Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 258

The men's restroom: All I want is a little consistency, please...

I appreciate and embrace consistency in all things. Find the fastest, most accurate, most efficient, least expensive way of doing something, and repeat as often as needed.

This is why men's restrooms infuriate me. 

Almost all men's restrooms contain urinals. This is good. They actually allow for the fastest, most efficient use of the restroom. They are quick to use and take up less space than a standard toilet, allowing for more of them. Urinals are the reason why the line to the men's restroom is always shorter than the line to the women's restroom. 

But here's the thing:

In the last decade or so, privacy partitions have started appearing between urinals in some restrooms. These rectangular pieces of plastic or wood have been bolted onto the wall between urinals, apparently offering a modicum of privacy to the user. 

"You can still see my head and my feet, but just try looking at my penis now, buster!" 

I'm not specifically opposed to these privacy partitions. What I'm opposed to is the lack of consistency between restrooms. Some have partitions between urinals and some don't, and this bothers me. Men either require this privacy partition or they don't, and I'm annoyed that we haven't come to a decision on this matter.

If it were up to me, I'd have no privacy partition. For a very long time, men used urinals without complaint or problem. Why we need to suddenly ensure the privacy of our genitals is beyond me. There was a time when men at Fenway Park and other baseball stadiums urinated into a communal trough without much complaint, and there are probably places where these troughs still exist. Men pee on trees all the time. Sometimes we pee side by side on the same tree. I can't imagine that many men suddenly felt the need for privacy while using a urinal.

But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps a significant number of men require a strategically placed sheet of plywood positioned at penis height to feel comfortable.

"You can look me in the eye or stare at my shoes while I pee, but don't you dare look at my penis!"

Maybe men are more concerned with wandering eyes that I think. Perhaps exposure of the penis contributes to shy bladders. Maybe this is homophobia rearing its ugly head.  

What I've also noticed is that the smaller the men's room and the more professional or fancy the establishment, the more likely that there will be partitions. 

Therefore a corporate headquarters or an expensive restaurant is more likely to have partitions than a concert hall, a fast food restaurant, or a sports stadium.

This annoys me, too. 

Men who work in the corporate world or spend more on dinner are more likely to have penises that require privacy than men who attend football games or stop at a McDonald's to use the restroom?

Also, aren't these quite often the same men? 

I don't know.

But here is what I do know:

We either need these partitions or we don't. Either equip all men's rooms with these privacy partitions or stop adding them to restrooms altogether.

Consistency. That's all I want. A universal agreement that this added expense is either needed or not. We either need to hide our penises in the restroom or we don't.

I think not, but as long as we can come to some kind of agreement, I'll be happy. 

Earning his keep

This cat pushes everything he can find onto the floor. He's broken bowls and glasses and picture frames. 

He eats our plants.

He has found a way to open kitchen cabinets and climb inside.

But he allows the kids to man-handle him. Drag him across the house. Aggressively cuddle him. So I give him a pass on all of his misbehavior.

Barely.

When will she die?

Sometimes I listen to a despicable person - politician, commentator, talk show host - and find myself compelled to run to Wikipedia to find out how old the person is, hoping that he or she is at least ten years older than me, thus reducing the chances that I will have to share the planet with this person for my entire life.

It's not that I am wishing death upon this person. I'm just hoping that he or she is so much older than me that the natural course of their life will run out before mine does, and for at least some measure of time, I can enjoy this life with all it has to offer absent the hatred, the lies, and the general vileness of the person in question. 

I hesitate to tell you whose age I just look up, in fear that it will seem that I am wishing for her death, which I am not. But I was pleased to discover that she is exactly ten years older than me, so perhaps I will someday know a world in which she does not exist. 

Two word horror story

A reader on Goodreads asked me to write a two sentence horror story. Here is what I wrote:

She cried out from the laundry room. "You didn't dry my sweaters, did you?"

All agreed that it was terrifying.

Free Dive

This is both fascinating and bizarre.

Watching the video of this man free dive to the bottom of the deepest pool in the world is both mind boggling and incredible, and yet:

1. I don't understand the desire to free dive. I cannot fathom (see what I did there?) the desire to swim as deep and far as possible on a single breath of air while risking your life in order to do so.  And while it's true that there are many other desires that I don't understand (sky diving, marathon running, baking), free diving seems to hold absolutely no reward.  

You can see the bottom of the pool with or without a tank of oxygen. I'm not sure how the lack of life sustaining air makes the experience any more compelling.   

2. Who spends millions building a creepy-ass pool like this? Sure, you might want to build the deepest pool in the world, but does it have to look like the inside of a water treatment plant from a Bond film?

Julian Edleman changes everything!

Each month my children each receive a free book from PJ Library, an organization that sends free books that celebrate Jewish values and culture to Jewish families across America and Canada.

Last week the newest books arrived. They tend not to be my favorite stories. Perhaps part of the problem is that I'm not Jewish, but while they do an excellent job teaching Jewish culture and values, they tend to be light on humor, antagonists, and conflict.

I find them a little boring.  

Elysha opened the latest books and began raving about one that she remembered reading at a child. "Yeah, yeah," I thought. "Another sweet little book with no stakes, no bad guy, no car chases, and no laughs."

A little while later I rose from my computer and took a peak at the book she had been holding. Just as I thought. No sword fights. No blood. No evil emperor. No underwear jokes. Blah.

Then I looked at the other book that had arrived. The one she didn't mention. My eyes immediately settled on the author of this book:

Julian Edelman.

"Julian Edelman!" I shouted. "This book is written by Julian Edelman!"

"Who's that?" Elysha asked.

"Who's Julian Edelman? Just the best receiver on the Patriots since the days of Randy Moss and Troy Brown! And apparently Jewish! Julian Edelman! I can't believe it!"

Flying High is the story of a squirrel named Jules who learns to overcome his physical limitations through hard work and the assistance of a goat named Tom.

If you know anything about the Patriots, you understand the genius of this plot. 

Julian Edelman is an undersized player - my height, in fact - who played quarterback in college and transformed himself into one of the finest receivers (and former two-way player) in the league.

Tom Brady is the G.O.A.T. - an expression in sports that means Greatest of All Time.  

It's true. There wasn't much conflict in the story and very little humor, but still... Julian Edelman wrote the book. 

I couldn't wait to read it to the kids. It was truly the first PJ Library book that excited me in the same way Elysha, Clara, and Charlie are so often excited about these books.

I guess even a blind squirrel can find a nut every now and again.

Sibling love is a strange and varied thing

Sometimes they want to kill each other, and sometimes they aggressively ignore each other, but more often than not, there are days when I walk into the room and find this and my heart breaks. 

Even if my son has his shoe in his mouth. 

Complacency kills.

Regardless of what I am doing or have ever done, I have always asked myself this question:

"Who is better than me?"

Whether I was managing a McDonald's restaurant, sitting in a sociology class, writing a novel, playing golf, performing onstage, or teaching multiplication to fifth graders, I'm always looking around and asking, "Who is better than me?"

I do this for one of two reasons:

Identify the person or persons who can teach me to be better.Identify the person or persons who I need to beat, crush, stomp on, step over, or defeat.

There is always someone better than you. The bar is always higher than you think. When you stop looking for and striving for that higher bar, you are doomed to remain far below it.  

Failure to seek out people better than you results in complacency, and complacency is the worst. Complacency produces mediocrity and a false sense of security. It results in an inability to see the scarcity of resources and increasing levels of competition in this world. 

The end product are individuals who fail to realize their full potential and are caught off guard when the economic climate shifts and the world moves on without them. 

"Who is better than me?" is a question that guarantees continuous growth. Self determination. Flexibility. A competitive edge.     

I ask this question constantly, and I never need to look very far to find someone who fits the bill.

Fortunately, there is always someone better than me. Someone who I am learning from or chasing after or attempting to destroy. 

Lyric issues: Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe"

Carly Rae Jepsen's 2016 hit song "Call Me Maybe" was a favorite of mine during the summer and fall of that year as it packed floors at weddings where I was working as a DJ.

But I have one problem with the song. One niggling complaint. 

The chorus of the song goes:

Hey I just met you
And this is crazy
But here's my number
So call me maybe
It's hard to look right at you baby
But here's my number
So call me maybe

"This is crazy?" I don't understand what is "crazy" about the scenario described. You meet someone who you find attractive, so you ask for or offer your phone number in hopes of reconnecting. 

This is not crazy. It's normal. It's how dating works. Right?

Or it's how dating worked when I was dating. Many a time I met a girl at a party or a dance club or the beach or the mall or a concert or Disney World or the the produce section in the Stop & Shop in Attleboro, MA or a rest area on I-95 in New Hampshire or a liquor store in Myrtle Beach (to name a few), and after talking for a while, I asked if I could have her number and call her sometime. 

Not crazy. Just dating. Right?

"Don't you dare..." are words most frequently uttered by morons

This is a tweet from Pastor Greg Locke, an outspoken, mouth-breathing conservative who opposes the rights of gay, transexual, and transgender Americans and has gone so far as to call them mentally ill and criminal. He's also a supporter of Donald Trump and many of his policies. 

Yesterday Locke tweeted this:

If you haven't heard, Eminem produced a freestyle rap about Trump that has gone viral. It's angry, clever, pointed attack on the President and (more surprising) his fans who support Trump.

I have two comments on Locke's tweet:

1. His description of Eminem is ironically a near-perfect description of Donald Trump.  

2. More important, Locke did that stupid thing that people do.

He writes, "Don't you dare lecture us..." 

Don't you dare? He already dared. He produced a four minute freestyle rap video that clearly lectures about politics and that you clearly watched. How can Eminem not dare to do something that he's already done and you know he's already done?

Do you think he has a time machine? 

It's sad and stupid when someone uses this meaningless, overly dramatic rhetoric to try to make a point. Proper retorts to the "Don't you dare..." nonsense include:

1. Too late, wing nut. I dared. And you know I did. That's why you're talking about it. What is wrong with you?

2. Hey dumbass, this isn't a reality television show. The "don't you dare..." middle school melodrama doesn't play well in the real world where cameras aren't running and the words are meaningless. Give it a rest. 

3. Look at the angry little man, everyone! He's trying to tell someone who's already done something to not do that something. How transparently powerless and pathetically ineffective of him. What a train wreck of a human being. Kind of makes him look like a President who promised that Mexico would pay for a wall, Americans would have beautiful, inexpensive healthcare, the Dreamers immigration status would remain unchanged, the LGBTQ community would be supported at every turn, and that he would release his tax returns. All talk and no action.