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Oh yes. This happened.

You’re right, I have had professional vocal training!

Josephine receives a kitty card from her lovely Auntie Rach. In lieu of subtitles, here’s how it went down: “Kitty! Meow!” ::hug::

Newsflash: I am a HUGE nerd. Like, staggering. Wait, let’s back up.

A few weeks ago, Brian revealed to me that he had ordered a new diet book, the TNT Diet, off of eBay for like $4. I found it on Amazon for like $6 (the price appears to have gone up), and since I have free Prime 2-day shipping, I had it in, well, two days; Brian’s took longer, eBay being what it is.

The book is basically a low-carb diet (specifically high fat, and we all love fat, right?), along with a detailed program of weight-lifting to build muscle. I’ve had good luck with low-carb diets in the past, so I figured this would be a fantastic way to get back under 18 stone and maybe develop those wicked arms and shoulders that drive the ladies crazy.

This is where the nerdiness comes in. While reading up on TNT, I discovered that Men’s Health (the publisher of the diet book) maintains a kickass forum for asking questions and chatting with other dieters, sharing your knowledge and goals and successes. From this, I learned all kinds of completely awesome things, like how ideally when trying to build muscle you should take in 1 gram of protein for each pound of “lean muscle mass” (which technically includes bone and water, anything in your body that’s not fat), and on the diet you want to try and stick to a 60/30/10 ratio of fat to protein to carbohydrates.

So during the roughly 30 minutes a day when I’m not at work or being bossed around by my family, I’ve been making nifty little spreadsheets to show me how many calories I need to take in, how much protein powder I should eat every day, fantastic stuff. I’ve even ordered a set of calipers and tape measure to reasonably-accurately calculate my actual fat percentage, which led me to some interesting data.

I currently weigh 254 pounds, and am roughly 6’3″, depending on time of day. My best guess, based on a number of online fat percentage calculators, is that I’m probably about 30% fat, and no more than 32%. (I’ll know more Friday night after my kit arrives.) If I’m 32% fat, that means I’m 68% muscle/bone/water, or about 172 pounds. Now, according to Wikipedia, if I get myself down to 14% fat, I would be very, very fit, almost “professional athlete” fit. Assuming that I gain no muscle (and I intend to, if possible), 14% fat on top of 172 pounds of muscle is 200 pounds. Someone who is 6’3″ and 200 pounds has a Body Mass Index of exactly 25, which is still technically in the “overweight” category. How crazy is that? Even if I was as fit as I had ever been in my entire life, a doctor might look at my BMI and tell me to lose a few pounds.

Sorry, are you asleep? My bad. I enjoy this stuff. See also: Nerd, Matt Hearn is a.

I started the diet at 257, so in about 10 days I’ve lost 3 pounds. Here’s hoping I can keep it up. I haven’t seen my wang in months.

I find this hilarious. This is the current picture that’s up on the website for Concord Mall:

As someone who works roughly 1/4 mile from the Concord Mall, I’d like to ask: where in the hell was that picture taken? It certainly wasn’t at the mall. It wasn’t anywhere NEAR the mall. Believe me when I say this: this is the nicest bench in the mall. (Click to embiggen.)

Who got a perfect score (15 out of 15) on this quiz about general religious knowledge? THIS GUY. Take the quiz, and then check out the demographic information. The second most knowledgeable were Atheists/Agnostics. “Worship Service Attendance” (weekly, monthly/yearly, seldom/never) had almost no correlation to increased knowledge. All in all a pretty interesting result.

I can’t decide if this is funny or not. Thoughts?

I am not an economic genius. My grasp of world-wide fiscal issues is worse than tenuous. But certain things seem obvious: it’s probably better for people to be working and earning an income than not. This is why I’ve greatly enjoyed a post from Karl Smith and a follow-up from Matthew Yglesias (whose twitter handle @mattyglesias always scans to me as Matty Glesias, for some reason). Short, but read ’em.

My feeling on the matter of stimulus spending, as opposed to tax cuts, is this: let’s say you have a middle-class fellow. (Ignore for the moment that tax cuts, as designed by Republicans, usually benefit only the richest of Americans, completely ignoring the middle-class, who are expected to benefit from the “trickle down” of these excess dollars.) Let’s call him Marv Strawman. He’s doing okay right now, all things considering. He’s still got a nice job in IT, his wife’s working part time doing some clerical work at a nearby school. He’s got a little savings, but not as much as he’d hope, and he’s not adding to it because nobody at his company got raises this year, and he’s trying to help out his brother, whose carpet-cleaning business is slowly failing. He doesn’t have any credit card debt, luckily, because he’s pretty smart. Smart enough to know that big expenditures in his situation would be a bad idea, drawing down on an already meagre savings account. So while he’d like to get his out-dated bathroom remodeled, he can’t really swing it this year, and probably not the next.

(As I’m typing this, I realize I’m using a close cousin to the anecdotal evidence argument I talked about the other day. I never said I knew what I was talking about. Bear with me.)

Then, he finds out that the Federal Government, in all its wisdom, has decided to give a nice big tax cut, because while adding to the deficit with additional spending smacks of socialism, doing so to give money back to Americans is, well, American. He does his tax return and discovers that, sure enough, he saved about $600 this year. Now: as a smart guy, what is he to do with this money, knowing that the economy is still in tatters and nobody knows what tomorrow will hold? Does he get his old, but perfectly functioning, bathroom redone? Does he splurge on a nice new TV for his bedroom?

No. If he’s got any sense, he socks it away in his savings account and saves it for a rainy day. He is behaving perfectly rationally.

Now, the other option: the government keeps Mr. Strawman’s $600, along with a few billion dollars in income from the taxes of many other Americans. It then comes to Mr. Strawman’s town (Strawville; it’s actually named for the founder, a distant relative of Marv, something of which he’s inordinately proud) and hires up a bunch of people, including the younger Mr. Strawman, whose business finally collapsed into bankruptcy, to plant a new park in the center of town. It also renovates a local train station for the line leading to the Big City so commuters don’t have to sit on benches that smell strongly of hobo piss. Then it sends some grant money to the town Baptist church, which uses it to build a shelter for the hobos so they’ll stop hanging around the train station. It also pours some money into the police force, so they can rehire the 3 officers they laid off, and they can get back to rousting hobos and preventing kids from vandalizing the new park. And all of these working people get decent living wages and can afford to feed their families, and Marv Strawman takes the money he’d set aside to help his brother and buys a $600 TV for his bedroom. (And all of these people keep paying nice taxes back to the municipal, state, and federal governments.)

Doesn’t that sound like a more pleasant outcome than Mr. Strawman having six hundo in a savings account earning 1%?

Been enjoying the “About My Job” series over at Andrew Sullivan’s crib. Two of them in particular resonated. A community college professor (and apologies, ’cause it’s kinda long):

I believe the assumption is that instructors are the product of a liberal-biased education and then we decide to join that liberal bastion and are just going with the established flow. For those of us in the junior college ranks, however, I think there is a more concrete reason for the lean left, rather than the abstract leftism offered in certain courses we took as students.

When I hear friends and family offer specific illustrations of why they list in a more conservative direction, it often has to do with anecdotes revolving around the person they check out at the grocery store using food stamps to buy a jug of Carlo Rossi zinfandel or spending their welfare check on some other decidedly non-essential item. Or the stories they hear from mutual friends in law enforcement or social services who deal with the dregs of society on a daily basis. Who could possibly support any form of social safety net when a portion of that net will be devoted to such vermin?

Well, on an equally anecdotal and emotional level (not pillars of rational thought, granted, but clearly major inspirations for why and how most people choose a side) we here at a community college tend to see the better side of our fellow humans who are struggling on the low end of the economic ladder. We see them trying to better themselves, working hard in spite of their conditions to try and take a step up said ladder. Hell, some of them may even be spending public money on a pack of Winstons, but we don’t see that. We see them in their best light, for the most part.

And that’s what I want people to know about my job: I don’t have empathy for poor people because I read Sinclair Lewis or Karl Marx; I have it because I work in an environment in which I see them at their best. Some of them are clearly not cut out for college, some of them are unpleasant to deal with, some of them probably do spend their meager checks on stupid things. But they are also trying to change their lot. And they have much less margin for error in doing so. If I taught at an elementary school or high school, I may assume that the kids in my classes were on their way to the destinies that social research and my own perceptions had fated for them. If I taught at a university, I would never meet people who take an English class so they can legitimately compete for a promotion at the hotel chain in which they work, or pass the nursing program to get their AA degree. The world would be easier to categorize. But since I work in the gray area between, I know that it’s not that easy, and that people defy your definitions for them all the time.

The whole thing also strikes me as interesting because it demonstrates how much of our “knowledge” is merely anecdotal. I had a good-natured argument over the weekend with a Twitter buddy who supports draconian sentencing of criminals. He defended this by talking about a woman he knew who was stabbed outside a movie theater by a recently released convict who just wanted to hurt “somebody white,” and also mentioned a family destroyed by a drunk-driving naval officer who escaped punishment. I don’t have any more information than this, and didn’t press him for details. I merely pointed out that modern Penology seems to indicate that deterrence wasn’t a factor in preventing most crime, and incapacitation tended to just produce hardened criminals who were more likely to be recidivist and stabby.

Politicians often talk about how they met Dorothy Babool in East Gabip, Iowa, and she patiently explained how such and such federal policy had deprived her of the money she needed for her excema medication which is why her skin was bright yellow and sloughing away in chunks the size of Delmonico steaks, and this means we have to change such and such federal policy so folks like Dorothy get the help they need. (On the left, it’s usually a policy that helps pay for Dorothy’s medication; on the right, it’s usually a tax-cut for people with Dorothy’s specific medical condition.) This works because while people may not know anyone with horrible leprosy, many of them can certainly identify with someone like Dorothy because she’s the same race, and roughly the same age and economic status.

Americans don’t deal well with statistics like “46 million American citizens with no health insurance whatsoever.” They respond better to anecdotal evidence, which is of course the least reliable evidence of all.

The other, largely unrelated Job, was Baroque Countertenor:

Being a sort of lower level, highly-specialized professional classical vocalist is really fun (I sing mostly in smaller pro choruses and as a soloist in local concerts), but can be annoying. For example, whenever I tell anyone what I do, they try to helpfully summarize by declaring I’m an “opera singer,” which I’m absolutely not. Then when I tell people that countertenors sing in their falsetto voices, they also helpfully summarize, “like a castrato?” No, there are no more castrati in the world, sorry.

Most annoyingly however is how, especially in North America, many assume that because singing is a wonderful gift and so much fun to do, I shouldn’t worry too much about remuneration. I can’t live exclusively off my earnings (although if I lived in Europe I probably could), and I am paid a fraction of the money of my instrumental counterparts, even though my skill is just as specialized. I find too many people associate the words “community” with “choir”—and friends of mine continue to express incredulity that I as a professional chorister with some of the best early music groups in North America should deign to get money for it. Working in the arts, as liberating and wonderful as it is, is a specialized livelihood, and it’s really hard breaking through the culture here where kicking a ball accurately is worth millions of dollars whereas perfect sight-reading, constant vocal practice, and good knowledge of period performance and ornamentation is considered a fun hobby for just about anyone.

Man, do I feel his dog. I realized some time ago that the thing I do best above all others is sing as part of a choir. I certainly enjoy singing solo, but I’m never going to be Sherrill Milnes. My skills (the aforementioned sight-reading, good performance practice, as well as a bizarre ability to concentrate at 3-hour rehearsals that is completely unavailable to me in any other part of my life) are perfect for being the section leader in a good choir. Sadly, if I were to quit my job and try to make a living as a professional chorister, I’d take something like a 70% cut in pay, if I were lucky, and took every single job offered me. The best choral musicians move on to become directors and choirmasters, but at age 32 that boat has probably sailed, and I’m a particularly poor motivator and people manager.

Semi-related: Happy New Year to all my Chosen friends! (I only remembered it because I’m singing the High Holy Days at a local synagogue this year.)

Golly, this post is just all over the place. Sorry about that. I’ll try and do better, you know, at some later date.

I am not a patient person. Among my manifold faults, impatience is the greatest and most shameful. It causes me to be a worse father than I should be, and, coupled with a twisted sense of justice, a particularly bad driver. So you can only imagine how much I enjoyed waiting in line at the US Open for nearly an hour yesterday. Not because there were a lot of people, though there were; people began queuing up at 4:45pm, with an advertised entry of 6pm, and we got in line shortly after 5. We were within 25 feet of the front of the line. And there we stood, until the authorities decided we were worthy of entrance.

Bear in mind that this was not entrance to the stadium, which was admittedly already full of patrons watching the matches before the ones we had tickets to see. This was merely entrance to the grounds, where we could walk a bit, do a little light shopping, and suck down food and beer like only Americans can. But we were not permitted to do so.

Us: Hey! US Open! We’re waiting out here! We would like to spend money purchasing products from your vendors, who I’m sure kick a healthy percentage into the coffers of the US Tennis Association! How about opening the gate?

US Open: Suck it.

Us: C’mon, man, be COOL.

US Open: (Moons us.)

Not an auspicious start. Our hopes of being let in at 6pm, as advertised, were dashed when the previous match ended at roughly 5:59, and they delayed the opening to allow the previous group of folks to escape. At 6:15, they finally deigned to allow us entry. We sprinted in, and made our way to the food court, where we discovered that

1. they had an Indian food kiosk, and


2. it featured no lines at all.

We grabbed platters of lamb, chicken, curried chick peas, and rice, and shoveled it down while sipping on the finest beers available (Heineken, as it turned out). Amusing anecdote: because seating in the food court is somewhat limited, the four of us (my parents, myself, and a buddy named Jeff that I know from high school and my parents know from church choir because we live in an insanely small state) got to sit with two young gentleman of indeterminate foreign extraction. We didn’t really talk, because neither group really understood the other’s English; I simply thought it was funny that the four Americans were eating Indian food, and the two foreign fellows were eating chicken fingers and french fries. Another odd thing I noticed was the number of people who walked by who stared longingly at our food. I took this an excuse to stare at a lot of bosoms, because there apparently was some kind of memo that I missed that said that appropriate attire for the US Open includes skin-tight tube dresses, loose halter-tops, and ridiculous bustiers. Would you wear something like this to a tennis match, particularly on a night with temperatures dipping into the low 60s? Many young ladies (and a few older ones, ::shudder::) did so.

(In the interest of full disclosure: it was awesome. I saw more cleavage than at a Jersey Shore reunion. A++++ would ogle again.)

My mother revealed the fact that, while we had tickets for Arthur Ashe Stadium to see the premier women’s and men’s singles matches of the day (including Roger Federer), our tickets also meant that we could wander the ground and watch other matches on lesser courts. So we caught a little bit of mixed doubles in a court so small I could smell the line judge’s BO (though that might have been my father releasing a bit of post-curry pressure). We tried to get in to watch the American Bryan brothers dismantle Mardy Fish and someone named Knowles that I assume was Beyoncé, but by the time we were able to get into the stadium the match was within a game of ending and we never did get seated. After finding some more beer, we headed to Arthur Ashe to see what was happening.

The match in question featured German Andrea Petcovic against Russian Vera Zvonareva, and we saw most of the second set in a straight shellacking by Zvonareva, who has intoxicating eyes. (I would describe the match, but I’m no professional sports journalist, and also my memories of it are not vivid because of four beers that found their way into my belly.)

Before the Federer-Melzer match, we were “treated” to a rendition of “America” by an 11-year-old Staten Island girl who seemed somewhat unclear as the actual melody, who randomly changed key in the middle of the verse, and who (worst of all) disregarded the usual tempo of the song in favor of a slow dirge-like rendition that forced me to go purchase more beer.

While I was up, I decided it would be best to make room in my bladder for the additional liquid, so I went in search of the men’s room, and discovered an interesting anomaly of Arthur Ashe Stadium: recognizing that women take longer to pee than men, the architects built, near as I can tell, exactly twice as many bathrooms for ladies than for gents. This led to the remarkable situation in which there were no lines for the ladies’, but the men’s room line was rolling 40 deep. It moved quickly, at least.

I managed to acquire more suds, and went to my seat just in time for the introduction of the Swiss Federer, and his German opponent, Jürgen Melzer. I’ll spare you the play-by-play (remember: beer), but will note that if you were to hear somewhere that Melzer was dispatched in straight sets, it would be worth noting that while Federer did break Melzer twice in the first set, Melzer broke back once, the second set ended in a tie-break, and the last set featured a number of hard-fought games before Roger finally got the upper hand.

We managed to fight our way out through the crowds, and I’ll speak not of the fact that the authorities deliberately blocked at least one downward staircase to prevent our use, for no discernible reason, and merely say that our walk back to the car was pleasant on a cool, cloud-less night, and the ability to park at Citi Field (the Mets were in Chicago last night) saved us from fighting too much traffic on our exit.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to the NYPD, which was helpful both in finding parking on our way in, and directing traffic on our way out. Holla, Thin Blue Line.

As a follow-up to Tuesday’s post, I came across this, which is only tangentially related: an old article at The Atlantic about the “real” Second World War. It discusses the remarkable dichotomy between the way the war was reported to the public, particularly in America, and the way real soldiers would describe the combat:

In the popular and genteel iconography of war during the bourgeois age, all the way from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history paintings to twentieth-century photographs, the bodies of the dead are intact, if inert — sometimes bloody and sprawled in awkward positions, but, except for the absence of life, plausible and acceptable simulacra of the people they once were… The same is true in other popular collections of photographs, like Collier’s Photographic History of World War ll, Ronald Heiferman’s World War II, A.J.P. Taylor’s History of World War II, and Charles Herridge’s Pictorial History of World War II. In these, no matter how severely wounded, Allied soldiers are never shown suffering what in the Vietnam War was termed traumatic amputation: everyone has all his limbs, his hands and feet and digits, not to mention an expression of courage and cheer…

What annoyed the troops and augmented their sardonic, contemptuous attitude toward those who viewed them from afar was in large part this public innocence about the bizarre damage suffered by the human body in modern war. The troops could not contemplate without anger the lack of public knowledge of the Graves Registration form used by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, with its space for indicating “Members Missing.” You would expect frontline soldiers to be struck and hurt by bullets and shell fragments, but such is the popular insulation from the facts that you would not expect them to be hurt, sometimes killed, by being struck by parts of their friends’ bodies violently detached. If you asked a wounded soldier or Marine what hit him, you’d hardly be ready for the answer “My buddy’s head,” or his sergeant’s heel or his hand, or a Japanese leg, complete with shoe and puttees, or the West Point ring on his captain’s severed hand.

What got my attention, and made me think of Tuesday’s otherwise unrelated post, was this quote attributed to Norman Mailer:

You use the word shit so that you can use the word noble.

I also found it attributed to Dwight Eisenhower with the phrase “without sounding ridiculous” on the end. I actually think it’s more effectively turned around to “You use the word noble so you can use the word shit,” which is one way of saying that one’s limited use of profanity has more impact because of the simple rarity of it. Like if your mother became infuriated at something and screamed an F-bomb. Whoa.

I, on the other hand, drop F-bombs so regularly that it’s difficult to tell if I’m angry until I start flinging poop.