While the purpose of most poker books is to convince you that with a little bit of math and a little bit of strategy, you can hold your own at the table, The Biggest Game in Town takes you to another planet. A planet where you don't belong at all, where the action is astronomical, even in 1981 dollars. The money amounts sound huge by today's standards. These guys were nuts.

We are in Vegas, an odd and insular place:

J. B. Priestley once remarked that in the Southwest you are more aware of geology than of history. The land is too big, too old, too parched, too obdurate; the only alternative to submission is defiance . . .

The book focuses on what is known as "the Cadillac of Poker," Texas Hold'em. 

Crandall Addington, a supremely elegant Texan, who regularly sets the sartorial standard for the tournament, and has said, “Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you.” 

The mix of cards and golf and high-stakes gambling reminds me a bit of the Jordan documentary, "The Last Dance." 

James "Slim" Bouler would fit right into this world.

 Yet some of the gamblers here, who are worth nothing compared with those people, will bet a hundred thousand without blinking. Most of them are average golfers—they shoot in the middle eighties—but at the end of a match they regularly settle up for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars. Even the golf pros don’t play for that kind of money, and if they did they probably wouldn’t be able to hold a putter. If a golf pro who shot seventy played a gambler who shot eighty-two and gave him the right handicap, he would lose all the time. The pressure would be too much for him; for the gambler, it is a stimulus.”

This is the attitude you need to be a great gambler:

"If I had too much respect for the money I couldn’t play properly. Chips are like a bag of beans; they have a relative value and are worthless until the game is over. That is the only attitude you can have in high-stakes poker."

This is how you keep score:

"Money is just the yardstick by which you measure your success. In Monopoly, you try to win all the cash by the end of the game. It’s the same in poker: you treat chips like play money and don’t think about it until it’s all over.”

The book is full of adages like this:

“The way I feel about those pieces of green paper is, you can’t take them with you and they may not have much value in five years’ time, but right now I can take them and trade them in for pleasure, or to bring pleasure to other people. If they had wanted you to hold on to money, they’d have made it with handles on.”

Sorry that I'm not attributing quotations, but you get the idea. The old-time poker guys like Alvarez, who is a British poet-- something foreign and innocuous. They love bending his ear about poker strategy and philosophy. 

It’s the downside of a gambler that ruins him, not his upside. When you’re playing well, you can be as good as anybody, but how you handle yourself under pressure when you’re playing badly is the character test that separates the men from the boys.

Funny and true.

Perhaps the Freudians are right, after all, when they talk of gambling as sublimation. In the words of another addict, “Sex is good, but poker lasts longer.”

As to why I enjoy poker, Alvarez nails it on the head. I'm playing for small amounts of money, but I love the competition.  

For many of the top professionals, poker has become a substitute for sport—something that they turn to when their physical edge has gone, but that demands the same concentration, skill, and endurance and provides a channel for all their bottled-up competitiveness. “Discipline and stamina are what poker is all about, especially when you’re competing with top players in games that go on a long time,” said Brunson.

My knees are only going to last so long, but hopefully, my mind and my nerves will last a bit longer. 

This accords with Jack Binion’s theory that the top poker players are not only “mental athletes” but also former athletes, who turn to gambling when they no longer have the physical ability or the inclination for sport. “It’s a question of excitement,” Binion said. “Gambling is a manufactured thrill—you intensify the anticipation of an event by putting money on it.

Do Not Resuscitate (the voice of Kurt Vonnegut)

If you're in the mood for something a little apocalyptic-- and something that sounds a bit like a modernized Kurt Vonnegut-- then check out Nicholas Ponticello's sci-fi novel Do Not Resuscitate . . . it's funny and dark and romantic and weird, and it's a fitting story for these times: the world in the novel is slowly falling apart, and science is necessary to stitch it back together.

The nice thing about the story is that near the end, the plot finally leaps into the future and you learn how things are resolved, scientifically and otherwise . . . which is NOT the point we are at yet with this COVID 19 situation (and COVID 19 sounds like something out of a Vonnegut novel . . . a complement to ice-nine in Cat's Cradle.) 

Besides the disease itself, this lack of knowing is what causes the anxiety. We don't know how the plot ends. I can't even wrap my head around what school is going to look like in September.

Here are a few moments from the book that I highlighted on my Kindle. They are enough that you will get the tone. 

The first piece of advice is really important right now, and-- at times-- I am struggling with it (although watching Silicon Valley helps . . . reading the New York Times every morning does not).

I myself am surprised at how quickly a sense of humor can atrophy with age. I can’t think of anything more important to keep in tip-top shape than a sense of humor, especially after your knees and hair and sight and taste and smell and even little parts of your mind are gone. Even after most of the people you knew or ever could have known have died.

And then there's this thought, which I assume-- aside from the most optimistic among us-- we've all had in some way, shape, or form. Ponticello's narrator just articulates it well.

Whoever said one person can make all the difference didn’t live in a world with seven billion people.

The next passage describes the kind of economic system that inevitably falls apart in an apocalypse. We are seeing it to some extent right now. Our economy is based on stability, extra-cash, good health, consumption, and extreme specialization. When everything works properly in a modern economy, you only need to know how to do one thing . . . or, if you're rich, less than one thing!

Today I write from a folding chair on my patio, watching some person I don’t even know wash my windows. It amazes me that we have come to this: a person who specializes in mopping floors, and another who specializes in washing windows, and another who mows lawns, and yet another who balances finances, and another who calculates risk, and so on. We are each a cog in some giant cuckoo clock, one man among many in a Fordist assembly line.

Sometimes my reading reflects this next thought. If I were perfectly logical, it probably should. But I'm glad when I switch back to fiction. Fiction is more satisfying, especially in times of great unrest. 

I myself, prefer nonfiction. I have enough trouble wrapping my head around all the things that have actually happened on this planet. I don’t have time to worry about all the things that happen in other people’s imaginations.

The moral of Ponticello's story . . . and the moral for right now.

I didn’t know then that life never stops dealing you surprises and that the biggest surprises always happen when it looks like everything is finally settling down.

This is the first book I've read by Ponticello. I will definitely try another. 

No Good Dave Goes Unrewarded

It looks like my stint as a community service pandemic shopper is coming to a close. While there were occasional rewarding moments, I'm happy that this chapter of my life where I pretend to be a good person is over. Unlike my wife, I don't think I'm cut out volunteering for things that are not directly tied to my own self-interest (or the self-interest of my kids, wife, friends, students, etc.)

Of course, it also might have been luck of the draw. She's been shopping for a lovely and grateful Trinidadian woman who lives in the senior community building in our town. The woman regales my wife with stories, dirty jokes, and thanks. My wife truly enjoys doing things for this woman.

I've been shopping for a laconic older gentleman who seems to be something of a shut-in. He lives on the second floor of a house divided into three apartments. An old lady with an eye-patch lives on the first floor. I think she's the landlord. She doesn't approve of all the diet soda and iced tea that my guy buys each week.

I think it's time for my guy to get out and about. He lives right around the block from Stop'n Shop and he mainly eats soup, pineapple chunks, crackers, and lunch meat. They've removed the one-way arrows from the aisles in the store, so I think restrictions are loose enough for him to go for it. He needs to see for himself that there is no such thing as "Medium" eggs. These days it's all "Large" and "Extra-Large." 

I don't think he understands that I'm a volunteer and that I don't get paid to buy and deliver his groceries (though I've told him this . . . the graduate student that lives upstairs next to him understands this and has been appreciative of my service and the lady with the eye-patch understands the deal as well). 

So we parted ways today with nary a thank you. And his emails have been getting a little weird. I'll give you a sample, so you know what you're getting into when you volunteer for community service. It's not all medals and parades.

Here's a recent one . . . so he's discussing a receipt from two weeks ago:
 

I went through the register receipt for the groceries you bought on 5/22/20. On the bill from Stop’n Shop on 5/22/20, This item was rung up 3 times—I don’t know what it was. SB is the code for Store Brand: SB.CD.HMST.CHKNN 1.19. Also, on 5/22/20, this item was rung up twice—CMP is the code for Campbells: CMP.GRFORCK.FRN 1.89. I don't know what that item was. The Campbell’s products I bought were rung up elsewhere.

This is what I wrote back:

Not sure what to tell you about this. I don't know the codes for various soups and this was two weeks ago, so I don't think we're going to be able to figure it out. I'll try to make sure that nothing is rung incorrectly-- I'm not sure how this happened or if it was some other kind of soup that got rung up, as they don't always have exactly what you ask for so I try to get something close.

I really love his reply to this. He carefully explains how to go to a grocery store and purchase items, though I've been shopping for him with some measure of success since March!

In the store, I ask that you stay with the cart containing my products. Then watch the cashier's moving belt observing the products on it so that only my products are there. When the cashier is scanning the products, see to it that only my products are scanned. Hopefully, your vigilance will be enough to prevent this problem from happening again.

I'm really proud of my tone in the reply. I tried to channel Saul Goodman, when he was lawyering for all the old folks. He was always patient, good-humored, and empathetic. Never sarcastic.

You got it. I will keep an eye on things and make sure nothing gets rung up twice or mixed together with any other products.

I really wanted to throw around the word "vigilance" in my reply. Especially in regard to Italian Wedding Soup. But I didn't. I rose above it. 

While I'm not going to rush out and volunteer for anything in the near future, I'm happy that I did some service. Before the pandemic, I never went to the grocery store. I was awful at it, so it was easier for my wife to go.

But today, I whizzed through the store, grabbing the stuff on my old man's shopping list like a pro: liverwurst here, bananas there, diet root beer in this spot, reach down for the applesauce, grab a few pears, etc.

Fast and fearless. 

When I look at the guy I was shopping for, I certainly think: there by the grace of God goes I . . . but perhaps learning to navigate the local grocery store is a step in the right direction for me to avoid that fate.

Trainspotting: The Finale

If you're my age and have a certain Gen X hipster sensibility, you probably love Trainspotting. The book AND the movie. The characters are the archetypes of your mates:


Renton: the scheming, slightly ambitious, slightly amoral, easily influenced, cynical mainstay, with the capability too (almost) fit into normal society.

Sick Boy: the lecherous womanizer

Spud: the slightly daft, but always loyal and kind whipping boy. The gang alternately tortures and takes care of him.

Begbie: the psychopath.


The last chapter of this saga is on sale on Amazon Kindle for $1.99.

Dead Men's Trousers by Irvine Welsh.

It's not a great book, but if you're stuck in quarantine and feeling a little nostalgic for wilder times, it's not bad.

The gang is middle-aged, estranged, and scattered about the world. If the book just took a look at the lives of some ex-addicts and how they've managed to fit into our modern society, that would be interesting . . . but it wouldn't be an Irvine Welsh novel.  Instead, we get the gang in their full glory and a plot that is a hodge-podge of weird sex and wanton violence and soccer and venereal diseases and stalkers and murders and art exhibitions and EDM music and the criminal underground and an illegal kidney racket.

It's a farce and a mess.

I still had fun reading it: you get to hear narration from all the members of the gang. There's plenty of action . . . too much really, it gets surreal, and while this worked for a gang of heroin addicts on the scam, in Trainspotting, it doesn't so much for a bunch of middle-aged adults.

But if you want to read about realistic middle-aged adults, you can read a Jonathan Franzen novel. This is something different. And now I think I'm done with Irvine Welsh and the gang, but it's a fitting end to the cynical, misanthropic, nihilistic tone of the '90s.

The youth today are much more compliant and socially aware. And anxious.

For example: for the most part, young people seem to be obeying all the Covid-19 social distancing rules, even though this is mainly to benefit their elders. If the Trainspotting gang were asked to hole up to protect the over 60 population, they'd just laugh and head out to the club to score.

Jury Duty: You Don't Need to Be a Clairvoyant Racist Lunatic

Last week, my wife had jury duty on Wednesday and I had jury duty on Thursday. This week, my wife had her administrative observation on Tuesday and I had my administrative observation on Wednesday.

Weird.

I hope my wife doesn't get bitten by a rabid animal (probably a coyote) next Monday . . . because it's going to happen to me on Tuesday. These things come in threes.

As far as jury duty went, my wife got called upstairs but didn't have to fill out any questionnaires or do any interviews. So she didn't need to utilize any of the stupid advice people give about how to get out of jury duty. 

Stupid Advice People Give You So You Can Get Out of Jury Duty

"Tell the judge you're racist!"

"Tell the judge you can tell people are guilty just by looking into their eyes!"

"Act crazy!"

The Real Deal with "Voir Dire"

If you've ever been interviewed for a spot on a jury-- the process known in legal parlance as "voir dire"-- then you know this advice is absurd. You're in front of the general public, in a formal situation, talking to someone wearing robes, in a court of law.

You don't want to present yourself as racist clairvoyant lunatic.

You might run into these people in the future.

My wife sat in a room for a while and then got released early.

I was not as lucky as my wife.

I arrived at 8 AM, and snagged a choice seat at the one large table by the TV (advice from my wife) so I could get some grading done. The presiding judge came down and spoke to us about the importance of jury duty and the system. He explained the difference between an inconvenience and a hardship. Then we watched a video, which gave us some instructions on how to behave if we were on a jury. We instructed to not only listen to the witnesses, but to observe their body language and tone of voice as well. I had a problem with this, which I tucked away in the recess of my brain. Then I got back to reading quizzes.

I was called upstairs at 9:30 AM, with a hundred other citizens. One of the elevators was broken so we had to stuff ourselves into the good one, in shifts. We were crammed into a courtroom. I was sitting in between a tall white guy from Texas and an older African American gentleman with one earring who was working on an adult coloring book with some markers. The judge told us they needed 12 jurors for a criminal case, and then he told us a bit about the case. I can't reveal this information, or I might get fined $1000. The prosecutor and the defendant and the defendant's lawyer were all there. The defendant was accused of a violent crime. He was African-American and looked like a tough hombre. You'll understand why I mention his race soon enough.

We filled out two questionnaires and then the judge, prosecutor and lawyer interviewed possible jurors. This went on for hours. We finally got to break for lunch at 12:30 and I went to Tavern of George (a.k.a. Tumulty's) and inhaled a burger. The beer looked was tempting, but I didn't want to be found in contempt of court.

I went back, finished my grading, and added some information to my questionnaire. Quite a bit of information. There was nothing else to do. And I decided if I got called up that I wasn't going to repeat what I did last time I went through "voir dire." No pathetic pleading. I would not throw myself prostate upon the mercy of the court. My kids were older now, and more responsible. If I got called to be on a trial, so be it.

So I would be myself. I would explain that it was a rough time of year for me to miss-- because of the College Writing curriculum-- but that this was more of an inconvenience than a hardship.

At 2 PM, I got called up for some "voir dire." I took a deep breath and walked over to the table with the judge, the prosecutor, and the defendant's attorney. I sat down. I told the judge my school situation, but very plainly, without drama or histrionics, and he said he would consider it. Then we got into my questionnaire.

First he wanted to know why I said I wouldn't be able to convict someone just on testimony alone. I told him about the new Malcolm Gladwell book Talking to Strangers and just how difficult it was to determine whether a stranger was telling the truth or lying. I told him I had a problem with the instructional video, because its very difficult to determine anything credible from tone and body language. Some people always seem like they are telling the truth and other people always seem nervous or anxious or sketchy. And it doesn't mean much. I talked about the fallibility of human memory and the ambiguity of eyewitness accounts.

Then we went through the people my interactions with the legal world. My brother worked in the building. My dad was director of corrections. I had a few run-ins with the law, but mainly college shenanigans.

Then he asked me why I wasn't sure if the legal system was fair. I told him I had read and listened to a lot about Ferguson and the shooting of Michael Brown, and I had listened to Serial Season 3 in its entirety, which delved into the corruption int he Cleveland court system. I told him I had learned that sometimes the court system is designed to shake down and oppress people of color.

Then we took a look at the free response questions. We were upstairs for a long time and I had answered the questions comprehensively. For example, there was a question about how you get your news. I had listed every podcast I to which I subscribed-- this is a long list.

The judge saw this scrawling mess and said, "I don't think we've ever had anyone run out of room on the sheet."

We talked my favorite books and movies (the judge enjoyed The Irishman) and the prosecutor pursued the list of magazines I often read: The New Yorker and Harper's and Mother Jones and The Atlantic and Wired and The Week.

The judge took a look at the people I'd like to meet. I had listed The Wu-Tang Clan, Dave Chappelle, and Howard Stern. I forgot Larry David.

The judge thought about all this for a long moment and then said, "I'm going to have you take a seat over there."

He pointed at the jury box.

"Over there?" I said, in slight disbelief. I was headed toward the jury box! I quickly accepted it. It was my civic duty, it was only a six day trial, and my family would figure it out. It wasn't the end of the world. My students would be fine.

I took three steps, and then I heard the judge again. I turned. The prosecutor had just finished speaking to the judge. Telling the judge to dismiss me. No way the prosecutor wanted some liberal bombastic blowhard all full of random and useless information on his jury.

So I was dismissed. And I didn't have to act like a racist or a lunatic or a mind-reader.

I just had to be myself.

Spite is Expensive

Last Thursday, I went to the pub after Back to School Night. It was a long day, and I was a bit wound up (although that is no excuse for my behavior).

We shot some darts and then Paul put five dollars into the digital jukebox. I looked over his shoulder at his selection and noticed he was about to play something awful-- The Doobie Brothers or The Eagles or such-- and so I boxed him out, usurped his credits, and told him that I would be handling the music for the evening.

Because everyone loves Dave's eclectically hip taste, right?

I played "Since You're Gone" by The Cars-- not because Ric Ocasek died . . . I hadn't heard the news-- but simply because they were advertised prominently. I played some Ween and some Pavement, some New Order and a funk instrumental by The Meters. I tried to find some Wu Tang, but the jukebox didn't have it, so I settled on A Tribe Called Quest.

The jukebox played my first selection: "Since You're Gone." Then, oddly, it played an old awful Irish country song entitled "Whiskey in a Jar." And then "Eminence Front,"  a song I like but had not selected. A song Connell had played last week.

Weird. 

And then some other songs that I don't recall, but songs I had definitely not selected. And I saw Paul, out of the corner of my eye, his fist raised in glory. Rejoicing. And I knew what had happened.

Musical vengeance.

My so-called friends, fed up with my condescension and musical elitism, had exacted their revenge. While I was pondering over my eclectically hip selections, they had fired up the jukebox app on their phones, paid for a bunch of credits-- enough credits to push my songs to the end of the line-- and played a bunch of shitty songs. Songs designed to piss me off. 

It cost Connell eight dollars to play "Eminence Front" and a few others. He said it was well worth it.

It cost Paul more than that (not that he cared).

Tom realized what was going on and asked Paul how much he had spent on the original credits.

Paul said, "Five bucks."

"And how much did it cost to disrupt those songs?"

"Eight bucks."

"Huh," Tom said, "Spite is expensive." 

But-- according to my so-called friends-- spite is well worth the money. I've certainly learned my lesson. I've got to tone down the musical snobbery, and just sort of lurk about and insert songs I here and there. I can't bully someone out of the way and steal all their selections. That's uncivilized ( even though in the end, Paul conceded that I did play some good music).