Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 475

I don’t stretch. I win.

I don’t like to walk because I could be running instead. Walking seems like such a waste of time.

Similarly, I don’t stretch before working out because I could be working out instead.

I told this to a college athlete recently and she was shocked. She attempted to convince me about the importance of stretching before any workout.

Less than a week later comes news that there is growing scientific consensus that “pre-exercise stretching is generally unnecessary and likely counterproductive.”

I wish I could go back in time and say, “I told you so!” to my high school track and field coach. All those hours of stretching in the multi-purpose room prior to practice was apparently a complete waste of my time.

It’s moments like these that reinforce my natural inclination towards nonconformity. Just when everyone thinks I’m crazy for behaving counterintuitive or seeming to follow a nonexistent trend, I’m proven to be correct.

This doesn’t actually happen (except in exceptionally rare instances like this), but it’s the belief that they happen and will begin happening more frequently, in combination with the denial over how rarely they actually happen that encourage me to continue adhering to my unconventional instincts.

Not to mention a supremely patient and accepting wife.   

First bagel

I didn’t eat my first bagel (from the freezer case at the local Almac’s grocery store) until I was almost twenty years old. 

My son has beaten me by about  two decades.

 

Speak Up storyteller: Okey Ndibe

Less than a month to go before our inaugural Speak Up storytelling event at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT.

May 4 at 7:00 PM. Admission is free.

Today I’m proud to introduce our second storyteller, Okey Ndibe. My wife and I had the honor of getting to know Okey while his children attended the school where we teach, and I have listened to him tell stories to children as part of several cultural celebrations at our school.  

His biography will astound you. We can’t wait to find out what he has planned for us next month.

_____________________________    

Okey Ndibe

Until spring 2012, Okey taught fiction and African literature at Trinity College in Hartford, CT (where the student-run newspaper, The Trinity Tripod, named him one of 15 professors “students must take classes with before graduating”). He is currently a visiting professor of Africana literature at Brown University in Providence, RI where he co-teaches a course with Chinua Achebe, author of the inimitable Things Fall Apart.

Okey earned an MFA and PhD from U Mass, Amherst. This Fall, Soho Press (NYC) will publish his novel, foreign gods, inc. His first novel, Arrows of Rain, was published by Heinemann (UK) in their esteemed African Writers Series. Ten years after its publication, the novel – which has drawn praise from numerous critics and authors, including Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and John Edgar Wideman – continues to maintain impressive sales. The U.K-based New Internationalist magazine described Arrows of Rain as “a powerful and gritty debut.” He also co-edited (with Zimbabwean author Chenjerai Hove) a book titled Writers, Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa.

Okey has taught at Connecticut College in New London, CT (where the student newspaper listed him as one of the college’s five outstanding professors), and Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, MA, winning the college’s New Faculty Award. During the 2001-2002 year, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. He was the founding editor of African Commentary, a magazine published in the U.S. by novelist Chinua Achebe, author of the classic novel, Things Fall Apart.

From 2000 to 2001, Okey served on the editorial board of Hartford Courant where his essay titled “Eyes to the Ground: The Perils of the Black Student” won the 2001 Association of Opinion Page Editors award for best opinion essay in an American newspaper.

Since 1999, Okey has written a column on Nigeria’s political, social and cultural affairs that’s widely syndicated by Nigerian newspapers and numerous websites. His unsparing stance against official corruption in Nigeria earned him inclusion on a government list of “enemies of the state.” In January 2011, Nigeria’s security agents arrested him, confiscated his Nigerian and American passports, and briefly detained him. His ordeal was covered by the Nigerian and international media (including major American, British, Canadian, French, and German newspapers). Protests by various writers (among them Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe), writers organizations and the Connecticut Congressional delegation forced the Nigerian government to return his confiscated passports. Okey has been detained five more times since then, most recently this January when the security agency held him overnight for more than 10 hours before he was let go.

Okey is currently working on a memoir titled Going Dutch and Other American Misadventures – detailing his often hilarious as well as frightful experiences as an immigrant in the US. The memoir dwells on such experiences as his arrest – ten days after his arrival in America – as a bank robbery suspect. A widely traveled lecturer and raconteur in Nigeria, Okey frequently gives lectures and readings in Africa, Europe, and on college campuses in the US and Canada. In 2010, the Nigerian Peoples Parliament (a political pressure group of Nigerians resident abroad) elected him as speaker. 

Resolution update: March

In an effort to hold myself accountable, I post the progress of my yearly goals at the end of each month on this blog. The following are the results through March. 

1. Don’t die.

Don’t mean to jinx things, but I kicked ass with this goal in March.

2. Lose ten pounds.

Three pounds down and holding annoyingly steady.

3. Do at least 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups five days a day.  Also complete at least two two-minute planks five days per week.

Done. 

4. Launch at least one podcast.

Preliminary work has officially begun.

5. Practice the flute for at least an hour a week.

The broken flute remains in the back of my car. One of my students loaned me a flute because he wants to play a duet with me. I haven’t removed it from the case. I don’t think any of this counts as progress.

6. Complete my fifth novel before the Ides of March.

Done! Huzzah! 

7. Complete my sixth novel.

I’m in the process of deciding which book will be next. There are eight choices, and I am equally excited about each one. Discussions with my agent and my wife have begun.

8. Sell one children’s book to a publisher.

I have three manuscripts in various states of being. I will share these drafts with students and adults this month to determine the one that I should focus upon first.

9. Complete a book proposal for my memoir.

Work will not begin on this goal until the summer.

10. Complete at least twelve blog posts on my brother and sister blog.

No blog posts written yet for the year.    

11. Become certified to teach high school English by completing two required classes.

I am now just one class and an inexplicable $50 away from achieving certification. That class will be taken in the summer. 

12. Publish at least one Op-Ed in a newspaper.

I had a second piece published in the Huffington Post in March and another in Beyond he Margins. Both of these publishing outlets exist online but might be better in terms of audience and publicity than an actual newspaper. I may need to rethink this goal.

13. Attend at least eight Moth events with the intention of telling a story.

I attended three Moth events in March. I told a story at the GrandSLAM Championship in The Music Hall in Williamsburg and placed second. I told a story at The Bell House in Brooklyn and placed third. I told a story at the New School in Manhattan and placed a surprising fifth (it was one of my best stories, I think). That brings my total to five Moth events in 2013.

14. Locate a playhouse to serve as the next venue for The Clowns.

The script, the score and the soundtrack are now in the hands of even more necessary people. Fingers crossed. We also plan on applying for a New York theater festival in 2014, though that application process has not yet begun.

15. Give yoga an honest try.

Though I’m ready to try this whenever possible, the summer might be the most feasible time to attempt this goal.

16. Meditate for at least five minutes every day.

Done.

17. De-clutter the garage.

Progress continues. The garage may me empty by the end of April.

18. De-clutter the basement.

No progress. Summer job.

19. De-clutter the shed

No progress. Summer job.

20. Reduce the amount of soda I am drinking by 50%.

My plan was to begin recording my soda intake in March. I failed. I also failed to begin recording in April, so I will have to wait until May to begin this project.

21. Try at least one new dish per month, even if it contains ingredients that I wouldn’t normally consider palatable.

In March I tried a curry chicken dish that I liked a lot and sugar snap peas (as part of a rice dish) that were palatable. 

22. Conduct the ninth No-Longer-Annual A-Mattzing Race in 2013.

No progress. Summer job.

23. Post my progress in terms of these resolutions on this blog on the first day of every month.

I am four days late.

Unacceptable platitude #4

It’s been a long time since I added to my list of unacceptable platitudes. Past platitudes include:

“That’s your opinion.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

“At least I admit my faults.”

Today I offer you a new one.

“To each his own”

“To each his own” is ridiculous. It is a statement that seeks to exonerate all human beings of any and all actions ever taken. It implies that judging a person’s actions or words is not valid or acceptable because each person has the right to say or do whatever he or she wishes.

This is stupid.

In practice, it looks like this:

“Yes, it’s true, Melissa’s four year old son only eats hotdogs and candy corn when the family goes to restaurants, and yes, their son still sleeps in a toddler bed in Melissa’s room, and yes, her son can only fall asleep if the television is on, but to each his own.”

No. Not true. Melissa is an idiot and a lunatic.

If “to each his own” was actually a valid bit of discourse, all form of political discourse would immediately be rendered invalid and meaningless. Philosophical and religious debate would come to an end. Disagreements of almost every kind would be unnecessary. Regardless of what your friend, neighbor or family member was saying or doing, you would never need to disagree or even comment because “to each his own.”  

From a rhetorical perspective, “to each is own” is often a metaphorical mark of punctuation that a person uses in desperation when all other attempts to win an argument have failed. It is the sign that your opponent has lost the argument and  simply wishes to extract him or herself from the disagreement with a shred of dignity.

Don’t allow such stupidity to stand unchallenged.

How dare the Pope act so kindly or equitably

According to the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and leading Catholic authorities, Pope Francis’s recent decision to wash the feet of two girls, including a Muslim, during a traditional Holy Thursday ritual has been viewed as an attack on Church law by conservative elements of the Catholic Church, of which there are many.

The traditional foot-washing ceremony reenacts the way in which Jesus washed the feet of his twelve apostles during the Last Supper. The Catholic Church has long said women can’t participate because the apostles were all men.

A lesson for the Catholic Church:

There are moments in your life when you think or believe something but know better than to express your opinion out loud lest you sound like a jackass.

If your grandmother has baked a birthday cake that tastes like cardboard, you know to keep your mouth shut even after Grandma has gone home because complaining about an elderly woman’s cooking prowess is sure to make you look downright despicable.

If you think that all babies are fairly annoying, ugly and stupid, you wouldn’t announce this to the world lest people think you are a heartless jerk.

If you believe that men are more naturally gifted at mathematics than women, you keep this opinion to yourself unless you are certain that your audience is made up entirely of morons like yourself.

Even most racists know better than to express their mindless hatred out loud. They may avoid friendship with people outside their race or even cross the street in order to avoid crossing paths with a person who does not look like them, but only the most stupid of racists announce their prejudice to the world.  

I suggest that the Catholic Church adopt a similar strategy.

Be angry with the Pope for washing the feet of a young girl or a Muslim.

Go right ahead and believe that only human beings equipped with penises are entitled to this honor.

Feel free to fear that the Pope’s decision to wash the feet of penis-less people might signal an eventual change in Church doctrine that would establish equality between the sexes.

These are all terrible things to think, but you are certainly entitled to think them.   

But don’t say any of them aloud.

When you express outrage over the Pope’s decision to wash the feet of a girl or a Muslim, you come across as a bigoted, sexist jackass. You make your Church seem less palatable and inviting. You do harm to your religion as a whole.

When your criticism borders on insanity, it’s best to keep your stupid mouth shut.

Our boy!

There were some super cute naked photos as well, but I decided not to expose his bottom to the world.

  

Two peas in a pod

I can only assume that my daughter and her grandfather get along so well because they are so close in maturity level.

Whatever the reason, Clara thinks of Gramps as one of her best friends, and I couldn’t feel more grateful for their relationship.

 

Done.

When my wife doesn’t like something I’ve written, she tilts her head, squints her eyes and rereads, as if doing so will make it look better.

I fear that look. I despise that look.

But it also forces me to do things like rewrite the last two chapters of my current manuscript, thus changing the ending completely.

For the better.

The book is done. The first draft, at least. And a good draft, too. It needs work, but it’s complete.

My fifth novel. The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs.

Spamming scumbag of the week

Each week, amongst the many interesting, insightful and occasionally scathing comments on my blog, I find comments by businesses and/or spammers who are clever enough to construct comments that avoid spam detection technology.

I delete these comments and ban their IP address, but I know that I will be doing the same thing again tomorrow for a new spamming scumbag.

In response, I’ve decided to write one post each week that highlights these businesses that either engage in this spamming behavior on their own or have hired spammers to do it for them. My intent is to shame these vile companies and damage their business in the process. I realize that both goals are unlikely to be achieved, but attempting to do so will make me feel good, and that is enough.

This week I had to contend with only one spamming scumbag, perhaps because this is Easter week and the even the most vile of cretins don’t like to engage in this kind of behavior at this time of year.

Today I present to you Austin Oral Maxillofacial Surgery, a company serving central Texas for over forty years with ten convenient locations. One of the three reasons to choose this team of twelve white, male surgeons, according to their website (which I found via a spam comment on my blog), is because “You and your family truly matter to us.”

Apparently this is not the case if you are a blogger trying to keep an audience entertained and engaged while trying to find time for his wife and two children.

If you require oral surgery and live in central Texas, I suggest you contact Central Texas Oral Maxillofacial Surgery instead. Dr. Lavelle Ford, a Vietnam veteran and former Captain in the Army Dental Corp, is board certified as a Diplomate in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.

More important, as far as I can tell he is also not a spamming scumbag, which makes him okay in my book.