I recently reported how my fanged son (he lost his two front teeth) gets distracted any time he sees a reflective surface because he is fascinated with his own image, and now I must inform you that I am equally narcissistic: mysteriously, we found Webcams in our classrooms last week, and once the neighboring teacher showed me how to use mine, I became obsessed with it: I used it to check my nose for boogers during class (always a concern of educators) and I used it to create "infinity" by pointing it at the monitor and then placed parts of my fingers and face in the infinite regression of screens and then, once the kids left, I took out my guitar, strapped it on, and pointed the camera in such a way that I could see my hands and my face, and then played for while mesmerized by how my hands moved on the guitar's neck and how my facial expressions corresponded to what I was playing.
Gran Torino: This Is How The Engine Runs
The characters in Clint Eastwood's film Gran Torino are unrealistic caricatures-- Walt's grand-kids are overly obnoxious, his children are calloused and cold, the gangsters are insensibly cruel, and his neighbors are extraordinarily foreign-- and while I questioned the realism at times during the movie, I now realize the exaggerated characterization is intentional: these people make you just as angry as Walt, which is the purpose of the film, because then you start to feel like Clint Eastwood and want to be tough like Clint Eastwood, because there's no other way to be in a world that is so hard and mean . . . and the movie moves like clockwork, or more like a train-wreck, there's no stopping or pausing, but upon reflection, when it's over, and you hear Clint Eastwood's voice singing the final song, and you remember that Clint Eastwood is 81 years old and has been acting, directing, composing, and producing film for more years than most of us have been alive, and you start to wonder: is Clint Eastwood really that tough? . . . can he really use tools? . . . can he actually fix a sink? . . . can he stare down gangsters a quarter his age? . . . and you realize that though the answer is probably "no" to all of these, it doesn't matter because he looks the part (especially on Blu-ray!) and so I give this film nine push lawn-mowers out of a possible ten.
I See The Future and It Is Yellow
Ian had a couple of night-time peeing accidents just before our trip to Washington D.C.-- he is a very sound sleeper-- and we were worried that after a long day of sight-seeing, he would be unable to wake up to urinate and thus cause major grief with the hotel staff, so we convinced him to wear a pull-up diaper at night . . . I told him that even some adults need to wear diapers and this logic worked like a charm . . . in fact he repeated this to Alex several times, "Even some grown-ups wear diapers!" and he put his diaper on without resistance or shame . . . and this worries me: fifteen years in the future he'll be the one suggesting to his friends that they have a "Depends Party."
Sometimes It Is Good To Vent Your Anger
I skimmed this insane article and it seems that Play Doh really is non-toxic and edible (although there is a petroleum based lubricant in it . . . it could also serve as a laxative) and so I am wondering why Hasbro makes the Play Doh container more difficult to open than a bottle of Percocet; I have strong guitar playing fingers and the colorful plastic tops still cut a deep ravine into my calloused fingers . . . so how are my children ever supposed to be ever to take initiative and become sculptors if they can't open the containers? . . . and while I am on this theme: why did Didier Boursin write a book for children titled Origami Paper Airplanes which-- if you would like to comprehend the instructions and actually complete one of the airplanes-- requires that you have a PhD in geometry and an extensive technical vocabulary (including the understanding of such terms as "mountain fold" and "water-bomb base" and "pleat fold") when he knew it was going to be placed in a elementary school library? . . . I think it might be easier to let my kids play with matches.
Another Awkward Moment in A Long Line of Them
As a teacher, you hope that you are forewarned certain things about your students, or else incidents like this and this are going to happen; one of the things that requires a warning is if your student has a twin . . . but I was not warned, and so when I saw one of my particularly clever students on the stairway, and was excited that she had coincidentally used the word "anthropomorphize" in her essay-- because this was a word that came up in class that day and she was the only student who knew what it meant-- I yelled this non sequitur to her: "Anthropomorphize! You used it in your essay! That's funny!" but I did not realize that this was NOT my student, but her twin (because, as smart as my student is, she did not warn me she has a twin, so I blame her for this awkward moment) and so her twin gave me a weird look of non-recognition-- a look that said, "Why are you yelling sesquipedalian words at me, creeper?" and then she gave me the cold shoulder and continued up the stairs . . . but we sorted it out later in the day and now I am on my guard for doppelgangers.
I Apologize to Educators Everywhere . . . But Honestly, What Do You Expect From A Greasetruck Song?
Apparently, biology teachers are showing my animated video "Amoeba Love" in class, thinking it's a cute way to illustrate binary fission, but-- unfortunately for them-- they get a "priceless" surprise at "00:27" . . . and though I know it's not people at my school showing this (Thank God) because we can't stream YouTube videos, I would still like to apologize to all the other educators who were surprised by the direction the song goes (warning! completely inoffensive cartoon depiction of genitalia!) but you have to understand the kind of mental place I was in when I animated this song: it was a snow day and both my children were napping and I had only two hours to record a song and animate the corresponding video and, to my chagrin, in the days previous I had come to the frank realization that I was not going to be a great animator, despite learning to use some pirated animation software, because I can't draw, and so I decided that the only subject I could animate was an amoeba . . . and now things have come to their logical end, my amoeba video has asexually reproduced its digital footprint on the internet and returned to visit me in a place I never expected: my profession . . . and in the end, I think any discomfort I have caused to our nation's biology teachers is probably outweighed by the joy I have given to countless students (and judging by the comments, this has happened more than once, and in more than one classroom . . . for more on this, visit Gheorghe: The Blog).
Bonus: Daryl Bem Owes My Fraternity A Citation!
If you are interested in scientific studies on clairvoyance and a stunning revelation on the true origins of the "genius" Daryl Bem's supposedly seminal paranormal experimentation, head over to my post at Gheorghe: The Blog.
We Convince Ourselves That We Are Improving
It's Hard To Get Angry When I Would Do The Same Thing
Arcimboldo is the Winner!
During our whirlwind four day tour of Washington DC, our kids walked us into the ground: we visited the Baltimore Aquarium, The Lincoln Memorial, The Air-Space Museum, The Museum of the American Indian (best cafeteria on The Mall!), The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Smithsonian Castle, The Museum of Natural History, The National Geographic Museum, The National Zoo and the Washington National Cathedral, but our favorite thing might have been a serendipitously discovered exhibit of "surrealist" Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo's major works in the National Gallery; he was the official portraitist of Maximilian II, despite the fact that his portraits are totally bizarre amalgamations of objects piled together as visual puns . . . they are completely arresting, and our family favorite, Water, is both a Renaissance bestiary of fish and sea life, as well as a surreal collection of puns weirder than any Dali painting.
Comment Away . . . You Might Become Slightly Famous
Dueling Definitions
Kevin Kelly juxtaposes two definitions in his new book What Technology Wants; the first is Alan Kay's: "Technology is anything invented after you were born," and the second is Danny Hillis's: "Technology is something that doesn't quite work yet," and the first definition makes me think of that awesome yellow first down line that appears on the television screen during football games, and the second definition makes me think of FoxTrax, television's failed attempt to animate a glowing hockey puck.
A One Sentence Summary of the New Testament
Warning: This Post May Contain Toilet Humor
One of the original motifs of this blog is how much I cherish when my wife screws up, but this doesn't happen very often (thus the cherishing) and last week was a memorable one, so enjoy it: I was fast asleep when Catherine woke me up to tell me that Ian had left some bloody stool in the toilet and she got me out of bed to look at said stool and it did seem bloody, but red blood, which I knew wasn't internal bleeding, and after a quick internet search we determined he either had hemorrhoids or anal fissures, neither of which was life threatening, so I went back to sleep, but then Catherine woke me up again at 4:00 AM to tell me that it wasn't bloody stool at all, it was old vitamins leaking red dye-- she had cleaned the hall closet out earlier that day and had forgotten she tossed them into the toilet.
Almost Forgot To Post!
Invictus is Pretty Good . . . But It's No Ruck and Maul
Clint Eastwood's movie Invictus is just as much about rugby as it is about Nelson Mandela, and although the film doesn't try to explain the rules of the game or make a coherent narrative out of game play (which was smart . . . and if you watch highlights of the actual Springbok/All-Black Final, you'll see the film does a fantastic job of capturing the look and feel of rugby, including the "haka," New Zealand's pre-game Maori war dance) it is a sports movie first and foremost . . . about two underdogs, the inspirational Mandela, who survived a twenty seven year training camp breaking rocks on Robben Island, and the Springboks, a mainly white team (with a token black), upon who Mandela bestows the responsibility of bringing honor and reconciliation to South Africa . . . it is well filmed and well-acted but it definitely sticks to the sports genre: nearly every scene is inspirational in some way, and-- as I am a sucker for sports movies-- it had me near tears multiple times (even a scene of the team running in the early morning before the big game got me choked up . . . but show me a movie where some mom dies of cancer with her kids around her deathbed and it has no effect) but it still portrays the characters with a hagiographic sheen that will make the movie ultimately forgettable . . . unlike The Wrestler, a film that I will never forget . . . and all this rugby and film discussion reminds me of "Ruck and Maul," a rugby screen-play that Whitney and I wrote many years ago which was certainly closer in theme to The Wrestler than Invictus . . . perhaps now is the time to pull it back out and pitch it.
F#@%* The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
I'm going to give Guy Deutscher's new book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages a perfect ten gender-neutral pronouns out of ten; first of all, I love how worked up Deutscher gets about things like linguistic relativity-- otherwise known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-- which is the idea that the "character" of a language somehow indicates the philosophy of the culture that uses it (and he quotes from the American Journal Philosophy Today . . . "if English thought is in some ways more open to ambiguity and lack of system, it might be attributed in part to the relative variability and looseness of English syntax," and then he comes down heavy on this idea; here is Deutscher's rebuttal: "It might. . . It might also be attributable to the irregular shape of hot cross buns. More appropriately, however, it should be attributed to the habit of English language journals to allow the likes of Mr. Harvey free range. . . ") and Deutscher also refutes the venerated Stephen Pinker in several places, but the main reason I like the book is it really does live up to its title in some very specific ways: you learn about the Guugu Yimithirr, a tribe who use no egocentric directions (right/left/behind you/in front of you) and instead only refer to the directions of the compass-- as in: "Can you pass the butter to the North?" and they learn this from an early age because that's the only way to speak, so they always know which way everything is facing-- whether they are in a dark room with no windows or recounting a story several years later, and they do not rely on the sun, they use other clues (and the children master this long before our kids master left and right!) and Deutscher also explains how nouns with gender (as in Spanish and Italian and French) have an influence on our associations about the object and he also answers that age old question: "Do you see the same blue that I see?" or at least he sort of answers it, and the answer is that you might see it slightly differently if you don't have a word for green . . . if you have a word for green then greens are greener, and if you don't then you might refer to the sea as "wine-dark," like Homer did, but what is important is that it is the language influencing the sensory perceptions and not vice-versa . . . if you start making generalizations in the other direction then he's going to go Sapir-Whorf on your ass!
My Time Is Near
The English Department has been hosting some creative parties lately: we had a Minute to Win It Party at my house (this was all Catherine, but still, the party was in the place that I live) and Liz and Eric hosted a Who Can Write The Scariest Story Party (and the stories were quite good and I feel bad for Stacy, who created a beautiful multimedia Case File, which was handed to me to read, but the complexity of the different documents-- fake newspaper articles, photos of a severed hand and a dead cat, an IM conversation, a medical report, etc.-- made me go into an over-stimulated coma, and so Liz had to take it from me, and I probably would have voted for it, if it hadn't stressed me out so much . . . and I couldn't figure out who wrote the other stories and I thought my story was well disguised but someone remarked that only Dave would have the main character eaten by a "series of animals" but I was glad I pulled a vote because the competition was stiff) and Jeryl Anne is hosting a Chili Cook-Off in a couple of weeks and this makes me think that I need to strike while the iron is hot . . . I need to organize my two great party ideas, which I have offered to the world free of charge, and which have been roundly ignored: I am talking about, of course, my YouTube and Survivor Parties, which I once again, offer to the on-line universe, free of charge, and which I expect to see implemented by close friends in the very near future.
My Attention Span is Wack
Denial Ain't A River in Egypt
Most of us are happily in denial (I forget about my receding hairline each and every day, but a look in the mirror shocks me back to reality . . . the hair I had on my head in college has migrated to my chest and back) but here's an example from the new Slavoj Zizek book that will make you feel better about your own mild delusions; the Shindo Renmei, a Japanese terrorist organization that existed in the 1940's in Sao Paolo Brazil, refused to believe the news that Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, and used violence against those that did believe, but, of course, as Zizek points out, "they knew that their denial of Japan's surrender was false, but they nonetheless refused to believe in Japanese surrender" and I am sure they got plenty of other people that knew that the news was factual to believe otherwise, because when the alternative is a violent death, what's wrong with a little denial?
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