What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

Section 238 of the Canada Shipping Act. Bold is mine.

Canada Shipping Act
PART III: SEAMEN
Protection of Seamen from Imposition
Punishment when drunk, etc.
238. Every person is guilty of an offence and, without prejudice to the right of recovery from him of any amount payable by him as fare, liable to a fine not exceeding ten dollars, who

(a) being drunk or disorderly, has been on that account refused admission to board a steamship by the owner or any person in his employment, and persists in attempting to board the steamship;

(b) being drunk or disorderly on board a steamship, is requested by the owner or any person in his employment to leave the steamship at any place in Canada that is a reasonably convenient place to leave the steamship, and does not comply with that request;

(c) after warning by the master or other officer of the steamship, molests or continues to molest any passenger;

(d) after having been refused admission to board a steamship by the owner or any person in his employment on account of the steamship being full, and having had the amount of his fare, if he has paid it, returned or tendered to him, persists in attempting to board the steamship; or

(e) without reasonable excuse, proof whereof lies on him, fails, when requested by the master or other officer of a steamship, either to pay his fare or exhibit a ticket or other receipt, if any, showing the payment of his fare, as is usually given to persons travelling by and paying their fare on steamships.

R.S., c. S-9, s. 238.

Today I am a comedian

In bilingual environments, I have English days and French days. On English days, strangers with no external cues speak to me in English. On French days, strangers with no external cues speak to me in French.

Today I seem to be having a third kind of day. Today I am having a comedian day. Everything I say with even the slightest element of humour gets a laugh. And by humour, I don't mean that I was telling a joke. I mean that there was some element of understatement or irony or some other literary device in my statment, and it would get a laugh. I have no idea why, but that happened all day today.

Edited to add the relevant Python.

Do I know anyone at Ryerson?

My call display is full of calls from 416-979-5000. There are no corresponding messages on my voicemail. Google tells me this phone number is Ryerson. Do I know anyone at Ryerson?

Make-up

A Toronto Star letter to the editor claims that the fact that Afghan women have started wearing make-up is oppressing, not liberating.

You know what? I find wearing make-up liberating. Instead of being oppressed by my genetics, it gives me the freedom to look like I want to. Instead of small, squinty sallow-greenish-hazel eyes surrounded by big dark circles, I can have wide, bright eyes in the most fascinating shade of pale green. Instead of shiny, oily skin with uneven skintone, pocked with acne scars, I can have smooth, even skintone in a nice matte. Instead of strange dry pink lips that don't match my skintone (really - I've been told that shade of pink looks awful on me while walking around without any lipcolour on) I can have shiny lips in a subdued reddish earthtone that goes with both my natural and my made-up skintone.

Is my make-up actually that miraculous? Who knows? But I think it is, so I face the world with the confidence of big bright green eyes, smooth skin, and dewy lips. I am no longer my parents' daughter, the spawn of two people to whom it never occurred that their child might inherit their more unattractive physical features. I am my own person, with my physical appearance at least hinting at the person I want to be.

I wear make-up for myself, sex appeal doesn't enter into it. But suppose it does make me more sexually appealing. That doesn't make me feel exploited or oppressed. Unwanted sexual attention happens whether I'm wearing make-up or not, but I can initiate positive social interaction (whether sexual or not) with greater confidence when I look like I want to look. The big green eyes and smooth skin also seem to have a molifying effect on potentially contentious social interactions. If I'm in a situation where I'm awkward or uncertain, people tend to be more trusting of my made-up self, give her greater benefit of the doubt. Whether I'm passing through airport security or asking the saleslady to remove the beepy security tag from these pants before I try them on so I can see if they gap in the back, people are more likely to be nice and friendly and not at all suspicious if I'm wielding the big green eyes. Professionally, I feel more confident and pulled-together if my complexion is smooth. And, of course, I always have the option of not wearing make-up at all if I don't feel like it, or putting it on but not taking advantage of the extra powers it affords me, instead just being quietly gorgeous.

Perhaps you find make-up oppressing yourself. And that's fine, you don't have to wear it. But stop telling me that it's oppressing for me. From the moment at the age of 13 when my mother gave me my first tube of concealer, it has always been a liberator for me, empowering me, giving me control over my own body.

How to make a liberal adult

A new study suggests that a more stressful childhood produces liberal adults.

As with everything, I found myself thinking about this through the lens of my own experience. Any liberalism that I might have is the result of what conservatism my parents have. (They are conservative in some areas but not in others.) I find their conservatism very unattractive and unpleasant. Whenever they demonstrated conservatism, my train of thought would be "This is ugly and unpleasant. I don't want to be that kind of person. I want to be better than that." And so I do my best to be the kind of person I want to be instead of the kind of person I hate being around.

Now, I don't know if other people are liberal because they are repulsed by the conservatism they see in their parents. But nevertheless, this all led me to a follow-up question: Does having conservative parents produce a stressful childhood?

What, only $5 million?

According to the front page of some supermarket tabloid, Jennifer Aniston is writing a tell-all book for $5 million.

The cast of Friends made $1 million each per episode. I don't know the filming schedule for Friends in particular, but my understanding is most sitcoms film an episode a week.

Would you write a tell-all book about your private life for only five weeks' pay?

The problem with automatic rent payment

On Thursday I went to the ATM, took out some money, and got a slip showing my balance. So I knew how much was in my account. Today I happened to log into my online banking and OMG THE BALANCE IS OVER $1000 LESS THAN I EXPECTED!!! OMG SOMETHING HORRIBLE MUST HAVE HAPPENED! OMG CLICK ON VIEW ACCOUNT TO SEE WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED TO ALL THAT $$$$ AND oh it's just my June rent was deducted.

Things They Should Invent: lightsabre cellphones

So you take a cellphone, and you install whatever technology they use in Wii controllers. Then on the end of the cellphone you put a laser where you can see the whole beam like a lightsabre. It will have to be a magical laser that doesn't damage people's eyes.

Then people can use their cellphones to have lightsabre fights, and bring back the social convention of challenging people to a duel.

Wherein I sacrifice one of my core principles in the name of good translation

One thing they made clear to me when I was hired is that there is no room for one's personal values in translation. My first duty as a translator is to accurately render the full meaning of the source text into the target language, and no matter how provocative the subject matter I was not to impose my own values upon it.

Not the most comfortable rule in the world, but I figured that the vast majority of the material I'd be asked to translate is not contrary to my values, and if I did find my values being compromised, I could always resign. So I accepted the conditions of my job. A couple of texts have pushed, but not crossed, the line, but overall nothing in the past four years has caused me to compromise my principles.

Until today.

In what was otherwise a perfectly innocent text, there was a pun. A horrible, terrible, ugly pun. A pun that made me recoil from the computer screen. Once I had recovered my wits, I analyzed it linguistically, showed it to some of my learned colleagues, and decided it was untranslatable. There's no shame in that, most puns are untranslatable. So I put in a pun-free translation of the phrase in question, and continued on my merry way.

Until it happened. Suddenly, unintentionally, against my very will, a solution came to me. An accurate and effective translation of that horrible pun, producing an even worse pun in English. The English pun caused me to make a face like I'd accidentally eaten an olive. But as soon as it came to mind I knew it was the best translation humanly possible of the full denotation and connotation of the French phrase.

So now I was in a dilemma. On one hand, I certainly had the option of disingenuously using a literal, pun-free translation. Certainly no one would blame me for not translating a pun. On the other hand, I did have the best possible solution, and I knew it. The source text's intentions were clear, the ethical dictates of my profession were clear. But was it really worth sacrificing my long-standing noble principle of not inflicting horrible puns on the general public?

Once again I consulted with my learned colleagues. I took a strategic approach: I printed out the section with the pun and shoved it in their faces, hoping to shock and disgust them. After all, if they reacted with the same visceral disgust that I did, I might be able to get them to agree that we really can't inflict such horror on the unwitting public. But they are older than me, and their additional life and translation experience seems to have grown impervious to such horrors. They looked the pun in the eye unflinchingly, with complete sangfroid, and confirmed that it was indeed the best possible translation, so I should use it.

So I swallowed my principles and my pride, inserted the pun, and submitted my text. So now, somewhere out there, is this horrid, wretched pun, just waiting to be unleashed on innocent civilians. And it's all my fault.

I think I'm going to go take a shower.

Nonviolence: Tenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky

I highly recommend reading this book. It's not that big of a book (only 183 pages) but there's really a lot to think about in it. I'm not writing a full review just yet because my brain is still processing everything I've learned from it, but I do recommend reading it. I like the directions it's making me think in.

When boys' voices change

Bad day (Rogers sent me a bill for $200 when I was expecting a bill for $10ish, so I'm going to have to call and complain and sort stuff out and probably still end up paying more than I expected) plus I have to get up early tomorrow. So what does one do to destress? Watch Eddie Izzard of course!

So Eddie's talking about puberty, and around 2:00 he starts going into how boys' voices change.

You know, when I was that age, I never noticed guys' voices. Apparently they're very self-conscious about it, but I literally never noticed. Sometimes I'd notice when a guy I hadn't seen for a while was suddenly a baritone, but the whole process, the whole voice cracking thing? Didn't notice! Maybe it's because boys were yucky for longer for me than they are for most people, and by the time they started to be intriguing I was old enough that only post-growth-spurt boys were of interest, so I just never paid much attention to boys whose voices were changing. Maybe I was too distracted trying to manage my own body's strange secretions. Maybe I was too distracted trying to avoid being bullied. But at any rate, I never once noticed any guy's voice crack or squeak or change or anything.

Good bras!

La Senza has these awesome (like a thousand hotdogs!) bras this season! They have several improvements over previous seasons' t-shirt bras. First, they're cotton! Second, they have an elastic on the outside of the cups, so you won't ooze out into your armpit area. Third, they have this hook thing on the back that allows you to hook the two straps together in the middle of your back, so you get all the supportive benefits of crossed straps, but you can still put on the bra the normal way (instead of doing the stupid pull-over-head thingy that you have to do with cross straps), then just hook up one additional hook once you've got everything in place. It also produces less back bulge than pervious versions, although I can't tell exactly which design feature is responsible for that.

I've been wearing one all day today, and I haven't had to pull up a strap or tug at an elastic even once!

It must be weird to be a stand-up comic

A while back, I thought of what I believe is a completely original joke. I could find no evidence on the internet that anyone had ever told this joke before. It isn't that good a joke - its only virtue is that it's original - so I didn't share it with anyone except mi cielito in case he could use it (he couldn't), but I did sort of plan the wording and timing and delivery in case a perfect opportunity to use it ever came up IRL. But none did, so the joke remained in the back of my mind.

In the shower this morning, I thought of a way to improve delivery, so I workshopped the joke as I shampooed and exfoliated. I experimented with wording and timing, used different voices and gestures, and played with how much build-up it could bear before you could see the punchline coming. The joke is now better than it was before. It's still not that good a joke, again its only virtue is that it's original, but I'd say there's a 50% chance you'd laugh if I told it to you now with the new delivery.

The problem is, it isn't funny to me any more. I've told it to myself so many times that it's just dull and predictable to me now. Unless the perfect opening came up naturally, I'd never tell the joke, because I don't go around telling people jokes that I don't find funny. (I do sometimes go around telling people jokes that they don't think are funny, but that's a whole 'nother thing.)

This makes me think that it must be very bizarre to be a stand-up comedian. They tell the same jokes over and over - and surely they work on them before they start telling them on stage - so the jokes must cease to be funny to the comedian at some point. And yet they continue to tell them. That's a strange thing to do. Except for the most socially inept, people don't usually go around continuing to tell the same jokes over and over. And you don't usually go around assuming that something will get a laugh if it doesn't make you laugh, but that's exactly what stand-up comedians do. And they make it work. And the greats even make it work when the audience knows exactly what's coming. I wonder if that really skews their ability to socialize normally?

Sweat and socialism

I should warn you that this post contains graphic descriptions of perspiration, my perspiration to be precise. It's rather a personal thing, but I'm putting it out there to demonstrate a point. If you're going to go "Eww, gross, sweat! You sweat! You're disgusting!" you should probably leave this post and go elsewhere.

With the end of adolescence, my body chemistry changed, which affected the chemical composition of my sweat. My sweat reacted chemically with my antiperspirant (which never fully stopped my perspiration because I am, as Sars from Tomato Nation puts it, a very dewy lass) to leave permanent stains in the armpits of my shirts. It took me a long time to diagnose this - I thought applying more antiperspirant would help, I though a clear antiperspirant would help (it made things worse), and I didn't realize that it was the specific chemistry of the antiperspirant and my specific body chemistry that did it. I had to do a lot of experiments and buy a lot of different antiperspirants before I could get it under control. (And no, I can't just skip antiperspirant, because I sweat even more without and would be walking around with wet armpits 24/7.) I also had to do a lot of experiments and try a lot of laundry products and methods before I could figure out how to wash my shirts so as to prevent staining. The best solution found to date has been to use Drysol twice a week, Secret soft solid every day, then treat every armpit of every shirt with Spray and Wash stain stick when I take the shirt off (whether or not there's any visible staining), then wash every shirt in warm water (or hot if it can take it), never cold, and never ever ever put it a shirt in the dryer.

But in the time it took me to figure out this forumla, I managed to irreparably stain 27 shirts. Twenty-seven shirts, all stained so badly that charities wouldn't take them. They had big crusty white or yellow stains in the armpits, highly visible, you couldn't even see the original colour of the shirt under the stains, they could not be removed even by professionals, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it because the problem was my specific personal body chemistry. No one in the world, could have seen this coming. No one in the world could have told me the specific method to keep it under control. I had to do trial and error with all the many products and methods and ideas available until I stumbled upon a method that worked. There was no other option, and all the virtue in the world would not have prevented it.

This is why I strongly believe that our social safety net needs to be strengthened.

This problem originated through no fault of my own. It took some time to fix, and during the time it took to fix it I had to keep throwing resources at it. Different laundry detergents, different stain removers, different antiperspirants, the occasional round of dry-cleaning, internet access for research, and replacement shirts whenever one would get so highly visibly stained that I just couldn't wear it in public any more. Fortunately, I can afford all this, but someone who's on social assistance could not. They get so little money that there is no way they could make it work to keep buying new laundry products and antiperspirants - and because it's a matter of specific chemistry, the cheapest store brand or whatever's on sale won't do, you have to buy specific brands. And even shopping at the Amity, constantly replacing one's shirts would become a burden if you only get $500 a month.

So then they'd be stuck with nothing but stained shirts. Every single shirt they own would have these huge, visible, crusty sweat stains in the armpits, even after diligent laundering. This would hinder them in every area of life. People would look on them with scorn and disgust, because they look disgusting and dirty. They would have even more trouble finding a job - could you imagine going to a job interview with large visible armpit stains? People would probably think that they have some developmental and functional disability and are therefore incapable of taking proper care of themselves, and not treat them as functional and intelligent human beings. And all this because the social safety net does not provide enough money to do the trial and error necessary to solve the problem.

Now you're thinking "But this is such an obscure problem! I have never in my life heard of perspiration reacting chemically with antiperspirant to stain clothing!" Which is my point exactly. It's such an obscure problem, no one could see it coming. Our lawmakers probably didn't see it coming when they planned our social assistance rates, and no one can expect them to have thought of it. But there are probably hundreds more problems like this that people face and no one would have ever seen coming, but still require money to fix. I just want to live in a society where everyone can do what they need to do to figure out how to fix these small, unexpected problems that will take over your whole life if you don't address them. Social assistance doesn't need to make it possible to buy cars and plasma TVs and designer clothes, put people should still be able to buy a stain stick and a different antiperspirant and a new shirt to replace the one that has been stained irreparably, rather than being sentenced to the indignity of walking around with armpit stains forever.

How to make your Sims be uncouth

If you have a male Sim who isn't too neat and isn't too shy, and he has to go to the bathroom, you can click on any bush on the property and the option "Use" will come up. If you click on Use, he'll pee on the bush!

(Yes, I only just discovered this.)

Macroquestioning and microquestioning

I question all the Big Things in life. Do I really want to own a house? Do I really want to drive a car? Do I actually believe in this religion with which I was raised? Is finishing high school and then going to university really the right decision for me? Is working full-time really the best use of my work-life balance? Should I really be speaking English right now? Maybe I should eat pasta for breakfast instead of for dinner? All these major core assumptions get questioned.

But the problem is that I keep forgetting to question the little routine habits I fall into. For example, I turn the TV to a show I watch every week like clockwork, and find myself going "I hate this episode! I don't want to watch this!" And then it takes a while for me to realize "Hey, I don't have to do that!" Or I wake up and I want to have a coffee before my shower, but I'm all "Waah waah I don't want to have a shower yet!" instead of just having a coffee before a shower.

Conan O'Brien is messing with my mind!

Conan O'Brien's guests today: America Ferrera from Ugly Betty, Eddie Izzard, and an entomologist.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's my two latest obsessions, and my greatest phobia!

I hope Conan keeps his guests nicely separated and presents them in the order announced!

(Although if anyone out there is watching and is able to handle watching the entomology segment, let me know if Eddie Izzard ends up covered in bees.)

(Speaking of, I'm surprised the internet as a whole hasn't noted the fact that the end of the opening titles for The Riches is covered in bees.)

Things They Should Invent: tag other people's posts

I'm watching a DVD that has been Youtubed in its entirety. It's divided into several parts, each titled and tagged with "DVD Name Part X." The original poster didn't put any more tags. This does meet the original poster's and the target audience's initial goal, which is to watch the entire DVD. However, I keep noting certain scenes that I might want to show to people at some point in the future, because it's entertaining or to illustrate a point or something. This isn't how the original poster anticipated me using the video, or how I anticipated using it going in, but it is how I'm likely to use it in the future. The problem is, how am I going to find these specific scenes if I want to show them to someone weeks from now? There are several scenes of interest, and many parts of the DVD posted on Youtube, but they're sorted purely chronologically, without any thematic indications.

Right now I'm making do by adding to my IE bookmarks, but really what I'd like to be able to do is add tags to the Youtube post. Then when I'm looking for that particular scene again in the future (as well as if anyone else in the fandom is looking for that scene) I can just search for "DVD Name" widgets to find the widget scene.

And if we can do it for Youtube, why not do it for everything that's author-tagged?

Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan

Animal books don't usually work on me (strange, I know, because I am an animal person), but this one did. It is adorable and hilarious and had me laughing and going "Awww!" on the subway. The author also handles the emotional arc of the book deftly - just as I thought I was going to have to end the book by crying (which is standard for the genre) I ended it laughing instead. I also have to admire that the author ended up coming across as sympathetic, when he's not the kind of person I'd find particularly sympathetic IRL. (Not that there's anything wrong with him, he's just not someone I'd seek out as a friend or anything.) I'm not going to actively recommend to read it for the writing because it didn't take my breath away or anything, but the author did manage to win over an unsympathetic reader who doesn't usually appreciate the genre. So that should count for something. Plus, like, it's funny and cute and has a yellow tilty-head puppy on the front.