Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 520

I can teach you how to sleep

TIME magazine reports that “the business of helping people get a good night’s rest is likely to remain what it is: A fast-growing sector in an otherwise slow-moving economy.”

In a piece published earlier this week, writer Gary Belsky outlines some of the products and services being offered to a sleep-deprived population, including The Benjamin Hotel’s “sleep concierge,” which is “just one aspect of a smartly differentiated approach to business travel; specifically, a focus on the part of business travel that involves sleeping.”

If you are one of these sleep-deprived people, I’d like to point out that I am an unlicensed sleep expert, and unless you have an honest-to-goodness medical condition that interferes with your sleep, I can probably improve the quality of your sleep and reduce the number of hours of sleep that you require rather simply.

I offer you three simple steps to improve your sleep, and I offer them to you free of charge, unless of course you are inclined to send me some money, which would be perfectly fine.

In addition, I can probably improve the sleep habits of your infants and toddlers as well by presenting to you these four simple steps, also free of charge, though donations are accepted if not encouraged.

If “the business of helping people get a good night’s rest is a fast-growing sector in an otherwise slow-moving economy,” I want a piece of that pie, damn it. 

When choosing a gravestone, why not get creative?

Actor Leslie Nielson’s tombstone is a park bench which engraved with his trademark quote:

Sit down whenever you can.

In 2002 interview regarding his film “Men with Brooms” (which centered on curling), Neilson mentioned that he studied the women’s curing teams at the Olympics and noticed how the “kept the rock in closer to them, and [sat] down more on their legs.”

He declared then that if he ever gets into another curling movie he’ll sit down, and that’s his advice to actors “Always sit down. Whenever you can.” Whether by that he meant “take time to relax whenever you can” or “focus intently on the task” or “don’t work harder than you have to,” we can never be sure.

But it got me thinking about what I might use for a tombstone instead of the traditional marker. Though Plan A is to never die and Plan B (if someone ruins Plan A by dropping a safe on my head or something similar) is to have my ashes spread at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, I’ve told my wife that I am not opposed to having a marker where my future generations can visit me.

But why choose an ordinary  gravestone when there are so many other options?

I’ll continue to consider this decision carefully, but at the moment, I’m leaning toward memorializing myself in a shot put pit. My idea to capture some of the competitiveness that filled my life while also mitigating the tedium often associated with visiting a cemetery.

A shot put pit seems ideal. A large shot put stone (perhaps larger than an official stone) would serve as my official marker, but it would be placed within a well manicured shot put circle. A more traditional stone marker would be placed just outside the circle, and this would be be engraved with  some of the more pertinent rules of the sport and encourage visitors to toss the shot put as often as they would like. This might even encourage visitors to stay longer and visit repeatedly.

I love the idea of visitors tossing my marker around in an effort to determine who is strongest amongst their group.

In truth, I would prefer that my marker be related to golf, basketball or even poker, but so far I have yet to come up with a viable option in relation to any of these sports or games. The shot put is large, heavy, can be made from stone, and can be engraved with my name and other necessary biographical information, making it ideal for this purpose. 

So this is my current Plan C. I expect it to change as better ideas emerge, but it’s always good to have a Plan C in the event someone decides to drop a safe on my head tomorrow.      

Not everyone finds me adorable.

Face down! All of you!

Note the position of the babies (and the pig)  in my daughter’s crib.

Every single one of them is face down. This, in my daughter’s mind, is the only way that anyone should sleep. Dolls. Stuffed animals. Even people. When I pretend to sleep, she rolls me over until I am suffocating on my pillow.

She doesn’t sleep face down anymore, but I don’t think she’s aware of this. 

It’s a little creepy walking into my daughter’s bedroom in the morning and finding five babies and a pig all face down in the corner as if they’re in the midst of a bank heist.

Even worse, I recently read that your dreams may be influenced by the position in which you sleep. One study found sleeping face down led to more erotic dreams.

I think I prefer the image of the bank heist.

Perhaps the strangest job I ever had should’ve remained forgotten

In completing an author questionnaire for a blogger as part of the promotion for my upcoming book, I was asked:

What is the strangest job you ever had?

My answer recalled one of those bizarre and inexplicable moments in your life that you forget about unless someone asks you just the right question.

My answer:

When I was eighteen years old, I was paid $50 to strip down to a thong (provided by the host) for a bachelorette party that was being held in the crew room of a McDonald’s restaurant. I was then paid $50 to do the same thing again three months later (same thong).

I’m not sure if I was better off having forgotten that moment in my life or not.

I spy a fundamental misunderstanding of the “I Spy” game

While driving up to the Berkshires yesterday, we played “I Spy” in the car.

Clara: I spy with my little eye something very far away.

My wife and I offered several appropriate guesses, none of which were correct.

Elysha: Can we have a hint, please?

Clara: Do you want a hint?

Elysha: Yes, please.

Clara: Do you think it could be China?

Elysha: Is it China?

Clara: Yes!

I experienced my first taste of anti-Semitism through online poker, and I’m not even Jewish.

Self acknowledged gamer and geek Eisa Melendez wrote a piece for Slate on the challenges of being a female gamer in today’s world, including the horrific levels of sexual harassment that they routinely receive from male gamers.

I was an online gamer for a long time (and occasionally dip back in from time to time, and though I was admittedly a griefer (and proud of it), I never witnessed this kind of harassment first hand.

I have, however, experienced similar harassment while playing online poker, though not even close to the levels that some of these female gamers have suffered. Though I am not Jewish, my wife is, and several years ago, she placed a dreidel in my Christmas stocking. I quickly learned to play the game, only to discover that I was the only person in my wife’s immediate family who knew how to play or even wanted to play. Stymied by their disinterest in the game, I wondered what to do with the dreidel.

Then it occurred to me:

The dreidel would make an excellent card protector while I was playing poker. Lightweight, unique and perfectly sized, it was the ideal object to place atop my hole cards. In addition, when faced with a 50/50 decision, I could spin the dreidel and allow it to make the tough decision for me.

I’ve been using it ever since.

When it came time to register for online play, I was asked to provide a username, and I chose Dreidel Man. I wouldn’t be using my dreidel in the digital world, but I thought my username could pay homage to it.

Almost immediately, online players began mistaking me for Jewish because of the name and attacking me with anti-Semitic slurs. While this was an exceptionally small percentage of players, I found the attacks shocking and infuriating. While I am well aware that anti–Semitism still exists in this world, I was stunned that players would be so willing to affix this hateful sentiment to themselves in such a public way. Of course, the use of usernames affords a degree of anonymity that the real world does not, and anonymity has always been the shield of cowards, but still, these usernames were attached to players who would sit at digital tables and play alongside other, most of whom presumably found these attacks as disgusting as me.

As a white American male, it’s difficult to single out a single time in my life when I was discriminated against based upon my race, religion or sex. In fact, it could be argued that my sex has assisted me in the workplace. As a male in the predominantly female dominated field of elementary education, it’s difficult to imagine that my sex didn’t assist me in finding a job,

But this experience online gave me a glimpse into an ugly world that I had thus far managed to avoid. And yes, I realize that this experience certainly didn’t give me a true sense of what it’s like to be Jewish. I could always turn off the player-to-player chat function, and none of the harassment impacted my life in any real way. It all occurred online within the confines of the game. It was rude, ugly and disconcerting,  but it did give me a peek into a form of discrimination that I had not experienced firsthand before.

Imagine what might have happened had I used the name Dreidel Girl.

It could make for an interesting experiment at some point in the future. 

A true-life space adventure that includes bears and wolves!

Mental Floss posted a piece this week entitled 4 Ridiculous Space Accidents (Where Everyone Survived). The whole thing is excellent and well worth reading, but the first story was so good that I couldn’t risk you not clicking over and missing it.

Heads up, screen writers and producers: There is a movie here.

In the 1960s the Soviets took a great leap forward in the space race when they sent Voskhod 2 into orbit with two cosmonauts aboard. One of them, pilot Alexey Leonov, became the first human to leave a spacecraft and perform a spacewalk. While an impressive feat, it came very close to disaster: the Soviets had failed to account for the effect of the vacuum of space on Leonov’s spacesuit.

After 12 minutes outside the craft, the cosmonaut found that he could not bend his suit sufficiently to return through the hatch. Soviet television had to cut away because they feared the worst. By opening a valve in the suit, he was able to reduce the pressure enough to get back in. Once inside, Leonov and his co-pilot could barely get the hatch closed. At the time, reports never indicated that Leonov had any trouble during his spacewalk, but the cosmonaut later revealed that his 12-minute ordeal left him up to his knees in sweat—it filled the legs of his spacesuit. And had the spacewalk gone any more awry, Leonov had a suicide pill handy.

After Leonov and Belyayev were safely inside, they found that there was so little room in the capsule that they couldn’t actually get back in their seats, throwing off Voskhod’s center of gravity. On reentry, they ended up hundreds of miles off-course. The men were forced to spend a night in the woods of Siberia, and while the door had been blown off on impact, they were at least heavily armed to protect themselves from wolves and bears. Although helicopters located the cosmonauts, the woods were too thick to land and the two were not rescued until the next day.

Design yourself

NPR’s Robert Krulwich delivered a commencement address at Maine’s College of the Atlantic that I liked a lot.

In all honestly, his delivery isn’t great. His head is down a great deal of the time, and his posture leaves something to be desired, but the words are fantastic, so click play and then go do something else while you listen.

Outstanding life advice from an accomplished person who I have always admired.

Twain understood the power of stupidity

My wife cannot abide by cheating, even if you could be dead tomorrow.

A cheater has been unearthed.

A young Scrabble player was kicked out of the national championship in Florida on Tuesday after being caught hiding blank tiles. A player at a nearby table spotted the player, whom Scrabble officials declined to name, concealing a pair of blank tiles by dropping them on the floor.

I’m not much of a Scrabble player, but even I know that there are only two blank tiles in each set. What was this kid going to say when he played his third, fourth or fifth blank tile of the game?

There’s nothing worse than a stupid cheater.

This story brought to mind an incident that occurred several years ago while playing Scrabble with my wife. We were at the home of friends for a holiday dinner and found ourselves in an actual drawing room playing Scrabble with a woman who was 100 years old. The lady could barely hear a thing but she had enough wits about her to not only play Scrabble but cheat at the game as well. Her attempts at cheating consisted mainly of surreptitiously shuffling letters on the board in a way that assisted her in word building, the whole time appearing as if she didn’t know any better. Despite her advanced age and inability to hear, it was clear that she knew what she was doing, and my wife called her out on it.

The best part was listening to Elysha yell at the woman, because this is the only way you could get the lady to hear. Yes, my wife was accusing a 100 year old woman of cheating, and yes, she was insisting that this woman play within the confines of the rules, but she was shouting at the woman the whole time. It was out of necessity of course, but I didn’t care. It was hilarious. 

I actually asked Elysha to give the old lady a break and turn a blind eye to the cheating, but Elysha refused, insisting that this was a matter of principle.

For the record, Elysha won the game, defeating the centurion in what might have been the last Scrabble game of her life. 

I kind of wished that the old lady had started crying upon losing. It would have made for an even better story.