Plants/Birds/Rocks/Things/Heat/Hot

I was feeling pretty bad about the quality and content of yesterday's sentence, until I turned on the radio and heard the second worst song in rock and roll history-- the worst is Jethro Tull's "Aqualung," of course-- but the two chord classic "Horse with No Name" by America is a close runner-up; hearing their infamously vague lyric "there were plants and birds and and rocks and things" made me feel so much better about my own writing-- as did the phrase "the heat was hot" . . . but what can you expect by a band named after a geographic location, as they fall in with such ilk as Asia, Boston, Chicago, Alabama, Kansas, Europe, The Georgia Satellites and Styx.

I Go Out On A Limb . . . A Nerdy Limb

I know it's controversial, but I told my students anyway because I'm that kind of guy-- if I have an opinion, I speak it and let the chips fall where they may: my definition of science fiction is when the setting-- whether it's based on technology, set in the future, or simply a logical alternative to our own history-- is the main character of the novel or movie-- so that excludes and Star Wars and Godzilla, but does include Soylent Green and The Matrix.

Talking With Himself

I assumed once the addition was done and we were able to use the new dining room, our children would start saying things like "Mother, could you pass the treacle pudding" and "Father, this aspic is divine" but it wasn't that way at all; instead of talking to us, Alex had a forty-five minute conversation (if you call lunatic ramblings, Jim Carrey-esque facial contortions, and out of control giggling "conversation") with his reflection in the bay window and Ian shrieked with laughter at his witty brother.

Peeing Etiquette and a Peeing Paradox

A woman in our department (Kristyna) is pregnant with her first child-- and it's a boy-- and she's definitely the feminine type, so I was giving her some tips on how to raise boys (always be developing their reflexes, constantly challenge them to physical contests, emphasize competition, compliment them on feats of flatulence and gluttony, stress the importance of athletics over intelligence, etc.) but the one thing she said her boy would never do is "pee on a tree"-- because it seems my boys, if they are more than seven yards from a bathroom, find it completely appropriate to drop their pants and water whatever flora is available; this led to a debate about when to and who can pee on a tree, someone claimed that if you let your kids pee on trees once they are over the age of eleven, then you are a degenerate, but I pointed out that if you drive over to Metuchen Country Club and wander onto the golf course, then you'll find well-to-do men over the age of eleven peeing all over the trees.

The Evolution of Beer Pong

Catherine and I played beer pong for the first time on Friday night (or the new version of the game, I remember a game we played with cups of beer on a ping-pong table in college, but we used paddles and if you lost you had to take your shirt off and the other team got to whack you with the ping-pong ball, which didn't hurt much, but it did leave a little welt that lasted for a few days . . . I think we called the game "pong-ping") and Catherine was good.

Bow Down to the Master Dave

Once again, I bow to the master: David Sedaris is the King of the Sentence; though I must admit that at the start of his new book, When You are Engulfed in Flames, I wondered if he had run out of good stories to tell, but that's certainly not the case-- I could read Sedaris-brand sentences about a boil, or a cab ride, or the details of his relationship with his boyfriend Hugh, and they would still make me laugh (and, of course, they did).

You Just Opened Your Gift!

It's the holiday season again, and normally I am wracked by guilt because I know I need to get people gifts and I never do (my wife takes care of it) and also because I have charitable thoughts that never really come to fruition, but this year I am in the clear because I have been giving the gift of entertainment in the form of this blog-- and so as long as poor people have a friend with a computer and an internet connection, they can enjoy my thoughts and sentences the whole year round!

Hey Joe

At school, a small middle-aged man with glasses has been saying "Good morning Dave" to me for several years now, and this has been embarrassing for me because I didn't know his name and whenever I described him (hey, there's this little guy, with glasses, maybe he's fifty or so, wears a shirt with a tie sometimes, do you know his name?) no one could ever give me a definitive answer and then I would forget all about it until the next time I ran into him and he rudely flaunted his knowledge of my name again, but yesterday near the mail boxes, another teacher (I don't know her name either) said hello to him and she also said his name and his name is Joe (but am I really going to start calling him by name now?)

No Cake For Me

There was chocolate cake in the fridge last night and I thought about eating it, but-- get this-- I did not eat it . . . amazing, but true-- instead of eating cake I took three ibuprofen and went to bed at 8:30 because my back hurt because I'm trying to learn this soccer juggling trick called "Around the World" which involves this really violent leg motion after you flip the ball in the air-- you have to whip your foot all the way around the ball and then flip it back up, and although I'm getting closer to achieving this, I may have to quit trying to avoid serious injury.

What's the Only Thing Better Than One Fox?

While walking back from A&P yesterday, a bright red fox walked across my path (I followed him across the soccer fields just to confirm this-- just to make sure he wasn't a big squirrel or a cat or something, but, of course, it was a fox-- they are unmistakable in their color and gait . . . and a fox's tail sticks out straight and rigid from their body) and the reason I note this is that this is the second bright red fox I've seen in a week; while we were hiking with the boys on Friday one ran right by my feet . . . and if this seems far-fetched . . . if perhaps, you think I'm fabricating this, then think of what an ingenious fabrication it is-- because most people would fabricate one fox so they could have some daily content on their blog, but they would never think to fabricate two foxes-- not that I'm fabricating this-- or maybe I am . . . because that's exactly what someone who was fabricating a story would say.

Mumbai Multitasking

It's official: the Giants are so good they're boring; I yearn for the days of Butch Woolfolk (that was exciting football, in 1983 Woolfolk set the record for rushing attempts in a game-- 43), but I am getting a lot of reading done during the games . . . yesterday I finished Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger-- a first person tale of corruption, entrepeneurship, amorality and perserverance in the jungle of the modern Indian dream: and I give it nine rickshaws out of ten.

How and When to Get Trampled

For the first time in my life, I got up early on Black Friday to try to get a deal on a TV . . . or I thought I got up early (especially with all this talk of a recession) but when I got to Electronics Expo at 6:10 AM, the line already wrapped around the building and they were letting in fifteen people at a time, so I beat a hasty retreat; it turns out I was lucky not to be trampled to death . . . which was the fate of a Wal-Mart employee; I read this story on-line at the Daily News site, and though it was a tragic tale, there was a comic irony to the first comment on the story: a woman expressed her disgust at the futility of the death, and the ignorance of the tramplers-- because she pointed out that the best sales are NOT on Black Friday, they are AFTER Christmas . . . so if you're going to trample someone it should be during a January sale, not a Black Friday rip-off!

Is Dave Spongeworthy?

After a year of blogging, one becomes introspective . . . one wonders: are my thoughts blog-worthy . . . are my sentences special and unique . . . is my perspective worthy of valuable space on the information highway . . . or am I a self-centered egotist who could make better use of his time learning a trade such as air-conditioner repair or dog-grooming?

I Love Coffee But I Hate Tea?

Perhaps it was due to the fog of beer, but it took an inordinately long time to solve Stacey's ridiculous riddle Wednesday night-- she just kept saying things like: I hate tea but I love coffee, I hate cats but I love dogs, I love mice and chipmunks and squirrels but I hate rats, I love love but I hate hate . . . and on and on and on until finally, finally we got it . . . will you?

Back in My Didn't Need to Breathe So Much

Great moment of laissez faire 1960s parenting in Madmen-- Don Draper's daughter walks into the room, her body completely inside of a plastic dry cleaning bag, and her mom says, "I hope you didn't leave my dry cleaning all over the floor-- now you march right back up there and clean it up" and the little girl leaves the room, still enveloped by the plastic bag.

Put Those Clementines Down!

I was spacing out in line in the grocery store, cradling a box of clementines in my arm, and I guess this bothered the old woman in front of me-- though she had put her items down, she was apparently bothered by the fact that I wouldn't put mine down, the fact that I was awkwardly holding the box instead of placing it on the conveyor belt-- because she turned and said, "You can put them down now-- put them down!" and pointed to the empty spot on the conveyor belt . . . and I took one look at her and put them down.

Getting Rich

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my blog-- "Sentence of Dave" has accumulated 31,594 views, which earned me 15 dollars and 37 cents in ad revenue, so I won't be quitting my day job any time soon (and what would I do with my day after I had written my sentence anyway?)

Our Children Are Crushing Our Spines

I took the kids to the Museum of Modern Art (the Joan Miró exhibit-- good for kids and doodlers alike) and FAO Scwartz (not the best place for a claustrophobic, but the kids had a good time jumping on the Big piano) and it marked the end of one era-- we no longer have to bring diapers when we go anywhere, and it's nearly the end of another era: the Stick the Kids in the Backpacks and Run Really Fast to Catch the Train Era, because the snap broke (brittle from the cold?) on our fancy foreign-made super-sized child-backpack and so I had to carry all child weight on my shoulders, and by the time we got on the subway to go back to Penn, Alex was compressing my spine (he was fast asleep and so was Ian, so they were both dead weight and now they're big enough so that when they fall asleep and lean to the side they often bang their heads against door frames and such) and so now I think I'm only 5'8" . . . so no more free ride for him-- next trip he will have to walk every step of the way . . . and judging by how Catherine's shoulders were feeling by the end of the day, Ian may have to hoof it as well.

Girls Are Too Clever For Their Own Good

Last week, one of my students tried to involve me in a web of lies and deceit: we have been reading and writing process analysis essays and she apparently started writing an essay with the working title "How to Survive a Post-Menopausal Mother" but then she gave up on it-- but she left the notes out and her mother found them (and was suitably offended at her daughter's choice of topics and tone about her mom) so the student, quick on her feet, said that "post menopausal mother" was just one humorous topic of many in a satirical essay I had given her and not her idea at all; the next day, she came in and told me that if I received an e-mail from her mom asking about this, to just go along with it and say that somehow the topic was my fault but I told her "I'm not lying to your mother-- don't get me involved in this!" but luckily it never came down to that: the crafty mom simply asked her ingrate daughter for a copy of the satirical post-menopausal essay and the student confessed that she had made it up . . . but what I was really impressed by was the fact that the girl thought of that excuse in the first place-- a guy would never think that quick on his feet, he'd just say, "What essay? I didn't do it."

A Vivid Geographical Simile

From a student's poem about Newark, New Jersey: "285,000 people . . . 12, 400 people per square mile . . . tight like a virgin."