Bad luck

My package of paper towels fell behind my dryer, which is a problem because it's a stacked washer-dryer in a closet and i can't even move it an inch. So I spent two hours using various creative ways to try to fish it out, without success. Then I decided to give up and go buy one of those grabby toy things tomorrow. So I put back all the stuff that lives on top of the machines (don't worry, it's all too big to fall behind there) and in doing so accidentally knocked down the hand mirror i'd been using to look behind the machine. So now my paper towels are behing my dryer, probably causing a fire hazard, my towels badly need to be washed (and they're the one thing that MUST go in the dryer because they're too heavy for my clothesline thingy when wet, I now have to retrieve the stuff from behind the machines blind, and I've probably just broken a mirror.

And I'm still doing time for the last mirror I broke. I wonder if they're concurrent or consecutive sentences?

ETA: I think maybe an actual fishhook would help. Anyone know where to buy those?

Theory confirmed

I recently heard a theory that the mission of the US republican party is actually to put political parodyists out of business.

I believe that theory is confirmed with the following quote:

I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products.

-John McCain, talking to employees of a gun factory.

I also think this quote may demonstrate a lack of foresight and planning on the part of Mr. McCain. If you have followed someone to the gates of hell, and you want to punish them, wouldn't the optimal course of action to be to push them into the gates of hell? Isn't that the ultimate punishment? I mean, people do sometimes recover from gunshot wounds, and if hell is right there, why would you even risk another course of action?

What talkshows should do during the writers' strike

Apparently TV writers are going to go on strike and, among other things, this will stop production of talkshows like Leno and Conan.

So why not can the comedy part of the show and add another interview or performance segment instead?

I don't know the details of the unions involved, and I'm not trying to encourage scabbing, but the impression I get from the articles I've read is that TV shows can keep on working and producing and airing whatever they can manage to do, they just can't write new material. But you don't have to write interviews, you just have to get someone to interview.

On gilding the lily

One habit of mine that is unpopular with some people is that I don't decorate. My walls are painted whatever colour they happen to be, my furniture is what it is (mostly what I could get for free), I simply don't put effort into this area because I don't have any sort of creative impulses that can be expressed through the medium of interior decorating.

Another habit of mine that is unpopular with some people is that I wear make-up. I've blogged about this before - essentially it makes me feel good and gives me a sense of control over my body, but there are people who think I (and people in general) shouldn't do this because we should just learn to love and accept the appearance of our bodies as they are.

This leads me to wonder: are there also people out there who actively believe that everyone should just learn to love and accept the appearance of their homes as they are, without feeling the need to cover the flaws and paint over them to make something more attractive?

Death (or cake?)

I've been reading about doctors diagnosing cancer patients, and the patients deciding whether to go through with arduous chemo or just to accept the limited time they have left without chemo so they can enjoy it.

I've always assumed I'd want to know if I had a specific limited life expectancy, because that would change how I arrange my life. Right now the reason I work (and, consequently, structure a lot of my life around my job) is because I don't have enough money to support myself for the rest of my life. By working, I not only accrue money, but increase my likelihood of finding another job when I lose this one. But if I had six months left to live, I'd have enough money to support myself for that long, so I'd want to know so I could quit my job and have my time free. I might also buy some things I wouldn't normally (I'd rethink whether a region-free DVD player is worth the investment if I'm not going to live to see that movie released in North America, for example) or not buy things I was planning to (my black pants are getting a bit worn, but like hell I'm spending my last months on earth shopping for pants!)

But reading about these cancer patients makes me think that maybe I wouldn't want to know, because then there'd be such pressure to make the most of every single minute. Like right now I'm sitting in my bathrobe (yes, at 2:30 pm) drinking coffee and reading my book. I am content. But if I only had a few months left to live, would I want to be doing this? Do I care enough about this book to spend some of my precious time left reading it? I love sleeping until I wake up naturally, but is the joy I get from that worth spending my last months on earth unconscious? I've never been to Paris, but I don't particularly enjoy travelling. So should I go to Paris so I don't die without seeing it, or is that giving into social pressure? And what if I find there are people who want to spend time with me before I die, but I don't really care if I spend time with them? What's my responsibility to them?

I don't know if I'd want to have all these dilemmas every single minute of my dying days! Maybe it would be preferable to just get hit by a bus, even if does mean spending more time in the office than I would have preferred and doing without a few material indulgences that I could have afforded.

Things I Don't Understand: age, weight, and dress size

Some people, especially women, don't want other people to know stuff like their age, weight, and dress size.

But why would you feel the need to keep these secret from people who can see you?

Either it won't surprise them (in which case they have no more information than they would if you didn't say anything), or they'll be astoundingly surprised and admire your ability to take care of yourself/dress well/etc.

Esprit de l'escalier

I've decided the answer to "Why don't you just buy a small house in Hamilton?" (or some other place with cheap housing and a huge-ass commute) is going to be "For the same reason you aren't buying a dairy farm in Kazakhstan."

Anyone out there remember their phonetics?

My inner child and I were trying to think of the naughtiest-sounding phoneme name we could, and came up with lingual-labial fricative.

I know this doesn't exist in English, but if it did exist what would it be? Wouldn't it be like blowing a raspberry?

I hope it is like blowing a raspberry, because that would give it maximum comedic potential.

"Hey baby, you want a lingual-labial fricative?" ***phllllbt***

Now I really think the Burmese panty superstition is false

I previously blogged that I wanted a fact check on the superstition that Burmese men believe contact with women's undies takes away their power. Today in the Star, Antonia Zerbisias writes about it:

According to the Thailand-based Lanna Action for Burma, senior general Than Shwe, whose troops bludgeoned unarmed monks and nuns, is very superstitious. The dictator and his minions "believe that contact with a woman's panties or sarong can rob them of their power."

Doesn't matter if the lingerie is clean or dirty, the fact that it's feminine makes it emasculating.

(Not that it stops Burma's state-sanctioned rape.)

Her quote is from the same organization my research turned up, so that doesn't count as an independent fact-check. But the state-sanctioned rape is new (to me) information, and is readily confirmed by Google.

This really makes me think that the panty superstition is false. Because how on earth do you rape someone if you're afraid of their undergarments?

Sometimes symptom relief is enough

This article seems to be missing the point.

It criticizes the use of cough and cold medicines on the basis that they don't make the patient get over the cold any faster.

But they don't have to.

All they have to do is temporarily relieve the symptoms, whether in reality or through placebo effect, for long enough for the patient to fall asleep at night. And both the yummy orange Triaminic that I took as a child and the hideous green Nyquil that I take now as an adult do this successfully.

I would find it very difficult to believe that having a proper night's sleep doesn't speed up the healing as compared with a restless fitful night. But even if it doesn't make things faster, if you can fall asleep and stay asleep for a good 8 hours (or more if you're a small child), that at least puts you out of your misery for a while, and you get hours of quiet restful bliss rather than hours of miserably struggling to breathe whilst your brains leak out your nostrils in mucus form.

Surely there are some days when that's quite enough to ask of our medicine?

Things I noticed today

1. When I wear a cami under my blouse, I'm far more inclined to get a wedgie - even though the underwear and pants are the same!

2. When I was in uni I lived in a co-ed res with co-ed group bathrooms, and I was perfectly fine with this. So in theory and as a matter of principle, I would have no problem with a man being in a public bathroom while I'm in there. However, in the building where I work we have gender-segregated public bathrooms, and standard operating procedure is that the cleaning people knock and make sure no one is in there before they enter the bathroom of the other gender. But when I'm in the bathroom and a male cleaner knocks, or I enter the bathroom and a male cleaner is there, I don't tell him "No, go ahead, keep doing your job, it doesn't bother me," even though it doesn't bother me. It seems like it could be misinterpreted as a come-on or something. It's like I don't mind a man being in the bathroom, but I'm concerned about what a man might think of me if I tell him I don't mind him being in the bathroom. Which is really odd.

3. They have candy canes at Shoppers Drug Mart! It isn't even Halloween yet! I could buy candy canes and give them to trickertreaters! I considered that too, but if I bought candy canes in October I'd be creating a market for candy canes in October, and that's the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid.

4. Speaking of stores and holidays, I've noticed that Halloween decorations are far less giant spider themed this year than in past years. Well done!

Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold...

Edited to add for all the people who are getting here from google: This song is The Way by Fastball

Things that piss me off

I don't particularly enjoy xmas. It's so long and drawn out and noisy and "OMG, everyone must be happy because this is the happiest time of the year!" all for a celebration of the birth of the messiah of a religion that I don't believe in.

What pisses me off is people telling me that I should celebrate and enjoy (as though you can just enjoy something because someone tells you to) xmas because it isn't really a xian holiday, it actually has Pagan roots.

But I'm not Pagan either! The fact that it has Pagan roots is completely irrelevant! So a holiday in one religion I don't believe in actually has roots in another religion I don't believe in? If they discovered that Ramadan had Buddhist roots, would everyone suddenly start fasting during Ramadan?

It also seems to me that this line of reasoning might be a bit disrespectful to Pagans, although I can't quite articulate why.

***

Not a thing that pisses me off, just an observation resulting from a long and winding train of thought that came to me before I hit Publish Post:

I make no secret of the fact that I have a negative view of my former religion. I figure as someone who was once on the inside, I'm entitled. I've been there, I've lived it, I've given it really quite a lot of thought including a full-fledged crisis of faith, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a negative thing. Not everyone's going to agree with me, but I don't care; I know whereof I speak.

What I find odd is that people judge me for being anti-xian in exactly the same way they'd judge an outsider who had never been exposed to xianity for being anti-xian. They view my negative assessment of the religion I grew up in, studied, wrestled with, carefully examined, and ultimately decided to leave (entailing some family drama) as being just as intolerant as a negative assessment coming from someone who has never even heard of the contents of John 3:16. To me, that sounds like considering the following to scenarios perfectly equal:

"I'm heard of that Bob fellow, and I HATE HIM!"
"You are so judgemental!"

vs.

"I was married to Bob for 15 years, and he was an abusive husband who made my life miserable. I HATE HIM!"
"You are so judgemental!"

I've been trying to figure out if there's anything comparable other than religion where this can happen, where an insider's negative assessment is considered just as unjustly judgemental as an outsider's. I can't think of anything offhand.

I can see myself blink!

The LCD display on my new phone has a bit of a delay. So if I stand in front of a mirror with the lens of the camera pointing at myself and the LCD display pointing at the mirror, I can see myself blink in the reflection of the LCD! That is so weird!

Mindfuck of the moment

Me in conversation: "...and I'm wearing liquid eyeliner. Now, I know what you're thinking, but I have heavy black brows and lashes so I can in fact carry it off."

Which gives me an idea for a mindfuck: say to people "I know what you're thinking, but..." then add something completely irrelevant.

"...and I think the elastics are getting stretched out. Now, I know what you're thinking, but San Diego isn't anywhere near Sacramento."

"...and he said their marriage is essentially over and they're just getting tied up in the divorce process. Now, I know what you're thinking, but red light has a longer wavelength than blue light."

"I do like to put ice in the martini glass itself. Now, I know what you're thinking, but I do have a lot of trouble washing windows without getting streaks."

Coercion and other big words

This train of thought started in this post of mine from last week, which took me to this article in Salon (possibly NSFW - talks about sex and there's a picture of a couple in bed).

This all got me thinking about the one concept that's missing from our debate about age of consent laws, and is also missing from debate about polygamy, and debate about sex work.

That word is coercion.

What our laws tend to do is if we don't want people to be coerced into doing something, we make that thing illegal - generally in a way that punishes the alleged coercer while treating the alleged coercee as a victim. Which is perfectly appropriate if it is, in fact, a case of coercion, but needlessly punishes people if the situation is in fact perfectly well-informed and consensual.

What our laws should be doing is making it illegal to coerce people into doing these things, while making it perfectly legal to do them willingly. If the laws aren't succeeding in doing this, the laws must be rewritten so that they do succeed, rather than taking away people's rights to consensually and fully-informedly do something that doesn't hurt anyone else, or casting competent people as ignorant victims. Is this an easy thing to legislate? Hell no! I wouldn't know where to begin on wording it! But we can all grok the concept. We can all scrunch up our brains and think for a bit and picture how, say, a fully-informed consensual polygamous marriage could exist. And because we the concept readily exists, there must be some way to word it to create legislation that allows for personal freedom that doesn't harm others, but prevents coercion.

Since one of the key points in my original post was that my 14-year-old self was capable of making an informed decision about whether to have sex, I then found myself thinking about how she'd handle the concept of coercion. I am certain that I would have known at that age whether or not I was being coerced, but what I'm not certain on is whether I'd be able to articulate that concept to others. I don't remember if I knew the word coercion at that age or not, and it's a difficult concept to articulate if you don't have the word.

Then I found myself thinking that there are a lot of concepts that you meet in early adolescence that are very difficult to articulate, but it's very necessary to tell someone if they're happening. Examples:

coercion
hypocrisy
harassment
abuse
belittling
demeaning
extortion
etc. etc. etc.

It would be very helpful at about the age of 11 to know these words, just so you can put a name on your experience. Compare: "He's sexually harassing me!" vs. "He's...saying things to me!"

Now some of these concepts are simple enough that they could be taught as vocabulary words. But others are more difficult. Harassment and abuse, for example, you'd need to give a certain amount of training so the kids would recognize the scope of the words. (And this is nothing against kids, I've heard adults that don't grok the concepts either. Once someone wrote a letter to the editor saying that the fact that Sheila Copps didn't concede Liberal Party leadership to Paul Martin was sexual harassment). And training the kids on what exactly does constitute abuse/harassment/etc. could also result in problems, because the prospective perps would be taking the training as well as the prospective victims. They'd know exactly what their victims know, and may be able to use it to their advantage. This happened when I was in school - in grade 7 we had training on how to resist peer pressure, complete with role-playing. So then in grade 9, when I tried to casually continue socializing with my so-called friends without taking up smoking, they recognized the technique I'd used in grade 7 Guidance class for casually continuing socializing without eating any of the Doritos, and called me on it. But at the same time, it would also be useful to everyone to learn that because certain behaviour constitutes harassment/abuse, it is unacceptable. It's a tricky line and I don't know where exactly it lies. Hopefully someone does.

New word: squeam

Squeam (verb): the kind of weird cringe you do when someone tells you something that makes you squeamish.

Technojoy!

My new cellphone arrived. It has a still and video camera and apparently can connect to the internet. And it is small enough that I palm it in my hand such that no one will see it unless they're specifically looking for it. And it is a starter phone - the cheapest one currently available. And it was unexpected delivered COD, but it was cheap enough that I was able to pay for it with the emergency cash I keep stashed in my apartment.

I love the 21st century!

Going to hell

Similar letters from Cary Tennis, Dear Prudence, and Damage Control: religious kids who think their non-religious parents are going to hell.

Here's something I don't get, and I say this as a former religious child myself: why would you care if someone else is going to hell? The only reason I can possibly think of is because you want them to be in heaven with you. But surely any deity worth being worshipped as a deity can arrange things so that you have everyone you need for a heavenly heaven experience, while everything deserving of a hellish hell experience experiences just that. (In fact, just to make things easier, maybe some people's hellish hell experience is being trapped for eternity with their evangelical relatives!)