I promise not to do this too often

I don't wade into the soi-disant "Mommy Wars" on this blog too often, essentially because I'm worried that if I do, I'll never stop. I'll wind up hunched over my monitor for days, wearing Depends like some toothless crone playing the slot machines in Vegas. I'd probably lose my job and some batshit social worker would take my kid away. So let's not go there too often.

But I'm feeling fortified by a sweet day of vacation today, so I'm only going to allow myself one sarcastic comment as a special treat.

Unlike most working women, as depicted by popular culture and the media, I actually have the leisure to read at least two newspapers a day and keep myself relatively well-informed about the world at large. While reading the Globe and Mail today, I stumbled across this article, about how most women really want to work part-time and not full-time.

Well, sort of. The article is quoting a study: Only 21 per cent of working mothers with children under 18 see full-time jobs as the best arrangement for themselves and their families - a drop from 32 per cent in 1997, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, 60 per cent of working mothers say part-time work is their preferred option, up 12 per cent from a decade ago.


Yup, that's a drop, no doubt about it. But when you read on, you've got to wonder about how they asked the questions. Let's see what Exhibit A, working mother of 1-year-old boy, has to say:

Marlo Miazga, a Toronto mother of a one-year-old boy, can relate. After a brief, self-financed maternity leave, the freelance film editor took on full-time hours as a film editor and teacher. She and her husband, a writer, enrolled their son Phoenix in weekly daycare.


But if she could work part-time and still afford daycare, all without taking a professional hit, she'd "do it in a second," she says.

REALLY?! Wow, that's such a huge surprise. Effectively what the journalist is asking is "do you want NOT to work all the time, but make the same amount of money, enjoy the same amount of responsibility and senority, get the same promotions, and keep your kid in daycare full-time, freeing you to enjoy your life on your days off, getting pedicures and seeing movies and eating bon-bons while enjoying the ministrations of Sven, your beefy-forearmed masseur?"

What an incredibly stupid position. The only way I'd take any of this seriously would be if they asked fathers and childless people the same question: "would you like to scale back your working hours if there were absolutely no negative consequences?" and the answers were substantially different.

I love my kid and I love my job, and yeah, I'd like to be paid to sit on my ass while my kid goes to daycare. (Come to think of it, that's what I did today: LOVE paid vacation days.) But then I'd like a lot of things: a car that runs on love, an oiled Ralph Fiennes on a silver chain. I don't expect anyone to hand them to me just because I popped out a kid.

Fucking hell. On behalf of working parents everywhere, I apologize on behalf of that very stupid column.

Now I either have to stop writing or go and buy some Depends.

How rude

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? (Well, this blog never pretended to be PG-13.)

You're disgusting -- it's a traffic bollard. But if you thought, however fleetingly, of a giant stone penis, you are not alone. The good people of Keizer, Oregon are distressed by the monstrous dongs adorning their parking lots, and are demanding the bollards be removed.

The story, however ridiculous, did make me glad that Victorian values are alive and well (and living in Oregon, apparently).


A total of 52 of the posts were installed at a busy intersection in Keizer and they are getting a lot of second glances.

A number of residents have complained to the city that the posts resemble male genitalia.

"I can't disagree with that," said City Manager Chris Eppley. "They certainly did not turn out the way we anticipated."

According to Eppley, the posts were ordered from a catalog and looked much different on paper.

Well, of course. I became consumed with the desire to help out this modest town, so I went online to search for some decent alternatives.

What do you think -- too ridgy?



Now we're talking:




Hoo boy. Is it hot in here?


OH MY GOD.


As Rufus Wainwright would say, I'm so tired of Americans. Though they do make me laugh.

Bacon sandwiches and disagreement

I'm pissed at the pile-on that's happening over Salman Rushdie's knighthood.

Normally I don't give a toot about a) who the Queen choses to knight and b) what the government of Pakistan and Iran think about, well, virtually anything. But reading how Pakistan feels it's "insensitive" of the British government to knight him makes me want to flip a massive, fleshy bird in their general direction. According to this story from cbc.ca, Pakistan's house of parliament passed a resolution saying: "The 'sir' title from Britain for blasphemer Salman Rushdie has hurt the sentiments of the Muslims across the world. Every religion should be respected.

Well, booty hoo hoo, fuckers. Do you respect my beliefs? I believe in freedom of speech, a vigorous media, equality of the sexes, happy homos and lascivious lesbians, birth control. Oh, and lard.

Actually, I think Salman Rushdie has said this all and better, in his essay October 2001: The Attacks on America.

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his worldview, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them.

How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.

Give this man a knighthood.

Ceci n'est pas un website

Overly enthusiastic video play button leads to Magritte-esque moment.

Beatrix Potter has a lot to answer for

This morning I overheard the following conversation between a small boy and his mother at Riverdale Farm:

Boy, coming up to the cow pen: And does this animal talk?

Mum, exhaustedly: No, this one doesn't talk.

Boy, incredulous: It doesn't? This one doesn't talk either? What kind of a farm is this?

Mum, resigned: It's not that kind of farm.

Finally, a Barbie doll of astonishing realism

I never had a Barbie as a child, and here's the really sad part: I never wanted one. But I bet if this particulary model of Barbie had been around at the time I would have begged my mother for one. Why? Because Barbie has a dog who eats her own shit.

Under Product Features, you learn that "You can open Tanner's mouth and feed her dog biscuits". More fun awaits "when Tanner has to go to the bathroom" because "Barbie cleans up with the magnetic scooper."

So let me get this straight: the fun of this doll is essentially totally scatalogical: feed your dog a turd, watch him drop a biscuit (did I get that the right way around?) and shovel the shit. Excellent!

These are going to be yoinked from the shelves faster than the I Hate Math Barbie, mark my words. So I'm going to buy one tomorrow and keep in safe for my eight-year-old son's birthday. He's going to love it.

Little Mr. Mousikin, in our little housikin...

Let me preface this entry by saying that it's been a long, hard week of swabbing bodily fluids, and not in that fun way. I'm talking vomit and poop, friends, almost all of it emanating from a small miserable person. It's been our first real brush with pukey illness chez Quince, and I guess we should count ourselves lucky. Public service announcement directed at childless people reading this: I'm sure you've thought to yourselves, "oh, I'd like to have kids, but it must be a drag when they get sick and puke all over your shirt." Yes, it is a drag. SAVE YOURSELVES. It's too late for me. Wear a condom. I beg you. Because otherwise you will not only have a small person puking on your shirt, you will actually instinctively be stretching forth said shirt while still on your body to better catch the stream of barf before it hits the carpet.

Yes, that is a true story. And here's another one: we have mice. Many mice. We have had at least 9 mice living in our house. How do we know this? Because we have killed 8 of them using mousetraps.

And what happened to the ninth? Well may you ask.

We have a cat, Smudge, who is really quite lovely. She is also elderly and frail and, to be honest, a bit of a prima donna. She is the type of cat who complains over a full food dish, and we love her for it.

This week, Smudge has also had cause to complain that mousetraps were placed near her food dish, and the traps occasionally have contained dead mice. (Not for days on end; that would be gross, but just until we've gotten home for work or something.) She complains in Cat language, of course, but I can tell she's saying, "Waiter, there's a mouse near my soup."

Anyway, Smudge is far too refined to actually catch mice, or, apparently, even deter them from running riot. Or so I thought.

This afternoon, in order to tend to my poopy child, I came home early. I was attending to some important business while patiently awaiting the next poopsplosion (note to childless people: put Trojans on shopping list) and was taking an important phone call from the Editor-in-Chief. Who should come waltzing in but Madam Smudge herself, thoughtfully gumming the head of a mouse.

This was reasonably distracting in itself. Frankly, Smudge isn't the type of cat who'd wake us up if the house were on fire; if that were happening, it's more likely she'd start bitching about the fact her water dish was getting uncomfortably steamy. But the whole element of distraction began to get out of control when I noticed the mouse was still kicking its legs feebly.

Smudge gave me a look like "what now? I have sucked the fur bon-bon for several minutes, and am full of ennui."

I am still on the phone with the Editor-in-Chief.

Smudge puts down the fur bon-bon. It kicks to life and then starts to run towards me, obviously totally out of its little mind from breathing in the stank of Smudge's maw. Without thinking too much about it, I drop an empty yogourt pot down on top of the bewildered mouse.

I am still on the phone with the Editor-in-Chief.

The mouse begins to beat against the side of the plastic. Smudge gives a baleful wail at the loss of her fur lolly, a wail that sounds very much like "I was enjoying that."

I finally get off the phone with the Editor-in-Chief. What to do with the fucking mouse? I decide the drown the little bastard, because it seems like sensible plan and I might have read about doing something similar in a David Sedaris story. I ready a dustpan and brush, remove the pot, whisk the mouse into the dustpan then into the sink.

And yes, reader, I drowned him. I am a killer of mice. This was not manslaughter or criminal negligence, but actually first-degre mousiecicide.

A couple of things to know if you ever want to drown a mouse (perhaps having Googled "mousiecide" and wound up on this page): they appear surprisingly hard to drown. This one managed to swim around successfully for around a minute, like a very small Ophelia in the all-mouse production of Hamlet. They also poop quite a lot in their final minutes, which was unexpected and not at all fair, given how much poop I've had to deal with today already.

I might have left Ophelia for a few minutes to see what would happen, but the Editor-in-Chief called me again so I took a butter knife and weighed the mouse down under the water. Finally, after a conversation about performance management that went on far too long, Ophelia achieved her quietus.

She was put to rest in a Sun Valley plastic bag in the trash.

Note to self: scrub sink, autoclave butter knife.

I like to watch

Sitting here as I do on the poop deck of the Titanic, as is my wont, I was intrigued by this article in Slate about the declining watch industry. It seems that now that humans have cellphones, computers and iPods more or less permanently attached to their orifices at all times, there's less of a need for wrist watches. What does this mean?

As in many other consumer areas, the middle is getting squeezed. According to Deborah Rudinsky, merchandise manager at the Doneger Group, sales of moderately priced watches—time pieces that retail for under $200—were probably down about 10 percent in 2005.

The purpose, or unique selling point, of watches used to be that they could provide you with information (the time) that was inconsistently available otherwise. There's nothing unique about watches as a time-information delivery device, apart from cultural associations we've built up around them. If other devices can deliver the same information as efficiently, they got nothing. And unlike the information contained in, say, newspapers, the time is not complex or nuanced in any way; it cannot be branded, personalized or shaped to give it added value. In fact, 'good' timekeeping is based on the fact it's standardized across the whole world.

So what's left for poor old watches? According to this article, the high end, the low end and niche markets.

"The customer is buying a fine watch more as a jewelry piece and less as a timekeeper," said Doneger Group's Rudinsky. Women are drawn to watches that help accessorize different outfits. Men are drawn to high-tech gadgetry. Fitness geeks of both sexes opt for souped-up digital watches equipped with heart rate monitors and GPS technology. "To capture younger customers, watches today need to have much more of a fashion nuance," said Rudinky.

Watches will probably be around for a while yet (much like newspapers). By the way, I looked up watches on Wikipedia and discovered this gem:

Because most watches lack a striking mechanism, such as a bell or gong to announce the passage of time, they are properly designated as timepieces, rather than clocks.

You just know some pedant tediously insists upon this distinction to the profound irritation of his friends and family.

A matter of luck?

A real prince of a guy, Trevis Smith, was sentenced to five and half years in court today after being convicted for knowingly exposing two women HIV by having unprotected sex with them. Neither of them were infected.

Now, I don't disagree for a moment that this guy is a dick (apparently, a latex-free one). Maybe he was just reckless, maybe he was angry and really wanted to infect them, maybe he just really likes bareback sex. I don't know.

What I do know is that the prosecutor, Bill Burge, is totally talking out of his ass when he "argued that Smith knew the dangers of HIV and he knew that he had a responsibility to disclose his condition to his sexual partners.

'It was just a matter of luck' that neither was infected," Burge said.

Not exactly. Our friendly neighbourhood AIDS page on Wikipedia gives a very useful table of estimated rates of infection per 10,000 exposures. Rates of exposure for receptive penile-vaginal intercourse...survey says...10.

Ten per 10,000. That's an infection rate of 0.001%. [Correction: 0.1%] Not exactly a matter of "luck," then. More like a 99.9% chance that the woman wouldn't be infected. I would take those odds.

I don't deny that these women probably went through a few hellish months waiting for their test results. Sucks to be them. Insist on a condom next time. And yeah, our Trojan horse really should have disclosed his HIV status. (Like, as if he'd ever get laid again.) But imprisonment -- particularly for more than five years -- is ridiculously punitive.

What really frosts me is the perpetuation of an impression of HIV that is years out of date. Yeah, it was pretty scary back there in the 1986, when you didn't know if you could get it from drinking fountain, but I'd like to think we've moved on in the intervening two decades.

Five and a half years for a 0.1% chance he harmed them? How much would he have gotten if he'd driven them home after a movie? Those cars are deathtraps, I tell you. It would have been only a matter of luck if she'd gotten out alive.

We are like unto the oyster, and irritation shall bring forth pearls

The New York Times reported Friday that CanWest Global is now The New Republic's majority shareholder, and in light of plunging readership and revenue, they're rethinking their operation. Starting in a couple of weeks, they're going to publish biweekly and go to a heavier paper stock with more graphic elements.

Yeah, yeah, same tune, different verse. Wake up and smell the circling buzzards, print industry. The New Republic is essentially screwed unless they can figure out a way to get online, fast, and a way to finance their online operations sufficient to feed a high level of journalism.

I guess the good news is that they know it. As Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief puts it,

"The print publication cannot keep up with the news,” Mr. Peretz said. So actual news will go up on the Web site, which now has five employees, up from two a year ago, while the longer production cycle for the print magazine will give writers more time for reporting.

But by far the best part of that article is the following information:

To that end, Mr. Peretz has become a blogger. "He said he was “not enjoying it exactly,” but that he had found it addictive.

“When I used to see something irritating, I would typically call a friend,” he said. “Now I just go to the blog.”

There's hope for TNR yet.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

My attentive readers will already know how incensed I am by this smug local eco-couple, Sarah McGaughey and Kyle Glover. Imagine my blood-pressure reading when I discovered this morning they've actually decided to reproduce.

Of course, there was much angst over the buying of the pregnancy test and how could she possibly buy ginger ale that comes in bottle with a non-recyclable cap. (Or something. I cannot quote it because little pieces of my brain are currently adhering to my monitor.)

Motherfucker. I laughed out loud. Because I hate to break it to them, but babies come with stuff. Poop and stuff, stuff and poop, stuff on poop, that's pretty much it for the first year. You don't buy it most of it. It just arrives, and surrounds your 9lb wonder like a miasma.

Sarcasm aside -- I do fear for these two gopher-cute beardies with their child. Because I've known a fair number who have had their little theories All Worked Out before the birth -- cloth diapers, family bed, homemade baby food, no plastic toys, no Disney shit -- and they've had a hard landing when the kid is actually a real live thing who is screaming at them GET ME AN ELMO I CANNOT STAND THE SIGHT OF THIS MONTESSORI CRAP AND I AM GOING TO PRY OUT MY EYES WITH THIS PIAGET STICK. There's nothing harder than having to give up your sleep and your principles in the same month.

Meaning, when Sarah and Kyle's little dude is cutting his first teeth and has been behaving like a total asshole for two days, but then miraculously turns normal again 20 minutes after his first dose of Advil (which only comes in teeny tiny non-recyclable bottles, surrounded by liability insurance and cardboard and plastic), I can absolutely promise you they won't be thinking, "this is wrong." They will be thinking, "where can I get more of this?" and "that 'no more than 4 doses a day' shit is just ass-covering nonsense, right?"


Wishing your baby health and happiness, Kyle and Sarah. And that pack of disposibles that's going to turn up on the porch in a year? You can thank me later.

Ooh la la!

Gerbe, a French pantyhose-maker, has announced its latest line of men's tights and pantyhose. Can you think of anything less sexy than hairy legs encased in sheer nude nylon? (Well yes, I can, but I try not to mention baby poop more than once a month on this blog.) It's horrible enough when women do it, but then that is our sacred right, owing to some complex equation involving tradeoffs between the existence of Daisy razors and facial hair.

However, my objection to this product is more than just aesthetic: it had been my impression that the two best things about being a man were:

1. able to pee standing up
2. never have to wear nylons

Kindly, all the photos of male models sporting COLLANT MEN SATIN 20, as they are known, are shown without heads. This brought to mind photos in medical textbooks where the child with the suppurating rash has its head blacked out so that when she joins the Class of 2018 at McGill she won't be unpleasantly surprised in Anatomy 101. Gerbe may be cruel enough to inflict men's nylons on the world, but not so cruel that these men won't be able to kiss their grandmas with a clear conscience.

You sleigh me

This has been floating around for a few weeks now, but I feel the need to weigh in. Health Canada has urged that all children wear a helmet while tobogganing.

This quote from the Star story is particularly magnificent:

"There probably, across this country (are) ... thousands of kids that are permanently brain-injured as a result of toboggan injuries that you won't know about because they are hidden in long-term care facilities or ... being taken care of at home," said Louis Francescutti, an emergency room doctor and child injury expert from Edmonton.

Wow, did you catch a mighty whiff of desperation blowing off that quote, or is it just me? There are "probably" many thousands of children being warehoused in covert facilities or kept at home, their families' secret shame! At this very moment! Probably!

There's a pleasant reality check here from the National Post's Andrew Coyne, who wrote this column last week. (Thanks to Molly for linking to it in the comments section of my second carseat post.) Coyne calculates that the odds of giving yourself a head injury during any given toboggan run are approximately 1 in a million. Stay away from toboggan hills near roads, and your risk of death falls to 1 in 50 million: compare this to your risk of being killed by lightening, usually cited as 1 in 10 million.

Vaughan Councillor Sandra Yeung Racco is leading the charge to make a mandatory toboggan-helmet law in Ontario. Is she butt-stupid, or just really bad at math?

Bubble, bubble, birthday trouble

Those who know me, know me well enough to know that I'm mighty touchy about my birthday on December 30th. Falling as it does in that post-Christmas trough between the merry opening of gifts and the welcoming of the new year, my birthday is often difficult to make special. OK, I admit it -- I have birthday issues.

However, even three decades of birthday ho-humity could not compare with the anguish I felt after reading this list of American Food Holidays. While it thrilled me to learn that there is such a thing as National Pistachio Day (Jan. 26 -- tomorrow!), Drink Wine Day (Feb. 18), Garlic Day (April 19), I was shocked and disgusted to learn that my natal day is...National Bicarbonate of Soda Day!

What the fuck?

That's not even a food. It's an additive, a rising agent, a chemical. It has its own chemical symbol. Celebratory foods should not have their own chemical symbol.

This child is no longer being abused.

Well, fancy that. Consumer Reports has withdrawn their report on car seat safety.

From CBC:

Nicole Nason, an NHTSA adminstrator, said Consumer Reports was right to withdraw its study.

"I was troubled by the report because it frightened parents and could have discouraged them from using car seats," she said.

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. That's what I said last week!

The (quite short) CBC article can't resist adding the detail that "The original report said seats came off their bases or twisted in place. The magazine said in one case, a test dummy was hurled more than nine metres."

People just can't get enough of projectile Chucky. I tell you, that movie pitch has legs.

Garbage delight

I first heard about Sarah McGaughey and Kyle Glover in this Globe and Mail article by Dale Duncan. They have a laudable goal: to produce no garbage whatsover in 2007. The article is available on their blog, nomoregarbage, where you can read about how they’re living up to their self-imposed challenge.



Now, I realize this is going to sound a lot like saying I hate puppies, or butterflies, or teeny bedewed spiderwebs, but really, these guys irritate the hell out of me. After the Globe story, these beardy-weirdies have been popping up all over the place. There's nothing the media loves more than two freaks with a social conscience.

Since my blood pressure hasn’t hit 160/120 in a while, let’s visit their little corner of vegantown and see how we do.

From the Globe article:

The couple's commitment is all-encompassing. In their cozy apartment near St. Clair and Oakwood, newly washed plastic bags attached to a fan in the kitchen dry in the wind. She figures she'll start making her own rice milk and almond milk again, since the refillable milk bottles they order from a health-food store are sealed with disposable plastic tops.

and

The couple recycles as a last resort to avoid sending trash to the landfill -- but they're most committed to reducing waste, and the obstacles can be surprising. "Our biggest problems are the smallest things, like stickers on fruit," says Ms. McGaughey, who saves those stickers to make collages and cards for friends.

Spending my evenings washing plastic bags? Home-made nut juice? Fruit-sticker birthday cards? Where do I sign?

And from their blog:


Also, we reuse our bath water to flush the toilet with. Our system is kind of complicated, but that’s because I’m a bit of a clean freak. The basic idea, which Kyle got from his German boss, is to save the bath water then use a big bucket to scoop in into the bowl of the toilet.

Here’s my system:

1.Get a large Tupperware container ( large enough to sit in, scrunched up) and keep it in the bathroom. Also get a big bucket (about mop sized) and a smaller one (yogurt container) to scoop the water with.

2. Put the plug in when you are having a shower

3. When you finish use the big bucket to scoop the water into the Tupperware

4. After using the toilet, use the big bucket to “water bomb” the bowl of the toilet and everything will flush down.

5. Put a small bucket full of water in the toilet so that there is water sitting for the next time.

6. Use a towel to wipe up the water you have inevitably spilt on the floor

Fucking hell. Toilet water has nothing to do with garbage. If I had set myself a zero-garbage challenge, you can bet your ass I’d be flushing with merry abandon because I’d feel totally frigging justified in disposing of something -- anything, even a turd -- without agonizing about it six ways from Sunday. Running water may be the last vestige of civilization in their crunchy kingdom and frankly, if I were living with them, I'd be taking scalding hot baths every night. Perhaps to better contemplate slitting my wrists.

Now, I am not an SUV-driving lardass greedhead (I drive a Matrix). We compost. We use our green bin. We use energy-saving lightbulbs. We have spent a minor fortune making our house more energy efficient. We have complicated arrangements involving rain barrels that I'm at a loss to even describe.

But even so, I absolutely concede that Sarah and Kyle, bless 'em, are doing way more to suck up to ol’ Mother Earth than I will ever do.

However, I would argue that they are doing far more damage overall to the environmental movement.

Why? Because people are lazy sods, and when they read about fruit-sticker greeting cards and having to set up a fan in their kitchen, they’re going to think “fuck me, that sounds hard. I can’t do that. I don’t want to do that.”


Sarah and Kyle are the right-on, Greeny equivalent of those mouth-breathing Christian sects you sometimes read about -- the kind who don't believe in birth control or money or TV, but who do believe in lots of prayer and goats. In fact, if they lived 150 years ago, they'd probably belong to some obscure sect that wore burlap undershirts and distributed tracts about their salutary effects for preventing masturbation. It's the same mentality.

And now I am going to do penance for writing this by eating a date and drinking a pint of nut juice.

This child is being abused

This week, in What You Don't Know Could Kill Your Child Part CCLXXVIII, infant safety seats were being declared unsafe by the media. Consumer Reports tested a bunch of them and only two passed. (Several stories noted gravely that a dummy was flung across the room during the course of their tests. Awesome! Am I the only one hoping the video makes it to YouTube? There's the Chucky movie in there somewhere. Chucky Gets Chuck-ied?)

Anyway, you should have seen various online parenting boards light up like the sky on the 1st of July. Oh god, little Wesson has been riding in an unsafe car seat. Lord in heaven, have mercy, little McPooply uses the kind that flung Chucky across the room! Let's all buy new carseats, because now there are only two possible car seats to buy in the whole of North America. Oh, and let's book that professional car seat installer in for a week next Tuesday -- you know, the one that has the PhD in mechanical engineering. Or if she's busy, let's take it to a fire station and a police station. And get a priest to bless it. And maybe a shaman.

Welcome to the newest freakin' yuppie parenting fetish: the goddamned car seat.

I am not saying that people should not buy, install and use car seats. They should. It's also the law. But before any more people get sucked into a screaming vortex of overthinking and consumerism, consider this:

1. The Consumer Reports tests were more stringest than US safety tests (Canadian tests are different again). So big fucking surprise that only 2 seats passed. If I tell Acme Seat Co. that the current safety standard is X at 48 km/hour, then do you think they're going to build their seats to withstand X at 56 km/hour? Why would they? But Consumer Reports tested the seats at 56 km/hour, a speed higher than current safety standards, meaning they were essentially rigging the test to fail a proportion of the seats.

I mean, why did CR not test the seats for a head-on collision at 75 km/hour? My kid rides at that speed frequently. Except then all the seats would fail, and people would start to question the validity of the test.

2. Car seats save lives. Sort of. Now, this is going to blow your little yuppie minds, but really, car seats are not magical force fields that have the power to ward off evil and semi-trailers. If you get into a collision with another car, it's possible that nothing will prevent your child being injured or killed -- not even the PoopaTron9000 with SnugShielding that you spent $280 on.

Or if your child is not killed, it may not have been the car seat that saved him. Read this article, detailing a study of how child restraint systems function in the real world.

Or don't, and let me draw your attention to the relevant part:

Compared with seat belts, safety seats were associated with a 28% reduced risk of death (relative risk=0.72; 95% confidence interval=0.54 to 0.97) when both were properly used.

When including cases in which seat belts and safety seats were seriously misused-for example, when two children were buckled with one seat belt or when the safety seat harness was not used-safety seats still reduced mortality risk by 21% compared with seat belts (RR=0.79; 95% CI=0.59 to 1.05).

What does this mean, exactly? This means that if you use a carseat properly and you are unfortunate enough to be in a crash, your child enjoys at 28% reduction in risk of death. However, if you toss your kid into his seat and don't even do up the straps, your child still enjoys a 21% reduction in risk of death. Pretty good, eh? The study doesn't control for "good" vs. "bad" carseats, so we can safely assume that even crappy seats protect kids.

Steven Levitt argues in the popular book Freakonomics that the reason child-death stats have been falling since carseats have become more widely used is purely due to kids being put the back seat and less to do with the seats themselves. (There's a somewhat-related article by Levitt here.)

Why do I care, though, that over-entitled yuppies are getting their Calvins in a bunch about their car seats? Well, some of it is just sheer annoyance that car seats have become another stupid thing middle-class parents can be competitive about. Did you get a bucket or a convertible, did you get the right brand, did you choose the houndstooth pattern or the stripes, did you get it installed professionally, did you get it rechecked at a clinic? Oh, you must never EVER accept a used car seat, even from a friend, it might have been in a fender-bender! You must throw out a 5 year old car seat. It must be actually DESTROYED, not just put out in the trash, because otherwise a poor person could come along and steal it and then their child would die.

And those poor people is why I feel strongly about the shittiness of this whole Consumer Reports report. Imagine that you're poor. You have maybe $100 to spend on baby gear. You keep hearing all this stuff about how there are only two carseats in the whole of North America that will actually keep your child safe. (And you know what that means -- they're not going to be the cheapest ones.) And car seats keep getting recalled. You're supposed to keep track of the serial number at all times in case of a recall. Or they could email you. If you had email. And you've heard they're hard to install. Professional people are paid to install them! You don't have the money for that. The cops would do it for free, but like you're going to go into a police station with those unpaid parking tickets in your car.

No, better not buy a carseat. It's expensive and they won't keep my child safe anyway, so what's the point?

This is why I'm pissed off. Because a five-year-old, bottom-of-the-line, Consumer-report-failing seat is better than no seat at all.

Oh, and out of 22,000 car accidents in Ontario in 2006, how many injuries or deaths were attributed to improperly installed, defective or otherwise problematic car seats?

That would be zero.

If you're that worried about car accidents, here's a thought: don't drive as much.

Let's talk about socks, baby

My husband gave me these stockings for my birthday from a bizarrely wonderous online-store-cum-blog called Sock Dreams. They seem very, very thrilled by the whole notion of socks, by the sheer sockliness of socks, by the whole socks gestalt. If you have ever despaired while gazing into the sameness that is your sock drawer, clicking on that link will make you very happy.

Anyway, their socks are, as advertised, totally dreamy. My socks are considerably more subdued than those worn by this fine lady in the picture; mine look more like what a wartime housewife would knit herself if forced to unravel old wool blankets before taking up a little light prostitution. Discarded on the floor, they look a little like vacuum cleaner hoses. But that's why I love them.

Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket?

Back in December, this article investigating Noka chocolates appeared on a blog. Read it; it's a cracking yarn. The author is remarkably dogged. He's a great reporter. And chocolate is obviously one of the more crucial subjects facing our society today.

And it depressed the hell out of me, as someone who works for a major newspaper. That insistent tapping sound you hear is another nail in the coffin of the dailies. Here's a guy who's not only willing to do a ton of work presumably for free, but who can put together an article -- without an editor, fact-checker, copyeditor, proofreader, printing press, or distribution system -- that any newspaper in the world would be lucky to run. Oh, and he's made it available for free, too.

Imagine you've had a very profitable business making widgets on your WidgetTron1800 for 200 years. Suddenly, in 1992, widgets just start falling out of everyone's ass. There you are, walking down the street, and the sidewalk is completely covered with widgets, just there for the taking. People are interested in the new widgets -- after all, they just fell out of their own asses! These new free widgets are constantly available and ever-changing. (You can use them surreptitiously at work, for example, and waste countless hours.)

You doggedly keep running the WidgetTron1800. You claim your widgets are of a higher quality. You advertise relentlessly and try to shore up your widget brand. You cut prices. You try to make your widgets more appealing to youngsters, who spend about six hours of their day doing nothing but gather free widgets.

But it doesn't matter what you do. You are screwed. People only wanted your widgets while the WidgetTron1800 controlled the means of widget production. If people like Scott can drop perfect chocolate widgets out of his ass that are better than yours, at absolutely minimal overhead and give them away for free, you are royally fucked in your widget-maker.

And that's the name of that tune. I'm going to retrain as a plastic surgeon -- I fancy there is a future in it.