Try going to US websites

The past couple of days, I've been able to get at US websites that I can't normally get at. I've been asking around, and some people can and some people can't. I don't see any pattern to it (and I'm infuriatingly not posting details in the hope of keeping the issue nongoogleable).

At any rate, it's worth trying to get to US websites that you can't normally get to, just in case you can right now.

If you post a comment on this, please do NOT include any keywords like names of websites or ISPs. I think this will last longer if it stays ungoogleable.

I wish I could do this

Melissa Etheridge covers Piece of My Heart with just one voice and just one guitar, and fills up the whole room so much that you can't imagine why anyone would ever need a band or backup singers.

I don't need my newspapers covered in bees, thank you very much

Everyone should read this article. It is good and important and informative and it is very important for everyone to know the facts contained in it if they don't already.

Unfortunately, I couldn't read it in the print version because the Star chose to illustrate it with pictures of bees to illustrate the bee sting metaphor. For some reason bees don't bother me as much as crawly things, but these were really zoomed-in pictures of bees, where you could see all their grotesque insecty characteristics, the hairs on their legs and everything.

Insects are one of the most common phobias, and even the vast majority of non-phobic people would rather not see a bug than see a bug. The bees may be attention-getting for someone skimming the newspaper, but they do nothing to make people want to stay on the page and read the article, and will even drive some people away from the article.

I sought out the article on the website (at the risk of seeing more grotesque pictures there - but luckily there aren't any) because I agree with the thesis as gleaned from the headline and wanted to see what else they have to say. But people who don't agree with the thesis aren't going to seek out the article online, and if the grotesque bee pictures drive them away they're not going to learn these important facts.

Dear Toronto Star: please be more mindful in the future.

Things They Should Invent: light-reflecting antiperspirant

If your armpit hair is dark, it's impossible to maintain that "There has never been hair here, at all, ever" look all day long, even if you start the day with a perfect shave. But other hair removal methods (waxing, electrolysis, laser hair removal) are time-consuming and expensive and take planning because you have to grow your hair out some before you can get it done, so it's a bit much for people really just need their armpits to look good a few times a year, if they're going out and want to look especially good while wearing something sleeveless. Makeup isn't really an option in hot weather either, because you're going to sweat it off.

What we need for these circumstances is a light-reflecting antiperspirant. It should work like regular anti-perspirant, but contain something light-reflecting, like Touche Eclat and Revlon Skinlights and Olay Definity Illuminator do. Then you can give yourself a good close shave in the morning shower, apply the antiperspirant, and the light-reflecting function will counteract the five o'clock shadow effect, keeping your armpits looking smoother all day.

Did they ever actually ban pictures of soldiers' coffins?

In 2006, there was talk of banning the media from covering the repatriation of soldiers' bodies. The reason given at the time was that it was for the privacy of the bereaved, which I thought was strange because I'd only ever seen pictures of the coffins, not pictures of the bereaved. But I thought that ban did go through (and in 2006 I blogged as though the ban had gone through).

But in today's Star, there were pictures of the bereaved. And now that I think about it, we have been seeing pictures of the bereaved for quite a while, as well as pictures of the coffins being carried by other soldiers.

So did that ban not go through, or what? I thought it did, I can't google up any evidence that it didn't (although I am getting a lot of interference from websites discussing the similar US ban, even when I use Canada as a keyword and try to restrict my results to Canadian sites) or that it was rescinded. So what's up with that? And when did they start printing pictures of the bereaved instead of just the coffins?

Open Letter to the strange men in the elevator

Gentlemen:

Let's review our little interaction from my perspective, shall we?

I get in the elevator. There are three people there (you two and the older lady with the awesome shoes) and one button pressed, for one of the lower floors. I press the button for my floor, which is one of the higher floors. The doors close and the elevator proceeds to the lower floor. The lady with the awesome shoes gets off, but you two don't move. The door closes.

So now I'm trapped in the elevator with two strange men who, as far as I can tell, are following me. The only floor that was pressed before I got on had come and gone, and you two didn't give the slightest sign that you cared, or press a button for another floor, or anything. And, come to think of it, you were awfully quick on the door close button after the lady with the awesome shoes got off. And you're also positioned in such a way that I will HAVE to get off first, and there's no way to change this choreography. And I don't even have my phone on me because I just ran down to the mailroom. (In retrospect, perhaps I could have pressed a button for an earlier floor and gotten off sooner, but I didn't think of that at the time.)

So what can I do now? I look at you, so I can give your description to the police if I ever get out of this alive. And I make my look a glare, because I'm certainly not going to give a positive or neutral expression to the two strange men who seem to be following me! I try to emote the most fuck-off vibes I can possibly emote, and I try to discreetly arrange my keys in my hand so my apartment key is right there between my thumb and my forefinger ready to open the apartment door, and all the other keys are in between my fingers to reinforce the first punch I expect to have to throw. (Gift of Fear told me not to do this because apparently it shows the potential attacker that you're scared or something, I forget the exact details, but I have to get the apartment key ready anyway and it's not like I have a lot of options at this point.) Meanwhile, I'm mentally debating whether I should get to my apartment as quickly as possible so I can get a locked door between us and access to a phone and some things I might be able to use as weapons, or whether I should fake going the other way so you don't find out where I live. The doors open on my floor. I decide to go for my apartment. I stride brusquely out of the elevator and down the hall, glad for once to have inherited my parents' fast-walking genes. As I turn to put my key in the door, I glare in your general direction again to see what you're up to, and breathe a sigh of relief when I see you at the door to another apartment on my floor, unlocking it properly with a proper key.

So yeah, in conclusion, the "What a bitch!" that one of you uttered just before your door closed was perhaps less called-for than you thought.

I wonder how long standups comics can get away with being just interesting for?

I'm watching a standup comic who isn't especially funny, but what she's talking about is rather interesting. So I'm not laughing, but I don't mind listening.

I wonder how long a comedian can get away with that for?

Do cap sleeves look good on anyone?

Cap sleeves make my arms look fat and my shoulders look round and schlumpy. IRL, my arms range between nondescript and skinny, and my shoulders are narrow and bony.

I recently saw someone who I know has mad crazy arm muscles because of the sport she does wearing cap sleeves, and they had the same effect on her.

Do they look good on anyone?

I appreciate them in theory, because then I don't have to worry about getting a farmer tan or about how my armpits look, but regular short sleeved or sleeveless or strapped shirts area all exponentially more flattering on the arms.

Things They Should Invent: contents insurance that comes with a personal shopper

You can get insurance for your home that will give you enough money to replace any possessions that are lost or damaged in a disaster. But for me, the money's just a minor annoyance. The real annoyance would be doing all the shopping to replace absolutely everything.

They should have insurance where instead of giving you money, they give you a personal shopper who goes out and buys you brand new everything, to your specifications. And the specificness of your specifications can vary. So if you don't care about furniture you can say "Yeah, a kitchen table and four chairs, I don't care what kind." But since you're probably more picky about your own clothes, you can say "I want black pants that are comfortable and fit me well and make me look slimmer than I am and don't look lumpy under long shirts," and then the personal shopper has to do the legwork. You don't get any money from your insurance claims, but you do get your stuff replaced quickly and with minimal effort on your part.

I would totally pay extra for that!

Open Letter to greeting card shops

If, in addition to Father's Day cards for children to give their fathers, you also want to stock Father's Day cards for wives to give their husbands (phrased that way because that's how the cards were phrased), that's perfectly fine with me. I totally get that your business is to convince everyone in the world to buy cards for everyone in the world.

But would you mind terribly moving the wife-to-husband cards futher away from the child-to-father cards, so we don't wander into them by accident? It's really quite skeevy to be looking for a card for your father and suddenly land on something suggestive.

Things Google Should Invent: iGoogle as a separate concept from Google

Google seems to think of iGoogle as an alternate but equal interface for the regular Google homepage. But that's not how I use it. I use iGoogle to catch up on everything that happened when I wasn't on the internet. I visit it only once or twice a day - when I get home from work or when I wake up in the morning - see what's going on at a glance, and then get on with my life. The problem is, once I go to iGoogle, when I go back to Google I have the iGoogle interface and have to switch back to the classic interface when I need just search. I simply don't need my search engine to be a portal all the time, just once or twice a day is fine. It might be useful to me at work if we were allowed recreational surfing (back when we were less heavily monitored I would compulsively check stuff for updates, whereas iGoogle could do the checking for me and it would show up whenever I go to google something), but as it stands it would just sit there and tease me with things I really shouldn't click on. And when I'm on iGoogle, I don't even use the search function, at all, ever, because that's not what I'm there for.

I want iGoogle to be considered a separate function, like Google Reader is. I want it to have its own button on my Google toolbar, and not interfere with my ordinary Google homepage that I use when I just want to search. Portal and search are different functions. They are not interchangeable. That's why I left Altavista, that's why I left Yahoo. Google, I love you, but please learn from your predecessors' mistakes.

Puppy break

Push-ups

When puberty happened, I lost the ability to do push-ups. It had always been a struggle, but my pathetic upper-body strength just couldn't keep up with my growth spurt and changing shape. I struggle just to do knee push-ups when the exercise lady on TV has push-ups in the workout, and just one foot push-up is my physical limit. But it has become clear that the ability to do push-ups would address most of my upper-body flaws.

So I came out with a brilliant plan. I would start by doing one push-up the first day, then two the second day, etc. etc. adding one a day. If I started on June 1, I could be doing 100 by the end of the summer!

So on June 1 I did one push-up then felt good and virtuous for the rest of the day. On June 2, I did two, but the second wasn't nearly as easy as the first. One June 3, I did 3, and was really pushing my limit on the third. Today I tried 4, but I couldn't do more than 2! I had to take a break and then do the third, and then take another break and do the fourth. This is never going to work!

If you feel the need to mock or taunt me for not being able to do push-ups, you are free to do so, but only if you also explain to me why you think that would be productive. Many times in my life I have had people mock or taunt and judge me for not being able to do push-ups, and it seemed like they thought doing this was going to make me be able to do push-ups, so I'm interested in the logic behind that.

Early Ani Difranco is showing its age

From Shy:

I might go out to that phone booth
And leave a veiled invitation on your machine

Apart from the fact that it wouldn't be a phone booth because Ani would have a cell, it also wouldn't have to be a veiled invitation because the other girl (girl? I've always pictured it's a girl, but I don't think the song specifies) would have voicemail instead of a tape machine. And they'd probably just text anyway - isn't that now the standard medium for hook-ups?

My subconscious has a strange sense of humour

Warning: don't read this if you're squeamish about blood.

Last night I dreamed I was sitting in the blood room from Dexter with Eddie Izzard, chatting about arm hair removal. Eddie's hair removal technique was something entirely new to me, but it seemed like it would be just the thing for my own (IRL) problem arm hair. And we were sitting there on the floor having this whole girl-talky conversation, not caring at all that we were sitting in a giant pool of dead prostitute blood.

When I woke up I was menstruating heavily. By the time I got that sorted, I'd completely forgotten what the miraculous hair removal technique was.

How to make retirement homes not be like high school

I previously blogged that they need to make retirement homes not be like high school. I now have a couple of ideas on where to start.

I'm drawing on my university experience here. I lived and worked on campus in university, so I should have been getting the full impact of the institutional environment, but it didn't feel like high school to me. I've pinpointed a couple of reasons why: I could leave the campus whenever I wanted, and I didn't particularly need anyone on campus to be my friend.

The issue of leaving campus can be encapsulated in food. Most days, I would buy something in the campus cafeteria. However, I was also perfectly free to go anywhere in the city and buy any food I wanted, whether groceries or restaurant. No one would stop me and there were no limits on me except my own laziness and my own fear of running out of money. So because of this, I didn't feel trapped by the cafeteria's menu at all. I felt like I had complete freedom and full run of the city. This applies to everything else too. Because I could come and go as I pleased, I could take in a movie or a concert or go shopping or visit friends or whatever. Even though I only ended up leaving campus about once a week, I didn't feel trapped there at all because I could go wherever I wanted.

What this means for retirement homes is that they should be located in an area that has enough amenities and transit that the seniors feel like they can do whatever they want. A van that goes to the mall once a week isn't good enough. There should be grocery/drugstore/library/clothing/a couple of cafes within a walking distance that's feasible for the seniors, and transit to everywhere. The sense of being able to come and go as one pleases is very important. Looking at the seniors in my life, the thing that bugs them the most is having to depend on someone else to drive them. Making it so they aren't dependent on someone else to get around would seriously boost morale.

I didn't need anyone on campus to be my friend because I already had all the friends I needed. I needed to get along civilizedly with classmates and co-workers, but I didn't need them to actually like me because I already had mi cielito and Poodle and other people whom I haven't assigned a pseudonym yet. (If you want a pseudonym, pick your own and let me know.) This just left no room for petty drama to happen because it didn't have to be your social life at all, unlike high school where you were supposed to be able to find a best friend and a second-best friend and a group of friends and a appropriate range of kissing partners all from within the same pool of 800 students (and you were expected to have a friend in every class you were randomly assigned to take).

So to translate this for seniors, first they have to have the resources they need to maintain their outside relationships. Everyone should have a phone in their room and internet access. (No, most seniors today don't need it, but they will soon. Hands up everyone whose parents have email.) Second, retirement home life should be organized in a way that minimizes any requirement of spending time with any particular randomly-assigned person. For example, in the home profiled in the article, residents has assigned seating in the dining room, and everyone at at once. This means you have to get along with the other people assigned to your table or else Every. Single. Meal. is going to be miserable. Why not let them sit where they want? Why not serve dinner over a period of several hours during which people can come and go as they please? Why not give them the option of eating in their room? Everything in the retirement home should be organized this way, so people aren't forced to spend time together with specific any more than happens by random chance. Then if someone grates on you, you can just go about your lives separately without having to make nice at each other.

Seniors have to spend the rest of their lives there. They deserve better than to spend the rest of their lives in high school. Work on making them not beholden to the institutional nature of the environment.

Everything should work this way

I was talking to someone who is trying to conceive, and she said that they lied to us in sex ed by telling us that you can get pregnant at any time in your menstrual cycle, when in reality you have to be ovulating.

And that is perfectly true if you're trying to make a baby RIGHT NOW.

However, if you're trying to avoid pregnancy, you still essentially have to protect yourself every day of your cycle. Unless you're absolutely 100% certain you're not ovulating right now and any sperm will have left by the time you do ovulate, the rhythm method is useless.

This is actually a good way to have imperfect knowledge that doesn't grasp every nuance. You start by thinking you have to protect yourself every day, so you err on the side of caution and not making any humans who are going to be dependent on you. Then when you do want to have a baby, you have to learn more and do research and understand complicated things about body temperature and mucus consistency. If you mess up on this complicated stuff, you end up not having a baby. To deliberately make a baby, you have to set out to educate yourself on how to do so and get all these copmlicated techniques right. If you think you can have a baby by just stopping the pills without learning all the complicated ovulation science, you're less likely to end up with a baby.

Everything in the world should work this way! The base understanding of anything should lead people to err on the side of caution and of less risky outcomes, and you should need more knowledge and understanding to achieve the riskier outcomes.

How can you tell an unregistered polygamous marriage from simple cheating?

The Star has an article about a family that was broken up when the wife ran off and eloped with another man even though they were still married. The Star makes this out to be a problem with Canada's polygamy laws, but I think really this is just a case of cheating. It's sad, of course. Emotionally devastating, in fact, and broke up a family. But if they didn't attempt to legally register a marriage, it isn't polygamy under the law. It's on the exact same legal footing as cheating. And, like it or not, cheating isn't illegal.

But the laws themselves do have their problems.

According to the Criminal Code, those who enter into a polygamous marriage, polygamous conjugal union, or officiate at a polygamous union can be charged with a criminal offence and face up to five years in prison. Even if the marriage is not registered, it is still considered a crime according to the law.

How would the law enforce that? By definition, a marriage that is not legally registered has no legal weight, so in the eyes of the law this is exactly the same as simply cheating on your spouse.

Here's what the Criminal Code says: (copy-pasted from The Star, not from the Criminal Code itself because I'm lazy)

(1) Everyone who:

(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into
(i) any form of polygamy, or
(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time, whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Look at the part I've bolded. Doesn't that make a shared polyamorous household illegal? Like if you want to live in a great big poly orgy house, where everyone has sex with everyone else with everyone's knowledge and consent, that would be illegal under that paragraph, no? That doesn't seem right. If you want to move into a sharehouse and have sex with everyone there, that's not the law's business. It's the law's business if it decides not to grant all of you the full rights and privileges of marriage, but it can't stop you from all fucking each other.

But if you keep all your polygamous spouses in separate houses like Bill Hendrickson does, then you're fine, because a conjugal union other than legally-binding marriage has to be in the same household. There's no way legally to have a common-law spouse who lives in a different household, so if your polygamous spouse lives in at a different address and you haven't attempted a legally-binding marriage, there's nothing the law can do.

I think the problem is that what marriage laws are capable of doing is governing who can and can't get the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage, but they aren't capable of stopping people from sleeping together or building households together.

So, unless the law is going to make cheating illegal (somehow I don't think the general public would stand for that), I'm thinking maybe the solution is to legalize fully consensual, non-coerced polygamy. The people being profiled in these articles seem to take marriage seriously because they are acting like they're married to their new partners rather than just running off and cheating. So make it so that everyone has to actively marry everyone else, like say wedding vows to everyone else. So if the Big Love family did this, Bill and Barbara would say wedding vows to each other, then Bill and Nikki would say vows to each other, then Barbara and Nikki would say vows to each other, then Bill and Margene, then Barbara and Margene, then Nikki and Margene. And they'd all sign the marriage certificate, and if any one person did not consent to any new union, that union could not happen. This practice would address the situation in the article and the situation they wrote about last week where this lady's husband married a second wife without informing her. They could throw in some kind of anti-coercion clause to address those cults and make sure everyone involved is fully informed and consensual. Polygamists clearly feel that they don't need to get a legally registered marriage because they feel polygamy is part of their religion and the law doesn't respect their religion. So if the law just calls their bluff and legalizes polygamy with the perfectly reasonable conditions of full knowledge and consent by everyone involved, then they will have to abide by these conditions since they do seem to value marriage.

I'm congenitally monogamous so I'm not about to actively lobby for this, but I fully expect it to become legal at some point within my lifetime. And I fully expect the last and loudest protesters to be employers and insurance companies who have to provide benefits to people's spouses.

I got nothing today

A pudu is an adorable little miniature deer. What could possibly be cuter?

A BABY pudu!