Blogosaurus Vex

High school was a bad time for me. I don’t just mean in the usual sense of having some adolescent angst and self pity, or of fretting over a pimple on prom night.  I was a pretty major social misfit.  Just about no one liked me, and while I didn’t particularly like most of them either, it killed me that I didn’t have any choice about my status.  Though it makes a lot of sense.  I think I was an immature kid – smart but undersocialized, with tendencies towards lonerism and bookwormishness.  I didn’t have fashionable clothes or boobs, or a coke habit, which pretty much meant I was doomed from day one at my intensely cliquey, well off school.

Grade eight was hell, but after that I was basically just ignored by everyone.  There were occasional incidents of active persecution, particularly in that shitty, cruel torture room known as gym class (guess who had no athletic skill?), but for the most part I was beneath notice.  In hindsight, the neglect was probably a blessing. It’s better to pass below the radar and not get actively harassed when there’s no escape. But at the time, I felt my isolation and negligible social status keenly.  I was desperate to be popular and had no idea how to go about it.  I had friends in the grade ahead of me, great friends, but somehow that didn’t make up for being worthless to my agemates.

Anyway, I’m taking belly dancing lessons. And there are two women in my class who act just like the popular, snotty girls I remember from highschool. Only they’re fat and middle aged, with attitudes no highschooler could touch.  They hog the mirror.  They giggle and snort when the instructor is talking.  The have endless private jokes which they “try” to muffle.  They roll their eyes a lot.  They make outraged, irritated faces if anyone gets too close to them.  If there was paper, they’d throw paper balls.  And it makes me feel terrible.

I know I should not be bothered by these two.  Clearly they have not matured much beyond their highschool years.  They are both in shitty marriages (this is one of the things they complain about), they both have ridiculous blonde highlights, they dress like they’re thin sixteen year olds when they are actually dumpy forty year olds, and neither can belly dance worth a fig.  I, on the other hand, am educated, intelligent, in a loving marriage, with great friends and strong family ties, and have discovered some latent talent for dancing – but I still feel about three inches tall when they’re around.  I am instantly transported back to highschool where girls like them made my life much harder than it had to be for four years.

I just ignore them, or at least pretend I’m ignoring them, but what I really want is to get revenge.  You know how they say that the best revenge is living well?  Well, they’re wrong.  Sometimes the best revenge is revenge. I want to push them over into a mud puddle.  I want to tell them they look stupid with their newsanchor hairdos and their fat rolls squishing outd of their LuluLemon exercise suits.  I want to tell them they sound like a pair of congested heifers when they snort.  I want to tell them that everyone thinks they are childish and pathetic – but that would make me childish and pathetic, so I can’t say anything.  Except on a public blog which anyone can read.

I want to slash their tires.  Would that be so wrong?

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments »

You know what the best part of going to the hospital is?  The Isagel pumps (Isagel is a brand of that water free, alcohol hand cleaning gel).  Man, I love that stuff!  I probably wash my hands fifteen times every time I visit the kid’s mom in the hospital.  There’s a pump about every ten paces in any direction you go in the hospital, and I use it every chance I get.  It smells so nice!  And after I use it my hands are so soft and bacteria free!

Posted in Health, Personal | No Comments »

First off, I want to say Anaheim is kicking our asses and I am very grumpy about this.  My current Canucks boyfriend Roberto Luongo is looking tired and slow after only one day off since game seven of round one, and with some players out and the undeniable strength of the Ducks, I fear we are in for a second round lose.  Which is how you know I’m a true Canucks fan: we drop our team like a hot rock as soon as the going gets rough.  As Esan says: Stinky ‘Nucks!

Oh look, we just tripped one of our own defensemen.  I have to stop watching now.

So the kid is back at our place.  This means my life has degenerated to answering endless questions about why do we have to go to bed before dawn, and scraping melted chocolate off the inside of the dryer.  But mostly we discuss the relative merits of different species of junk food, as the kid tries to weasel me into buying her crap.  Aren’t Sun Chips the healthiest chips?  Can we get Sun Chips, because they’re whole wheat?  Look, Sun Chips have no transfats, let’s buy some!  Clearly the kid has internalized some messages about the food ingredient hierarchy, but this doesn’t change the fact that Sun Chips are still chips, and chips are garbage food!  But how do you explain marketing manipulation to a 7 year old?  Or the fact that adding a healthy ingredient to a shitty food doesn’t change the shitty food into a healthy food – it just changes it into a shitty food with a good marketing angle.  I know plenty of adults who haven’t figured this out; it’s probably a bit much to expect the kid to.

I’m not a junk food Calvinist.  I eat junk food.  I personally love potato chips, and pretzels, and Mars bars.  But I had to cut most of that stuff out when I decided I didn’t want to be fat anymore, and now it is just an occasional treat for me.  You just can’t eat that stuff every day and expect to stay at a reasonable weight and be healthy.  And kids need the best start they can get, and that means, among other things, making sure that just about everything they ingest is nutritious.  Children do not need potato chips.  They need milk and carrots.  The kid gets a lot more junk food at home than she gets here, and she’s used to having it.  It’s hard for her to adjust to how Husband and I eat, and junk food tastes good, so I can understand why she’s resisting it.  But I’m standing my ground.  We have dessert every night, so it’s not like she is being deprived of sugar.  She likes cinnamon toast with a bit of sugar on it – I’m fine with serving that for breakfast.  But I am not fine with serving her McDonald’s for lunch every day, or giving her a bowl of Smarties as an afternoon snack, or bags of chips just on a whim.  But try explaining the reasoning behind this to a kid!

On the plus side, I got our duvet covers laundered today.  Combine that with fresh sheets, fluffy pillows, a cool and silent room, and a fifth of rye, and you have a good night’s sleep for yours truly!  Huzzah!

Posted in Health, Watching | 2 Comments »

Finally, Vancouver turned on the juice and started playing hard.  So long, Dallas, you bunch of suckers!

Posted in Watching | 1 Comment »

I just got back from an appointment with my trainer.  I’m almost too tired to type.  Yes, even my fingers lift weights.

Okay not really.

So – the gym.  I go twice a week for half an hour.  Most trainers book an hour with you, but mine tries for the half hour.  I do a warm up on my own before I arrive (usually a half hour walk), and I always arrive five or so minutes early.  So my half hour is a concentrated half hour of extreme punishment.  No fucking around on the treadmill.  No wasteful, wasteful chit chat.  It’s all work, all the time.  And by the end of half an hour, I’m so fatigued I doubt I could manage another thirty minutes.

I find this setup works very well for me.  Going twice a week means I always have exercise on my mind – at most I have three days off to begin getting out of the habit.  And since I dance one night a week, really I have three blocks of proper exercise scheduled every week.  I try to do my home routine twice in addition.  That’s a lot of exercise, especially for a slackass like me.  One day I may be able to do half an hour without batting an eye but that day is not today.

And I’m thinking of getting a bike again.  Cycling is basically the only exercise I truly enjoy, just for itself.  Running bores me to death, plus it feels like shit.  It is way, way too hard.  Swimming is too pleasant to make into a workout – I always degenerate into lazy floating and blissing out.  Walking is great but only with a partner to chat with, which requires scheduling with Husband – which hasn’t really happened yet.  But cycling… cycling is a blast.  Even alone – actually, especially alone.  When I was in the first grade and learned to ride a two wheeler on my own, my dad tells me I would ride up and down our block (the maximum range allowed to me) for hours.  Apparently, at six, I had well defined and beefy calf muscles.

Several years ago, my dad gave me a bike for Christmas.  It was an awesome present.  I was living in the north end of East Vancouver (Nanaimo and Hastings, for those who know the area) and working in Richmond.  I cycled to work.  I don’t know how many kilometres that is but I tell you, many.  Did you know the entire city of Vancouver slopes uphill, forever?  Then I moved to the Marpole area (south Vancouver – Heather at Marine), and kept biking to Richmond every day.  The move cut the distance in half, but still – I was a cycling fiend, until some fucker stole my bike.  Then I moved to Halifax.

I haven’t had a bike since, but now that it’s getting nice out I’m thinking about looking at prices for a street bike.  I have no idea what the features or prices are these days.  I don’t want to spend more on a bike than I have spent on a car (that puts a cap on the price of around $600), but can you get a bike that cheap?  Someone told me today that street bikes go for up to eight grand!  That is, simply put, stupid.  Well, stupid if you’re me, meaning a non-athlete.  I think I’d be willing to save up for and spend a maximum of maybe around 700 bucks, helmet and stuff included.  I already have one of those cool camelback things that are little packs just for water and housekeys.  Then all I’ll need is an iPod and I’ll be totally ready to go!

Posted in Health | 1 Comment »

I love the Pharyngula blog, not least because the guy posts like five times a day, and every time I check in I have a little titter about all the work (as a biology professor) he probably isn’t doing. Also, every Friday he has the Friday Cephalopod post which is a beautiful photo of, you guessed it, a cephalopod!  But anyway, he often has great posts and here’s a recent one that I found especially funny :

A creationist explains how it’s okay to drown kittens and puppies.

Posted in Reading | 1 Comment »

I make the biggest salads.  I really do.  You might think you make big salads, but I am here to tell you that mine are bigger.  Tonight we had salad for dinner and it was huge.  You know those big bowls you use to mix cake batter, or to put out chips for all the guys when the hockey is on?  Well, we need one each for dinner because I make salads bigger than god.

My salads are also delicious.  They aren’t fancy but they taste damn good.  They are the salads of my childhood, with avocado and salt added.  So! Good!  You don’t need complication to have flavour.  But of course buy the best veggies you can find.  Here is what is in my salad – (remember it’s going to be BIG):

Romaine lettuce.  One head for two people.  I mean it.

Tomatoes.  One each.

Cucumber.  1/4 of a Long English each.

1 green onion each.

Cheddar cheese, preferably old, about a handful chopped each.

1/2 avocado each.

1 celery rib each.

Carrots – one each, cut up small.

Dressing – I like balsamic and oil, but anything oil and vinegary will do.  Don’t overdo it by dumping a bunch on.  Toss the salad so everything is coated but you can use less.

Pepper.

Rock salt.  This is the crucial ingredient.  Your taste buds will shrivel up with salty death but it will make your salad taste SO GOOD you won’t believe it.

Protein can be added by tossing in a can of rinsed beans of any kind.  Chickpeas are good.  Or try nuts, though personally I don’t like a nutty salad.

Chop, mix, toss, eat, belch.  You’re welcome.

Posted in Health | 3 Comments »

A good comment was left for me. While I generally blog about light, fluffy topics, occasionally I do stray into more serious matter. Vegetarianism is that kind of matter. Without further ado, the comment, and my response:

From Incognito, in reference to A Fish Is Not A Vegetable:

Pescetarianism would be the term for the fish and vegetable ideal. (Thank you!)

But are you also against animal testing? Giving some poor heartless baby a Baboon heart? Lab experiments on mice?

Do we have philosophical consistency in our moral stance on a steakless life?

Do I have philosophical consistency? The short answer is, of course not.

A brief preamble: in general, I choose not to eat meat for two reasons. The first is the deplorable, atrocious living conditions that meat animals suffer under. The second is the massive environmental damage that is a direct result of meat production, be it animal waste runoff or dragnet fishing. But when you get right down to it, vegetarianism is a philosophical farce. Every day I do things that impact the earth and the other creatures on it in terrible, negative ways. I drive my car. I take medications that have doubtless been tested on animals. I study in a field that makes regular use of rodents and primates for research. Even the vegetables I eat are grown on land that has been cleared of its indigenous life to make room for wheat, as well as sprayed with pesticides, and so on.

Even Jains can’t avoid harm.

That said, there are actual, measurable gains to be made as a vegetarian. In fact, a tiny amount of animal meat less is needed for the world now that I no longer buy it, and I imagine that somehow that must translate into less deaths. (Well, probably just more waste… but if you imagine the vegetarians as a block, then we have some progress.) The same can be said, by extension, for environmental damage that results from meat production. Less meat made means less damage done. These are worthy achievements.

But in fact I do think humans are more important than animals. I totally support medical testing on animals, though I believe it should be as ethical as possible (for example, you can easily look up research standards, and they require things like application of anesthetics, comfortable living conditions with access to other animals for socialization, and so on). Of course testing is cruel and awful, but I’m comfortable paying that price for the maintenance and advancement of medical science. If a baby needed a baboon heart (I don’t know anything about this, including whether it’s ever happened or is even possible), I say fuck the baboon. Lab experiments on mice? In general, I support ethical use of animals in scientific research. I personally wouldn’t want to do it, and I guess that tells you something – but I am untroubled by the use of mice or rats in labs. Yet I wouldn’t buy fur and I also don’t buy leather.

There is some kind of complicated math of relative value at play here and I am no philosopher, and don’t pretend it’s airtight or perfectly reasoned out. So bear with me.

It an inescapable reality that we live in a tightly interlocked ecosystem here on Earth. If we don’t change how we live, we’re going to find ourselves without a viable planet. I suppose a cynic could say I make my choices ultimately to serve the best interest of people, and to a degree that is true. But there is also an ethical component.

Someone said we should eat meat because we’re top of the food chain. I think that’s bogus. Given we’re top of the food chain, does that give us the right to eat meat? Here’s another question: because men are bigger and stronger than women, does that give them the right to rape? What’s the difference? There is none. In both cases we have one most powerful agent, one victim group, and one desire (we’ll leave aside the multiplicity of reasons for raping and meat eating and just lump them together under the heading of “things we want to do,” i.e. pleasures). In both cases the agent is able to enforce their will. But as a society we think one is fine and the other is punishable by jail time. I realize drawing analogies is fraught with danger but I hope you see that my point is this: just because we can eat meat isn’t a good enough reason to do so. We are a thinking animal, and there is some responsibility that comes along with that. Once you find out how most meat is produced, it becomes impossible to justify supporting that system. Once you learn about the social and mental lives of animals, it starts to feel bad to kill them. We love our pets to distraction; why can’t we see that a pig is just a pet we haven’t met yet?

Where is this going… certainly I am an imperfect creature who is obviously only partially committed to change and to my morals. But you have to start somewhere. Being imperfect is no reason to abandon the whole project entirely. It’s not like we can’t live harmlessly on Earth so we should just go and light all the oil wells in Iraq on fire, what the hell, the planet’s doomed anyway. I believe every bit counts. I’m doing some bits. They count.

Posted in Personal, Vegetarianism | 5 Comments »

A dilemma is a problem that requires a choice between two equally undesirable choices. The clue to the “bi” nature of the dilemma is the “di” prefix, which means two. For example, you’re on an airplane, very hungry, and the stewardess offers you your choice of meal: mystery meat meatloaf made of Spam, and manky fish of unspecied species and indeterminate age. The food tray smells in general like ass. But you’re hungry so you have to chose one of two options. This is a dilemma.

But what about this: “Gee, I just can’t figure out what to have for dinner. What a dilemma.” Sorry, not a dilemma! This is just a problem, because there are more than two choices (various foods at home are available, by implication). It could become a dilemma if the situation were revised slightly: “The only things to eat in the house are old slices of Wunderbread and a single saggy cantaloupe. Which should we have for dinner?” Two choices, and you must pick one… it’s a dilemma!

If you have three choices, that’s also not a dilemma.  A dilemma has two – and only two – choices.

If your problem is really hard, that still doesn’t make it a dilemma. If your problem is super, deeply, truly, hugely difficult and hard and brutal… it’s still just a problem (albiet a big one) because a dilemma is only if you are forced to choose between two poor options. This is why being on the horns of the dilemma makes sense: there are two horns, and you are going to end up on one of them.

As usual, those commonly mistaken people are acknowledged: “a difficult problem” is included in the dictionary under dilemma as a disputed reference. But you don’t want to be part of the commonly mistaken, do you?

———————————

As an aside, my reference for the educational PSBs is my home edition of the Oxford English Reference Dictionary, which is one of the many offshoots of that most glorious dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary. One day Husband and I hope to own an OED and at that time will require a second apartment in which to house it.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

I’m starting the Public Service Announcment category because I sometimes find myself with something I’d like to beef about but that doesn’t really fit any categore well on its own.  And I suspect the theme of all these entries will be tied to educational matters, so I hereby begin the inaugural issue of the Educational PSB with an explanation of when and how to use the words quote and quotations.

Quote is a verb. (verbs are action words)

e.g.: I loved what you said and would like to quote your speech.  Can I quote you on that?

Quotation is a noun. (nouns are thing words)

e.g.: What an interesting quotation.  I haven’t heard such a powerful quotation in ages.

“Quote” used as a noun (“What a great quote”) is only acknowledged in the dictionary, in the last place entry, as a colloquialism, meaning a common misuse.  We all hate mistakes, including the common ones, so please use these words accurately.  For the love of god, stop saying “I’m going to read you a quote here…”  It’s a quotation, people, a quotation!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »