Open Letter to the Comedy Network

Dear Comedy Network:

I'm really happy that you show Just For Laughs so often. But there's one thing you could do to really improve my user experience: consistently and in every medium provide a listing of which comics are appearing on every single Just For Laughs episode. I don't necessarily want to watch every single episode of Just For Laughs, but I would like to see some of my favourite comics when they're on the show, especially since there are some comics who I love but I've never seen their Just For Laughs appearance.. I'd like to be able to type their names into Zap2It at the beginning of the week, or look them up in my on-screen program guide at the beginning of the day, and see when I should take time out of my schedule to watch Just For Laughs. It would also be convenient when I'm trying to explain a comic who you really have to see rather than read but they're not on Youtube - like Wendy Liebman for example - if I could just look up when they're next going to be on Just For Laughs I could point my friends in their direction at the appropriate time. Since Just For Laughs show so many comics and is on so frequently, it's the ideal medium (when Youtube fails) for introducing a friend to a new comic.

So please, people, a list of every comic appearing on every episode, and I promise I'll end up watching more episodes.

Now recruiting for the Colour Coordination Cabal

We in the Colour Coordination Cabal are attempting to take over and redefine global consciousness of what colours go together. If you're looking for once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of a conspiracy, now's your chance!

To join the Colour Coordination Cabal, all you have to do is one simple thing: define black and brown to be matching colours, regardless of their respective shades, and dress and accessorize yourself accordingly. That's it. According to the dictates of our philosophy, no shade of brown looks worse with black than any shade of black. All you have to do to be a member of this elite and exclusive cabal is to live your life in accordance with this philosophy.

Once we reach a critical mass of people pairing black and brown willy-nilly, the world will believe that they match, and dressing and accessorizing will become much easier for everyone. This is for the greater good, people! Join now!

The effect of parental age on parent/adult-child relationships

When I was born, my parents were several years older than I am now. This means that I have no memory whatsoever of my parents ever being my age, whatever age I've ever been in my life. Sometimes I do have to remind myself that they had more or less a decade of adult life before I came along - I sometimes feel incompetent that I'm not as good at grownup stuff as they are, and then I remember that when they were at this stage in their lives and perhaps still practicing this grownup thing, I wasn't there to witness.

But I do find myself wondering whether the dynamic of your relationship with your parents, or perhaps your perception of yourself as a grownup, changes when you reach an age that you can remember your parents being. I can't articulate why exactly I think this might happen, but I just have this idea that it might. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who is close enough to me to discuss this sort of thing and also has young parents.

The Bishop

I just noticed that in the cartoon intro to Monty Python's The Bishop sketch, the bishop moves diagonally.

I love how, even though I've been watching Python for nearly half my life, I still notice new stuff all the time!

Open Letter to Microsoft

Dear Microsoft:

Want to make PowerPoint more translation-friendly? Then please enable the overtype function.

Sincerely,

A disgruntled translator

Things They Should Invent: intermodal information on how to improve your environmental footprint

We know that fluorescent lightbulbs are better than incandescent lightbulbs. But does that mean you should throw out your perfectly good incandescents, or just replace them with fluorescents when they burn out? Does the heat generated by incandescents help in the winter when you need to heat your home anyway?

What about replacing your perfectly good old electronics and appliances with Energy Star ones? Is that worth the waste generated? Does that depend on the options available for disposing of them? What is you donated them to charity?

We know that locally-grown produce is better than imported produce. But how far is it worth driving to buy it? Is it worth driving to the local supermarket if it means you'll use fewer plastic bags?

Is it worth buying organic produce if it goes bad faster than I can eat all of it, thus requiring me to throw out some every time? Would it make a difference if my building had a composting program?

Is the extra energy required for a trip to the beer store worth it for the benefit of returning your bottles instead of putting them in the recycle box?

Is it worth washing your clothes in cold water if it reduces their lifespan (by making it more difficult for stains to come out)?

Is the energy saved by using the dryer on low temperature worth the energy spent by having it operate longer (because it takes longer to dry on cold)?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I don't have the information to calculate any of this. But I really wish someone would. It's one thing to self-righteously say "X is better than Y" when you're talking about only one factor, but real life consists of a multitude of factors. Give us some cost-benefit analysis!

Chansons

The problem with songs in French is that they always cheat on their meter/rhyme schemes.

"Oh Canada/Terre-UH de nos aieux"

"Allons enfants de la Patrie-UH..."

"L'amour est un oiseau rebelle-UH"

Even the very first song we learn in French is filled with cheats:

Frère-UH Jacques-UH, Frère-UH Jacques-UH
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous
Sonnez les matines-UH, sonnez le matines-UH
Ding dang dong, ding dang dong

The ENTIRE meter and rhyme of the song is made up of letters that should be silent!

Half the language is made up of silent letters, but the instant they start singing they start gratuitously pronouncing even the weakest of vowels.

Helpful Hints: choreograph your recipes

I was reading a recipe for roast chicken, which is an unfamiliar process to me because I'm vegetarian. I don't think I could follow the recipe as it stands. For every step, I found myself asking "In what? With what? Until when?"

For example, "Combine butter, lemon rind and lemon juice." In what? A bowl? How big of a bowl? With what? A spoon? A whisk? How do I know when I'm done combining them?

"Rub chicken with the butter." How, exactly? With my hands? Does it have to soak in like moisturizer, or just cover the chicken? Should all the butter end up on the chicken, or do I just coat the chicken with however much butter it takes?

"Roast the chicken with the garlic and shallots for 1 hour, 15 to 30 minutes or until juices run clear." Where, exactly, are these juices? Do I have to take the pan out of the oven to see them? How clear? Transparent but coloured? Clear like water?

"Place pan over high heat and add lemon juice and sugar. Bring to boil and boil for 1 minute or until sugar starts to turn brown. Immediately add the stock, scraping up any bits on base of pan and bring to boil. Add in any chicken juices from carving board and boil until reduced by half. Remove from heat and whisk in butter." So do I mix in the lemon juice and sugar or just put them in the pan? If I do mix them in, with what? What do I use to scrape the bits on the base of the pan? Am I to remove the bits, or just not let them stick to the pan? Apparently I'm supposed to be using a whisk for the butter, so what am I supposed to use for the rest of this step?

Maybe these things are apparent to someone who is familiar with roasting a chicken, but I seriously have no idea. And I'll never be able to learn unless people write their recipes better.

So if you're ever writing a recipe, remember: in what, with what, until when. For each step.

Cake or death

I've been watching a lot of Eddie Izzard on Youtube, and everything has been absolutely hilarious except the "Cake or Death." It just seemed totally random and out of context.

Turns out whoever Youtubed it edited out the first bit that gives all the context and makes it make sense. The whole thing is here, in the paragraph that begins "There's no Church of England fundamentalism. "

How dryers work

Do dryers use more energy turning around and around, or producing heat? I've always set my dryer heat on low to save energy, but it just occurred to me that I might be inadvertently using more energy by requiring them to turn longer.

Plastic bag ban vs. urban realities

I think the people who are lobbying to ban plastic bags aren't taking into account urban life. This explains so much! I often hear people say "Why on earth do you need to put X in a plastic bag?" where X is something that needs to be carried home, just like everything else. This would always get me puppy-head-tilt confused, but after reading this I realize they think the stuff doesn't need a bag because they think it's going in a car trunk.

A&P and Dominion, for example, sell a 99-cent reusable shopping bag that holds the equivalent of about three plastic bags of groceries, and give 5 air miles to customers with reusable bags. With all grocers and other stores on board, through their associations, competition will set in and incentives are likely to rise.

The incentive program flows from a pilot project in Sault Ste. Marie, which is trying to find out what it takes to get people to remember to bring their reusable bags back to the store.

"What are consumers looking for? What will make them remember to open the trunk and bring the reusable bin or the reusable bag. `Gee, if I'm going to get $5 off my groceries I'll do it,' or air miles or whatever the incentive is – what is enough to (encourage) them to take it back?" Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario, said of the pilot project.

See, the thing of it is, there is no trunk involved. I can't just stick the reuseable bag in the trunk because I don't use a car to grocery shop. I just stop by the store right on my way home from work. And because the store is conveniently located right on the way home from work, I don't plan my grocery shopping. I start getting hungry before I leave work, and on my way home I just buy whatever I'm craving to eat. (And yes, eating exactly what I'm craving is an important part of life for me. Planning my meals would seriously reduce my enjoyment of life.) So if I couldn't get my purchases bagged at the store, then I'd have to carry around one or two of those big Dominion tote bags with me all day, every day, just in case I start craving something for dinner that I don't have at home. Either that or I'd have to walk home from the subway, grab my shopping bags and walk back to Dominion, then go shopping and walk back home again. That's 15 minutes of walking where there is normally five, which is significant when your commute is only 17 minutes. So for people in high-density urban areas, where grocery shopping isn't done with a car and isn't a special trip because it's right there in your immediate neighbourhood, not having bags provided by the store is a far greater inconvenience than just having to keep some extra bags in your car trunk. And, as I've mentioned before, if the store didn't give me plastic bags, I'd need to buy (and subsequently throw out) plastic bags for garbage disposal purposes.

My suggestion: have stores bag customers' purchases in biodegradable plastic bags.

Fun with words

In a code-switching conversation with a Francophone, I used the English word "frumpy." My interlocutor wasn't familiar with the word, and I couldn't explain it well, so I reached for my handy Collins-Robert. One of the options it gave was mal fagotée.

Ergo, if you are frumpy, it's because you haven't been Queer-Eyed.

Ninja Turtles!

Once upon a time, this was the coolest thing ever. Really. The animation seemed l33t and everything.

But this is just a tragedy.

I think Dear Abby printed a fake letter

I think today's first Dear Abby letter is a hoax. It's alleged from a father warning people that the latest thing among teenage girls is to have a "prom baby" (i.e. get knocked up at the prom) to get out of going to college. But consider:

1. If someone is smart enough to get into an Ivy League school, they would know that taking care of a baby is harder than going to college. These people are 17, not 13.

2. In what world would it be easier to tell your parents you're pregnant than to tell them you're not feeling ready for college?

3. If they really wanted to sabotage their own chances of going to college, wouldn't they just submit a poor application? Don't US colleges require essays and interviews and all kinds of stuff like that rather than just filling out a form? Why not just submit a crappy essay or blow the interview?

4. If they really wanted to have a baby, why would they put all their eggs in one basket by depending on getting pregnant on one specific night? Wouldn't they instead work on arranging their lives so they have multiple opportunities to "try"? Even highly supervised kids, in their final year of high school, could arrange to have some "group projects" that required a lot of work at a conveniently parent-less house, or find some way to be alone in a car. This does take some stealth and lying and good luck, but if it's really that important to get pregnant, it's not that hard to make it work.

5. When I was that age, the thing to do if you weren't feeling ready for college was to work for a year. It was considered a responsible, perfectly respectable thing to do. Surely they've heard of that!

6. All the Google results for "prom baby" (excluding those where the two words appear next to each other but aren't intended as a single term) point to a) this column, or b) references to babies that were born at proms, not conceived at proms. The only Google Blog Search results or Technorati searches (again, excluding those where the words appear next to each other but aren't intended as a term) are referring to this specific Dear Abby column. If this were really a trend, it would have been mentioned on the internet by now.

What I'm surprised about is that Dear Abby didn't clearly see that this was a hoax.

Freaky Google ads

I was sent an email containing a number of family photos. The subject line was "Photos" and the body of the message was blank. The image files themselves were numbered, not given descriptive names.

Here are the Google ads that Gmail served up alongside this message:

Menstruation Pictures
Free Pictures & Illustrations About Menstruation.
www.healthline.com


Pomeranian Warning
All The Things You Probably Weren't Told About The Pomeranian
www.ThePomeranianManual.com


Che Guevara Rebel Test
Are You a Rebel Like Che Guevara? Take This 30 Second Free Test & See
www.DaVinciMethod.com


Lhasa Apso Dog Warning
All The Things You Probably Won't Be Told About the Lhasa Apso Dog.
www.lhasa-apso-dogworld.com

SEXISM!

All the best Mother's Day cards say "from your son". And the messages on them aren't gender-specific, or even based on gender stereotypes! Some power in the greeting card industry just randomly stuck "Happy Mother's Day From Your Son" on all the best cards, leaving only lame ones for daughters and genderless children! WTF?

And don't get me started on the difficulty finding a humorous card for a grandmother from an adult grandchild!

Offers and counter-offers

Often on TV when people are negotiating the price of something, they often write it down on a piece of paper and pass the paper back and forth instead of saying the amount verbally. Is that so the TV show won't age, or do people actually do that IRL?

University sports

Some universities, in the US especially, put a lot of effort into their sports programs. They give athletes huge scholarships to come play sports at their school. Question: what's in it for a university to have a good sports program? Is it just bragging rights, or do they get something else out of it?

"Inspected by Postal Supervisor"

When I was preparing to move, I arranged to have Canada Post forward my mail to the new address, just in case I forgot any address change. Shortly after I moved in, I got some mail at my new address with yellow forwarding stickers on it, so that made me feel reassured. But just before I returned the keys to my old apartment (i.e. over a week after the date when my mail forwarding was to start) I checked my old mailbox just in case, and found some very important letters in there. So I sent an email to Canada Post explaining the problem, emphasizing how serious the consequences would have been if I hadn't gotten these letters, and imploring them to make sure the forwarding went smoothly in the future. There was a brief email exchange where I clarified certain particulars (I hadn't known what information they needed at first), and then the next morning, while I was in the shower, someone from Canada Post called and left me a voicemail saying that in addition to looking into my forwarding request and making sure everything was good, they were having the carrier who delivered to my old address keep a lookout for letters with my name on them and physically hand them to the carrier at my current address if they find any (because apparently all the mail is given to the carriers at the same physical location). So I was happy with all that.

So today I got another very important letter, addressed to and delivered to my new address and marked "do not forward" by the original sender. And someone wrote on it in pen "inspected by Postal Supervisor", with today's date and some illegible initials.

I wonder if that is because of this mail forwarding problem, or if it's a completely unrelated thing?