Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 688

Spoiled

I know it's not even July, but football season is nearly upon us and I couldn't be happier.  In just a couple short months, my beloved Patriots will begin playing again, and for the first time in nearly twenty years, I will have season tickets to the games.

I can't tell you how much I love attending Patriots' games.  The two-hour drive, the impossible traffic, the tailgating, the food, the bitter cold weather, the screaming fans… I love every part of it. 

Two years ago, during the...

Telltale signs

I was listening to an interesting story on mapping on This American Life today, and it gave me the idea of writing the short story or a novella in which a protagonist's life is told through the scars on his or her body.  A series of keystone events in the protagonist's life with a scar associated to each.

Maybe a little contrived, but it might work for a short piece.  

It also caused me to think about the scars and other imperfections on my body and map them out as well. They tell quite a...

Slacker book club extraordinaire

I'm a member of a slacker book club.

Yes, I've heard stories about slacker book clubs before, and perhaps you are even a member of one yourself.  But my slacker book club is the most slackery of all book clubs on the face of the Earth, because taking months to read the book or not reading the book at all is just the tip of our proverbial iceberg. 

My group can't even choose a book.

In our book club, each member takes a turn choosing the next book.  The last book that we read was NUDGE, a...

Confirmed perfection

I was watching Journeyman today, a show that was sadly cancelled by NBC after just one season. In the episode, two characters are discussing the possibility of marriage.

The female character asks, "Are you looking for a woman who will eat take-out and watch South Park?"

The male character responds, "If I hold out for perfection, I might never get married."

The pride and joy that I felt in knowing that I married a take-out loving, South Park junky was indescribable.

To cannibalize or not to cannibalize?

I reference the apocalypse often.  Not the apocalypse mentioned in the Bible, but the real possibility that someday, governments will collapse as a result of a manmade or natural disaster (or zombie invasion) and human beings will find themselves living in the Stone Age again.

While I am not looking forward to this day, I am prepared for it and will be ruthless about my survival.  I've already chosen the people with whom I will band together, and many close friends and family are excluded...

Confronting a coward

I was standing in line at 7-11 yesterday. The line was long and not moving quickly. There was only one register open and I could see the frustration on the customer's faces as I entered the line with bottle of Diet Coke in hand.

Thankfully I also had my iPhone with me and a healthy supply of podcasts with which to occupy my time. I was listening to Bill Maher's Real Time and quite content despite the situation.

This is more than I could say for the woman in front of me, a forty-something...

An absolute out-of-the-park must-read

Behold! The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, my newest favoritest place on the Internets.  Wit and wisdom, combined with amusing pop-culture references and a deep understand of the human condition.

A truly astonishing blend of truth and humor.  

Here are just five of my favorite obscure sorrows lists:

Knight Rider syndrome

n. disillusionment upon rewatching a beloved pop-culture touchstone of your youth and having to confront its hand-puppet characterization, magnetic-poetry dialogue...

Pay to pray

I was watching Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm last night when the issue of purchasing tickets for Jewish services arose. If you're not aware, most Jewish temples require worshipers to purchase tickets for services during the High Holidays. In addition, most temples charge a substantial fee when a family joins their congregation. 

I find these requirements to be dreadful, shameful, and sacrilegious, and not surprisingly, I have yet to find a single person, Jewish or otherwise, who...

Monopoly, short and cruel

When I was a kid, I stopped playing Monopoly because of my best friend, Bengi.  Whenever we sat down to play, he would rally the other players against me, making it the group's sole purpose to knock me out of the game before even began competing against one another.

As long as Matty lost, everyone else was a winner. 

And for reasons that I never understood, it always worked.  Game after game, he would turn my friends, coworkers and even my girlfriends against me.  Fifteen minutes after...

The bird

My hands contain a total of ten digits. Eight fingers and two thumbs. Though these appendages are my own, social mores prevent me from raising my middle finger while in public, even if the reason is to point out the approach of a rapidly descending airplane, an oncoming train, an escaped tiger or the sudden spawning of a tornado.

The United States FCC has banned the display of this gesture on broadcast television, declaring it an obscenity equal to the famous seven words that cannot be said...