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  • On Wikipedia as research method: why not?

    written by

    james

    The class I take–as in, the one I should be focusing on at the moment rather than doing exactly what I’m doing right now–is sandwitched in between two presumedly highschool level English classes. During one of those classes, I walked in on the tail end of a discussion between the instructor and a student on a research project she was working on. I don’t recall if I heard exactly what she was researching, but the student seemed to be having some issues with coming up with material for that project–particularly online material. Apparently, the only semi-solid resource she was able to track down online was Wikipedia. To which, I could pretty much tell the instructor was doing all manner of shaking her head. that was pretty much confirmed when she escentially advised the poor girl to back away from pretty much anything to do with online material so far as research goes, on account of just about anyone can edit and/or create the material and so there’s no actual honest to god verification of that material. She meant it specificly in Wikipedia’s case, but the impression I got is it could be just as valid for, say, a website/community blog that focused specificly on one specialized subject–like, say, some of the sites hanging out in the sidebar over there. And it kind of got me to thinking. Isn’t that the point?

    The disadvantage to a Wikipedia, according to instructor lady, is just about anyone who thinks they know something about a subject can drop an edit on a page related to that subject and have it reflect as part of the “official” record on that subject. I didn’t jump into that conversation, but I was thinking–and apparently I’m not alone with that thought–that that’d be probably one of wikipedia’s strongest advantages, if you were the type to give a thing like that an advantage. I say that knowing for every mainstream subject with 40 or 50 people who actually know their stuff, there’s another 60 to 100 who love the opportunity to theorize, criticize and just generally let it be known they consider themselves experts in the same. Which was probably what the instructor was referring to. But here’s the thing, and this is what I find nifty about a Wikipedia-like environment. More often than not, the fringe folks who can’t actually back up what they’re tossing on an otherwise mainstream page will find they’ve been escentially outvoted and the completely whacked out edits don’t usually last long. Equally usually the actual, solid material is more often than not verified by linking to places where John Q. User can’t create an account for the specific purpose of scraping the record clean. So even if you wouldn’t quote directly from Wikipedia (who would, given the particular passage you quote might not be there tomorrow), you can usually use it as a springboard to move you to places who’s exerpts you borrow will probably still be there in 4 or 5 years, barring a situation wherein the whole damn site blows up.

    There’s actually a not entirely objective reason why I’m in the pro-Wikipedia-as-research-method camp. It dates back to before the average person knew what the hell a Wikipedia was. As a research project of my very own when I was doing the highschool thing, I did a profile type deal on what hockey was like in the days of gordie Howe, and ended up overlapping it with a transition to the days when Gretzky pretty much owned the place. The internet was still new enough that the trend of slapping “cyber” on a word and adding it to the criminal code with tripple the sentence hadn’t quite started to become a trend yet, but old enough that places like encyclopedia Britanica were starting to see the light and putting up at least some of their info for online consumption. I actually sort of wish I’d kept a copy of that paper around just so I could remind myself exactly which online sources I scraped for it, but that was several computers and a couple floppy disks ago. But I do remember the traditional dance of hit the library, come back with an armload of textbooks, flip through them, curse and do it all over again was escentially supplemented with stops at magazines with online archives, NHL related stats and history websites, and other people’s biographies of the man in between trips. And every internet source had a URL, exactly like every textbook source had page/chapter numbers and all that jazze. As I recall, even though most people were still trying wicked hard to wrap their heads around this whole internet thing, no one flipped their stack on account of online means somehow less verifiable than an actual, physical copy of the exact same material.

    And yet I sat pretty much where I’m sitting now and listened to that conversation wondering if, assuming I’d had her as my English teacher in those days, I’d have passed the class considering my own methods. Surprisingly fewer people actually live at the library these days for research type things, unless they’ve established they can’t pull what they need for material from, well, anywhere else. Why? The simple answer is it’s freaking 2013. there’s internet access pretty well freaking everywhere. And with projects like Google Books having been ruled not in violation of copyrights–suck it, authors’ guild–there’s increasing likelyhood the exact material you’d have gone to the library for a few years ago will relatively soon be searchable, if only in small sections–which would probably suit quoting for research purposes just fine to begin with. That, combined with something like a Wikipedia to potentially get you started with at the very least links to more solidly verifiable–and, apparently, research-appropriate–material, can’t do much but be a huge favour to someone with a nack for finding pieces and fitting them where they go to get across a convincing position. And the only thing I can actually think is where would the harm be in that? Instructor lady figures it’s all over the place. Part of me hopes she runs into this–I wouldn’t mind seeing her show her work.

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  • In Terrorland, quoting Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is a problem.

    written by

    james

    It’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to mocking the US’s nervous twitch when it comes to anything that has the slightest potential to come within a solar system of terrorism. Thank you so very much, Techdirt, for saving me from withdrawal and giving me this.

    First, from the increasingly stupid United States of America, a story of how a teen’s life got flip-turned upside down. You see, he was just on the playground where he spent most of his days, minding his own business. You know, chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool and sometimes with this friends he liked to be shooting some b-ball outside of the school.

    WAIT. DID HE JUST SAY SHOOT AND SCHOOL IN THE SAME SENTENCE? ARREST HIM! Once you’re done laughing, know that that’s exactly what happened to 19-year old Travis Clawson because a doctor’s office called his voicemail to confirm an appointment, heard the above line, thought he was shooting people outside the school and called cops. Who arrested him first, then spent the 20 seconds it takes to realize it’s the theme song from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. No word on whether Carlton showed up to dance and everyone laughed at him.

    Once you’ve had time to properly reorient your brain, I’ll let you consider this for a minute. Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, the receptionist what made the phone call was… how can I put it… TV stupid. Let’s also assume, being that she’s TV stupid, she’s not once even by accident overheard that damn theme song. Can probably also assume she’s got a bit of a hearing issue, but I’ll let you decide to make that leap all by your lonesome. The Techdirt article takes the position that this could have probably been resolved by about a minute and a half of questioning. I’m going to take things slightly further–say, saving the cops the driving time. Receptionist has this guy’s phone number. gave the info to the cops, obviously. So, uh, rather than lock down an entire school district to find one innocent 19-year-old who isn’t TV stupid, why not just call the kid’s cell? You know, actually hear–and maybe record–the voicemail greeting for yourself. Then you, without having to leave the comfort of your own office, can decide he’s quoting TV theme song lyrics and that’ll just be that right quick. Of course this is probably also why I wouldn’t cut it in law enforcement, the blind guy thing notwithstanding.

    Also: 3 hours to search a locker? Tell me it required congressional approval and to take the kid to a secure facility so he can hand out the combination code. Please?

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  • On OC Transpo’s public disservice announcements.

    written by

    james

    I’ve mentioned the automated bus stop announcements they’re now using up here for OC Transpo. They were a long time coming, and it’s actually nice to see they work really quite well–so long as the system’s been appropriately kicked into gear, but I expect that these days. On recent trips, though, I’ve noticed they’ve become somewhat less effective in actually keeping up with announcing stops. I’d like to say it’s the fault of the technology–either the GPS is off, the software needs a tweak here and there, whichever. But actually the problem has more to do with administration than the platform being administered.

    I’m not exactly sure when it started–I want to say somewhere just before the official (finally!) rollout of their Presto system, but they made a change to their automated system such that every so often now, the same guy what announces the next stop will come on with a tip, or safety instructions, or something. I’ve heard him talk of how you can lend your Presto card to someone in your fare class if you’re not planning on using it–though he doesn’t actually explain what a fare class is. I’ve heard him more than once advise people, in both official languages, that the seats at the front of the bus are for people who have difficulty standing (related: I still don’t quite see how that translates to a guy that has difficulty seeing), and so they should move to the back of the bus when someone requires one. And just this morning I heard him remind people to “Let’s help keep each other safe.”, and to report any suspicious activity to your operator (interestingly, in french he says driver instead, but I’m knitpicking). All well and good. Common sense things that people maybe aughta know, but common sense not being so common these days, good on OC Transpo for including them. Except when they get in the way.

    This morning’s trip, which is actually what reminded me, cut it close to getting in the way. There are a couple of pretty near back to back stops on my route home from the college. One such stop is, conveniently, the stop right after I get on the bus. So if someone who maybe isn’t as familiar with the route happens to be on the bus and needing to get off at, say, Baseline station, it’d be somewhat important if that person actually have a bit of warning before pulling into–and, on the off chance no one needs to get on or off there (it’s happened), pulling right back out of–the station. Some of these announcements, I’m not sure if it’s the timing or the fact the guy making them likes to–or is required to by some municipal regulation or another–take the long way around to get to his point, but by the time he gets there the system’s needing to play catch-up. So you’ll have it doing its PSA dance, then shift gears right into announcing the next stop–if you’re lucky, before you go flying past your next stop. This doesn’t happen insanely often, thank whichever divine creature’s got a hold on that, but when it does happen, it can potentially be problematic. As I said, this morning was a fine example. I’d just gotten on the bus leaving campus. We’re about halfway between stops, and his “keep each other safe” PSA comes on. Now, I’ve done this route often enough that I can recognise where we are by more subtle things, like turns in the road and things like that. So if I needed to get off at Baseline station for one reason or another, I myself wouldn’t be completely screwed–this time. The PSA does what it does, and when it’s done, we’re about ready to make the turn into Baseline station. It announces Baseline station as we make that turn.

    Fortunately, I both know the route and don’t actually need to take advantage of that, and to my knowledge this particular trip didn’t have anyone who didn’t know exactly where they were going and when–or anyone who didn’t have the ability to actually look out for the stop they need, so this wasn’t as much of a problem on this trip. But if I’m taking a route for my first time ever–let’s say I need to figure out where I’m going because I’ve got a job starting in 2 weeks and, well, it involves places I haven’t had any reason to go prior to now and so didn’t bother to just get up and go out of sheer boredom, this poses a bit of a hang-up. If I’m a blind shmuck with no idea where I’m going and still need to get there in a reasonably not quite late fashion, I need to be able to somewhat accurately judge where my required stops are. If I’m doing this thing on a daily or even monthly basis, that’s less of a problem–once I get used to it. But if I’m just figuring out the workings of this new place I can’t very well look out the window to spot, I actually pay attention to what the automated system’s trying to tell me–as opposed to doing it just so I can scan the thing for issues that could be problematic to me or some other poor sop that might actually need to use it on some regular route of mine. When a public service announcement shows up the way these do, even if it doesn’t happen necessarily all that often, it throws off the automated system–which in turn throws off the people using it. That results in missed stops, which results in mobility complications–trying to find your way back to where you should be, either by walking back and hoping you don’t blow right by it, or locating the bus stop going the opposite way and hoping you don’t get to wait an age and a half for a bus you later learn doesn’t actually stop where you need it to. And that results in awkward phone calls on your first day of work wherein you get to explain to a guy who’s probably never heard of automated stop announcements that your bus made you late. Yeah. Career boosting move right there.

    I’m not sure if they can improve the timing of these announcements or even just shorten them by a bit. I honestly don’t know how much if at all doing either one would help. But as it stands right now, OC Transpo’s public service announcements, which on the surface I support, are turning into public disservice announcements at the moment. And in so doing, they’re actually hurting the effectiveness of what I think is otherwise an awesome–and yes, much overdue–system. They’re useful, and a halfway decent substitute for a lack of common sense, but sooner or later, somebody’s going to miss their stop because it wasn’t announced on account of one of these PSAs. I’m not sure I’ll want to be anywhere near OC Transpo management when somebody makes that an issue.

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  • Student descression is advised.

    written by

    james

    Being an academic is a drag. I can see that. I mean I’m just getting back into the whole thing from a student’s perspective and it’s threatening to give me a headache. I can only imagine the level of frustration your average professor must be dealing with. Physical stress, emotional, hell probably even sexual frustration–all that time spent on research instead of taking the politician’s way out and nailing your secretary after hours and praying to god she didn’t stick a camera in the corner. See? I get that. So naturally you might be looking for a little bit of a… how do we say it… sexual release. Naturally, being the only one in the classroom and, well, a long way from home–this one was from Belgium and visiting a Dutch university, you’d resort to the source most commonly tapped by people with lots of time on their hands and access to the internet–you’d go for the porn. Just, in future, you might want to possibly consider disconnecting your porn machine from the projector you were using for your lecture. I mean, it’s just a suggestion. but I figure if you’d rather the folks watching the lecture online didn’t actually stick around for the encore, that might have been the smartish thing to do. At least, it would have resulted in far fewer people getting themselves a free copy of that encore via one quick spectator taking and publishing a screenshot or two. But hey, at least you can say you’ve already got a new job lined up if this thing ends up costing you in Belgium. Or perhaps the employee of the porn site he was presenting who reached out to him was just suggesting an alternative means of releasing some of that frustration…

  • Rob Ford gets the remix treatment. I may or may not still be snickering.

    written by

    james

    So. When you’ve escentially been cornered and forced to admit to smoking crack by way of every single one of your denials blowing up in your face, you pretty much can’t go any lower, right? Of course not. It’s when your public life, scandalous as it might be, becomes the very material worthy of a snerkwhile remix that you pretty much can’t go any lower. See also: Rob Ford yesterday, versus Rob Ford today. Very quite probably the best kind of spin ever put on a Rob Ford the Crackmayor story. And I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it. It’s not embedded, so RSS and email types should have no problem grabbing it. stream and/or download the thing at will–I don’t think it’s covered under copyright.

    Hat tip to KiSS 92.5, who actually put this thing together. I only wish I coulda been there for the mashing.

    Update: And right on the heels of this one, a remix of Ford’s crack confession hits Youtube. This one’s an embed, unfortunately, so if you’re reading this by way of RSS or email you’ll need to click over to the site and smack play. but it just might be worth it. You may suck as Toronto’s mayor, but you’ve got a future in what passes for modern music, Rob old chap.

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  • Case for designated driver? Made.

    written by

    james

    so. You’re driving down the road, minding your own. Your significant other is in the passenger’s seat. One or both of you’s been feeling the urge pretty much all freaking day. So rather than find a spot to pull over, or better yet wait until you’ve gotten where you’re going, you decide you maybe might aughta just take a little care of things right the hell there. I mean why not? You’re a relatively safe driver, right? You can multitask. right?

    This florida woman figured that was about how it worked, anyway. And it worked pretty damn well for her. right up until she multitasked herself right into someone else’s house. Lucky for the house its occupants weren’t home–and neither passenger nor distracted driver were killed–but she drove through two rooms of the place before one or both of them clued in that, uh, this ain’t road anymore. I expect to hear of at least one road safety organization taking up the call and putting out an advertisement. “Be safe. Find a designated driver. Don’t dip and drive.” Thanks to these two, their case would already be made.

  • In which someone gets all offended by garlic ice cream.

    written by

    james

    You may or may not remember me making mention of a restaurant in San Francisco trying what I figured to be a questionable ice cream recipe. Not, you see, that I have a problem with garlic. But in ice cream, I think that might just be a little much for me. It was apparently way too much for one googler. Their solution? Well, you see…

    Feb 18 2:58am: go to the stinking rose and shove all the garlic ice cream up my ass

    One actually has to wonder if the one what landed here figured that would be an improvement. One also has to wonder if I should be keeping an eye out for potential charges of indecent offenses committed with an almost food item. Oddly, I’m not really any more likely to decide to get adventurous in the garlic ice cream department. I, er, wonder why…

  • It’s time for another bad idea, worse idea.

    written by

    james

    Bad idea: getting cute with the judge for only setting your bond at $5000 when the reason you’re in court in the first place is for possessing xanax bars–related: xanax bars are a thing? Dear lord. Judges don’t usually much like the snark, unless they’re the ones wielding it or they really, really like the idea of your side of the story–hint: that’s not you, Penelope Soto, or you wouldn’t actually be tied to a $5000 bond. Judges actually tend to figure you’ve decided that’s relatively painless. This one decided since she isn’t too concerned over $5000, it’s now going to be $10000. Oops.

    Worse idea: stepping it up a knotch or two and flipping off your judge on your way out.

    Rodriguez-Chomat called her back and upped the bond to $10,000. Soto, looking a bit stunned, asked him if he was serious (“I’m serious, adios”) and she walked off, again, giving him the middle finger offering a her profane farewell.

    He called her back to the bench. “Did you tell me to f— off? Did you say that?”

    “Yes sir.”

    She got 30 days for her efforts and melted after a week. One appology later, she’s back to being free on bail and hopefully a little less like those kids you see in shopping malls that make you kind of wish a parent had spent just a little more time parenting and maybe a little less on Facebook. but, you know, just in case I’m wrong…

    the court case that put her in jail apparently has video. It’s apparently not all that great quality, but if you’d like to find yourself amused, it’s embedded below. RSS/email reading folks will have to flip over to the site if you want to watch–blame the technology. Also: is it bad that I watched this video and my first thought is “Hey, I know someone just like her…”?

  • Fun with passwords. Or, why your 25-year-old sysadmin might be looking a little grey.

    written by

    james

    Default passwords are a thing, and for a fairly decent reason. Your crap needs to be relatively secure, even if you haven’t actually done anything useful with your crap since the start of its existence. Default passwords are also incredibly, incredibly bad for you. It’s why most actual corporations force you to change it from the default the first time you log in, whether or not they force you to change it on a subsequently frequent basis later on. Because not doing so can be a real problem for you, your content, and your sysadmin. Most of this, you’d think, would be pretty common sense–even if you’re not the technical sort. But, I’m putting it here, so you can safely assume it’s not as common as I’d prefer. This came pretty much full circle yesterday, and the only reason it didn’t get blogged yesterday is educational things have conspired to fry me.

    As probably a few of you will figure out, I’ve run this site on a dedicated server for a few years. I also happen to have added a few people to the list of things running on this server in that time. In doing so, I use what I think to be relatively standard practices for security–you get an account, with whatever domains/services/whichever you need access to. You get a username of your choosing, and because I neither want nor need to know what your actual password(s) is/are, I give you a standard default password–and very strongly recommend, as in you really, really want to do this before I scramble the thing for you and hand you a generated one that’s at least 32 characters long, that you change the thing. Like now. As in before you even decide to turn around and install WordPress–which you should, because flexible. Because yes, the thing is secure. Mostly. But default passwords are usually three things. Easy to remember, short enough so as not to be overly confusing for folks who aren’t exactly up to trying to translate, commit to memory and not completely flub a 32-character-long password, and probably not difficult to figure out for your average script kiddy with a brute force program and some free time to devote to finding themselves a new machine they can borrow to spam the hell out of someone or someones. In other words, change it or you really do deserve to be slapped across the forehead with the clue stick. Gently, of course.

    So I was on my way out the door yesterday with the half dozen things that usually follow me out the door when my phone pretty much blew up. I pull it out on the bus and find myself staring at a screen full of mail server failure notices. I’m talking very nearly a hundred of the freaking things. Well, I figure. This isn’t altogether too pretty of a thing to be seeing if you’re me. Did a server people are trying to send to decide to pick yesterday to suffer a fatal issue, or has something on my end gone and broke itself?

    To figure out how this applies, let me summarize roughly what happens when you try and send someone an email. Your machine, through Outlook or some other program, sends the mail you’re working on to a server–either owned by your ISP, or your website provider, or the company you work for–with instructions that basicly says “This needs to get to person@place.com”. Your mail server, then–that’d be the thing Outlook just got done talking to, flips through the internet equivalent of a phonebook to figure out which other servers are accepting mail for place.com. When it finds one or several, it tries to contact them. Assuming it gets an answer from one, it asks two questions. “Do you actually accept mail for place.com?” And, if the answer to that question is yes, “Does person exist in your info on place.com?”. Assuming both answers are yes, one of two things happens. Ideally, your mail is then sent to the receiving server, who then tells your mail server, “Okay, I’ve got it. Thanks for dropping by.” and that’s that. Transaction complete. Or, slightly less likely, the server’s experiencing problems–or one of the servers it relies on is experiencing problems–and your mail server is told to escentially try again later. Which it will, repeatedly every so often, until either the mail is delivered or it just plain gives up on account of the destination’s well beyond broken. If the answer to the second question comes back a no, the receiving server escentially tells your server, “I don’t have anyone named person here.”. Okay, so that’s a problem. And it’s a problem you should probably know about so you’re not trying to repeatedly send mail to person@place.com and wondering why in the sam hell that rat bastard hasn’t gotten back to you in 6 months. So your mail server turns around and automatically sends you a quick email saying basicly “I tried to send your mail to person, but the folks at place.com don’t know who that is. Sorry about that. Oh and by the way, you should probably tell person his place.com address doesn’t exist–or make sure the sneak gave you the right one already.”. Okay so maybe not that last part, but you get the idea.

    When my server sends people the “place.com doesn’t know who person is” email, it also copies that email to me. Not because I feel like snooping in on the juicy details of the morning’s gossip that you’ve accidentally sent to the slightly mistyped but still mostly correct address of the chick you usually have coffee with after work, but because in the event this kind of thing happens consistently, there’s either something wrong with the receiving server–which I may need to yell at someone about, or work around temporarily–or there’s something wrong on my server’s end, either with your account or with the server in general–which I need to fix, or prod you to fix, in order to prevent further much larger problems. So when an account on my server started generating several emails to random addresses that didn’t exist, the server got several “this person doesn’t exist here” notices from servers it was trying to deliver to. As a result, I got several copies of “I tried to deliver this, but they don’t exist” emails. And because it’s 2013, I’m a geek and there isn’t a smartphone alive today that doesn’t let you, I got to handle most of those on the way to class–and discover that those emails were coming from entirely random addresses on my server that also didn’t exist. Well then. Don’t we have us a situation. I couldn’t do entirely too much about it at the time except diagnose on account of I was mobile, I was on 3G and I wasn’t in one place long enough to haul out the laptop and make things happen, but at least now I knew there was something amiss in techville.

    When I got where I was going, I had a bit more time to play find the hole. And what I found was the mail traffic was being generated by an account that hadn’t actually been accessed since it was set up and the person who owned it installed a version of WordPress. Since then, that account had escentially been sitting there doing not much. Unfortunately, because it hadn’t been accessed except the one time it took to install WordPress, that also meant its default password was still its current password. And, as a quick check would tell me when I got back to a network I could actually use without the restrictions of a not very well set-up firewall, it was that default password stil being set for months on end, on a public-facing system, that lead to the account being accessed by places and in ways that it might not aughta be. Having no idea at the time, though, my priority was escentially turn off the tap. So I disabled that account before class started, and it sat there being disabled until I could get a look at it when I was free–see also: when I confirmed that yes, in fact, the thing was accessed in ways it shouldn’t have been by a password that should have had a lifespan of 5 minutes.

    That account will more than likely end up deleted, on account of it was never actually used and so really, nothing’s being lost by killing it. Which also means I don’t need to send an actual user an email basicly saying “by the way, because you fail at security basics all your crap is now compromized. Thank you.”, which works just fine for me. But this is a thing that could actually happen to a system or service you would probably much prefer it didn’t. think of everything that comes with a default password in place already. Routers, any modem purchased in the last maybe 5 years, university or college email/network accounts, the afore mentioned actual work related systems, the list goes on. They don’t come with default passwords because they’re worried about John Q. User developing amnesia and not having the slightest idea what their password is. They come with default passwords because they’re usually set up automatically, usually in batches, usually for several dozen to several thousand people at once. This also means if you feel like giving it a couple months, that common, default password can and will be found on Google. Which means anyone with 5 minutes free who knows the service exists and you have access can easily also have access. Which in turn means if they decide to use that access for less than legal purposes, or less than insanely irritating purposes, it’s not them that catches hell for it–it’s your access, therefore it’s your problem. Changing that default password, preferably the second you sit down in front of the system in question and access it for the first time, significantly reduces the likelyhood of it becoming your problem. It also just so happens to be exceedingly smart thinking, since in the case of people who maybe used to have access and shouldn’t anymore, it prevents them from deciding to borrow your access to try and get back at whoever decided they no longer needed it. And you’ll have just prevented, at least temporarily, your friendly neighbourhood sysadmin from developing a few of those grey hairs. That gets you bonus points somewhere. And hey, if it’s a thing I have anything to do with and you’ve just prevented me from having to piece together a working copy of your account long enough to beat you with it before telling you you should probably change your password, I swear I’ll be your best friend for life. Which will be a lot easier if you’ve also resulted in me having one or two fewer heart attacks. Now if the rest of the world would just come along quietly we’ll have it made.

  • If you don’t quit drinking and driving, I’ll threaten you again.

    written by

    james

    I meant to do something with this forever ago. then life happened. So, uh, have this now.

    Say what you will about the way the US handles DWI laws. Oh, please, by all means, say what you will. But before you do, consider this. It’s 8:45 AM on a Sunday morning. You’ve been drinking more than enough to put you over the legal limit. You’ve been drinking exactly enough to actually double the legal limit. And you’re officially out of booze. Now, there’s a couple ways you could handle this. You could actually decide it might be time to go sleep off your very near future one hell of a hangover. You could, assuming you’re not drinking alone, try and find yourself someone sober who wouldn’t mind making a run to the grocery store for beer–I’m still a little jealous you folks in Quebec can pick up your beer when you pick up a bag of milk, I’m just saying. You can get creative and try walking to your nearest grocery store for the offending beer run. Or you can pour your drunk ass into the driver’s seat and head off to help yourself.

    If you picked that last one, congratulations. Odds are you are the next Maurice Larrivee. Odds are also that you will be intercepted by well-meaning grocery store employees who valiantly attempt to talk some sober second thought into your alcohol-hazed brain and try to get across to you that you don’t, in fact, want to be driving home in your way past “I only had one or two” condition. Odds are you’ll dismiss the caution, because hell, you got here just fine didn’t you? And odds are you’ll drive yourself straight into your 17th arrest for drunk driving. But you can rest safely in the knowledge that you won’t actually see much if any jail time. And, hey, if you play your cards right you might just be back in a position to take a run at arrest number 18. Because worse than the fact some of these folks haven’t yet stopped by the clue shop on their way home is the fact there’s not a whole lot the police can actually do about it. Well, unless you’ve gone and killed someone before they managed to arrest you for driving while sloshed beyond belief.

    sure, the police can take your car, or suspend your license–and they have. But you can–and often times do–eventually get one or both of those back before entirely too long. Meanwhile the police are kind of left with escentially wagging a finger at you and saying pretty much “don’t do that again, or else.” Or else what? Well, or else they’ll tell you not to do that again. Because, you know, that worked so well the first, second, third and sixteenth times. But hey, one can always hope 17’s this one’s lucky number. And somewhere, someone with at least as many convictions just drank to that.

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