Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 346

Clara's Mid-Summer Bucket List

A parental suggestion courtesy of my wife:

Yesterday, with about half of our summer behind us, Elysha asked our six year-old daughter to create a bucket list of summertime activities that she still wanted to do. 

The list is great, and best of all, it's entirely doable.

Backyard picnics. Sleepovers. Trips to playgrounds and beaches.

Not only do we know exactly what she wants to do, but as we check each one of those items off the list, she will feel better and better about her summer.

And we also learned that our daughter isn't a selfish, materialistic jerk face as well. She's content with the simple things of life. Playgrounds and beaches and sleepovers.

Also a great thing to know.   

A mid-summer bucket list: An outstanding idea courtesy of the great Elysha Dicks. 

Are you faithful to your spouse? It's less common than you might think.

Ashley Madison,  the online affair facilitator with the slogan, Life is Short. Have an Affair." was hacked this week. Hackers are threatening to release the personal information of its 37 million members. 

Did you hear that (in your head, I mean, since I am not reading this aloud to you)?

37 millions members.

That may sound like a lot, but its not. "A lot" doesn't come close to describing this massive number. 

Let's do the math:

While Ashley Madison operates in 46 countries, a "significant percentage of users" are American.

For this post, let's pretend that a significant percentage of 37 million amounts to 30 million.

The population of the United States is 318 million. Of that number, 51 percent, or 162 million are married, which means that almost 20 percent of married Americans are members of Ashley Madison. 

I suppose this number should not be terribly surprising, since research has shown that 15-25% of married people cheat on their spouse at least once during the course of their marriage, but that would mean that every single person cheating on their spouse is using Ashley Madison to do so, and this can't be true. 

-So a hell of a lot of married Americans are cheating on their spouses - more than we may suspect - and many of them are using Ashley Madison to do so.

A simple solution for Scott Walker's uncertainty

Republican Presidential candidate Scott Walker says that he doesn't know if being gay is a choice.

I have a simple solution to this problem:

He could simply ask any one of the millions of gay Americans if being gay is a choice and believe what they say, since they would know.

I can't begin to imagine the degree of arrogance and self-righteousness required for a heterosexual man (who dropped out of college with a 2.6 GPA) to completely discount the word of millions of American citizens who would absolutely know the answer to this question.

Does he think that all gay people are liars?

Even better, Walker could stop caring if being gay was a choice, since that question happens to be one of the stupidest questions being asked today.

Do the morons who think that being gay is a choice really expect my homosexual friends to suddenly switch to relationships with opposite sex partners like you might change your order at the local diner? 

Even if being gay were a choice (WHICH IT'S NOT, SCOTT WALKER), who cares?

Perhaps Walker could say that as a conservative politician who believes that government is too large and omnipresent in the lives of Americans,  he doesn't think it's his or anyone else's business when it comes to who a person chooses to love. 

Now that would be a real answer.

The best marital advice you'll ever receive (and some thoughts on same sex marriage, too)

She's only six. I hope she can adhere to this advice in 20 years.

Brace yourself for the cutest thing EVER (not one bit of hyperbole)

And if that wasn't enough, we have the extended cut with both verses:

Dentists need to tell stories, or they will end up with people like me in their chairs.

My dentist told me that I should have two of my wisdom teeth extracted. One of them has a cavity, and it's in a spot that is almost impossible to keep clean.

I asked what the extraction process entailed.

Dentist: We use some local anesthetic and some rocking back and forth, and that's it. Done in an hour.

Me: I have no idea what that means. Could you give me an actual account of the procedure? 

Dentist: What do you want to know?

Me: I don't know what I don't know, so I can't tell you what I want to know because I don't know what there is to know. But a step by step description of what will actually happen would be a great start.  

She looked a little annoyed. 

Me: Look, the entire bottom row of my teeth were knocked out in a car accident when I was 17, and then they were jammed back into place and wired down in the emergency room, which was the worst part of the car accident, and that's saying a lot since I went through the windshield and tore my leg open to the bone. And about five years before that I was stung by a bee and had to be brought back to life via CPR and about 50 shots of epinephrine over the course of a week, so now I have involuntarily associated needles with death, which I know is a little crazy but is how I feel and my therapist - who I don't see anymore - said it's completely understandable. So I'm a little squeamish about my teeth and needles. So I want some detail.

Dentist: This won't be a big deal. People have wisdom teeth extracted all the time.

Me: Yes, but for me, it will only happen once, so it will be a big deal. When someone wants to pull a part of my body out of my mouth, it's a big deal for me, even if it isn't for you

Dentist: I meant to say that we do extractions all the time.

Me: I would hope so, but that doesn't really help me understand the procedure.

Dentist: Maybe I should just refer you to our oral surgeon. 

Me. Great. Thank you.

Dentist: But don't look anything up on the Internet about the procedure until you meet him. 

Me. Why would you say that? That does not inspire confidence.

I know I can be difficult, and it may seem as if I was being a little belligerent, but in this case, I just wanted some information, which left me thinking this:

Dentists need training telling stories. Had my dentist told me a story that was reflective of what what I could expect when my wisdom teeth were extracted, complete with an arc, a splash of humor, and some clear but not graphic descriptions, I might have been fine.

But glossing over the removal of two of the largest teeth from my mouth deserves more, at least for me. And I suspect most people would appreciate a clear picture of the procedure but are unwilling to press the matter to the degree I did.

So dentists of the world:

I'm available for hire. Let me teach you some storytelling strategies that you can use to make your patients more relaxed and informed. Very few of us enjoy our dentist appointments, and while this may be inevitable, part of our dislike for our visits is the fear related to what may or may not happen while sitting in that chair. 

Alleviate some of that. Explain your procedures in engaging ways. Entertain and inform your patients. Tell stories.

Most of the time, your patients can't speak anyway. Instead of asking us how the kids are doing while we have a suction tube and an ice pick in our mouths, entertain and inform. 

We have a right to know, and wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to pry the information from you in the same way you want pry my wisdom teeth from my gum line?

The next time you see or hear a story about the British royalty, I suggest this response:

Look, it's a story about Kate Middleton, the possibly American woman married to one of the British princes (I say possibly because I'm not certain of Middleton's nationality and refuse to spend even a second confirming this suspicion). 

Yup, that's her. The princess and her latest baby. Does she have two kids or three now? I'm also not quite sure. But definitely more than one. 

But wait. I don't need to pay attention to any of this. I can change the channel or turn the page in this magazine or close this website because: 

It has nothing to do with my country. 

These people don't have any actual power or influence over anything. 

The whole point of this American Revolution was to break free of the influence of these  entitled people of unearned stature and wealth.

It's a monarchy. Yes, a neutered, ridiculous, fairly pathetic monarchy that a growing segment of the British people believe should be eliminated, but still, it's a monarchy. And monarchies are stupid. Right? We're a republic. We believe in the power of the people. Again, the whole American Revolution was fought to break free of these royal buffoons. What would our founding fathers think of us staring at these royals from afar, obsessing over their weddings and clothing and babies?  

There are people far more worthy of my attention. People who actually accomplished things without enormous budgets and prestige conferred upon them at birth. These princes and queens and dukes are only receiving this attention because of who their Mommys and Daddys are. Maybe I should read about  people who are not exclusively wealthy and white and privileged beyond imagination. Instead of reading about Kate's latest fitness regime, let me go find an article about Chris Gardner or Ursula Burns or Elon Musk or Janet Yellen.

These are people worthy of my attention. Perhaps I might even learn something from them or be inspired by their accomplishments.  

Those are the thoughts that I suggest run through your mind the next time you encounter a story about British royalty. 

First review of The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs arrives!

The Kirkus review has posted online, and I'm thrilled to report that it's a great one.

Kirkus Reviews is a magazine of book reviews published on the first and 15th of each month. It offers a preview of books prior to their publication, as well as a short but critical review of each book. 

It's an important moment in the life of a book. It's a review that booksellers, librarians, and the like pay attention to.    

Of The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, Kirkus says:

“Dicks (Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, 2012, etc.) well balances Caroline’s caution against Polly’s pluck, Caroline’s passive-aggressiveness against Polly’s outrage, creating a believable mother-daughter relationship. As each secret comes to light, he shapes their initially fraught ties into strong friendship.

Heartwarming and often darkly humorous, this road trip for vengeance fairly cries out for filming.”

— https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...

It's been a week of exciting news in our home, and this was one small but important bit. 

Don Featherstone was an interesting man for at least two reasons. Also, the mysteries of 57 and matchy-matchy remain unsolved, and it's really bothering me.

Don Featherstone passed away last month. He was known for two fairly remarkable things:

1. He was the creator of the pink plastic flamingo that adorns so many American lawns even today. He and his wife kept 57 pink flamingos on his front lawn in Fitchburg, MA.

I have yet to figure out why he chose the number 57 and it's really bothering me. 

Side note: The fact that his last name was Featherstone and his greatest career achievement was a sculptured plastic bird is a likely signal that we are living in a computer generated world with surprisingly ham-handed naming algorithms. 

2. Don Featherstone and his wife, Nancy, dressed alike for more than 30 years.  

No explanation for this wardrobe decision that I can find, either. It's also really bothering me. 

A brilliant app idea that I'm giving away for free. Take it. Make it. I'll be your first customer.

Here's my vision:

I'm driving down Starr Boulevard in some tiny town in Somewhereville, USA. I come to a traffic light and stop. I remove my phone, click on the app, and instantly, I am transmitted information about the name of this street.

Why Starr?Why the double R?Is the street named after a person, and if so, who was it and what did he or she do to deserve the honor of a street name?

I've considered writing a book that explains all of the street names for a random town in the United States. My hometown, perhaps. 

Here's the one problem about my app (and probably my book idea):

I may be the only person in the world who is intensely curious about this topic and desperately wants this information. 

So it might not be quite as profitable as you were hoping.