Matthew Dicks

Inexplicable stupidity

Who are the idiots who haven’t figured this out yet?

What kind of discount would you expect after a night like this?

Our plan:

Cancel the trip to the movie theater. Instead, enjoy a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant and then return to the hotel room for dessert and a pay-per-view movie in bed.

What really happened:

Enjoyed a nice dinner. I had the filet. Elysha had the salmon. 

Returned to the hotel room and attempted to order ice cream but was told by the kitchen staff that they had no ice cream, even though the bananas foster that we eventually ordered was comprised primarily of ice cream.

We still haven’t figured that one out. 

Discovered that the television in our room was not receiving a signal. Called the front desk. Spent the next 90 minutes with an engineer who attempted to repair the TV before replacing it entirely. At one point there were two engineers in the room working on the job, and at another point, I was asked to hold up the television while the engineer mounted it to the wall bracket.

After 90 minutes, which would have been the duration of our movie, the television still did not work. We finally sent the engineer away, defeated and dejected.

This was to be our last hurrah in New York City before the birth of our second child, and while most of the day went exceedingly well, it certainly ended on a sour note. 

At 8:00 this morning, a smoke alarm in the hallway began beeping. It awoke Elysha, who was unable to go back to sleep. It has beeped on and off for more than an hour now.

What kind of discount should we expect today when we check out?

Keep in mind that a very cute, very pregnant woman will be presenting our case.

Does the television weatherman serve any useful purpose anymore? I think not.

“Is this the end to the mild weather? Find out at 11:00.”

This is what I heard tonight on television during an exceptionally rare viewing of live, non-sports related television.

Actually, that’s not even true. We were watching The Office, but it had actually aired about an hour earlier. But this is as close as Elysha and I get to live TV these days, so the weatherman’s words at least made sense for once. They actually matched the weather outside. 

When I heard the guy, who looked about seventeen years old, I thought:

Really, dude? You think that tease that works anymore? Find out at 11:00? How about, “Find out in 11 seconds by checking the app on my phone or on the Internet?” Does anyone actually wait until 11:00 PM to listen to a weatherman read the weather to you when you have the forecast at your fingertips at all times?

I hope not. I’d hate to think anyone is encouraging him.

Baby Lily is an orphan and I shouldn’t give a damn.

It breaks my heart every time my daughter tells me that one of her babies is upset and crying because the baby doesn’t have a Mommy and Daddy.

“But Clara, you can be her Mommy,” I’ll say.

Then Clara will look at me as if I have two heads and reply, “I’m not a Mommy. I’m Clara.”

Don’t most kids take on the role of mother in these situations?

In order to mitigate some of their suffering, Clara has begun reconfiguring the relationship web amongst her babies, assigning the role of mother to the larger dolls and connecting each large doll to a small one.

Still, some of her babies are still orphans, including Baby Lily, who Clara told me this morning is  “so sad that she doesn’t have a Mommy or Daddy. What will she do, Daddy?”

What the hell am I supposed to do? Run out and buy a Mommy doll for Baby Lily?

If Clara keeps this up, I just might.

Has the pie-in-the-window cliché ever been put into practice? Even once?

Has any pie, in all of human history, actually been placed on a window sill to cool?

And if so, why?

The narrowness of an average window sill alone should exclude this as an adequate location for cooling.

Add to it the probability of dust and insects contaminating the pie, not to mention the large number of vagabonds, misanthropes, anthropomorphized wolves, and comedic rabbits that literature teaches us are lurking outside every open window, and the window sill seems like the last place in the world where one would want to leave a pie.

Am I wrong?

Falik took the bathroom. What should Dicks name?

William Falik is my kind of guy.

In honor of his father’s 100th birthday, he donated $100,000 dollars to Harvard Law School in order to provide financial assistance to students who are pursuing a less profitable career in public-interest law.

When offered the opportunity to name something at Harvard in honor of his father as well, Falik decided to be unconventional:

“The only thing I ever thought of naming - with my last name - was a men’s room,’’ says Falik. He proposed that it be called the Falik Gentleman’s Lounge, but the powers-that-be at the World’s Greatest University didn’t go for it, settling instead on the Falik Men’s Room. (Falik said his father had an excellent sense of humor and took great pleasure in the naming opportunity.) Remarkably, this isn’t the first men’s room to bear his name. A few years back, he made a generous donation to the Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theater, and as a result, male patrons spend part of intermission in the Falik Gentlemen’s Lounge. “There’s humor in this, of course. But, most importantly, it was a donation in honor of my dad as he celebrated his birthday.’’

There are few things I admire more than a lack of pretension and the ability to be self-deprecating. William Falik seems to possess these qualities in great measure. 

He also leaves me wondering what I might choose to bear my equally suggestive last name when I make my fortune and become equally philanthropic. Falik has already taken the idea of naming the men’s room, so I need something new and original. Something truly befitting this burden of a last name.

Thoughts? Ideas? Please?

Do you ever cross your fingers anymore?

I just wrote the phrase “Fingers crossed!” in an email to my editor. 

I used the phrase to signal that I was hoping for good luck, but when was the last time anyone actually crossed their fingers in real life?

I can’t remember the last time when I did.  Nor can I recall a time when someone crossed their fingers in my presence.   

Is it possible that the physical gesture of crossing one’s fingers for good luck no longer exists in real life, and all that is left is the verbal expression of the gesture?

 

It’s the Year of the Dragon, which is a hell of a lot better than the year of the rat or the rooster

According to the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Dragon.

I’m glad. Other options include the rat, dog, ox, pig, rooster and a host of other unimpressive, rather ordinary animals.

The tiger isn’t bad, I guess, but it isn’t exactly a dragon. 

I don’t understand how the Chinese zodiac is comprised of eleven animals that actually exist in the world today (most of which can be found on an average farm) and one fictional, fire breathing monster. 

This would be akin to Santa’s sleigh being pulled by eight flying reindeer and Gamera, the monstrous, inexplicably jet powered turtle that is most famous for fighting Godzilla in the 1960s Japanese monster movies. 

You are probably stupid in comparison to your children, and you only have your parents to blame

A study was released this week reiterating the dangers of drinking alcohol while pregnant and identifying the end of the first trimester as the most dangerous time for a pregnant woman to consume alcohol. 

The end of the first trimester appears to be the period when alcohol can wreak the most havoc on fetal development, causing physical deformities as well as behavioral and cognitive symptoms, according to research in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Despite the clear evidence that consuming alcohol can cause great harm to a developing fetus, alcohol still poses a serious danger, particularly when a woman does not know that she is pregnant: 

While the data reinforce current guidelines that expectant moms avoid alcohol, it’s particularly difficult for those in the first days of pregnancy, especially since 50% of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned. That means most women may not even become aware they are pregnant until the middle or end of the first trimester.

Despite these dangers, expectant mothers drink and smoke far less frequently than they did twenty or thirty years ago, which causes me to wonder:

Has the extreme reduction of alcohol and nicotine consumption during pregnancy caused children born today to be more intelligent than the children born thirty or more years ago?

Wouldn’t it stand to reason that a generation of human beings whose mothers routinely smoked and drank during pregnancy would be less intelligent in comparison to a generation of children whose mothers reduced and/or refrained from these cognitively debilitating behaviors altogether?

All other things being equal, is it reasonable to assume that my daughter’s IQ is likely higher than that of her parents, grandparents and great grandparents?

I think so. 

I realize that if this is true, there is not much use for this information other than to gloat, but in my experience, gloating can be quite fun.

It can also lend credence to the desire to ignore the wisdom of your elders. If you parents or grandparents were bathed in an amniotic slosh of whiskey and  beer and nicotine during their most critical periods of their development, who are they to tell us that we need long term care insurance or should consider purchasing a more practical automobile?

Compared to the children born in the last twenty years, they aren’t even functioning on the same cognitive cognitive level.

At least that would be the argument I would make.

The Emperor might have been better off with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker foiling his plans

Star Wars fans, I have a question:

What exactly was the Emperor's endgame?

Let’s say that he managed to crush the rebel alliance and turn Luke to the dark side.

Then what? 

So he rules the galaxy?  Was his ultimate goal to be the boss of everyone?

It seems a little anticlimactic to me.

Did he really want to be the one to determine marginal tax rates, the legal drinking age and sentencing guidelines for white collar criminals?

Because once the rebels are gone, aren’t these the only kinds of decision left to make?

Or did the Emperor have a grander vision?  Perhaps a Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street view in terms of the direction that the galaxy’s economy should be headed?

Even then, should this really be the concern of a Sith Lord?

It seems to me that the worst thing for the Emperor would have been the complete elimination of the rebel alliance. 

Eliminate the opposition and what are you left with?

Determining the import tariffs on bantha meat?  Assigning patents on droid technology?  Christening Death Stars?   

There’s something to be said for having enemies.