Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Note to self: You don't like Lindeman's Bin 65 Chardonnay. Yes it's highly-rated and reasonably priced and keeps turning up on lists and has a yummy-sounding description on the label. But you don't like it, so stop buying it!

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

My local Blockbuster does not have The Princess Bride! INCONCEIVABLE!

Monday, December 29, 2003

I need the following:

1. A hairdresser who has long hair herself (long means at LEAST past the shoulder blades, preferably past the waist).

2. Machine-washable black or charcoal pants with pockets, size 14, that can handle a 12-inch difference between waist and hip circumferences without gaping in the back and look more appropriate on a 23-year-old than on a 63-year-old.

3. Someone to explain to me how necessary it is to take Introductory Harmony before Grade 3 Harmony if you already have Grade 2 Rudiments.

Saturday, December 27, 2003

An analogy, for the reference of anyone who might be able to use it:

Secularism is a religion to the same extent that abstinence is a sex act.

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Speaking from personal experience, this story is not so much indicative of the Canadian experience as it is indicative of the Dundas experience.

Saturday, December 20, 2003

I have made a decision. Until I tire of doing so, I will eat dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. The inspiration for this came this morning as I sipped my coffee, persued the Star, and pondered what to eat for breakfast. I came upon this article about a guy who eats pasta for breakfast every day. "Oooh, pasta! That sounds good!" my stomach said. Since it's the weekend and I already had some cooked pasta in the fridge, I figured why not? So I put some cooked pasta in a bowl and smothered it with cheese and tomato sauce as is my custom, and ate it for breakfast.

My digestive system handled it just fine even though it was the first thing I'd eaten that day (my digestive system is very picky about my first meal of the day), and it was quick and filling and yummy. Plus pasta has this strange talent for making me happy, so pasta for breakfast makes me much happier than my habitual breakfast. Perhaps I should do this more often?

Then I was reminded of a school of thought that it is preferable to eat your largest meal first thing in the morning and your smallest meal for dinner. I've never been able to do this because of morning time restraints and my digestive system's sensitivity to breakfast foods in the morning. But I habitually have a big bowl of pasta for dinner. So, I thought, what if I have my big bowl of pasta for brekkie (which gives me all day to metabolize it), my habitual lunch of two of soup, salad, and sandwich, and for dinner graze on fruit, eggs, and bread, which is my typical breakfast food?

Best case I might lose weight under this scenario. No heavy meal before bed, and fruit, eggs and bread are quick so I won't end up snacking while I make dinner because dinner will be right there, snack style. The only drawback is that I'll have to have cooked pasta prepared at all times, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Worst case I hate it and go back to eating like a normal person. We'll see what happens.
A favour? From anyone? Next time you go to see ROTK, glance at your watch when the spider scene is over. How long into the movie when it's over? 30 minutes? 1 hour? As accurately as possible please. Also, are there any other key plot points that happen before the spider?

Friday, December 19, 2003

I just remembered possibly the most bizarre thing I did in childhood:

In kindergarten, we had a sandbox. And in the sandbox we had this game we made up. I forget how the game went, but I distinctly remember that it was called "We're Making Food for the Robber."
I'm bored! Seriously! BORED! WTF is wrong with me?

Thursday, December 18, 2003

As a public service, the Rules For Very Crowded Public Transit.

1. If you are not getting off at this exact stop, MOVE AWAY from the doors. If you are in the process of getting on, your mission the instant you set foot in the vehicle is to move as far away from the doors as possible.

2. Never, ever, ever EVER stop right in front of the subway doors. There's always someone who wants to get on behind you.

3. If you are standing near an empty seat, sit down in it. If someone who needs it more than you do is nearby let them sit down, but if they're on the other side of the bus take the seat yourself. Standing in front of an empty seat = taking up enough room for two.

4. After people from the stop before yours finish loading, you may stand up and move towards the doors. This is the earliest possible moment you are permitted to move towards the doors.

5. If you see more people getting on after you, start sardining. Fill in every possible space. If there's room after they've finished boarding you can move away from your neighbours.

6. Try to let people whose hands are full stand near walls and poles.

7. Sit your preschool child on your lap.

8. If you see a parent with more than one child, and neither of those children is within reach of a pole, let the poor kid sit down! The parent needs one hand to hold on to something and therefore can only hold one kid's hand, and children can't reach the plentiful ceiling rail thingies.

9. Sit with your legs together. No one actually believes your dick is that big.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

A lot have things have been invented lately, but for some reason we tend not to call them "inventions".
An inappropriate combination of three totally random thoughts, in the order in which I thought of them:

1. Apparently Peter Jackson claims to be an arachnophobic. An arachnophobic would NOT have come up with what is apparently the single worst spider in cinematic history. A real arachnophobic would not even have been able to read that chapter of the book! Memo to Peter Jackson: when you make the DVD, make sure Shelob is in its own chapter with at least 30 seconds of forewarning, so we can just skip to the next chapter and avoid nightmares. Same for if you feel the need to put images of Shelob in the documentaries.

2. Poverty, true poverty, epitomized. (Because it seems to constantly change, cycle through until you get to the Afghan picture)

3. IT'S SNOWING!

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

There's sexual harrassment in early MASH episodes. It ruins the whole thing.
Way early star trek has better incidental music
I did laundry. Then I put my pjs on straight out of the dryer. There are few things in the world as perfect as warm jammies.
Things that really really do not need to be decorated for xmas:

- Television and radio station IDs
- Take-out food
- Everyday consumer products like pop and toilet paper
- Muzak
- Print media, with the possible exception of the single issue of any publication that is printed on or closest to xmas.

Speaking of print media, when did the maple leaf disappear from the Globe and Mail's masthead? (If this is appropriate use of the word masthead - the big title on the front page). I only noticed it yesterday and a quick prowl through the recycle box showed that it has been gone all week, but when did it disappear?

Monday, December 15, 2003

I'm home sick today, so if you feel inclined to bring a welcome interruption to my 3:00 ennui, don't bother today. :)

Sunday, December 14, 2003

Saddam Hussein now bears a striking resemblance to my father. So do Osama bin Laden and new cabinet minister David Anderson.
I'm watching the documentaries on my LOTR DVD, and they're discussing how they wrote vocal operatic pieces in Tolkien languages for various parts of the soundtrack. I'm watching this and I'm like "Singing? Where's he singing?" Then they show final examples from the final cut, and it turns out there is vocal there, it just goes so well with the movie I never even noticed the music!
SNOW!!!!

Friday, December 12, 2003

I am boycotting Subway because I find their policies on religious headgear unacceptable. It is not only an issue of religion, it is an issue personal modesty. Forbidding Sikhs to wear their turbans is like forbidding any of your employees to wear shirts.

If you happen to agree with me on this position, I encourage you to contact Subway and let them know. If you decide to boycott, be sure to mention it to them.

Thursday, December 11, 2003

This is just to disseminate this idea to a further audience.

150402840 indeed!
So why do women think men are stupid? Because men become stupid when women are around!

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

If I could reorder the entire mindset of the human race and undo millenia of social conditioning, I would change the "rules" so that a person's life partner and their sexual partner are in no way expected to be the same person.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with marriage and monogamy - this is the direction in which I choose to lead my own life. But when you think about it, a spouse fulfills two very different functions, and when looked at detachedly they don't necessarily seem complementary.

One is the life partner - a person with whom you share your household and finances and families and the trials and tribulations of day to day life. The life partner is practically a business contract.

The other function is the lover, which is self-explanatory.

Now I know in many many cases couples manage to successfully amalgamate these two functions, but if you think about it from a detached, purely logical perspective, it's a bit extreme to expect a person who can fulfill your needs as a life partner to also be able to fulfill your needs as a lover, and vice versa. There is a certain degree of love required to trust someone enough to be your life partner, of course, but a platonic life-partner relationship could carry on quite well without the kind of love generally associated with a sexual relationship. For example, I can think of about five people I know personally with whom I could plausibly be life partners for as much of eternity as I can conceptualize at age 22. But I can only think of one person whom I would choose as a permanent sexual partner. A life partner requires so much more that has nothing to do with romance - agreeing on managing money, compatible standards of cleanliness, buying furniture, dealing with insurance, even sleeping (by which I mean sleeping) in the same bed - that it's practically unreasonable that the pool of people who can meet these requirements has to be narrowed down to people who would also make compatible lovers. Promiscuity wouldn't need to be a necessary characteristic of this society, a pair of lovers could be monogamous if they wanted and monogamy could even be mainstream. Your perma-lover simply wouldn't have to also be your life partners.

The other problem here would be what to do about children, since they originate from sex but are part of a family and household. Since we're reordering the universe anyway, I think the simplest solution would be to make society matrilineal and matriarchical. And because the concept of sexual fidelity to one's life partner wouldn't exist, the fathers wouldn't be as bothered by the fact that they're sharing the household with another man's child. Of course, there would be more people involved in the decision of whether to have a child, but we'll deal with that when we come to it.

And no, I'm not condoning adultery (unless, of course, it's by mutual consent of all parties involved, and even then I still find it distasteful). I'm talking about a hypothetical reordered society. In our current society spouses, by definition, are expected to fulfill both these functions for their partners, and anyone who doesn't want to do so shouldn't enter into that sort of relationship. In the reordered society the concept of adultery wouldn't exist for the same reason that in our society there is no word for consensual sex within a maritial relationship that has the "sinful" connotation.
I thought of a game, but I don't have a catchy name for it. It's like six degrees of separation, but you take someone you already know directly, and find a secondary route linking you and that person. The rule is that there has to be at least one person in the chain that neither of the two people at the end knows.

For example: Bob is a former co-worker. So I know Bob directly. So to find a secondary chain:

1. Bob used to go to high school with George.
2. George is friends with Mike.
3. Mike used to be in a band with Dan.
4. Dan used to go to high school with me.

Bob doesn't know Mike or Dan, and I don't know George or Mike, so this route is valid.

You have to take the shortest possible secondary route, so no inserting extra people just to have someone you don't know in there. For instance, in the example above, if I knew George directly, Mike and Dan would have to be removed, and this route wouldn't be valid because the two ends (me and Bob) would know everyone in the middle (George).

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Two unanswerable questions:

1. Did previous wars undergo as much media spin as this Iraq debacle?

2. Since Star Trek characters seem to get possessed by various alien beings fairly frequently, do they teach them how to handle this situation at Starfleet Academy?
Question for people who are not afraid of bugs at all: what do you do when there's a bug in your home? (Or, if you are afraid of some, but not all, bugs, if there's a bug that you aren't afraid of in your home) For argument's sake, let's say there's no one else in the household who is afraid of bugs. Do you kill it? Do you let it outside? Do you just let it wander around and mind its own business?

Monday, December 08, 2003

Why isn't Platform 9 3/4 hooked up to the Floo Network? I know that having to get there the Muggle way often provides a nice plot device, but it's illogical and also encourages that oh-so-annoying "Cars in fanfic" phenomenon.

In other news, I have FUZZY RED PANTS!

Saturday, December 06, 2003

Anyone remember those pants they had in the 80s with an elastic at the back half of the waist and no elastic at the front half? What was the point of those? I know that personally the front part of my waist expands and contracts as I eat and breathe (sometime I think I would be a lot more comfortable in my clothes if I hadn't done five years of intensive music stuff in high school, which drilled diaphragm breathing into me so much that I have to make a conscious effort to breathe from my chest), but I can't think of any factor that would cause the back of my waist to expand.
It occurs to me that I should want to write. But I don't want to write. Generally someone in my position would write as a hobby - it's a characteristic of my profession - and with my long bohemian hair pulled up in a bun with a pencil my intellectual glasses perched on my nose, sipping inexpensive red wine in my tiny shabby urban flat, the aesthetics of the situation are simply begging me to be a frustrated author. I should have the Great Twenty-First Century Novel kicking around in my head. I should have a short story and a screenplay on the go. I should have been doing NaNoWriMo. I should at the very least be taking out my frustrations with by writing fic and erotica and posting them on pathetic sites for amateur writers. But I'm not. I have no desire to write. Occasionally I come up with stuff - a scene, a plotline, a snippet of dialogue, a movie trailer - but just coming up with it makes me happy. I have no desire to flesh it out, get to know the characters, map out the plot arc, I don't even need to write it down. I think of stuff, it lives in my head, I'm happy.

So much for being an intellectual.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

I feel better days when I exercise in the morning. I can think better, my joints are less stiff, the day goes by quicker. Unfortunately, I hate hate HATE loathe and detest exercising! It's annoying and bothersome and I'd much rather be asleep.

On that note, goodnight.
Happy news of the day: Enza finally got her breasts! YAY for her!

Stupidity of the day: The Ontario tories suggesting that raising the minimum wage is a bad thing because the minimum wage earners whose wages will increase will then have to pay taxes on their increased wages.

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

I am the most talented sleepwalker in the world - I changed my underwear in my sleep last night!

I sleep in a sweatsuit, so last night, while I was asleep, I managed to remove my pants, remove my underwear, open the correct drawer of my dresser, select a pair of underwear, put the new underwear on, and put my pants back on. When I woke up, the underwear drawer was open, the discarded underwear were on the floor, my pants were on the right way, but the new underwear was on inside out, although I did get my legs through the leg holes and the waist through the waist hole.

Upon inspection, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the old underwear that made me discard it, but at any rate it's the most interesting sleepwalk I've ever done.

Sunday, November 30, 2003

This is a poll, please answer in the comment section.

Picture a spreadsheet that's intended to be a timesheet for an employee. On one axis, you have the days of the month. On the other axis, you have the various tasks you did that day. For each task, you enter the amount of time you spent on it that day. Every row and every column totals itself at the end, so you can quickly see how much time was spent on each task in a month, and how many hours were worked in a day.

Do the days go down the side and the tasks across the top, or vice versa?


Friday, November 28, 2003

It occurs to me that if it weren't for my arachnophobia I would probably be living off the grid. The vast majority of my lifestyle choices are, directly or indirectly, made either to avoid spiders or to help cope when I do encounter one.

Thursday, November 27, 2003

I'm looking for a jpg or gif of Strongbad's "Eating One Battery...Eating Five Batteries" diagram. Both diagrams in the same image. Preferably small - it's for my LJ icon. Just posting this in case anyone happens upon one before I get my lazy ass into Photoshop.

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

With Advent almost upon us, I'd like to remind the world of the One True Plan for Improving the Universe:

IF you are in charge of a non-religious-affiliated public space, institution, or facility, or involved in the public relations of such an organization, AND

IF your public space, institution, or facility has decided to put up seasonal decorations on its physical plant and/or use seasonal themes in its public relations material, AND

IF someone, anyone, even one person complains that the seasonal theme in your decorations and/or public relations material is not religious enough,

THEN the proper course of action is not to have any seasonal themes whatsoever in anything having to do with your organization ever again in the future.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Ugh, bad bad bad reporting in the Toronto Star today. Even for a fluff section. In ID, the issue is "to have kids or not to have kids". They address people who have kids. They address people who don't have kids yet. They address people who don't want kids yet. They don't address people who can't have kids, or people who don't want kids ever! They make the whole thing out to be "Do you want kids when you're very young, or when you're a bit older?"

Then there's this crap. They start with the premise that women in their 20s, especially young 20s, are having fewer kids than they did in the past. Decent premise, backed up with statistical data. But the rest of the article is sloppy and lazy. "Talk to people in their 20s..." they begin, and proceed to interview a bunch of people who are 20, with the exception of one who's 21. Nothing wrong with being 20 or 21, but it's certainly not representative of "people in their 20s". Plus everyone they interview is a student. That's the reason for not having kids right there - it's not the people's age, it's the fact that they're students. They haven't had their first grownup job, their "permanent address" is likely still the parental home. Functionally, they haven't completely finished being children themselves. It has nothing to do with a paradigm shift or a cultural revolution, it's the fact that the U of T student who wrote this probably didn't even leave campus to do his interview (reflecting poorly on student journalists who can at least do decent research).

To further the poor impression of student journalists that this article must be giving the world, he makes statements like the following:

- "The break-up, get-together relationships that twentysomethings love, aren't really conducive to child-bearing, either". People LOVE serial monogamy and constant break-ups?

- "Now that women are rountinely able to have children into their 30s..." Women have always been able to have children into their 30s in modern history! I know doctors often encouraged people to stop at 35, but that's certainly "into their 30s"

Finally, after mentioning that in the 1950s women between 20 and 24 had babies at four times the current rate, they neglect to mention the two real causes of this!

1. In the 1950s, it was much easier to support a family on the money you could earn with a high school education! Now it is much harder to do that, so when people are finally able to support a family they are older.

2. Family planning is much easier and more widely available now. In the 1950s, people had more kids just because they likely had no mechanism in place to prevent them from producing a baby when they had intercourse. Now people have more choice.

Overall, as the target audience of this section, I'm disappointed and rather insulted. Do better next time!

Monday, November 24, 2003

A pet peeve: people who say you should learn Latin in order to understand basic grammatical theory and make it easier to learn other languages.

If you want to learn Latin for geek value, for fun, to be elite, for vaster academic purposes, that's fine. But if you want to understand basic verb tense theory in order to learn European languages, just studying any European language will do just fine! Latin does have the advantage of Romantic word origins (because I always forget if that's entymology or etymology, and the other one is very icky) in combination with Germanic/Slavic cases, but neither is that difficult to learn on its own, and if you're never going to speak a language that doesn't have cases and declension there's no point in learning one that does just to help you with your verb tenses.

The worst instance of this I've ever seen was someone asking a web community whether they should learn French or Latin. So many people advised them to study Latin, because then it would be much easier to learn other Romantic languages. Um hello, the same thing happens if you study French, plus you'll end up speaking a viable, living, European and world language!

This over-enthusiasm for Latin is akin to encouraging someone study Harmony and Counterpoint before even picking up an instrument. Or learning how to balance chemical equations before mixing baking soda and vinegar to watch them explode.

Sunday, November 23, 2003

People talk about whether the arts or the sciences are harder (as subjects studied in uni), but I think the fine arts, particularly the performing arts, are hardest. Fine arts majors have to study academic subjects, AND rehearse for performances. You can bullshit an essay, you can even bullshit a lab writeup with a bit of research and ingenuity, but you can't bullshit a performance. If you haven't studied for an exam you can usually still squeeze out a passing grade with some logic and ingenuity, but you can't fake a performance you haven't rehearsed for.

I took everything in high school - english, maths, sciences, languages, social sciences, and music - and it was music that required the most effort and the most consistent effort on my part. I could usually do okay on a physics test by quickly memorizing the key formulae on someone else's study sheet in the last 10 minutes of lunch time, I could usually do okay on a French test by conjugating the verbs like similar verbs and going with the "it sounds right" rule for prepositions, but I simply could not get through a performance test in music without spending at least half an hour a day working on the sixteen notes and the tricky part and training myself not to have to breathe for twelve bars.
Monty Python randomness

John Cleese: "So in three years, you've spotted no camels."
Eric Idle: "That's right, in only three years!"



Saturday, November 22, 2003

Jimmy can tech support toilets over ICQ! Ten points!

Friday, November 21, 2003

I've heard a lot of people bitching about the fact that TTC drivers get paid $20-25 per hour. Don't the realize that, in the grand scheme of things, that isn't a lot of money? It's certainly not NOT a lot of money, but if you do the math and see what that comes out to per year, it's a reasonable income, especially considering Toronto housing costs. I earn on the low end of that scale and I have no financial problems with just myself alone, but if I had a child I'd have to be on a tight budget. This isn't unskilled labour they're doing - if you take transit or drive on a street where transit vehicles run, these people are responsible for your safety. They certainly deserve a reasonable salary for that responsibility. I know that salaries are currently the TTC's biggest operating expense, but I don't think that punishing the employees would improve the situation.

Just for laughs, the stupidest proposal I've heard to address the situation: "The TTC is inefficient. The drivers make way too much money! What they should do is hire a CEO, pay him a few million dollars, and have him run it like a business!"

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

So I get a flu shot for the first time since I was young enough that my mother could force me to, and what happens? It turns out this year's flu shot is for the wrong strain of flu! GAH!

On the brighter side, I managed to get my health card renewed on the first try and with only 30 minutes out of my life. They say it take 4 weeks to arrive, so I might even get it before the old one expires!

Hopefully this bureaucratic good fortune will extend to Friday when I try yet again to get my G1.

Monday, November 17, 2003

It just occurred to me that there's a serious logical flaw in Secret Keeper theory in the Harry Potter world. Why don't people just keep their Secret Keeper secret?

For example, James didn't want Voldemort to find his family so, before everything went to shit, he made Sirius his Secret Keeper. Now no one could find James or his family unless Sirius told them. Now a sensible precaution would have been for James to then be Secret Keeper to the Sirius. So no one could find Sirius unless James told them, and no one could find James unless Sirius told them. (Yes, it would be impractical to go about life without anyone being able to find you at all, but since both families in question were independently wealthy and talented wizards, this shouldn't pose too much of a problem in this case.)

Quelle geek suis-je.
I was at Radio Shack looking at some gizmos. I decided I wanted to purchase one of the gizmos. However, the gizmo I was looking at was a display model, taken out of the package and tied to the shelf with a security cable. I looked around, and I couldn't see these gizmos in packages available for purchasing anywhere. So I went home.

The moral of the story: If you want me to buy things in your store, make sure they are actually there.
They should invent sleeping pills that last for only 2-4 hours. For when you're closer to wake-up time than bedtime, still can't sleep, and are getting desperate.

Sunday, November 16, 2003

My LJ is now here. I'm in the process of switching over friends lists and shit.

Friday, November 14, 2003

If anyone reading this is interested in inventing chemicals that alter the way the human brain works, I've got an idea: an anti-rape drug.

Some rapes are triggered by lust/horniness, and others are triggered by anger or hatred. This drug targets the latter.

There is a part of the brain that behaves a certain way when a person feels anger or hatred. There is also a part of the brain that behaves a certain way when a man gets an erection. So what the anti-rape drug would do is prevent the erection part of the brain from working when the anger/hatred part of the brain is active.

How to get people to take this drug?

1. Require sex offenders to take it on a regular basis as a condition of parole.
2. If you don't want your army raping people, require your army to take it. (Plausible for some armies, not for others)
3. Put a sniffable version in pepper spray.
4. Require it to be added to viagra.
5. Require it to be added to steroids.
6. When a version is perfected without side effects, dump it in the world's drinking water!

This doesn't address lust-related rape, but it could at least cut down on rape as hate crime.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

So I went to get a flu shot like a good girl. I was prepared: I knew that they gave you the shot in the upper arm, so I wore a blouse whose sleeves could roll up past my bicep and tricep, and I wore a strappy tank-top underneath just in case.

So I get to the flu shot place. I was surprised to see that they were giving people shots out in the open. I'd thought it you would at least behind a screen! But I bravely sat down in the chair and started rolling up my sleeve.

The nurse looked dubiously at my long-sleeved blouse, but I said "Don't worry, it will roll up far enough" as I worked the sleeve up my arm. "How high up do you need to be able to reach?" I asked as my French cuff passed my elbow. "I need to get your deltoid" she said.

Deltoid. Oh. My cuffs can't get past the bottom of my deltoid. Damn weight training!

I look around. Behind me in line there are three frat-boy asshole types and a gaggle of 12-year-old boys. I'm in plain view of all of them.

It's one thing to unbutton three buttons of your blouse and slip your shoulder out revealing a spaghetti strap, the satiny trim of your bra, and perhaps a glimpse of cleavage when you're behind a screen with a medical professional. It's quite another thing to do this in front of that three frat-boy-asshole types and a gaggle of 12-year-old boys.

I quickly pulled down my sleeve, gathered my things, and scurried off, apologizing for having waster her time.

Moral of the story: wear a fucking t-shirt!