Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 652

Two more allergens to add to my list

My wife would like me to go to the allergist for reasons that I do not fully understand.

I am allergic to bee stings.  I know this and have an ample supply of Epi-Pens in case I am ever stung.

They aren't always readily available but I have an ample, if sometimes inaccessible, supply. 

On the morning of my wedding day, I found myself surrounded by bees on a golf course with no Epi-Pen.  It was the only time I ever picked up a golf ball and didn't assess myself a penalty stroke.  

I am also allergic to mustard.  I break out in hives if I eat it.  So I do not eat it.

I am 39 years old and I have never encountered anything else to which I am allergic, yet my wife would like me to go to the allergist anyway.  And apparently the allergist concurs.

Because she is my wife, I have agreed, but I do not like it.  And I will not allow them to poke me with six dozen other possible allergens in hopes of finding another.

If I've made it this far without encountering another, I can make it another 39 years.

Last night I had a dream that I went to the allergist, and after an afternoon of painful shots and tortuous skin pricks and endless tests, it was determined that I am also allergic to dinosaur bites and Talmudic scroll paper.

My subconscious apparently has a sense of humor and is more than a little annoyed about this future trip to the allergist as well.

Slightly disingenuous but outstanding nonetheless

Not everything that is stated in the first commercial is entirely true, but I thought both of these GM commercials were excellent. 

Two of the most effective of the year, though admittedly I only see commercials that air during sporting events. 

For the first time in a long time, I felt a little bit of pride in an American car company.

How to know your Supreme Court justices

My admittedly unfair and terribly biased list of determiners of intelligence begins with:

The number of Supreme Court justices that a person can name

While my list has been surprisingly well received by a multitude of readers (I expected to be excoriated on the basis of my criteria), several have questioned me on this first item, wondering how anyone could be expected to know the names of all the Supreme Court justices when they appear in the news so infrequently.

In response, I promised to outline my rationale.  Here goes:

President Obama has nominated two new Supreme Court justices in the last sixteen months:  Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Both were subsequently confirmed by the Senate after a series of public hearings. 

Both of these nominations were big news stores.  Both occurred recently and Sotomayor is the first Hispanic justice on the Court. 

If you've been paying any attention to the news over the last year or so, you should probably know these two names.

You should also know the third female judge on the Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  She was only the second female Supreme Court justice in US history and the only female justice on the court for almost five years until Sotomayor was confirmed in August of 2009, making her rather notable.     

In short, you should probably know all the current female members of the Court.  Two are quite recent nominees and the other was singular for quite a while and relatively historic.   

If you do, you're already up to three.

Oh, there's nine justices by the way.  Sadly, most Americans do not know this.

Then you have John Roberts, the Chief Justice for the past five years and the man for whom the Court has been named (The Roberts Court).  As Chief Justice, Roberts tends to be the face of the court, appearing most often in news stories related to recent rulings and occasionally exchanging verbal jabs with the President over their opposing views of legal activism on the Court (the kind of exchange virtually unheard of until Roberts and Obama began taking swings at one another last year). 

He was also the justice who administered the oath of office to Obama twice after misspeaking on inauguration day and causing a brief Constitutional kerfuffle. 

If you know any Supreme Court justices, you should probably know Roberts.

And now you're up to four. 

If you were born prior to 1975, you should be old enough to remember the sexual harassment scandal involving Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Court, not to mention the fact that he is often reported as being the only Supreme Court justice to have never asked a single questioned during oral arguments.

Not one in more than two years, and barely any in his almost twenty years on the Court. 

He is also the only African-American on the Court and only the second African-American in history of the Supreme Court.

Add to this his wife, Virginia Hill, a Tea Party advocate,who  was in the news recently when she contacted Anita Hill, the woman who Thomas allegedly harassed, in order to confront her regarding the nearly twenty year old allegations against her husband. 

Apparently Virginia Hill does not believe in letting sleeping dogs lie. 

For these many reasons, you should probably know Clarence Thomas's name.

And now you're up to five.  And if you can name five justices, you are already well ahead of the majority of Americans (two-thirds cannot name a single Supreme Court justice), and you're doing just fine in my book.  Five isn't great, but it's passable in my opinion, which if you will remember, serves as the basis for the list.

The last justice who I feel people should know is Anthony Kennedy, since he is often the swing vote on the Court.  With four conservative justices and four liberal justices currently serving on the high court, Kennedy, a centrist in many respects, is frequently cited as the Court's most influential member, and his vote often determines the direction of a ruling.  If you are paying any attention to the Supreme Court at all, you should be paying attention to the way that Kennedy is leaning on any issue. 

So now you're up to six.  Success in my book.  

The last three justices, two conservatives and one liberal, are admittedly more difficult to name. In fact, in listing them yesterday, I could not recall the name of one of them.  His name eventually came to me, but initially I could only name eight.

The remaining three, Stephen Breyer (a liberal who has served on the Court for sixteen years), Samuel Alito (a conservative who has been serving for just four years) and Antonin Scalia (the conservative justice who I could not name yesterday who has served for more than twenty-five years), have not been in the news recently and tend to maintain a lower profile compared to most other justices.

A triumvirate of boring, old white guys. 

If you missed one of these three, I understand.  Even though Scalia is the longest serving justice and Alito was nominated less than four years ago, these men tend to stay out of the news. 

If you managed to name more than six, I'm impressed. 

If you managed to name all nine, I'm incredibly impressed.

Not enough to make up for being a Jets fan or rejecting evolution or watching twelve hours of reality TV a week, but still impressive and a clear indication of an active, engaged mind.

Flip-flop throwing and pending nuptials

I just love this note from Mike Reiss on the ESPN Patriots blog:

The Titans will start rookie quarterback Rusty Smith, a sixth-round draft choice out of Florida Atlantic, today in Houston. Bill Belichick privately worked out Smith before the draft, and it just so happened the workout was one day before Smith's wedding. Smith's groomsmen were his receivers at the workout and Belichick was firing his flip-flops at Smith in an attempt to distract him. Classic.

Sometimes a few simple sentences can offer so much by way of story and characterization.  

National Geographic photo contest

National Geographic is once again holding their annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30th.

There are about fifty entries so far.  Many of them are remarkable. 

This is my favorite so far, and I'm allergic to bees.

That's saying something.

Determiners of intelligence

I judge intelligence (rather unfairly) by the following criteria:

The number of Supreme Court justices that a person can name The amount of time a person spends watching television Smoker or non-smoker The scope of a person's musical interests A person's overall ratio of speaking to listening A person's willingness to act self-deprecating The total number of tabloid magazines that a person reads in a week A person's acceptance of evolution as Darwin initially described The ratio between a person's degree of religious belief and the number of times that he or she has actually read the Bible The way in which a person spends his or her time in a waiting room A person's acknowledgement of human-induced global warming The degree to which a person finds Jon Stewart and David Sedaris funny A person's ability to debate without raising his or her voice, repeating a previously-stated viewpoint or interrupting New York Jets fan or not

Like I said, I'm not exactly fair in my judgment. 

LOUD MUSIC in a library?

I'm sitting in the library, pecking away at my manuscript.  I've just hit my stride when an announcement comes over the intercom warning me that the library will close in fifteen minutes.

"Please bring all materials to the front counter for checkout at this time."

Okay.  Fine.  It's Friday night.  5:00 seems reasonable.  I'm disappointed, but I'll just squeeze in another ten minutes or so and then go.

But wait…

What's this?

The announcement has been followed by calliope music.

Loud calliope music.

Seriously.  

I'm suddenly transported from the quiet solitude of the library to the bright lights and spinning ferocity of a merry-go-round.  Images of smiling horses and brass rings fill my mind.

Is this really necessary?

Do they really need to play this dreadful music as a means of stirring the book-addled masses?  

Oh good.  It's stopped. 

No.  Wait.  Another announcement.  "Ten minutes to go."

And then… more music.  The same music.  Again.

Unbelievable.

I should've gone to Starbucks.

Casual dining at 7-11

I just watched a family of five purchase their entire dinner from a 7-11.

Not an impoverished, bedraggled family either.  A jovial, well-dressed bunch who proceeded to pile into an Audi after making their purchases. 

Hot dogs, corn dogs, Twinkies, soda, slushies, and a food product that purported to be a burrito.

I'm both horrified and slightly impressed at the same time.

How to win a Thanksgiving Day argument

John Dickerson wrote an entertaining piece about how to win your Thanksgiving Day fight. 

Dickerson's piece centers on politics, which is his field of expertise. 

On his weekly podcast, he explained that his father would go so far to assign red and blue cups to his guests in order to identify their political leaning. 

Brilliant. 

As an experienced combatant of Thanksgiving Day fights, my strategy for winning falls along one of two lines:

1.  Reinforce a winner

2.  Sacrifice and retreat

Allow me to illustrate each stratagem. 

A few years ago a vociferous argument erupted at the post-Thanksgiving dinner table over the state of the economy and the reasons for the economic downturn.  As with most debates, I chose to remain silent, waiting as battle lines were drawn and positions staked out.  When it became clear to me that my father-in-law was the only person at the table who knew what he was talking about but stood alone against an army of overly emotional combatants who had no fundamental understanding of credit default swaps, toxic assets and the true causes of the banking collapse (they were blaming the whole of the crisis on media hype), I decided to enter the fray, bolstering my father-in-law's side with facts and data that illustrated the lack of fundamental economic understanding on the opposing side.

Hence my strategy of reinforcing a winner. 

This year my father-in-law took a familiar stand against the violence of the NFL, declaring that in twenty years we would be watching a bastardized version of flag football instead.  This is a position that he has staked out many times with me, and occasionally I will allow myself to be drawn into the fray.  Yesterday, however, I quickly saw the battle lines being drawn, with my father-in-law and my brother-in-law's father taking up positions against the violence of today's game and my brother-in-law, Michael, choosing to oppose them.

Though I do not believe my father-in-law is correct in his predictions of the the future of the NFL, I am also smart enough to avoid taking up positions against two older, wiser men on Thanksgiving. 

So instead of fighting, I took a couple small steps into the fray, saying just enough to draw Michael into the fight before retreating to the kitchen to baste the turkey and make myself scarce.  For the next fifteen minutes, Gerry and Barry hammered away at Michael, armed with their years of wit and wisdom.  Only once did I reenter the battle, and only then to remind my father-in-law that shouting does not enhance the overall quality of a person's argument. 

Hence my strategy of sacrifice and retreat.

Better to live and fight another day.  And in doing so, I managed to catalog a laundry list of arguments and counterpoints that Gerry may use against me in the future.

All of this may seem a little over-the-top and unnecessarily complex given the circumstances, but it was halftime.

It's not like I was missing the game.        

And now some genuine thanks

Regardless of my inability to give thanks for my greatest blessings, I have many other reasons to give thanks this year that I thought I should mention:

My daughter continues to be a blessing in our lives.  She is perpetually happy, consistently well behaved, loves school and is learning in leaps and bounds.  She can sing her ABCs and has memorized sizable chunks of several books. 

With a year filled with thousands of little moments like these, how could anyone complain?

More reasons for thanks:

My wife had proven to be a remarkable mother with near-flawless instincts when it comes to parenting.  She is tough, loving, unwavering and willing to do what is best for Clara in all things. 

She's also a pretty great wife, too. 

In the tough economic times, I am thankful to still find myself with the means of providing for my family. 

I am doing some of the best teaching of my life this year and my job is secure.  While I have an eye on teaching high school or college sometime in the not-so-distant future, I still adore my time in the classroom with my fifth graders and am blessed to be doing something that I love and a job that I have dreamed about since childhood.

In addition, I am working with some of the finest teachers who I have ever known, and together, I feel like we are making enormous differences in the lives of children.

My DJ company remains successful after fifteen years in business, and this year we streamlined our operations in such a way that I am doing considerably less work for more money. 

My writing career continues to prosper.  Though my latest book is not yet finished, my brilliant agent has already sold the foreign rights to the book in Spain, Italy, Brazil and the UK, with two other nations soon to follow.  In addition, the script for the pilot episode of a television show based upon SOMETHING MISSING has been written and will soon be pitched to studios.  And the film options for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO remain plentiful, with smart and determined people working hard to make the project happen.

I have much to be thankful for in terms of my professional life.   

I am thankful for my friends, a collection of honest, direct, intelligent, successful people who miraculously accept me for who I am and stand by me in times of trouble. 

I am thankful for the Patriots, a young team that is poised for a Super Bowl run.  Regardless of their success this year, they are positioned to be an outstanding franchise for years to come.

I am thankful for canned, jellied cranberry sauce.  We should eat much more of this throughout the year.

I am thankful for Bill Bryson, William Shakespeare, Stephen King, Nicholson Baker, JK Rowling, Jasper Fforde, Mark Twain, Billy Collins, David Sedaris and Kurt Vonnegut and a dozen others that I have shamefully forgotten to mention.  These are writers who continue to entertain and inspire me. 

I am thankful for Bluetooth headphones and the limitless supply of podcasts and music that pour forth from them on a daily basis.

I am thankful for puddles in the driveway, so that I can watch my daughter splash in them.

I am thankful for pickup basketball and the occasional collisions in flag football. 

I'd be thankful for tackle football if I could find someone to play with me.

I am thankful for Sesame Street, a show that I watched as a child and one that I now watch with my child.  Thirty years later, it has not disappointed.

I am thankful for Kaleigh, a dog who can admittedly annoy us to no end from time to time but also is the only other living being in the world willing to climb out of bed at 4:00 with me and head downstairs to work.  Almost every sentence that I write is written with Kaleigh underfoot. 

And yes, I'm thankful for Owen, our twenty pound bulimic housecat who wakes us in the middle of the night and bites us from time to time but accepts all of Clara's poking and prodding and full-body hugs with patience and love.

There's more to be thankful for, of course, but Kaleigh needs to be walked, Owen needs to be fed, Clara needs a hug, and I need to finish a book.

I'm not going to work today, which means I have a lot of work to do.