My big mouth

Maybe I SHOULD ride my bike in front of a car next time and hope it hits the part of the brain which handles linguistics. I wouldn't mind being a cobbler or a carpenter or something for th rest of my life.

Sorry to all my family. Last post/note has been deleted.

Pickled herring

I bought some Ma Baensch brand marinated herring from Sentry yesterday, because it was on sale so I thought it was worth a try. It was packed on the 19th, so they must have just brought it over from Milwaukee. You hear about all the weird things that people used to do to fish to preserve it before the invention of refrigeration which have now become traditional delicacies (e.g. budu, lutefisk).

I'd never had marinated herring before and wasn't sure if it had to be cooked or not before eating. So when I got home, I looked it up in the Joy of Cooking*. You don't have to cook it, since the vinegar in the marinade pickles it. According to the standard recipe, one of the other components of the marinade is milt. That is, fish testicles.

I just had fish sperm on my toast. This is, naturally, a topic that makes some other people nervous.

Anyway, it tastes OK but REALLY REALLY fishy (it's uncooked fish, duh). Next time I want a strongly fish snack I'll get mackerel (a.k.a. sardines) in tomato sauce. Great on toast with some chili.

* Not to be confused with the Joy of Sex, although if you're a werewolf, they're not too different.

AK-47

So I was reading Kenny Sia's blog post about visiting Vietnam and getting a tour of an old Viet Cong headquarters... (contains an ad for Rexona Men's deodorant btw)

(08:13:24 PM) megabigblur: hehe, this guy paid $10 to fire an AK47
(08:13:30 PM) Stim0r: ?
(08:13:36 PM) Stim0r: does that include ammo?
(08:13:43 PM) megabigblur: http://www.kennysia.com/archives/2009/01/adv-if-i-had-an.php
(08:15:37 PM) Stim0r: well, that's actually fairly competitive
(08:15:57 PM) megabigblur: how much is ammo for yours?
(08:16:18 PM) Stim0r: a good bullet for an ar-15/m-16 costs around a dollar per bullet. But that's deer hunting quality
(08:16:38 PM) Stim0r: military quality cotsts around 20-30 cents per bullet for a civilian
(08:16:59 PM) Stim0r: he's holding the magazine
(08:17:01 PM) megabigblur: you mean it's cheaper to shoot people???
(08:17:04 PM) megabigblur: EVIL AMERICANS!
(08:17:07 PM) Stim0r: ...
(08:17:20 PM) Stim0r: the same applies to all governments
(08:17:22 PM) Stim0r: sheesh
(08:17:26 PM) Stim0r: go join the commies
(08:17:51 PM) Stim0r: anyways, you can hold the magazine for a simple gun like the AK, but you really can't do that with any american made guns....it causes jams
(08:18:13 PM) megabigblur: I didn't pay any money to get to fire an AK...I just paid with my dignity. *sigh*
(08:18:23 PM) Stim0r: dignity?
(08:18:29 PM) Stim0r: dear, you gained status
(08:18:36 PM) Stim0r: you can say that you've fired a silenced uzi
(08:18:44 PM) Stim0r: that's hardcore nerd chick action hero stuff there
(08:18:54 PM) megabigblur: I don't want to any more I"m boycotting Israeli products.
(08:19:28 PM) Stim0r: it was american made, dear
(08:19:52 PM) Stim0r: like the desert eagle, designed by jew, made buy fat american

(08:25:16 PM) megabigblur: anyway why is it hceaper to kill people than deer???
(08:25:17 PM) Stim0r: i love kenny's post on the american boycot
(08:25:29 PM) Stim0r: because a deer bullet is meant to kill
(08:25:37 PM) Stim0r: military bullets like wounding better than killing
(08:26:03 PM) Stim0r: it takes 2-3 soldiers to take a wounded soldier off a field
(08:26:27 PM) megabigblur: yeah but you said they were for shooting civilians!
(08:26:43 PM) Stim0r: what?
(08:26:44 PM) Stim0r: where?
(08:26:49 PM) Stim0r: no no no
(08:26:58 PM) Stim0r: bullets that CIVILIANS CAN BUY

By the way, it's not true that you can bury an AK-47 in a bog for a year and it will still work.

Erotic target location error

"Erotic target location error" has got to be one of the funniest phrases I've read in a scientific journal.

(Context: "K. Freund and R. Blanchard (1993) proposed that nonhomosexual MtF transsexualism represents an erotic target location error, in which men whose preferred erotic targets are women also eroticize their own feminized bodies." from the abstract of a paper about parallels between gender identity disorder and amputation fetishes.)

I'm skimming through the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior because I was looking for the published results of the BBC's "Sex ID" survey. It was a collaboration between the Beeb and a bunch of psychologists which gave them a very large data set, because people all over the world read the BBC and people like taking online personality tests. The study is long over but you can take a condensed version of the tests here.

During my senior year of college I got some of my girl-friends to take it and three of us had REALLY HORRIBLE empathy scores (1-3 out of 20). When she heard this, another friend who had scored around 10 shrieked "That's why you guys are always mean to me!" Actually I think those of us who were more tomboy were comparing cojones and hoping we'd get more masculine scores.

I found the issue of Arch. Sex. Behav. with the results eventually, but ended up skimming several other very random papers (as above) along the way. If you're at a large university with a subscription to the journal I suggest doing the same. Human nature is fascinating.

No China dolls, please

I dunno...do I sound like I'm turning into Bulbir Singh?

To: fred@thesundaily.com

Dear Editor,

I would like to point out a highly inappropriate label used for female Chinese nationals in "Police score hole-in-one in raid at golf resort" (Jan 11, 2009) where the first sentence of the article mentions police detaining "10 China dolls and two Indonesian women". The term "China dolls" is both racist and sexist, implying that Chinese nationals who enter the country as GROs or sex workers are not considered human. In addition, since this phrase is a street colloquialism, its use in a mainstream news article sounds unprofessional. I realize this article is from Bernama and was probably not written by theSun's journalists, but I hope that future articles will not contain this kind of language.

Sincerely,

Hwa Shi-Hsia
hwashihsia@gmail.com
--------------------

WisCon

I have lived in the USA nearly 9 years and I'm a HUGE science fiction and fantasy fan and still haven't been to a convention. I'm likely leaving some time this year.

Sooo....anybody wanna go to WisCon with me? Anybody?

Conspiracy theory political thriller...from Canada???

I got together with a bunch of friends tonight and picked out 3 movies from the nearby video rental. One was a movie about a little French girl whose parents become left-wing activists (Blame it on Fidel!). Another was about Canada joining the United States (The Trojan Horse). Another was about how everybody moves to Japan because the world sinks, except Japan (The World Sinks Except Japan).

We ended up watching the Canadian one which was a bit of a mistake on my part cos I didn't realize it was actually a 3-hour miniseries...

Anyway, it turned out to be one of those movies where all the politicians are evil and the hero is a courageous whistleblower, in this case an English journalist. But it was quite funny because we're more used to seeing all these ridiculous conspiracy theory films out of Hollywood, so a ridiculous conspiracy theory movie out of the CBC was something else.

Best exchange:

Madigan: You're supposed to say something comforting.
Shea (CIA agent): I'm an assassin.

Last year's resolution

Last year I made a resolution to be a one-man "matching grant" organization: I would calculate how much I spent on nonessentials (e.g. eating out, leisure items, fun events, clothing (unlike most girls, I tend to consider new clothes nonessential) and so on) and give an equivalent amount to charity, including women's organizations, food aid, medical aid, and Christian organizations. Also, I resolved to spend an equal amount on wildlife conservation and animal welfare as I spent on my cat.

(In the end I decided not to include what I spent on bicycles in the calculation, since my bikes are my only vehicles and therefore essential. This includes the price of the Fuji Absolute that was stolen, which I am STILL upset about. Bike accessories and maintenance supplies, however, are included the calculations.)

As you can see, I did a decent job on the first part of the resolution and an absolutely dismal job on the second. These were my mid-year reports if you're interested.

The $25 to the Four Lakes wildlife rehab was actually guilt money to pay for the care of a baby red-winged blackbird that Lina brought home once. Damn cat. (If I donated to Friends of Ferals and the wildlife rehab center, would they cancel each other out?)

Even though it was my resolution for 2008, I'm going to try to keep doing this, although I'm done with publishing my accounts on the Internet.

My resolution for last year was a proof of concept to show that you don't have to have a lot of money (e.g. Bill Gates) and you don't have to be a "real adult" (i.e. not still in formal education) to be a mini-philanthropist. I'm blogging this not to show off but to show that it's possible.

Resolution for 2009: Learn how to use Linux!!! I bought a secondhand HP TC1100 and installed Fedora on it.

Chivalry is dead

There are all kinds of assholes who hate bikers.

On my way home just now I was signaling to get into the left lane (this is on a small road that is 2 lanes either way, and wasn't busy) and the driver behind me HONKED. I was signalling, moron. You should have been grateful, there are lots of bikers who don't even know how to do that.

Then, as I turned onto the sidewalk, I hit a patch of ice and took a spill (roads are safe, it's sidewalks that'll kill ya). A guy who was walking past just said "That sucks!" cheerfully and kept walking. BASTARD. A girl fell down violently and you didn't even stop to make sure she was unhurt?

Well, on the other hand I was wearing a helmet, balaclava, and ski goggles, so it wasn't immediately apparent that I was a girl but still...! Can you imagine a Victorian gentleman failing to render aid to a lady in such distress?

Never mind, imagine a Victorian lady riding a bike in a balaclava.

Chivalry is dead. I'm going to have more frozen pizza.