Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 535

Hybrid snobbery

The grocery store that will sell me damn good pizza but cannot deign to provide a soda that wasn’t squeezed from the bark of a tree has decided to offer preferred parking to the owner of hybrid automobiles, presumably to reward them for their contributions to the environment.

This, of course, is incredibly stupid, not only because it alienates a large percentage of the customer base, but because the idea that a hybrid is the best and only ecofriendly vehicle that a person can drive is a myth.

While a hybrid vehicle may reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, the CO2 costs involved in the manufacture and transportation of a new vehicle can account for as much as 28 percent of the CO2 emissions that will be generated during the life of the vehicle, making the purchase of a used car or the choice to continue driving an older car an equally (if not more) ecofriendly decision.

And don’t forget that the new hybrids‚ despite lower emissions and better gas mileage‚ actually have a much larger environmental impact in their manufacture, compared to non-hybrids. The batteries that store energy for the drive train are no friend to the environment‚ and having two engines under one hood increases manufacturing emissions. And all-electric vehicles are only emission-free if the outlet providing the juice is connected to a renewable energy source, not a coal-burning power plant, as is more likely.

I currently drive a 2003 Subaru Baja. I could have purchased a new car long ago but have opted to continue driving my nine year old vehicle because it’s still doing its job. It’s reliable, fuel efficient and in decent shape. To purchase a hybrid at this point would make no sense in terms of the environment.

Yet Whole Foods and other businesses catering to hybrid drivers ignore this scientific reality.

Why?

I’m guessing that rows of shiny new hybrids abutting their businesses do more to enhance the store’s image than a row of ten year old vehicles. 

Best baby gift so far

It actually made Elysha a little teary-eyed, but she’s still pretty hormonal, so I’m not sure how much of the emotion was genuine.

 

The first rule of memoir

As I prepare to write my first memoir, I shall embrace this concept fully.

You have been warned, you rotten people who did bad things to me.

The Moth: Bike Off Roof

On April 19 of this year, I took the stage at The Moth StorySLAM at Housing Works in Manhattan to tell a story. The theme of the night was Armor. 

I placed second on the evening, scoring exceptionally well but losing to former StorySLAM winner Diana Spechler, whose story about losing her virginity (which included the difficulties in dealing with her fibrous hymen) was quite deserving of the win.

Diana and I will be competing against each other in July at the GrandSLAM Championship.

Here a recording of the story I told that night:

Competing against my hero

Storyteller Steve Zimmer is a hero of mine. I’ve listened to him several times on The Moth’s weekly podcast and have heard him tell stories live at Moth events around the city. I adore this style of storytelling and am always impressed with his performance.

But Steve is also my competitor at the upcoming Moth GrandSLAM Championship in July, which I find both exciting and daunting.

Steve has told stories at more than 75 StorySLAMs and has been to 10 GrandSLAM championships.

By contrast, I have told stories at four StorySLAMs, and this will be my second GrandSLAM championship.

In the experience department, Steve has quite a leg up on me.

I’ve always wondered how veteran storytellers prepare for competition, and in this short video, Steve discusses several of his techniques, as well as admitting to the level of nervousness and competitiveness that he experiences when he takes the stage.

Overall, I suspect that I am slightly less nervous than Steve when I take the stage but at least as competitive, if not more. As much as I enjoy taking the stage and telling a story, the competitive side of The Moth has always appealed to me as well.

But competing against one of my storytelling heroes next month will probably increase my level of nervousness considerably.    

My hometown on Blackstone, Massachusetts needs to learn the value of doing nothing

I grew up in Blackstone, Massachusetts, a small town on the border of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

I love Blackstone. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I’ve actually set one of my future novels in Blackstone, partly because it’s easier for me to write about a place I already know but also because of the affection I still have for the town.

I was taking a peek at Blackstone’s official website yesterday for reasons I honestly can’t remember when I clicked on the About Blackstone tab, expecting to learn a little bit about the history of my hometown.

What I found was a single page PDF that was clearly written by a middle school student suffering from a traumatic brain injury. It is a poorly written, strikingly nonspecific, occasionally incomprehensible document that offers nothing of value to the reader. Comprised of three sections, it is the third section that I think is the worst.

Titled ORGANIZATIONS, I have pasted it below for your examination. In terms of grammar, please note the capitalization of the words Civic Organizations and the double and triple spacing after sentences.

Even worse, I don’t think it’s possible to write three sentences containing less  information than these. This is truly a study in the art of the wasted word, a masterpiece of drivel and something that does not belong anywhere in print, let alone on the official webpage of my hometown.

What would a person who was considering moving to Blackstone think after landing on this page?

Worst of all, this is not a difficult problem to solve.

Why not simply link to Blackstone’s Wikipedia page, which isn’t great but at least is comprised of facts and correct grammar.

Or why not sponsor a contest at the high school, asking juniors and seniors to write their own About Blackstone page. Allow students to spend the entire school year working on their entry, then post the best piece on the website, crediting the student for the work.

Or how about simply deleting the tab altogether?

As a general rule of thumb, nothing is almost always better than dreck.

Resemblance update

For those of you who doubted the resemblance when I first posted photos of my newborn son and his grandfather, what do you think now?

 

When my wife and I argue, it’s about how our eldest child was conceived

I recently read that money is the number one thing that people say they argue about most in marriage.

Arguing about the children is second on the list.

To be honest, my wife and I don’t argue very much, and when we do, it’s never about money or children.

We are both frugal as hell and want little in terms of material possessions, so we are almost always on the same page in terms of money.

And as teachers, we both understand the importance of presenting a unified front to our children, so we avoid disagreements about parenting in front of the kids. By the time we are finally alone and able to argue about a particular parenting decision, we’ve often forgotten the disagreement altogether.

No, when my wife and I argue, it is typically about our differing recollections of the past. I recall an event occurring one way, and she recalls it happening another way. An argument then ensues, with each person steadfastly defending his or her specific memory of the situation.

A perfect example, as off this is, oddly enough, how our first born was conceived. I thought that I was holding the frozen corn at the time of conception and Elysha thought that she was.

Luckily, I write to my daughter (and now my son) every day and post those messages to a blog for them to read someday, so when this particular disagreement arose, we were able to look back in the blog’s archive and determine who was correct.

Here is the post detailing our daughter’s conception, including the answer to the question about who was holding the corn:

Actually, here’s how it really happened.

Your mom wanted to get pregnant very badly. I did as well, but with your mom, it became a full time job. She was taking daily basal temperature readings and using online software to calculate her precise cycle, pinpointing the time in which she ovulated to the day.

Thanks to this intense data-gathering, it has never been so easy for me to wake her up in the morning. I’d tell her that it was time to take her temperature, and rather than groaning like an old house and falling back asleep, she’d immediately pop the thermometer in her mouth.

With your mom, little one, it’s typically all or nothing.

So we had been trying to get pregnant for one whole month without success and your mom was having a fit. Even though it takes many couples six months, a year, or more to become pregnant, your mom was near panic after missing pregnancy on our first try. We were 0-1 and she was acting like George Steinbrenner. 

I expected to be traded any day.

With her next ovulation period approaching, your mom had managed, through the use of this software, to identify precise day of greatest fertility, and though we were fooling around for the days and weeks before this day, Tuesday, May 6th was a red-letter day on our calendar. Our next real shot at getting pregnant.

The whole process sounds quite romantic and spontaneous, doesn’t it? 

On that fateful Tuesday night, disaster struck. While cooking dinner, your mom reached for a pan, forgetting that it had come out of the oven just moments before. She burned her hand badly, and having worked in restaurants for years, I know how painful a burn like this can be. Throughout the night we rotated frozen bags of vegetables in and out of her hand to reduce the pain. In the back of my mind, I thought that we had probably missed our chance at getting pregnant this month. With a hand so badly burned, there was no chance that we would be fooling around that night.  

Silly me.

When it came time for bed, your mom’s hand was no better, but she stepped into the bedroom with a bag of frozen corn in her hand, declaring herself ready and able to make a baby. Admittedly, I had my doubts. Her hand was a deep red and I expected blisters to form before long. But your mom was a trooper and pushed through the pain.

I suspect that for the first time in human history, a couple had sex while the woman clung to a bag of frozen corn.  

And it worked. Amidst the thermometers and online software and frozen corn, you were conceived that evening.

Let me apologize ahead of time for the lifetime of frozen corn jokes that I have lined up for you.

See the resemblance?

Grandpa on the left, grandson (and my son) on the right.

 

Peeping Tom

My favorite photo from last week’s Book Expo America was Erin Morgenstern’s Instagram of the advanced readers copies she acquired while at the Expo.

Erin Morgenstern is the author of THE NIGHT CIRCUS, a book that I enjoyed very much. It is especially thrilling when an author who I respect and admire a great deal is interested in reading one of my books.

Even though I’ve published two novels and have a third on the way, I still feel very much like an outsider when it comes to the publishing world. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who is peeking through the windows into the industry rather than stepping through its door.

Moments like seeing my book in Erin Morgenstern’s pile bring me a bit closer to that proverbial door.