Things They Should Invent: study of introverts living in nursing homes

When I hear about what life is like in nursing homes, I dread it. Even if the care is exemplary, it would be hell for me because I am an introvert. Rather than having their own shower, nursing home patients are bathed (because they can't do it themselves). Health care workers come check up on them in the middle of the night. Their lives are necessarily regimented because the institution is, well, institutional - they have to wake up and go to bed and eat and be bathed at a specific time rather than whenever they want.

For me, that's no way to live. I get great joy - yes, joy is le mot juste - from sleeping in as long as my body needs to, having a ridiculously long shower and doing some of my best thinking in the pseudo sensory-deprivation that ensues, then eating whatever I want whenever I want at my own pace. I call this process rebooting my brain, and it's an essential part of staying sane and personable enough that people don't defenestrate me. Another thing that's important is being able to completely let my guard down. I cannot completely let my guard down when another person (apart from mi cielito) is in the room, or may enter the room. I could never let my guard down at my parents' unless I was home alone, and my personality suffered for it. If I lived in a nursing home where there were no locks on the doors (which is normal, according to a PSW friend of mine) I could never let my guard down, at all, ever, for the rest of my life. That's not a life worth living, that's just being kept alive.

Someone should do a study on how nursing home conditions affect introvert patients, whether they're significantly worse off than extrovert patients, and maybe come up with new care models to help people preserve their psychological privacy. I tried googling, but the results were tainted by non-scientific definitions of "introvert" - people who think the word means shy or quiet or nervous or doesn't want to go to the potluck, rather than the technical definition of being energized by being alone.

Things They Should Invent: don't heat the subway

They're always talking about how the TTC can save money. Here's my thought: don't heat the subway. Or perhaps heat it a little, but set the thermostat to 10 degrees or something.

Why? Because if the outdoor weather demands a coat, everyone is wearing a coat when they go into the subway. If it's heated to 20 degrees, everyone gets sweaty, which in uncomfortable and unpleasant and inconvenient. In the spring and fall, I find myself actually taking off my jacket as soon as I enter the station just to avoid being soaked in sweat when I arrive at work. Given that everyone dresses for outdoors whenever they leave the house, I seriously doubt anyone would notice if, in the winter, subways were at a temperature where you need a jacket. I think you should be able to take your gloves off so you can read or do your homework or play video games without your fingers freezing, so some heat might be necessary if it's like -20 outside, but if it's 10 or maybe even 0 I don't think we need it.

Now air conditioning is very necessary in the summer, because the trains themselves generate heat in the stations, and all the bodies generate heat in the trains. But I don't think heat is nearly as necessary, especially when it's like 15 degrees out.

Best. Ship. EVER!

I would love to know if anyone in fandom predicted this! No, seriously, go read it!

Burma and panties

It seems people are mailing panties to Burmese embassies to protest the military junta.

The manoeuvre is a calculated insult to the junta and its leader, General Than Shwe. Superstitious junta members believe that any contact with female undergarments - clean or dirty - will sap them of their power, said Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee.

"Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious. They believe that touching a woman's pants* or sarong will make them lose their strength," Ms Pollack told Guardian Unlimited.

*I'm pretty sure this is the British use of pants to mean underwear.

I would really love a fact check on this superstition. Everything I can google up cites this same source - representatives of this organization trying to run this campaign - and googling the organization just turns up more articles about panties. I can't find anything from before this campaign started.

I have some old underwear that I could stand to get rid of, I could even arrange for traces of menstruation if that would help, and frankly I think it's a hilarious protest if its basis is actually true. But, given that there are weirdos out there who would pay money for used women's underwear, I don't want to send my underwear out to strangers unless I am more certain that it would produce the desired effect.

Bizarre dream sequence

When my alarm went off this morning, I couldn't open my eyes so I decided to skip exercising and sleep for another hour. I promptly fell back asleep and had an extremely vivid dream - everything from the colours to the plot to the emotions were way stronger than usual. Then I woke up. Five minutes had passed. So I closed my eyes again and had another extremely vivid dream. Then I woke up. Five minutes had passed. So I closed my eyes again and this happened again.

This went on for a full hour and a half. Extremely vivid dreams, each five minutes long. The weird thing is, when I woke up in between, I couldn't get out of bed. I could sit up and look at the clock, but I was somehow incapable of rolling out of bed and starting my day.

Nothing like this has ever happened before. I quite enjoyed the dreams though. I wish I knew how to make them happen again.

Weirdness

On the Environment Canada Weater Office page, there's a banner ad (in Tory blue, which isn't part of the Enviro Canada colour scheme) linking to the Throne Speech.

Isn't that odd? Does that sort of partisan cross-promotion on a politically neutral page strike you as a bit, I don't know, crass and unbecoming government?

Age of consent

The big omnibus crime bill the conservatives want to pass includes, among many many things, raising the age of consent from 14 to 16.

I am strongly, almost viscerally, opposed to this.

As with most issues involving children, I look at this by putting myself in the kid's shoes and remembering my thought processes at that age. I was not yet ready to have sex on my 14th birthday, but I was ready to have sex before my 16th birthday. However, and this is the important part, on my 14th birthday I was perfectly capable of deciding for myself that I was not yet ready to have sex. Apart from medical advances in the past 12 years, I had the same information then that I do today, and was able to use the same reasoning then to determine that I was not yet ready for sex as I use today to determine that loving sex with mi cielito is a good idea while jumping the homeless guy who shouts stuff at me is a bad idea. This reasoning has served me well - I've never had sex that I ended up regreting - so I have no reason to believe that 14- and 15-year-olds are incapable of deciding for themselves whether to consent to sex.

They say the purpose of raising the age of consent is to protect kids from sexual exploitation, but it's degrading and paternalistic to do this by passing a law saying that people are not capable of making a decision they are perfectly capable of making. The existing law already raises the age of consent to 18 for situations in which one party is in a position of power or authority, rape and pimping (I forget the the legal term) and other similar stuff are already illegal - surely any capable legislator can close any existing loopholes without declaring competent people legally incompetent.

But the weird thing about this issue is it's very difficult to speak out against raising the age of consent without sounding creepy. I've heard other people do it, and they almost all came across as creepy, like they wanted to have the right to have sex with grade 9 students for their own personal purposes. So because of this, even though I'm so strongly opposed to raising the age of consent, I'm very hesitant to speak out. I don't even know if I've managed to succeed in not coming across as creepy here, I only dare speak out here because I'm not using my real name and I have a proven track record of prudishness. I just wish it were easier and more appropriate to speak out against.

Lassie on Whose Line

Watch everyone on the entire show turn to smiley mush:

Words words words

Play a word game, donate free rice to hungry people.

I donated 2180 grains before I got tired of playing (I don't know if the game ends or goes on forever), and the highest level I reached was level 44, although I tend to hover around level 40 on average.

I'd expect this would be significantly harder for people who don't speak as many foreign languages, unless you go around memorizing huge lists of vocabulary instead of determining the meaning of words from their etymology.

Things They Should Have Invented: MMP information at polling stations

Even though I felt innundated with information about MMP, I've heard quite a few stories of people getting their referendum ballot and being all "WTF is this?" but the polling station employees weren't allowed to explain it to them.

What they should have done is have literature with non-partisan information about the two systems available at the polling stations. So when people went WTF, they could look at a pamphlet (and go home and google and come back if necessary) and then vote somewhat more informedly.

My inner child on security cards

Both the building where I live and the building where I work have those security cards that you wave in front of a sensor, then the sensor beeps and unlocks the door.

I've noticed that we invariably describe it as "beeping the thing."

Which has glorious potential to sound dirty.

"Could you do me a favour and beep me? My hands are full so I can't get my thing out."

"My thing won't beep today for some reason. It took three tries before it worked."

"You can beep without taking your thing out of your pants?" "Yeah, if the thing is sensitive enough."

More information please

I'm not following this.

She wired the money to her boyfriend. Her boyfriend wired the money back to her. They showed the scammer the receipt, but the wiring was between her and her boyfriend. Unless I've read it wrong repeatedly, they never actually wired money to the scammer. So how exactly did the scammer get their money? Is there banking information that allows your identity to be stolen on a moneygram receipt? Is there some kind of password involved? It would be really helpful to know where precisely the security leak was.

Weirdest corelation ever?

I'm not 100% certain, but I think my acne has worsened since I started taking 1000 IU Vitamin D. So I'm going to cut it out for a bit and see what happens.

Al Gore MUST run for president!

Do I want Al Gore to be president? I don't give a monkey's. Do I think he's make a good president? Haven't given it a moment's thought.

No, I just want him to run for president so I can see how his opponents would give negative spin to the winner of a fucking Nobel Peace Prize! I've done enough work on communications and speechwriting and PR that I can usually anticipate how something will be spun, but this one I can't work out at all!

Hopefully watching the returns isn't an essential part of my good luck ritual

I voted, with full good luck rituals, and I did see a beautiful doggie at the polling station so that's a good sign. But my prospective strep throat seems to have turned into a head cold, so instead of watching the election I'm going to take Nyquill and go straight to sleep. This will be the first time in my adult life I haven't watched the results come in - I hope it won't hurt the outcome.

(You may scoff at my superstition, but there has been 100% correlation between successfully completing my rituals/seeing a doggie/watching the results and favourable election outcomes).

What 2003 would have looked like under MMP

One more link to DemocraticSPACE:

What the 2003 election would have looked like under MMP (you have to scroll down a bit).

What actually happened in 2003.

I've been taking it easy lately because my body is trying to decide whether or not I'm about to get strep throat. More later when the idea of writing down the thoughts in my brain becomes more appealing than the idea of drinking juice and sleeping.

For if you have the choice to vote in more than one riding

Democratic SPACE has some information on in which ridings your vote might be more influential

Election Roundup

Before I forget, here's a repost of my election stuff. This is from the last federal campaign, but it applies to the current Ontario election. (This might be the provincial election where I can reuse these!)

How to vote
Where to vote
How to vote strategically.

Update, because some of the strategic voting links have moved:

Election Prediction Project is here
Hill Knowlton predictor is here
DemocraticSPACE's strategic voting guide is here (it isn't up yet, but they say it's going up today.

I really shouldn't read the G&M comments page

Apparently abortion wait times in Ottawa are six weeks.

So how do we fix this?

They say we're complacent about our abortion rights. I'm not sure if that's the case. I think it's just that, like with anything, we tend to assume the situation's the same unless given further information. I know about the Morgentaler clinic, I have a family doctor, I could go to the Bay Centre or Planned Parenthood or Hassle-Free, and if all else fails Telehealth could probably refer me. I have a plan and a series of backup plans, my elected representatives are all pro-choice, so what else would they have me do? I don't think having fully processed all available information and made an action plan = being complacent. Now I know that there's waiting times, so now I start following up after I miss one period (which I never actually have) instead of waiting to see if I miss the second. But aside from that, what?

They also say people are hesitant to speak out because of the stigma of having an abortion. I'm totally willing to represent as a potential abortion patient, but I don't know how much that would count since I'm not pregnant and not in Ottawa. But yeah, because people are afraid to speak out, I'm going to out myself here: Until I reach menopause or get a tubal, I consider myself a potential abortion patient. I'm just not sure what I'm meant to do with that.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the comments page. I don't recommend it. It's full of assholes and will just make your blood pressure go up. But I do have two productive comments arising from all those assholes (in addition to all my usual comments, which we'll take as read because they are in the archives and in everything I've said in my life.)

1. A lot of people in the comments seem to take great personal offence that anyone would ever get an abortion. I'm not sure why. However, for those types of people, I'm offering you a fabulous once in a lifetime opportunity. You, yes you, can stop me from ever getting an abortion! All you have to do is get me a tubal ligation! Just one successful tubal, and I can promise you I will never get an abortion ever in my life! The tricky part: I'm 26, never married, no children, never been pregnant. Because botched surgery can result in incontinence, I require an experienced surgeon in the top quintile who has never once performed an operation that resulted in incontinence. Hook me up, and you'll have removed one person from the pool of people who might possibly have abortions.

2. If you think about it, it's mind-boggling how many times you ovulate in your lifetime. Do the math - it's close to 500 times! I, personally, have been through nearly 200 menstrual cycles. Two hundred! That's 200 times I have successfully avoided getting pregnant. So if I found I needed to have an abortion next time around, that would be one abortion I did have, and 200 abortions I didn't have. People should really do this math before condescendingly assuming that people who need abortions don't know how to prevent pregnancy. I'm sure if you do the math, you'll find an astounding success rate in almost everyyone in the world.