A poll: do you know what the word "attrition" means? (Without looking it
up). Answer in the comments please. I don't need to know what it means,
just if you know what it means.

Irrational petty selfish desire of the day:

I want to be given prizes and treated like I'm special because on Monday I
will be voting in my sixth election and I've only been old enough to vote
for five years.

From the brilliant ideas that will never work file: mortgages where you can
revert to any previous amortization schedule.

Suppose you have a mortgage. Suppose you unexpectedly come into a
significant amount of money, and you promptly to pour it all straight into
the mortgage. Then suppose that shortly after this occurs you lose your job,
and don't have enough money to make your mortgage payments. Under the
current system, I think you can reamortize, or you might be able to
negotiate skipping a payment, but interest would still accrue.

Under the proposed system, you would have the option to return to any of
your previous amortization schedules. You could look at a previous schedule
and say "According to this schedule, I should have paid $75,000 by now. In
reality, I have paid $85,000. According to this schedule, I'm not expected
to have paid $85,000 until five months from now. Therefore, I'm going to
stop making payments for five months." No further interest would accrue over
these five months (because you're all paid up, right on schedule), and after
the five months have passed (giving you time to get a job and get back on
your feet) you'd resume paying according to the previous amortization
schedule as though nothing had happened.

The Globe and Mail has an interesting tool to help you decide whom to vote for.

The only problem with this tool is that each choice represents one party's entire platform on the issue, so it contains several different policy items. When I was doing the quiz, I found that in each platform I agreed with some policy items and disagreed with others. Because of the way the quiz is designed, I had to choose only one platform, even if I disagreed with some of the items therein.

It would better serve the voters if each policy item was listed separately, and you could mark each item as "Agree", "Disagree", "Neutral", "Deal-breaker" or "Deal-maker". Each party would get plus one point for agree and minus one for disagree. Parties that earn a "deal-breaker" are eliminated (unless all parties earn one) and parties that earn a "deal-maker" get your vote (unless more than one party earns one, in which case the number of points will be used to decide). At the end of the quiz you'd see which party deserves your vote, as well as how each party scored on each issue.

The elevator was freshly painted this morning. The smell of paint makes me feel nauseous, so I held my nose as I rode up to my floor. When I got out of the elevator, it occured to me that I should have made it clear to the gentleman who was in the elevator with me that I was holding my nose because of the paint, not because of him.

In honour of one-week-til-election day, my top ten election-related pet peeves:

1. People who vote based on appearances (Oh, he speaks well/Oh, he looks well-groomed) without giving though to matters of policy.

2. A system that does not allow candidates to go off-message, even if it's to answer a voter's questions.

3. The fact that debates are unwatchable. If only they could NOT all talk at once.

4. People who base their strategic votes on national polls instead of riding polls.

5. People who only vote for the candidate that's leading in the polls, regardless of what they stand for, because they think their vote is wasted if it doesn't go to the person who wins.

6. People who vote for the local candidate that they like without even taking into consideration that candidate's party affiliation.

7. Every editorialist and letter-writer who has called me lazy/selfish/self-absorbed/childish/spoiled because members of my peer group don't vote. Yes, I am lazy, selfish, self-absorbed, childish and spoiled, but not because of the voting habits of my peer group! Hell, it isn't even my own voting habits that make me lazy, selfish, self-absorbed, childish and spoiled, or reflect those aspects of my personality.

8. People who don't bother to read parties' platforms and instead vote based on what they assume the platforms are.

9. People who don't consider "Can I, in good conscience, support this party I'm voting for" when casting a strategic vote.

10. The fact that most landlords don't let their tenants put up election signs. Not that I want to put up a sign myself, but it would certainly help evaluate the riding's sentiment.

In GoF, Mrs. Weasley has them eat in the backyard because there just isn't
room for 11 people in their kitchen/dining room. But there are nine people
in the family already! Don't tell me they eat their everyday meals around a
table that's so cramped they can't squeeze an extra two in!

Helpful hint: attempting complicated hair-removal procedures while all your towels are in the wash is not among the greatest ideas in the history of humanity.

Helpful hint: if the Globe and Mail website insists that you register, dump your cookies and your cache and try again. Worked for me.

In the bathrooms at work there are these huge-ass rolls of toilet paper. We've been at this location for eight months, and I've never once seen a toilet paper roll that was less than 1/3 full. This would imply that they change the rolls before they near empty. I wonder what they do with all those part-full toilet paper rolls?

I saw a gentleman on the subway who appeared to have a rather severe facial cancer, which deformed his face. I looked at him. Then I looked away so I wouldn't be staring. Then I glanced briefly in his general direction so I wouldn't appear to be avoiding looking at him. I completely forgot how to not-stare-at-someone-but-not-avoid-looking-at-them!

One problem with debates is that there is a certain segment of the population that is inclined to vote based on which leader presents themselves best on TV, rather than on matters of policy. I'm not saying debates are completely without merit, but it is terribly irksome to hear someone say "I'm going to vote for this guy because he speaks well" with no mention whatsoever of his policies.

Project X by Jim Shepard takes us back into that living hell we're all
trying to forget: grade 8. He shows us, in brutal, life-like detail, the
reality of the poor kids at the bottom of the hierarchy. And he takes this,
with a progression that isn't quite logical (it's grade 8 after all) but
that you can totally see how it happens, to a school shooting. Thankfully,
the shooting isn't shown in much great detail.

It has a first-person narration that lacks complete self-awareness, which is
very interesting, and it's painfully realistic. My only complaint is that
the author has not mastered idiomatic use of the quotative "go". He
overuses it and puts it at the end of quotations instead of the beginning
("I'm tired," he goes.). But apart from this terribly distracting habit,
it's an excellent book (and quick too - under 200 pages)

Every summer up until the summer after grade 9, I wore running shoes and
socks during the summer and got a hideous sock tan. I couldn't do anything
about the sock tan, however, because it was too hideous for me to brave
exposing my feet to the general public.

The summer after grade 10, I finally got brave enough to wear sandals in
public, and I've been wearing sandals all summer every summer ever since.
The last time I wore socks outside in the summer was in 1995. So why do I
still have the damn sock tan????

On an unrelated note, every couple of weeks I am accosted on the street by
someone trying to sell me a discount spa package. Do I look like I need a
spa or something? I'd go if it was free, but it isn't something I'd pay
for.

Note to the spa guy at Yonge & Sheppard today: to make your pitch more
effective, you need to:
1) say "Excuse me, ma'am," instead of just "Excuse me" (just excuse me makes
you sound like a lost tourist);
2) have a brochure or some literature in hand, or at least a nametag that
clearly identifies you as a spa employee. Having some random civilian guy
walk up to me and start talking about spa treatments is kind of creepy;
3) be (or at least act) gayer. If I must have a discussion about spa
treatments with a strange man (discussion with a strange man, not spa
treatments with a strange man), it's much more comfortable if he's
reasonably gay. But then that just might be my (politically incorrect,
borderline-objectifying) preference for gay men as customer service
representatives.

Why does the smell of popcorn stick around in the microwave for longer than
the smell of anything else?

Heard back from the Green candidate. Asked me to call him to discuss the issues I wrote about. Fair enough, but not quite what I was looking for - it seems to me that good public relations would include communicating with the public in the medium of their choice.

However, he loses points for spelling my name with a single letter where there should be a double letter. I hate it when people do that!

I read all the party platforms, and found that none of them answered all my
specific questions. Yes, they did have general information about how much
money they're going to throw at which programs, but I'm concerned about
issues within issues. For example, rather than how many jobs you're going
to create, I want to know what specific measures you'll take to encourage
businesses to create secure full-time permanent jobs with reasonable pay and
benefits instead of insecure contract positions. None of the party platforms
entirely addressed the specific aspects of the issues I care about the most.

So what I did was I sent an email to each of the four candidates running in
my riding. In this email I made it clear that I had read the platforms and
they didn't provide me the answers I was looking for. Then I asked five
specific questions that I couldn't find the answers to in the platforms. I
sent the same five questions to all the candidates, mentioned that all the
candidates were getting the same questions, and politely asked them to take
a moment out of their campaign to answer my questions.

It did occur to me that I might not get answers from all the candidates,
that I might not get answers from the candidates themselves but rather a
campaign worker, and that this might be irritating the candidates because
some of my questions were off-message. But I thought it important to define
my issues myself rather than letting the parties and the media do it for me,
and also I wanted to see what would happen.

I just got my first response back, from the NDP candidate. He gets points
for being the first to reply, for replying on a Sunday, and for under
24-hour turnaround time. However, all those points are swiftly taken away
because his response consisted of politely suggesting that I read the
platform. GAH! I did read the platform! I told him that! That is not so
very cool.

A lot of people find my blog by googling for "strumpet". Strange thing to google for. They're probably disappointed by what's here.

I hate how newspapers always publish polls indicating "X percent of
Canadians intend to vote for this party." That isn't what matters! What
matters is the number of ridings that are going to elect each party, so what
we need is riding by riding polls. I realize that the popular vote is often
a useful guideline, but it is of no importance whatsoever in situations like
ce que nous vivons, where there is a difference of only a couple of
percentage points between the two leading parties.

Ideally they should publish polls for each riding, if only to remind voters
that their vote only has an effect within their own riding. I'm concerned
that publishing TORIES ARE IN THE LEAD BY TWO PERCENTAGE POINTS! on the
front of every newspaper might encourage, for example, voters in Toronto to
vote Liberal so the Tories don't win, which would be a wasted vote if they
live in a riding that would never elect a Tory anyway.

Anyone know which current xian denomination Puritanism evolved into?