Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 314

#Biblebuffet

Protip: If you're using The Bible to justify your opposition to same sex marriage, don't forget to stone to death any woman engaging in premarital sex. And not just your garden-variety stoning, either. You must gather all the people of the town at the doorstep of the woman's father and kill her there. 

God is very specific about this (Deuteronomy 22:20).

Side note:

If you are a man engaging in premarital sex, fear not. God does not condemn you to death. However, if you were engaged in premarital sex, it must logically be with either with a woman who was also engaging in premarital sex (meaning you must now stone her to death, which strikes me as awkward given the intimacy of your relationship) or with a married woman, at which point you and the married woman must both be killed.

So caution is advised.

Every thing doesn't need to be a thing

My friend and podcast host Rachel was recently told me about a recommendation she received about the joy of drinking a glass of bourbon while in the shower.

This is, of course, a ridiculous idea. And it's indicative of something that seems to be gaining purchase in society that I would like to publicly take a stand against:

Making a thing out of every thing.

It's happening all around us. It must stop. 

Remember a time when guacamole was prepared in the restaurant's kitchen and delivered to your table by a member of the waitstaff rather than prepared at the table by a member of the kitchen staff, momentarily stifling conversation so you can watch someone do their job for reasons that are ultimately meaningless and slightly awkward?

Remember when weddings didn't require signature drinks named after the bride and groom?

Remember when children's birthday parties didn't end with overflowing goodie bags? 

Remember when soccer was played on fields within your town limits? Remember when terms like "travel soccer" and "weekend tournaments" had not yet been invented? Remember when hundreds of dollars were not spent on hotel rooms so kids can run around on a grassy field just like the one down the street from their home?

Remember when the word promposal didn't exist and you asked someone to the prom by asking them to the prom?

Remember when lattes were not canvases upon which baristas created art?

Remember a time before the use of the ubiquitous use of the word barista?

Every thing doesn't have to be a thing. It's getting ridiculous.

I am a person who prizes simplicity. Efficiency. Productivity. Minimalism. I despise ornamentation. Ostentatiousness. Unnecessary complexity and purposeless expense. I cannot stand when something is made precious that is not precious and was never meat to be precious.

A glass of bourbon in the shower is a stupid idea. Take your shower, get dressed, and then, if you want a glass of bourbon, drink one. Don't turn the act of washing your body into anything more than it is.

Get in. Get out. Get dressed.

Be happy that you're able to shower at all. More than half of the world's population still doesn't have access to hot water for showering on a daily basis. A shower is already a thing. It's an amazing thing. You don't need to add bourbon to the mix to make it any more precious than it already is.   

Guacamole being prepared at the table is ridiculous. We get excited about watching avocados being smashed before out eyes because we think it denotes an exceptional level of freshness and offers an artisanal flair.

It doesn't.

Having your guacamole prepared in the kitchen one minute earlier achieves the same damn thing and doesn't interrupt the conversation with a ridiculous, artificial, ultimately meaningless moment during dinner.

Promposals are atrocious. Teenagers perform and record these elaborate displays because they want attention. They want their prom to mean something more than it already does. They want the recording of their promposal to get more likes or views or shares than their friends' promposals.

There was a time - not so long ago - when a prom was a moment significant in its own right.

Actually, it still is. Teenagers just can't stop staring at YouTube long enough to realize it.  

Signature wedding drinks are created by caterers and bartenders who know that guests will consume these drinks in large amounts, thus allowing them to manage their inventory more effectively and maximize profits. Bride and grooms embrace the concept of  these signature drinks - sometimes spending hours deciding upon the name for each one - because they apparently don't think they are going to get enough attention on their wedding day. They've become such a thing that magazines and

It's an art now.

It's an art apparently capable of achieving perfection, despite the fact that a week after a wedding, no one could tell you the name of the bride and groom's signature drink. 

People love the art that baristas design in their lattes because everything about coffee has been fetishized in our culture. If anything in this world has ever been made into a thing, it is coffee. Drinking a cup of coffee is no longer a means of quenching a thirst or warming you up on a chilly day or injecting caffeine into the bloodstream or even drinking something that tastes good. Coffee has become a ritual for people. The coffee culture has taken something that was once small and simple into something of enormous import and great meaning. Coffee is no longer a warm, tasty beverage that people enjoy in the morning. It has become a means by which people define themselves. It has become a constant source of conversation. It is precious and artisanal and zen, and latte art reinforces these silly beliefs.   

Competing with coffee on the highest level of things being made into things are travel sports. Parents drive or fly their kids to soccer tournaments and swim meets and baseball games around the country because they believe that their children need to compete against the best of the best or be seen by the best coaches or because every other parent is bringing their kids to Timbuktu to play basketball this weekend and "my kid can't be left out!"

I hear from these "travel" kids all the time. Kids who travel from city to city, state to state to play baseball and soccer and swimming and hockey and basketball. They always tell me these four things:

They don't care where they play or who they play. They just want to play.Their parents take sports way too seriously and are overly involved in their sporting life. They worry about making the travel team only because of the enormous pressure they feel to play on the team or else be perceived as inferior by their peers. They love travel sports not because of the games or the competition but because they love staying in hotel rooms and swimming in hotel pools.

We have turned this thing called youth sports into a thing. An enormous, expensive, ego-driven, parent-centered thing. A thing it was never meant to be and never needed to be. 

I'll say it again. Every thing doesn't need to be a thing.

Showers can just be soap and shampoo and water. 

Coffee can simply be a beverage.

Soccer can be a sport that kids play after school and on Saturdays on the field around the block or even across town.

Asking a girl or a boy to the prom can be a simple - albeit courageous - question posed privately after school. 

Every thing doesn't need to be a thing. We are all important enough already. Life is sufficiently complex. There is already great meaning in simple things if you pay attention. There is no need to make food or drink or sports or toddler birthday parties so ostentatious and grand that we garner undeserved meaning from them.

When a thing is made into a thing, it's usually done in an effort to bring false meaning to a process or undeserved attention to a person. Allow the thing to just be a thing. 

A shower without a glass bourbon has been relaxing and joyful experience for a long, long time. Don't add an alcoholic layer to the process in order to make it any more precious than it already is. Instead, pay attention to how precious and lovely and perfect it already is. See the beauty and meaning and import of the world as it already is.

Things are already things. See them as such. Embrace them for what they already are.  

From the mouths of babes...

Clara tells me that she doesn't like Donald Trump. She says that she heard him say mean things to "a lady named Megyn Kelly" on CBS Sunday Morning.

"Megyn asked a question, and Donald Trump started making mean compliments about her."

Then she told me that she doesn't like Ted Cruz because he's not nice to mommy-mommy and daddy-daddy families.

Not to get too political, but if Clara can figure this stuff out...

Opposing Donald Trump while defending one or more of his positions is not doubly odd. It's called objectivity.

Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast - in writing about Bill Maher's recent criticism of the charge of battery against's Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, says:   

“Maher’s defense of Lewandowski seemed doubly odd considering his anti-Trump stance during the earlier portions of the program. In his monologue, Maher proudly branded the GOP frontrunner “a bipolar five-year-old” for branding Ted Cruz a liar and cheat after losing Wisconsin to him. “He has two settings: you cheated, and you started it!”

— Marlow Stern

There is nothing doubly odd about this at all.

While Bill Maher clearly despises Donald Trump - who once sued him for $5 million over a joke - he is not so biased and slanted that he can't defend a candidate's position in one regard while opposing his candidacy overall.

In fact, it's the farthest thing from odd. It's admirable of Maher to defend someone who he despises. Whether or not you agree with Maher in this matter, I want my political commentators to look at each candidate's decision impartially rather than painting a broad brush based solely upon political leanings or personal vendettas. 

I want independent thinkers who can tell me that a candidate is right on this issue but wrong on this one. I want commentators who are willing to criticize the candidates who they support and defend the candidates they oppose depending on the issue.

I don't always agree with Bill Maher, but I have always admired his willingness to criticize Democrats despite his support for them. 

It's the ideological purity that political parties require now that are grinding our government to a halt. Compromise is dead. Politics have become black and white. There is no room for any gray. 

Maher’s defense of Lewandowski seemed doubly odd considering his anti-Trump stance? 

I don't think so. I think it seemed objective. Unbiased. Open-minded. 

The things we expect from writers like Marlow Stern. 

Mike Pesca's favorite sentences of 2015 (and mine)

Back in January, Mike Pesca of Slate's The Gist discussed some of his favorite sentences of 2015. When Pesca attributed the sentence to someone., I included the attribution. 

Bill Raftery on how he enjoys learning something and immediately sharing it: "That's why I went into broadcasting rather than espionage." "It's easier to condemn than to figure out the charge.""They're against changing the flag because that's against they're identity. I don't mean the flag is their identity. Being against change is their identity." - Mike Pesca "Grief is our compensation for death.""Some voters do not share democratic values, and politicians must appeal to them as well." "The tradeoff of living in a country where California gets to set the standard on auto emissions is that Texas gets to set the standards on textbooks." - Mike PescaFrank Luntz, acknowledging the anxiety of Trump voters: "But they're also out for revenge.""Bravery is easy when you defend yourself from other. Humanity is more difficult. It's when you defend others from yourself." - Nino Markovich of Montenegro 

Like Pesca, I am a serial collector of words, sentences, dialogue, images, and ideas. You can't write five novels, three musicals, a magazine column, and a blog post every day for almost ten years without being a good listener and connector of ideas. 

 Inspired by his list of favorite sentences, I went to my Evernote to recover some of my own favorite sentences from 2015:

“What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.” - Don Draper"In a world where superheroes, and more importantly super-villains, exist, being a glazier must be a great job." - Michael Maloney"He was the fourth of three children.""Whisper to yourself what you love most, and that's how you can be brave." - Clara Dicks "The saddest of all the ribbons is the white ribbon." - Matthew Dicks"You make me want to come to school every day, and that is what every teacher should try to do before everything else. All the other stuff isn't as important as that. Just fill the classroom with hilariousness and love." - a former student (currently in eighth grade) writing to me"None of us marry perfection, we marry potential." - Elder Robert D. Hales“I trust my story. I always betray my heart with my tongue.” - Clara Dicks while reading Neil Gaiman's Instructions

A fashion designer who doesn't know she's a fashion designer

On the same day that my wife told me that she wanted to be a fashion designer when she was a little girl but doesn't have that same passion or desire anymore, she made this for our son.

The vision can change. The outcome can be different than what we originally imagined (sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity). Childhood passions are often ignored but they rarely die.

"Close to the chest" or "close to the vest?" The answer annoys the hell out of me.

I've heard this idiom spoken both ways:

"Play your cards close to the vest.""Play your cards close to the chest."

So I wondered: Which of these is correct?

The answer: Both.

There is no definitive answer to this question. While it appears that "close to the vest" appeared first, "close to the chest" followed almost immediately, and today, both are used with equal frequency.

This annoys the hell out of me. I want there to be an answer. I want one of these idioms to be correct, and frankly, I want it to be "close to the vest."

This middling, indecisive linguistic uncertainty is stupid. 

As a writer, I'm thrilled with a variety of ways to express a single idea, but that variety should contain some actual variation rather than two words (vest and chest) that essentially mean the same thing in this context and rhyme. 

And it shouldn't be the result of an inability to decide upon a correct way of expressing a specific idiom.  

So I'm taking a stand. I say that "close to the vest" is correct and those who say "close to the chest" are heathens and cretins and socially unacceptable monsters. Linguistic criminals. Language murderers.

Disagree with my selection? Unsure if I'm right? Do a Google image search on "close to the vest" and "close to the chest" and see which set of images more closely capture the meaning of this idiom and which set of images make you marginally uncomfortable. 

Who is with me?

Seasons: Spring 2106

My column in the spring 2016 edition of Seasons is now available online.

I write "Last Word," the humor column on the back page of the magazine. This month I write about the oddity and pain of dance recitals. You can read it online here.

I've never done this medically inadvisable thing that you probably do often

Two years ago I posted a list of 9 things that I have never done that most people in the world have tried at least once. 

Today I add a tenth item to the list:

I've never inserted a Q-tip or cotton swab of any kind into my ear.

Every doctor in the world will tell you that you should never clean your ears with a Q-tip or cotton swab. It is bad for many reasons and can cause permanent hearing damage. 

Even Unilever, the company that makes Q-tips and depends upon people ignoring this universal warning in order to stay in business, advises its customers not to insert their product into ears with warning labels on the packaging.

Nevertheless, I've watched countless people, including my wife, clean their ears with Q-tips. I've watched mothers clean their children's ears with Q-tips. And even though they have read the warning labels and are fully aware of doctor's warnings about this behavior, they continue to risk permanent hearing loss for the sake of an ear with slightly less wax than before.

Insanity.

I didn't grow up with Q-tips in my home, so the habit of cleaning the ear with cotton swabs was one that I never developed.

As an adult, I was fully aware of the dangers involved and have always avoided this process.

In fact, I don't think I've ever purchased Q-tips in my life. They are in my bathroom closet because my wife purchases them, but I have never used one on myself or my children.

And so my list of things I have never done that most people have tried at least once is now ten items long.    

Never watched a single episode of The Real Housewives, The Jersey Shore, or anything involving those Kardashian peopleNever used an illegal drug in my entire life Never bought a lottery ticketNever smoked a cigaretteNever revealed a secret that I was asked to keepNever swore in the presence of my motherNever shopliftedNever taken a selfieNever actually said the word “selfie” aloudNever inserted a cotton swab of any kind into my ear

Boy in blanket fort offers lesson on happiness

It's just a sheet spread over his crib, but it makes him so happy. There's so much joy and wonder in this simple thing.

It's an important reminder to me about how little is required to make you happy if you're willing to open your eyes and see something as new and different. 

Happiness isn't what or who or how much. It isn't what others are thinking or offering or seeing. It's simplicity in the moment. It's wanting little and receiving so much in return. 

It's also a reminder about how invaluable and unforgettable a momentary burst of pure joy can be if you allow it to be so. Happiness sometimes comes to us in flickers of light and sound that we must see and hear and hold and remember. So often we are looking at the wrong thing and worried about the wrong stuff that we miss the thing right in front of us.

Like the limitless joy of a little boy in a blanket fort.

Find your blanket fort. Or make one of your own.