Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 621
April 11, 2011
No limits on royalty. And milk.
No classism in our little girl.
Tonight we found a baby and a knight perched on identical thrones, both dining on what my daughter considers the finest of all cuisines:
Milk.
Equality at its best.
First time in history that Cleanest teeth isnt great
I live in Connecticut. In terms of the area that my state does not excel, we have the highest rate of pancreatic cancer in the country.
Not good.
And the area that we excel:
Cleanest teeth.
With all of the possible outcomes impacted by science, nature, public health and social justice, the best we can manage is clean teeth?
Why can we be a state like Washington? Most organic apples (which sound delicious) and most invasive snails.
Snails. A hell of a lot better than pancreatic cancer. Easily squished.
Or how about Colorado? Lowest obesity rates and most avalanche deaths. Presumably the fat people are the ones who cannot outrun the avalanches, thus keeping their numbers low.
Or Hawaii? Least smog and most endangered species. If a species of animal is going to cease existing, it's at least nice to be able to take one final look at them. Right?
But at least we're not Tennessee.
They have the most caves and also the most sewer runoff.
If you're wondering which of the two is supposed to be a positive, it's the most caves.
I know. I'm not sure why this is a positive either.
A cave-filled, sewage-filled state.
A hell of a lot worse than clean teeth and pancreatic cancer.
April 10, 2011
Totally hitting on me
A woman was looking at photographs of my daughter on my phone last week. After recognizing how beautiful my daughter is, she turned to me and said, "I'd love to have babies with you."
She went on to clarify that her desire had everything to do with Clara appearance and nothing to do with mine, but that's not the good part of the story.
Top 10 ideas about books
After spending the weekend with one hundred readers and eight other authors at the Books on the Nightstand Retreat, here is a rundown of the thoughts and ideas that have emerged from the experience:
________________________________________
1. Family members who do not read the book that another family member has written are surprisingly pervasive and the basest of all human beings.
2. When someone tells you that they don't like fiction, remind them that most of what they watch every night on the idiot box is fiction.
3. The spiteful wish for an elderly woman's death is probably not the best thing to include in a talk meant to inspire people.
4. When possible, avoid eye contact with your wife while delivering a book talk. While your audience may be willing to disguise their disappointment and horror with benign smiles and polite nods, your wife is not.
5. A book talk places the author in the position of salesperson. He can sell the product or sell himself. I believe the latter to be always preferable.
6. The willingness of an author to overshare is excellent for his readers but not always great for his marriage.
7. The ability to form a tightly-knit community of like-minded people and bring them together from the corners of the globe for a weekend of laughter and learning is not done through a blog or a podcast but through the unselfish willingness of two extraordinary people to share themselves with the world. Admiration is not the word to be used when describing one's feelings about these people. It is nothing short of reverence.
8. A excellent book club choice is likely to be one that at least half your book club despises with a vengeance.
9. The authenticity of an inexperienced speaker will almost always overshadow the poise and polish of an experienced one.
10. When a group of nearly one hundred people dub your wife Saint Elysha, you probably should send flowers soon.
April 9, 2011
Joy in others unfortunate desire to sleep
This is one of my favorite times to write.
I just spent the last two hours sitting in the lobby of a beautiful Vermont inn, working on my book, while the dozen or so guests (my wife included) quietly slumbered away.
My wife and I are in Manchester, Vermont, participating in the Books on the Nightstand weekend retreat. As much as we miss our daughter already, we couldn't be more excited about the day ahead.
Since 5:00, I've written about two thousand words of fiction, completed a blog post to my daughter, written a short post for this blog, caught up on the news (government shutdown averted) and watched the sun come up over the low, rounded mountain to the east.
It's been a joyous morning so far.
I've recently begun work on a semi-autobiographical book related to productivity, which sprung from a blog post that was getting entirely too long to post. One of the tenets of the productive life, I believe, is finding great joy in being productive.
This morning has been a perfect example of this.
And it explains why this is one of my favorite times to write:
Early in the morning, when the world is still dark, in a building filled with sleeping guests.
The building full of sleeping guests is the important part.
It sounds a little mean, but I take an immense amount of admittedly perverse pleasure knowing that I just spent two hours getting things done while so many others merely slept.
A little bit of personal schadenfreude to start my day.
I suspect early morning runners experience this same feeling, though most are not as foolish enough as me to admit to it.
Apology conundrum
What's worse?
Demanding a meaningless apology that changes nothing or refusing to apologizing for dropping bombs on the wrong people?
I'm not sure.
April 8, 2011
I dont know how to explain this to my daughter either
Forty-six percent of Mississippi Republicans support making interracial marriage illegal, and only 40 percent said it should be legal, according to a Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday.
I don't know which is worse. This one or this one.
The real end to Dead Poets Society
We all know the ending of Dead Poet's Society. Right?
If you don't, shame on you. Go watch the movie. I'm about to spoil it.
At the end of the film, a handful of boys who were compelled to falsely testify against their teacher take a stand (literally), demonstrating their allegiance to for him in a moving tribute to his teaching.
It's a scene that makes many people cry. Not me, but many.
But here's my question:
What happens when these boys finish school, and perhaps finish college? What do they do once the shackles of the their restricted teenage existences are thrown off?
I always find it amusing to watch high school teachers and college professors, both in film and real life, treat students unjustly.
What are these educators thinking?
Do they fail to realize that these seventeen year olds will soon be eighteen, and soon after that twenty-one?
Do they forget that these young men, once powerless to fight the system, could soon return seeking retribution and vengeance?
I like to think that the boys from dead Poet's Society, Knox and Charlie and Meeks and Pitts, return to Welton Academy as young men, demanding justice. I like to imagine them barging into the headmaster's office, pushing his indignant ass back down into a chair, and telling him that they are not children anymore.
"You can't bully us with threats of expulsion and the arm-twisting of our parents anymore, old man! Did you really think that we were going to forget the lies you forced us to tell? Did you really think you could bully boys who were about to become men and not pay a price?"
And then I like to imagine those boys-turned-men spending every waking hour of their lives for the next six months ensuring that the headmaster is fired and Mr. Keating's reputation is restored.
And I'd like to see Charlie kick Cameron's ass once more.
The symbolic standing-on-desks moment was nice, but I am much more vindictive than that.
April 7, 2011
Enough with this clich
When a character speaks slowly in a novel, the author often describes this process as "measuring their words."
I don't think anyone actually does this.
Some people just speak slowly.
They might search for the right words, but they don't measure them.
The emailed thank you note: The sign of an advanced civilization
When the emailed thank you note finally takes the place of the physical thank you card in the minds of the minority of tradition-obsessed individuals who make the majority of us crazy with their arcane and time-wasting hoop jumping, I can die a happy man.
To that end, I will be revising my Friendship Application to include a line that deals with the importance that a potential friend places upon the physical thank you card.
The last thing I need is to receive a gift from someone, forget to send a thank you card (probably because I thanked them in person when I opened the goddamn present) and then become the victim of the behind-the-back gossip in which these insane traditionalists specialize, particularly when they feel that their generosity has been spurned.
