Les Bonnes Choses

Reader John writes in from Maryland today to alert me to the following research, which contradicts my previous statement on the amazingness of grapefruit:

(Source: http://xkcd.com/388/)
Clearly, according to these data, grapefruit does not compare favourably to most other fruits. Fortunately, I have a powerful, dedicated quad-core computer available to run the statistics, so I will begin a cluster analysis of various produce on these and other dimensions to see if I can account for these results.

Thank you John for writing in. Because your email was selected from the hundreds of emails we receive here at Les Bonnes Choses each week, you will be receiving the official Les Bonnes Choses tee-shirt in the post.

As a result of my status as a parent and an uncle to some pretty young kids, I have been exposed to quite a bit of what's being served up to kids these days. Most of it is just crap. I have a few friends who are in the animation industry (here's where I get to tag them), and I know that a few of them get irritated by the crappy animation that gets foisted on them because companies get all kinds of tax credits for producing this crap. It's like they print their own money. Surely you're familiar with the old Flintstones or Amazing Spiderman (trippy '70s bongo version) looping background gambit; it's like that, but slightly less obvious, though once it gets pointed out to you, you can't miss it (here's one: Next time you have occasion to see a cartoon, be on the lookout for extended periods of dialog where the screen is mostly filled with a character's face -- here the animators basically use of the head as a background, and only have to animate a mouth). Don't get me started on the plots.

Kids music seems to be similarly crappy. How many recordings of Old McDonald (sung either by a swarm of atonal, yelling kids, or else some saccharine vocalist) does the world need? Fortunately, Rebecca is chronically reading blogs, often written by mom-knitters, and seems to pick up recommendations for music that isn't total crap. I am rather pleased to be able to say that, instead of having a collection of Barney's sh*ttiest hits, we have CDs like For the Kids, too, (I really like John Lee Supertaster, by They Might Be Giants, I Often Dream of Trains, by Robyn Hitchcock, and Meow Meow Lullabye by Nada Surf). More recently, we picked up Blue Moo, which features some really well-done songs by artists like BB King, Brian Wilson, Sha Na Na. It's like they actually put in a bit of effort. If it happens to be in the CD player, I listen to it in the car even if Pokey isn't with me.

It's like how your parents didn't mind watching Sesame Street with you when you were little. Anyways, I just wanted to put in my $.02 on the topic. And tag a bunch of parents.

For the last few weeks -- let's say month and a half -- I have been on a grapefruit kick. I can't get enough of the things. Fortunately, Rebecca usually peels and defleshes (the underlines from Firefox's spellchecker¹ is suggesting that defleshes is not a word) the segments, leaving behind only the good stuff. We have progressed from eating six to eating eight grapefruits in a week. I'd say I was on a grapefruit diet, except it would be completely untrue.

Fancy sidenote: when you have a plastic container full of grapefruit sections, it fills up at the bottom with grapefruit juice. I discovered that fresh grapefruit juice makes for a nice martini-ish type drink. This evening I mixed:
2 oz of some random Christmas gift exchange Japanese vodka-like alcohol (I'll have to ask Kaz what it was)
1 oz of Triple Sec
8 oz of grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed from some grapefruits that were not satisfactory for eating, but fine for juice
Had I only added a splash of lemon juice (or maybe peel for garnish?) then the drink would have been like marmalade.

Before I hit the publish post button, I realized I should also add that I made the drink to share with Rebecca. I am not a lush.

Finally, I would like to investigate this peanut butter and cheerios phenomenon that Miranda claims is il fait du yum. I am skeptical, but want to know more so I can give a justified opinion.

¹The spellchecker also claims that spellchecker is not a word.

What can you do with a degree in psychology? An age-old question, asked by an endless parade of newly minted university graduates. I think we have an academic counsellor on the 7th floor who will help answer that question. When I first graduated, at the height of the first internet bubble, my familiarization with cognitive psychology landed me my first big-boy job as an interface designer for a startup company with a web-based research project - sort of like an automated Google. But what will an advanced degree in psychology get you? Hopefully, for me, it will land me a tenured position at a university where I never again have to worry about working for a company that can't make payroll, or with micromanaging clients. However, I find it amusing that a PhD in cognitive neuroscience is also coveted by the people at Nestle in Switzerland (yes, the same Nestle that makes your cocoa powder).

I would it very amusing to have oompa loompas for research assistants. That, my friends, would be a tightly run lab.

Some observations:
Deanna likes milk; Graeme likes milk; Miranda, Rebecca and I do not like to drink milk, though we will have it on cereal. Miranda likes 2 yogurts; Rebecca would also eat 2 yogurts. Deanna would eat 1/5 of a yogurt. Graeme's yogurt status is unknown to me.
My fleece zip-up top smells like the middle of March.

This reads like a kid's book -- for kids with adhd. The illustrations would be funny. And random.

P.S., If I mention Michelle, then I can tag her when this note gets imported into facebook!
P.P.S., I wish the bunnies were on facebook.

Update: Through the magic of static cling, I had a dishcloth stuck to the inside of my fleece top all afternoon, which I pulled out in the middle of a conversation with Tasha. Usually people don't produce dishcloths in the middle of conversations, so again, that was random.

Today, Rebecca and I went to Toys 'Я' Us (I get some pleasure out of making sure I get that reversed R character to display). Our niece and nephew keep fighting over a particular toy car from the Pixar movie Cars. My solution was to get a second one so they can both be happy. Rebecca said that makes me a good uncle. I disagree. I may be a good uncle, but that's not why. Rather, it's because I am so awesome at the XBox game Rock Band. We went into the electronics corral sort of on a mutual dare to buy a Wii. While loitering around, I saw the Rock Band game set up, and decided to try my hand at playing the drums, since I've always fancied myself to be innately talented where rhythm is concerned. Scrolling down the menu, I saw the song Creep, with which I am fairly familiar, so I thought I stood a decent chance of not making myself look foolish (or at least, moreso than necessary). This being the first time I ever played the game, and given that I am not actually a percussionist, I opted for the easiest setting. I think it was a bit too easy though, because the bass pedal line was missing most of the beats that I know are in the song. I didn't actually realize that there were bass pedal targets for the first half of the song, so, it wasn't until the Toys 'Я' Us employee pointed out that I was hitting the bass pedal too much that I started racking up the points. And rack them I did! Just ask the crowd that formed behind me. It was like a scene from a cheesy movie -- except I'm not a nerdy teen (was), and my garage band didn't win the school battle of the bands, and I already have the hot chick (Rebecca will likely not be getting $30 of roses from me this week, so this blatant move will have to do).

So, uh yeah. Now I want to play that bloody game again. Perhaps on medium difficulty (I need all the bass beats in there to help me keep the rhythm). I wonder if Heather's fiancee has it, or if I can persuade Kevin to invest in it...

I love drums. I will let Jude get drums if he wants them.

I have been encouraged to mention my dream from a couple of nights ago which was extremely random. In it, I was some kind of investigator driving around in either a convertible, or else on a bicycle (and probably both, intermittently). I was looking for some kind of shady dealer, who ended up being some made-up person from the Gosnell family (Tom Gosnell is one of London's past mayors, is presently on city council, and his family does well for themselves with their company, Gosnell Paving). And after I caught up with this made-up Gosnell character, we had to duck under a bridge and keep out of the searching beam of light coming from the flying spaghetti monster which was circling above like a helicopter. That last part I think came from me being able to hear the sound of the fan, which I have turned on every night for the white noise to drown out the incessant whine of my tinnitis (and for all I know, the constant hum for 8 hours a night is aggravating the problem).

Last night's dream just involved Amy chastising me because my experiment that I ran using cohort and rhyme competitors didn't use ERP. Or something like that. I think it made sense at the time. But in your dreams, most things do.

This evening, on Ideas, a program on CBC Radio 1, they were discussing the topic of tolerance. I don't generally listen to that program, but it was kind of interesting in that it would be the kind of discussion into which I wouldn't mind being inserted. I don't know if it was a rerun, but I kept waiting for someone to make the point that tolerance implies that something needs to be tolerated -- which can be offensive, if you think about it. For example, to proudly advertise that you are tolerant of religions other than your own implies that there is something you find to be repugnant about these other religions, but you stoically tolerate them, as one might tolerate a bad smell or something. What is the right way to go about deciding as a society what sorts of actions and beliefs should be tolerated anyways? It's all really tricky. I will need to get this all figured out before I make my bid to become a benevolent dictator.

This past weekend, Rebecca and I were a host couple for the course they make engaged couples take if they are going to get married in the church. Now, Rebecca and I are buddies with the baby Jesus, but we're somewhat subdued in the expression of said Jesusness. So it came as some relief, both to me, and also to the engaged couples, that the weekend wasn't all over-the-top with the Jesus. Our responsibilities included giving a 15-20 minute talk. The talks were kind of generic Christian themed, at least, according to their titles, but really, the content of the talks consisted of practical advice about communicating and maintaining your relationship with your partner -- basically the sort of thing that applies to pretty much everyone regardless of their religious outlook. It's not like it was all nonsense about "just pray and everything will be okay", which is maybe the sort of bum rap that churchy things might get. Fortunately, there was another young newbie couple, and they were really nice. And charismatic. Like, I think they both rolled at least 15 on charisma. They invited the rest of the couples to dinner at their house some time in April. I failed my will save, so I accepted.
That last part should have made sense to nobody except a small handful of people with very peculiar interests. Will Wheaton, and the general readership at Fark.com would've gotten it.