How to express "you should" versus "you must" in french

Learned an awesome and subtle new french tip today.

In english, we say "you should do something" which is a step down in severity from "you have to do something" or "you are supposed to do something".

In french, the verb for those two states is encompassed by "devoir".

You make the distinction with tenses!

For the case where you are suggesting something, you use the conditional tense.

For the case where you are demanding something, you use the present tense.

So the girlfriend of 2 months would say to you "tu devrais te trouver une job".

(you should get a job)

Whereas the girlfriend of two years would say "tu doit te trouver une job!"

(you must get a job!)

[Note: "une job" is not proper french. Worse, I just found out that in Québec it's "une job" and in France it's "un job"!!]

My response to Alberta's $1 billion dollar budget deficit

EDMONTON and CALGARY -- Alberta, long the envy of the nation with its vast energy resources and overflowing treasury, is about to post a stunning financial setback - an estimated $1-billion deficit, one of the largest budget shortfalls of any province this fiscal year.

Albertans learned for the first time yesterday how dire their economic situation has suddenly become after Finance Minister Iris Evans announced the debt-free province has entered a "sharp period of recession."

She said Alberta, which hasn't posted a deficit in 15 years, is expected to shed 15,000 jobs in coming months as its economy shrinks by 2 per cent.

Read the rest of the fun here.

Um, I told you so?

I mean, come on, everybody and his dog with any brains was pointing out how obviously overheated the Alberta economy was and that efforts should have been made to both cool it down, so it would last longer and to put down money for when it ended. The response of the government and the majority of Albertans was that the rest of the country was jealous, that finally it was time for "Western" values to be listened to in Ottawa, blah blah blah.

Now normally, I don't like to make fun of governments and regions being in debt. It's always the poor and the people who are already struggling who suffer in these situations. What is so infuriating about Alberta is that it wasn't just a case of a bunch of greedy, short-sighted assholes signing away the future of the province to a bunch of multinational oil companies and taking a huge personal cut on the side. No, this was happening during the height of neo-con cultural indoctrination and propaganda. So now instead of simple lying and prevaricating, the Albertan government and all the people making out like bandits got to walk around acting like they were actually part of some political philosophy and what they were doing was morally correct and to the benefit of society overall.

It still blows my mind how these "conservatives" have abandoned entirely the fundamentals of conservative financial behaviour. Spend wisely. Save your money for a rainy day. Balance risk and security appropriate to your future needs. Husband your resources. And so on. All that stuff has been tossed out the window. They are decadent, wasteful and greedy but at the same time get to act all righteous about social issues, as if they themselves are living some morally superior lifestyle. I think that if you are holding a credit card debt that you are not able to pay off that month, you should not be allowed to have any socially conservative viewpoints. How can you rail against abortion, immigration or gun control when you can't even afford to pay off your home and you are driving around in a new pickup truck that you don't need and don't own. This goes from the individual level right up to the government itself.

When things get really bad, and you want to complain and whine, take it to the big oil companies to whom you gave all your profits in the first place. Maybe they'll lend you some money to get through the hard times.

The wet snow/freezing night trap - Avoided!

We had a decent little snow fall overnight Wednesday. This was going on top of basically clear streets, sidewalks and stairs. We woke up to around 8-10 cm and it was supposed to drop another 5 cm or so throughout the day. It stayed quite warm though, making it a slightly wet and heavy snow, perfect for snowballs and making snowmen and other snow sculptures. It's very easy to clear this kind of snow from smooth surfaces, like car rooves. It clumps together and slides, so you can knock huge sections off with sliding motions. It can't stick to the sides either. In general there was very little work for drivers.

On stairs with rough carpets, it's a little tougher, but really not too bad. It's just heavier to move. I gave myself plenty of time in the morning to clear the stairs properly. The real danger with this kind of wet snow is that it melts down into the fibres of the stair carpet. When the temperature drops overnight, the melted snow freezes right down to the bottom of the carpet and clings, making it almost impossible to get off without using salt or the Sun God's own powerful rays.

We had a dinner date that night and I went directly there from work. By the time we got back home, the air was already much colder and the slush on the sidewalk had hardened into ice. Seeing all my lame neighbours stairs now covered in solidified and tenacious ice, in slippery, uneven clumps, I was quite worried about our own stairs. I knew it had snowed a bit during the day and I was worried that that was enough to leave a thin layer of icey death on our stairs, reducing my status significantly in the neighbourhood.

I was relieved to see that our stairs were even cleaner than when I had left them. I guess the wind and the warmth had overcome the falling snow and everything had melted or blown away, leaving just the lightest dusting on the carpet. There was one chunk of ice at the top of the stairs where the balcony above had deposited its own melting snow. The video below will show you the difficulty in getting this off.



Imagine if that was the entire stairs, like many of my neighbours! I like to mock them, but it could have easily been me, had I just said to myself, oh I'll do the stairs when I get home from work. The lesson is, always clear the snow sooner rather than later, even if there is more snow to come. Get on it, son!

Below you can see how clean my stairs are, other than the blemishes from the balcony above.

Obama pimpslaps Harper

Here is how it's going to go down tomorrow in the PM's office when President Obama comes to visit Harper for the first time:

[intro music "Big Poppa" by Edwin Starr from the Hell up in Harlem soundtrack]

Obama, sitting in Harper's chair, smoking a cigarette, using a framed picture of the Harpers as an ashtray, his feet on the desk. Harper is in the smaller chair on the other side.

"I don't give a shit about your goddamn "trade relations", mister Har-perr. I'm going to run it down for you one time, you dig? You are going to clean up your motherfucking dirty-ass oil and you are going to get it to me and my people. But that shit better be clean, you here? None of this jive-ass, stepped-on, carbon-producing garbage you been peddling around your neighborhood. I want you to pretend like that shit is my jelly sandwich that I take to the beach. If I bite into and it's got some sand gristle in there that I'm going to hurt my teeth on, I'm going to send my man Arnold up here to shove that sandwich up your ass and take a 50% discount. You with me?"

"Um, er, well—"

Grabbing his tie and yanking his face close in, "I can't hear you, honky! Let me tell you right now the only reason I haven't already slapped you hard upside the head is because I don't want to get whatever keeps your hair in that funky-ass shape on my hands. Now one more time. Are. You. With. Me?"

"Um, yes, I'm with you."

"I'm with you, who?!"

"I'm with you, President Obama."

Releasing him so he stumbles backwards, Obama leans back into the chair, takes a long drag. "That's better. We've got be clear in these kinds of relationships. Now, one more thing, about Guantanamo."

"Yes, I understand you are going to close it down."

"Not going to, motherfucker. That shit is already closed. Past tense. Shut down. Finito. And that means my Muslim brother Omar Khadr is a free man. He's going to need to chill out for a while, try and get his shit back together, you know? And he's going to be doing that here, in Canada, his nation. So you are going to make sure that happens. I want a nice crib, stereo system, ladies, all that good shit. And no trouble from the man. If any of your faggot-ass mounties with their gay redcoats get up in his mix, I'll come here personally and you know you don't want that."

"No, I really don't."

"You really don't who?"

"No, I really don't, President Obama."

"Yeah, that's right. You're getting it now. Oh shit! That reminds me, where can I get some weed? I know you all got some dynamite weed up in here."

Harper stammers, dumbfounded.

"Oh forget you. I can tell just by looking at your hair that you don't know where the weed is at. What about Iggy? He's one of them professor types. He can probably hook me up. All right, I'm done here. Remember what I said. Peace out."

Obama gets, up puts his cigarette in his mouth, does up his jacket and walks around the desk. Harper jumps up and then awkwardly reaches in the air for a high five.

"um, peace out, my brother."

Obama punches him viciously in the stomach. Harper crumbles to the floor. "I initiate the daps around here, mofo! You got that? You just concentrate on getting me that clean oil and we'll be straight. Now clean yourself up and go meet the press. I gotta go see if I can get my hands on some of that good island weed."

He steps over Harper's curled up body and walks out to the flash of lights.

[cue "Easin' in" from the same album.]

The Back Gate - you've got to be vigilant!

So we've got a wonderful back gate that leads out into our pretty good alley (the really kickass alleys are farther to the north up in Mile End; but I'm pretty happy with ours overall). I like to have at least two exits from any of my dwellings. The ground floor neighbour to the south of us has a wonderful Golden Retriever'ish mutt named Charlie and she uses the back gate to take her out for walks or at least to let her run up and down the alley. Finally, the back gate is supposed to be an emergency exit for the whole sixplex. By last summer, the gate had sunk a bit and was leaning and I was the only one who could lock it or unlock it (and that was with a lot of struggling), so my neighbour on the ground floor underneath me hired a guy to come and fix it (I really have pretty good neighbours). My point is there has been a decent amount of attention paid to the back gate.

In the winter, the problem is that there is bare ground on the inside where the gate opens. The gate is really tight against the ground. It blocks really easily, for many reasons. In the spring, when the ground gets wet, it expands upwards and jams the gate. In the winter, when the snow gets packed down, it's hard to open. Any melting and then freezing makes it stick as well and the water seems to accumulate on the base of the gate.

We had an early melt this winter and we weren't vigilant. It froze, and then snowed a lot. I went at it with a shovel, clearing out all the snow and making a path to the gate. The dog-owning neighbour went at the thin ice with a pick and got the gate opened about 10 degrees. I really went at it the next day (had a good podcast to listen to) and chipped away enough ice so that the gate opened far enough for man, woman and/or dog to get through.

We put down a crazy carpet right up against the edge, so that we could just yank it up the next time it snowed.

Well we slacked during this last thaw and now I'm afraid it's a doozy. I don't think man or woman power is going to get this gate open. That crazy carpet is embedded!



That's possibly an inch of solid ice. I think the real solution will be to raise up the bottom of the gate, putting a little frame at the foot, maybe 6 inches off the ground. It'll be a bit of a hassle if you are bringing things in with a hand-truck, but at least it will open easily in these kind of situations.



Finally, here is a look into Charlie's backyard. She runs around here, terrorizes the cats, takes her shits (note, the single mom with two kids has trained her children to clean up after the dog and they do it quite responsibly). As you can see, there is a lot of ice here so I don't think Charlie will be very happy until we get a good snow again.



(note: you can click on all these images to get a nice high-res look at the ice action.)

Climate Change hits home

The recent abrupt fluctuations in the temperature have had an immediate impact on the snow fort, whose upkeep has now been neglected by its capricious early 20-something builders.



As you can see, the materials and construction techniques were not of the highest calibre. Perhaps the natives were so accustomed to living in a consistently cold climate that they never needed to develop the skills necessary to keep a building upright in above-freezing temperatures.




Climate change is real, people. Cut down your impact today!

Well that was a decent cleansing

It turned out that the rain that was supposed to happen Wednesday night and didn't, ended up coming down all day Thursday. That was supposed to turn into snow by the end of the day, but it never did. So we got some major melting and then a nice dry, cold night that evaporated most of the thin ice off the sidewalks, leaving them much cleaner (except for the buckshot melting no-slip gravel that is everywhere). Some (all right, most) households did not take advantage of this glorious opportunity to chop and clear their sidewalks, so now they have little ice hillocks on either side, making walking difficult and giving a generally untidy appearance. I think I'll get drunk tonight and go up and down the block painting a red X on the doors of all those whose sidewalks are unacceptably icy.

Today is sunny and comfortably cold (like -6), with little wind and a much cleaner atmosphere thanks to the air-scrubbing rain and a lack of woodstove use over the warm days. It's definitely winter again (we'll be in the -4/-11 range for the next 5 days) but you can see the concrete, a lot of the dogshit was swept away and the birds are singing. We'll probably get some good snow again, but the worst of winter is over I'd say and there is hope again.