Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 426

I would love to play the role of Gandalf the Grey and stop trains. Just not at this moment.

I see this kind of hilarious brilliance (make sure you watch until the very end), and I think three things:

I wish I had thought of that first.
With my luck, I would’ve been arrested on suspicious of terrorism.
Despite how much I love and admire this, I’m not sure that I would want to invest the amount of time and energy required to produce a single minute of video that will likely be forgotten in a month (even one as amazing and daring as this).

I’m kind of glad that someone else is doing this for me, even though part of me desperately wants to try something like this myself.

Maybe when my kids are older and can do it with me…

My greatest treasures

   

The needless shortening of words is cray tradge. It must stop

I’m going on the record as vehemently opposing the needless shortening of words.

This weekend I heard someone shorten champagne to champers. On the radio, no less.

Not only does this sound stupid, but it’s impossible to spell champers without confusing people.

Champers also has the same number of syllables as champagne, thereby nullifying any purpose of the reduction  and making me think that champers is probably a word used most often by douchebags.

Just say it aloud a few times:

“On New Year’s Eve, I think I’ll have a little champers.”

I feel stupider each time that I say it.

Even the dog thinks I’m an idiot.  

Other acts of word shortening stupidity include cray, cray-cray, hundo, tradge, whatevs, gorg, hilar, redonk, nevs, brill, bestie, and perhaps the worst of them all, totes.

No. Jelly is the worst. No, totes. No, jelly. 

There’s also the shortening of the phrase “the usual” minus the “ual,” but I can’t begin to imagine how to spell that.

There are more. Many more. I’m sure you know lots of them. Hopefully you hate them as much as me. I’ll refrain from listing any more in fear of offending too many champers-drinking readers.

Then again, perhaps I am a hard-lined word completeist.

(I made that word up and am undecided about the final e. Thoughts?)

Maybe I need to be a little more flexible about the language. I understand that the English language is a living, breathing entity constantly undergoing change, but this does not mean that every change is good and needs to be accepted. For a short and terrifying moment in American history, tubular was a word that people were using to express the greatness of something, but except in small pockets of stupidity, that died quickly.

Perhaps this trend in needless word shortening will die a similar death.

Still, I am admittedly a hardliner. I’m not even comfortable using the word photo. I much prefer photograph, though I acknowledge that this is an extreme position to take.

But in general, the needless shortening of words needs to stop. You sound like an idiot. You sound ridiculous.

No redonk.

Apple’s “Misunderstood” is brilliant and completely unrealistic

Even though I saw the ending coming a mile away, I thought this commercial was incredibly clever. Sweet, even.

Also completely unrealistic.

Every time I see someone with their head buried in their phone, they are texting or playing that stupid Candy Crush game.

Sadly, no one is ever creating. 

Admittedly, I have never played Candy Crush, but I think stupid is a more than safe assumption.

The Moth: The Boy’s Mother Was Dead

The following is a story that I told at a Moth StorySLAM at The Bitter End in New York City earlier this year. 

The theme of the night was Scars.

I told a story about a terrible mistake that I made while student teaching.

I finished in second place.

103 degrees

Not even an iPad can defeat a 103 degree fever.

 

Best goals ever

I’m a big fan of goal setting. At the beginning of very year, I establish a list of difficult-to-achieve New Year’s resolutions and then work like hell to achieve them. I document my progress, post it to my blog and add and modify goals when necessary.

I’ve been setting goals for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a list of goals as perfect as this one:

Cell phone crashing: Beyond even me

I have a lot of nerve. I say things that perhaps shouldn’t be said.

On Saturday morning, while waiting in line, a overheard a woman tell a McDonald’s manager that the parking lot wasn’t plowed yet.

In response, I told her that she had forgotten to wear her Captain Obvious cape today.

I’m very defensive of McDonald’s employees.

She stared at me, confused.

The manager didn’t charge me for breakfast.

I’ve done even more nervy thing in the past, but even I don’t think I could pull off this stunt.

2013 Matthew Dicks Holiday Gift Guide

In keeping with the way that I shop for the holidays (last minute), I present my first ever holiday gift guide. I have attempted to create a list of gifts that are inexpensive, in some cases unique and guaranteed to please the recipient.

Almost all of these gifts also fall into the four categories of gifts that I consider most desirable:

Time
Experience
Knowledge
Cash

If purchasing gifts for your loved ones during this holiday season, you may  want to review my two simple rules of gift giving as well.

Happy holidays!

___________________________  

1. Remote control helicopter

I cannot speak for women, but every single man in the world wants a remote controlled  helicopter, regardless of what he may say. It is the ultimate gift for any man (with the exception of actual helicopter pilots… maybe). 

2. Microloan account

Open an account at a website like Kiva.org or Microplace.com on behalf of the recipient for as little as $20 and allow him or her to begin making loans to entrepreneurs  around the world. When the money is paid back into the account, it can loaned again and again,

It’s a great gift for anyone, and especially for a child. We have a microloan account in our classroom, and the kids love reading the entrepreneurs’ applications and choosing the person who they want to help.

 

I suggested this gift last year and met some resistance from people who don’t feel that this qualifies as a gift.

Others accused me of recommending it as a gift simply because I expected it to annoy people.

While this may be the case, it was not my intent when recommending a microloan account as a gift. Jason Kottke recommended this same gift on his blog last week (copycat) and summarizes the proper attitude toward these people nicely:

Any family or friends who think you’re a jerk for doing this are annoying, and you should make new friends and find a different family. 

3. Five hours of babysitting

If your friend or family member has young children, this gift is invaluable but will cost you nothing but an evening of your time.

Give this gift as often as possible.

4. Knowledge

This is another gift suggestion that I made last year. Ask your friend or family member for a list of skills that he or she lacks but would like to learn (perhaps you have some ideas of what they lack already). If you know how to do something on their list, offer to teach them.

It’s an outstanding gift. You offer time and expertise, and the recipient gains a valuable skill.

Just this past week, John Dickerson of Slate tweeted that Evernote users can highlight text in any webpage or document and use Windows-A or Apple-A to automatically send that text directly into Evernote.

This is huge for me. Better than any sweater or scarf that I might receive this year. I told him that I considered it his holiday gift to me.  

My current list of things I want to learn includes:

Change the oil in my car
Give my car a tune-up
Invest in individual stocks
Hit my driver longer and more consistently
Install replacement windows in my home
Become more knowledgeable and skilled with Word Press
Sync all my calendars reliably on my iPhone

5. Lord or Lady of Sealand

The Principality of Sealand is a recognized micronation, located on a former War War II sea fort in the North Sea, 7 miles off the coast of Suffolk, England.

Since 1967 the facility has been occupied by family and associates of Paddy Roy Bates, who claim that it is an independent sovereign state. Bates seized it from a group of pirate radio broadcasters in 1967. He established Sealand as a nation in 1975 with the writing of a constitution and establishment of other national symbols.

For £29.99, you can purchase the title of Lord, Lady, Baron or Baroness to the country of Sealand, along with all the official documentation required to confer such a title.

I am a Lord of Sealand. I include this fact in my bio. Despite also mentioning my two near-death experiences and my suspension in high school for inciting riot upon myself, the question most often asked about my bio pertains to my Lordship of Sealand, and this discussion often results in the subsequent purchase of a Sealand title of nobility.

Everyone wants to be a Lord or Lady. Now you can make this happen for someone for real.

6. A lifetime exemption to all future thank you cards

If you have a friend or relative with whom you regularly exchange gifts, this proverbial “Get Out of Jail” free card is invaluable because it offers the recipient life’s most precious commodity:

Time.

Also, postage.

Never again will your friend be forced to spend the time writing and sending you a thank you card. Over the course of a friendship, this is a gift that can really add up in time saved.

7. A refrigerator box

It’s tends to be a gift better suited for children, but it’s a perfectly acceptable for a more self-actualized adult, too.

There are few things in this world more entertaining than an enormous box.

I’m not the only one who recognizes the greatness of this gift.

8. Terror

The best gift I ever received was from my friend, Jeff, who handed me a gift box at my bachelor party and told me that it was his pre-wedding gift to me, and that I needed to give it to my friend, Tom. I tried to ask why I needed to give my gift to someone else but he insisted that I simply hand it over to Tom and say, “This is for you.”

I did.

We were standing near the starter’s shack at one of our favorite golf course, surrounded by friends and strangers who were waiting to tee off. Tom untied the ribbon, opened the box and found an enormous spider inside, still very much alive and apparently quite angry. He threw the box into the air, screamed like a girl, and ran about twenty feet before coming to a stop.

Tom is terrified of spiders.

What a gift.

It’s admittedly a difficult gift to reproduce, and it will require ingenuity and preparation, but if you can pull off a prank on behalf of a friend or loved one,  there may not be a better gift in the world.

7 serious problems with the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer television special

As well as the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer television special holds up after 50 years (I still adore it), there are admittedly some serious problems with the special in relation to modern day norms that I noticed while watching the special with my family last night.

1.  Yukon Cornelius carries a gun and a knife throughout the episode.

While I think that the gun (and probably the knife) are poor choices for a children’s television special, the savvy viewer is also left wondering why Yukon Cornelius doesn’t simply shoot the Abominable Snow Monster that is about to devour his friends.

2.  There is massive, pervasive, long-term, adult-sponsored bullying of Rudolph by Santa Claus, Comet and his many reindeer friends.

3.  Rudolph’s father, Donner, at various points in the special rejects his son based upon his physical appearance and inflicts serious psychological abuse upon him.

4. Donner’s relationship to his wife is overtly misogynistic. She barely speaks throughout the special, is told by her husband to stay home rather than engaging in “man’s work” and doesn’t have a say in the naming of her son. 

5.  Although female and male reindeer grow equal sized antlers in real life, the female reindeer in the special are capable of only growing tiny nubs instead of full sided antlers, which strikes me as fairly sexist and consistent with the misogyny that is pervasive throughout the special. 

 

6.  The female rag doll on the Island of Misfit Toys has no discernible misfit problem, leaving the viewer to wonder why she is on the island at all.

Incidentally, the problem was revealed in 2007 (43 years after it’s original broadcast) on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! when the producer of the special, Arthur Rankin, said Dolly’s problem was psychological, caused by being abandoned by her mistress and suffering depression from feeling unloved.

Even if this were true, it doesn’t exactly fit a children’s holiday special.

7.  Our hero’s solution to the Abominable Snow Monster of the North is to concuss him with a boulder and rip his teeth out of his mouth with a pair of pliers while he is unconscious, thereby eliminating his ability to eat small, woodland creatures. 

In a more enlightened age, perhaps the Abominable Snow Monster could have been angry because of a aching cavity or periodontal disease, and once taken care of by Hermey, the elf who wants to be a dentist, he reverts to a more kind and gentle nature.

This would be more humane, more aligned to Hermey’s desire to help people through dentistry and considerably more child-friendly than yanking out the monster’s teeth while he is unconscious.