Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 370

Perhaps I have more in common with the Matthew Dicks of Des Moines, Iowa than just our names and our mug shots

Back in May of 2011, I wrote a post lamenting the fact that a person with the same name as me has been arrested in Des Moines:

Great. Someone who shares my name has been arrested and booked at the Polk Country Jail in Des Moines, Iowa for failure to pay child support.

You’d think my name is difficult enough without guys like this further besmirching it.

Recently, my namesake’s girlfriend contacted me, asking me to remove the post. I initially balked at the request. The man’s mug shot is available online on desmoinesmugshots.com. Removing it from my blog wouldn’t remove it from the Internet entirely, and it wasn’t like that post, written more than three years ago, was garnering any traffic.

Then it occurred to me:

I have a mug shot as well. I’ve never seen it, and because it was taken in 1992, it’s unlikely to ever appear on the Internet. But in some police database, a photograph of me exists, alongside the charges of grand larceny and embezzlement.

I was not guilty of those crimes, and I was eventually exonerated at the end of a lengthy and expensive trial, but had I been arrested two decades later, I might be in this man’s same position. My mug shot might be posted on the Internet.

Elysha might be as upset as this man’s girlfriend clearly is.

Truthfully, I don’t even know if this man was guilty of a crime. Like me, perhaps he was falsely accused. There’s no more ardent supporter of the concept of  “innocent until proven guilty” than me.

Wasn’t placing his mug shot on my blog antithetical to that position?

Had it been my image posted on the Internet, I might want my mug shot to appear in as few places as possible, too.

And having been the victim of a widespread, illegal smear campaign later in my life, I understand the pain associated with someone attempting to destroy your reputation.

So I deleted the post. Honestly, I felt bad that I ever posted it in the first place. A Google Alert on my name had probably brought it to my attention, and finding it both coincidental and amusing, I decided to post it to my blog.

But had I thought about how much more that this man and I might have in common beyond just our name, I probably would’ve never posted it to begin with.

Perhaps Matthew Dicks of Des Moines, Iowa and I have more in common than just our names and our mug shots

Back in May of 2011, I wrote a post lamenting the fact that a person with the same name as me has been arrested in Des Moines:

Great. Someone who shares my name has been arrested and booked at the Polk Country Jail in Des Moines, Iowa for failure to pay child support.

You’d think my name is difficult enough without guys like this further besmirching it.

Recently, my namesake’s girlfriend contacted me, asking me to remove the post. I initially balked at the request. The man’s mug shot is available online on desmoinesmugshots.com. Removing it from my blog wouldn’t remove it from the Internet entirely, and it wasn’t like that post, written more than three years ago, was garnering any traffic.

Then it occurred to me:

I have a mug shot as well. I’ve never seen it, and because it was taken in 1992, it’s unlikely to ever appear on the Internet. But in some police database, a photograph of me exists, alongside the charges of grand larceny and embezzlement.

I was not guilty of those crimes, and I was eventually exonerated at the end of a lengthy and expensive trial, but had I been arrested two decades later, I might be in this man’s same position. My mug shot might be posted on the Internet. 

Elysha might be as upset as this man’s girlfriend clearly is.

Truthfully, I don’t even know if this man was guilty of a crime. Like me, perhaps he was falsely accused. There’s no more ardent supporter of the concept of  “innocent until proven guilty” than me.

Wasn’t placing his mug shot on my blog antithetical to that position?   

Had it been my image posted on the Internet, I might want my mug shot to appear in as few places as possible, too.

And having been the victim of a widespread, illegal smear campaign later in my life, I understand the pain associated with someone attempting to destroy your reputation.

So I deleted the post. Honestly, I felt bad that I ever posted it in the first place. A Google Alert on my name had probably brought it to my attention, and finding it both coincidental and amusing, I decided to post it to my blog.

But had I thought about how much more that this man and I might have in common beyond just our name, I probably would’ve never posted it to begin with.  

Sometimes I think that my daughter is already cooler than I will ever be.

 

New word: Truché

New word: truché
Pronounced troo·ché

I can’t recall if I or my friend, Shep, first coined this word, but we use it with each other often, so I’ll give us both credit.

The definition:

exclamation
1. used as an acknowledgment during a discussion of a good or clever factual correction made at one’s expense by another person. A portmanteau combining the words true and touché 

Example:

Me: That might be the longest completion that Tom Brady has thrown all season.
Shep: Actually, he threw that 60 yard bomb in the fourth quarter last week. Remember how you hugged that big, hairy stranger after he scored?
Me: Truché  
____________________
Shep: This might be the most beer I’ve drunk at a football game all season.
Me: You only think that because you drank so much beer last week that you lost count.
Shep: Truché.

If you haven’t noticed, the word was invented and is frequently used in the stands at Gillette Stadium.

I have a lot of stories to tell. More than you could ever imagine. I suspect that Bill Murray would understand why.

Bill Murray on the Howard Stern show:

Howard Stern: “Who teaches you to tell a story? Is it something you are born with?”

Bill Murray: “No, I don’t think you’re born with it. You have to hear stories and you have to live stories. You have to have a bunch of experiences and be able to say ‘Here’s something that happened to me yesterday….’ And if you can make people laugh by telling them what happened to you, then you are telling the story well. So that’s what I learned in improv…. But you have to live to have the stories. You need the experiences.

I couldn’t agree with Bill Murray anymore.

The part of his answer that resonated the most with me was the idea that you can ask yourself what happened yesterday, and if it was the right kind of day and you choose the right moment from the day, you may find yourself with a great story.

I teach my storytelling students how to generate stories from their everyday lives, and while many of my former students have gone on to become accomplished storytellers who perform at shows like The Moth and Speak Up, the part of my workshop that so many people find most valuable is the training they receive in finding and nurturing stories from their own lives.

At the conclusion of a recent workshop, one of my students said, “I feel like I’m a more important person in the world now. I don’t see myself as living day to day anymore. I see my life as a series of stories inside one bigger story.”

I admittedly got a little weepy when she told me this.

Another storyteller recently said in regards to finding stories in her life:

“It’s like I can see the air now.”

Since I began storytelling a little more than three years ago, I have told more than 40 different stories on the stage. Only a handful of times have I repeated a story on the stage. Almost every time I take the stage at The Moth, Speak Up, or any other venue or show, I am telling a new story for the first (and quite possibly the last) time.

This is because my list of story ideas (kept on an Excel spreadsheet in an insanely organized and data-driven way) currently stands at 178.

My storytelling students and my fellow storytellers think that 178 is an impossible number. An insane number. They assume that most of the ideas will not result in good stories. Many think that I am simply throwing everything at the wall, hoping for something to stick. 

This is not the case.

Proof:

One of the things I do in workshops is allow my students to randomly choose an idea from the list so they can watch me begin to craft the story onstage. It’s an awkward and difficult process for me, not having a plan of any kind before beginning to speak, but my students have found this extremely helpful when it comes to crafting their own stories. It’s the closest I can get to allowing my students into my brain to see how I work, and the process has been extremely well received (even though I kind of hate it). 

I’ve done this many times over the course of the past two years, and my students have never found an idea on my list that I wouldn’t make a good story.

I’ve also won 15 of the 26 Moth StorySLAMs in which I have competed over the last three years, and I’ve finished second in seven others. I’m not trying to brag but rather demonstrate that despite the large number of stories that I’ve told and that I have yet to tell, I’m not telling duds.

I’ve just got a lot of stories.

Part of the reason for this is my ability to recall my past, including my childhood, in great detail. I have a very good memory.

Part of the reason for this is the exceedingly unfortunate, unusual, and difficult life that I have led.  

My wife credits my long list of stories to the way that I view my life through the lens of story.

Regardless of how you view life, how well you can recall the past, or how eventful (or uneventful) your life has been so far, I believe that if you use the strategies that I teach and class and practice my exercises regularly, you will find a multitude of interesting stories in your life.

And when you find and cultivate these stories, even if you have no intention of every taking the stage to tell them, I think my former student is right:

You will feel like a more important part of this world. Your life will gain weight and heft. You will better understand the amount of gravity that you exert upon your environment and the people around you.

You need not be a storyteller to enjoy these blessings.

My possibly petulant “I told you so” climate change Kickstarter idea: I need your feedback. Am I an idiot?

Earlier in the week, I wrote about the sound byte being used by Republicans in response to questions about the existence of climate change:

“I’m not a scientist.”

Variations of this ridiculous statement include:

“The science isn’t all there yet.”

“I’ve heard arguments from both sides of the scientific aisle.”

House Speaker John Boehner: “Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change. But I am astute enough to understand that every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs.”

Here’s the thing:

When a politician tells us that he does not believe in climate change or does not accept that climate change is the result of human activity or can’t be certain enough about the science to take action, he or she is either lying or stupid. The science is simply too overwhelmingly in favor of manmade climate change for anyone with half a brain to deny it.

The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) — a massive international effort to synthesized scientific knowledge on climate change from around the world — concluded with 95 percent certainty that the vast majority of the rise in global temperatures observed since the 1950s has been man-made. (Ninety-five percent is the same certainty that scientists assign to the assertion that cigarettes kill.)

It’s simply become impossible to deny climate change, which is why this “I am not a scientist” sound byte has come into fashion. Claim a lack of expertise and training and you don’t have to take a stand.

Convenient. Stupid but convenient. 

More than likely, these “I am not a scientist”  politicians are receiving campaign contribution from oil, coal, or natural gas companies and do not want that funding to dry up.

The largest contributors to John Boehner’s campaign, for example, are gas and oil companies.

But even those of us being paid by the fossil fuel companies to keep silent or plead ignorance know that climate change is real, and in the not-too-distant future, when sea levels rise to the point that the map begins to change and once valuable real estate is underwater, denying it will be even more difficult.

There will come a day when man made climate change will be undeniable by even the most ardent fossil fuel advocates.

My fear is that the politicians who are denying the existence of manmade climate change today will be forgotten tomorrow. Thanks to the short memories of the American people and the disregard for history, these men and women lie with impunity, knowing that they will no longer be in office and will probably be dead by the time large portions of southern Florida are underwater.

They are relying on the fact that history can be slippery and forgetful.

Ask an average American how many US Presidents have been assassinated while in office, and he or she will likely say two.

Just imagine: Two United States Presidents were murdered while in office after Lincoln’s assassination, and they have been all but forgotten.

 

What does John Boehner have to fear when he lies about climate change? Who will ever remember his lies in light of everything else that is forgotten.

But in the not-to-distant future, my children, or perhaps my children’s children, will ask me what the hell we were doing when there was still time to reduce CO2 levels, impose a carbon tax, and make serious investments in green energy. They will want to know why we fiddled while Rome burned, and I want to be able to name names. I want to be able to tell them the names of the liars who took no action and impeded the action of others in the face of over whelming scientific evidence. I want those names etched in history.

So my Kickstarter idea:

I’d like to publish a book entitled:

United States Politicians in 2015 Who Denied the Existence of Manmade Climate Change Despite Overwhelming and Undeniable Scientific Evidence in Order to Further Their Political Careers At the Expense of Future Generations

Each page of this book will feature one of the politicians and their exact words in response to questions about climate change.

That’s it. Lying politicians and their exact words.

I’d like to print one billion of these books, to ensure that physical copies will exist for future historians, but one billion may be a little unrealistic. But I’d like to convince as many people as possible to purchase this book, and to also have the book logged in the United States Library of Congress.

I want people to place this book, which would be handsomely bound, on their family’s bookshelf alongside their copies of The Bible and Huckleberry Finn. I want this book to become a family heirloom. Something passed down from generation to generation.

I want this book read when a father explains to a son that the Des Moines Dolphins were once known as the Miami Dolphins, before Miami was underwater.  

Ideally, I’d love to see a granite monument with these politician’s names etched into its side, added to yearly like the Stanley Cup, but I’m an author and books are my thing. But if a sculpture is interested in pursuing this project, I’d be more than willing to back it as well.   

One of my stretch goals would be to have one of these books printed on a material other than paper. Something that will last a thousand years or more and be kept on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Maybe thin sheets of gold? Or platinum? Whatever the scientists suggest. Because I may not be a scientist, but I trust them to tell me what material makes the most sense for this project.

So my questions:

Is this a crazy idea?

Would it be ultimately pointless?

Would the Kickstarter be unsuccessful?

Is this merely my way of publishing a petulant, historical “I told you so” that will change nothing?

Would people support something like this?

Would the money be better spent supporting climate change activism or green energy research?

Should I try that monument idea even though I wouldn’t begin to know where to start?

What are your thoughts? I really want to know.

My Daddy gnaws on raw pumpkin.

My wife asked our son who he thinks is eating our pumpkin.

His response: Daddy.

I’ve been accused of crimes that I did not commit before. I’ve even gone to trial.

But c’mon. My own kid? I don’t even like pumpkin.

 

I was once homeless, living in my 1992 Toyota Tercel. But that still seemed spacious compared to this apartment.

I have managed to live in some small spaces in my time.

For a period of about two years, I shared a former pantry-turned-bedroom off the kitchen in the home of a family of Jehovah Witnesses with another person and the family’s pet goat.

That sounds a lot crazier than it really was.

Prior to that, I was homeless, living in my 1992 Toyota Tercel.

Also a small space.

None of this compares to this apartment in Paris, which is only eight square meters in size. Despite it’s miniscule size, it contains a kitchen, bathroom, dining room, and bedroom, all thanks to some incredibly clever design.  

I think I would suffer from extreme claustrophobia if I were forced to live there, but then again, I bet the rent is fairly cheap.

Seriously badass porcupine

Underdog was an impressive superhero. He spoke in rhyme. He saved Sweet Polly Purebred every week. He was not bothered by collateral damage. He even had a great catchphrase:

There’s no need to fear–
Underdog is here!

But when I think of underdogs in the future, I’ll be thinking of a porcupine.

This porcupine. The one that survived an encounter with 19 lions.

She can find her own bed, and it hurt.

My daughter woke up at 4:00 AM this morning. She came into our bedroom and asked for some tissues. After Elysha hand her the box, I asked her if she’d like me to tuck her back into bed.

Her reply:

“I know where my bed is, Dad. I don’t need your help.”

Can a five year-old really be that jaded already?