I’ve mentioned in the past that I have to use the Comedy Network website to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report because, residing as I do in Canada, the sites that actually belong to the show are blocked here. Now, this annoys me in all kinds of ways: Whenever someone on the Internet links to a clip from one of those shows, they’re gonna link to the real sites, so I can pretty much never follow a link discussing the content. And even if I were bother to try to find the same clip on the Comedy Network site, their library is very much incomplete. There is no way at all for me to go back to the clips from way back in like 2000 or whenever when Colbert/Carell gave us amazing gold all the time. And also sometimes they seem to delay putting up the previous night’s shows for hours after the normal time

But I’m used to that. I’ve had to put up with that all the time. But what really bugs me is the way that the player on the Comedy Network doesn’t seem very good. It always takes a long time to load, but I’m willing to assume that that is in part the fault of my computer (though I rarely have that problem with things like YouTube…), and plus, for all I know the same problem would occur on the actual sites, so I can’t complain. But these last couple days the Comedy Network site has been even worse, often resetting every forty seconds making it pretty much impossible to watch the shows. And I know this time that it isn’t my laptop’s fault.

So, what I’m getting to here, is, if anyone ever scans the Internet looking for opinions on this, I want to be allowed to use the Daily Show and Colbert sites in Canada. C’mon, Comedy Network. If you’re going to make it illegal for me to watch the shows on their actual websites, can’t you at least try to not suck so bad?

In other news, I was awakened by the sound of jackhammering outside today. So that sucked.

What’s new? Not much for PDR. But here’s some things:

This week I finished reading the Aeneid, which is a book I bought like twelve years ago during my failed attempt at going to university. I feel like the “books I’ve yet to read” section of my bookshelf has lost one of its most stalwart pillars. I shall soon move across this shelf in a big sweep, reading all in my path. Or at least I would if the shelf wasn’t constantly calling for reinforcements in the form of new books…

In other news, there’s now a new African country. This, just a few years after I decided to memorize the continent as it was. How the chunks am I supposed to remember where South Sudan is?

I’m pretty sure that those two things are the only interesting things that have happened since the last time I had anything to say. Let’s see… We’re currently in the middle of new seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Louie, so I am all about watching those. And Futurama is on at the moment and, while it occasionally disappoints me, I still haven’t given up on it altogether. So… now my television watching habits are known, as the prophecy foretold…

I got nothing else. Go away.

“They keep coming up with these stupid computer things. There should be one damn computer thing, that’s it!”
— Robert Freeman

So now I’m on Google Plus. I remember when Facebook was new, people kept using it and I didn’t bother joining up. Then I joined up and now I like it. I don’t do much with it. I can send messages to people in a more efficient form than my email and I can play Scrabble and also there’s a program where I can keep track of books as I read them that’s pretty neat. I have no problem with Facebook. But some people do. They wanted something different so now Google Plus happened. I probably wouldn’t have joined, but Kiiip sent me an invite so I figured, why not?

And now I’m on two different social media things. I was never on the Myspace or the Twitter. I feel like it’s going to get all complicated and I’ll have to start putting more mental effort into it and that’s going to cause social anxiety. Like real life! And if computer-type socializing starts becoming as bad for me as real-life socializing? What then? What’s the point? Argh.

Ah well. I’m on there now, so we’ll see what happens.

Over this last week I have purchased seven DVDs from Blockbuster locations that are dying here in Halifax. Now, I love my DVD collection and its extensiveness, (as shown in this here not even up-to-date list) so I am quite pleased to be adding to it for the first time in quite a while.

That said, with every DVD I add to the collection I also add to my annoyance, because I know I shouldn’t have a DVD collection at all. At the place where human technological development is, there is simply no need for it. Ideally all the movies (and music and so on) would be kept in a vast repository online where we could all see the movies we want, when we want. These physical copies of the movies that I so enjoy are entirely pointless. And yet I still like them. It’s rough being a greatly self-contradictory fellow.

Of course, when DVDs are finally an obsolete technology, this collection is going to seem like a lot of wasted time and effort.

(For the record, I’ve just realized that one of my new seven DVDs is Fullscreen. I didn’t even know they still had those.)

So there’s this professor who hates television So Much that he decides that the medium used to relay information is more important than the information relayed. Using this revelation that the “Medium is the Message” the professor decides that the content must be the audience. Becoming aware of the audience, he then breaks the forth wall to ramble at us with his crazy ideas. And I guess this guy is Canadian. Or else he wouldn’t be a Part of our Heritage now would he?

What? I saw this commercial dozens of times as a youth and I have no idea (zero actual idea) what the crazy professor is going on about. I’m sure that the idea that “the medium is the message” has some sort of meaning to people who have had it better explained, but it is not conveyed to me in this piece. It just sounds like he is “television is bad for you because the method used to educate and entertain someone is important and television is a bad method.”

I just don’t get it.

This one is weak. I can only give it One and a Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake because I only understand about 25% of what is going on in this one.