It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m looking for a bit of a snack. I just happen to have one of my favourite treats in the world: a bulb of giant elephant garlic. If you roast this mild cousin of regular garlic long enough, elephant garlic becomes creamy and spreadable. It turns into a rich, golden cracker topping that hits those garlic notes with caramel, sweetness, and none of the harsh, acidic flavours of regular garlic.
Roasted elephant garlic is something you can put out at a party to spread on crackers or toasted slices of baguette. If you cook, try adding it to soup, rice, or having it beside meats. Elephant garlic amazingly easy to prepare and more or less safe provided you bake it long enough to avoid the inherent hazards of eating under-cooked garlic.
I get it. You like to sit down on the bus. Yo know what? So does the person who has difficulty standing up — more difficulty than you. Even so, when a woman who’s obviously pregnant boards the bus, you look steadfastly at your phone to make it look like you haven’t noticed.
Now you’re sitting and texting while the woman is clearly uncomfortable with standing and having trouble hanging on during the starts and stops, and all you have to do to make their ride a hell of a lot easier is stand up. But you don’t. Why?
Because you lack emphathy. You think only of yourself and your immediate comfort. There’s no rule to make you be nice, so forget her. You sit, she stands.
And wobbles. And frowns at the pain in her feet and knees and back.
You know what this makes you? A douchebag. You’re a douchebag who needs a specific rule to force you to be decent. Unless somebody forces you to stand, you look out for yourself and only yourself. You are the very definition of a scum-sucking douchebag.
I wanted to end this rant saying, “so go to hell, douchebag”, but I won’t. Here’s why. For one thing, it would impolite. For another thing, the 24 Hours article in question was popular because it touched a nerve among transit riders. There are a lot of people on transit who are good people — well, at least good enough to know when to offer their seat. There are lots people who offer their seat to others without a second thought because they have an innate sense of decency and empathy. And, douchebag,… each an every one of them is better than you. So go to hell, douchebag.
London Drugs now sells a “Grillbot” for cleaning you barbecue grill. This is so phenomenally stupid, I don’t know where to start.
First, it’s almost certainly not a robot, which implies a level of autonomy and decision-making, but rather an automaton, which simply bounces around the grill spinning it’s feeble little brushes.
Second, a simple steel brush and a bit of steel a wool would be more effective because a person can not only apply force when needed, but can also identify dirt spots and focus more attention on those.
Third, after you’ve run down the batteries on this gadget, you’ll have to clean up after it anyway. Check the results, scrub missed spots, rinse the grill, etc.
Fourth, as any Roomba owner knows, maintenance is time consuming and expensive. Dirt gets into the inner workings, parts need to be replaced, batteries charged/replaced — all of this costs you money and time. At huge expense, you’ve given yourself more work than you had before.
Finally, if I had a gas barbecue, I would definitely buy one of these, because OMG TINY GRILL-CLEANING ROBOT!
In my long and glorious career writing user manuals, I’ve adopted many rules to ensure that my work is absolute top-quality. They’re kind of like the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition in Star Trek, only my rules aren’t numbered, and I usually only remember any given rule after I’ve violated it. So in actual practice, their actual application is much like, “Oh, crap, not again,” followed by panicked scrambling.
Examples:
Never publish first-thing in the morning. Your brain in the morning is as agile a new-born deer wobbling around on spindly legs: you’re going to fall flat frequently and often. In practice, this means making such wonderful screw-ups as publishing the Portuguese version with a German cover.
Never say “no hurry” to your subject matter expert. If you ask an SME a question and imply that they have at least a week to get back, you will never hear from them again. Instead, tell them you need their feedback before the end of the day, and when they complain, grudgingly accept the next day instead. But before noon. Is this deceptive? Yes. Of course it is.
Never skip the spell-chick. Even when the pressure is high, always check the spelling; always scan the copy for typos. You really don’t want to publish a manual in which the product name is misspelled both on the title page and the running header.
I was reminded of these rules this morning while making coffee — a procedure that has its own similar set of rules. For example, don’t start the coffee machine without an urn or cup under it. I’ve broken that rule a few times. From this morning: a coffee press produces the best coffee when you use boiling water, not cold tap water. It also helps if you have ground coffee in it. My mug of cold tap water was refreshing, but not what I expected.
Outside my window, a road crew is building a concrete median to segregate my street as part of Vancouver’s expanding network of bike lanes. The north side, the larger part, will allow one-way traffic and parking. The south side, which is quite a bit narrower, will allow two-way bike traffic. They have already placed most of the plywood forms and rebar, and a cement truck has pulled up just now.
Pouring concrete for a new median
I’m watching this with a lot of interest, partly because it’s the most excitement around here in a while, and partly because I’m curious about the consequences.
The city’s stated intention is “traffic calming”. By converting the street to alternating on-way—each block runs one way opposite to its neighbours—cars and trucks can’t use it as a thoroughfare. This makes it a much safer route for cyclists than the busy route one block over with no bike lane at all.
Since big delivery trucks seem to like this street as a shortcut, I’m looking forward to not hearing the roar of big diesel engines outside my window. As well, there’s a school here; kids and traffic don’t mix well, unless you’re using them as lane markers or speed bumps.
Among the objections to this route was the loss of parking in a neighbourhood that didn’t have enough already. The plan removes street parking along the south side. At my guess, that’s a loss of about 50 spots per block. It was a challenge to find parking near my home before. I can’t imagine finding parking within a few blocks radius now.
Converting a busy two-way street to a quiet one-way street is going to be a confusing transition. After the work is done, I’ll definitely watch for confused drivers heading the wrong way and down the bike lane, probably wondering why their lane is so damn narrow. I’ve already seen photos off drivers doing that in segregated bike lanes downtown. It’s hilarious until they meet a cyclist.
And when inevitably somebody living on the south side hires movers or takes a delivery, where does the truck park to load or unload? Across the street, making the poor delivery guy dodge cars with his hand truck, climb a concrete median, then dodge bikes? Can the van jump the median and park in the bike lanes? We’ll see how that works out.
Finally, the question most have is this: Will cyclists even use the route? The more popular route among cyclist, despite the dangerous traffic, is one block north, where the hill is a bit smaller. As my brother Matt says, cyclists tend to take the path of least resistance. After all the expense, effort, and inconvenience, cyclists may just avoid it anyway. It might be perfectly safe, but it might be futile.
It’s mid-afternoon, and I’m looking for a bit of a snack. I just happen to have one of my favourite treats in the world: a bulb of giant elephant garlic. If you roast this mild cousin of regular garlic long enough, elephant garlic becomes creamy and spreadable. It turns into a rich, golden cracker topping that hits those garlic notes with caramel, sweetness, and none of the harsh, acidic flavours of regular garlic.