I read a headline this morning in the Canadian Press:

“Study finds link between problem gambling and abundance of VLTs”.

Really? I think we should now also commission some studies on the link between peanuts & peanut butter, computer use & Microsoft employees, and I think there may also be a connection between pollution and the abundance of pollutants in the air!!

In all fairness though, the study should do some good. Newfoundland and Labrador plan to reduce the number of VLT’s in the province. But it leads me to wonder why a study is needed to state the obvious before policy makers will consider it? Have the folks in charge lost all common sense?

In other news, I’m taking Catticus to the vet tomorrow to get her fixed. I’ve tried to tell her, but I think she’s hoping I’ll forget. Oh good grief…I’ve become one of those people who talk about their pets as though they’re people. Sorry. Let me rephrase: I’ve tried to tell her she’s going to the vet, but she no more understood that then anything else I’ve ever said to her.

Culinary Differences

I spent my Saturday morning with some friends at Costco. It’s a fair distance away from campus, but is well worth the outing 2-3 times a semester. After we finished our shopping, we headed for our ritual meal at the Costco food court. (It serves the only pizza in Korea that really tastes like pizza.) While we were eating, we noticed 2 different Koreans perform an interesting culinary exercise. I’ve seen it happen on all my other Costco fieldtrips as well. You know the onion dispensers they have (where you turn the handle and the onions grind out)? I have always assumed the onions were to be used as a condiment for a hotdog, or slice of cheese pizza. However, in Korea, it seems to be a common practice to grab a dinner plate, grind the onions onto the plate to make an onion mountain, then cover it in ketchup, mustard and tobasco sauce. The resulting onion platter is then consumed by the forkful as a side dish to accompany a pizza or chicken bake. Hmmm.

I apologize for any typing errors in this posting. I’ve got a cat sleeping on my left arm, and I’m useless at one-handed typing. Sorry.

Sneaked or Snuck?

I was reading an article (the content of which left me feeling incredulous and I’ll get to it in a minute) and the first sentence contained the past tense of the verb “to sneak”. The article used the word ‘sneaked’. It just sounded so wrong I had to check it out. Apparently, according to AskOxford.com, ‘Sneaked’ is the proper British English form, but ‘snuck’ has made its way into the American vernacular over the past century. While it’s still frowned upon by editors and folks who care, (some British dictonaries actually warn against the use of ‘snuck’) ‘snuck’ just sounds right. Funny how the spoken workd changes so much faster and meets with less resistance than the written word.

Now, onto the actual article I was reading. Since I’m a technological dunderhead, I can’t make a link to it. I found it on Yahoo!’s Oddly Enough news page. The long and the short of it is this: A guy from LA meets a girl from Canada in a chatroom. Since he can’t cross the border legally (he was convicted of robbing a Pizza Hut in the US…..WHY??) he walked into Manitoba instead. He’s picked up 100 hours later suffering from hypothermia and is going to lose is fingers to frostbite. Here’s what gets me: (1) He “didn’t really know that there was any place on Earth that could be so cold and so inhospitable,” For goodness sake, IT WAS FEBRUARY IN CANADA!! (2) He never did see his girlfriend … because SHE LIVES IN QUEBEC!!. Amazing. I know everyone loves the Proclaimers song “I would walk 500 miles..” and perhaps people even find it romantic, but really – if you’re setting off on foot to woo your internet girlfriend, wouldn’t you LOOK AT A MAP and/or the weather report?!?! I’m dumbfounded. Absolutely dumbfounded. Really. I’ve been sitting here reading the article over again, and shaking my head so much I’m pretty sure something’s starting to rattle in there. Unbelievable.