Les Bonnes Choses

It has come to my attention that some people are woefully ignorant of the commonlaw practice of yoink. 'Yoink', for the uninitiated, is the phrase, accepted in most Western jurisdictions, that legitimizes certain classes of theft that are about to be perpetrated. For example, a tray of cookies sits on a table for a meeting that has not yet begun. You enter the room, full of witnesses. A cookie, l'objet du désir, has not been offered. Declaring 'yoink' as you grab a cookie allows you to escape the consequences that would normally follow such a blatant theft.

I have personally confirmed from Pat that this practice extends as far Southwest as California, and from Jeff that yoinking is also practiced at least as far Northeast as Montreal. I have yet to verify whether it is also practiced along the Eastern seaboard, or indeed in Europe, though because of the similarities between our legal systems, I would not be surprised to find the yoink practiced in Western Europe.

It is important to note the specific exclusions provided in yoink commonlaw. First, kidnapping cannot be legitimized by a yoink. Babies, can be yoinked for a short period of time, but only if the yoinked child is kept in the same room as its parent (the yoinking of an infant who has just filled its diaper is, in fact, welcome). The charge of grand theft also supersedes yoink commonlaw, and thus vehicles, jewellery, and other high-value items are also not typically subject to yoinking.

This concludes today's expert legal advice column. Be sure to read next week's column to learn how "woob-woob-woob" in the voice of Larry Fine allows one to avoid the charge of reckless endangerment that would otherwise follow the execution of dangerous stunts.

I'm presently sitting in a round egg chair, hoping to passively restore shape to my bum, and undo all the flattening that happened over the course of all the driving I've done since Friday. I'm back in London for a few days for a wedding between good friends that happened this weekend. What with all that driving, I've had plenty of time over the last 72 hours to think, and have thought of at least three things that would make great blog topics. And right now I can't seem to remember a single one of them. Or maybe I can, but, upon sober second thought, no longer see how I might draw it out into a multiparagraph entry. The only thing that comes to mind right now is that I have recently redoubled (I guess that means it's an exponential function) my efforts to instill into Jude a healthy aversion to germs. A month ago, he experienced some gastrointestinal discomfort, plausibly related to eating a peanut-butter covered saltine cracker that had fallen to the ground at the Chicago zoo that day. The sore tummy remains a salient memory, and I took advantage of it to tell him about how bugs get on your hands and into your tummy, and that these bugs don't like soap. After only a day's worth of training, Jude now routinely scrubs down his hands and forearms, up to his elbow, like he's prepping for surgery. And just last week, we were listening to Chicago Public Radio as Jude helped me prepare dinner. On one program, they were talking about bacteria, which I told Jude was the name for the bugs that make your tummy hurt. Naturally, after learning about BACteria, he asked about FRONTeria.

We're in the US Midwest, which comes with a number of subtle differences from Southwestern Ontario. For one, they're in the Central timezone. This timezone sucks. Why? Because, as a market, it doesn't merit its own broadcast schedule. The Eastern timezone, containing the entire Eastern seaboard gets the network news at 6:30, filler crap like Wheel of Fortune and Entertainment Tonight at 7:00 with primetime running from 8:00 to 11:00 for the late night news. The Central timezone gets the same programming, but one hour earlier. I suppose for those holiday cartoon specials that I remember from my childhood, that could be a good thing because the kiddies don't have Charlie Brown as an excuse to stay up late. Not that I watch much primetime television, but if I did, I'd find it irritating to have to rush through dinner and cleanup in order to catch the opening scenes of my favourite series.

Yes, favourite. Not favorite. Another subtle difference -- one that I relish when I send out memos or leave notes. I'll spend an extra minute or two trying to think of synonyms just so that I can use words that use a 'u' in the British/Canadian spelling that does not appear in the American spelling.

Finally, we have the midwest accent. Or 'eayccent'. It's not quite as pronounced (to my ear, at least) nor come with the same dim stereotype as a 'Sathern' drawl, but it's apparently noticable enough that, while visiting a store today, Rebecca was mortified when Jude asked why "the lady asked if she could open theyat for us?" Yes, 'that' has two syllables here.

I begin by presenting the price per ounce of a number of liquids, gathered from various sources on the internet:

• Molten gold: $1016.20 per ounce


• LSD: $120 per ounce


• Inkjet ink: $40 per ounce


• Human blood: $11.83 per ounce


• Soy sauce: $.12 per ounce


• Chocolate syrup: $.10 per ounce

My final bill from Rogers came in the mail yesterday. It sat, opened and exposed to the elements, on my dining room table for part of the day. I had noticed by bedtime that the heading on the page had become smudged. I didn't think much of it at the time, but it occurred to me this morning to take a closer look at the bill whereupon I saw every indication that the bill I was holding was printed out on an inkjet printer.

Now, if you go into any Staples/Office Depot/whatever, and ask for help selecting a printer, the nice young man with the popped collar and frosted tips will ask what you need it for. If you were to say something like, "oh, I just want to print off some pictures and maybe directions from the internet", then you might be directed to any number of nice inexpensive inkjet printers. If, on the other hand, you said, "oh, I run a multimillion dollar telecommunication company and need to send multipage bills to a hundred thousand households," well, the store associate will either advise you to purchase a high-volume laser printer, or else MacGyver the machines to print in human blood, which, as you can see from the list above, would result in a 75% savings over the lifespan of the printer. It might be more appropriate, too. Damn leeches.

Here's a bunch of mini entries. Unfortunately, nothing happened today that merits a grand narrative, so you will have to pick and choose from among them. They won't all be winners, but they're sufficiently small that any duds won't leave a bad taste in your mouth. Last thing I want is some nasty reply from ingrates like my sister or Effamy.

1. Jude quote of the day: "Daddy, I want some more broccoli."
   I would typically be on the lookout for something a little more amusing in the way of Jude quotes, but a child requesting more broccoli is really worth mentioning.



2. It's taken me 35 years, but I finally have a bunk bed. I came home early today to assemble it. I think I may change things up and sleep on a top bunk tonight, just for kicks. Jude likes making forts out of pillows and blankets, and having a top bunk from which to hang blankets is going to make our forts both more elabourate and easier to build.



3. Fortunately, the Jude quote of the day is not a repetition of the expletive he heard me say when putting the bunk bed together. He tried to repeat it, but said something that sounded more like "Daddy, why did you say shut?". I told him it was because I couldn't close the pieces together.



4. I have been using Chex mix for breading for the last two months. It is absolutely brilliant on fish. I discovered it by accident in August when I was lacking anything else that I could grind up into crumbs.



5. Finally: net neutrality: yay! Rogers/Shaw monopolies and collusion: boo! Or, should I say "oops"?

It's just after 5pm here in Evanston, and our buddy Amy should be over shortly to look after les messieurs so that Rebecca and I can go out to Koi for dinner. Nothing good ever hits the theatres anymore (though I think I would like to see the new Ricky Gervais movie coming out in a couple of weeks called The Invention of Lying), so it'll be an early Friday birthday night for us.

In preparation, I have just finished making dinner for Amy and Jude: macaroni and cheese (with peas for nutrition and bacon for tastiness). Rebecca grated a metric boat-load of cheese, which I turned into the most amazing cheese sauce I have ever made. I used most of it in the macaroni, with about 1/2 cup remaining. We're eating it with corn tortilla chips right now. It's really good. I kind of want to skip going out and just eat this cheese sauce for my birthday dinner.

I figured I should make one last post before I become decidedly in my mid-thirties. Assuming I can make it to 70, I should be up for a mid-life crisis this year. Unfortunately, I get to spend tomorrow fretting about a three minute talk I have to give on my research. I remember in fourth grade when we had to do public speaking that a minute seemed like an eternity, and when shorter was better. How times have changed. Three minutes is not a lot of time to describe twelve to eighteen months' work and, I believe more importantly, persuade the audience that they should care.

What will I get in return? Rebecca and I are probably just going out for dinner while Amy entertains les messieurs chez nous.

And on that note, I'm going to bed, so that I can wake up elderly but refreshed.

One thing I have noticed since moving to the US over a month ago is that the telemarketers are much more of a nuisance. When I first mentioned this to someone, they replied, "well, don't they have ten times the population? Of course you're getting more phone calls!" True, with ten times the population of Canada, it stands to reason that there might be ten times the number of businesses calling people. But they also have ten times as many phones to call. No, proportionally, there seems to be a higher volume of telemarketing traffic, at least by my estimation. In Canada, they recently instated a Do Not Call list. Problem with that was that many people experienced an increase in telemarketer calls after registering their numbers: In effect the list was a registry of valid phone numbers that could be called for the next 30 days.

The DNC list first showed up here in the US, however, and I figured that I am unlikely to receive any more telemarketers calling than I already am. So this evening, I registered my phone number. After 30 days, I'm just going to start making crap up on the phone.

Many years ago, I found myself considering my career options. Daan's dad was a clinical psychologist, which appealed to me at the time. However, I have also always had an interest in the life sciences, so I also considered psychiatry, which is kinda similar, except it requires an MD. One important consideration is that I have never been a particularly good sleeper -- being unable to cat-nap when being on call for thirty six straight hours would probably lead me into more than one malpractice suit, and permanent eye-bags. Thus, when I entered the first year of my undergrad at King's College, my course selection sent me down the road to my PhD in psychology (though I decided along the way that being a clinician was not for me and instead found myself studying cognition and now cognitive neuroscience, which is kinda medical, in a poser kind of way).

I am presently watching How It's Made, a Canadian-produced program that runs on Discovery back in Ontario, and on the Science Channel here in Illinois. As the program's title may imply, it shows how various objects are made; tonight, for example, we had coloured pencils, fancy ball-point pens and iron chandeliers. Just moments ago, however, the icky feeling I got when they were showing how various blood products were made out of whole blood drawn from volunteers reaffirmed yet another reason that I was correct not to pursue med school.

In fact, the whole purpose of this blog entry was to serve as a distraction so that the television program didn't cause me to pass out.

A few days ago, I mused about what I might want for my birthday. Don't get me wrong, if one of you crazy people delivered a yacht or a jet pack to my door, I would most certainly be delighted. And wonder whether you're involved with the Miami drug trade where yachts are plentiful, or come from the future where jet packs are plentiful. However, f'reals, I have been trying to figure out whether I want the pleasure of owning a cell phone again. In London, I seldom used my phone, and so never came anywhere close to using up the 200 minutes per month that Rogers charged me for (after a month of particularly gratuitous usage, I managed to use 50 minutes).

Then my jerk* of a brother-in-law goes and brings his iPhone with him on our car ride from London to Chicago. He's all texting Heather hither and yon, finding our position on a map because my GPS had been stolen, and looking up CITAG. If you're shipwrecked on an island, you want a guy who knows how to catch fish and build a fire using only a pair of shoelaces and a swatch of canvas. If you're lost in the arctic, you still want the firebuilding, but are going to need some rabbit-trapping skills. For pretty much any other situation, you want an iPhone.

Aside: if Apple uses that line, or any derivative thereof, I will sue them into the stone age -- as in, before 3G wireless carriers existed.

Anyways, after JPM stepped in with some words of wisdom, I realized that, if I don't mind only being able to phone from WiFi hotspots, Skype on an iPod Touch at $.021/min is pretty inexpensive; probably even less than the pay-as-you-go plans I've seen. The downside: I just recently bought myself a very satisfactory mp3 player (which would become obsolete), and iPods are the sorts of things that get stolen or get you mugged.

*Note that I don't actually think that my brother in law is a jerk. I rather like him, and have even been accused of having a man-crush on him -- I don't, but will admit that he is somewhat dreamy in a rugged, well-educated kind of way.

Monsieur Jude reached the 'why?' stage earlier this year and hasn't looked back. Unfornately, he also has a pretty good grasp of the while(TRUE){} programming structure, so once he starts asking why [some X], you can rest assured that he'll ask why [your explanation for X] until you distract him with something shiny (ideally, a new 1:55 scale die cast member of the Pixar Cars cast, or even one of those made up cars that I'm sure never appeared in the movie and yet appear on store shelves).

This evening, his stomach squeaked at bedtime.
"What sound was that?"
"That was your belly"
"Why?"
"Because your belly squeaks sometimes."
"Why?"
"... Because it has doors in it."
"Why?"
"Because sometimes doors squeak. Your belly has doors in it to keep all the food from going in there at the same time."
"Why?"
"Because it would get too crowded in there if all the food went in at the same time."
"Oh."

He has a memory like a trap, so he's going to remember that his belly has doors in it right up until he takes high school biology. Then he can learn the word sphincter and have a grand old time, just like we did.

I've tried unsuccessfully a couple of times to submit links to Fark.com. If you're not familiar with the website, it's basically a news aggregator where the headlines are written by a bunch of smartarses. Sometimes you need to click on the story to get the joke; other times the headlines are a self-explanatory play on words or meme. Unfortunately, I'm just one of a horde of web savvy smartarses out there, so getting a headline submission approved is actually pretty difficult.

After today's failure, I decided, screw it. I've got my own forum for smartarsery. So I present my rejected submission for today:

The hunter becomes the hunted

Update: the revisionist bastards at CBC have revised their story. As originally posted, the pair was ghost hunting.

Fine, Carrie.

My birthday is coming up pretty soon, and if you're like most people, you haven't yet bought me a gift. I must admit that I am partly to blame for this, as I have not made generally public a list of suitable gifts. I also must admit that I am becoming just like every other hard to shop for dad out there. However, I can't see how it can be any other way: you're born into this world all bare-ass with nothing. From there on, you're a collecting machine so that there comes a time when you really don't need anything else. Sure, there's lots of stuff out there that I don't have but might like, though not enough that I've already gone out and gotten it for my own damn self. Other things can't be put on a birthday wish list with a straight face, like one of those 35 foot yachts that I've been seeing out in the harbour on Lake Michigan as we follow Lake Shore into downtown Chicago. Yes, one of those things would be a fantastic gift (though upkeep on one of those things would be a bitch), but I don't run in the kind of circles where yachts might be a gift-giving idea. Perhaps if someone could coordinate all of my readers; maybe each could chip in a couple of bucks?

You know, I remember being in the kitchen of my grandparents' house on Oxford St. at Christmas time, 1979. My mom or dad (can't remember which) asked what I wanted for Christmas. My answer: a jet pack. I must have picked the term up on the schoolyard, where the kids played Star Wars every recess. I also remember trying to draw a jet pack to show my parents what the hell I was talking about. I couldn't have been that committed to the idea because, although I am quite sure I did not get a jet pack, neither do I remember being disappointed that Christmas. Maybe I just didn't draw it very well.

So, yeah, a yacht or a jet pack. Take your pick.

They deliver mail on Saturdays here in the US. Isn't that weird? I also get it delivered right to my door, which is kind of nice. Now that my cheques have arrived though, I don't really have much else to look forward to in my mailbox.

My inbox, however, is another thing altogether. I had been having problems retrieving my GMail inbox contents from two accounts in Thunderbird. I use Thunderbird because I hate using webmail interfaces. Not sure why my sensibilities demand a standalone application for reading my email, but that seems to be how I roll. For the last few weeks, however, there's been a problem with the system, which I have documented in earlier blog posts, and also been trying to debug in an online forum (I am user Chris M). If you were to follow that last link and scroll down to the end, you would find that the culprit seems to have been the Lightning plug-in trying to sync with GCal. This is a recent development, because I had been using GCal with Lightning for some while, however I recently switched from using the Provider add-on to using the native CalDAV calendar syncronization.

Coincidence?
Maybe.
Or maybe it was ...
Murder most foul!