The world's last non-porn website

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...

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 no...

I've been trying so hard, so very hard, to get into the habit of selling customers things that I would never buy myself. When it comes to menu items that I believe are good value, or tasty, or otherwise worth the money, I'm an excellent salesman. But other things, not so much. For example: when people ask for water, I'm required by the restaurant I work for to ask "Would you like sparking, mineral, or tap water?" It annoys the bejesus out of me for two reasons. The first is that people who order "just water" are almost always ordering it because they're on a bit of a budget and don't want to drop extra money on a drink, or like me, think that restaurant drinks of all kinds are a huge rip-off. Second, who on God's name orders a bottle of water at a restaurant? Who buys a bottle of water anywhere ? So I say "Sparkling, mineral, or tap water?" and most people just look at me like I'm a sales guy on a used car lot who just do...

Well, it was actually a 2009 resolution, so technically this one was nearly 5 months late in completion. Nonetheless, it's done! I ran the Times Colonist 10k, in a pretty darn reasonable time of 52 minutes 47 seconds. That was well under my goal of 60 minutes, and approximately 10 minutes short of my real goal, which is ultimately to beat Jordan. You heard me, old buddy. Next year, it's on.

If I owned one of those live-in rehab places, I'd name it "The Last Resort"

I was out for a walk last night at around 10, and came across -out of pure coincidence - a big apartment fire on Oak Bay Avenue! The top floor of a building, right across from Garden Works, was up in smoke; fire trucks lined the street and residents from the building and elsewhere were gathered around to watch the show... and what a show! I like a good fire. It's primal. I listened to all the people around, as they seemed to be 'giving reasons' to themselves and others for why they were standing there watching... analyzing the job of the fire fighters, talking about how the fire spreads, making phone calls and relating themselves to the one or two people they know who live in the building, and so forth. But they're all really there to watch a little bit of destruction. Our society is so well-built, so carefully shaped right from the buildings to the services to the educations and right up to our minds, that it's pleasing - at least occasionally - to see a little ...

Well, it's high time to write a thing or two. Honestly, if you're reading this, it's a little depressing that you've kept checking all this time to see if I've posted anything. But, still, I am truly grateful! Your diligence will, hopefully, be worth it. So, I ran ten kilometers without stopping the other day (see: new years resolutions 2009!). Took me 59 minutes, which puts my goal of running the TC10k (coming up in 12 days) in under an hour within reach. It's no guarantee though, because that 59-minute run very nearly killed me. I'm changing my goal to 'under 55 minutes', just to keep things interesting. You know, it's good to spend as much time combating your natural weaknesses as you do enhancing your natural strengths. My natural weakness (among many), as far as it seems, is endurance. Every time I practice and work on endurance, it is grueling, painful, difficult, and never does it come easy. So here we are; after months, and I mean months,...

I bought a cell today. It's to the point now where a cell is cheaper than a land line for people who don't talk on the phone much. My goal of dying of old age cell-phone-less has itself died, and so be it. I made it until the good year of 2010 (and Korea doesn't count, because land lines don't even appear to exist there anymore). Speaking of South Korea, it's quite something to see how far behind Canada lags in terms of its mobile technology and reception. My phone doesn't even have a touchscreen! Pfft. By Korean 2010 standards, I might as well be chiseling my texts onto stone tablets and strapping them to the back of a dinosaur.

My Grandmother, and current host, is an absolute hoot to talk to sometimes, amid the lengthy discussions about life, love, work, and philosophy that we have regularly. "I don't know much about rappers. Their pants always seem to be falling off."

I've been terribly behind on this site... there are many pictures to post but the fact is that, unlike facebook, blogger.com requires much more time and effort on the part of the user to resize, upload, and format them. All in good time. I am once again destroyed by jetlag. I've flown on no less than 12 different planes since I left for Korea 17 months ago, and that has been more than plenty. I even know which of my belt buckles set off airport metal detectors and which don't. I learned quickly that, at Seoul's airport, one can get a rather thorough frisking from one of the their unusually attractive security ladies (who you'd think were flight attendants by dress and smile) if one chooses to wear the right belt buckle through the metal detector. Hypothetically, that is. Back in Vancouver, I found that I could take a new skytrain line part-way to the ferry terminal. A security fellow, in response to a question about the new line, mentioned offhand that it had been c...

On the Trip I might as well publish the story here. Apologies in advance for the lack of photos; they will have to wait until I can access a computer which allows me to use USB, because hostel computers don´t. The trip has been, basically, cancelled. After a week in Madrid and a few days in Barcelona, I´ve realized that this isn´t the time for such a vacation... I´ve been feeling terribly homesick, partly because it´s been over 16 months since I´ve been home, and also because I just left my second and more recent home, Korea. I thought, while leaving, that I´d feel more ¨at home¨ going to western Europe, but it had the opposite effect... I´ve felt disconnected fully on both fronts, and sad for not having either of the homes or sets of routines that I´ve become accustomed to over the years. I had these intrepid ideas in my mind, of traveling to remote places, spending each night with new faces, and generally going rogue through Europe... but now that I´m here I just miss the people I...

Times have been good. I´m working on posting photos, but the hostel computers have time limits and typically don´t like people plugging in their USB cables. All in good time. I hope everyone is well back home, back in Korea, and back wherever else you all are! I tell ya, the wealthy demographics in the world are so spread apart, they go just about everywhere to travel and study and meet lovers and do everything else! Would we be so inclined to live this way if it weren´t for the close contact kept thanks to the internet? Madrid was great. I think the best part was staring ito Bosch´s ¨Garden of Earthly Delights¨at the Prado. Great stuff. Today Em and I may also hit up Barcelona´s picasso museum!

The culture shock even during this first day has been bewildering, confusing, and tiring. I've spoken Korean thank yous to a number of shop keepers, and I keep passing things and accepting things with both hands, Korean style. Everything is different, the buildings, the people, the sounds, even the smell of things. I'm tired, and frankly lonely and sad, missing what feels like two separate homes and emotional connections on opposite sides of the world at the same time. The hostel is nice, albeit smokey and full of people my age with drinking and drug stories to which I simply cannot relate. God help me I just don't binge or pass out or fight or deprive myself of sleep or make any of these stories that get passed around the bar table by my generation. On the upside, I can speak more Spanish than I previously thought. Somehow, those dozens of hours doodling on my desk in the back of Ms. Ciccone's class through high school weren't a complete waste. Looking back, ...

I'm going to Madrid on Saturday, after 16 months in Seoul, South Korea. It's been a good time here in just about every way. I'll be home in Victoria around the end of March, after a bit of touring through Europe, India, and possibly Thailand. Wish me luck, and I'll be home soon! I'm packing the computer now, so the next post will likely be from Spain.