More cookie dough

This McSweeny’s column is really funny.

I totally respect what Al Gore is trying to do, but there’s something about this title card that bothers me and I can’t place my finger on what it is exactly.

Four acronyms I encountered today that basically mean the same thing:
AIS – Aquatic Invasive Species
NIS – Non-indigenous Species
NIZ – Non-indigenous Zooplankton
ANS – Aquatic non-native Species


Why does it always take me two tries to log into Webmail? Do I really type my password incorrectly the first time I type it – every time?

I think I’m on about 5 e-mailing lists that I’m constantly unsubscribing to, to no avail. And they’re all about things happening in Edmonton. I haven’t lived there for 1 year! I’m not going to be adjudicating any science fairs or going to the Starlite Room anytime soon, you know?

There’s a lot in the news here about the price of lobster. The price per pound is so low right now that fisherman can’t break even. One article I read summed it up really well: “In short, the demand for lobster just isn’t there.” THEN STOP FISHING IT! If you provide a service that no one wants, you go out of business. If you sell a product no one wants, you go out of business. You don’t just keep going. If no one wants lobster, selling it roadside for more than market value doesn’t make any sense. This is what worries me about the fishing industry. What happens if people start to eat less fish and seafood? Pretend for a moment that all the people like me, tilting at the fishing windmills, actually have an impact and people start to think “Hmm, maybe my temporary craving for raw fish meat isn’t more important than the right of that species to survive and play an integral role in a very sensitive ecosystem we really don’t understand all that well.” Or something to that effect. My point is that if demand decreases dramatically, will the fishing industry respond with a corresponding decrease in fishing? Probably not, right? They’ll cry foul and get money from the government. God, this is depressing.

They discovered a Super-Earth Waterworld! I wonder if there are fish? Oh, probably not. If you read the article it says the water is all in ice form. Maybe there are special ice-burrowing fish? Some fish on our planet have anti-freeze proteins in their bodies. Granted, they can’t actually come into contact with the ice, but maybe on Super-Earth they’ve evolved to live in the ice. I’ll bet they’re cute. In my head I’m totally picturing them wearing little scarves and ear muffs. And mittens! On their fins! Aww.

A gay MP here in NS sent out Christmas cards with a picture of him & his husband on it. It’s the tamest picture I’ve ever seen, two guys standing feet apart with a dog between them. Of course, some people have taken offence. Who are these people with so much time and energy they can spend so much of it hating people for no real reason? Most days, I can barely be bothered to hate individual CBC commenters for very specific and justifiable reasons, let alone hate an entire subset of the human population just for falling in love.

Speaking of...the latest CBC comments to irk me were on this story about an international adoption agency that had gone bankrupt but was now back and continuing to help Canadians adopt children from Ethipoia. Some of the commenters said they should be adopting Canadian kids, because they need help too. Okay, that’s a reasonable argument. But then there were some people who seemed entirely anti-adoption. Like, they were against adopting kids from any where for any reason. What kind of a stance is that? How can you be against adoption? I mean, you may not think it’s the right thing for you personally, but to look down upon it as a dirty and horrible practice? What do you suggest we do with these kids, then? Use them to feed the poor?

An actual quote from a work email looking for volunteers to help out at the food bank putting Christmas boxes together: “Dress in practical clothing and we’ll all make a difference together!” Even taken in context, it’s funny. And, I just got an email inviting me to “drop in to the library reference area Thursday morning to share some Christmas cheer with the library staff.” Do they mean liquor?

A friend passed on a mixed metaphor she heard from a co-worker: "He always gets the rotten end of the shaft." I think this is the same co-worker who once wanted to make sure everyone was on the same “wave page.”