Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 355
February 25, 2015
I won’t be reading my novel to my children. For a damn good reason.
My son asked me to read my novel, Unexpectedly, Milo, to him.
“Too long,” I told him. “No pictures. Let’s find something else.”
It also has an awkward and explicit sex scene in it (which I didn’t bother to mention), so I think he’ll be reading that one on his own some day.
February 24, 2015
5 questions about the third line of James Taylor “Fire and Rain,” which will likely plague me until the end of days.
The first lines from James Taylor’s song Fire and Rain confuse me.
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can’t remember who to send it to.
Put aside the first two lines, which are confusing in their own right, and the fourth line, which is also slightly baffling. I’m interested in the third line, where Taylor says that he wrote the song ‘this morning.” It raises a number of interesting questions.
This may get a little complicated. See if you can follow:
1. Did Taylor actually write that line on the day that he wrote the song? Did he really walk out on the morning in question and write this song?
2. If he wrote it on the morning in question, did he then insert the line, which is the third in the song, into the song after writing the rest of the song? Or did he write the third line as the third line, indicating in the past tense that he had written a song this morning even though he was only three lines into the song at that point?
3. Is the line unauthentic? Did Taylor actually write this song at some other time rather than on the specific morning mentioned in the song? Is the mention of writing the song just part of the fantasy of the song, written only for the purposes of the narrative?
4. If the third line is inauthentic, why say it at all? Does this falsified timeline within the song really add anything to the song?
Here’s the most confusing of the questions:
5. If the line isn’t meant to be authentic, are we to then believe that James Taylor is singing these words, or is the songwriter referenced in the song someone other than James Taylor? Is Taylor writing and singing about a different singer-songwriter who has supposedly written the song, and if so, while performing the song, are we supposed to understand that Taylor is merely playing the role of that singer-songwriter, even though he also a singer-songwriter?
Did you follow?
More importantly, are you as disturbed about these questions as me?
February 23, 2015
Four things to consider before dating a coworker: An office romance with my future wife.
Jackie Zimmerman of Time’s Money section writes about four things to consider before dating a coworker.
The last coworker who I dated was my wife. When we started dating back in March of 2004, she was teaching in a classroom one door down from mine. A friend and colleague now teaches in Elysha’s old classroom, and though Elysha’s been gone from that classroom for more than five years now, I still think of it as ‘Elysha’s room.”
I still leave school almost everyday through that classroom’s outer door, even though it often means going out of my way to do so. Before I push that door open and step out onto a wooden ramp, I always pause and purposefully recall something about those days long ago when Elysha and I worked together and spent so much of our time side by side.
I remember so I won’t forget. I remember because I was one of the best times of my life. I remember because it makes me smile every time even though is also often makes me sad, too.
Some couples could never work together. Many couples, perhaps. Elysha and I loved working together. It made my days brighter and better. I’m always hopeful that someday, we may be able to work together again.
In reading through Zimmerman’s four suggestions, it looks like Elysha and I did well when we dated (and married) as coworkers.
1. Avoid Getting Involved with the Wrong Person
Zimmerman’s suggestion pertains to dating people in positions higher up the corporate ladder. Though I always thought of Elysha as unattainable in every sense of the word, we were both teachers when we started dating, with no power over each other.
2. Know Your Company’s Policy Before the First Date
Before I dated Elysha, I had dated another colleague at the school and had already checked with my principal to be certain that there were no policies against it. He told me to make sure that if things didn’t work out, we ended our relationship amicably.
Not exactly a policy, but a good suggestion.
Thankfully, I have always been highly skilled at ending relationships. I’m friendly with almost all of my ex-girlfriends. In fact, the colleague who I dated before Elysha remains friends with me to this day, and in July, I will be the DJ at her wedding.
Still, I thought it was important to keep my principal informed when I was dating someone at work, so on April 1, 2004, as he crossed through the school auditorium, I told him that I was dating Elysha.
“Ha ha,” he said. “April Fools.”
“No, we’re really dating,” I said. “I’m serious.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, walking across the auditorium and out the door. “You and Elysha dating. Right.”
I have no idea when he realized that I wasn’t joking, but he was the person who married us two years later.
3. Consider the Worst-Case Scenario
Zimmerman suggests that you take careful stock of the person you are considering dating. If you break up, is this someone you can trust? Someone who you want potentially influencing your career? Could you still work together afterwards?
Honestly, this wasn’t even a consideration when Elysha and I began dating. She practically moved into my apartment immediately, and three months later, we had an apartment of our own.
Six months after that, we were engaged.
Even before we started dating, on one of those late night phone calls that people who are falling in love tend to have, she told me that if we ever started dating, she knew that we would never break up.
A bold move, I thought at the time. And my heart soared.
I had also known Elysha for almost two years before we started dating. We began as colleagues and eventually became friends. Close friends. So I knew her well. I knew we would never break up, but I also knew that if the unthinkable happened. we could remain friends.
4. Remember that During Business Hours, Work Comes First
Despite one lunatic claim that this wasn’t the case, Elysha and I always took our jobs seriously and never placed our relationship ahead of our responsibilities. When you’re a teacher dealing with students and their futures, this is not hard to do.
That said, it doesn’t mean that our romance didn’t find ways into the workplace. I purchased her engagement ring online with a committee of fellow teachers after work one day in a first grade classroom. I plotted my proposal with a colleague in the office of our curriculum specialist. I was known to leave her notes on her desk during my lunch hour, and at least once, I sent three dozen roses to her classroom.
One dozen per hour for three hours.
We kept our relationship a secret from our students for quite a while, but one day, after Elysha’s students saw a fairly innocuous note from me on some chart paper, one of them asked, “Are you and Mr. Dicks dating?”
She admitted it. Happily. Over the course of a school year, your students become as close to you as any of your friends or family. At least that’s the way it’s always been for us. Letting them in on our secret was so much fun.
Emergency and Evacuation Plan maps should not be designed to produce panic
Just a thought, but perhaps your Emergency and Evacuation Plan map shouldn’t indicate your present position in an amorphous speech bubble that seems to engender a sense of flame, heat, and panic, and shouts the three words with the use of an exclamation point.
The message should be: “You are here.”
This one reads: “AH! You are here! Right next to the fire! The heat! The flames! The humanity! You’re all going to die!”
February 22, 2015
February 21, 2015
If you want to deny homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals, you are evil.
After reading about the doctor who refused to treat a six day-old baby because the parents were lesbians, my first thought, which I tweeted alongside a link to the piece from Slate, was this:
Evil scumbag.
And so I starting thinking:
Do I really believe that? Are the bigots who deny or wish to deny homosexuals the same rights as heterosexuals inherently evil?
I think they might be.
Racists are evil. Right?
Denying children of color the same educational opportunities as whites simply because of the color of their skin is evil.
Imposing the death penalty on a person of color while imposing a prison sentence on white defendant who is guilty of the same crime is evil.
Refusing to hire a person for a job because of the color of their skin or paying them less than a white applicant of equal ability is evil.
Slavery was evil. Apartheid was evil. Jim Crow was evil. Denying any basic human right or equal access to privileges afforded to the majority based upon the color of a person’s skin is evil.
Right?
I think the same probably applies to discrimination based upon sexual preference.
Denying a person the ability to adopt a child or receive medical treatment or marry or worship in a public place or benefit from legal protections afforded to heterosexuals simply because of their sexual preference is not only ignorant and cruel, but I think it’s probably evil, too.
No, I’m sure it’s evil.
There are people – including the evil scumbag doctor who refused to treat the infant – who will cite religious reasons for their discriminatory beliefs, but I have read the Bible cover to cover three times and know that these people – or at least the Christians – are simply cherry-picking the parts of Scripture most convenient to their belief system. The New Testament alone is enough to contradict the Biblical admonitions against homophobia. But even if you ignore Jesus’s command to “Love thy neighbor” or his warning to “Let him without sin cast the first stone,” the hypocrisy required to discriminate against homosexuals while still allowing adulterers and anyone who works on Sunday to continue to live negates any excuse for discrimination based upon Biblical doctrine.
The Biblical excuse for homophobia and discrimination is nonsense.
No, I think discrimination of any kind against homosexuals is evil, and anyone engaging in this behavior or supporting those who engage in or defend in this form of discrimination are evil, too.
Does their evilness rise to Hitler-like levels? Of course not.
This is not to say that these people are not wonderful parents and beloved colleagues and gentle souls who bring warmth and light to the world in many respects, but their desire to deny people basic human rights based upon their sexual preference is evil.
It’s time we start calling it what it is. If logic and reason and common decency isn’t enough to convince these bigots to change their minds and afford equal rights to all people, maybe shame will do the job.
Maybe the label “evil scumbag” will do some good.
February 20, 2015
Stephen Fry explains what he would say if he was “confronted by God” and nearly knocks the interviewer out of his seat.
Regardless of how you feel about Steven Fry and his position on the Catholic Church and faith in general, you have to admire this answer on purely rhetorical grounds. It’s structured beautifully.
But my favorite part is the look in interviewer Gay Bryne’s face at two or three points during this two minute video.
Appalled is probably the best way to describe it, but even that doesn’t seem to do it justice. He seems to almost knock Bryne right out of his chair by his words.
February 19, 2015
This is not a telephone, so how does my son know that this was once a telephone?
My wife sent me this photo of my son from a recent visit to a children’s museum.
Yes, my family gets to go to children’s museums during the week while I slave away in the mines.
When I saw the image, I couldn’t help but wonder how Charlie understood how to use this device. It’s so unlike any telephone that he has ever seen in his life. The rotary dial, the cord, the immobile base, and even the separate, oversized, oddly shaped handset are all foreign to him.
Yet there he is, holding it to his ear, pretending to make a phone call.
Then again, I’ve also seen my son pretend to make phone calls using bananas and shoes, so perhaps imagination has a lot to do with it.
Yet somehow bananas and shoes more closely resemble the phones that Charlie has seen than this thing. Think about it:
Bananas and shoes are the same shape as our cordless phone.
Bananas and shoes are portable, like every phone Charlie has ever seen.
Bananas and shoes have no cords dangling from them.
Bananas and shows have no finger wheels affixed to them.
Bananas and shoes have no numbers on their surfaces, which our iPhones don’t have, either. To Charlie, most of the phones that he’s ever seen have clear, black surfaces. He’s probably never even seen an the number pad on any iPhone.
I have to assume one of two things:
Somehow the ancient, rotary phone has insinuated itself into human genetic code.
My son is a genius.
