Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 703

To read or not to read

I'll be speaking this evening at the Lucy Robbins Welles Library in my hometown of Newington at 7:00.  SOMETHING MISSING, my upcoming book UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO), the writing process, and publishing in general are likely to be the topics of the evening, but since I never plan ahead and am often as surprised as my audience about what comes out of my mouth, who knows!

There may also be a few some high school students present who will be sharing their work for a couple of minutes apiece.  I...

Its a room

When did the word room get replaced with the utterly pretentious and overblown word space?

A substitute teacher entered my classroom a couple days ago and said, "This is a great space. Your students are a lucky bunch."

"It's not a space," I said. "It's a classroom."

Someone came to our house for the first time a few weeks ago and said, "This space has a lot of potential," referencing the under-furnished section of our home that we refer to as the living room.

I hear brides and grooms...

Witticisms or lacking wit?

There's an iPhone application called iQuote which is essentially a database of thousands of quotations from famous and intelligent people, and one by Angelina Jolie which I am surprisingly fond of:

If I think more about death than some other people, it's probably because I love life more than they do.

I think about death a lot, too. 

The software allows me to rate each quote, email them to myself and friends, and categorize them according to my need.

I know it sounds like a simple...

Fuzzy time tables

Earlier this year, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which are still sending images back from Mars, celebrated their sixth anniversary on the red planet.

The mission was slated to last only three months.

In 1997 the Mars Pathfinder mission lasted more than three months when it was originally expected to cease functioning in a week to a month.

Am I the only one who suspects that these extended mission times have more to do with NASA's inability to calculate the expiration date of their...

Longing for happier days

m I the only one who finds it tragic that the number of people in the world who can define the Malachi Crunch diminishes daily?

Rocco and Count Mulachi. Pinky Tuscadero and the Pinkettes. 

Please tell me that you remember.

This is a vital part of Americana that will be lost before long.

Asked and answered

Thanks to podcasting, I don't listen to much talk radio anymore, which was once a staple of my media consumption. Granted, I listen to a string of NPR podcasts pulled right off the radio, and I listen to one or two ESPN radio shows that are re-aired as podcasts, but gone are the days of the classic talk radio show host. This means that when I do listen to one of these shows, I can't help but notice some of the oddities connected with the media.

Specifically, I want to know why every talk...

Im saved!

While my wife and I were serving brunch today, two Jehovah Witnesses knocked on our door.

I am grateful to the Jehovah Witnesses.  There was a time in my life when I was homeless, living in my car, and a family of Jehovah Witnesses took me into their home and gave me a room off their kitchen that I shared with a man who routinely spoke in tongues and a goat.

I know that sounds like something out of one of my books, but it's true.

Despite their generosity and my genuine affection for...

Ten Word Wiki

Ten Word Wiki is a spinoff of Wikipedia with one important distinction:  All entries must consist of exactly ten letters.  The results are often amusing and sometimes quite profound.  The site has become my newest time-waster, so click at your own risk. 

I'm completely obsessed with it. 

And I've even submitted my own 10 Word Wiki entry, which can be found on the site.  It is:

Project Runway: Heidi Klum making everyone else look like flat, boring nobodies.

Here is a list of ten recent...

Plan A

I was listening to Ira Glass of This American Life discussing the concept of a Plan B for an episode of the same name. He said that in a room of one hundred people, he asked the audience to raise their hand if they were still on the path to their Plan A, the one thing that wanted to do with their life originally. The job, the lifestyle, the family. Whatever they had envisioned their lives to be as a child, a teenager, or perhaps just coming out of college, how many people had achieved their...

I dont get it

I know it's hip and trendy to love Wes Anderson's films, but I don't. 

I thought that Rushmore was okay, The Life Aquatic was overrated, The Darjeeling Limited was slow and unfunny, and The Royal Tenenbaums was so awful that I would have walked out of the theater if I hadn't gone with friends. 

One of the worst movies I have ever seen. 

I just don't understand the love affair that people have with his films, and this video short illustrates my feelings precisely.