I thought that Squant was a joke… But apparently a woman with the right combination of X chromosome genes would in theory be able to see a fourth channel of color in addition to the usual red, green and blue — a tetrachromat instead of a normal trichromat. She would have two distinct “red” (or “green”) channels, and normal green (or red) and blue channels. That woman wouldn’t even know about her ability, but would probably be extra good at telling colors apart or at matching them. And who knows… maybe one day tetrachromats can have monitors made for them that are capable of displaying Squant after all.

Looking into getting electric service started for the apartment I’m moving into next week. Here’s a quote from the site: “Are you in the dark? Report your power outage through our convenient online system.”

Do you see anything wrong with that idea?

I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one, but my computer doesn’t run on hamster-power.

(Okay… so the site also lets you report streetlight problems and downed wires… But it’s funny until you figure that out.)

Coinstar‘s commercial is kind of funny, but there is one fatal flaw with the idea of the Tooth Fairy turning in all of her quarters for crisp twenties — what is she going to do when she gets to a kid’s house and has to leave something under the pillow? Ask his parents for change? Are the kids just going to get really lucky? Or reallyunlucky when she makes use of the pliers to get some extra value out of your mouth (as Terry Pratchett imagines)? And what about after she’s collected all of the teeth? Those have got to be a bitch to carry around, too. Is there a Toothstar machine that changes teeth for sand dollars or mermaid’s purses or whatever the hell they use for currency up in fairyland? And what is the value of the different types of teeth? I think molars must be worth the most.

I found an article that claims that one of the useful purposes of lying about the Tooth Fairy is “giving a child a sense of faith in things unseen”. Yes. That’s great. And then once they discover that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are damn dirty lies, hopefully they’ll learn a valuable life lesson and become skeptics. Critical thinking is a good thing.

I have another question. If the Tooth Fairy was my parents, and Santa Claus was my parents… just who is this God fellow? Are parents really that egotistical? I mean, well… I guess a lot of them do seem to think that they’re omniscient.

While I was learning about the Tooth Fairy, I also found an interesting example of a situation where it would be to one’s disadvantage to be omniscient. In a game of chicken “if A knows that B is in fact omniscient, then A will simply decide to never swerve since he knows B will know his logical decision and B will be forced to swerve to avoid a collision”.

Ha! And this site says that I can’t play chicken with God and win. Shows what they know! Unless God doesn’t mind getting into a huge car wreck (and why would he mind, really). But I think that’s a tie, isn’t it? Good enough for me, against a fucking God!

I’m not really too sure what’s specifically supposed to be memorialized this weekend, but from what I can gather it has something to do with grilling, football, beer, and car sales. Kind of like May Two Four in Canada, but with slightly less beer (Canadians must drink an entire “two four” over the weekend), slightly worse (and wussier) beer, and it seems like camping is not entirely obligatory. I don’t know if there are fireworks, but I can only assume that there are because these kooky Americans seem to find any excuse to blow things up. Is that kind of thing really appropriate on a “memorial” day? I don’t know. I wouldn’t figure that it would be. It’d be like fireworks on Remembrance Day. Seems perverse. Maybe it’s a celebration of the dead. Like an Irish wake. Or maybe everyone is full of shit, doesn’t know what it’s all about, and doesn’t care. Either way, I don’t have any beer or the potential to get any, so screw it!

HHGG Interview with writer Karey KirkPatrick

But what followed was an interesting process because several names were bandied about and I even met with one of them (and we’re talking A list directors here). And the general sentiment from all of them was “No thank you, I don’t want to be known as the guy who screwed this one up.” And part of me understood and another part of me was saying, “Oh God does that mean I’m going to be known as the guy who screwed this up?”

He’d better not be, that’s all I can say.

Hopefully people will give it a chance and remember what DNA wrote about the script: “Whenever I sit down and do another version of Hitchhiker, it highly contradicts whichever version went before. The best this I can say about the movie is that it will be specifically contradicting the first book”, and not go all LOTR-fanoboy-like — I don’t want to hear <nerd voice> “Aaaaaactually, Marvin is supposed to be constructed of brushed steel, not plaaaastic, and chapter seven of ‘The Restaurant at the end of the Universe’ says that Marvin was ‘not in fact a particularly small robot’ [speaker pushes glasses up on nose]– and now he’s being played by a dwarf. This is a complete insult to Douglas Adams’ literary integrity.” </nerd voice>

Actually, I have already heard that. And it made my brain hurt. And it made me want to hurt people. Because the size of the goddamn robot is so crucially important to the stroyline.

And oh no! Ford Prefect is being played by a black, non-British man. Nevermind that last time I checked, England wasn’t “somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse”. Personally, I think the only important description of Ford in the book is (in reference to what the difficult to identify odd thing about him might be) “perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about to go for their neck.” Other than that, I don’t give two shits. Or even one.

Mark Kate and Ashley Plus Size.

I don’t think I’ve noticed plus size clothing for girls before. Have kids gotten that much fatter since I was 11? Or maybe they were just faced with a problem like mine — having to buy women’s sizes that didn’t exactly fit right, either (but er… more horizontally for them than vertically, I guess).

Also sad: There are a couple of payphones nearish to where I live. Based on their location (say, not somewhere where random people would probably need a payphone very often — not a terribly busy street except for residents, not near much of anything but townhouses) I am assuming that the people I see using them (and there is ALWAYS someone using them) are nearby residents with no phoneline of their own. Nearby residents who can’t manage to pay for their own phoneline, but who CAN manage to get a nice shiny automobile to drive up to use the payphone in. And I think I will agree that it is probably more important to have a car than a phone around here.

Parliament has been dissolved, and the 38^th Canadian general election has been called for June 28^th.

Waiting to see how long CNN takes to figure this out. The BBC has the story up… But at least CNN has a “world” section on it’s site. It’s more than I can say for FOX.

I’m in a new riding this year — that looks somewhat likely to end up being won by the Conservatives. Blech! Paul Martin and the Liberals are bad enough…

I get to vote by special ballot this year. Because I’m special. Or out of the country. One of those. I’m still trying to find good sources of info online, since it’s all I have. For my own reference: Canada 2004, Canadian Federal Election 2004 Wiki, Blogs Canada: E-Group Election Blog, Election Prediction Project.

I can just see a nine-year-old, the shortest in his class, stealing mommy’s credit card to buy a bottle of “male enhancement” pills he saw on TV, and being extremely disappointed to find that they do not, despite guarantees, make one 25% bigger.

Could the ads be any more vague? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wash my feminine.

After two hours of driving, four hours of sitting in a waiting room, and another two hours of driving… I can now work legally in the United States. Which means I will shortly be complaining about my crappy job, instead of how crappy it is to be forced to sit around all day doing nothing. Once I get a crappy job, that is. I took a look at the classifieds. Truck drivers, hairstylists and dental assisstants sure have it made. But unless I want to work at Burger King, things are looking pretty sparse for me. I’m afraid that I’m just not a dynamic self starter. Not a team player. Not results oriented. Not suited for a fast-paced environment. Not motivated towards excellence. Not able to read Tom Peters without vomiting.

What did clean linen smell like before the invention of ‘Clean Linen’ scented fabric softener?

Because whatever it smelled like… Presumably like some other kind of fabric softener… Wouldn’t that logically mean that this new ‘Clean Linen’ scented fabric softener would have to smell exactly like the scent of fabric softener that people used to use when cleaning their linen before the invention of ‘Clean Linen’ scented fabric softener?

Or have I made an incorrect assumption somewhere here?*

Don’t people have any new ideas anymore? Everything is a remake these days. Apparently even fabric softener scents…

_{* I do, of course, realize that fabric softener scents don’t follow any sort of logical rules. If they did, ‘Spring Rain’, ‘Mountain Spring’, ‘Surf’ and ‘Morning Dew’ would all smell exactly the same. Like nothing. Like water.}