Matthew Dicks

22/08/2026

I am admittedly a reluctant atheist, but having grown up in the Christian religion and having read the Bible cover-to-cover three times, I have some knowledge of the Christian faith.

Here is something that has annoyed me for a long time:

If Jesus returned to Earth tomorrow and did not identify himself, an unfortunate number of Christians would reject him outright and perhaps even despise him if they met him on the street.

After all, Jesus was Jewish.
He was very much a socialist.
He was homeless for most of his life.
He was a refugee.
An undocumented immigrant.
He was anti-death penalty.
Anti-school prayer (Matthew 6:5-6:7).
Anti-violence.
Opposed to nationalism.
He was strongly opposed and even hostile to the accumulation of wealth.
Anti-capitalist.
He demanded that you love your enemy.
He never said a single word about homos*xuality, same-s*x marriage, or transgender rights.

And as much as the church might have you think otherwise, Jesus was not white.

He was a brown-skinned Middle Eastern man who wore sandals to the dinner table and hung out with s*x workers.

He sounds pretty great to me, but if Jesus returned to Earth tomorrow and made no attempt to identify himself, a disturbing number of Christians would reject him outright, which says a lot about how closely they are truly aligned with the man they claim to be so closely aligned with.

21/08/2026

Perhaps you heard what Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff said about Donald Trump in a recent campaign speech:

“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the President sleeps through his meetings, he golfs, and trades stocks. He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar."

His reference to Natalie was to Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant, who joined him in the catering cart that snuck Trump and a small group of staffers onto Air Force One while leaving the Secretary of State, Treasury Secretary, and others on the Quatri-gifted plane that lacked the resources to defend itself against a threatened Iranian attack.

Ossoff has been attacking Trump like this for quite a while and getting a lot of attention for it.

Yesterday, in a Georgia campaign appearance, Ossoff called Trump a “draft-dodging, crook president.” He contrasted Trump with Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot and astronaut, saying Americans should consider who has actually demonstrated patriotism and service.

I have been waiting for this for a long time.

I appreciated Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high," and I support that sentiment in most cases. But when it comes to this President — a man who routinely insults people based on their weight and physical appearance and calls them some of the most vile names, the time for going high is over, for a few reasons:

Sometimes you need to meet your enemy on their turf in order to fight, and I think this is one of those times.

When you allow a President to refer to opponents with terms like "low IQ," "mentally disabled," "vermin," "horseface," "big, bat pig," "crazy," and "barely literate moron" and refuse to punch back, it only emboldens him and his supporters to continue.

He said that John McCain wasn't a war hero.

Attacked Gold Star families.

Mocked the disabled.

Routinely insults women's physical appearance and intellect.

Sometimes you need to punch back. Sometimes you need to go low and fight back.

I think this is one of these times.

But I also think that it's especially effective considering who Donald Trump is at his core:

A man with an enormous but supremely fragile ego who is utterly incapable of laughing at himself or taking criticism of any kind. This is a man who would routinely call New York City newspapers, posing as his own publicist, to speak highly of himself. He created fake Time magazine covers featuring himself and hung them in his golf courses. He's attempting to build monuments to himself and is actively plastering his name on things in a way no President has ever done before.

This is a man who never learned that it's best to allow others to speak highly of you because he so desperately wants to be loved, so much so that the aforementioned Natalie Harp is known as "The Human Printer" because she spends her days printing positive things said about Trump online and feeding his ego with the printouts.

This is a man who conducts Cabinet meetings on camera so that each member of his Cabinet can compliment him publicly.

This is a man who once altered a National Weather Service map with a Sharpie to prove he was not wrong about where a hurricane landed.

He routinely takes cognitive tests designed to screen for dementia and then brags about how well he's done. I gave the exact same test to Clara six years ago when she was 11 years old, and she scored 27 out of 30. She lost points for not knowing the date (in the midst of her summer vacation) and reversing the order of words on the memory portion of the test.

Yet he brags about it constantly.

His ego is thin and fragile as a roll of Dollar Tree toilet paper.

This is a man who cannot stand to be made a fool. He especially can't stand the kinds of attacks that Ossoff is lobbing his way. He is incapable of self-deprecation or self-correction of any kind.

This makes the man ripe for a taste of his own medicine.

In the parlance of the playground, "He can dish it out, but he can't take it."

In response to Ossoff's statements, Trump replied, “You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman look-alike?”

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung: He called Ossoff “Jon Jackoff” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics.” He said that Ossoff should ask himself why he is “a miserable person who hates this country,” attributing it to Ossoff being a “radical, extremist Dumocrat.”

White House spokesman Davis Ingle described Ossoff as a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama,” adding, “Nobody gives a s**t what this lightweight loser says.”

Those are actual public statements from White House communications officials.

All of this means Ossoff has managed to hit Trump where it hurts, which is great, because I promise you Senator Ossoff doesn't care one bit about what the White House or Trump has said about him.

Unlike Trump, his ego is secure. Sticks and stones may break his bones, but names will never hurt him.

In fact, Ossoff probably loves it. While his remarks focused on actual facts related to Trump's actions and decisions, the White House and Trump only managed to lob baseless, meaningless, crass, and stupid insults at Ossoff, absent any substance.

They said nothing about Ossoff's record as a Senator. They did not criticize his actions or decision-making.

They simply called him names, which, for anyone with a strong ego and defined sense of self, means nothing to them.

Ossoff is exploiting Trump's asymmetric vulnerability:

Trump is wounded by insults of the kind Ossoff has lobbed. Comments like these cut him to the core. They force his communications team to waste time formulating ridiculous responses. They probably send the Human Printer inter hyerdrive, producing mountains of positive comments on social media to counteract the attention Ossoff's comments are garnering.

Meanwhile, Ossoff probably finds the White House's response amusing. Their words do not do damage and fail to score any points. The language they've chosen is likely distasteful to moderate Republicans, independents, and religiously minded Americans.

Senator Ossoff understands that when your opponent has a weakness, as Trump clearly does, you pound away at that weakness whenever possible.

I wish more Democrats would do the same.

And it wouldn't take much.

Just make sure, when speaking to the public, you remind people, if embarrassing, humiliating, but absolutely true facts about Trump:

Trump is often caught on camera sleeping on the job.
Trump paid hush money to a p**n star with whom he had s*x with shortly after his son was born.
Trump repeatedly promised never to play golf while in office but plays more golf than any other President.
Trump bankrupted casinos.
Trump is a draft-dodger.
Trump was Epstein's best friend.
Trump refused to release the remaining Epstein files.
Trump promised to reduce prices on day one of his second term.
Trump promised to keep America out of war.
Trump bragged about grabbing women by the ge****ls.
Trump was found liable by a jury for s*xual abuse.
Trump is a convicted felon.

They could mention his fraudulent university that stole money from Americans. His fraudulent charity, which federal officials shut down for misuse of funds. His six bankruptcies. The way that fans boo him at every sporting event he attends. His lackluster inauguration crowds. His inability to get musicians or celebrities to perform at any of his events. The minuscule crowds at his celebration of America's 250th birthday. The way NATO leaders have openly laughed at him during speeches. His defense of Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies in Helsinki.

The list of humiliations is endless.

This is what opponents of Trump should be talking about — not solely, but consistently.

Stand your positions. Make your arguments. Explain your thinking. Lay out your plans for a better day.

But also hit the guy where it hurts.
Force him to react.
Set him on his heels.
Don't allow Americans to forget Trump's greatest failures and indignities.

"When they go low, we go high" is right for so many instances, but not this one.

Jon Ossoff has it right. Jon Ossoff understands how to do battle with Trump. He's also explaining, in simple, clear, and fact-based terms, how Trump is enriching himself and his family by manipulating markets, passing on sweetheart deals to his sons, and redirecting taxpayer money into his own coffers.

He's doing it in ways Americans can easily understand the extreme level of corruption taking place in Washington.

Ossoff is doing it right.

Democrats would be wise to follow his lead.

20/08/2026

September approaches.

Teachers return to work. College students leave home. Perhaps you're starting a new project at your firm or hiring a new team.

For many, many more meetings and classes will commence shortly.

One reminder:

"Gosh, I really hope we start off with an icebreaker activity," said NO HUMAN BEING ever.

19/08/2026

I have always thought that the continent of Antarctica looked like this:

Then I learned this week that Antarctica isn't at all what I've always envisioned. Beneath the ice that covers the continent, the actual landmass is not nearly as solid as I once thought.

It's practically an archipelago, filled with islands, peninsulas, and inland lakes and seas.

How did I not know this before today?

Did you know this?

Have I been somehow left out of this fascinating bit of information?

Of all the people in the world who didn't know this, I should not be one of them.

When I was ten years old, I received a globe and an atlas for my birthday because I asked for them. Instead of requesting an Atari 2600 or a skateboard, I asked my parents for maps.

I was, and still am, a geography nerd.

When visiting London earlier this month, I entered every map store I could find, and in London, there are many.

In high school, I skipped taking typing class in favor of a geography class, which led to a fight with administration, multiple meetings with the vice principal, and a front page school newspaper piece entitled "The Right to Write" about my techers' demands that I type my term papers but their refusal to allow me to use the school's typewriters because I had never taken the class, which they did not require.

You can't ask me to type a paper if you can't provide me with the equipment to do so.

I won that fight.

I still have that school newspaper.

Today, I type with about six of my fingers in a haphazard way, because I thought the study of geography was more important, not knowing I would spend my life writing books, magazine pieces, blog posts, musicals, plays, and more.

Millions of words, typed in the least efficient way possible.

Boy, do I wish I had learned to type properly.

But no, I took geography because I loved and still love the subject, and yet Antarctica's actual land formation escaped me until this week.

I still can't believe it.

18/08/2026

Someone recently told me:

“If you’re going to have a difficult life, it might as well be childhood, since it’s so short.”

I disagree. Wholeheartedly.

I think it was a supremely stupid thing to say, for a few reasons.

First, it's the percentage of your life that is difficult that matters most, and a difficult childhood skews that percentage poorly for a long, long time.

If you have a difficult childhood, that means 100% of your life up until a certain age is difficult, and these are fundamental years upon which the foundation of our lives is often built.

This alone is exceptionally damaging.

Equally important:

It takes a long, long time for that percentage to even shift to a 50/50 split.

For example, if your life was difficult until the age of 16, you won't attain a 50/50 split of difficult to not-so-difficult until you're 32 years old, and that assumes none of the years between ages 17 and 32 were difficult, which is unlikely.

Even if that's the case, you've now only reached a 50-50 split at the age of 32.

Half your life was hard.

Half was not.

And the hard half is still your foundation.

In this example, you'll need to reach the age of 48 before two-thirds of your life wasn't difficult, and 64 before three-quarters of your life wasn't difficult, and all of this is assuming that none of the years between ages 17 and 64 are difficult, which is, of course, a ridiculous assumption.

No, if you're going to have a difficult life, make it anything but childhood. I wish every person on the planet a childhood filled with love, joy, learning, productive struggle, and great success.

If life is then filled with hardship, at least the foundation will be solid, coping strategies will be in place, and the person experiencing the hardship will be able to lean on the memory of those childhood years with a sense of what has been and could be again.

The kind of person who thinks that if you’re going to have a difficult life, it might as well be childhood is probably someone who experienced a childhood free of hardship and has no understanding of the long-term impact a difficult childhood can have on the rest of your life.

We build homes on solid foundations, or they eventually fall.

So, too, should we be trying like hell to build a lifetime on a solid foundation, meaning investing in education, healthcare, and nutrition at an early age.

All things, for the record, that have been cut in recent years by an administration that has gutted the Department of Education, eliminated healthcare subsidies, and cut SNAP benefits.

Hurting children is always wrong, but it's also strategically stupid. It creates larger, more expensive problems in the future, but this is how our country has treated children for a long, long time. We don't invest nearly enough in preschool, education, paid parental leave, healthcare, and nutrition, and we end up paying for it later.

It's short-sighted, economically stupid, and cruel.

Childhood may be short, but it shouldn't be difficult. On the contrary, it should be the most productive and most supported time in a person's life, helping to guarantee them the very best future possible.

17/08/2026

My former roommate and friend, Tom Landry, died yesterday.

He was 57 years old.

I met Tom while working at the McDonald's in Milford, Massachusetts, in 1987. I was a junior in high school, and he was a senior. We had little in common except for the music we listened to and the burgers we flipped, but Tom was uncommonly sweet and kind for a teenage boy. He possessed a blend of innocence and wisdom that I found deeply appealing.

Tom, Bengi, and I moved into a townhouse in Crystal Village in 1989 after I had graduated high school and had nowhere to live, and Bengi had decided that living in college dorms was not for him.

To make the place work financially, we invited Tom to join us. By then, he was still living with his parents, working in a warehouse, and probably making more money than both of us. Bengi and I shared a bedroom, and Tom had the other to himself. We decorated the walls with posters of heavy metal bands, supermodels, and Bart Simpson. Soon, Bengi and Tom bought hamsters and began building a series of tubes that extended from one room to another.

We called our home The Heavy Metal Playhouse, and that name stuck. Our friends, the strangers who became our friends, and the strangers who remained strangers spent enormous amounts of time in our home, drinking beer, watching movies, playing video games, and engaging in seemingly important but probably stupid conversations about life that people of a certain age seem to love.

It was a glorious time.

Tom remained our roommate for about eight months. He may have been sweet and wise, but Tom was not the neatest roommate. He left messes in the kitchen. Dripped toothpaste onto the sink and left it behind like tiny art projects. Considered every room a place for him to leave his clothing.

I still loved him, but he made me a little crazy.

Then Tom purchased mice, and things took a turn for the worse. For reasons we never understood, his mice would not remain in their cage, so we would find them wandering our home. They also smelled. The combination of Tom failing to clean their cage and the fact that they were mice made the smell inevitable.

The hamster probably smelled just as badly, but it was locked in plastic boxes and tubes, whereas the mice were kept in an open, wire cage.

Also, Bengi cleaned the hamster cages regularly.

Tom's roommate status came to an end when two things happened simultaneously:

Tom lost his job, and within a month, he couldn't make rent.
The mice began keeping Tom awake at night, so Bengi and I arrived home late one night to find Bengi's computer chair in the hallway with the mice's cage sitting atop it. The mice were busy eating the chair through their wire cage.

The lack of rent, plus the mice, was enough to send Tom packing.

Asking Tom to leave was Bengi's job, and he did so brilliantly. He explained, in the gentlest of terms, that the longer he stayed in The Heavy Metal Playhouse, the more debt he would accumulate, when a perfectly good bedroom was waiting for him half an hour north in his parents' home in Milford.

We assured Tom that he could always come back once he got another job and saved up some money, and we told Tom that he could hang out in our place whenever he wanted, just like the many friends and strangers whom we often found sleeping on couches, eating our food, and watching our TV.

Tom left the next day. We helped him pack and load his things into his boxy, white car.

Tom came back from time to time, but not as often as I thought and hoped he would. I think it was hard for him to come back to The Heavy Metal Playhouse after having been an integral part of it.

I worry I might feel the same when I visit the school where I taught for 27 years for the first time:

Do I belong here?

Do they even want me here?

Have they all moved on and forgotten me?

Tom Landry and I were friends in the early 1990s, when cell phones and email did not exist, so when I moved out of The Heavy Metal Playhouse after Bengi landed a job in Connecticut and I became homeless for a time before landing on my feet in a pantry that I shared with a goat, I lost track of Tom.

Absent phones and email, it was hard to stay in touch wth anybody.

When Facebook arrived, I quickly reconnected with many of the former Heavy Metal Playhouse friends whom I hadn't managed to stay connected to in the years between, but I could not find Tom. Sharing a name with one of the most famous NFL coaches of all time didn't help the search, but Tom was also never the most social person. He was shy and unassuming. He waited for you to reach out and rarely made the first move.

I can see him avoiding social media, thinking, "Why would anyone want to find me?"

Tom was living in Maryland when he died. I only know this because the brother of a former Heavy Metal Playhouse friend remained in touch with Tom through the years. I don't know what Tom was doing with his life at the time of his passing, or in the intervening years between our time together and his death, but I hope he had a happy life.

He certainly died far too soon.

For over a decade, I had made it a goal to host a Heavy Metal Playhouse reunion. My first idea was to return to Crystal Village and host something in their main building, but when I inquired, the owners of the complex said they didn't have a room for anything like that. I looked into function halls nearby but realized that so many of us are scattered across the country now.

Asking someone to travel from Santa Fe for an evening of reminiscing would be a lot.

Then Zoom became as ubiquitous as cell phones and email, so I tried to organize something a few years ago before getting pneumonia and canceling.

I've done nothing since.

I have a list of people I intend to invite, and hopefully, I can still find most of them. I looked at it yesterday. Tom's name is second on that list, right below Bengi, because Tom, Bengi, and I started out together. We are the founders of The Heavy Metal Playhouse.

For a time, Tom was like family to me.

I loved him.

I placed the cursor behind his name last night and placed my finger on the Delete button, but I could not bring myself to depress the key.

Tom has passed away, but he will remain on that list of friends who, more than 30 years ago, were just emerging into adulthood and would gather on hand-me-down couches and beat-up chairs to drink beer, eat cookies, and watch "The Simpsons" and "Melrose Place" and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" for the one thousandth time.

We gathered in a place that we affectionately came to know as The Heavy Metal Playhouse and imagined what our seemingly meager futures might one day amount to. We hoped and dreamed and wished for days at least as brilliant and joyous and fun as those days we were spending together, poor, sometimes hungry, sometimes cold, but almost always happy.

I have a notebook that Bengi, Tom, and I kept back then. It served as a communication journal in a time before text messaging and email. I have dozens and dozens of notes from Tom to Bengi and me, written in a tight, hard script.

Words written by a boy who was becoming a man who is no longer with us.

I have treasured that notebook since Bengi passed it onto me a year ago.

I will treasure it more now.

I have many photos of Tom from our time together, but my favorite is the photo of Bengi and Tom visiting me on Christmas Day following my near-fatal car accident.

Tom is in the foreground, looking unassuming, and Bengi is in the back, giving bunny ears to Santa.

We hadn't moved in together yet in this photo. The Heavy Metal Playhouse is still months away from becoming a reality. We didn't know it at the time, but we were on the cusp of making new friends, finding romance, hosting riotous parties, and learning to live for the first time as independent people.

About seven months after the accident that nearly took my life, we would move into 3 Commonwealth Avenue in Attleboro, Connecticut, Townhouse #2, and begin our adventure, but in this photo, we are simply friends.

Not yet roommates.

This is how I will remember Tom Landry:

A quiet, gentle, soulful young man who gave up a part of his Christmas Day to visit a friend who was feeling so very alone. Tom was a boy I loved, and I wish we had remained friends for all of my life.

I had not seen Tom in more than 30 years, but I still loved him.

Rest in peace, Tom.

16/08/2026

Here’s a rule I think everyone should consider:

At least once a year, do something new, difficult, and a little frightening.

Something that might change you.

Something that might even change your life.

I’ve got my list for 2026. What’s on yours?

Read more in my latest Substack post:

Here’s a rule to consider when living your life:

16/08/2026

One of my clients was leaving for the airport for a speech I helped her craft.

As she was leaving, she said, "Wish me luck!"

I hate this.

Three reasons to avoid saying the phrase "Wish me luck!" as part of your goodbye dialogue:

It's aggressive, presumptuous, and authoritarian.

You're not even asking someone to wish you luck. You're telling them to offer you the wish. You're practically ordering them to do it. It's at least a little audacious, if not downright pushy.

Is there any other instance in which one person tells another person exactly what to say as they part?

Can you even imagine it?

"Tell me not to worry!"

"Say something positive about my future!"

"Tell me that you love me a lot!"

"Tell me that you hope my plane doesn't crash, but say it in a funny way."

"When you say goodbye, add something about how you're hoping I win the Powerball tonight!"

"As I turn my back and walk away, wait two seconds and then tell me I have a nice ass!"

It doesn't happen.

"Wish me luck" is the only time when we demand that another person say a particular set of words as part of their farewell.

It also creates this odd stage play of sorts, because there is only one response to "Wish me luck!"

"Good luck."

By asking someone to wish you luck, you can be 99.9% sure of their response, thereby creating this predetermined bit of two-line dialogue. It's like a guarantee of the future. You can be certain that there will be no surprises for at least the next two or three seconds.

Person 1: Wish me luck!
Person 2: Good luck.

Is there another instance when dialogue is so predetermined?

Even when you tell someone that you love them, the responses can vary slightly.

Person 1: "I love you."

Possible responses:

"I love you, too."
"Me, too."
"Love you, too."
"Super love you!"
"Ditto."
"Don't forget to pick up milk on the way home."

"Wish me luck" is weird. I know that most of us don't think very much about it when we say it. It's simply a phrase that we use in place of the standard "Goodbye" or "See you later." Most of the time, we're probably not trying to solicit good wishes from another person. We're simply trying to make an exit.

Still, it's weird, even if you're using it innocuously. It's aggressive, presumptuous, and authoritarian. It forces you and your companion into a brief and boring stage play. It's meaningless chatter laced with undertones of bellicosity.

I won't be annoyed if you ask me to wish you luck, but I may say something other than "Good luck," and perhaps something equally aggressive, presumptuous, and authoritarian.

In my client's case, I said, "Luck is not a factor."

She smiled, perhaps because I upended the little play that she had grown accustomed to.

Expectation sucks.

Surprise rules.

15/08/2026

Seemingly every day, I hear someone say they're overwhelmed, or feeling overwhelmed, or that someone they know is overwhelmed, or that a certain segment of the population is overwhelmed.

And yes, I'm quite sure that some people are legitimately overwhelmed for good and valid reasons.

Many people, perhaps.

But I also know this:

The average American watches 2 hours and 36 minutes of television per day — roughly 18 hours per week.

The average American also spends 2 hours and 16 minutes per day on social media — nearly 16 hours per week.

These do not seem like the statistics of an overwhelmed population.

And these are the averages for Americans, meaning at least half of Americans are exceeding those already outrageously large numbers.

If you are spending five hours per day — nearly a third of all waking hours — staring at screens large and small, perhaps you're overwhelmed because you've committed a significant portion of your life to the mindless consumption of video content instead of the things that might make you feel less overwhelmed:

Human interaction. Nature. Music. Exercise. S*x. Reading. Hobbies. Volunteering. Learning. Medication. Building a side hustle. Creating your own content.

Perhaps less time on a screen and more time engaged in life would make you feel better.

Or perhaps this excessive screen time is exactly why so many people are overwhelmed:

When you commit a significant portion of your day to staring at glass, you probably don't have enough time to do the things that matter and might alleviate that overwhelmed feeling.

Also, social media is almost certainly making you feel bad.
Or empty.
Or jealous.
Or angry.
Or disconnected.

I know it might sound crazy if you're committing three hours of your day to social media, as more than half of Americans are, but I suspect the bad-to-good ratio for social media use is probably about a billion to one.

Social media is the lotus flower in The Odyssey:

Delicious, addictive, and ultimately life-destroying. You invest enormous amounts of time into something that feels good in the moment but is ultimately meaningless, irrational, and supremely forgettable.

Maybe the problem for many isn't that life is too difficult ot too full.

Perhaps people are feeling overwhelmed because their lives are too full of the bad stuff and too empty of the good stuff.

Or maybe they are spending more time staring at screens — Five damn hours per day! — and less time solving their problems, building their future, and ensuring that tomorrow is better than today.

Just a thought.

14/08/2026

During my 25 years as a wedding DJ, I played Billy Joel's "Piano Man" at 9:00 on a Saturday whenever possible.

Hundreds of times.

In case you don't understand the reason, the first line in the song is:

"It's 9 o'clock on a Saturday..."

Only once — La Renaissance, East Windsor, Connecticut, in September 2011 — did someone notice. As I began to play the song, a man got up from his seat, walked over to me, and said, "I see you, man. Impressive."

Here's the thing:

Once was enough.

More certainly would've been better, of course, but I believe in grabbing every edge possible, as minuscule and unlikely as it may seem. A great big pile of teeny-tiny advantages, compiled over time, can equate to something meaningful and important if you're consistent, persistent, and relentless enough.

One guy, who almost certainly doesn't remember that moment, was more than enough for me.

Effort. Persistence. Consistency. Relentlessness. Hope.

These are the things that make for a successful career, even if your cleverness is only recognized once in a quarter century of trying.