The world's last non-porn website

Everyone complains these days about their content online. We hate the commercials on youtube and everywhere else, the popups, the subscriptions to spam, and so on. We also even complain that our downloading sites are being compromised and shut down by movie and record corporations. I think this sense of entitlement arose because of the length of time the internet was underutilized by corporations as a medium for advertising. But now, since so many people are cancelling their cable TV altogether, and refusing to buy/rent dvd's, and no longer buying cd's, companies are forced to move their advertising to match where the consumers are. There's no reason to expect companies to produce content for you, for free. Let's say Wal-Mart, over the years, had turned a relatively blind eye to petty theft, but recently has cracked down. There will be a certain number of regular thieves who think that this new situation is unfair to them. The same logic, I believe, is in the mind...

Steve Jobs presented the new IPhone today, and while comparing the thing to it's predecessor, neither of the two phones could catch a Wifi network. Oops. Anyway, he went into their respective photo albums in an effort to stall the audience, showing off the difference in picture quality between the two phones, which was actually noticeable, albeit only hardly. At that moment, he spoke out of script: "It really comes down to... what do you want to be looking at all day?" Yes Steve, yes it does.

I had two obvious chances today to do something socially conscious, but failed at both of them. The first occurred as I was sitting on the beach studying, at clover point. A couple of girls who were near me packed up and left, walking by me and leaving several beer cans on the ground. I almost stopped them to mention the garbage they were leaving behind, but didn't. The second, a more odd situation, happened at the grocery store. In front of me were a few young high school boys, maybe 15 years old... not the 'cool kids', you might say by their appearance. In front of them was a guy and a girl together; the guy had one of those macho t-shirts, a few tattoos, and looked like a through-and-though prick even before he opened his mouth to talk. And he was a prick, as it happened, because for no reason he confronted the three boys, asking something like "I hope you're not trying to fuck with me, because if you do, I'll fuck with you..." It didn't even ma...

Well, I bought an eggplant today for the first time ever. It was just sitting there in the vegetable section, staring at me. It was so... so purple, I just had to buy it. But now that it's in my fridge, I don't know what to do. What the hell does one do with an eggplant?

It's been about two full years since I've actually watched a tv show on cable here in Victoria, commercials included. I did today, and what do you know, that god-forsaken Money Tree caterpillar is still pumping out new ads. I just about threw my remote at the screen. Why does anybody have cable anymore? Everything is free online (albeit not legally), without commercials, in high quality. The internet is everything that cable and satellite want to be, but aren't. I got cable just this week because Shaw, the drug-pushers that they are, actually finagled with my bills so as to save me money for getting cable. What they do, in addition to the 6-month promotional offer, is extend my existing 6-month internet promotional ($10 per month) to a full year. After the math is done, I'll have saved 30 bucks a month for six months, so long as at the end of November, I cancel the cable and keep the internet. Or to put it another way, refusing the cable promotion would actually cost ...

BBC reported yesterday that condoms in India are often too large for men , particularly the men living in rural areas. It makes sense; in less developed parts of the world, the people are simply shorter and smaller all over, thanks to a lack of protein and other nutrients during childhood and adolescence. Conversely, the nations with the highest standards of living are the tallest. That must be a blow to one's sense of nationalism, that one's country needs smaller condoms manufactured than those of international standards. Anyway, I'm not tooting my own horn here, or implying anything, but the condoms in Korea really are smaller than the ones sold here. At first I thought I was mistakin', but after a few, er, tests, it became really obvious. See the thing is, Seinfeld was right: when it comes time to wrap up, you've got about a 30-second window to complete the task before all is lost. There's just something about refocusing one's mind away from the sexual an...

I've always been skeptical of ratemyprofessors... Many of the reviews say more about the quality of the student than they do about the quality of the professor. And just the other day, I looked up one of my old favorite profs, who's teaching one of my upcoming summer classes, and she's got terible reviews! "Worst professor I've ever had" and "Avoid this professor at all costs" were common phrases on her page. I was shocked. Sure, she's less than friendly, her lectures are never particularly well-organized. Hell, she even answers "I don't know" to questions every so often. But I don't care, the classes are interesting and the tests are fairly made and marked. What more could a student ask for?

You know how, every time you need cash and you go to some ATM that's not your bank's, they charge you $1.50? And then your bank, to rub it in, charges an additional $1.50 as a processing fee (at least my bank does)! The U.S. congress wants to cap ATM fees , interestingly, at 50 cents per transaction. The logic is populist; only really low-and-middle-income people use ATM's that much, so they end up with the shitty end of the stick once again. But I thought about this for a minute, and came up with the following question: Why don't we just eliminate cash altogether? I'm trying to think of all the reasons we use cash these days, and there aren't that many. Petty purchases (snacks, bar drinks, etc) - and all other small purchases - could be done with a swipe debit card... the technology exists already and it would only require /everyone/ to have a bank account of some kind. The only other things people use or have cash for are things that are illegal, annd things t...