The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
Do NOT Read This Book
1) the ocean is absorbing much of the carbon dioxide emitted when we burn fossil fuels, and this is causing a usurious problem that has been overlooked until recently: ocean acidification . . . to an extent that hasn't been seen in 300 million years-- at the end of the Permian, when there was a mass extinction; many corals, marine plants, and shelled animals need "dissolved carbonate minerals" and the lower pH makes it harder for these animals to "crystallize carbonate" out of a solution;
2) a cool fact, a pint of seawater contains two billion viruses, and they are helping to slow the rate at which the ocean is acidifying, but no one knows at what level of pH those tiny organisms won't be able to function-- or if they function too well, then there is an increase in global warming, because they recycle the the nutrients in sunlit waters-- keeping carbon in the cycle, instead of letting it sink into the deep sea;
3) nutrients, fertilizer and run-offs are causing toxic algal blooms at a much greater intensity and rate, red tides and other toxic phytoplankton which, when ingested, can cause hallucinations, nightmares, nerve-damage, cancer, birth defects, and tumors (especially in sea turtles) and the increase of big storms with high-winds has exacerbated airborne instances of sickness and contact, the "storms churn the sea into a spray which can be inhaled," resulting in rashes and lung inflammation . . . but what's bad for us is good for one creature-- the "triple combination of nutrient enrichment, low oxygen, and overfishing" is wonderful for jellyfish, so if you're taking a trip to the beach, make sure you bring meat tenderizer;
4) persistent organic pollutants (POPs for short) are building up in water and ice and animal fat all over the world, chemicals like DDT and PCBs are especially deleterious-- the toxic load carried by male dolphins in Sarasota Bay makes their flesh equivalent to biohazard . . . females have lower amounts of toxins because they pass much of the bad stuff to their offspring through pregnancy and breast feeding . . . and these toxins are making their way up the food chain, into large animals like whales and humans, and there are thousands of new chemicals wending their way through the waters and polar ice and food chains and we don't even know the consequences, so get used to the acronyms, there will be more to come;
5) if the chemicals don't get you, the heavy metals will-- the most toxic is mercury, and the main culprit for mercury pollution are coal-fired power plants . . . Asian plants produce over half of the world's mercury pollution, and it seems they are "hell-bent on building more" such plants . . . and if Trump has his way with deregulation, maybe we'll see more coal burning in America as well . . . anyway, my son loves sushi, but he really shouldn't be eating it, as tuna often exceeds safe levels of mercury . . . but the FDA also recommends that children and pregnant women don't eat swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, and shark . . .
and I'm not even halfway done with the book, so sorry, but there will be more bad news to come.
He Turned Them Into Newts! It Gets Better . . .
War with the Newts by Karel Capek falls into a small but illustrious category: Super Excellent Books I've Read by Czech Authors (the other five books that reside there are Kafka's The Castle and his parallel work The Trial, Josef Svorecky's The Miracle Game, Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk, and Milan Kundera's The Joke) and I would have never heard of this one if it wasn't for a random recommendation by a friend over at Gheorghe (thanks Zoltan!) and I'm not sure how I made it nearly forty years without reading this . . . it's about a race of intelligent salamanders that undergo a population explosion due to the meddling of humans and the social, political, and geographical consequences of enslaving these newts so they can perform undersea construction, and then eventually educating, arming, and trading with the newts in a natural progression of amphibious advancement until-- in the last four chapters-- the title finally becomes an inevitability; the book was published in 1936, and it satirizes the post World War I political milieu as well as just about everything else, and it is loads more fun the Brave New World, and satirical like Vonnegut, and humorous like Charles Portis and David Foster Wallace, and-- as Monty Python can attest-- no matter how many times you hear the word "newt," it's always funny.
We Try To Be an Out-To-Breakfast Family
11/12/2009
Greg Grandin's new book Fordlandia recounts Henry Ford's epic attempt to build a model American town and rubber plantation deep in the Amazon jungle, and while their foray is a disaster, it is a valiant disaster-- one in which Ford tried to introduce hygiene, good diet, and economic stability to a disease-ridden, corrupt region-- but the moral of the story is this: once Ford introduced assembly line capitalism and consumption into the world, there was no way to bottle up the genie, and although he failed to "civilize" the jungle, capitalism is doing a pretty good job of it now, and there are huge free trade zone cities in the Amazon, and all the pollution, poverty, waste, and environmental devastation that come with big cities, but since there's nothing we can do to stop this, our only recourse may be to give up and deforest as we please until it is all gone and we have consumed everything green on earth, and then the human race will finally extinguish itself in a blaze of materialistic glory and magnificent and unexpected new flora and fauna will rise from our rotting corpses . . . but until then, live it up!
A Book Makes Dave Feel Emotions
A Book to Help Liberals Understand Conservatives
Sorry Chuck, The Inevitable is Coming
1) it's very difficult to predict what band will become the John Philip Sousa of rock'n'roll . . . no one can name another march music composer (and Klosterman points out that in one hundred years Bob Marley and reggae will be synonymous) so you can speculate: Chuck Berry? Led Zeppelin? The Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Def Leppard? who knows?
2) once a genre becomes insular and arcane, it's the "weirdos" who get to curate the art form, and select what is great;
3) American football now seems to be on the outs, as everyone educated knows that the sport is too dangerous because of the head injuries-- but Klosterman points out that this is because football is trying to become the sport for everyone . . . everyone watches a game or two, and almost everyone belongs to some kind of fantasy league or pool and everyone watches the Super Bowl . . . so this is too much exposure for something so dangerous, but there are plenty of sports that are more dangerous-- auto racing, UFC, base-jumping-- but they don't command such a large audience, so football may become less popular, and that may save it-- it may have a core group of diehard fans and to them, the sport will represent valor and fortitude and toughness and all kinds of conservative values, and the rest of society will look upon it like auto-racing . . . or it may be deemed too dangerous and expensive it may die at the youth levels and go the way of boxing and the dodo . . . we won't know until the future;
4) folks in the future may look at The Matrix as a seminal film not because of the groundbreaking "bullet time" effects, but because the Wachowski Brothers transitioned and became the Wachowski Sisters, and so the world-within-a-world theme takes on an entirely new (and possibly more compelling) spin for future generations;
5) Klosterman concedes that important art from our time should reflect the most important elements of our time and he gives a list of these possibilities, while admitting that we see these through the cloudy and low vantage point of the present, but here are a few . . . and while I don't use quotes, I am usually using his exact words, just truncated: the psychological impact of the internet, the prevailing acceptance of nontraditional sexual identities, the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white police officers, an unclear definition of privacy, a hatred of the wealthiest one percent, the artistic elevation of television, the recession of rock'n'roll and the ascension of hip-hop, a distrust of objective storytelling, the prolonging of adolescence;
BUT, while I love Klosterman and had a great time navigating his ambiguous, philosophical arguments about how we can't predict the future, or how the future will view our present, Kevin Kelly does present a convincing counter-argument in his new book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future . . . I'll save the summary of his most interesting predictions for another sentence, but, Chuck Klosterman, I'm warning you: tomorrow is going to be nothing like today, and the day after that is going to be exponentially even more wild . . . we've leapt over the edge and into the realm of the zillions . . . zillions of bits of interconnected information, zillions of smart objects, zillions of interconnected screens, zillions of hyperlinked pages, zillions of sprawling dendritic tendrils, stretching across the earth, in an ever-expanding, self-revising smart tangle of digitally connected humanity, so strap yourself in and get ready for a wild ride: we'll be in the future before you know it.
Scary Story Contest 2020: The Safety Dance vs. The Chinese Curse
This year's theme was "It's Perfectly Safe" and I had no desire to write anything, let alone a fully developed short story. I was sick of screen time because of the technological soul-sucking abyss of hybrid school. Stacey and I usually collaborate, but we couldn't find time to flesh out her idea.
So instead of a story, I wrote a scary poem. I framed it as a Facebook post, ostensibly written by a woman who thought she might have some magical powers and wanted to use them to change the course of this fucked up year. Over the course of the post, she descends into madness (of course).
It was fun to write, but, I didn't realize how hard it would be to read. The poor lady who was randomly assigned my piece (Cunningham) nearly descended into madness trying to perform it. I snagged third place, which was an accomplishment-- the stories were really good this year.
Here it is-- I think it's both appropriate for Halloween and the looming thing which may not be spoken of. If you like it, post it on Facebook . . . maybe it will work.
The Chinese Curse
What’s on your mind, Blair?
video photo feeling
What’s on my mind? Do you really want to know, Face-suck?
Or do you just want to mine my data?
What’s on my mind?
The Chinese Curse, that’s what. May you live in interesting times.
October 31st, 2020. Interesting times. Four more days until the election. Two more months left in this mess of a year.
Interesting times suck. I can't get them off of my mind. Or out of my mind.
But maybe, I can change things. Have some control. Do some lexical magic.
At least over you, my so-called Facebook friends . . . in my so-called life during this so-called pandemic. Maybe you’ll pass my incantation along and this year will turn itself inside out.
What if I could cast a spell?
Dissipate this weary hell?
I should at least give it a try. My mom used to do tarot readings. I might have some kind of gift.
Hocus-pocus, maybe I can learn to focus?
Zuckerberg’s clairvoyant vision
Find this with your algorithm:
Make my post go super-viral
Pull us from this deadly spiral.
It was the year of twenty-twenty,
It is the year of twenty-twenty . . .
Twenty-twenty, twenty-twenty
Why do you rub me
in this way?
Why can’t you love me?
You push and shove me
Day by fretful day by day.
Boil and bubble, Trump is trouble,
O Lord don't let him win the double
Yes! Let my soul turn to lead
and sink to hell if he were dead.
If he were dead, if he were dead.
Banish these thoughts from my head!
My busy brain should not be fed
By such bitter vengeful bread.
Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies
covid covid we all fall down . . .
Safety, safety, safety first
Safety dance, the Chinese curse
Living safely is the worst
But is it better than the hearse?
Lady liberty not Trump tower
Used to give our country power.
Hippies filled their hair with flowers.
Now . . .
abortion makes Coney Barrett sour.
Blues and reds, they all glower--
Children at the border cower.
They say the pen is mightier than the sword.
But what if the Populus is polarized and bored?
Pandemic, plan-demic
A fiction Democratic.
You have my word
November third
It disappears like magic.
Meatpackers work, shoulder to shoulder
The policy gets colder and colder.
Carcass, virus,
virus, carcass . . .
Cut that meat or they will fire us.
Covid covid, we all fall down.
Black lives matter, blue lives matter,
George Floyd’s ashes we must scatter.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter
The blood of Rayshard Brooks did spatter--
Tasers, guns I’ll take the latter.
Breonna Taylor’s door got battered.
Some say the world will end in fire,
But for migrant workers,
ICE will suffice.
That’s great, it starts with an earthquake,
Birds and snakes and aeroplanes,
Dave Chapelle is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
While the outback burns and burns.
It’s the end of the world as we know it,
Grandma don’t feel fine at all.
Covid covid, we all fall
down.
Fly of Pence, tongue of Stone,
Bannon’s nose hair
Kushner’s throne
Ivanka’s fabric
Mnuchin’s money
Tongue of Miller
Pompeo’s arm
Mix these for a deadly charm.
Yes! Let my soul turn to lead
and sink to hell if he were dead.
I make this bargain readily,
Like Faustus with Mephistopheles . . .
I wear my mask and then I sneeze
Don’t stare at me, pretty please.
Here we are now, entertain us.
TV shows to make us famous,
Social feeds will try to change us
We bare our souls, can you blame us?
Bail out the airlines and the banks,
To Donald Trump we give our thanks.
The rest of us must share the wealth--
And hope he subsidizes health.
Plumes of smoke, tear-gas, fire
Men in armor, guns for hire
We're all so very very tired
But am I preaching to the choir?
Twenty-twenty when you end
Will our fractured country mend?
Or have we gone around the bend?
I see two paths, both portend.
Yes, two roads diverged in yellow wood . . .
One repulsive, one not so good
Three roads, four roads, five roads, six,
There will be no easy fix
Epstein’s minors turn their tricks.
Safety dance, safety first
Safety is the Chinese curse
Will November make it worse?
What rough beast slouches towards Washington to be reborn?
Once I pondered weak and weary, on a scientific theory
Then I learned of QAnon and thought: “Fuck yeah! IT IS ON!”
Now I fight the pedophiles,
Me and Trump, we do battle
The rest of you are sheep and cattle
Do your research on Seattle
Protesters, they mass and gather
Law or chaos, would you rather?
Widening on the turning gyre,
the center cannot hold
Things fall apart, it’s getting cold
The virus once again grows bold
Airborne particles
Fake news articles,
Winter is coming, enjoy the carnival.
My thoughts grow wild, I can’t control them,
I wish that I could turn them off,
I wish I were allowed to cough
I wish that I could turn them off
I wish I were allowed to cough
until my lungs come out my ears and throat
The devil is inside a goat
Bubble, bubble Trump is trouble
Will he be elected double?
Twenty-twenty, a dozen more?
Will he change the terms to four?
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan
Let’s enact a travel ban!
Illhan Omar and AOC
Want us all to work for free.
Socialism . . . not for me . . .
We mourn the mighty RBG.
Twenty-twenty, you have offended,
But in a year, will all be mended?
Perhaps we have just slumbered here
While these visions did appear?
No . . . this is no idle theme--
It’s not a dream, it’s not a dream
I give you full consent to scream.
Stop these thoughts, away begone!
Yet they continue on and on . . .
What’s on my mind, Facebook feed?
I can’t choose which way to proceed.
I cannot do a single deed.
I’m paralyzed and by booze and weed
Safety safety, safety first
The safety dance, the Chinese curse
Living safely is the worst
My brain won’t stop until it bursts.
I poke and scroll on my phone
There’s no such thing as home alone.
O lord I feel so weak and weary, fatigued and futile, eyes so bleary,
My mask lies soiled and forgotten, dirty, dusty smelling rotten
Fallen from the special spot on my car mirror to the floor--
Now I need it, I must retrieve it, I’m on an errand to the store.
But can I enter? Dare I enter? I do not want to touch the door--
The doorway entrance, a deadly sentence, full of germs I can’t ignore.
What’s on my mind?
Only this and nothing more.
Facebook-- make this post go super-viral,
Release me from this deadly spiral,
I’m feeling mad, my mind is wild,
Like a surly red-faced child--
I want to stomp and throw a tantrum--
Redrum, redrum! REDRUM!
Murder mayhem bloody-mary
Twenty-twenty, you shock and scare me
Like some spider black and hairy.
I can’t sleep my way through this disaster
Twenty-twenty: you are the master
Of my whirling anxious brain--
Release me from this grisly reign.
Dash these thoughts against the stones,
Let them live among your phones,
Free me from these dreadful times
Cast this spell, release these rhymes.
What’s on my mind, what’s on my mind?
It was the year of twenty-twenty,
It IS the year of twenty-twenty.
Only this and nothing more.
Post
Two Reasons Why I Will Never Get a Vasectomy
My rationale is based on two very solid reasons. They’re not the two reasons you are thinking, although I do value those two things as well.
I acquired one reason from a TV show and the other from a movie.
That’s where you learn stuff, right?
Reason #1 is obvious.
I don’t want anyone — advanced medical degree or not — going near my testicles with a pair of surgical shears. Michael Scott expresses this better than I ever could during “The Dinner Party.” If you haven’t seen it, you need to (especially if you are thinking about getting a vasectomy).
This is what he tells his girlfriend/condo-mate/ex-boss Jan Levinson (in front of an audience of co-workers).
When I said that I wanted to have kids, and you said that you wanted me to have a vasectomy, what did I do? And then when you said that you might want to have kids and I wasn’t so sure, who had the vasectomy reversed? And then when you said you definitely didn’t want to have kids, who had it reversed back? Snip snap! Snip snap! Snip snap! I did. You have no idea the physical toll, that three vasectomies have on a person.
My second reason for refusing to get a vasectomy is much more profound.
I should point out that I’m certainly a vasectomy candidate. I’m fifty. I’m happily married with two children. My wife and I are done procreating. Once in a while, when I see a cute little infant I turn to my wife and say, “We should have a baby!”
My wife wisely says back to me: “That store is closed.”
She’s right. We’re done with that stage in our life.
Or she is . . .
My wife uses some kind of hormonal IUD that I should know more about. I do know that birth control is often left up to women, and it’s often a pain in the neck (a pain in the vagina?) There are plenty of side-effects. Headaches, weight gain, nausea, pelvic pain, irregular bleeding, acne, breast tenderness, etc.
The United States is not particularly good at subsidizing sex education and birth control, which is ironic, because a huge swath of our country is violently opposed to abortions. Male sterilization should be another tool in the box to prevent unwanted pregnancies. A better understanding of birth control of all types will decrease abortions, allow more women to finish school, and prevent infants from entering the world in a state of poverty. Men should understand this. Birth control should not be solely left up to women.
So I get it. Undergoing a vasectomy is not a big deal. I don’t want an old man poking around in my mouth with a drill, but I still go to the dentist. One in ten American males has been voluntarily sterilized. 500,000 men a year. I have friends that have done it. It’s not supposed to be that bad. I’m all for vasectomies. In fact, I urge YOU to get one.
If I really wanted to, I could get over Reason #1.
The MAIN reason I’m not getting a vasectomy is inspired by the ending of the classic Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb.
Reason #2
I might be called upon to repopulate the planet.
My friend Ann finds this portion of my argument silly, and it’s not. It’s deadly serious. So let me explain.
Dr. Strangelove was made in the 1960s. The world was worried about the madness of MAD. Gigantic nuclear arsenals were supposed to deter nuclear war, but in the film, an Air Force high alert mission goes awry — with the help of the homicidal General Ripper — and his breach of authority sets off a cascading chain of events that results in an impending nuclear disaster.
If you haven’t seen this movie, you need to.
Dr. Stranglelove — an ex-Nazi in charge of U.S. military weapons R&D — suggests that the survivors of the initial nuclear blast could hide out in “some of our deeper mineshafts.” Radioactivity wouldn’t penetrate down there and in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in the dwelling space could be provided.
In the plan that he proposes to President Merkin Muffley, several hundred thousand citizens would need to remain in the mineshafts until the radiation subsides: one hundred years.
Peter Sellers plays both roles.
PRESIDENT MUFFLEY: You mean, people could actually stay down there for a hundred years?
DR. STRANGELOVE: It would not be difficult Mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh… I’m sorry. Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered.
The plan then takes a more eugenic slant.
Dr. Strangelove suggests a computer program should be used to determine who gets selected go down into the mine shaft (besides present company in the War Room . . . they get a free pass, of course).
And then we get to the real mission. The population in the mineshafts would have a “ratio of ten females to each male” and the women would be selected for “highly stimulating sexual characteristics,” Dr. Strangelove estimates that within twenty years the U.S. will be back to its present gross national product.
Even the highly distractible General Buck Turgidson finds this plan interesting. As does the Russian liaison.
GENERAL TURGIDSON Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
DR. STRANGELOVE Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious service along these lines . . .
Since the Cold War ended, we haven’t been as concerned about all-out nuclear war. But COVID-19 has given us a sneak preview of another kind of apocalypse. And this one kills men at a higher rate than women (though it’s negligible).
But what if it wasn’t negligible?
What if there were a highly contagious virus that targets the Y chromosome and kills all the men? Or nearly all of them. This COULD happen. I read about it in a comic book.
What if this hypothetical virus kills all the men except me?
Or me and a couple of guys who have had their tubes snipped?
Then it will be up to me to repopulate the planet!
Regrettably, this will “necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship.”
I’m willing to make that sacrifice and do “prodigious service” for the human race.
Here’s how I envision it. I’m lounging on a beautiful white sand beach of some lush tropical island, being tended to by a cadre of incredibly beautiful women from around the globe. Occasionally — perhaps once a week or so — a boat sails into the harbor.
A number of bikini-clad attendants lower one especially beautiful specimen into the water. Then they all stride through the surf, beads of saltwater on their bronze or brown or black or white skin.
I beckon them to come forward.
They present some delicacy from wherever they hail: Iceland, France, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Goa, the Sudan. I taste the food. I admire the women. The queen bee smiles coyly at me. She rubs my tan feet. Then we head into my candlelit bamboo hut and get to down to business.
Perhaps — if I’m feeling up to it — I bonus impregnate a few of the attendants as well. Why not? This is my job. I embrace it. Then they sail off, my future progeny lodged in their uteruses.
Though my friend Ann found my description of this scenario ludicrous, she was still willing to play along. “If you’re pretending this could happen, couldn’t you pretend that you were fertile? Even if you had a vasectomy?”
For a little while. But in nine months, the gig would be up. That’s too soon for such a sweet post.
Plus, who would be a better Adam for the planet than me? I want to do this. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. So though it’s highly unlikely, I’m playing this lottery. Not having a vasectomy is the golden ticket.
I haven’t run this by my wife yet, but I’m sure she’ll be on board. If she trusted me to be the father of her offspring — if need be — why shouldn’t I father of the entire human race?
Miracles: I Generate Them
While zealous fanatics of Sentence of Dave know that I am no stranger to miracles, I realize that some of my more skeptical readers question the authenticity of these wondrous happenings, and might even doubt my hagiographic qualities . . . but this example will certainly sway them: last Wednesday night, while playing basketball, my leg popped out of the hip socket -- or that's what it felt like -- and I knew to stop playing, but it didn't seem like that bad of an injury, but the next morning it felt much worse, and by mid-day Thursday, much to the amusement of my colleagues, I was curled in a ball on the floor of the English office, unable to find a position to relieve the excruciating pain in my right hip and leg -- and so I had to do the unthinkable . . . cancel soccer practice AND miss pub night, and despite taking Advil and Aleve, I couldn't sleep and my hip kept getting worse and worse, so I took off work on Friday and went to the doctor -- who despite having a very calm bedside demeanor, still scared the crap out of me, since he kept mentioning X-rays and MRI's and physical therapy and possible surgery . . . but the first step was to get an X-ray, which was an epic trip in the rain, considering I needed the use of a cane to get in and out of the car, but luckily all that showed up on the x-ray was a bone spur and lots of wear and tear, so he thought it was probably just a bad "bone bruise," where bone hit bone on the spur, and then everything swelled up, and so I spent Friday in incredible pain, taking a prescription anti-inflammatory drug, and I was unable to sit up, or walk very far . . . and in order to get off the couch, I had to undergo ten minutes of weird gyrations (including a step when I had to crawl on the floor) and I was feeling pretty low -- like I was done playing sports forever, even with my kids, and probably wouldn't even be able to attend Ian's soccer game on Saturday, let alone coach it, but when I woke up Saturday morning, I was able to get out of bed without a problem, and though my hip was sore, it didn't hurt . . . and I now realize the acute difference between those two states, and so I was able to walk the dog, coach the game (we won! Ian scored!) and rejoin the ambulatory world . . . and now I have a new lease on life, an appreciation of the simple things, and I have sworn to take it easy until I am fully healed and not jeopardize my health and the well-being of my family and myself by vainly taking part in adult athletics, because I am long past my prime . . . unless . . . unless . . . this miraculous recovery is a sign from the powers above that I should continue to recklessly participate in sports aimed for people many years younger than me, and I am sure that my stupid brain will slowly rationalize the latter logic, and I will act just like Steve Martin's character Davis in Grand Canyon.