Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 627

Exclamation points say so much about a person

Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is a hard lesson to teach to ten-year olds, who seem to want to shout at the world at every turn, but I agree with Fitzgerald's assertion on exclamation points.  They are almost always unnecessary and should be avoided like the plague.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I used a total of five exclamation points in my first two books.  That's a 230,000/5 word/exclamation point ratio.

I'm still sort of embarrassed by it. 

Then there is the dreaded multiple exclamation point, which I once despised in all contexts but now only criticize when teaching. 

Ten-year olds are also quite fond of the use of the multiple exclamation point, and while part of me is happy to see any mark of punctuation at the end of their sentences, I tell my students that if they leave my classroom having learned to hate the multiple exclamation point as much as me, I will have done my job.

I used to despise the multiple exclamation point (and its ugly cousin, the question mark/exclamation point) outside the classroom as well, but now I view its use as a quick and easy determiner of IQ.

If you are an adult and use the multiple exclamation point, you are probably dumb.  

And since It's always nice to know if the person to whom you are speaking is stupid or not, I don't mind it as much anymore.  IQ is often a tricky thing to determine.  I'll take all the help I can get. 

What frightens me the most, however, is the use of a space followed by a question mark at the end of the sentence, like the one I saw at the gym last week:

Congratulations, Jim.  We think you look great, too !

See the space between the word too and the exclamation point?  It's as if the writer believes the exclamation point is too good to be attached to the sentence, and that by detaching it from the unworthy string of words with a space, it is both emphasized, glorified and sanitized in one simple keystroke.

Who does something like this?

Insane people.

That's who.

Certifiable lunatics.  Only the craziest of the crazy.

I'd warn the staff at the gym that a crazy person is on the loose, but what if the person who I am warning is the person responsible for the sentence?

I'm a father, now.  I just can't take that kind of chance anymore.  

Despite my even greater hatred for the anonymous note, an anonymous tip might be the only way to warn the staff that a potentially dangerous lunatic is amongst them.

Broken baby

I was playing with my daughter on Sunday and I think I broke her. 

While flying her around the kitchen, she landed funny on her leg and began crying.  While she didn't cry for very long, she has been limping like a linebacker who has blown out his Achilles ever since.

Seriously.  I've never seen a toddler limp like an adult before.

She's smiling and happy and the doctor has checked her out and declared her fit for play, but I know that there is something wrong in a Malcolm Gladwell Blink kind of way. 

If she is still limping on Thursday (WHICH I KNOW SHE WILL BE), she may get an X-ray.

I broke her.  I know it.

My wife will just about anything to expand my daughters palate

For a man who despises broccoli, this whole incident was downright frightening.

Cooler heads finally prevailed:

Her first haircut will be a doozy

This page from Dr. Seuss's ABC AMAZING ALPHABET BOOK scared the hell out of my daughter.  

She stared at the baby in the barber's chair, with the enormous pair of scissors suspended over his head, and cried out, "Baby okay!  Baby okay!  Baby okay!"

She was nearly in tears. 

In her mind, this baby was clearly not okay.

And I have to admit that the picture does look a little frightening, though in truth, I have always found all of Dr. Seuss's characters to be a little creepy. 

Gucci what?

My brother-in-law owned this pair of Gucci sneakers, which, as far as I can tell, retail for about $500.

I was hoping to tease him about the sneakers for the next eighteen months or so, but he has given them to our mother-in-law to sell in her outstanding eBay store.

Oh well.

Maybe I'll just tease him for six months instead.

Should decisions made twenty years ago impact employment today? Im undecided.

I'm torn.

I want to support this teacher and her right to teach. 

I believe in giving people a second chance.

I believe that decisions made twenty years ago rarely reflect the people we are today.

I believe that personal circumstances should always be considered when judging a person's decision-making process, and in this case, circumstances were dire at the time of her indiscretion. 

I believe that if this teacher's previous indiscretion had been drug use, larceny or vandalism, she might still have her job.  I believe that the decision to terminate her employment has more to do with our Puritanical views on sex than anything else.

Having said all this, I also think that this teacher would have an equally difficult time finding and keeping a job in the private sector if information regarding her past was uncovered by an employer, and I believe that a company would have every right to deny her employment on this basis.

If, for example, a friend owned a software company and discovered that one of his employees had an illicit past that could potentially alienate customers if it were ever made public, I would fully support his decision to terminate her employment.

He would have the right to choose who he employs and how long they remain employed.

Also, as much as I may believe that she has the right to teach, I fail to see how this teacher could continue teaching in a school after her past indiscretions have been so thoroughly exposed,

So I'm torn.   

I think this teacher has every right to keep her job, and I also think the school district has every right to terminate her employment based upon what has happened.

These two beliefs cannot exist concurrently. 

This is why I am torn.   

I also worry about where a decision like this might lead to in the future. 

What if a teacher writes a novel that describes a sex scene?

What if a teacher directs or appears in an R-rated film that contains a sex scene?

What is a teacher creates art that depicts sexual imagery?

Where do we draw the line on a teacher's right to a private life and his or her ability to create? 

I'm also deeply concerned that students in both 2006 and 2011 managed to uncover this teacher's past, meaning that these students are such frequent purveyors of pornography that they managed to stumble upon an almost twenty year old film starring their teacher in two separate incidents. 

That's two different school districts in a five period.

What are the odds?

Astronomically low, I would assume, unless the viewing of pornography by teenage boys is more prevalent and more frequent than I had ever imagined.

Anti-dragon sentiment has dissipated considerably

Either my daughter's opinion of dragons have changed since I last posted about them or what I thought was a threatening ring of little people around the dragon was actually some type of communal hug. 

I came home today and found the dragons enjoying what Clara described as "grill cheese breakfast" with the little people.

Peace reigns once again in the kingdom of the little people.

Our mathematical genius

How many two year olds do you know who request an abacus?

How far does your field of expertise actually stretch?

Since when did meteorologists become the lead experts on earthquakes and tsunamis? 

I just spent my workout at the gym watching the coverage of the Japanese earthquake on CNN, and a meteorologist was repeatedly questioned as if he were an expert on earthquakes and tsunamis.  In one segment a professor of seismology from Purdue found himself sitting alongside a meteorologist, answering questions about subduction zones and the propensity of aftershocks in the coming year. 

And the same thing happened last night on the local news.  For reasons I cannot understand, the meteorologist played a key role in discussing the impact of the earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan and along the west coast. 

Have I missed something in my understanding on meteorology? 

And turn to the Weather Channel and you will find almost nothing but earthquake and tsunami coverage, with almost nothing centered on any weather-related concerns in Japan or anywhere else.

Thunderstorms, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards and now earthquakes?

I don't get it.

Always great or recently great?

Jeff Bridges career is having a revival of sorts, having been nominated for the Academy Award the last two years (Crazy Heart and True Grit). 

He was previously nominated for the Academy Award (almost always in a supporting role) several times over a thirty  year period (including for his role as the alien in the 1984 film Starman, which I simply cannot believe), but he has never received the kind of recognition or acclaim that has recently been bestowed upon him. 

It leads me to wonder:

Has Jeff Bridges developed into a better actor over the years and is being rightfully acknowledged for his newfound skill?

Or was the younger version of Jeff Bridges just as skilled an actor as this older Jeff Bridges but could not compete against the younger, better looking Hollywood stars such as Daniel Day Lewis, Sean Penn, Adrien Brody, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro and others.

Perhaps Academy Award winning roles such as Rooster Cogburn and Bad Blake were simply not available to the younger Jeff Bridges with the likes of Henry Fonda and Paul Newman running around, and it has only been in his older age that he has been able to steal these roles from his younger, better looking counterparts.

Maybe?