Post your headphone recommendations here

The headphones that came with my ipod are dying, so I'm in the market for new ones.

I want something with hardly any bulk (because it has to be carried around in a pocket or purse and I dress girly) and that can be comfortably worn for up to 10 hours if necessary. Because I already know that clip-ons hurt my ears if worn for long periods of time, I think this points to earbuds, although I'm not married to the idea.

I plan to treat my headphones with no care whatsoever. They will be worn outdoors in all sorts of weather, stuffed into wherever I happen to be putting my ipod, and exposed to disgusting amounts of sweat and earwax. I don't expect them to last forever, but at the same time I don't want something that has to be babied.

I spend most of my time in areas with a lot of white noise so I'd appreciate headphones that can address this, but I still want to be able to jaywalk across Yonge with impunity so I don't want so much noise cancelling that I can't walk around safely. I can hear the technical flaws of the white ipod headphones and I don't want anything worse, but I'm not a huge technical quality geek and top-of-the-line anything is generally wasted on me.

Price point is flexible. I don't want to spend $200 for something that's going to die in six months, I don't want to spend $10 on something that's inconvenient to use.

I'd appreciate any thoughts anyone might have.

Another one of those annoying posts where I take credit for coincidences

Me last May

Salon since January

Me a couple weeks ago

Toronto Star yesterday (3rd picture from bottom)

Things They Should Invent: don't ghettoize classical music

There's been a bit of a fuss in the Globe and Mail lately because CBC Radio 2 is going to be playing less classical music.

It occurs to me that the real way to be bold and innovative about classical music programing is not to ghettoize it. Just play classical mixed in with all other types of music. It's music too, and anyone can enjoy it. At this point, some people will argue that classical is more advanced and complex, and involves a greater intellectual commitment. I can't address this point, because as a result of the way I slacked off and the stopped slacking off and then slacked off again in my musical education I learned how to do proper analysis and Music Appreciation of classical genres only. I know there's way more to other genres than I know how to process academically, but I don't know how much. But even if it is true that classical is more intellectually complex, it can still be enjoyed casually. As an adult, I enjoy early Beatles because I'm trying to analyze and internalize the vocal harmony with the goal of eventually being able to improvise vocal harmony myself; as a small child, I enjoyed early Beatles because it was fun to dance around to in my own little six-year-old way. The fact that I didn't even know what harmony was didn't hinder my enjoyment of it then, and if I hadn't been exposed to it then it may well have never ended up on my ipod today. Similarly, someone who can't tell Bach from Cage could still listen to and enjoy a piece of classical music just because it's nice or it's interesting or some totally benign reason, and may then be moved to learn more about a kind of music they normally wouldn't have touched. To ghettoize and isolate it on the basis that it's too advanced does the whole genre a disservice.

Radio 2's playlist should be something like Diana Krall, followed by Tragically Hip, followed by Glenn Gould, followed by k-os. (Of course it should all be less mainstream, more innovative up-and-comers, etc. but I'm too lazy and ignorant to come up with good examples.) The usual objection to intermixing classical like this is that classical pieces tend to be longer and radio stations need to hit their scheduled commercial breaks. But the CBC doesn't have this problem, so it's the perfect venue for this kind of open-minded, innovative programming! This is the 21st century, we're already doing the same thing on our ipods, the public can handle it!

Slice of life

1994. Grade 9. I'm painfully shy and awkward as the result of years of bullying, feel miscast in my role as a high school student, have been shunned by all my supposed friends for reasons I don't understand, and hate what I see when I look in the mirror. But when I'm walking to school and my mind is wandering freely, it's starting to occur to me that I might want to kiss a boy someday.

I'm at my locker, and the guy who was assigned the locker next to mine through the magic of alphabetical order is at his locker. I don't know him that well because he's from another elementary school, but he seems perfectly nice, quiet and unassuming, the kind of guy who's getting his puberty on the installment plan instead of an overnight visit from the puberty fairy (although I didn't quite notice that sort of thing yet at that age). We start chatting, I forget what about, and get into a perfectly decent small-talk conversation. This was quite a novelty for me at the time. I hardly ever got to have a decent conversation with anyone, but here I was having a decent conversation with a real live boy! So we have our conversation, then he goes off to wherever he was going.

Just then, the girl whose locker is on the other side of me comes up. I don't know her very well because she'd just moved into town, but she struck me as the kind of girl who might get into fights or might get to dye her hair or might get to drive a car around on her parents' land or might even get to have sex. Nodding towards the boy who has just left, she asks me "Are you two going out?" She didn't sound surprised, she didn't sound judgemental, she didn't sound like she had an ulterior motive. Just a simple straightforward question, "Are you two going out?"

She thinks we're going out! She thinks I could conceiveably be going out with a boy! This girl who meets the exact demographic profile of the people who put icky things in my hair last year thinks I am a candidate for going out with a boy!

"No," I reply, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible, trying not to read anything into her comment or allow anything to be read into my response, "we're not going out..." I was about to follow it up with "We were just chatting about the English assignment" or something else that with 14 years' hindsight would probably have been a mistake, but she interrupted.

"Oh, so you're just friends then."

She thinks I'm the kind of person who could have friends! This girl who dresses and acts exactly like the girls who would walk up to me and say "You have no friends, you know," takes as a given that I could be friends with a boy!

"Yes," I reply, "We're just friends."

The next time I looked at myself in the mirror, I liked what I saw a little bit better.

The boy moved away the next year and he's ungoogleable. I don't even remember the girl's name. But I'd like to buy them both a drink.

Things They Should Invent: a book on how to swear fluently in other languages

I know lots and lots of swear words in all kinds of languages. But I don't know how to use them properly. I think I know how to use them properly, but I always come out sounding like Spock on Star Trek IV.

I want books on how to swear fluently in every language! Someone go and write them!

The problem with Elizabeth and Anthony as a couple

Most of the fandom grievances against Anthony have been described here far more eloquently than I could. Now I don't object to Anthony as much as the average fan, although I've blogged before about why Liz's arc doesn't work, but their engagement just isn't convincing.

Now, unlike most of fandom, I don't mind that he's awkward and geeky - I can identify with that. I do think the fact that both Liz and Michael end up with their childhood sweethearts is a bit much, but I can accept that if it's done well enough. But the problem is that they don't have any romantic chemistry, or even friendship chemistry. They simply are comfortable with each other.

Don't get me wrong, I can totally appreciate being comfortable with your partner. I swooned the first time mi cielito wore sweatpants in my presence, because I was so flattered he's that comfortable with me. But we don't see anything beyond comfort with Liz and Anthony. We've never seen even a glimmer of lust - even if you've been with someone a long time, you occasionally still look at them and just have to...pounce. They didn't even kiss when they got engaged! We've never even seen the signs of deep and abiding friendship. We've never seen them finish each other's sentences, anticipate each other's needs, surprise each other with the perfect thing, share a geeky delight in something, or even know how the other takes their coffee. Right now the chemistry between them is like the chemistry between cousins who aren't the best of friends but have nothing against each other. No pretense is needed, you're automatically entitled to be in each other's presence and ask each other for favours of reasonable scope, you can chat without awkward silences, and you wouldn't be embarrassed for them to see you in sweatpants and without makeup. But you can't say to them "So I was in the bathroom squeezing my zits..." and they probably wouldn't be on your list of people you'd be roommates with if absolutely necesary.

I'm getting the same vibe from Liz and Anthony, and that's no basis for a marriage. So show them singing showtunes together. Have Liz pour a cup of coffee and Anthony wordlessly hands her the milk. This isn't an arranged marriage; just comfort isn't enough. Get their hair messed up every once in a while! FBOFW should be able to do better than this!

Writing a "cake or death" joke is left as an exercise for the reader

I have a million things to blog and I'm too tired. So here's some fun music. (You don't have to watch, you can just press play and listen.)

A sociological survey of my spam folder

My spam folder is full of penis enlargement spam (amazing what those spammers know about my genitals), but nearly all the subject lines are about something else. There's "Re: Your Tracking Number" and "Hot Tight Wet Pussy" and "Thousands of Rolexes," and the contents are always penis enlargement spam.

Are there really people out there who are going "Oh, my tracking number, just what I need!" and then click on it and say "Why, now that you mention it, I do have a small penis!"

The other thing that's weird is some of the spam wants to enlarge you to 7 inches, and some of it wants to enlarge you to 13 inches. So I'm very curious about how big they think my penis is right now. And the 13 inches is the one with the tight pussy subject line, which...um, no thank you!

The other thing that's weird is it's all loudly heterocentric. You'd think there'd be at least SOME gay penis enlargement spam?

On sharing homework on Facebook

It occurs to me that if students could actually cheat by discussing their homework on Facebook, i.e. they could just copy answers instead of doing and understanding the work themselves and still leave the course with a good grade, then the problem is really a poorly-designed course.

In every course I've ever taken even as far back as high school, the point has been to learn how to do something, or to acquire in-depth understanding of something, rather than to regurgitate the correct answers. We've always had opportunities to discuss our work with others - in fact, my resource teachers actively encouraged me to help other students as part of my "enrichment" (an offer I didn't take them up on until uni because I didn't want to help my bullies) - but if you just blindly copied rather than understanding then you wouldn't be able to understand the next lesson and the lesson after that and you wouldn't be able to do well on the exam and on your ISU. So when we discussed homework we'd quiz each other, share mnemonics, explain procedures to people who didn't grok them the first time around, sort of help everyone arrive at understanding the material. Blindly copying the material might possibly maybe get you through one minor assignment (but most likely not), but wouldn't help your overall mark.

So if blindly copying other people's work from Facebook actually works and makes it possible for students who don't understand the material to pass the course, the problem is really how the course is designed, how material is graded, how different assignments/projects/exams are weighted.

One of my favourite profs - a veteran and professor emeritus who addressed male students by surname and female students as Miss Surname and taught us to write an essay so tight you can bounce a quarter off it* without us even noticing that he was teaching us essay skills - allowed students to go to the bathroom unescorted during exams, his logic being that if you've managed to hide something in the bathroom that will give you the in-depth intellectual and analytical understanding of the material needed to write his exams, more power to you. In his classes, you had to actually understand to pass, and we all came out better for it.

Any good course should be designed this way. If you can get by by blindly copying other people's answers without understanding them yourself, then there's clearly a flaw in the course design or evaluation method.

*You're thinking "You can write an essay so tight you can bounce a quarter off it? Could have fooled me!" Apart from entries that are clearly tightly choreographed, everything I write here is first draft, typed up as soon as it comes to me in words, so it isn't really an example of what I can do.

New Rule: when making declarative statements about hair, specify hair type

From an article about how to pack when travelling for business, on what to do about your hair if you don't want to pack a hairdryer:

She also encourages people to forgo the blow dryer and use travel as a chance to wear hair naturally and "live simply."

Here's where we differ: My experience with female friends, family members and colleagues leads me to believe that women fear the thought of bad hair days.

So I say reward yourself for all the work by visiting a nearby salon. A blow dry typically costs less than $50 and - marathon notwithstanding - will last the duration of a three-day trip.

From my perspective sitting here with long straight oily hair, that is one of the most bizarre statements I've ever heard. It's so surreal I can't even come up with a good analogy. It makes just as much sense in my reality as if she had said "But these problems can be easily avoided by sleeping with a pair of fuzzy pink earmuffs under your pillow." Even if for some strange reason the blowout could last through sleep, my hair would still absolutely positively HAVE to be washed every single day so I don't look like I dunked my head in a vat of grease. Of course, I can easily wrangle my hair into a respectable conservative updo without any product whatsoever and let it air dry. It's completely unsexy, but it's quick and easy and does the job. So wear it naturally and live simply is extremely feasible for me (and is actually what I do most days anyway) while getting it blowdried at a salon and then leaving it for three days is something from the bizarro universe.

But all this aside, every hotel I've stayed in in my adult life has provided a hairdryer. Is that really that strange?

And if you're willing to spend $50, why not just buy a hairdryer at a local drugstore and leave it in the hotel room when you leave? Not being able to do your own hair and having to pay someone else to do it instead is a bit...Marie Antoinette, I think. You're not an Egyptian pharoah, this isn't Oscar night, a suitable hairdo should be in your repertoire.

So yeah, my point is, hardly any statements can apply to everyone's hair, so specify the kind of hair you're talking about.

Things They Should Invent: illegal drug weight to dosage converter

Suppose I'm reading a newspaper article, and it mentions two ounces of cocaine. I have no idea how much that is. Like I know what two ounces is, but I have no idea how many doses of cocaine that is. Is it one dose or one hundred doses? Sometimes you need to know this to properly understand the article.

I want an easily googleable website that will do this for me. Actually, I want Google Calculator to do this, but I don't think they'd go for it.

Awareness Test

This is brilliant


Awareness Test - Watch more free videos

More information please

Mentioned in passing in a larger article:

[Mavis Gallant] moved to Paris in 1950, after discovering that women could not be served alone [in restaurants] in North America, even at New York's Algonquin Hotel.

Um, why? On what basis? What would happen if a woman went to a restaurant alone? They mention this like it's either common knowledge or irrelevant to the story, but it's bizarre and I've never heard of it before and there's a whole story behind it that I can't seem to google up.

I wear heels for the greater good of society

Today I wore running shoes, which I don't normally wear. I'm a fast walker to start with, and in running shoes I walk even faster. The problem is I get really frustrated at the slower pedestrians (which, when I'm wearing runners, is literally everyone except for people who are actually running) - I get like sidewalk rage! Not at old people or people with disabilities or small children or impractical shoes or carrying lots of stuff, but people who look like they're in perfectly good condition. I feel like "How is it physically possible for you to be walking that slowly? Don't you get bored in between your interminably slow steps?"

So next time someone gives me shit for wearing girly shoes, I'll tell them it's for the good of my blood pressure and the good of society. They're to handicap me, like in Harrison Bergeron, so I can act civil in today's slow-walking society.

Culinary tip of the day

If you're out of milk for your coffee, whipped cream will do in a pinch. Cover the surface of the coffee with a layer, let it melt in (stirring helps) then add more as needed. Not the classiest thing ever in the world, but it gets the job done and you can enjoy your coffee without having to run out and buy more milk. My previous back-up plan was adding powdered milk to the coffee, and whipped cream works better than that.

Open Letter to all US video streaming sites

So you want me to watch a commercial before you'll show me the TV show? That's fine, that's how these things work, I won't even try to hack my way around it.

So you won't show me the show because I'm outside of the US? Well, I'm not as cool with that, but I'll take that it's a given for the moment.

But please, please, for the love of all human decency, don't make me watch the commercial and THEN tell me I can't watch the show because I'm outside the US!!!!!!!!!! If your sponsor is US-specific then it doesn't do any good to show me the commercial anyway, and if your sponsor sells its products internationally then you may as well let me watch the show so I'll come back to your site and see more of your commercials!

Analogy for profanity

Swear words are like hammers. They vary in size and quality - "hell" is one of those little hammers (mallets?) your doctor hits your knee with, while "cunt" is a sledgehammer. Obviously it's unhelpful to go around hitting things with hammers when they need to be tightened with a screwdriver or cut with a saw, but this doesn't mean no one should ever use a hammer ever.

Sexy tune

Eliminating intolerance through corporate sponsorship

So apparently some people boycotted Ford because they advertised in gay publications. I wonder how they knew what kind of ads are in gay publications, but I digress.

But they've just tipped their hand here: if you advertise in gay publications, they'll boycott you.

So all we need to do is get really important things, really major things that would be extremely difficult to do without, to advertise in gay publications. A single brand of car is easy to boycott; let's make it hard for them.

For example, Google. Boycott Google, then their ability to navigate the internet is seriously impaired, plus no gmail, no youtube, no blogger, all kinds of important tools.

Or Microsoft. Suddenly they can't use any computers with Windows, they can't use MS-Office, no hotmail, no MSN messenger. I know many people would say that this is a good thing, but losing the option of using (like it or not) the standard platform would be a blow.

Or, if you prefer, Apple. No iPod, no iTunes, no QuickTime, no iPhones.

Or, to take another tack, Proctor & Gamble. How much stuff do they make? Just avoiding their brands would be an inconvenience!

Or, in certain markets, telecom companies. Imagine losing access to the only cable internet provider! Or, in certain markets, utility companies. Having to boycott the water company would be quite a blow, wouldn't it?

So if you're a monopoly, or if you're the best, or if you're the industry standard, or if you're unique in your field, or if you're impossible to avoid, advertise in gay publications and smoke out intolerance!