Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 667

Assigning personal belief at birth

In light of a recent post on my loss of faith comes this intriguing quote from Richard Dawkins which I have a hard time imagining anyone disagreeing with on a sensible and logical level. 

Thoughts? 

"I feel very strongly that it's wrong to label children with the opinions of their parents.

Nobody minds labeling a child an English child, or a French child, or a Dutch child. But you'd think I was mad if I started talking about a post-modernist child, or a Keynesian child, or a monetarist...

Raise your hand if you think that lush eyelashes have anything to do with beauty.

There was a segment on the Today Show recently about products that women can apply to this eyelashes in order to grow them "longer, thicker and more lush."

Lush?  Since when are eye lashes supposed to be lush? 

The problem with the female beauty industry, which includes but is not limited to women's fashion, skin care, make-up and prescriptive eyelash-growing ointments, is that it has seemingly detached itself from the sensible, evolutionary-based determiners of beauty.  Many decisions...

Save the planet. Sit your ass down.

My good friend, Charles, has often argued about the dangers of over-populating on the planet. He believes in a two child per couple limit, reasoning that human beings should only seek to replace themselves.

Apparently he was right. It appears that just walking my dog every morning is proving to be more damaging to the climate than driving to work.

It's not my personal use of fossil fuels that is threatening to melt the polar ice caps, but the breakfast burrito and peanut butter and jelly...

Meanest comments of the year

Occasionally, while on tour, I find myself saying mean things to audience members. 

I know.  Probably not a good idea, but sometimes I can't help it.

My two meanest comments from this year:

Mean Comment #1

While speaking to an 82-year old woman, she informed me that she had a great story to tell, and that "one of these days, I'll get around to writing it."

"One of these days?" I asked.  "Why not today?"

"I'm not ready yet," she explained.

"I don't mean to offend you, but you're...

House tours

I promise to never, ever force a house tour upon any of you.

If you would like to see my house, I'd be more than happy to show you around. But the need for people to show me their bedrooms, their second floor bathrooms, and their finished basements baffles me.

If you designed and built your own home, or if you recently underwent a major remodel, I'm willing to make an exception.  But if you bought a house that just happens to have three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, I have no need to...

Is there a reason to cater to adults?

My daughter has started watching Sesame Street in the morning while my wife is taking a shower and getting ready for work.  As a result, we've been catching a few minutes here and there, and I've been shocked at the number of parodies and spoofs that the makers of Sesame Street use as a framework for their segments. 

Law and Order, Mad Men and Sex in the City are just three that I have seen, and she's only been watching the show for a few weeks. 

I don't get it. 

Do the producers...

Read at your own risk

I was speaking to a good and wise friend about religion and faith. Unknown to me, she was under the impression that I had been raised outside any formal or organized religious faith. When I corrected her, explaining that I was born a Catholic and later converted to Protestant Congregationalism with my mother's approval, she was surprised.

Actually, I was not born a Catholic.  My parents conspired with the church in an attempt to indoctrinate me at a time when I was not capable of reason or...

Hiding from me

Over the past month, three different people have told me that they had kept a secret from me, fearing that if I discovered their secret, I would have made fun of them.  

These were not big secrets. 

One person had begun teaching a class and hadn't shared the details with me, assuming that I would find the subject worthy of amusement.

Another was watching a television show that she assumed I would find silly and trite.

A third had made a questionable parenting decision that she feared I...

Foreign language

I took four years of French in high school with Lester Maroney, a good teacher who was also a little crazy. Lester would hand out detentions as if they were candy and would smile while doing so.

Forgot your homework?  Detention.

Laughed at a joke?  Detention.

Tripped while entering the room?  Detention.

At one point I had amassed 87 detentions with him, most certainly a school record. I spent most of them playing chess with the guy and chatting about life. It interfered with track and...

Pets. Part 1.

Earlier in the summer, I posted about all the jobs that I've had in my life. It turned out to be a popular post, and I loved the fact that I had a complete work history saved for posterity.

Recently, I thought I might do the same about the pets that I have owned throughout the years.

Since there were so many, I thought that I'd start with the dogs today and squeeze in the hamsters, guinea pigs, horses, cats, fish, goat, and raccoon in a subsequent post.

So here are the dogs, in...