Wherein my inner 12-year-old expounds on the subject of dog breeding

Today in the pet store I saw a puppy called a Cockapoo, which is a cocker spaniel/poodle cross, and a puppy called a Shih-Tees, which is a Shih Tzu crossed with something else, I can't figure out what.

I think they should crossbreed them the other way, so you have a Shihtz-Poo and a Cock-Tees.

What about evacuation?

1.25 years ago, a bunch of people were trapped in New Orleans because there was no contingency for evacuating people who don't have cars. At the time, I thought "Well, at least this means that in the future they'll come up with evacuation plans that take into account the people who don't have cars."

Have they done that yet? I haven't heard anything.

The fluffy parts of the newspaper are particularly stupid today

Jump Start: This doesn't make sense. Dot has always been presented as smart. Why on earth wouldn't she know that you can't bring liquids and gels on the plane? It's common knowledge! And she's always been presented as an English-major type, so she must read the paper! I hate it when comic strips break character for the sake of a gag.

FBORFW: Oy, where to begin? Nothing about what they're trying to set up today makes sense! First of all, why wouldn't Liz call ahead? She's staying with Gary and Viv house, so they would need to know that she's arriving a day early! Yes, they are ready for her already, but she has no way of knowing that they would be. They could have gone into town to get groceries or something and there'd be no one to let her in when she got there! Secondly, why would she so quickly draw the conclusion that Paul is cheating from the conversation at hand? She loves him and has had no reason whatsoever to suspect him previously - surely she'd read it has he's just visiting Susan, since she's an old friend. Thirdly, why would Paul invite her up to Mtigwaki if he's cheating on her? Fourthly, why would Paul transfer south if he's so not-in-love with Liz that he's cheating on her! Or, if he lied about the transfer, why would he do that? Why not just tell her it didn't go through? After all, this is his second transfer in a year, it's perfectly plausible that it wouldn't go through.

Dear Dear Abby: Before you give anyone any more advice, please read The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney

Dear Clara in Chicago: Your boyfriend is clearly an introvert. This means that he finds spending time with people draining, and being alone energizing. I know, this sounds bass-ackwards about you, but I've explained it in greater depth here. Introverts are very choosy about their friends, so the fact that he has chosen a romantic relationship with you is a very high compliment indeed! I'm sure he loves spending time with you, it's just that sharing you with all those other people is draining to him. And surely you chose him as a boyfriend because he has some excellent qualities beyond being another person to flutter around your circle! So the solution to your problem is simple: you go out with your circle of friends around you, thus recharging your extrovert brain, and let him stay home if he wants, thus recharging his introvert brain. I know this sounds mean to you, but he won't mind, honest! Then when you come home, you will both be recharged and re-energized, and can each share your best selves with each other.

Things They Should Invent: walking directions for Google Maps

I was trying to figure out how to get from Point A to Point B on Google Maps. It gave me a direction, a distance, and a driving time, but it wasn't clear to me how walkable this trip was. I'm not very good at converting km into walking time. So I decided to compare the distance that of a walking route I knew well - the route I walked to school when I was a kid. Unfortunately, my walking-to-school route was much shorter that the driving directions Google gave me from my parents' house to my old school, because my walking route included shortcuts through parks and through those little paths they put between the ends of cul-de-sacs (culs-de-sac?), so Google couldn't tell me how long my walk to school either.

What I want is to enter Point A and Point B, and click on "Walking Directions". Then Google will show me a route that takes into account shortcuts that pedestrians can take but cars can't, and provides an estimated travel time for walking.

The problem with PDFs on the TTC website

As everyone who cares knows by now, there's discussion in the big Toronto blogs about how to redesign the TTC website. All of these discussions seem to have fallen into pro-PDF and anti-PDF factions.

I fall into the anti-PDF faction, and I've come up with a demonstration to show why:

Here's the TTC system map in PDF form. This is the only electronic format in which the full system map is available, and the full system map is the only way to find out which routes you need to take.

Find someone who doesn't live in Toronto and is not familiar with the city. They can be as tech-savvy as you want. Give them two points in Toronto, and have them figure out what subway stations and bus routes they need to get from point A to point B. Pick two points that require at least one transfer. See how quickly they get pissed off figuring this out with the PDF map, especially if their computer isn't brand new or doesn't have gamer-calibre RAM.

If you're a non-Torontonian and you want to take up this challenge, here are two sample routes for you to try to figure out:

1. How do you get from Union Station to Bayview & Lawrence?
2. How do you get from Yonge & Eglinton to Roncesvalles Ave?

Torontonians will know that these are simple trips, but are they so simple to figure out with the PDF map if you don't already know where you're going?

Ashley

The parents of a severely disabled girl are having her sex organs removed and giving her hormonal treatments to stunt her growth. Understandably, there has been outrage, but I don't think what they're doing is bad.

Some, if not most, of you will disagree with me - and that's fine, I can totally see the other side too - but I think the parents did the right thing here in removing her sex organs, and I don't think stunting her growth is actively wrong. I'm thinking my way through this by putting myself in the little girl's shoes, and the more I think about it, the more I think the parents were not wrong.

How would I feel if my sex organs were removed? Well, in early adolescence, I wouldn't miss them and might even be glad that I didn't have them. (IRL, I felt the trappings of fertility were a burden for several years, and thereafter felt they were a tolerable nuisance.) In later adolescence, I would either have come to terms with the absence of sex organs, or I would resent their absence because it prevents me from having a sex life. But that's the benefit I get from sex organs - they make me more physically attractive, thus increasing my likelihood of finding someone to have sex with me, or they make sex physically possible. Other people also enjoy sex organs because they enable them to reproduce. But none of these apply to this little girl. She will never be able to consent to sex or even comprehend sex, and of course she will never be able to reproduce, so her sex organs are simply a burden for her. I think they did her a favour by removing them, and if I were in her position I would want them removed.

The other issue is that the parents made this decision unilaterally. How would I feel if my parents unilaterally made a decision to have my sex organs removed? I would feel that they are exceeding their authority - I would feel that they should have consulted me, or, if I was rather young, my parents and medical team should have educated me objectively to the point where I could have made an informed decision myself. However, this little girl will never be able to make an informed decision herself. She probably doesn't even grasp the concept of an informed decision. I don't even know whether or not she understands that she's an autonomous being. There is simply no possibility whatsoever of consulting her, at all, ever, so it was not inappropriate for the parents to make the decision unilaterally.

Now for the size thing. How would I feel if I underwent medical treatment to stop me from growing? I would feel cheated. I've long aspired to be a grownup, and part of that is being grownup size. I like being grownup size. I like that I can reach things, I like being treated with grownup respect, I like it when I can come across as authoritative, I like being able to look over the cubicle walls and see where everyone is. Being tall is fun. However, this little girl will never be able to stand up, so she will never be able to actually be tall. She could be long, but being long is an inconvenience (have you ever tried to sleep on a too-short bed?). Because she has the physical and mental abilities of a three-month-old, she will never look grownup or come across as authoritative anyway. None of the reasons why I enjoy being tall will ever apply to her. In fact, given her severe disabilities, I think being small would be the least of her problems.

How would I feel if my parents unilaterally decided to stop me from growing? I would think that's sick and twisted, that they cannot let go and accept the fact that I'm growing up, and that if they wanted something little and cute, they really should have gotten a chihuahua instead. But none of these statements apply to this little girl. She will always be physically and mentally three months old. She will never be an adult, she will never be independent, her parents cannot let go because she will always need care. With the mind of a three month old, I'm not sure if she even comprehends the concept of independence, never mind that she will never have it. Maybe she wants to be held all the time, maybe she has no need for privacy, maybe she doesn't want to be apart from her parents (I'm not a child development expert, but that sounds about right for a three-month-old to me.) Again, this little girl will never be in a position to make that decision for herself, and will never be able to comprehend what might have been. Even if she does perceive herself as different from everyone else, it will be because she is so severely disabled, not because she is small.

The most frequent argument I hear against these measures is that the parents did it for their own convenience, not for the child's convenience. This is a very good point - parents should make their kid's medical decisions based on what's best for the child, not what's easiest for the parents. But we have to ask, are these measures any inconvenience to the little girl? I don't think they are. I think by removing her sex organs they're doing her a favour (although she will never realize it), and making her small is no inconvenience to her whatsoever. While, as a general rule, I don't think parental convenience should be a factor in decision-making, I don't think there's anything wrong with making it more convenient for the parents if doing so is not inconvenient or unpleasant for the child.

I've also seen a few red-herring-type arguments in this debate, so I'd like to briefly address them here. The first is drawing a parallel between removal of her sex organs and female circumsion. I don't think this is an apt comparison, because breasts and uterus will be a burden to her, while the clitoris is no problem whatsoever. If she has or ever develops sufficient motor control (I have no idea whether or not this is possible for someone with the motor skills of a three-month-old), she may even figure out how to use her clitoris to give herself pleasure, which would be a safe and appropriate way for her to enjoy her own sexuality despite the fact that she will never be able to properly consent to sex. Her breasts and uterus can give her no such pleasure. Therefore, removing the sex organs removes a burden that gives her no pleasure, while removing the clitoris would be removing something that's gives her pleasure without any inconvenience.

The other red herring I've seen is that keeping her small is just as bad, ethically, as would be removing her arms and legs to make her lighter. This is not an apt comparison either, because her limbs are some benefit to her. The general consensus among the first page of Google results is that a three-month-old can move their arms and legs and hold things in their hands, and that doing so amuses them. They would also keep her balanced while lying down, and allow her to roll over if that's within her abilities. So removing her limbs would make her smaller and lighter, but at the expense of what little mobility and ability to interact with her environment she does have. However, hormonally stunting her growth makes her smaller and lighter at a negligible cost.

I certainly don't think this situation is black and white. If her parents weren't taking these measures, it would never occur to me that they should be taken. It might occur to me to recommend tubal ligation, but that's about it. I also think we need to carefully keep an eye on the slippery slope thing - this one case shouldn't be a wide-open door to allowing parents to alter their disabled children willy-nilly. However, the more I think about it, the more I feel that the parents in this particular case are not doing anything wrong, and may even be doing what's best for their child.

Question for people who wear glasses

Do you remember how much anti-glare lenses cost X years ago? X can be any number of years ago you happen to remember, but I'm looking for numbers for anti-glare lenses instead of regular lenses, and just the lenses, not the frames.

Why? Because my optometrist prescribes anti-glare lenses for me, and, given the nature of my eyesight, it is very necessary. I never realized it at the time, but lack of anti-glare was the reason why I found driving at night so disorienting when I was in my teens. If I drove now, having the anti-glare would be a matter of public safety. As it stands, it doubles my stamina for just normal walking around city streets after dark, and working at a CRT monitor (which I still use all day at work).

However, anti-glare lenses cost significantly more than my insurance will cover. This is just the lenses, without even taking into account the frames - just what's written on my prescription, without the other stuff that the doctor says is optional.

I've noticed that the cost of my eyewear as a whole has been increasing far faster than the amount my insurance will cover. However, I've only been prescribed anti-glare for a few years, so I can't track anti-glare lenses in the long term, and I'd like to know if they've always cost more than my insurance limit, or if that's just a recent development because insurance hasn't been keeping up with prices. Anyone have longer anti-glare memory than me?

Anyone have TNG DVDs and a ton of spare time?

A lot of the Star Trek articles on Wikipedia - especially TNG articles - appear to have been written by someone for whom English is not their first language. Every once in a while, they just use the wrong word. I've been wandering around and editing a bit, but a lot of the time I can't tell the author actually intended to say, and I don't have the DVDs so I can't check the actual episodes.

If you've got the TNG DVDs and nothing better to do, here's a project for you!

Adventures from the puppy store

Today, after stressing myself out with shopping, I went to the store to look at the puppies. There was this adorable little floppy-eared beagle in with two silly poofy bichon frises. And the bichon frises were using the poor beagles floppy little ears as chew toys! Poor beagle! Mr. Floppy-ears deserves better!

Also, there were a LOT of people taking videos of the puppies with their camera phones. Y'all had better post those puppy videos on Youtube! If you're going to block my view of the puppies, you need to share the pictures with the world!

Refelctions on my first full week off of my adult life

Well, I'm certainly never going to end up being one of those people who needs to hire a consultant to tell them what to do with their time in retirement, that's for sure. I found that my time was still quite full despite the fact that I'm not in the office 8 hours a day. I also find that what I'm sacrificing to be in the office 8 hours a day is sleep, stressless mornings, and TV and gaming that makes me happy. This past week I've slept all I've needed, went about my morning routine without any sense of urgency (sometimes stretching it to 2 or 3 hours) and watched all the TV and played all the computer games that I wanted it. Some people would call that a waste of time, but every moment of it served to actively make me happy. I was actually twirling around my apartment, in my bathrobe at 2 pm, saying "I AM SO FUCKING RELAXED THIS IS AMAZING!" I don't think I need any satisfaction or fulfillment or anything from my job, I just need the money. I guess I like the respect it gets me, too, but if my bank account would stay full without me working, I would be so out of there!

Lessons learned: just because I'm not working doesn't mean I have extrovert energy. I can do multiple small errands within the neighbourhood, but my attempts to thoroughly investigate and try on at multiple Yorkdale stores were just too much. (Of course, this is exacerbated by the fact that the Gap's dressier pants now have narrow ankles - no more boot cut!)

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: emotional alimony

In marriages when one spouse is generally dependent on the other spouse for financial support, if the couple divorces then the supporter is expected to pay a certain amount of alimony to the supportee, especially if the supporter initiates the divorce. This can be temporary or permanent, depending on the circumstances.

But married couples don't just support each other financially. What if there was alimony for the other things that married couples provide to each other? Examples:

Emotional alimony: you must provide your spouse with moral support, a sounding board, a shoulder to cry on, until such time as they can develop their own resources.

Social alimony: you must provide your spouse with access to your social network and an escort to any major social events, until such time as they can develop their own resources.

Household alimony: if you are solely responsible for cooking/mowing the lawn/sewing on buttons/killing yucky bugs, you must provide your spouse with support in these areas until such time as they can develop their own resources.

No, I have no idea how it would be calculated or enforced.

Jumping in front of trains

Via WMTC, this guy in NYC jumped in front of a subway train to save someone's life. Of course, this sparks discussion of whether you'd jump in front of a train to save someone's life.

The thing is, in that sort of situation, I don't think I'd jump in front of the train. But it's not because I'm not up for risking my life to save someone else's (I once unthinkingly ran out into traffic to save some random toddler's teddy bear - the teddy bear and I both emerged unscathed), it's that it would never occur to me that my presence down on the tracks would help the guy. It seems the rescuer piled on the rescuee and held him down so the train wouldn't get him, but it just wouldn't occur to me that that would work. I never thought there was room for two people under the train - one, maybe, but I never thought that piling on the fallen person to hold them down would help. If the train wasn't right there, I totally would have jumped into the tracks to help the victim back up to the platform. But if the train was in sight, I would have either run screaming to the end of the platform to hit the power cut, or reached an arm down in a desperate (and probably fruitless - I have weak arms) attempt to pull the victim back up to the platform. But it simply would not have crossed my mind that jumping in front of the oncoming train would be helpful.

Also, I like the quote here: "Transit officials recommend staying away from the platform edge and never jumping onto the tracks."

Another thing I wish I could say literally and neutrally

"I have nothing to say to him. I wouldn't care if I never saw him again."

I want to be able to say this literally, but it sounds like a dis. But I don't want to dis the person, it's just that they're not at all relevant to my life (which sounds like a dis in and of itself.)

It's like how you'd feel about some kid who was in Grade 1 with you, who wasn't your friend and wasn't mean to you, was just sitting there unremarkably in the classroom. You may or may not remember them, you probably have never given a moment's thought to where they are or what they're going. If someone said to you "Hey, remember Joey Smith from kindergarten? Well this is an opportunity to catch up with him!!! Isn't this wonderful and amazing????" You probably wouldn't feel that enthusiastic. The best you could probably muster is "Meh, it might be interesting." Joey Smith could well be an interesting person, it's just that given what you know about him, you feel no need to actively seek him out. It's nothing against him, it's just that if you never saw him again, you probably wouldn't feel like you're missing anything.

I wish there was some way to express this without it sounding like a dis.

Things They Should Invent: digital cameras at glasses stores

The problem with trying on glasses is you have to take off your glasses to do so. But with your glasses off, you can't see very well, so it's harder to see how the frames you're trying on look. I can manage by leaning in really close to the mirror, but lots of people have worse eyesight than I do.

Solution: provide digital cameras that customers can use while trying on glasses. So you put on the new frames, take a picture of yourself, put your own glasses back on, look at the picture on the camera's little screen thingy. That way, even people with the worst eyesight can actually see what they look like before they buy their glasses.

Security concerns? Tie the cameras to the glasses shelves. Set up one of those beepy security things in the doorway to go off if someone walks through with a camera. Make people leave collateral. Lots of options!

Strange translation decision of the day

In my kitchen, I have a product called, in English, No-Chicken Broth. (Q: That's just what I need! Where do I get it? A: Noah's Natural Foods, or the organic section of some Dominion stores.) However, the French side of the box says "Bouillon à Saveur de Poulet." I'll admit that it's quite possible I'm missing some small connotation, but it looks to me like there's nothing in the French name that says that there's no meat. The French name just says "chicken-flavoured broth," while the English name places greater emphasis on the fact that there is no meat in the product. Your Anglophone chicken-soup-craving vegetarian may well grab the product off the shelf based on the name alone, confident that something called No-Chicken Broth will contain no meat. But the Francophone chicken-soup-craving vegetarian has to notice that it says "Bouillon à Saveur de Poulet," not "Bouillon de Poulet". "Une échappatoire?" pense-t-elle, and then hoping against hope she goes to read the ingredient list and sees that yes, there is NO CHICKEN! And there was much rejoicing! But the Francophone vegetarian needs to get to that point of desperation where she's reading the ingredient lists in a desperate hope that she can enjoy some comfy soup without sacrificing her principles. Meanwhile, the Anglophone need only glance at the product name as she scans the shelves, allowing the product to catch the eye of the anglo veggie who isn't actively craving chicken soup, and make her think "Hey, chicken soup! I haven't had that since I was a kid!"

I wonder why they chose this translation in French, as opposed to something along the lines of "bouillon sans poulet." Is it a suboptimal translation, or is there some connotation/marketing thing for the French audience that I, as an anglo, don't know about?

Open letter to Blogger

Dear Blogger:

So you can't upgrade me to the new Blogger yet because my blog's too big. That's fine, no problem, I can wait. But in that case could you please stop giving me great big UPGRADE NOW notices whenever I log in or try to post a new entry? It's annoying! I CAN'T upgrade, so stop telling me to upgrade!

What it's like to hate sports

Every time I blog about how being forced to do sports just makes you hate it (like I did below), I inevitably get backlash from people who love sports. There's a key miscommunication here: people who love sports simply cannot conceptualize what it's like to hate sports. They have this idea that sports are fun, and they don't seem able to see the other side. This is a problem because all the expert-consultant-type people on trying to make society more active are all phys. ed. teacher/kineseology student types, all of whom enjoy sports, because if they didn't enjoy sports they would ahve picked another profession.

So here are some truths you need to understand for us to have a reasonable dialogue about physical activity:

- Physical activity is not fun. If I happen to be having fun doing some sport or active game, it's despite the fact that it involves physical activity, not because of it.
- If you increase the physical exertion or competitiveness involved in something I enjoy, I will enjoy it less.
- If I am bored, doing physical activity will not make me less bored. In fact, it will probably make me more bored, because part of my brain has to focus on the physicality of the activity, which reduces my ability to think my own thoughts.
- If you said to me "Hurry up, you have to do [insert sport here] right now, this is your last chance ever in your life to do [insert sport here]!" I wouldn't be motivated to change my plans. There is no sport or physical activity in the world that I care about or enjoy enough that I'd even blink if I never had the chance to do it again. With many sports, I'd rejoice in the fact that I never have to do it again.
- If you said to me "Hurry up, this is your last chance to do any sports at all ever again!", I still wouldn't be motivated to change my plans for the same reason listed above. Again, I'd probably rejoice.
- For me, physical activity is a chore. It's like doing the dishes or taking out the recycling. If you gave me a choice between the dishes doing themselves for the rest of my life or never having to do physical activity for the rest of my life, I would pick no physical activity, without hesitation.
- For me, physical activity is undignified. Sweating, running after a ball, stretching - they aren't the sort of thing I want people to see me doing. Putting me in a situation where other people can see me doing physical activity is as humiliating to me as having those people watch me take a dump or getting a pap smear or drooling in the dentist's chair.

At this point, all you sports-lovers out there are saying "But that's not true!" But this is my point: even if these statements aren't true for you, they are true for me, just like for me olives and cantaloupe are yucky. If you want to cook a dish I'll enjoy, you have to take as a given that olives and cantaloupe are yucky; if you want to create a physical activity scheme that will work for me, you have to take as a given that these statements are true and plan accordingly.

***

ETA: Same thing, but in analogy form.

You've never been too fond of scrubbing the floor. You've been exposed to it your whole life as your parents exposed you to most aspects of everyday life, but you've never really liked it. If you could choose anything to do in the whole wide world, you would never choose to scrub the floor.

However, they recently did some studies that found that the nation's floors are perilously dirty, so they added floor-scrubbing to the school curriculum.

Floor-scrubbing classes made you start to actively hate scrubbing the floor. You had to wear this ugly floor-scrubbing apron and use this grungy industrial sponge that everyone else in the school has used for the past who-knows-how-many years. Your teacher would stand over you and yell at you whenever you missed a spot, even if it was just that you hadn't gotten to that spot yet. Your knees always hurt if you kneel a long time, but if you don't stay on your hands and knees you lose marks for poor technique; this results in a grade that's significantly lower than all your other marks, and brings down your overall average. Plus, your classmates have always tormented you at the slightest opportunities, and floor-scrubbing class gives them a lot of fodder. They mock you for being in the undignified hands-and-knees position, they poke at your bum (and the teacher deducts marks for poor technique if you use a position that protects your bum), they throw dirty water at you when the teacher's back is turned, they deliberately walk on your section of floor with their dirty shoes...

So when you've completed your final mandatory floor-scrubbing class, you're ecstatic.

From then on, you do everything possible to avoid scrubbing the floor. You take on other chores instead, leaving the floor-scrubbing for your roommates. Once you move into your own apartment, you vacuum and mop and spot-clean, avoiding scrubbing unless absolutely necessary. Your floor is clean enough for your purposes - there's certainly nothing unsanitary about it - but it will never be as clean as the floors of those people who love scrubbing the floor, and scrub it on their hands and knees every day. And you're fine with that, you don't need it to be surgically clean. (In fact, secretly and to yourself, you kind of think that people who keep their floors surgically clean must be rather dull individuals, and you have no desire to meet or socialize with such people.)

Then one day you see a newspaper article about the shameful state of the nation's floors. Some floor-scrubbing experts - the kind of people who love floor-scrubbing so much they studied it at a post-secondary level - are recommending that floor-scrubbing be manadatory year-round throughout students' entire educational careers. It's also offering parents tax credits for enrolling their kids in after-school floor-scrubbing classes - but only for the kind of floor-scrubbing that's on your hands and knees with a sponge. If the kids prefer mopping - or if they prefer to learn how to cook or garden instead - the parents don't get any tax credits.

Do you really think these additional measures are going to help? Or do they just strike you as cruel humiliations that will just make those kids hate scrubbing the floor as adults?

The problem with the tax credit for kids' sports

They have or are going to introduce a tax credits for costs associated with kids' sports, but it only applies for certain sports that are deemed to involved sufficient physical activity.

There's one major problem with this scheme that I haven't seen mentioned yet: it's the kids who have to do the sports, but the parents get the tax credit. If we assume that the tax credit is sufficient motivation to get people to change their behaviour (which I don't actually think it is, but since this seems to be one of the key assumptions behind this plan I'm taking it as a given for the moment), then the parents are motivated to have their kids do sports from the approved list. But it doesn't provide any motivation for the kids themselves. It isn't motivating people to have an active lifestyle, it's motivating people to force other people to do certain physical activities that have been approved by a third party. There's nothing in it for the people who are actually doing the physical activities. If the kids want to do the approved sports, they'll be doing the sports anyway. If the kids don't want to do the approved sports, their parents are more likely to be making them do it anyway for the parents' own personal gain. As I've blogged about extensively before, being forced to do sports in childhood simply makes you hate sports in adulthood, and adulthood is much longer than childhood. So if this tax credit does have the social engineering effect it's intended to have, it will simply make more people hate sports in the long term.

This is a good holiday

The great advantage of New Years Day as a statutory holiday is that nothing is expected of you and the day itself is of little significance. On xmas you're supposed to visit your family and get presents and have the Best. Day. Ever. On Thanksgiving you're supposed to visit your family and eat turkey and be all thankful and shit. On Victoria Day you're supposed to go to the cottage and watch fireworks and OMG summer starts! Labour Day is OMG the end of summer and we have to make the most of it, all while being haunted by the spectre of school starting the next day.

But New Years Day is nothing. The big deal happened the night before. The day after isn't really a great big return to anything. It's just...a day off. Very easy, very low-pressure. Plus, there's no pressure to be productive and get stuff done, since stores are closed and we can't do our errands anyway. It's just one simple day where we are fully justified in doing absolutely nothing. As I'm typing this, it's 3 pm and I'm in my bathrobe, but no one can really fault me for that. Get dressed and do something productive? Why, what would you have me do? Go out, have fun, make the most of the day? Why, where would you have me go?

More statutory holidays should be like this.