On word choices

Antonia Zerbisias objects because some people on US TV talking about abortion chose and/or landed on the word "people" instead of the word "women."

This is really interesting to me, because I tend to say "people" instead of "women" in the same place for exactly the opposite motive attributed to the speakers here. It's something I started doing a long time ago in response to two things.

First, to avoid creating a Someone Else's Problem field, I don't specifically mention gender unless it's a case of causation as opposed to correlation.

Then, after reading some Deborah Tannen where she articulated how male tends to be linguistically unmarked and female tends to be by default Other and observing a number of interactions IRL where this manifested itself absurdly (example: a woman mentioned that she had just moved into the gaybourhood, and a man in the conversation made a stupid "don't drop the soap" type joke) I decided to deliberately make the female unmarked whenever it could be smoothly incorporated. So instead of saying "This is really dangerous, someone could fall down the stairs. If it's pregnant woman she could have a miscarriage and if it's an old lady she could break a hip!" I would say "...If they're pregnant they could fall down the stairs, and if they're postmenopausal they could break a hip!" I know it doesn't actually do anything - no one is going to think for a moment that it's a pregnant or postmenopausal man - but I'm doing it on principle and as an intellectual challenge. So far no one has noticed that I do this (or perhaps they have and just haven't said anything - in my line of work people tend to notice).

I don't really have a point here, I just think it's interesting.

Parting your hair with a ruler

I have no control over the part in my hair. It goes wherever and however it wants. One day a while back it ended up in a perfectly straight line. Someone said to me that day "Did you part your hair with a ruler?" Seemed to me a really strange thing to comment on, but some people are like that.

But it just occurred to me: can you even part your hair with a ruler? How would that work?

Wanted

Wanted: a continuous loop of the "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" part of All These Things That I've Done, maybe a couple of minutes long. Downloadable or embedded online is fine. I just wah wah whine don't want to have to edit an audio file myself.

Fun fact of the day

From a comment by Shawn Micallef in Spacing:

When Rev Brent Hawkes performed Canada’s/Toronto’s first same-sex marriage at the Metropolitan Community Church in 2001 he wore a bullet proof vest.

This is confirmed widely. (This was the one that was done by publication of banns and wasn't legally recognized.)

Same-sex marriage was legalized in Ontario in 2003 and federally in 2005. Some people made a bit of a fuss for a little while, but it very quickly became basically a fact of life. Some people probably still don't like it, but they just don't do it themselves and let other people get on with their lives. And yeah, we still kind of have the childish need to mention the genders of the happy couple when we're invited to our first big gay wedding. But overall, it's normalized.

So we went from requiring a bullet-proof vest to "Yeah, all right, whatever, I'm cooking eggs" in the space of maybe five years. That's pretty cool.

Things They Should Invent: tester-sized mascara

The problem with trying new mascara is you don't know if it will work better than your previous mascara. Obviously they can't have in-store testers for sanitary reasons, but still it really sucks to drop ten bucks on something that ends up being worse than what you were using before (and therefore is useless).

Solution: very small tubes of mascara that sell for maybe two or three dollars. They have the same brush as the regular mascara because the brush is an essential part of the application, but the brush handle is shorter and they only contain a few days' worth of mascara. You drop a couple of bucks, test it, and if it's better you buy a full-sized tube with an easier-to-use full-size brush handle. Maybe they could even sell it at a loss, because people totally aren't going to use mascara brush with an inch-long handle for everyday.

I can think of at least three mascaras I would try if I didn't have to pay full price for them. If only one company did this, they'd be in the best position to win over new customers

Mother Nature gives us a quickie

It went up to a sunny 16 degrees today, and the wind was pushing 50 km/h. At lunch I went for a walk. With no coat on. And my hair down. Wearing my sunglasses for the first time in 2009. The wind (warm! comfortable! pleasant!) bounced off all the tall buildings and came at me from every direction, whipping my hair in front of my face, then trailing it in a ribbon behind me, then blowing it straight up in the air and making it settle in a cloud over my shoulders.

I came back to work flushed and tousled, and all was right with the world. Then I put my regular glasses back on, put my hair back up, and got back to work.

Why I love Toronto

Spacing and the Star both have lists of reasons why they love Toronto.

Here's mine: in Toronto I'm nothing special.

Growing up, I was the weird girl with the long hair and the accent. In Toronto, there's always someone around who's weirder, or has longer hair, or has a stronger accent.

Elsewhere, people tend to be impressed because I have a handful of European languages. In Toronto, they're vaguely disappointed that I don't speak, say, Thai.

Elsewhere, I've had people be impressed because I can dabble in a few musical instruments. In Toronto, there's a busker right there playing a bassoon, and the one in the other subway station was playing some strange instrument I've never seen before in my life.

Here, I never get the opportunity to develop the illusion that any of these things are special, and I'm a better person for it.

Foreplay for the brain

Video is irrelevant, just press play and listen to the music

In lieu of content

This puppy is very small.

Edit: This guy is even smaller.

Open Letters

Dear plasterer eating fruit on the subway:

If you're going to leave the pips on the train, at least drop them on the floor instead of leaving them on the seat next to you.

Dear mother of twins:

I see that you have two babies, most likely through no fault of your own, and I get that you need a stroller that can hold two babies. The problem is that your stroller is so wide that it doesn't leave enough room in the supermarket aisle for a shopping cart to pass. When the store is crowded like during evening rush hour, this messes up traffic flow in the whole entire store. When you are in an aisle, no one can get past you in either direction. You're going to have to either a) get a narrower stroller, perhaps one that has the kids one in front of another instead of side by side, or b) leave the kids at home or with a sitter while you do groceries, or c) go shopping during non-peak times. Seriously. I get that strollers and childcare are expensive and you have shitloads of things to do on very little sleep, but you're inconveniencing literally hundreds of people with that behemoth.

Dear Flash fetishists:

If you present the content of your website as image-based Flash only rather than as text, it won't get indexed by Google. This means that when the translator working on your annual report thinks "Surely all this shiny happy stuff about their history and mission and values has already been done in carefully-crafted English by their talented corporate communications people" and then goes googling to save herself some time and you some money, she will get zero hits. At this point she would be perfectly justified in translating it herself, which means you will be paying the translator to do what you've already paid your communications people to do, and the translator might (perfectly rightfully) make different choices along the way. However, if your translator is a stubborn little shit like me, she won't take zero google hits for an answer and will plow through your sea of flash until she finds the information in question. However, since your Flash is image-based instead of text-based and therefore can't be copy-pasted, you are still paying the translator's hourly rates to retype all this stuff when it could have been done in 30 seconds of copy-pasting. It's essentially advertising copy about how awesome your organization is, why not make it easy for people to find it and repeat it elsewhere?

Mystery glass

The other day I found a piece of broken glass in my dishwasher, but none of the dishes in there were broken.

I was just talking to my friend on the phone, and she said she recently found a piece of broken glass randomly lying on the floor, but nothing in the house seemed to be broken.

So if it turns out that we're in a horror movie or something, this is the clue the killer left.

Wherein I am spoiled

My milk went bad. So I just found myself mentally bitching to myself that I have to either a) go a whole block to get coffee and then it will be a bit cold when I get home and I'll have to microwave it! or b) do my whole grocery shopping without coffee in my system! or c) go to the corner store and get the milk that's slightly less yummy! and then go home and make coffee and go back out to do my errands! or d) go to a coffee shop and just sit there drinking coffee!

And then I found myself thinking that this is all so annoying that I can't possibly go shoe shopping today, it's all I can do to just go get a supply of food and booze, and I'll have to put off the shoe shopping until tomorrow!

Perhaps I need some real problems.

Update:

Dear Neighbours: I apologize for the water main break. I think that was the universe's response to this post.

Dear Universe: I get it that you want to give me problems and, strictly speaking, I suppose I did ask for them. But next time maybe you could do it without inconveniencing the entire street?

Me and My Llama

When I first saw this on Sesame Street as a little kid, I didn't question the plausibility of the situation. Now I desperately want to know the backstory.

Grande mort par petites morts

According to Broadsheet, there are sex ed programs in Texas with the thesis OMG, you're all gonna DIE! (traduction libre).

So here's the thing: when I was that age, I wouldn't have minded dying. Actually I still wouldn't exactly mind - the inevitability of death makes me rather blasé about it - but at that age with the bullies and the schoolbuses and the parental demands and societal expectations and no idea that it would ever get easier and being told "These are the best years of your life," my reaction to the idea of dying was "At least I could finally get some peace and quiet!"

Because I'm a late bloomer emotionally, my interest in sex didn't come until a year or two after sex ed was over, and my virginity didn't feel like a burden until even later.

However, if the phase of my life where I considered my virginity a burden had occurred earlier and the phase of my life where I would have welcomed death with open arms had extended a couple more years, and if during this time I had honestly seriously truly believed that having sex would make me die, I totally would have actively sought out sex at the first available opportunity, regardless of quality. My unwanted virginity was primarily due to lack of desirable, suitable and willing partners. If I had seriously thought that sex would cause my death, I would totally have narrowed those criteria down to just willing, or maybe even unenthusastic but coerceable.

So perhaps it isn't the best strategy for sex ed at a difficult age.

Things They Should Invent: introvert/extrovert temporary switch medication

Introverts, picture this: You have oh so terribly many errands to do and phone calls to make. But the more you do, the more places you go and things you see and people you talk to, the more energized you'll feel. Wouldn't that be useful?

Extroverts, picture this: You're stuck at home all alone with no one to talk to for hours and hours and hours. But the more time that passes all alone, the better and happier and more energized and revitalized you feel. Wouldn't that be useful?

We wouldn't want this to be permanent or ongoing. Speaking as an innie, getting bored when alone in my head sounds like living hell, and I'm sure extros would get frustrated living with our slow, easily-stimulated brains. But it would be so convenient to be able to switch every once in a while!

They know the neuroscience, so why can't they make us a drug to do this?

Computer animation

A sketch from Important Things with Demetri Martin:



The animation is a bit crude, isn't it? (Not that it matters - Demetri Martin usually uses line drawings on a flip chart - but it something I noticed.)

But there was a point in my lifetime when that silly little animation would have been cutting edge. And there was a point in my lifetime when the technology didn't exist to make that silly little animation. That's really weird if you think about it.

When the audience doesn't know (or care) what the music is

My iTunes gave me El Tango de Roxanne (from Moulin Rouge) and it occurred to me that it would be a good figure skating program. So I went googling and it seems Yu-Na Kim did it a year or two ago (and very impressively indeed!)

But the thing I forgot about figure skating music is a) they take out the lyrics, and b) people clap along at the slightest provocation. So while the end result was still a tango, without the lyrics it wasn't nearly as sexually aggressive as the original, and the audience was merrily clapping along to this dirtyish song about a prostitute and her jealous lover.

I'd still like to see it done in pairs skating though.

Um...

Surely this is symbolic of everything that's wrong with the world today

Grammar Nazis

I suppose this was inevitable...



(Langlings: make sure you read the subtitles)