Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 601

Frisbee is still a challenge

She can count to twenty and identify about half a dozen shapes, and she's learning her letters rather quickly, but a simple game like frisbee is still posing quite a challenge for my little one.   

Rethinking my assault on the institution of coffee

A follow-up to my attack on the institution of coffee from yesterday:

A reader on Goodreads responded to my post with the following:

"Coffee is also a ritual, a comfort. I know I can get through a tough commute, a tough meeting, a tough report or a tough day in general if I have that coffee.

I wonder if the bigger problem is the over-sharing that goes on in social media?"

She might be onto something.  As I was forced to point out several times yesterday, my post was not an attack on coffee or the act of drinking coffee, but on the way in which people insist on talking about it, tweeting about it and raising it's status in society to unreasonable levels. 

It was an assault on the institution of coffee, which I thought I made pretty clear in the title of the post. 

Enjoy your coffee as much as I enjoy my Caffeine-free Diet Coke, but do I have to hear about it every damn day?

So I think the Goodreads' reader is right, or almost right.  It's not the over-sharing that bothers me, but the unnecessary-sharing.

The boring-sharing.

For example, I watched a woman ask for 12 creams and 12 sugars in her small coffee this morning at Dunkin Donuts (I was getting coffee for my wife).

As I stood in line, I tweeted about it, because I thought it was a highly unusual and slightly insane request.  I also noted the courage it must have taken to make a request like this. 

And my tweet got a response.  People couldn't believe it.  It made a guy who drinks his coffee black scoff in disgust.  It made another one laugh.

The aforementioned reader on Goodreads even responded:

12 creams and 12 sugars means it was no longer coffee, more like a vaguely coffee-tinted beverage.

Then I laughed.

This seemed like the right kind of coffee-sharing situation to me.  It was unique.  Odd.  Possibly amusing.  Maybe even conversation-inducing. 

"Need. Coffee. Now." or "This is going to be a three-cup day!" or "I need my Starbucks right this minute!" are none of these things.

They are no where close to these things.   

These kinds of comments only serve to glorify the need for coffee, and as I've said before, I get it.

You all need your coffee. 

Fine.  Drink up.

And please shut up unless you have something new to say.

7 perfectly good reasons why the use of a tanning booth is a perfectly acceptable

Tanning has gotten a significantly bad rap as of late, primarily due to concerns regarding skin cancer.  The FDA has issued health warnings related to tanning and are considering heightening the warnings on the tanning beds themselves.

Despite these dangers, I think there are some perfectly acceptable reasons to use a tanning booth on a regular basis. 

They are:

1.  You are so terribly insecure that you must modulate the tone of your skin in order to feel good about yourself.

2. You have always wanted your skin to be darker than your natural lip color.

3.  Your internal fragility does not permit you to stand alongside another person whose skin might be more artificially darkened than your own.

4.  You are physically incapable of engaging in the kind of outdoor activity that might provide you with a natural darkening of your skin.  Rather than swimming, playing tennis, golfing, walking or mowing the lawn, you simply prefer to lie down and bake for 30 minutes like a Thanksgiving Day turkey. 

5.  You're going for the wise and distinguished look at an abnormally young age and are therefore targeting the premature aging that the FDA has linked to tanning. 

6.  You are a serious long-term planner, intent on committing suicide sometime after the age of 55 but by a more natural means than gun, pills or noose.  Considering the social stigma now attached to smoking, tanning was your next best option.

7.  You take great pleasure in lying to yourself and others by claiming that tanning provides that fabled base to keep you from burning later on in the summer, when we all know that (1) a base does not prevent burning and (2) there is an affordable and readily-available product called sunscreen that  also mitigates burning and prevents skin cancer at the same time. 

See?  Plenty of good reasons to hop into a tanning booth today! 

Doing the impossible.

While visiting Essex earlier this week, my daughter became bound and determined to move this enormous rock, returning to it again and again in an attempt to lift it.

Obviously, it never happened, but I couldn't help but admire her tenacity.

If only she would apply that same tenacity to picking up her toy.

   

My personal assault on the institution of coffee

I am constantly annoyed by the Facebook updates, Twitter posts and verbal declarations regarding the need for coffee, the desire for coffee and the importance of coffee in everyday life.

It's a beverage, people.

Only it's not. 

Somehow it's also become a societal totem of a harried lifestyle.  The prized moniker of both the inundated worker bee and the ambitious titan of industry.  A demarcation of imposed diligence and prized productivity.    

And at the same time, it's also become an acceptable means of spending leisure time.   

"Let's get a cup of coffee" has become equivalent to "Let's take a hike" or "Let's go see a movie" or "Let's go throw a Frisbee in the park."

I find all of this utterly insane. 

Nevertheless, I decided to take a step back from my hardened stance on the mysterious brew and be a little more reflective when is comes to my position.  I wanted to determine why these constant coffee declarations bother me so much.

Why "This is definitely a two cup day!" and "Need. Coffee. Now." makes me want to punch said coffee drinkers in the face. 

I've come up with three possibilities:

I don't drink coffee, nor have I ever even tasted coffee, so I can't possibly understand its impact on a coffee drinker's everyday life. The need for coffee is so often expressed that it has become  exceedingly repetitive, virtually meaningless and utterly cliché. The apparent physical need for coffee (or any other substance) is a human weakness that I detest and avoid at all costs.

All three possibilities may play a role, but I'm leaning toward #2.

I am, however, willing to listen to opposing viewpoints.

An end to their blasted chirping

A couple days ago I met with an arborist to assess the possible pruning of the trees in my backyard.

He told me that earlier in the day, he had met with a homeowner who wanted the only tree in his front yard, a beautiful red maple, taken down because dozens of birds fill its branches in the morning, and their constant chirping wakes him up.

And the decline of civilization continues.   

Smothered by love

At least it's someone else's cat getting mauled by my daughter for once. 

   

Redundant, and therefore stupid, ad copy.

I don't think that McDonald's understands the meaning of the word savor.

Couldn't "Relax and enjoy" characterize the word savor rather effectively?

So this ad copy essentially reads:

For every drop of life that you relax and enjoy, relax and enjoy.

Parents cant figure this out on their own?

According to a Department of Labor poll, some 85% of the class of 2011 will be moving back home at some point in their lives.

I'm stunned.

And frankly disappointed. 

Yes, I did not have a home to return to after I moved out at the age of eighteen, and yes, I was homeless for a short time, so perhaps my view of the situation is slightly jaded, but moving back home with your parents seems like the absolute last thing that I would've done. 

Of course, if you're living at home in order to finish a degree or care for an ailing parent, these are different types of circumstances. 

But if you're finished with college and ready to make it on your own, make it  on your own, damn it.  Keeping a roof over your head and food on the table should be within the grasp of almost any college graduate who is willing to work as much as possible, in whatever job or jobs are necessary in order to survive.

In order to deal with a situation like this, Time Magazine offers:

When College Grads Move Home: Six Ways to Get Them Off the Couch

It's a stupid list of a bunch of commonsense and uninspiring ideas that are frankly a waste of digital ink. 

The advice includes don't let your kid make a mess of the place, help your kid get a job (but don't help too much) and make your kid pay his or her share of the bills.

Real revelatory stuff here. 

But how about this instead:

Don't let your kid move back home. 

Advise him to find a roommate and head to the seedy section of town, where rundown apartments can be had for a bargain.  Tell him to negotiate with the landlord for a reduction in rent if he pays in cash.

Remind him that furniture is not immediately necessary.  If he has a bed, a refrigerator and a stove, he is good to go.   

Then tell him about my friend, George, who put his programming skills to work on a low paying, entry level position on the nightshift at a large insurance company, and who then worked at McDonald's in the mornings and on the weekends in order to make ends meet.  This, plus two roommates and a tight budget that included no cable television and the most basic of cellphones, allowed George to survive and continue to interview for better paying jobs.  He worked like this for two full years before finally finding a well paying job with regular hours and excellent benefits at a different insurance company.

The tell him that I've known about fifty Georges in my life, myself included, and none of us have starved. 

And as far as I know, only I ended up, albeit briefly, homeless, 

And then remind your kid that life isn't supposed to be simple or easy, and that it is only through struggle that we gain the confidence and strength in order to succeed.

Tell him that there will come a day when he looks back upon his struggles with a smile.  Tell him that my friend and former roommate and I look fondly upon the years we spent eating elbow macaroni and bread and sitting beneath the same pile blankets, leaning against one another in order to stay warm because we could not afford to turn on the heat in the middle of winter. 

The pipes had burst, girls refused to come to our apartment because of the lack of heat and we were often hungry, but we laugh today and say in all sincerity that those were some of the best times of our lives, struggling to survive.

And most important, those were the times that taught me to appreciate what I have now and to work hard to protect it.  

There's nothing wrong with providing your struggling kid with home cooked meals and the occasional bailout when he is in trouble, but do it under his roof and not your own.

Don't deny him the opportunity to struggle.

I guess I only enjoy reality television when its imported from Korea

I haven't watched any of these singing or talent shows since the first season of American Idol, but this clip from the Korean version of one of those shows is pretty stunning despite the language barrier and subtitles.

Sometimes a story is so compelling that it surpasses any differences in language and culture.

And it reminds me of a saying that I have that goes something like this:

If you're struggling with a a difficult situation and feeling like your problems are getting the better of you, get in your car and take a long drive.  Before long you'll come across some road kill.  When you do, remind yourself that your life is still better than that mangled critter on the road.  Then drive home and get back to work solving your problems.

I actually take this advice quite often.

But If road kill makes your stomach queasy, you can watch this clip instead and remind yourself that even the most difficult of situations can be overcome with hard work and persistence.