On Hummus and Aliens

The hummus revolution is taking Canada by storm. For one, Microsoft Word recognized the word, and did not draw that ugly, red, squiggly line underneath the word. Marketed as “healthy alternative” and “vegetarian certified” it’s not hard to see why it would be so popular. Plus, it tastes great.

But that’s besides the point. As far as I’m concerned, hummus is the latest victim of Capitalist bastardization of a great classic. Variations on hummus available in the supermarket these days inclu

de: spicy hummus, roasted garlic hummus, masala hummus, avocado hummus... among others. I told a friend of mine as I opened the fridge at work, seeing at least 4 varitites of hummus “we’ve been eating hummus for 3,000 years, recipe mainly unchanged. It only took a year for hummus to lose its identity.” This is the culture we live in.

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I can’t help but think that as we get more technologically advanced our written culture is becoming less and less traceable. Most of what we know about the culture of ancient civilizations is through carvings, tablets, and other “concrete” forms of communication. As we start putting things on servers, CD’s, and USB drives we’re making our written culture less and less visible. It takes a pair of eyes to see the first alphabet ever created. It takes 100 years worth of technology to read an email. Soon enough the only way we’ll be able to read a Charles Dickens novel will be through a Kindle, or a computer monitor.

If a meteor were to strike our planet, and thousands of years later we are visited by extraterrestrials, how much of our written culture will they come across. I have a feeling those same tablets that we marvel at in museums will still be around, while my CD with 2,000 ebooks will be looked upon as some sort toy for children.

Your Two-Step Guide to Small Talk

We’re all faced with those awkward moments in social settings where we are forced to make “small talk” with someone. These situations are abundant when one starts a new job, or at a party, or even while waiting in line at the supermarket. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to run into someone talkative and creating small talk is a breeze. At other times creating small talk is like pulling teeth.

Recently, I have had more than my fair share of awkward encounters. In some I was successful in taking the conversation from small talk to big talk, if you will, while in others the conversation just ended with a blank stare. I have always thought that it was much easier to be friendly than not. Some people, I have noticed, go to great lengths to avoid eye contact just to avoid saying hello. I could never wrap my head around that. A smile doesn’t hurt, and is far easier than pretending to be busy texting a friend. This is the same reason that I try to make small talk when I can, it is simply the easy way out.

But to make small talk one has to have a Swiss Army knife equivalent of conversation starters. There are universal things that all people love to talk/complain about. Talking about the weather is the easiest example. The weather impacts all of us, whether in the way it forces us to dress, or in how affects our commute to work. In Canada, the weather is a very passionate subject for many. People get quite animated about it and for good reason of course. Popular events are also a hit, but with this one a person needs to gauge their audience. The 55 year old HR manager might not keep up with the latest news from the R&B music scene, and similarly the lazy couch potato who keeps up with every sitcom on television might not know about the newest changes to auto insurance laws. It certainly helps to be informed in a wide-array of subject, because like a Swiss Army knife, you have to have be versatile and have the right line for the right time. But if you’re the sitcom-watching-couch potato or the 55 year old HR manager and you’re too lazy to read up on things then what do you do?

Well, worry no more, for I hae created a systematic method of creating small talk. Simply follow my two step program and put your hands and feet in cold water (Syrian idiom meaning relax). First, determine the time of the year. Second, use one of the lines provided. Allow me to example...

Christmas Time:

“Have you finished buying gifts yet?”

“Kids toys are so elaborate nowadays?” Could be followed up with “Back in my day...”

“Have you seen this new toy...”

“What do you think would make a good gift for an X year old girl?”

“The mall is crazy nowadays!”

“Why do people leave their shopping till last minute?”

After New Year:

“So what did you end up doing for NYE?”

“This is the only year we’re going to be alive for, where the last two digits are exactly double the first two” This is for the mathematically gifted, and only works in 2010. Next time you can use it, people of the future, is on 2211, 2412, 2613 etc.

“Did you see the fireworks downtown?” if they say “No” reply “Neither did I” at least it’ll get you a laugh.

If you’re comfortable with making dumb remarks, comment on people’s clothes saying “that was so last year” if they have a sense of humour it should lead to a conversation.

Valentine’s:

“You have to wonder how many teddy bears are sold each year on Valentines..”

“You know what I love Valentines? All the chocolate”

“Are you planning anything special?”

“Valentine’s day is such a scam!”

Spring time:

“Ahh, why did they have to change the time on us?!”

“I love seeing the trees come alive again”

“Planning any outdoors projects this spring?”

“Have you started your spring cleaning yet?”

Summer Time:

“Where are you going on vacation?”

“Do you enjoy camping?”

“I went on this really nice bike trail last weekend...”

“Did you end up going to the cottage this weekend?

Halloween:

“What are you dressing up as?”

“I saw this really funny/weird/awesome costume in the store?”

“Going to a Halloween party this year?”

Thanksgiving:

“Are you getting together with the family?”

“Making turkey this year?”

“Have you heard of deep fried turkeys? It’s getting popular in the US”

“So why are they called Turkeys? Did they come from Turkey? It must take them a long time to walk over here” You should get at least a pity laugh for this lame attempt at a Seinfeld joke.

Winter Time:

“How was the drive this morning?”

“Global warming my ass!” Requires a younger audience.

“Do people lose all driving skills during winter?”

“Have you heard of the series of snow storms we’re getting?”

All of the above are Canada biased, in case you couldn’t tell.

As you can see there are plenty of conversation starters at your disposal. You should never run into an awkward situation again. If you find yourself having trouble still, please email me and include the country you live in, major holidays, climate, and popular TV shows and we can go from there.

If I meet one more Mfalsaf...

One of the things I love about Arabic is that it has certain idioms that just hit the spot.   The idioms speak volumes about a situation or a personality often with one word.  One of these idioms is “mfalsaf” (مفلسف ) a colloquial term derived from “falsafeh” which translates to philosophy.  A person who is mfalsaf is one who dives too deeply into every argument made in their presence, squeezing every last drop of fun out of any conversation (sort of like a smart ass).  Mfalsafeen (plural) are a breed of people who I just can’t stand to be around.  Here’s why...

When a mfalsaf is around I find it very hard to converse freely.  I tiptoe around topics that I feel might induce a falsafeh diarrhea, which is pretty much impossible with a mfalsaf around.  These people are very good at what they do.   Another downfall of having a mfalsaf around is “super joke analysis”.  They can’t take a joke for what it is, they have to go into the details and tell you how it doesn’t make sense.  As if it proves their intellectual superiority if they point out “It’s impossible to be so short that you can see someone’s feet on their drivers licence... plus wouldn’t they zoom in on the face anyway?”  They are also guilty of “super Hollywood movie analysis,” they would often be heard saying “dude, it’s impossible to survive that crash, do you know how many G’s that is?  Humans can take only 5 G’s before....”

At work a mfalsaf will never answer your question. They will go into debates (often with themselves) reaching no conclusion and leaving you more confused than before you asked the questions.  If you happen to be having a conversation and they’re around they will intervene with useless, irrelevant comments, which serve only in breaking the train of thought and continuity of the conversation.  For all I know they probably have wet dreams about the number of intellectual breakthroughs they made the day before. 

A typical mfalsaf argument is “I don’t have to prove that god exists, you have to prove that he doesn’t exist”. Booooooo. Most of mfalsafs’ arguments begin with “well technically...” or “provided that...what you’re saying could be true”. Mfalsafeen are in desperate need of chill pills. 

So how o you deal with a mfalsaf? If you try to give them a taste of their own medicine they will take you on and go falsafeh diarrhea on you, and that can get messy.  If you simply agree with their argument in hopes of shutting them up, you’re encouraging them to continue their quest.  So that leaves us with the only option of ignoring them.  When they throw the “technicaly speaking” at you, you just let it slide.  They might try harder to be involved in the conversation, turn your back to them. Hopefully Pavlovian Conditioning will teach them to keep their comments to themselves.  I strongly believe that mfalsaf is a yet undiagnosed psychological syndrome, one that many engineers seem to suffer from.

On corporate marketing, multi-blade razors, and snow

Just when we thought it was all over we were hit with another snow storm. This winter is putting up a good fight and doesn’t want to give up just yet. It looked like a blizzard outside all day today, and it’s going to continue into tomorrow. I guess that’s why I appreciate spring and summer so much.

I’m really bothered by big corporations trying to “green” their image just from a marketing perspective. Putting a hybrid badge and painting an SUV green doesn’t make it fuel efficient and certainly doesn’t make your fleet of cards environmentally friendly. Hear that GM and Ford? And to all other corporations trying to sell me on e-billing by saying “Help save the environment, choose paperless bills” I say bullshit. It’s more like help save us some postage stamps, and paper costs. If you care about the environment you wouldn’t stuff my mailbox with flyers about your latest cell phone plans, and new high speed internet service.

I lost my old Gillette razor, which I had for over 10 years now. I tried the new Gillette Fusion with 4 blades, comfort grip, and a trimming a blade at the back, and it sucked. I jumped from store to store on the weekend to try and spot a Gillette Sensor Excel. After a lot of searching I was finally found it at Wallmart. It really made my day. I’ve already ranted about the ridiculous competition between Schick and Gillette in adding more blades to razors, so I won’t do it again. Although I’m tempted…

Sir Mix-A-Lot had a point after all

"I like big butts and I cannot lie" are the lyrics of a classic song, but according to latest research, if your dad was like Sir Mix-A-Lot then chances are you're smarter than average. Read on...

CURVIER women may have smart children because hip fat contains polyunsaturated fatty acids critical for the development of the fetus's brain.

Using data from the US National Center for Health Statistics, William Lassek at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Steven Gaulin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, found a child's performance in cognition tests was linked to their mother's waist-hip ratio, a proxy for how much fat she stores on her hips. [source]

Corporate Bullshit

Nothing pisses me off more than Corporate Bullshit. I’m not sure why Corporate Bullshit (CBS from here on in) works me up, but then again, people have the weirdest pet peeves. If you worked for a big company then you know what I’m talking about. It’s those stupid acronyms, play on words, and ‘clever wording’ that makes a bunch of executives feel good about themselves. I can just imagine a bunch of executives sitting around a big board roam table trying to come up with a catch phrase to get employee moral up, or to increase sales of a certain product.

So what is CBS? And what are some examples?

Toyota doesn’t hire employees, they hire, get this, Team Members. You cannot mention to your boss that “somebody on the floor got hurt” you have to say “a team member got hurt.” And that’s an example of CBS.

You know how Cottonelle toilet paper was changed to Cashmere? “Because there’s nothing softer than Cashmere.” How sensitive are people’s asses that such wording would have an impact? I would love to heat the market study they ran before changing the name. “Ok Ma’am, one last question, would you rather wipe your bottom with cotton or cashmere?” The funny thing about this CBS is that product name was only changed in Eastern Canada. Apparently we’re a little pickier than most when it comes to personal hygiene.

How about McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It.” That’s your prime example of CBS. While where on the subject of McD’s, one instance of CBS that I particularly hated was that “Smiles are Free” was on the menu. I’ve heard “Well, I’ll have a Big Mac and a free smile” about a million times, and you know what? The customer did not get their free smile, contrary to McD’s CEO thought. Customers have to earn a smile, especially when you’re dressed in a shirt that was a hand-me-down from a previous employee, you had grease all over your pants and hands, and you practically had to moonwalk your way through the kitchen while holding a bag a bag full of a food, and a bunch of drinks.

While we’re on work experience, I worked at an automotive company two years ago as an intern. As a “continuous improvement exercise” we had to come up with ideas to save ourselves time, like putting a hole punch at every desk. The more ideas you had, the more GEAR points you earned. Yes, GEAR here stands as the example of CBS. GEAR stood for “Great Effort Achieving Results” or something along those lines. Clearly, someone started with the word GEAR, and tried to fit the acronym into it. After all it was an automotive company, and GEARs are extensively used in cars. What I found and funny… and sad, was how worked up some people got over somebody stealing their GEAR suggestions, and how people kept up with who was at the top of the GEAR point list. So what did GEAR points get you? No, it wasn’t a raise but rather, another brilliant example of CBS, company related clothes and the likes.

The other day I was at a Capgemini info session when I heard the best example of Corporate Bullshit in a long time. While talking about the services the company offers, the lady mentioned Offshoring. After mentioning which, she explained to us Capgemini trademarked the term “Rightshoring” “since Capgemini will the find the right shore for you!” Oh the humanity! Can you get any cheesier than this? At that point I wanted to walk out of the session, but then I noticed the food preparations happening outside the meeting room. After going through her spiel, she enthusiastically introduced her co-worker who started there months ago, but who has made great strides since then, Tom. Tom talked about the friendly environment of the office, and flat structure of the corporation, which he had apparently climbed fast. He mentioned some of the programs that bring people together at the company like the PAL program, don’t even ask what cheesy term that stood for, as I was getting really hungry by then. An example of a PAL event the he mentioned was a scavenger hunt through Toronto. The event would have sounded cool if I was lonely, and enjoyed running around a city at night with colleagues from work, trying to find clues, so we could win a BIG PRIZE, instead of partying it up with friends and good looking women. I forgot to mention that the event was to take place on Friday night. I would rather be working on an essay at home rather than solving clues with overworked business men and women.

These were just some of the few examples of CBS that we encounter on a daily basis. If you have some to share, please don’t hesitate, I can never say no Corporate Bullshit.

Facebook Wars

Every year people across the globe buy in to the myth that Mars will appear as large as the moon in the night sky. And every year I have arguments with people that such an event will never occur. I once gave somebody solid proof of the impossibility of the event (a link from NASA’s website), and she refused to believe what I told her. She shrugged it off saying something along the line of “who knows? it may happen, I’m still going to look up on that night.” This year is no different, but rather than seeing posts about it, I’m witnessing the frenzy on Facebook.

One girl created an event stating that the celestial event will occur on August 27th, which happens to be two days before her birthday. She was just a bit shy from suggesting that Mars crept closer to Earth just for her birthday. At the moment there are hundreds of “confirmed attendance” RSVP’s, and many replied with apologies along the lines of “I’m going to be in the US on that day,” one girl apologized saying that she was going to be in Montreal that night. Because as we all know the night sky in Montreal is drastically different than that of Toronto’s. On the other hand, and to be fair, I have seen many comments by people saying that this event is a hoax, although their attempts at telling the truth are being looked at as “party pooper” behaviour.

I’m not bothered by the fact that these people are idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, you have to learn to deal with them. What bothers me is the lack of critical thinking. Even if a person hears about this event, they should be able to reason that such a thing will not happen. First of all for Mars to appear large on that single day would mean that Mars has to accelerate towards Earth, leaving its orbit behind (after all, it’s the girls birthday), make an appearance next to the moon, and then quickly jet back into orbit. But since that sounds physically impossible I think another explanation might have to do. What if god held a giant magnifier somewhere between Toronto and Mars, wouldn’t ha make Mars appear larger? Or maybe god has a lot of time on his hand, and he decided to make another Mars (a birthday gift), and place it in orbit around Earth for a day. Other possibilities also include: hanging a giant poster of Mars in the sky, and projecting a picture of Mars against the sky. We can also never forget the possibility that Moon might be going to a Halloween party, and decided to dress up like Mars on that particular night. I can probably think of a few other possibilities for the event might occur, but I’ll leave that for your imagination.

So, in retaliation to the Facebook event, and to “poop the party,” so to speak, I started a Facebook group named “I think anybody who believes Mars will be as big the moon is an idiot.” I sent the invitation to many people on my friends list, including friend’s who planned on attending the “event.” The response for the group has been overwhelming; at the time of writing I have 13 members and 8 wall posts. One person in the group is a converted believer, as she bravely admitted. Another, thanked me for creating the group. To those people I say, thank YOU. It feels damn great to be an educator and to set people on the right path.

Street Lingo 104 - Mastering Your Son and Daughter's Language

It’s been a while since I’ve discussed street lingo on the blog. I used to discuss common words, and phrases that I hear on daily to monthly basis, put them in useful sentences, and so on. So here is the latest installment of Street Lingo:

The word “shit” seems to have a tremendous amount of usage, for example, consider the phrase…

“you must be shitting me”

This usually said in a casual conversation with a friend when he/she tells you something you weren’t expecting. It’s the same as saying “you must be kidding me.” The “shitting” part makes the phrase stronger, and implies a greater surprise.

While we’re on the surprise category, girls often say

“Shut UP!” when they hear something that takes them by surprise. My friend told me that a girl in her class loudly said “Shut up!” after the prof. said that “some of your neurons could stretch from your head to your toes”

On a different note, this phrase is not as common, but I have heard it a few times:

“Shoot the shit”

If used in a sentence it would sound like:

“so me and John were shooting the shit when Mary came in”

To “shoot the shit” means to be involved in a conversation. Generally the conversation is not serious in nature, and usually it’s between acquaintances.

“I give that major props” is a widely used phrase among university, college and high school students. The phrase denotes happiness or acceptance of something. For example someone could say “I give that prof major props for delaying the due date” a variations to the original phrase is:

“props to that!”

And as an added touch I would like to introduce my own spin on “prop” and coin the phrase “propable” which simply indicated that something is worth giving major props to. “Propable” could be used to say “that’s a propable proposition” meaning the proposition is worth considering.

On the sexual side of things there’s an increasingly popular phrase indicating the sexual interest of a male in a female. The phrase is of course “I’d tap it!”

Of course, tap is used as metaphor in this phrase. If you’re having trouble seeing the metaphor I suggest you read this article. I foresee this phrase to be widely used among females in the next few years, as the pattern has shown for the phrase “I’d do him/her.”

I hope this informative lesson was of value to you. I think it’s important to understand street language, and I certainly encourage older people to learn these phrases. Just think of the all things your sons and daughters are saying, and you’re oblivious to. By learning these phrases not only are you connecting to your teenage sons and daughters, but you’re also viewed as a hip parent.

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