Cutest. Thing. Ever.

Cutest. Thing. Ever!

Corten Pinot Grigio

This wine is from Moldova, which I hadn't even heard of before, but they were kind enough to include a map on the label showing that it's on the Black Sea, and is possibly a former Soviet republic.

The wine itself is described on the label as crisp and dry, but it also has a sort of warm tartness to it, which is kind of a strange thing to say but is the best way I can describe the taste. The colour of the bottle makes the wine appear slightly greenish, like certain Sauvignon Blancs, but in the glass it is a warmer yellow, which is a more appropriate colour for a Pinot Grigio. I think this wine could stand up nicely to food containing onions, and I intend to test it out on Thanksgiving stuffing as soon as I have some on hand.

Wherein I take it upon myself to define a nebulous concept

The definition of "cheating" in a romantic relationship is not really about any particular limit of physical activity. It's more about doing something that denies your partner something they need or deserve by giving your attentions to someone else.

So having sex with someone else instead of with your partner is cheating.

Going out with someone after work and having a long, intimate conversation with them when your partner is at home wishing you were there to share a long intimate conversation is cheating.

But what you're taking away from your partner doesn't have to be the same thing you're giving the other party.

For example, having sex with someone else when your partner is physically incapable of having sex because she's just given birth, but still badly needs you to come home and watch the baby so she can have a shower and eat something is cheating.

Looking at porn while your partner is lying in bed wanting to be cuddled is cheating.

The thing you take away from your partner doesn't even have to be tangible or direct attention.

For example, having sex with someone else denies your partner the trust and security of monogamy.

Being seen "canoodling" (as the tabloids say) with someone else in public denies your partner the dignity of a respectful relationship that presents a strong united front to the world.

Linguistics poll!

Consider the following two sentences:

1. Not all of these ideas are good
2. Not all of these ideas are bad

Which sentence describes the situation with the higher percentage of good ideas? Approximately what percentage of the ideas are good in each situation?

Anonymous comments are welcome, but please indicate if English is not your first language

The Common Theme That Shall Not Be Named

1. Pet stores really really do NOT need to be decorated for Halloween.

2. What happens if you spray Peter Parker with Raid?

Thoughts and value judgements from the commute home

1. There is a hemorrhoid (thank you Blogger spellcheck) product called Anusol. This amuses me greatly, despite the fact that I don't usually go in for toilet humour.

2. There's something a bit...I don't know...trashy? tacky? cheap? about going to a supermarket and buying just once single lemon.

3. My biggest public transit pet peeve is people who try to shove past people who are going in the same direction. Like they're trying to get off the train, so they try to shove past other people who are getting off the train. Or they're trying to get up the stairs, so they try to shove past other people who are going up the stairs. And it doesn't even seem like they're in a hurry - they just don't seem to grasp the concept that these other people are going in the same direction too rather than standing around trying to be obstacles.

4. It is far too hot out for October.

America: The Book by Jon Stewart

The book was generally witty and made me laugh out loud an average of twice a chapter, but any enjoyment I might have gotten from the book was negated by two unpleasant attitudes the kept cropping up:

1. The writers seem to believe that having sex with someone is some kind of ultimate way to insult or degrade them, and they were using this metaphorically throughout the book. While I think this strange attitude would be excellent fodder for psychology research, it's just bizarre and vaguely unpleasant in a comedy book.

2. The writers (all male) had a strange attitude towards women. I don't want to use the word misogyny because that's a bit strong - it's more that it appears to never have occurred to them that someone reading this book might a) be female and b) be a human being with thoughts and feelings. In some parts it felt like they were deliberately trying to be as unpleasant as possible for the express purpose of making me stop reading the book, like you sometimes hear that workers in mostly-male workplaces do to push out female co-workers (something I've heard of but never experienced).

Now these two attitudes weren't 100% pervasive, it's just that they kept popping up here and there, frequently enough to make reading the book a not entirely fun experience. I don't quite understand why they did this. I watch The Daily Show somewhat regularly and I don't find these attitudes are present on TV. I know the writers are smart, and they are, after all, writers, so they should be able to easily make the text not feel exclusionary to the reader. The fact that neither the writing team nor the editing team chose to make the few editorial changes necessary to make the book not feel exclusionary rather ruined the experience for me.

Again, the vast majority of it was amusing, and it was only a few ill-chosen words, phrases, images and "jokes" that felt exclusionary, but it was enough to alienate me and, consequently, make me think twice about whether I should watch The Daily Show or just go straight to bed.

Toilet paper

Charmin Ultra > Cottonelle Cashmere

That is all.

Church politics again. Yawn

So apparently the Catholic church is considering denying communion to politicians who support laws that are contrary to Church doctrine. (I like this article from the Star better, but CTV has one you can access without a log-in/bugmenot.

I think the Church is shooting itself in the foot with this proposal, because it will ultimately lead to a complete absence of practising Catholics in the political sphere.

Why? Because of conflict of interest rules. After all, if it's a conflict of interest for a politician to work on an issue from which they may stand to gain financially, it's certainly a conflict of interest for a politician to work on an issue where they could ultimately be condemned to hell if they don't do what the pope wants them to. Even if a politican is perfectly capable of not being influenced by this, there will still be a perceived conflict of interest - not only for practising Catholics, but for the many people who were baptized Catholic but don't practise any more.

Practising Catholics will have to report this as a real/perceived conflict of interest, and then they will likely be instructed to recuse themselves from working on any issue that's associated with Church doctrine. Since Church doctrine can be interpreted as being rather broad, they might even be forced to resign. The result will be that there are few or no practising Catholics in politics, ultimately because the teachings of their church is preventing them from acting in accordance with general ethical principles.

Non-practising Catholics will also have a perceived conflict of interest that they'll have to report, although they may be able to satisfy the ethics authorities by formally and/or publically dissociating themselves from the Catholic church. I wonder if Catholicism actually has a mechanism to do this with? I know that just anyone can search the baptismal records of my hometown church and find that I was baptized and even had a first communion, so they might conclude from that that I'm Catholic. But there's no written record of the fact that I haven't attended church in almost 10 years except for my grandfather's funeral, and the only public record of my atheism comes from this anonymous blog and other people's testimony. Is there some way that I can get myself stricken from church records, or have them amend my file to show that I'm no longer Catholic?

This also raises another question I've been wondering about for some time: what are the theological consequences of taking communion if it's forbidden to you? I'd assume you're going to hell anyway, because being forbidden communion means you'll die without last rites. So really, what they gonna do about it?

One-upped by Dilbert

I recently thought of a witty response to that most annoying of job interview questions:

Q: What is your greatest weakness?
A: I don't interview well.

Unforunately, Wally from Dilbert came up with a much better response today.

The Last Honest Man : Mordecai Richler: An Oral Biography by Michael Posner

Whenever I read a biography of an author, I end up finding the author to be an unpleasant person - not the kind of person I'd want to know IRL. This book was no exception. Richer wrote columns for one of the newspapers my parents subscribed to and I generally found these columns interesting and not unpleasant, but the accounts of the man himself in this book paint a portrait of someone I wouldn't care to know.

The book itself is not terribly interesting either. It was really a chore to finish it more than anything else. It would be useful for academic research, but doesn't quite stand up to general interest reading.

Bouchard Père & Fils Mâcon-Lugny Saint-Pierre

I never understood what floral meant in wine descriptions until I tried this wine. It is extremely floral - smells almost like perfume, which is a bit disconcerting. I did enjoy it though. It's not the ideal patio wine because it's more floral than crisp, but it's quite nice if you don't badly need to be refreshed.

Attn: Sympatico users

Any of the Sympatico users reading this currently having trouble retrieving email via Outlook? I'm trying to figure out if it's a problem on my end or a server problem, and I really don't want to call their annoying tech support line.

Psycho-sociology experiment, anyone?

I invented an experiment in the shower this morning. Now all I need is for someone with suitable knowledge to actually do it and write it up. Yes, it is rather hetero-centric, but that's how it came to me. One must limit one's variables, you know.

1. Using psychology and sociology, construct a masculine ideal and feminine ideal. The ideal for each gender is what the members of that gender themselves want to be (i.e. the kind of man that men want to be, and the kind of woman that women want to be). So men who want to be manly want to be exactly like the masculine ideal, and women who want to be womanly want to be exactly like the feminine ideal. For reasons that will become apparent momentarily, we're focusing more on personality and interests and lifestyle rather than physical appearance or age or anything else purely superficial.

2. Once you have established the ideal, create the exact opposite of the ideal, which I will call the anti-ideal. So you have a man that men do NOT want to be, and a woman that women do NOT want to be. In general and on average, if a person has any of the traits of this anti-ideal, they are ashamed of them and/or are trying to change them. Again, we are not going for physical appearance or age, but personality, interests, lifestyle etc.

3. Write a personal ad seeking an anti-ideal man or woman. The sought-after anti-ideal traits should be presented positively or neutrally in the ad (i.e. no saying "...seeks stupid loudmouth asshole"). The person whom the ad is purportedly from should be a fictional character, specially designed to be as attractive as possible to as wide a range of people as possible, while still remaining realistic. The personal ad should say nothing about age or physical appearance so as to make the pool of candidates as wide as possible, although if necessary a conventionally attractive photo of the person purportedly placing the ad can be included.

4. See if anyone answers the ad, since by answering the ad they'll be self-identifying as anti-ideal. If people do answer, see how well they correspond with the anti-ideal, and see if they like their anti-ideal traits. Since the ideal, and thus the anti-ideal, are based on collective attitudes rather than individual attitudes, there wouldn't necessarily be anything wrong with the people who reply. It would just be interesting to see what kind of response it would get.

Robert's Rock Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon

I like this wine because it's less tannic than expected.  It has a bit of a smoky undertone to it.  While this is the exact same flavour that makes me dislike Viogner, it's not too bad in a red wine.  Plus, it's inexpensive and the bottle is aesthetically pleasing.  Who could ask for anything more?

Best. Invention. Ever!

Where do I sign up?

The only problem I can see is that you'd have to wear it all the time, which could get uncomfortable.

Open letter to Margaret Wente

Dear Margaret Wente,

In your column today, you wrote about the sexual habits of American teens. I'm not entirely sure why you decided to write about this because I'm afraid I don't see what it achieves, but, at any rate, one item jumped out at me.

You cited the study in question as mentioning the "oral sex" participation rate, which is how it's described in the study itself. However, you go on in your article to use the terms "oral sex" and "fellatio" interchangeably.

The fact that you are using these terms interchangeably could lead the reader to believe that you believe they are, in fact, interchangeable. This is not the case.

Fellatio is but one act that falls under the category of oral sex. There are several others, some of which, if I may be so bold, are vastly more enjoyable than fellatio.

It is not my intention to make any implications about your private life, which, I realize, is none of my business. However, I would be remiss if I let this go uncorrected. The misconception that oral sex is limited to fellatio is not only an embarrassing terminological error for an experienced journalist to make, but also a damn shame of a misconception under which to live one's life.

I hope this information prove useful to you.

Thoughts arising from Bowling for Columbine

I mean this seriously and totally non-judgementally:

These people seem to think that they need guns to protect themselves.

Who do they think is going to attack them?

And why do they think these people are going to choose them, personally?

Thought of the moment

Suppose the messiah was born today, conceived through immaculate conception and born in a virgin birth.

Suppose they then did a DNA test on the baby and compared it with the mother's DNA in hope of establishing paternity.

What would they find?