Vivid, critical insomnolence

A friend of mine, “Ted,” posted the following as his status on Facebook a few days before the New Year:

TED: 2010 is NOT the start of the a new decade! Decades run 1-10, centuries 1-100, and millenniums 1-1000. Remember there was no year 0000. Happy New Year to all.

We’ll just chalk the semantically confusing “the a new decade” up as a typo. He and I had had a similar conversation before, and I’d pointed out that– heck, here are my comments and his rebuttals:

VDV: 2010 is not the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, but it is the beginning of a decade–the 2010s. Look at the 1990s–they began on 1/1/90, not 1/1/91. Or do the 90s not count as a decade? If not, what do we call them? Time periods that just happen to share a tens-digit and just happen to last ten years?

TED: Dom, the decade of the 1990’s was 1991-2000. Therefore the 21st century did not start until January 1, 2001.

[NOTE: VDV added the boldface to Ted's ridiculous statement.]

Here I am trying to explain that there are two different and perfectly valid ways to count decades, centuries, and millennia, and that these two ways are always going to be offset by exactly one year, and then he claims that the 1990s ran from ‘91 to 2000. I was having trouble telling whether (A) he really didn’t understand what I meant, or (B) he saw that he was wrong and was trying to save face because he’d been bringing up this issue so much in recent weeks. My smart-aleck response:

VDV: So 1990 wasn’t in the 1990s? Awesome. When I turn 40, I’ll tell everyone I’m still in my thirties.

TED: When you are 40, you are finishing your third decade. Feel better?

VDV: When I am 40, I will be finishing my fourth decade.

Normally, when arguing with someone who is so clearly incorrect, I’ll just give up and let them suffer the consequences of spouting utter nonsense. However, I couldn’t let that happen to this particular friend—I have far too much respect for him. So, in hopes of preventing him from making foolish-sounding statements like “the decade of the 1990’s was 1991-2000,” I sent the following e-mail:

At risk of beating a dead horse…

First, please note that you are correct in suggesting that 1/1/2010 is not the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, just like 1/1/2000 was not the beginning of the third millennium, or of the 21st century, or of the first decade of the 21st century.

However, 1/1/2010 is the beginning of the decade that we will call the “teens” or the “tens,” just like 1/1/2000 was the beginning of the decade that we call the “zeroes,” or the “aughts,” or the “double-o’s,” or whatever, and was the beginning of the century that we call the “two thousands.”

I tried to point out that 1/1/1990 was the beginning of the decade we call the “nineties,” but it was not the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century. You said, and I quote, “Dom, the decade of the 1990’s was 1991-2000. Therefore the 21st century did not start until January 1, 2001.” Your statement is a non sequitir, because you’ve conflated two things:

1. an ordinal counting of years (the first decade was A.D. 1-10, the first century was A.D. 1-100, the first millennium was A.D. 1-1000), and

2. a nominal sorting of years (the “nineties” were 1990-1999, the “nineteen hundreds” were 1900-1999, etc.).

The ordinal groups of time do not correspond perfectly to the nominal groups. The 21st century (ordinal) is not the same as the 2000s (nominal), but there’s a ninety-nine year overlap. The last decade of the 20th century is not the same as the 1990s, but there’s a nine year overlap.

Therefore:

1/1/2010 is the beginning of a new decade in the sense that we nominally sort decades.

1/1/2011 is the beginning of a new decade in the sense that we ordinally count decades, with 1/1/0001 as the first day of the first ordinal decade, century, and millennium.

If that doesn’t clear it up, I don’t know what will. Happy New Decade anyways!

(I have to thank my friend DFJ3 for offering what I think is a perfectly logical explanation for the difference between the two counting methods.)

Ted’s response:

We’ve had this conversation before.

I tried. Happy New Decade!

Happy New Year, and here’s to the Twenty-Tens! (This reminds me: I have to post a transcript of an argument over whether this year constitutes the start of a new decade.) Time to renew some old resolutions, new some new ones, and old some old ones. Let’s see how my Aught-Nine resolutions went:

1. I shall drink more water and milk, and less soda, pop, and sweet tea. Kept. Chocolate milk is still milk, right?

2. At the end of this year, I will weigh less than 192 pounds. Nope. Not even close. There was even some movement in the opposite direction in 2009. However, I think I’ve found a way to trick myself into making this one a reality in 2010.

3. I shall put all the books I’ve bought but not yet read on a particular shelf, and I shall either read, sell or give away more than half of them. Nope. I’ve barely kept the first part of this resolution: right now, the books I’ve bought but not yet read are not on a shelf, but are in a plastic box next to my reading chair.

4. I shall cook something I’ve never cooked before, and cook it at least three times to fine-tune the recipe. Kept. I’m very happy with the result, too: sweet-and-sour chicken far better than the takeout version, and with slightly fewer health code violations. The fine-tuning was leaving out the ketchup. It made the dish taste too ketchupy.

5. I shall write at least one journal entry each week. I will not go seven days without posting an entry. Kept, but that self-imposed deadline made me feel like I was back in school.

6. I shall archive my 2008 journal entries in the same manner as the 2005-07 entries, and write “On Dilbert, Part Two,” and write “How to make everything perfect forever, Part Two.” Kept, though you’ll note that the Dilbert entry came in the waning hours of 2009.

7. If a task or chore will take less than one minute to accomplish, I shall do it immediately. Kept as much as possible. Once again, less clutter, less procrastination, and less… I forget the other one.

8. On weekends and days off, I shall awaken and get out of bed before 9:30 AM. Mostly kept. I know I broke this one on the day I returned from my trip out west, but I was jetlagged, and aside from that I broke it four or five other times. This made my weekends seem a lot longer, more productive and more fun. I’ll renew it.

9. I shall fly on an airplane for the first time in my conscious memory, in order to attend Captain Patton’s wedding. Kept.

10. I shall visit Chicagoland, and feast on real hot dogs, and real pizza, and real beef sammiches. And see friends and family along the way. Nope. Too much other stuff going on last summer, what with the seminar, the break-in, and moving. That trimmed my itinerary by a week.

11. I shall put my U.S. history powerpoint presentations back online, in hopes that doing so will make a difference. Nope. Broke this one on purpose. It occurred to me that putting my powerpoints online would interfere with a partcular assignment I wanted to give.

12. I shall make a real twelfth resolution before May 30th, 2009, and shall keep at least nine of these resolutions (inclusive). My final resolution was “I shall replace my cell phone.” That part was kept, but I count four “Nopes” and one “Mostly” up there, so that makes this one a fifth Nope.

Net result: Six kept, one mostly kept, five not kept. That’s a drop-off from the last two years (eight of twelve kept in ’07, nine of twelve kept in ’08). I’ll need to do better this year.

Here’s my batch for 2010:

1. I shall drink more water and milk, and less soda, pop, and sweet tea.

2. I shall ride the exerbike for thirty minutes (or engage in the substantial equivalent of other exercise) at least three times per week. (I like this one because it’s more concrete and habit-specific than “I will weigh less than 192 at the end of this year.”)

3. I shall put all the books I’ve bought but not yet read on a particular shelf, and I shall either read, sell or give away more than half of them.

4. I shall cook something I’ve never cooked before, and cook it at least three times to fine-tune the recipe.

5. I shall write at least one journal entry each week. I will not go seven days without posting an entry.

6. I shall load my archived entries from July 7, 2009 and earlier into the normal blog archives.

7. If a task or chore will take less than one minute to accomplish and I have a minute to spare, I shall do it immediately.

8. On weekends and days off, I shall awaken and get out of bed before 9:30 AM.

9. I shall visit Chicagoland, and feast on real hot dogs, and real pizza, and real beef sammiches. And see friends and family along the way.

I’m going to focus on these nine for now, but I’ll list my deadlines for numbers 10, 11, and 12.

10. I shall make a 10th resolution before February 28th, 2010.

11. I shall make an 11th resolution before April 30th, 2010.

12. I shall make a 12th resolution before June 30th, 2010.

I’ll take suggestions. Here goes.

Here’s a link to “On Dilbert, Part One.” I started writing what was going to be a longer post, had something else to do, decided to publish the post as was with the intent to finish it up in the next few days. Well, that clearly didn’t happen. Earlier this year, I resolved to write Part Two, but whenever I sat down to do it, I couldn’t remember what the rest of the article was supposed to be about. Happily, while going through some boxes, I found the book that had led me to write the article in the first place.

Here’s where I left off:

I think that every person has a tendency to think that something about him is unique; this uniqueness sets him apart from the rest of humanity and it creates a sense of entitlement. In this case, we have a comic strip that touches people in such a way that many people feel it truly belongs to them and them alone. (“Them alone”? I’ll have to consult a grammatician.) We’ll go from there next time.

Apparently “next time” meant “more than three years from now.” Oh well.

A week or so before I wrote Part One, I read In Our Hands. The author, Murray, is libertarian but is resigned to the belief that the welfare state will never go away. He proposes that as long as we’re stuck with a massive federal welfare system (which includes payments to poor households, Medicare, Social Security, loans and grants for college education, subsidies for corporations, and so on and so forth), we may as well make it as simple, as transparent, as democratic, and as conducive to freedom as possible.

Here’s the super-short version of his plan, which he calls “The Plan”:

1. Get rid of every type of federal welfare program–food stamps, TANF, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, scholarships, college grants, corporate subsidies, agricultural subsidies, bailouts, you name it.
2. Replace them with a (roughly) equal monthly stipend to every American citizen age 21 or older, who isn’t in jail.

He gets a little more specific in the book. For instance, Murray’s annual payment would vary based on income, from $5,000 for the highest earners up to $10,000 for those who earn less than $25,000 per year. Also, he would require each individual to spend at least $3,000 of that stipend on health insurance. He claims that five-to-ten years after initiating The Plan, the total annual expenditure would drop below what would have been spent by the welfare state as it currently exists.

And after you pay for the health care, you’re free to do as you wish with that stipend. Spend it on a car. Spend it on school. Spend it on food. Spend it on housing. Save it for retirement, so that you’ll have extra cash in addition to the stipend you’ll keep receiving when you retire. Aside from the stipend on health insurance, you’d be free to do as you wish. You’d know that everybody is getting approximately the same benefit, you could plan ahead with greater certainty and clarity about what’s coming from the federal government, you’d have a better idea of how much the government is spending and how it’s spending it, the jobs of the federal welfare bureaucracies would be simplified and streamlined, and you wouldn’t have to jump through as many hoops to get the same money from the government as everyone else. And there’d certainly be less for the politicians and voters to argue about.

And that’s why, despite the savings, the efficiency, the simplicity and the appeal to equality and democracy, nothing resembling The Plan will ever happen in this country.

Not because of disagreement over the age of eligibility. Not because of disagreement over the size of the stipend, or what income level should receive how much money. Not because of arguing over how to pay for it. Not because of the argument over whether immigrants, prisoners or convicts should be included. You can iron out those details relatively easily.

The Plan will never happen because it doesn’t play to our vanity.

Here’s the admittedly flimsy connection to Dilbert I tried to draw: “Yeah, Dilbert’s funny, but to truly appreciate it, you really have to be a ___________,” parallels “Yeah, everyone’s equal and everyone has needs, but the government should pay for my _________ because it’s more important than…”

Under The Plan, politicians wouldn’t be able to manipulate that sense of entitlement or vanity. It would greatly reduce, if not eliminate, politicians’ ability to cater to special interests. Politicians would no longer be able to scare the elderly by claiming their Social Security or Medicare payments were at risk, or parents of high school kids by claiming their Pell Grants or scholarships were at risk, or corn farmers by saying their subsidies are at risk.

But it would also greatly reduce, if not eliminate, individuals’, families’, and businesses’ ability to claim special necessity or privilege. Voters would never go for the Plan, because we as special interests–maybe you’re elderly, or you have a kid about to go to college, or you have a corn farm dependent on ethanol subsidies–are so much more special and important than everyone else.

You might say, “I’m not a special interest!” Yes, you are. That is, to everyone else, you are. Kind of like it’s worthwhile and valuable to bring federal dollars to your congressional district because you need to rebuild a stadium, because without that stadium the team goes away and without the team, the local economy hurts–but if those same dollars go to another district’s stadium, it’s “wasteful pork barrel spending.”

The Plan would make federal spending more understandable, more controllable, and more equitable. It would transform federal and state politics by radically reducing the appeal to our vanity and to special interests–which includes all of us. Making the Plan a reality would require ego-displacement of unfathomable proportion. It’ll never happen.

…

Okay, so the connection between Dilbert and “a radical transformation of the federal welfare system” is a bit of a stretch. It probably would have been a lot smoother if I’d just written the whole thing at once back in aught-six. That’s procrastination and forgetfulness for you.

Off to celebrate the New Year. 2009 Resolution #6, check.

Last night’s dream:

A co-worker tells me she’s arranged for me to tryout for Cruz Azul, a professional soccer team based in Mexico City. This strikes me as odd on for three reasons. First, I’m not a fan of Mexican soccer. Second, I’ve never been close to being good enough to play pro. And third, I’m about 60 pounds heavier than my ideal playing weight, and 10 years older than my ideal playing age. But what the heck, it’s an opportunity to get out of the country, to visit Mexico, to see some high-quality soccer and have a good time, right?

My reaction strikes me as odd, because I’d have to employ my least favorite mode of travel, flight, to get to Mexico City, and because I’m not a big fan of huge cities or anyplace outside America. But I decide to go anyways. Will I make the team? No, but it’ll be a fun time and besides, what’s the worst that can happen?

…

It’s about a month later and I’m dead. I am a ghost haunting an apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina, where four people live: three roommates in their 20s or 30s, and the young son of the oldest roommate, none of whom I knew when I was alive. All I know is that I was murdered in Mexico.

I know nothing else. I don’t know how long I’ve been dead. I don’t know who did it. I don’t know why or how I was murdered. I don’t know if my family’s been informed. I don’t know why I’m in Charlotte. I don’t even know these poor schleps I’m haunting.

Actually, “haunting” doesn’t seem to be the right word. The roommates and the son seem to be perfectly comfortable around me. They talk to me without any fear and without any sense that I’m imposing on them–I don’t eat or sleep, so their bills are the same. They go about their business and let me go about mine, which is figuring out exactly what I should do about my predicament.

I can’t tell how much time is passing, but I haven’t tried leaving the apartment yet. Nobody’s home right now; they’re at work and school. I’m trying to figure out what exactly I can do before I try going outside. I work on using computer keyboards and telephone keypads. I can’t remember e-mail addresses or telephone numbers–they’re all entered onto contact lists on the computer and speed-dials on the cell phones, so I haven’t had to remember them.

I remember only two phone numbers. The first is the landline at Dad’s house, which is the one phone he never picks up. I don’t bother calling. The second is my work number. I dial, and for one mad moment wonder if I could get my old teaching job back. Then I worry that because of the state’s class-size legislation, they might not allow me to teach because they might not be allowed to include dead teachers in figuring out the class-size ratios.

The automated system picks up and some anonymous, robotic-sounding woman tells me to dial the extension of the person I’m trying to reach. I punch in the code to check my voicemail. I hear my own recorded voice say, “Vincent Viscariello,” and wait for the robotic woman to tell me to punch in my passcode.

Instead, the robotic woman says, “Murdered.”

It means someone back home knows I’m dead. I’m stunned to hear it, even though it’s no surprise at this point. I keep the phone to my ear and listen to the hum of recorded silence. Now what?

I go to the website of my hometown newspaper to try and find an obituary. No luck–not because I can’t operate the keyboard, but because the website is so poorly designed I can’t navigate my way around it.

Then a sense of peace befalls me. I can’t be hurt–at least not by anything tangible. I can find out who did this and avenge my own death or turn them in, I can communicate with my friends and family, and I have the time to do it–

…

I’m in front of an old friend, “Karl Winter,” who asks, “Don’t you think people in your position have tried this before? Do you know anyone who has successfully plotted with the dead? Aren’t you wasting your time?” The peace is gone.

…

My hauntees come home. I ask them to give me a ride to Jacksonville. One of them is perfectly willing to do it, but then he says, “Wait, I was thinking of Tallahassee, because I have to go to Tallahassee for work anyways. I can’t fit Jacksonville in.”

I tell them that I’m a ghost, and I’ll haunt them for real if nobody gives me a ride down to Jacksonville. It’s only about six, seven hours and after that they’ll never have to see me again. Alas, they’re still more worried about missing work than they are about getting haunted.

I tell them that I will let them have every last cent in my bank accounts if they’ll give me a ride down to Jacksonville. One of them points out that my accounts have probably been frozen since my death, and that if not, it’d look pretty darn suspicious if some poor folks from Charlotte suddenly emptied my accounts.

I assure them that one way or another, they’ll get compensated for the lost time at work. After enough begging and cajoling, one of them agrees to drive me to Jacksonville. I don’t know what’s waiting for me there, no idea what I’ll do when I get then, and no idea how much time I have left before

…

I woke up.

Merry Christmas!

Just got what is quite possibly the sloppiest haircut of my life, and definitely the bloodiest since the ear incident of 1985. I may have to buzz my noggin for the first time since aught-one to minimize the damage. Will update.

Winter break, alias Christmas vacation, is three days away. All I want this Christmas is for my students to put some substantial effort into doing those assignments over the break before the weekend before they come back. That’s it. Not world peace or universal happiness–that would be asking an awful lot of billions of people. I’m just asking for a little bit of reading and paperwork from 162 people. Please, Santa.

…

I might take a day to go up to South Cackalacky. No other travel. Little-to-no Christmas shopping in accordance with my anti-gift policy. Only a little bit of paperwork. Fulfilling a few more resolutions. Catch up with some old friends. It’ll be nice and relaxing.

…

I finally caught up with 2006 and bought a PS3. I still say today’s game systems have too many buttons for my taste. One shouldn’t have to have the reflexes and skills of a real-life fighter pilot or a real-life football player or a real-life diminutive plumber in order to enjoy a video game. Right now the only game I have is FIFA Soccer 10. Everywhere outside the U.S. it’s simply called “FIFA 10″–I guess the designers were worried that we Yankees might somehow think it was a bowling game. Anyhow, I have no idea what all this machine can do, but it’ll serve at least two useful purposes. First, I can set it up right in front of the exercise machine and use it to break up the monotony. Second, once I figure out how to hook up the internet connection I’ll whip my little brother from 900 miles away.

FIFA Soccer 10 for the PS3 (angle 1 of 2).

FIFA Soccer 10 for the PS3 (angle 2 of 2).

Actually, it might take a little bit more than merely hooking up the internet connection since I can barely beat MLS teams with AC Milan.

…

The Bears’ season ended today. Forget a non-winning season and not making the playoffs–they went 0-2 against the Packers. That makes the season a failure. There’s not much to say that I haven’t droned on and on about already. I think they have decent enough skill players on offense, but they need the best QB coach on Earth and a pretty good shrink for Cutler. They need a big, as in tall, receiver who can outjump defensive backs on long bombs. They need a better offensive line–Olin Kreutz is old, and when Orlando Pace is touted as a big-name o-line signing, you’re clearly in trouble. They need to fire Ron Turner first and probably Lovie Smith second. Bring in Cowher or Shanahan. And burn the orange jerseys.

…

Three days ’til vacation. Despite recent ill omens–a coworker’s dream that I died, a bag of oranges (watch the Godfather series if you don’t get that), lots of rain and goofy weather, the Bears getting swept by the Packers–I can make it three more days.

Lessee…

Clemson got caught looking ahead to next weekend’s ACC title game, and got worked by South Cackalacky 34-17. The bright side is that they’re still in that title game, and if they beat Georgia Tech they’re on to a BCS bowl.

Worse, I’ve had November 25th marked on the calendar for months because it was the US release date for The Road–but it’s not playing anywhere around here. The closest showing in the next few weeks is somewhere around Winter Park, more than two hours away. The theaters around here won’t show the film adaptation of a powerful, post-apocalyptic, Pulitzer Prize-winning instant classic, but they will block off multiple screens for those g@#$%^&*d emo sparkle vampires.

And worst of all, the Bears got hammered 36-10 by the Vikings and have no hope of making the playoffs. So much for the Cutler experiment, but I just can’t believe that they’d be doing any better with Orton at quarterback. There’s no offensive line, the defense has vaporized, the offensive play-calling is still atrocious (and I’ve been hoping they’d fire Ron Turner since before Super bowl XLI), and Lovie Smith is not exactly confidence-inspiring. Time to start a two- or three-year plan: fire the coaches, bring in Cowher or Shanahan, rebuild the offensive line, and bring in the best QB coaches and sports psychiatrists money can buy to get Cutler’s head straight. No bright side for the time being.

And the pressure in my sinuses still hasn’t gone away. So much for birthday wishes.

If not for a pretty good belated birthday dinner last night, there would be absolutely no hope for anyone crossing my path in the next couple days.