scary...

So... today is Halloween. Time to see how many students here at the high school where I teach on Fridays have elected to go with the perennial Halloween costume favorite...

"Slut."

As for me... I didn't wear anything special today... just jeans and a turtleneck. If anyone asks, I'll tell them I'm dressed as Apple Computer/Pixar CEO Steve Jobs.

D.

dangerous

i'm currently ONLINE at the pizzeria uno down the street. i did NOT need to know that was possible!

d.

a brefé çommént....

One of my readers has kindly attempted to make a fool of me by pointing out that the dude who played the Moravingian is, in fact, really from France.

Hmm.

Well, I’m here to tell you that I watched the fucking extras on the DVD, and they interviewed the guy, and he does NOT talk like THAT. In fact, I didn’t hear any accent at all. I’ll go back and listen again, but I’m quite certain that if he DID have an accent, it wasn’t the Pepé-le-Pew-on-crack nightmare that he does as the Moravingian. And so I assert the only thing worse than a horrible fake French accent is a French accent horribly faked by a real French person!!

Monsieur D.

now that THAT is over...

Jesus... I could use a long vacation from days like THAT... between the grading and this science departmental event I had to plan for today. My ass got to the train and I just... *WHAM* ...fell right to sleep. My head feels a little clearer now. I can breathe again. I can write now. I can get back to worrying about Alabama again.

That’s the thing... you just get time to take a quick breath before the Next Big Thing. Next it’s the trip to Alabama... then grade reports for the Old School... then Thanksgiving... then I’m sure SOMETHING will crop up between that and Xmas. Then January... trip to Chicago... maybe Baltimore... and possibly Alabama again, you know... if I take the job... realtors, builders... oy. Hopefully at some point during all that, the 10-month-old will start SLEEPING so I can feel like I’m not about to drop dead of exhaustion every single fucking day.

I just feel... ugh... all the time... by fucking BACK and my fucking NECK and my fucking KNEES. Fuck, you should hear the sound my right knee makes when I get up off the floor... it’s like someone chewing a mouthful of Pringles. That’s not right. I need an orthopedist or a yoga instructor or a massage therapist or all of the above, because I’m just plain falling apart.

... ... ... ... ...

And just when you think everything is going fairly smoothly... the train I usually transfer to at the halfway point of my commute was CANCELLED for who-knows-what reason... so I just had to stand around for 20 minutes in the cold and wait for the next (now extremely crowded) eastbound train. The minor irritations and inconveniences never end.

Although if they did... what the hell would I write about here?

... ... ... ... ...

I bought “The Matrix Reloaded” on DVD last week. It’s better the second time around. It’s still not a great movie, but if you go in expecting it to be comic-book quality it’s not as disappointing. I didn’t find the bit with The Architect as nonsensical as I did the first time, although there are still some holes that just don’t sit well with me. What do you mean, you have destroyed Zion 6 times in the past? It doesn’t make sense that 6 iterations of the Matrix also imply 6 iterations of Zion. It doesn’t add up. Although maybe Zion isn’t real either... you know... maybe the Matrix is a program within a program... maybe that’s how Neo has powers in what he thinks is the Real World at the end. Maybe? I dunno... I hope not... that’s pretty fucking lame. I have hope that the third movie will clear it all up, and yet I fear that it will only wind up more muddled.

One comment about a part that DOES suck. What the hell is the deal with The Moravingian? Are there no actors with REAL French accents? I mean... I THINK that was supposed to be a French accent. It was really BAD one, mind you.... so sometimes it was hard to tell. It makes that whole 10 minutes a chore to sit through.

And there are also bits that don’t hold up on the small screen... effects that somehow seem faker. The Neo versus 100 Agent Smiths... there are moments where you can see it switch from live action Neo to videogame Neo and back again. Real... animated...real... animated. Very distracting. But the fight scenes? Pure ballet. Beautiful

.

So... there’s my movie review of the week.

Speaking of movies, I never got a chance to see that new Gina Gershon movie... “Prey for Rock and Roll” I wonder if it’s still playing in Manhattan anywhere? I suppose if I miss it I can always rent it in a month or two. Then I can enjoy Ms. Gershon in my own special, private time!

Ok, folks... that’s it for today.

Dr. Dave

abs of steel...?

I saw this billboard today with an ad for the new Superman ride at Six Flags... some huge blue rollercoaster, I dunno... anyway there was a cartoon picture of Superman and he had these HUGE fucking muscles... way more inflated and pumped-up than any picture I’ve ever seen of Superman, and I realized that... yeah... Superman does look all muscular in the comic books nowadays, and I got to thinking...

He’s Superman!! Superman isn’t strong because he has big muscles... he’s strong because he’s an alien and there’s something different about the Earth and Krypton... gravity, the Sun... some such bullshit... and that makes him Superstrong here on Earth. The fact that he’s a Superstrong alien lifeform means that he wouldn’t NEED big muscles to be strong. In fact, his super strength would KEEP HIM from having really big muscles... since the only way to get really big muscles is to work out which you do by lifting things that are almost too heavy for you to lift. If he can lift a train without breaking a sweat, there is no way he is ever going to build any kind of appreciable muscle mass. Hell, he’d probably have to have a strict regimen of bench pressing oil tankers just to keep his super-muscles from atrophying... he’d be like the astronauts on Mir whose muscles don’t have to work in zero-G. He’d probably have about the same physical build as me, since leaping over a tall building for him is about as much work as walking up the stairs is for me.

So the people who used to make fun of George Reeves from the old 1960’s black-and-white Superman TV series for being kinda flabby and paunchy?? He was probably the most accurate physical portrayal of the Man of Steel that there’s ever been!

I’m sorry... has this conversation already been had on Seinfeld, 6 years ago??

D.

grading...

Remember all the grading I said I had to do last night...?

I didn’t.

So guess what I’m doing this morning?

I can be such a fuck-up sometimes.

d.

if it’s "saved", then where the hell is it...?

Whose idea what this whole “daylight-savings time” business anyway? Because I’m riding the train home in the pitch fucking black dark, and it’s only 5:15. That shit is NOT cool. Why can’t people just leave well enough alone?

One more reason to move to Alabama.... closer to the equator!! (10 degrees further south!!)

D.

meanwhile, I’ll be weaving my own...

I have to watch both kids tonight. Well, not so much ‘watch” them as just get them both into bed, since the wife isn’t leaving until 7:00, but still... that’s bad enough... one adult, two kids... bedtime. Especially since the one kid does NOT like to sleep. Should be fun. Anyway, my wife is going to some kind of Basket Party. Yeah... I don’t know what that means either. I stopped asking about shit like that a long time ago. Apparently it’s like a Tupperware party but instead of buying cheap-ass plastic crap to put leftovers in you buy expensive-ass baskets to put... Jesus, fuck if I know... whatever you’d put in an expensive basket.
And so I was thinking, well... at least once the kids are down I’ll have a quiet house to myself while the wife is out, until I realized that I need to have all my grading done for my class at the Old School because tomorrow is Parent-Teacher conference night. And I don’t have to DO the conferences, cuz I don’t really work there anymore, but I do have to give a grade report to the Science Dean so he can cover my classes. Fucking hell. Why did I agree to do this again?

Oh yeah... $100/hr.

Still... some days it’s just not worth it. Just three more weeks, then I’m done with that gig. Yay.

D.

too much...

The week is full... full of shit... shit to do... and I’ve got that paralyzed feeling... I can’t get started on... anything.

And I really have nothing to say this morning apart from to mention that a woman just down next to me who smells really nice. She smells like a bath.

d.

who are YOU...?

Ummm... I dunno what your cable service is like, but if you are flipping past the History channel one day and think you see Roger Daltry making stone tools and rubbing sticks together and talking about Homo erectus... you are NOT hallucinating!

I'm not sure I've ever been more perplexed by the concept for a television program than I am right now.

D.

don't follow that link!!

Blogger's ad banners use some kind of weird artificial intelligence that bases their content on what you post in your weblog. So now thanks to my entry about Bob Lazar and UFO's I now have an ad banner pointing people to something about "spin waves" and "gravitational propulsion."

DO NOT FOLLOW THAT LINK

It's pseudoscientific quackery and utter bullshit, and I'll be mortified if my weblog is responsible for even a single hit at this whackjob's site.

And now of course, you're curious and want to go see...

DON'T!!

I'm serious, people...

Dr. Dave

dr. dave vs. the ufo nuts...

I was cleaning out my outbox of the 300 or so old messages in there and I came across this little exchange between myself and a ufo nutjob that I thought might be fun for people to read. I get lots of mail from ufo nutjobs because I wrote a critique of a particular ufo nutjob named Bob Lazar, and that critique appears on a few websites with my email address. It’s kinda fun... arguing with nutjobs... it keeps you sharp. Anyway... here it is... the nutjob’s portion is in italics. Keep an eye out for repeated uses of the not-quite-really-a-word “delusionary”.

*** ** *** ** ***

Since you believe that lazar is a fraud, why don't you give me your
opinion on this UFO subject. Millions of cases. Millions of
witnesses. Millions of video, Millions of pictures. Millions of sightings. We
just need 1 case to be real to prove it exists. Of course, your intelligent
enough to agree! Based on the mexico city videos taken by over 100 people
in different parts of the city, it appears that these crafts distort the
space around them. how about your opinion.

Of course UFO's exist. The "U" stands for "unidentified". Of course millions of people see things that they can't identify. Down though human history, millions of people have also seen ghosts, leprechauns, angels, succubi, Bigfoots, Loch Ness Monsters, Yeti, chupacabras, pixies, sprites, sea monsters, burning bushes, and wheels in the sky...

Just because sometimes people see things and they don't know what they are, doesn't mean that we are being visited by aliens from another planet. Any more than the fact that lots of people think they saw one means that Ireland is really crawling with leprechauns. It's interesting that most people who believe in ONE of the things above believe in MOST of them. For example...most Bigfoot believers also believe in Nessie. (At least the ones I know of.) Why? Because if they accept the flimsy evidence of "I saw one!" for their own particular pet phenomenon, they have to accept it for all of them. Many UFO Believers go one step further and say that leprechauns and angels and succubi were really aliens all along, that way they can sweep up a whole legacy of flimsy evidence into a big PILE of flimsy evidence.

Lazar is just one more piece of flimsy evidence for your pile, and you're clearly irritated by my debunking of him. Sorry. I'm not making any comment on the UFO phenomenon in general. What I've said above is simply my own opinion.... I don't have enough facts about the matter that anyone should particularly care what I say one way or another. But I DO know physics... particle physics especially. And I can say with absolutely no doubt that Lazar's "physics" is at BEST nonsense and at WORST a complete load of crap. It's up to you whether or not you want to take Lazar out of your pile based on that. If you're so sure that UFO's are alien spaceships, and that there is so much evidence for it, then it shouldn't be a big deal that this ONE guy happens to be a fraud... right? Or is your pile so flimsy that you even want to fight for the hoaxes?

Maybe millions of people are dilusionary, but I saw a disc
shaped craft with my father and 3 other people over Islip N.Y. in 1996.
It performed maneuvers that defied our sense of how flight using thrust and
wings was supposed to react. We are very stable, rational educated objective
people who saw a UFO.

Of course you are. I never said people who see UFOs were "delusional" - you're putting words in my mouth. I said that sometimes people see things and don't know what they are. They are not delusional... they are simply mistaken.

For example, once I was working at the observatory as a graduate student, and I walked outside onto the roof to look around at the sky... you can't see the whole sky from inside the dome. I looked up and I saw... off to the north side of campus, heading west... a huge triangular object... maybe 150 meters from tip to tip... gliding completely soundlessly through the sky...and it was low... low enough that I felt I should be able to hear an engine or something. It appeared solid and metallic grey in color... no lights. I was so stunned that I actually took a step backwards... literally with a little jolt of fear. Had I gone inside to get someone or into the dome to get a camera or had it gone behind a tree or a building so that I lost sight of it, I would have had a perfect UFO story on my hands.

Instead I stayed another 2 seconds and looked at it again. What I saw was a large flock of geese, in perfect formation, lit eerily from below by the rising full moon. Once they had passed me and I could see them from behind it became clear what it was. But 2 seconds before, I was SURE that I was seeing a solid triangle... like a big, grey stealth bomber. Was I delusional? No... of course not. Was I stupid and unfamiliar with things that go on in the sky? No... I'd been an avid astronomer for 10 years... I'd spend my entire adult life looking at the sky. It's not like I've never seen a flock of geese before. But what I was seeing did not look ANYTHING like a flock of geese. It was clearly, unambiguously SOLID. And yet, it wasn't. I was simply mistaken about what I saw. I was a victim of unusual lighting and optical illusion. For 5 seconds, I had seen a UFO too. The only difference is, I got a second look in time to eliminate the "U".



What I'm saying is that
science, your latest journals and your collegues, may not be telling you the
whole story of your science today. What makes you think that our military with
their scientists will discover and utilize a theory and put it up on display
for all scientists to learn about when that discovery must be safeguarded
due to security reasons. believe me Dr. M, unless you work with black
projects for the Govt. Your not going to know about it either. When you studied
science in middle school, were you given texts about silicon chips to learn
about?. The Govt probably had a good grasp on computer components 30 yrs
before we knew of their existance.

And yet we built the atomic bomb and deciphered Nazi codes with hand-crank calculators? Come on. You think we had digital computers in the 1940's and all those hundreds of scientists who worked with them lied about it? You think someone like Richard Feynman was part of a government conspiracy? Please. Don't even get me started on the Conspiracy Theory angle. The government can't even cover-up the fact that the President gets blow-jobs in the Oval Office, and they are going to cover up the fact that a flying saucer crashed in New Mexico? No. Conspiracy theories are just a trick that UFO people use to turn the ABSENCE of evidence into evidence itself.

As for not having microchips to play with in middle school in the early 80's... do you happen to remember how much a 2 Mb SIMM cost in 1984? Microchip technology was new and expensive... not "secret"!


I'm not attempting to disrespect you or
science, however, there is more reality out there even though we haven't taken
it apart and examined it. You can't dismiss things that you do not understand
because "science" did not cut it open and examine it and display it in your
texts for all to learn. Again, do you really believe that in the past 50 yrs
of all the reports of ufos including our own fighter pilots in the 40s ,50s
and 60s (before blue book).that their all delusionary and that every sighting
has a scientific explanation?


Again... not delusion... illusion. And unexplained does not mean inexplicable. And if I believed in UFOs, I'd also have to believe in angels, ghosts, and Bigfoots too. Because millions of people have seen those as well. But I don't believe everything that someone TELLS me that they saw. How could I? How can you? People make mistakes. Peoples’ eyes and imaginations fool them. It seems pretty obvious to me. It happens to me all the time. As fun as it is to believe in vast government cover-ups and alien visitations... when you really take a closer look it just doesn't make any sense. Just the IDEA that you could travel a hundred light years in a ship the size of a Buick is flat out silly. The suggestion that aliens look like "greys"... basically tall skinny fetuses... identical to humans in every respect... contradicts everything we know about biology and evolution. It's a 20th century fairy tale. Nothing more.

DM

readers...

I know sometimes I bitch about how much it sucks only to have 12 or 15 or 18 readers instead of 50 or 100 or whatever, but then this morning, I clicked over to my SiteMeter and saw that I had 12 hits to my weblog before 11:00 this morning, which suggests that twelve people... pretty much the first or second thing they did today when they sat down at their computers and logged on was to come here and read what I had written. And really... how the hell cool is that?

So thank you – O’ Underappreciated Regular Readers! That was a nice moment.

dave

subtropical depression...

(Leftover entry from Wednesday)

I feel like if I start writing a weblog entry right now I’m gonna complain for a few sentences about how much Wednesdays suck, then I’m gonna start talking about Alabama again and I’m TIRED of talking about Alabama and THINKING about Alabama and the whole fucking “Alabama Thing” so I don’t want to do that.

And yet I think of little else.

What’s going on at home? The kids are both sick, so that’s a lot of fun. And I’m taking an early train home, why? Stupid. I should be hiding in my office right now. ”Sorry honey... emergency meeting with a student... I’ll catch the 4:04”

Oh, hey... speaking of emergency meetings with students, I did have a student completely bug out and have a hysterical crying fit in my office a few weeks ago. That was a real treat. You can imagine how well I deal with that sort of thing. This girl apparently has some recurring medical depression episodes and she had missed class for about 2 weeks straight and she dragged herself in for the midterm exam and got a 60-something on it. Well, duh? And so she goes all nuts on me and she’s never gotten a 60-anything before and every few years she winds up the hospital with these episodes and she’s retaking a bunch of courses from last semester that she couldn’t finish... (So you’ve never gotten a 60, you’ve just NOT handed in a whole half semester worth of work... whatever).

What the fuck am I supposed to do with this information?

I basically told her, look... you failed the exam cuz you missed 4 classes in a row... it’s as simple as that. So the most important thing is getting yourself “well” so that you can drag yourself out of bed in the morning and get to class. Once THAT happens, I’m more than willing to give you as much academic help as you need. But for now, it’s really a medical problem between you and your doctors and your counselors and the university. If you’re honest-to-goodness depressed... get better, come to class, and we’ll talk. But if you just don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning or doing your homework, well... fuck... neither do I. Tough shit, you’re going to fail.

I mean... I said it a little nicer than that.

Because, I try to keep in mind that... yes, I realize that depression is a real “medical condition”, but on the other hand... I dunno, I guess I have very little patience with weepy, fragile people. (Which this girl clearly is... depression aside.) And I suppose I do have a double standard... for example I have a student in another class recovering from appendicitis who missed 3 classes and I’m allowing her to postpone the taking of that exam until she makes up some of the missed work. Is that different? I don’t know. It seems a little different to me.

And on a related note which I alluded to in another entry, my wife is on Zoloft now, so... yeah. She's just been feeling unable to cope or work or do much of anything lately, and she's not sure if its just sleep deprivation or genuine post-partum depression... but she's been leaning towards the latter, so she finally went to a doctor. And the doctor basically said, well... the sleep thing isn't going to change, so why don't you just try these and see if they help. Welcome to the quick-fix pharmaceutical culture!! She has mixed feelings about it, as do I. But if it helps... why not?

There was gonna be a point to all this, but I’m really not sure what it was. At least I made it a whole page without talking about Alabama.

*ooops!*

D.

.

complaint department...

Ok... I think I have myself a pretty good exam. Now I can get back to my weblogging/complaining.

How bad do blisters hurt? Y’know? When they really get nasty and swollen and they THROB? Fuck. I had to get out of bed last night and go downstairs to the sewing machine and grab some straight pins to stab my finger a few dozen times and drain this fucking thing. It wasn’t all just your typical nice watery-blister juice either... it was kinda yellowy and chunky. Eek! Can you say “infection”? I put some Neosporin on it and a band-aid. I just took the band-aid off cuz it seriously fucks with my typing, and I can’t use my trackpad through the band-aid. At least its not throbbing anymore.

And to add to my discomfort today. I’m underdressed and wearing uncomfortable shoes. I thought my blazer over my turtleneck would be enough for today. It’s not. Brrrr. And since I was in such a hurry this morning I decided to just slip on my Spiderman shoes. That’s what I call those new weird looking lace-less tennis shoe things. I bought a pair of brown ones for $15 at Target cuz they looked comfortable. And they are comfortable, in a way... kinda like bedroom slippers. But do you really want to be walking 10 blocks through the city wearing bedroom slippers? No. So they don’t really hold up to extended wearing.

Let’s see... finger hurts, too cold, bad shoes... anything else to complain about this morning?

Well, there is the baby, who still feels the need to pick a particular hour of the night (last night it was 2:30 – 3:30) and to SCREAM for that whole fucking hour and refuse to sleep. Fucking... fuck.

Ok... finger hurts, too cold, bad shoes...not enough sleep...?
Oh, and two big fat old business guys are sitting across from me on the train, so my legs are all squinched up and falling asleep.

And I just realized that my Metrocard is empty and I didn’t have time to fill it yesterday so now I have to stand in line with all the other losers at the machines this morning.

Finger, cold, shoes, sleep, old fat guys, Metrocard machines... yeah... I think that about covers it... for now anyway.

dr. d.

no time to say hello, goodbye...

I hate being late. I hate oversleeping. I hate that feeling of having my wife say...”Dave, it’s 6:30” when I have to catch a 6:57 train. (The station is 20-25 minutes from my house.) I made it. Luckily they have restrooms on these trains, cuz I didn’t even take the time to pee before I left the house.

Anyway, I have to write a physics exam right now, so I don’t have much time to chat. Maybe if I finish the 5 or 6 questions I still have to write.

dr. dave

HEY...YOU...!

Yeah, you with the “Game Boy Advance”. I happen to know that thing costs about a hundred bucks, so if you plan on playing your fucking video games on the train with it, howabout you spring for some god damned three-dollar earphones, huh??

Or would that money have to come out of your “body-piercing fund”??

Asshole...

D.

”did you sleep well...?”

”No... I made a couple of mistakes.”

It’s an old Steven Wright bit, but boy is it appropriate. My fucking neck. Oy. For 3 days now. I don’t know what the FUCK I’m doing at night.

Oh, man... you should see the hot chick that just sat down across from me on the train. Yeah. Ok... well... maybe not so much “hot” as... I dunno... it’s a chick and she’s wearing a skirt... sometimes that’s all it takes.

Now, what was I talking about before my dick started typing for me?

Oh, yeah... my neck hurts. I think that’s all I had to day about that.

And so let me go back to this... why are all the hot chicks always reading some vapid bullshit like “Elle” or somesuch. I know... that’s how they get hot. Or rather what makes us THINK they look hot is that “Elle” has convinced us that looking hot means looking like the chicks in “Elle” so chicks that read “Elle” try to look like the chicks in “Elle” thus becoming hot by association. But still... wouldn’t it be nice to find an exception? Wouldn’t it be nice to someday have a hot chick sit down across from you on the train reading “Scientific American”?

Yeah.

And that’s the thing. I don’t believe that looking like the chicks in “Elle” makes you hot. But if a chick sat down here reading “Scientific American”?? No matter WHAT she looked like... fuck... now THAT would be hot!

dr. dave

who knew there were so many nerds in brazil...?

Hot off the truck I picked up the new DVD/CD sets ”Rush: Live in Rio”. A two DVD concert film and documentary, plus a 3 CD live album (sold separately) from the last show of their last tour. Apparently they had never played South America before, and they didn’t even know they had enough fans down there to pack a 60,000 seat soccer stadium full of screaming Brazilian geeks. Do they have Star Trek conventions in Brazil, too?

Not to be down on Rush or anything, but let’s face it... it’s not the coolest band in the world to be a fan of. They’ve always been pretty big with the Dungeons and Dragons set. And I’m always surprised when I’m presented with evidence that they really are pretty popular, even still... I mean, this new DVD was prominently featured in both the Best Buy and Circuit City sale circulars this week, so they must be expecting SOMEONE to buy them. After all... I did.

And when a band was your favorite band at age 13-15... you never really outgrow that... the music gets burned into the deepest layers of your developing hormone-drenched psyche. So last night, I popped in the DVD, pulled a bass out of my studio and played along. Even all these years later, my fingers still find most of the notes by themselves, although my technique is pretty sloppy from lack of practice. And I gave myself a blister the size of a nickel on my right middle-finger... (often the main plucking finger for a bassist). Very sad.

Anyway... in case you need to hear me say it explicitly... yes, Rush still rocks.

I also got the latest CD from “A Perfect Circle” – the side project of Maynard from “Tool”. I’m actually finishing the last track right now on the headphones. It’s good. I think Maynard is becoming one of those people like Aimee Mann for me... if they put out an album of Gregorian chants or barbershop music, I’d still buy it just to listen to their voice.

Also picked up the 4 DVD Indiana Jones boxed set on DVD. And with our $100 purchase, we got a $25 gift card with which I am going to buy “The Matrix: Reloaded”.

*wshew*

Help! I’m drowning in little silver discs!!

D.

fucking new yorkers...

... are just so fucking LOUD. It’s 7:00 in the god damned morning, I’m just trying to get to work... the last thing I want to listen to is your big fat goombah mouth running on and on about NOTHING just as loud as you possibly can, Vito or Tony or Vinnie or whatever the fuck your name is. I don’t really WANT to be listening to music blaring in my headphones, but it’s the only way I can survive on the train sometimes when there’s one of these fuckers in the same car as me. Shit, sometimes it’s the fucking conductors!! Just shut up and punch our tickets, buddy... seriously.

One thing about Alabama... people aren’t like this, right? I mean... they might be small minded bigots and fundamentalist whackjobs, but at least they are polite most of the time. Right? I mean... that’s the image I have anyway.

Alabama... we’re seriously considering this, y’know? Seriously. I have an interview down there on November 14th, and the wife and kids are coming along to check out the area. Just looking at the statistics... money-wise anyway... it’s a no-brainer. Right now I’m making $60,000 in a place where the median home price is $300,000. I’m being offered a job making $75,000 to live in a city where the median home price is $111,000. Fuck. And that’s not to mention property taxes and insurance premiums. That’s not to mention the fact that I’m pissing away $250 a month here to ride the train.

Of course we’ll probably have to put my daughter in a private school. I get the idea that even the best Alabama public schools aren’t exactly models of innovation and quality education. Maybe I’m being unfair. And really... how bad can kindergarten really be? Hell she’ll already be able to read when she starts school. (But... oh fuck, just don’t pick up the accent!!) Anyway, I’m betting that a private school in Alabama doesn’t cost much more than we’re paying for preschool here in NY. ($500/month for 3 days a week!)

And the houses... good lord, the houses. We look at these houses and think... How can this house be $140,000?? It has 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a garage, a giant whirlpool tub. What’s WRONG with this house? And of course what’s wrong with it is that it happens to be sitting in Mobile Fucking Alabama. But shit... having a nice, big, new house in a nice neighborhood with sidewalks and neighbors who aren’t crackheads... that’s so important to us, and we don’t have that now, and we COULD have that down there.

Alabama...

”Where the skies are so blue....”

So we’re seriously considering it. Which would mean I would ride out this year of my contract, teach next semester, and probably move in July of next year. It’s gonna be a tough decision. Really tough. And I’m gonna feel like shit for leaving my University after only 2 years. But... there are more important things.

The whole thing makes my head hurt. I didn’t want to write about that this morning.

D.

where's mine...?

My cat is on Prozac.

My wife is on Zoloft.

When the fuck do I get MY HappyDrugs??

d.

smokers...

Smokers are fucking disgusting... and it’s not just because they smell bad and have yellow teeth or whatever. I take a train to the suburbs and invariably I have to change trains about halfway out to the other line... along with a bunch of other people. And they stand there by the door waiting for the train to stop with a butt hanging out of their mouth, and when the door opens they quick-light-it-up for the walk across the platform to the next train for what... 30 seconds??? Do you people not fucking sicken yourselves?? To be that fucking beholden to a little paper tube of smoldering leaves that you need to do that for 30 seconds? It just seems so... subhuman. Bleah.

Addicts suck.

d.

misuse of technology...

Today I caught my 4-year-old blowing into my wife’s Lexar 32Mb USB thumb drive. Apparently, she was trying to get it to whistle.

That can’t be good for it, can it??

D.

carmen electra... fitness guru...

Apparently Carmen Electra has a new video out. An exercise video. Actually, a 5 DVD series of exercise videos. It called “Carmen Electra’s Aerobic Striptease.” That’s right people... I don’t make this shit up. You can even check it out at aerobicstriptease.com. The videos start with standard aerobic and strength-building exercises with a male personal trainer, and then moves on to add dance routines, hip-hop moves, striptease and lapdance techniques.

Yeah...ok...

The thing is this...

I have no problem with Carmen Electra, I just sincerely hope that she is not so delusional that she honestly believes that anyone is actually exercising to these videos.

Exercising anything but their RIGHT ARM, that is.

d.

pleasant armageddon...

I’ve been thinking about a friend who has been having what she calls “end of the world” dreams and also thinking about Douglas Coupland and the Twilight Zone where Burgess Meredith survives the nuclear war and then breaks his glasses... there’s nothing I enjoy more than a good post-armageddon fantasy. Especially the urban landscape... decayed and overgrown... streets clogged with cars and corpses... something killed all the people, but the stuff is still there... buildings still stand... things still “work”... to an extent. Just the idea of wandering that landscape... tossing old tires through store windows... cooking on gas grills in rat infested Home Depots. How long would the electricity work? If people all just dropped dead on the spot? Would the power plants run until the fuel ran out? Or do they need babysitting? Would you have a month of power? A week? A day?

What about food? How long could you last – if it was just you? Suppose the power went out quickly, and with it all the refrigeration. Meat... milk... eggs... gone. But what about grocery stores? How long could you live on boxes of cereal... canned goods... Twinkies? Clean water? Hard to come by, perhaps... best to rely on Coke and 7-Up for drinking. Flour and rice... that shit lasts forever, right? You wouldn’t live well, but I don’t think you’d starve... maybe move to a new grocery store every few months. I think you could live for YEARS.

Clothing... forget about it... throw an old tire through any old store window and go nuts. Me, I’d head to the upscale European sex shop on 22nd street and pick out a suitably Neo-esque post-apocalyptic chains-and-black-vinyl ensemble. Warm, yet light and easy to move around in. Maybe with a cape, even. Not that anybody would see me, but you know... if you’re picking your way through the remains of a devastated city, you might as well look good doing it.

Heat? Nothing beats a good fire. If you were in the suburbs, you might even find a house with a fireplace. You could burn the neighbors furniture a bit at a time. Or hell... even get out and cut some wood... work off some calories from all the Cokes and Twinkies you’ve been eating.

Light? Flashlights and camping lanterns and batteries.... you could steal a fuckload of batteries. What about gasoline? Would the gas pumps at a gas station work if there was no electricity? Probably not. I’m thinking it would be nice to run a generator. I know of a few places I could steal one, but I’d need some gasoline. Siphon it from the tanks of abandoned cars? Maybe you’d be lucky enough to stumble on a tanker somewhere. And speaking of cars... could you get around? Even a little bit? Break into a house, find some keys hanging next to the door, head out to the garage, fire up the engine. You could drive around until you ran out of gas, at least – right? Or maybe the roads would be too full of abandoned cars for you to go anywhere. In that case, it would be great to be able to ride on the shoulder or the median... you’d need something small. Like a motorcycle!

Now we are talking some serious fucking futuristic dystopian style!

And what would you DO all day, every day? Once you had stockpiled enough Twinkies and jerky and bottled water in your suburban 2-fireplace house? Well... if you had a generator you could watch TV...although... there wouldn’t be much on, but you’d have a whole Blockbuster full of DVDs and videos to go through. (That’s not even to mention the infinite supply of free porn!) But I’d probably take Burgess Meredith’s lead and head for the books. Mountains of books! Read the ones you like... burn the rest for heat. Hell... I’d probably make Barnes and Noble my home base.. y’know? Drag in a mattress and a wood burning-stove... read all day... listen to CD’s on a battery powered boom-box....oh man... Heaven!!

Just don’t break your glasses!!

These are things I think about... as you can tell... I mean... give them a LOT of thought. What do you think this says about me?

Dr. Dave

can someone tell me...

...why the hell i would stay up until 12:30 at nite to watch the end of a baseball game in which i have no real interest in the outcome?

it was a good game, i guess, but fuck - am i tired this morning.

d.

where am i...?

In the weblog sense, that is. I think I forgot to post my entry this morning. I’ve been a few entries ahead... saving them up. I haven’t been keeping very good track of which ones I’ve posted. I spent all morning adding fancy enhancements to my page, and neglecting my content. Shallow...

I just got done talking to a former student of mine on the train... a former high-school student, that is. One of the guys I went to the Rage Against the Machine concert with, and as a result, one of 5 students out of 500 who thinks I’m cool. He’s in art school now studying digital design and cartooning. Cartooning! Fuck, as many cartoons as I drew in my physics notes, they should at least given me a MINOR in cartooning. At the time I didn’t even know it was possible.

Today was a pretty good day, although I’m rapidly losing control of my physics class. It has turned into this big “tangent factory” and I think the students are starting to do it on purpose. I can’t have that, I have shit that needs to be taught. I will not be manipulated!!

(Of course I will, because fact is... I enjoy tangents more than the actual material I have planned, and it just means that the material I have planned can be made to last longer!!)

On Tuesday we talked about comets and asteroids and Armageddon with Bruce Willis and how you would REALLY deflect an asteroid that was about to hit the Earth. And today we talked about asteroids and knuckleballs and the phases of the moon and solar eclipses and whether or not the Earth would move if everyone in China JUMPED up in the air. (A: It would move about 1/10,000th the diameter of an atom. Note that this is not my ASTRONOMY class, and all we talk about is space stuff. Like I said... loss of control...

It’s 5:00 and I’m suddenly VERY sleepy.

time out...

d.

the commute...

I’m a little freaked out about the whole Staten Island Ferry thing... not that I take the Staten Island Ferry or have EVER taken it... just... I don’t like the idea that you can just be killed on your way to work on public transportation like that. Cuz it can happen to a train too, right? Every once in a while, one of these things jumps the fucking track. How much would it suck to be sitting here minding my own business, typing on my laptop and then...

And appealing to statistics just doesn’t work... because I’m convinced that our brains just aren’t built for statistics... of course you’re way more likely to die in a car accident and of course there were 1,490 people on the Staten Island Ferry who DIDN’T die and given that something like 50,000 people ride that ferry every DAY, your chance of dying even yesterday was only 1 in 5000... these numbers don’t MEAN anything to us.

So... I’m a little freaked out about it... not that I’m having a panic attack about riding the train... it’s just one of those things that unsettles ones notions of ... whatever... security, mortality, normality...

In other train news, we got our little commuter news bulletin thingy today... a little monthly pamphlet notifying commuters of track construction and schedule changes and whatnot. And a little section about cellphone-use reminded me of a sign I saw on the subway the other day that said...

”Courtesy never goes out of style”

And I thought... well, that may be true, but that doesn’t really imply that rudeness is losing any of its popularity either.

I was gonna grade homework this morning. I don’t know. It doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing I want to be doing right now.

I wore my black leather coat today. It’s not really that cold... it just seemed like it was time.

In sports news... how about those Cubs? Jesus. I don’t even know what to say about that...

In gadget news, I got this new doohickey... it’s a retractable USB cable that pulls out of this little circle thingy, and it has a little plug that lets me charge my cellphone from the USB port of my laptop. How cool! And it was only $17, which is WAY cheaper than a wall charger or a car charger.... not to mention way smaller. Now I can charge my phone at work on days when the battery dies, so I don’t have to listen to my wife bitching... “It kinda defeats the purpose of having a cellphone if you never charge it so I can’t reach you...” Fuck you. It kinda defeats the purpose of having a HOUSE phone if your office is such a shithole that 2 days last week it sat under a giant pile of papers on your desk OFF THE HOOK all day so I couldn’t reach YOU.

Sorry... I don’t know where that came from. My point was... it’s a cool gadget. I was thinking that I would try using it now while I’m running on battery power, just to see how much faster my laptop battery drains when it’s charging my cellphone battery, but... I dunno... that seems kinda barbaric, doesn’t it? Draining one battery to charge another battery? It’s like electronic vampirism or something.

The train is stopped... sitting still somewhere that it shouldn’t be. I knew it... all that talk of commuting accidents... I jinxed it. Now I’m gonna be late for class.

Speaking of which, I have NO IDEA what we’re doing in astronomy class today. None. we’ve reached that point that I’ve come to call the Planning Threshold. Or perhaps for the astronomy class I should call it the “Planning Event Horizon”. It’s that point during the semester where I cease to have thought about what I’m doing next week and I just walk into class every morning and say...”Ok... what the fuck am I going to talk about today?” It always happens around midterm... around NOW, that is. So... I should stop writing and start thinking about that, huh?

The train is moving again. Something about a bicycle. I dunno.

D.

new and improved...

Better than "notes"... a GUEST-MAP! Check it out over there on the right.

Plus, be on the lookout for a new photojournal... I have a link over there, but it's empty.

D.

Nubby G, featuring Jay Z...

My wife’s vibrator went on the fritz, apparently. She tells me this last night. Her “purple friend” as she calls it... just finally completely died. It had been acting up... every once in a while it would go... bzzzzzzzzzzzzz-GGRRRRRRRRRRR-K-K-K-K-K-K-K like there was something wrong with its clutch or something, y’know? And so since we live in the suburbs and she has to cart two kids around all day, every day, and since *I* work in Manhattan, she sends me on this quest to buy her a new vibrator.

I just love a “mission”.

She has fairly specific guidelines. Battery power. Preferably “C” batteries. Nothing anatomically correct. Nothing beige, but nothing too “Barbie-colored” or “Hello-Kitty”... no pinks or pastels. What she refers to as a “nice, simple, $15, get-the-job-done vibrator.” Oh, if only it were that easy!!

Because I can FIND that, but they all look CHEAP... I mean, cheaply made and light and they look like they’ll all wind up with the same sort of clutch problem that her last cheap one had. So I’m looking for something well made, y’know? Something that looks like it will last, and that the batteries won’t rattle around too much... quality stuff. But the quality stuff always has some kind of extra fancy shit you don’t really want... bumps or spirals or remote controls or blinking lights or one of those little funny looking rabbit things sticking out of it, which... I mean... I know what it’s supposed to DO, but does it really have to be shaped like a little animal?

I found one that has the “Penthouse” brand name... which is good... you know, I assume they wouldn’t put their name on inferior quality stuff... that appears to fit the bill perfectly... its’ even purple like her old one, and it advertises not just plain-old vibration, but a “three speed escalating throb.” And I think... well SHIT, that sounds good to ME, but really... what the fuck do I know?? It was all just way too complicated.

So I went back to my office and surfed over to the website of “Toys in Babeland” down in SoHo. One of those “Vibrators FOR women BY women” kind of places. Even more complicated. And not only do these upscale vibrators have more bells and whistles, but they have all sorts of funny names that all involve the names of flowers or animals or the letter “G”...

"Insatiable G"... "Nubby G"...

Nubby G? Didn’t he do an album with Snoop Dogg??

Anyway... I have it narrowed down to a few. Maybe I’ll buy an assortment... save a couple for Xmas.

D.

sweatpants...

Ok... what is the deal with all you women and the sweatpants? You know the ones. The stylish, urban, J-Lo sweatpants. The very, very THIN and non-constricting freedom of motion and no underwear or maybe thongs or I don't know WHAT underneath, but there is nothing going on down there to control the *jiggle*. And I'm not talking about fat-ass-jiggle... I'm talking about - Just Got Out Of Yoga Class In My Stylish Urban Sweat Pants And My Perfectly Toned Tight Ass Jiggle.

Fucking... fuck...

I think my testosterone level is through the goddamn roof or something. Seriously. I don't think I used to be this fucking horny. I don't think I used to stare at women's asses ALL DAY.

I seem to remember going through a phase like this after my daughter was born. I think maybe having really young kids kicks up your testosterone level so that you can kill more mountain lions or something. Maybe the crying kicks it off... like it causes the breast milk to kick up in the mothers. Makes perfect sense to me... you know, scientifically speaking. And since I don’t happen to have a whole lot of mountain lions around to kill, I just burn up my testosterone staring at women’s asses all day.

Speaking of asses...

Has anybody caught the cover of the latest Esquire magazine? Sweet Fancy Moses! Now I don’t have to tell you that I don’t have a very high opinion of Ms. Spears in general, but oh my GOD. Apparently she’s announced that she’s not a virgin anymore, which I guess means that we’re gonna have to look at her naked ass every time we open a magazine.

I’ll try not to complain too loudly.

d.

starbucks...

I know how some people feel about Starbucks... but you know what? Fuck them. It’s just fucking coffee... who cares? It’s not like anybody really even LIKES the way coffee tastes. So what if it’s a “chain” or too commercial or whatever the fuck? I’ve got a comfy chair and some hot tea, and I’m happy. In fact, I may have just discovered the comfiest Starbucks in the city, and I’m not telling anyone where it is because I don’t wanna lose my seat.

Walking to work this morning... you know, between Starbucks stops, that is... keeping the pounds off. I managed to maintain 195... despite copious amounts of birthday cake and Edy’s Special Edition Andes Mint Ice Cream. (Thank you, by the way... You Know Who You Are). It’s a nice fall day... windy as fuck, but not too cold. Wearing my new blue sweater and no jacket, and it’s perfect.

I even finished grading a stack of papers on the train. So, it’s only 9:00 AM, and I’m already having a good day. I could totally go to sleep right here, though.

d.

wicked...

So we went to see this musical last Thursday. Have people heard about this book... “Wicked”? I can’t remember the author. I had heard a bunch about it. It’s one of those “re-imaginings”... those sorts of books are pretty popular nowadays. Anyway, the idea is that maybe the Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t really all that bad, lets’ take a look at the story from HER side. Turns out she was really just sort of misunderstood. I had never gotten around to reading the book, but when I heard they had made a musical based on it, I figured – here’s a musical that should at least be interesting from a plot standpoint, so I suggested to my wife that we go see it. (She was immediately suspicious!)

I’m not gonna write a whole Broadway theatre review here... because, well... that would just be too gay, but I will say I enjoyed it. It was cute... funny. It was spectacularly staged... amazing sets. (And real flying monkeys!) The music was... well, it was musical-music, which does nothing for me, but as an example of its genre, I suppose it was fine. All the singing was good. (Although Joel Grey’s performance as The Wizard was somewhat phoned-in.) And like I said... it’s an interesting story. It was only in “previews” when we saw it, so I imagine it’ll continue to be tightened up over the next few weeks. So if you happen to be in NYC between now and the time it closes (a month from now?!) I can certainly recommend it. Certainly a better idea than going to see “The Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast’ or some such dreck. At least none of your money will wind up in Disney’s pocket.

And thus ends the first, and most likely the last, musical theatre review you will ever read in my weblog. Hope you enjoyed it.

D.

twisted...

my back... i wake up every morning and just straightening out is a chore. i’ve been sleeping in a bad position and i can’t get out of the habit. imagine laying on your side with your knees bent. then take your top leg off your bottom leg and twist your hips so that your top leg rests on the bed in front of your bottom leg. so now your top half is on its side, but your hips are kinda twisted face-down. sound comfortable? yeah... it’s not. at least, not after a few hours, or a few weeks. it is fucking up my lower back in a big way. last night, i tried to put a pillow under my knee to reduce the twist. we’ll see if that helps.

anyway, lower back aside, right now it’s my neck that is killing me and it’s making my head hurt which is making my left eye throb. that can’t be good... can it??

oh... one piece of sleep-related GOOD news... the little one slept from 11:30 pm until 5:00 am last night. that’s right... five and a half hours straight. a new record. have we turned a corner, or was it just a fluke? stay tuned...

d.

four off...

It seems like weeks since I’ve been to work. It’s amazing how long four days can feel. I promised myself I’d do some grading on the train today... I even made a special effort to bring a stack of papers home with me. But I also promised to write some weblog entries that didn’t suck, so... what a conundrum. As if we don’t know who wins THAT particular dilemma.

The weekend didn’t get any better since last we spoke. I was on Kid Duty yesterday while the wife worked. She has 3 freelance projects on her desk right now, and no time to work on them, so there will probably be a few more weekends and evenings like this. It’s not always a horrible thing, but they were really getting on my nerves yesterday. The little one just gets in these phases of “enh... enh... enh... enh... enh... enh...”

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT??

So... yeah... it was a day like that.

But there were good parts too. Before bed, my daughter and I snuggled on the sofa and browsed through the “Astronomy Picture of the Day” archives and I told her about all the pictures. She’s so funny... first of all, I enjoy the fact that she recognizes the NASA logo on sight... but she also asks the coolest questions for a four year old. “Daddy... there’s something I don’t understand. How come here on earth we have gravity, but in space there’s NO gravity?” Now nobody, enjoys the challenge of teaching science more than I do, but getting Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation down to the preschool level is pretty tough even for me!

(A bunch of people just got on the train and I just had one of those moments of ”Oh, fuck... who just walked by who smelled that good??”)

I’m wearing new pants today. They rock. I’m so bad at describing clothes... how do women acquire such a large fabric-related vocabulary? You know what I mean? Colors and patterns and fabrics... they seem to know all these words that men don’t know. And it’s not like it’s the 18th century and they spend 12 years sitting at their mothers’ feet next to the spinning wheel or something. Anyway, they are dark gray with a hint of a bluish cast... really fine herringbone-type pattern... pleated... and they are really thick, but really soft and a little ‘fuzzy’... I don’t even know what the fabric is... I’m sure it’s something synthetic, but it feels like brushed cotton or something. They must be touched to be appreciated!

But enough about my pants.

I’m also listening to my new Elvis CD. ”Wear My Ring Around Your Neck”...”King Creole”...”Trouble”... It absolutely does NOT get any better than that.

I see from the guy’s newspaper across from me that the Yankees lost last night. It’s not something I could ever say out loud around here, but... Yippee! As a life-long Baltimoron, I find it very hard to accept the Yankees as my home-term, even after 6 years in New York. (It’s a shame, huh? Because, seriously... how much do the Orioles suck?) But anyway... I’m pulling for a Sox-Cubs series, because... come on.... how can you NOT? I’m not even a huge baseball fan or anything (although I’ve been through some phases... games on the radio, y’know?) but that would be something to see.

Am I talking about BASEBALL in my weblog? Ok... I’m officially out of shit to talk about. More later...

d.

ps... i checked the label... 100% cotton.... no wonder...

sunrise...

As the days get shorter I get to see the sunrise on the way to work in the mornings. This morning the clouds in the east were full of yellow and pink and red. So, if there are any sailors out there... you know...

Consider yourself warned.

happy fucking birthday...

is it to much to ask for presents that aren't afterthoughts, or checks, or of the - "here, go pick yourself out something" variety? is it too much to ask for a phone call from my brother or either of my parents? is it too much to ask for someone to actually follow though on their promises of special-occasion non-vanilla sex?

yes... apparently it is.

on the bright side, at 34, i'm well past the midpoint of my life expectancy, so i probably won't have to put up with too many more disappointing birthdays before i kick it.

d.

quickie...

no posts since thursday... i know... i suck.

m.i.l. just left today... musical was good the other night... got some b'day presents from 'borders' yesterday.... carl sagan's cosmos series on dvd and the new elvis cd.

birthday tomorrow... no work monday thanks to mr. columbus and his poor navigational skills...

big posts on tuesday... promise.

d.

woofus...

More Letterman on the TiVo... caught a bit of Rufus Wainright performing the other night. He can’t sing even a little bit, can he? Not even a little. It’s just this kinda nasal whine a la Thom Yorke, only much more off key. It was appalling.

And how hard is it to say his name and not say “Woofus Wain-wight”?

d.



the king...

I stopped at B&N this morning and spent about an hour grading exams, while the muzac in the cafe was playing the new Elvis album "Second to None'

Oh my god, does it rock!

It almost made grading papers bearable!

d.

irritation...

It’s a shitty way to start the day... oversleeping. My wife woke me up this morning at 6:20, which is when I usually leave the house. Oops... helps to turn the alarm ON I think. Anyway... I got up, threw on some clothes, hopped in the car and drove 70 mph to the train station. Made it. Not that it would have mattered much if I hadn’t – I don’t have a class on Wednesday morning, but the 6:58 train is just so much cooler than the 7:24... less crowded, don’t have to change trains to get to Penn Station... I’m glad I made it anyway. Now I can relax for a bit...

What to do...? Not much to write about after emptying my brain out yesterday... nothing has happened since then.

Oh, wait! Arnold Schwarzenegger is Governor of California! (Would you believe that “Schwarzenegger” is in the MS Word spellcheck dictionary?) I think this is a good time to pause and reflect on just how fucked up that is. Go ahead... reflect.... I’ll wait.... ok? Yeah. Although it’s no more fucked up I suppose than the fact that George W. Bush is the President. I certainly don’t think Ah-nold is quantitatively any more stupid than Bush. They are both about equally (in)capable of stringing together a coherent English sentence. When did it happen that we decided that we value intelligence in our leaders LESS THAN we value a kind of Aw-shucks, Gee-whiz, Slap-on-the-back, Ha-ha, Good-natured, Regular-guy affability? And not to say there isn’t SOME value in that, but when did that become enough? I know your name, you seem like a nice guy... ok, I’ll vote for you. When did the American political process become one big Student Council election?

I could go on and on, but I won’t. I’ll just go back to watching re-runs of the West Wing on Bravo and pretending that I live inside the TV.

And speaking of which... how much did the last episode of the West Wing suck?? Fucking idiots at NBC... firing Aaron Sorkin. I don’t care if he was doing lines of coke through a rolled up script off the desk in the fake oval office... Aaron Sorkin WAS that show. His writing is *electric*... you just can’t fake that shit with a committee. The show will never be the same. I was willing to give it a few episodes to prove they could make something happen, but... it’s pretty clear already that it’s not. Whatever Sorkin does next, I’ll be first in line... I don’t care what it is... that guy is fucking brilliant.

And now I must put on the headphones to drown out the conversation of the two guys who just sat across from me and are talking about their company’s pension fund investment allocation or some such...

People just irritate me. Have you noticed that?

I think I’m done here for now.

D.

a dayful of thoughts...

I just did NOT feel like writing this morning, so I worked. I mean, I NEEDED to work, but I also didn’t feel like writing. I was nursing a bit of a crabby mood from the day before, and a little crabbiness from this morning... it’s mostly gone away, and I’ve been accumulating a list of things to write about all day. Here’s the list...

the five pounds, the biennial haircut, my finger, a transvestite in a sweater, the gay panhandler, homeless literacy

So... here goes.

The Five Pounds: The first reason I was crabby... the five pounds are back, courtesy of an inordinate fondness for Krispy Kreme donuts and too many long commutes in the car past a known purveyor of said honey-glazed crack. Fucking shit. I was looking SO good at 195... y’know? Like, as in... “do a double take at your-own-self in your-own-mirror” good. And now? Now I’m back to having an antagonistic relationship with my own pants. Fuck. It’s that five pounds... THAT five pounds that makes the difference. The difference between 200 and 205? Negligable! The difference between 195 and 190? Un-noticable! But the difference between 195 and 200? “Gee Dave... you’re looking particularly man-breasty today.” Fuck.


The Biennial Haircut: It’s just too long... it’s all scraggly and tangly... it gets this way and I don’t really notice it until it’s too late and I’ve looked like hell for months. So I overcompensate and whack 6” off. It’s not a big deal... I didn’t go all “Queer Eye” or anything... it’s still shoulder length...but a LOT shorter than it was. I like it. My ponytail feels very *bouncy*.

My Smashed Finger: Does this happen to you? We have two cabinets in the kitchen that meet at a corner, and they swing in opposite directions, that is... the doors swing OUT from the corner under the sink. And if Door #1 is slightly ajar and you open Door #2, it also pulls open Door #1 with it, and if your finger is in *just the right spot* between the handle of Door #2 and the unbidden opening of Door #1 and you pulled the door open REALLY hard without noticing that Door #1 was ajar, you can crush your fucking finger in some kind of spontaneous makeshift fucking VISE created by the leverage and the angle between the doors in some way that I don’t even fucking understand, but that hurts like a MOTHERFUCKER and leaves you stumbling around the kitchen banging your head against things and trying to figure out something to say besides ” FUCKFUCKMOTHERFUCKINGSHIT OHFUCKINGHELLTHATHURT FUCK!!!” with your mother in law sitting right there 8 feet away.

No?

Well... it happened to me. My right index finger is still throbbing 24 hours later, and every once in a while with no warning it will just go ”STAB!!”. Oh, the pain! And I have a weird little purple blotch now under the fingernail of my right index finger which is shaped like... well, it’s kinda shaped like a little hand pointing its index finger. Pointing back at me, as if to say... YOU, dumbass, crushed me in a kitchen cabinet.

So, that would be the SECOND reason I was crabby.

Transvestite in a Sweater: Walking up 6th avenue today in Manhattan I saw a transvestite wearing jeans and a sweater and sneakers. And I thought... what the fuck? You go to all the trouble of being a transvestite, and you dress like THAT? Jeans and a sweater?? I mean... I don’t want to tip my hand as far as any secret lifestyle inclinations I may have are concerned, but I can tell you one thing... if I was gonna be a transvestite, you can be damned sure you’d never catch me wearing jeans and a sweater. I don’t care if I was grocery shopping, I’d be wearing a miniskirt and 4” heels. Otherwise, what’s the fucking point?

The Gay Panhandler: I wouldn’t exactly call this guy a transvestite... well, maybe a really BAD one, I don’t know... let’s leave it as “effeminate”. He wears lipstick anyway. And he wears a white leather trenchcoat, and a little white hat to match. And platform sneakers. And he dyes his hair blonde. (He’s African-American.) And he sits there on 6th Avenue jingling his little cup full of change in that – “Gimme Some Change” kind of way. Excuse me? You’re wearing a leather coat and you DYE your HAIR, and I’m going to give you some of my CHANGE?? What the fuck? I don’t know what your life situation is, buddy, or what your circumstances are, but if you want people to give you their spare change, you are gonna have to start looking a whole helluva lot LESS “fabulous”! Will Work For Dye Job!

Homeless Literacy: What percentage of homeless people do you think are illiterate? Cuz you never see them reading. They have all the time in the world... access to an endless supply of newspapers and magazines and paperback books, and yet never once have I seen a homeless guy reading. They can’t ALL be illiterate, right? I mean a lot of them maybe, but not ALL of them. You wouldn’t think anyway. Especially because of all those statistics about regular people being just one paycheck away from losing their homes and ordinary people falling on hard times and winding up homeless. Some of them MUST be able to read, right? And if I had no job and no family and nothing to do all day, I’d be reading up a storm. That would be about the ONLY good thing about being homeless... y’know? Being homeless would SUCK... there’s no question about it, but all that free time? Might as well take advantage of it.

These just things I think about. Maybe next time I’ll just toss the guy in the trenchcoat a copy of “Cosmo” or something.

D.

holy day...

The Old School... the place I used to teach and now give weekly guest lectures... is a private school. That means that they aren’t beholden to the public school holidays. And as a general rule, they do NOT close school for the Jewish holidays. But since a large portion of the students are Jewish, they allow them to miss school that day. And so since so many students are absent, they have a “policy” that teachers aren’t really supposed to teach any new and important material, that the day is to be used for review and such. And because they know they won’t miss anything important, even the kids who AREN’T Jewish stay home!!

What. The. Fuck??

So... today was Yom Kippur, and I gave my lecture to a half-full house. Not that I care... they still pay me, so... whatever. That school is seriously fucked up, though... I’m glad I got the hell out of there.

** ** ** ** ** **

The mother-in-law arrived today. She’s staying for 6 days or so. Free babysitting!! Not that we have loads of plans. We are going to a show on Thursday... Broadway... “Wicked”... a musical based on the book about the Wicked Witch of the West. I know the book was fairly critically acclaimed. The musical sounds a little silly... I fucking hate musicals anyway, but... what are you gonna do? I have to give in every so often... so I figured I’d suggest this one, which at the very least should be “interesting” in some sense of the word... better than homeless French people stealing bread, anyway.

That’s Thursday.

I have next Friday off, and the following Monday... 4 day weekend. Woohoo!! Add to that the fact that Sunday is my b’day and things are looking good for the week.

Can’t wait to see what happens to fuck that up!! :)

D.

it’s the end of the world...

I caught REM on the TiVo, performing on Letterman. Tell me... has anyone ever seen Michael Stipe and John Malkovich in the same place at the same time?

I didn’t think so.

And hey... isn’t it great that they can not make an album for 10 years and then come back with a song that sounds EXACTLY like “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”?

Oh wait... maybe that’s not so great.

D.

rrrwwrwrwEOOWW!!

Our cats... serious problems. They are both hopping with fleas, so we’re paying thru the nose for all sorts of powders and drops and sprays and who-know-what... all sorts of toxic shit all over the house. And we don’t know if it’s BECAUSE of the fleas or what, but our older cat has FLIPPED the fuck out and won’t come out of the fucking bedroom... and if the other cat comes into the bedroom she goes completely nuts (see title) and runs round in circles and hides under the bed.

So... now we have TWO litter boxes and TWO food and water locations and spend half the night listening to “grrrwrwrwrwwwrwrwwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....” We finally got fed up and took her to the vet to see what they could do for us. The result...?

Our cat is on Prozac.

No seriously - CatProzac. We have to give her a pill every day. It’s supposed to give her a “general feeling of well being.”

Yeah.

I think both the wife and I might be found occasionally dipping into THAT stash.

D.

i’m not sure i remember HOW to use a mop...

So my mother-in-law is coming for a visit next week... arriving Monday, and our cleaning service never showed up on Friday, which means we have to spend the whole weekend cleaning the fucking house.

Cleaning our own house?

What the hell? How much does THAT suck?


(Hey, thanks readers... I can really feel all of your sympathy from afar!)

d.

kid’s show dialogue snippet of the day...

“It’s just no use, Wags... I’ve lost my special pirate hat, and with it, my ability to dance!”

D.

car troubles...

Not mine. Although I’ve had my share, in the past... piece of shit cars. So I’ve been stranded my fair share of times. Which means that I have to play Good Samaritan now, every time I see somebody who needs help... karma, y’know? Last Wednesday or so I was driving around and I got off the highway and there was this car just STOPPED at the end of the offramp. Since everybody else in the world drives a giant fucking tank, they were all going around her by driving up on the curb. Well, my little red sport coupe was no way gonna go up on that curb without getting stuck, so I got out of the car and went up to have a look. The car was doing nothing... not cranking or anything.... just stopped. It seemed like it was probably just the battery, but there was no way to jump the car, cuz I was BEHIND her on the offramp. The woman had already called a friend of hers on her cell, and just then this other woman drove up on the road in FRONT of us and pulled up in front of the car. So, I headed to my trunk, whipped out the jumper cables, hooked her up... *vroooom*

What a Man...

Then on the way home that same night on the highway, I saw this van on the side of the road just immolated in flames... the whole fucking vehicle. Ok, well... there’s not much I can do to help here. You could feel the HEAT when you drove by from 3 lanes away. It was wild.

And so, fast forward to Sunday morning... the wife is still in bed, I’m doing breakfast and stuff with the kids, so it must be about 8:30, when someone rings the doorbell. What the hell, at 8:30 in the morning? So I go to the door, and there is this 280 pound black guy... bald... soaking wet and covered in mud. (It had been POURING rain all night) this guy was clearly not having a good day. He asks if he con borrow a jack. Sigh. Ok, yeah... I guess so... (fucking karma)... let me go grab a raincoat and an umbrella and my keys. I said – “So do you have a flat or what?” And the guys says, no... his car is stuck in the mud. Ok. And he says he’s been stuck since 3:00 AM on the “road” out behind the white trash neighbor’s house... which is not so much a road at all but a dirt path through the woods. So I get my old jack from the Probe and tell the guy I’d walk back there with him.

Yeah... he’s stuck.

And his “car”? A fucking stretch limo!!

A black stretch limo up to its lugnuts in the mud... bottomed out so that we have to DIG to even get the jack under it. Dude... there is no fucking way this car is coming out of here under its own power. But I humored him, brought out some shovels from my shed, dug out the tires and watched the guy burn the reverse gear out of his transmission. Yeah.... the wheels aren’t moving anymore, and I see smoke... this car is fucked. And he kept cursing to himself and saying “I can’t call my boss... I can’t call my boss... I’m a dead man.” And so I’m thinking, fuck... his boss isn’t like, Mafia or something is he?? (Did I mention it’s pouring rain? Fuck, do I hate the rain!)

He eventually gave up. He came to use our phone to call a friend. I wished him luck. About an hour later I was trying to take a nap and I heard a lot of yelling coming from the woods behind the house, but no gunshots or anything. I saw another vehicle through the trees... heard some revving engines. I assume they got the thing out. I should maybe go back there and check for bodies, huh?

D.

the disorient express...

I took a nap on the train this morning. I was finishing my last entry on the computer and I closed my eyes and opened them again, and it took about 15 seconds for my vision to stabilize and refocus on the computer screen. So I figured... yeah... a nap would be good.

So I pack up the computer and close my eyes , only to wake up maybe 20 minutes later with NO fucking idea where I was. I mean... I knew I was on a TRAIN, but I didn’t even know which direction it was headed. Am I going to work? Am I going home from work? Did I miss a stop? Where the fuck am I??

It really sucks to think for a moment you may be heading home, only to realize that it’s still only 8:00 AM.

Damn...

Oh well... it was a nice nap, I guess.

D.

productivity...

Yesterday had moments of what could be described as honest-to-goodness productivity. Wrote half my exam on the train, walked to work, stopped at B&N, graded some papers, walked the rest of the way to work, finished my exam, ran off copies, had a class and some meetings, took the train home and graded some MORE papers... that’s just too much like work. I need a day off now.

Now I have to turn my attention to some other nagging projects... job applications and the like. That’s no fun at all. Because they all want the same stuff... letter of application, CV, statement of research interests, statement of “teaching philosophy” (whatever THAT is)... but you always have to *tweak* each piece a little bit for each school. It’s just a pain in the ass to write the SAME LETTER over and over again... which is why I haven’t started yet.

That’s about it. I think I may be “written out”... I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time writing here the past week... I think I posted FIVE entries the other day. I think I’m starting to bore myself. Maybe I need a “theme” to write about... something new... something I don’t usually write about. I’ll go check out some of those “writing prompt” sites maybe. If anybody knows of some good ones, let me know.

D.

new music...new readers...

So I’m on the train... I wrote and email... I wrote a weblog entry... I wrote an exam. Not too bad. I still need to do some grading. I’m thinking maybe a walk to B&N this morning... cuppa tea... grade some papers there... headphones on... Lyle Lovett. He’s got a new album out. I’m thinking of buying it just to make amends for the SIX that I ripped from the library this summer. Boy... albums and DVD’s... I have a long list starting to accumulate... must-haves between now and Xmas. New albums by Lyle Lovett and A Perfect Circle are out now, and a new 3CD live Rush album in October... I know... has-beens, but I have to have it... and that’s not to mention the DVD concert video that goes with it. Then on the movie front, we have the Indiana Jones boxed set this month, Finding Nemo in November, then the 4-disc LoTR “Two Towers” special edition around Thanksgiving. That’s what... $150 worth of little shiny plastic circles? Why do these things always come all at once like that??

Anyway, my weblog got 39 hits yesterday, which is pretty cool. I’ve been reading a lot around the web... other bloggers... Open Diary... found quite a few “keepers” too, which is always fun. And I used to think that this was a good way to attract readers... you know... leave ‘em a note and maybe they’ll come take a peek at your weblog... but I’ve found out that it’s MORE than that. Leave a note with your URL in a really POPULAR blog, and all the many VISITORS to that blog who read your note will pop over as well. I got at least a dozen hits from a note I left at a weblog called “Electrolicious.” How cool.

Of course none of these NEW READERS left me any notes! Well, ok... one did...

And she called me an “asshole”.

d.

one of those random music entries...

I really don’t have the time for writing pages and pages this morning. I promised myself I’d grade. I have some other stuff to do too... work stuff... writing course descriptions, finishing my grant proposal... job application letters. Clickity-click... typeity-type... it’s all I fucking do. It’s a wonder my fucking carpal tendons haven’t just fucking SNAPPED like old dry-rotted rubber bands.

I’m listening to Sinead O’Connor on the mp3... “The Lion and the Cobra”... her first album... back when she was all ethereal and Irish and bald and angry, kinda like a pissed-off Enya... but before she got all political and full of shit and irritating. I listened to this album to death in college... it was nice to come across it in Ken’s CD collection and cut myself a copy... I haven’t listened to it in years. I think my favorite thing about it is that the lyrics (for the most part) make absolutely NO sense in the slightest, but she’s just so intense and earnest that it really doesn’t matter.

”But I doooo knowwww, Mandinkaaaa”

Whatever.

I also ripped some bluegrass from his collection... “Best of Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys”. Yeeha!! Seriously... bluegrass music kicks ass... you can’t fake that shit... those fuckers play FAST. And I come from a family with a rich bluegrass tradition... West Virginia hillbillies... my Mom’s family. Any large gathering... family reunions, funerals... the guitars would always come out. I was listening to NPR the other day, and they had a story about June Carter Cash’s last album... it’s just the Carter family sitting around in their living room... a bunch of old hillbillies sitting around singing these songs... I actually had to turn it off, I couldn’t deal with how much it reminded me of my family, especially of my late aunt who used to sing with my Mom... it really snuck up on me. Music is about the only thing that can do that to me.

And finally, my students were doing a lab last week... milling about the room and somebody asked if they could put some music on the computer. I said “I guess so... what have you got?” and they said... well, we’ve got A Tribe Called Quest and Iron Maiden.

Iron Maiden??

And like 5 of these students were like, “Oh YEAH, Iron Maiden ROCKS!”

Really?? Because *I* think that Iron Maiden rocks, but that’s only because I thought they rocked when I was in the EIGHTH GRADE, which was like 1983, which was before a lot of you 19 year old kids were even BORN. These guys were washed up more than a decade ago... how do you even know who Iron Maiden IS, much less have a copy of “Number of the Beast” in your backpack? Is there some sort of revival of British Invasion Heavy Metal that I don’t know about? Maybe. Now that I think about it, didn’t I recently hear that Rob Halford is reuniting with Judas Priest? I wonder if I can find my old acid-washed denim jacket?

D.