There is something very wrong with the world

Sarah Palin wigs are commercially available.

In and of itself, I wouldn't find this terribly worthy of comment. All kinds of weird things are commercially available.

The problem is that I can't google up instructions on how to copy her hairdo. So someone went and manufactured a mass-market wig before anyone reverse-engineered and wrote down instructions for the hairdo.

I'm sure that's symbolic and/or representative of something that's terribly wrong with society today.

Because I feel like posting mindlessly fun music

Most useful website ever

If you're like me, the first thing you think when you wake up in the morning is "WTF?????" Then, after you get your bearings, the second thing you think is "Gotta pee gotta pee gotta pee!" Then, after you pee, the third thing you think is "I wonder if that collider experiment they're doing over at CERN has destroyed the world yet?"

If so, this is just the website for you!

Things They Should Invent: predictive text automatically learns every word in every text message you receive

I received a text message containing (entre autres) a word my phone didn't know. I then went to compose a reply that included the same word. But my phone didn't know the word, so I had to teach it.

It would be faster and easier if the phone would learn these words itself. They're right there in the text messages in the inbox!

Things They Should Invent: express queue for telephone customer service

Sometimes you need to call customer service for just a real quick question, but you still have to wait on hold for 20 minutes until a rep becomes available to answer your 30-second question.
Among all the press 1 press 2 options at the beginning of the call, they should have an express line. On the express line, the CSR will talk to you for no more than one minute. After one minute, they will hang up (perhaps it will happen automatically) and take the next call. If you're still in the middle of something, too bad, you have to go to the back of the regular queue. Perhaps they could have the customer explicitly agree to these terms before entering the express queue. "For the express queue, press 3…In the express queue, the customer service representative will assist you for no more than one minute. After one minute your call will be automatically cut off. If you agree to these terms, press 1."
This way, people who really do only have just one quick question can get served quickly, which makes calling customer service a far less dreaded experience.

Sometimes I wish I could read what other people are thinking about me

Today everyone seemed to react to me like I was emoting a "Don't fuck with me!" vibe that was just barely being restrained under a thin veneer of social niceties.

But I'm frumpy today. My shoes are flat mary janes, my hair is flat and stringy and my split ends seemed to have multiplied overnight, my clothes are my fat clothes (although my jacket is just a tiny bit kick-ass), my purse is all wrong for the outfit, my forehead keeps going shiny and my wrinkles are showing more than usual. As far as I can tell, if I'm giving off any vibe it's one of patheticness. Moodwise I've been either neutral or shy/nervous, and I did yoga this morning and it did work its magic so I haven't been especially cranky or aggressive feeling.

But the world has been reacting like I will snap if provoked. I have no idea what's up with that.

Brilliant Ideas That Will Never Work: voters have to know what's in their own interest

Once upon a time I proposed a simple knowledge test for voters, and anyone who can pass the test can vote regardless of age.

Today I have a better idea: require all voters to know which proposed policies are in their own interest. I've seen quite a few people both in Canada and in the States (when your neighbour spends like 18 months shouting on the rooftop with a bullhorn "Look at us! We're having an election!" you tend to notice a thing or two) supporting candidates or parties who stated platform is directly against that person's own interest. Basically they're saying "I have size 11 feet. The Purple Party wants to ban shoes that are larger than size 10. Vote Purple in 2008!"

I wish they could administer a test to every prospective voter: "Name any party's or any candidate's position on any issue, and explain why this position is or is not in your own best interest." People wouldn't be required to vote for a party or candidate that is necessarily in their own best interest (maybe you agree with the Purple Party's premise that large shoes use too many resources and are willing to go barefoot for the greater good, maybe you're 82 years old and own enough shoes to last the rest of your life), they'd just have to be aware of whether a particular policy actually is in their own best interest.

The only problem is, apart from the logistical problems of administering a quiz (and an essay question at that) to every prospective voter, you could never get everyone to agree that the test is being administered fairly and neutrally.

How my mind works

The CERN Collider switch-on is at like 3:30 am, when, hopefully, I'll be asleep. Wild internet rumours are saying that this thing is going to create a black hole and suck in the entire earth, ending life as we know it.

Logically I know that's not true, it doesn't work that way. And yet I felt the need to take some precaution just in case.

So I will be wearing a bra to sleep.

That way, if the world ends, I'll be comfortably supported and won't have to, I don't know, hitch-hike on a Vogon spaceship with my arms crossed tightly under my chest.

I know the Collider isn't going to cause a black hole. And I know if it does, I'm not going to survive long enough to care if I'm wearing adequate foundational garments. But I'm not going to be able to fall asleep tonight unless I'm wearing a bra.

Silliness

Jukebox by Ani DiFranco

Once upon a time in uni we got into a debate about whether this song is about masturbation. I can see that interpretation, but it doesn't seem consistent with what Ani was writing at that stage of her career. My iTunes just served up Jukebox for the first time in a while, and I remember that debate and went agoogling to see if anyone on the internet thinks it's about masturbation, but I didn't find anything fruitful.

So this post is really just a ploy to see if anyone else is googling for whether Jukebox by Ani DiFranco is about masturbation.

John Fluevog broke my heart

See these babies?

They're on sale for like 65% off.

They had them in stock.

They had them in a size 11.

And they were too narrow.

That was the first time in my entire life that a pair of shoes has been too narrow.

I have freakshow skinny feet. All my shoes need to be horizontally adjustable, or they fall right off. I can't wear regular pumps without straps because they fall right off. I can't wear flipflops because they fall right off. And yet these awesome purple shoes were too narrow.

Dear Mr. Fluevog:

I do see that you are incredibly epically cool, and therefore might not want to make shoes that just anyone can wear because that seems to be what the cool people do. But even if you don't want them to fit commoners with normal-width feet, perhaps you could consider making them at least fit people with freakshow skinny feet? Or is this all some conspiracy to torment the proles, teasing us with promises of awesome purple in large sizes at justifiable prices only to tear it all away?

Nostalgia

Upspeak and security

Language Log on upspeak (they call it uptalk, I call it upspeak).

They've covered it more thoroughly than I ever could and I've already thrown hundreds of words at the subject, so I'm not going to reiterate everything. I just wanted to talk about one thing the original LW said that piqued my interest:

It appears that it is a psychological insecurity requesting some sort of approval or affirmation from the listener that what the talker says is correct, approved by the listener or adequately explained to the listener.

I find it so bizarre that they'd perceive seeking approval or affirmation from the listener as a sign of psychological insecurity. I always thought it was a sign of, oh, I don't know, dialogue? In conversation, you check that your interlocutor is with you so far rather than barrelling ahead without a moment's thought to whether they're following you. In a presentation, you gauge your audience's response and give more clarification as needed rather than just reading the script at them.

Actually, to me, if the speaker is seeking affirmation it gives an impression of greater security than if they just talk at you without allowing you to react. If they welcome or even seek affirmation, it means they really know their stuff, they'll explain it to you in different ways until you get it, they've thoroughly thought out their argument and can address any questions you might have in an intelligent and civilized manner. If they don't seek affirmation or even check that I'm following, it can seem a bit ego.

I once had a prof who deliberately suppressed her natural upspeak (it was a linguistics class so she did mention that she was doing this). To me it didn't sound particularly authoritative, it just sounded like she was deliberately suppressing her natural upspeak. I've had other profs who retained their own natural upspeak, and (speaking as a user of upspeak myself) it didn't sound at all inautoritative. It just sounded less formal. Instead of a great big "Now I shall lecture you!" situation, it was just "Okay, here's some information I have that you need. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask."

I've also noticed that when I'm feeling secure, I use my own natural speech patterns. When I first started my job and was overwhelmed with imposter syndrome, I overcompensated by suppressing my natural speech patterns, wearing my hair in a bun, speaking in the most formal French I could muster at all times, wearing only the most subtle of nail colour, writing emails all business-like even when it was just brief and internal. Now that I've been there for over five years and gotten used to it and feel like I belong there, I use my natural speech patterns, I wear long hairstyles, I code-switch back to English for humour and sarcasm, I email jokes to co-workers, I listen to my ipod, I paint my nails fun colours, and all the while I do my job somewhere between perfectly competently and astoundingly well. I know I'm good, I know I deserve to be there, I know my work speaks for itself, so I'm secure enough to be myself, upspeak and all, instead of putting on an act.

Does the age at which you learn to read affect your accent?

Where there is room for variation in pronunciation, I tend to pronounce words very literally, very close to how they are written. I pronounce the T instead of using a glottal stop in words like button (I have both pronunciations around me, I haven't done enough observation to work out which one I'm supposed to have ended up with). I pronounce Tuesday as "toooosday" instead of "chewsday" (I've heard "chewsday" from people with similar background and education who should have developed the exact same pronunciation as I have, but again I haven't done enough observation because I just thought of this). I know there are others because I've noticed them, both IRL and when we were doing Canadian dialects in my linguistics classes, but I can't think of examples offhand.

I'm wondering if this might be because I learned to read using phonics at a very early age - I think I started learning at the age of 2, and by the age of 4 I could fluently read age-appropriate books. I spent less time during my formative years having an auditory-only relationship with my rightful accent, and more time with the internalized concept of one-to-one correlation between letters and pronunciation. (I know it isn't actually one-to-one, but you can't exactly explain the subtleties to a two-year-old).

In support of this hypothesis is my very literal pronunciation, and the fact that I tend to mispronounce words because I've only seen them written more than other people do. (I was 25 before I realized that the written word and verbal pronunciation of annihilated are in fact one word.) I also tend to fudge my vowels a bit when the spelling is different - I don't pronounce buoy and boy exactly the same, even though I remember learning the word as a child and I thought it was "boy", but I still pronounce buoy with one syllable instead of "booo-ey" which is the accepted alternate pronunciation. And I do caught and cot, and collar and caller, like half a phoneme different - not as much as in accents where it's a proper accent feature, but not identically the same even though I think I pronounce them identically the same. (Can I has a few linguistics cred points for knowing that I pronounce something differently but think I pronounce it the same?)

On the other hand, I did manage to acquire Canadian raising, which is acquired strictly through aural assimilation and contradicts strict phonetics. And I Canadian raise in exactly the right places despite the fact that I devoice all my final consonants, which is an inherited accent feature aurally assimilated from the ESL side of my family and also contradicts phonetics.

I haven't talked to any other early readers about this or made proper observations of my family's pronunciations, but if other early readers have the same thing it would be an interesting thing to research.

Victoria's Secret has excellent shipping

A week ago, I ordered some stuff from Victoria's Secret and picked the cheapest shipping method. It shipped from the States yesterday and arrived today! That's really good considering how the official ETA was Sept. 22.

Their prices are very reasonable too. Shipping costs to Canada are a bit high, but it's worth it if you're buying several items. The problems inherent in buying lingerie over the internet are obvious, but if you're certain about your size or the item is returnable or you can swallow the cost of a non-returnable item possibly being suboptimal, it's certainly worth a look.

Do people actually use Facebook as a substitute for the Internet as a whole?

Mentioned in passing in a text I'm translating (yes, right now, blah) is the idea that Kids Today don't use websites, instead if they're looking for something they look for it on Facebook.

Is that true? If you're looking for a person, I can totally see going to Facebook first. But do people actually head for Facebook first instead of Google when looking for information about an organization or a topic?

Most inadvertently hilarious thing ever of the day

Scroll down to 4.2.2.8

Apparently, as long as you follow packaging guidelines, you can send the following in the mail:

- Live day-old chicks (but only day-old?)
- Live small cold-blooded animals (except snakes, turtles, baby alligators, caimans, or anything that emits "obnoxious odours"
- Parasites, leeches, insects, and bees (as long as they are free of disease, which raises the question of how to tell if an insect has a disease). And queen bees are allowed to travel with a maximum of eight attendants.

Blah

I wish that knowing intellectually that my worries are unfounded was enough to make me be able to stop worrying. Usually being a pessimist works well for me, but sometimes I wish I could turn it off on demand.

How to revolutionize US politics right this minute with no effort whatsoever

So apparently there's a US politician whose teenage daughter is pregnant. And most people don't want a big deal made of this (because it's politically inconvenient to them and/or because they want to be better than that). Some people do want to make a big deal of it, either because it's good gossip or because a big deal would be made if the roles were reversed or out of misfired schadenfreude, but it sounds like the major players don't want to make a big deal.

So here's all everyone has to do: don't make a big deal of it. Leave the kid alone. Everyone wins! All the politicians and pundits etc. will be taking the high road and come out looking like better people for it. Because of the precedent this will set, it will move all politicians' families a bit further out of the campaign spotlight and the state a bit further out of the bedrooms of the nation, which will make some room for discussion of actual issues (I understand y'all are having a spot of economic trouble? And there's a sort of messy war-related thing going on?) to the benefit of all USians. Then after the rest of the campaign continues on this higher note, people will be hesitant to take cheap shots at people's private lives because you don't want to be single-handedly responsible for lowering the tenor of your entire country's political discourse.

And the best thing about this technique is you don't have to do a damn thing. All you have to do is not pay any attention to this one person, which I'll be you've been doing the vast majority of your life anyway.