content

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 minds of consumers who have been conditioned over a number of years to think that accessing free media from companies who are not voluntarily giving it away is OK. It's really not.

I read a study that part of the reason people don't see why it's wrong to steal media is that we have trouble understanding the concept that non-material things can and do have real value. For the same reason people who use credit tend to spend more than people who use cash, we think that a piece of digital information suddently doesn't belong to its creator, just because it's copyable. but think of an analogous case: it's intuitively obvious that a person shouldn't be allowed to photograph/photocopy a painting and then sell or give away the copies without the consent of the artist. And we see it as obvious in that case because suddenly it's a 'real thing,' being copied, and each copy has intuitive value. This psychological quirk is also why investors sell stocks and flock to gold when there's a recession, and why we all enjoy counting (or are even willing to count) that pile of change we've collected over the months or years. Of course, the value of gold and cash and artwork are no less artificial than that of a digital movie file, but for us there's a difference.

To me, watching a commercial on YouTube before seeing a music video is a bigger compromise for the record company than it is for me. They're only taking that step because of how unwilling people are to purchase CD's or even Itunes files, and want to find a middle-ground between people buying stuff, and theft. It's be like if Wal-Mart's anti-theft strategy was to simply let people steal, but force them to steal only items that have sponsor flyers super-glued onto them. Who's getting the better deal?

We expect things for free, then threaten to boycott companies who do not spend money producing free things for us, and then complain when these companies generate their revenue by giving us free things with advertising attached!

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 make sense, and there was zero provocation. The poor boys didn't know what to do, and I know exactly what they felt in that moment, because I've felt it many times. At that age, boys are so self-conscious, so inwardly focused, so worried about how they look and what others think, that they have trouble realizing that there are other people in the world who are just plain wrong, or worse, just plain assholes. In reality, quite a large number of people are, and this guy was.

I should have calmly stood up for the boys, perhaps telling the macho guy to relax and keep the language to himself, but I didn't.

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 me 180 bucks.

The logic, I assume, is that enough people just end up keeping the cable TV to justify the loss leader of extending the promotions, thanks to the fact that television is addictive. So now it's in my house, and this time, I'm not watching it. As long as that money tree caterpillar keeps showing his face, this addiction should be easy to fend off.

In other news, school starts on Thursday.


Oh and one other thing. Any readers out there who also have blogs with blogger.com? Notice how, when you press the publish button, it says "Your blog post published successfully!"? As though the website has something to brag about... Imagine if your car displayed that message on the dash, "Your engine has started successfuly!" every time you turned the key... in a very real way, wouldn't that give you less faith in the machine?

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 and on to this tricky task, combined with the realization that a very tenous layer of latex is protecting one from all kinds of things that may or may not otherwise be results of the intimate moment. It is a little bit of a taunt to millions of years of evolution.

Back to my point: condom sizes really do vary by country. I wonder, then, if the data exists out there on the average 'size' of men all over the world. Could countries be ranked? Who would be on top? Imagine the bragging rights we'd have if our country was #1. Imagine the taunting there'd be by tourists from one country to the next. Imagine the consequence at international sporting events, if all the fans knew who was where on the rankings. It's no wonder such a list has never been published.

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 that they don't want to pay taxes on. I"m talking about drugs, tips, under-the-table business fees, and all that sort of thing.

So let's replace our slow debits with fast swipe cards for small (i.e.under 50 dollar) purchases, and use our regular cards for everything else. It would only be a small leap in technology to create cards that could transfer money to each other, thus eliminating the problem of paying people back for things in person!

Forget the penny, folks. Let's get rid of all cash. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that before I'm dead - presuming I live up to average mortality rates - cash will be a thing of the past. And luckily, if you chart the trends, people in my sort of shoes (Canadian, healthy, non-smoker/drinker born in the mid-80's) should live well into their 90's, if not beyond.

Now, I may already have mentioned this, but in Korea, you can have just about everything a human needs to have in life with rice. In the food department, they serve it up strait, puffed, mashed, shaped, coloured, sweetened, levened, or gelatinized. You can also find it in milk, wine, and beer form. It's a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner, and a dessert... hell, even a midnight snack.

But the good folks over in Japan, long-standing rivals of the Koreans, have truly outdone themselves. They've clothed a woman with a miniature rice farm. Well, sort of... I'm not sure "clothed" is quite the right word.

On a related note, I'm pretty sure that all it takes to be a news producer is to be able to work a ridiculous pun into every possible story title. I bet I could do that job... let's have a look at some of CNN's real headlines, May 13th, 2010, and give them a pun-upgrade:

6-month sentence sought for U.S. Missionary in Haiti

Upgraded: Missionary position not so good for one U.S. aid worker


Mr. Obama: Buffalo needs 'freakin' jobs

Upgraded: Obama is 'freakin' out over Buffalo's job losses.


Lettuce E. Coli oubreak spreads

Upgraded: Eat your vegetables... except for lettuce


Some quitting Facebook as privacy concerns escalate

Upgraded: Some facebook users feel their private parts are being violated


BP hopes pipe insertion will capture spewing crude...

Upgraded: That one's just too easy, it's not even fair...