Regional price discrimination is a Very Bad Thing™. Basically, it's a form a predatory pricing where a company has such a dominant market position that they can effectively set the price of their goods in individual regions. Take Levi's jeans back in the day (remember when they were the height of fashion?). You could buy the exact same pair of jeans for the exact same sticker price in Toronto and London, but the Toronto pants were priced in dollars, and the London ones were priced in pounds. Sucks to English doesn't it?

The nice thing is, most jurisdictions regulate this kind of thing, so it doesn't get too out of hand...but there's no practical way to legislate against regional availability discrimination (same idea, but with selective sales to particular regions only).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1 - Released in North America: January 15th, 2002
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 1 - Released in Europe: December 4th, 2000

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2 - Released in North America: Unreleased
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2 - Released in Europe: May 21st, 2001

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 3 - Released in North America: Unreleased
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 3 - Released in Europe: October 29th, 2001

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 4 - Released in North America: Unreleased
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 4 - Released in Europe: May 13th, 2002

Screw you CBS/Fox Home Video.

Rustboy is cool. So are The Beatnuts, in their own slightly thugged out way. As is Reaktor from Native Instruments. Obtain the equally cool Kazza Lite (beware of pop-ups) for more info on the second two. That is all. You may now return to your regularly scheduled Sunday loafing.

Ah, the first spam in my new inbox...and it wasn't even porn!

So disappointing. Some sort of firm that has "unique technology that instantly submits your website to over 500,000 search engines and directories" instead. Mental note: Never post unobfuscated address to web. Ever.

Just a little note about attention spans. If you (like your loyal writer) have the concentration prowess of a crank-addled six-year-old anime fan, there is a simple solution. Read. Get your literate on. It's the simplest trick in the world, but it works.

Think about it, when children are young, there's an abundance of hue and cry over the amount of time spent watching television or gaming versus the amount of time spent reading. Apparently one's mental endurance is set in stone by the age of eighteen though, because past that point, no-one seems to concern themselves with the management of their video crack to literary ganja ratio. This, of course, is complete crap. If you want some shred of your attention span back, proceed as follows:

1. Obtain one novel of considerable heft that does not suck.

2. Read said novel.

The idea is fairly simple. The combination of length and quality will help to re-establish the subconscious association between time consuming endeavours and pleasure that has been more or less completely destroyed by five years of painful post-secondary all-nighters. Try three or four repetitions (pick a particular author that generally meets the non-suckitude conditions), and see if it helps.

Of course, having not done this, and heading into a four-day week with three assignments and two midterms, I'm switching tasks an average of every fourteen minutes.

...and a Corporate Standard Jovial Greeting to Tracykins, who I don't think realized who I was when she approved my application to join the UW Bloggers Local #401.

Parents, don't let your children grow up to be culinarily-illiterate.

There's nothing more pitiful than someone who could starve to death with a full fridge. Now I know roast chicken-in-pig-in-ox-in-polar bear-style lovin' isn't for everybody, but that's not what I mean. If your offspring can't boil rice by the time they leave home, you fucked up somewhere. If their impression of a three course meal involves supersizing their Big Mac combo, you haven't done right by 'em. I know kids that can do abstract mathematics, but can't even cook toast.

"Oh, [Johnny/Sally] will learn soon enough once they move out."

No they won't. They'll eat doughnuts in the morning, McShit Meals for lunch, and order in for dinner. After a few years of that, they'll start funding a massive pharmaceutical/surgical industry that preys on fat fucks that don't know how to feed themselves properly.

All that because you were too busy to teach them to cook.

I did some homemade pasta for my Moms this year. Ten bucks, two hours, and some elbow grease, dead easy. Happy Mother's Day Mum (and thanks).

All hail Sam Raimi, saviour of the Superhero Flick.

Seriously, after the vast heap suck that comprises nearly every single other attempt to take comics to the big screen, Spiderman was a joy to behold. Peter Parker was suitably pathetic, Willem Dafoe is great as Osborn (the Green Goblin suit is one of the only real Batmanizations in the movie, but at least they left the smoke trail behind his glider intact), Kirsten Dunst actually pulls off the small town hottie look nicely, and JJ is straight off the page. Quality.

And they left all kinds of room for a sequel.

U Know U Ghetto: Too 'Hood For TV



On today's U Know U Ghetto, we dry some fresh pasta on some damn coat hangers. Plastic coat hangers. Hangin' from a lampshade. 'Cause we so ghetto, we [Audience chanting in unison] Too 'Hood For TV! [Cheering, cut to commercial].

The last time I went back to the spawning pool, I talked to to my best friend about the different faces we all use...I think I first noticed it when I started working for the man back before I came to university. We all seem to have different layers of ourselves that we use for different situations, like those little Russian dolls with a series of smaller dolls inside. When I got my first suit job, I started to see that I let different sides of my personality have more sway depending on what kind of situation I was in. Eventually I realized that I had a different face for everbody (some closer to the real me than others).

When I had to help my brother deal with his little pyro-accidental habitat shift, I was under so much stress that I didn't really have the resources to put a face on, and I was more than a little surprised to find that I actually liked what showed up. I wasn't exactly nice to people (not that I'm a Saint under any other circumstances), but I kept it together, got the job done, and managed to help one of the few people in the world that I actually give a rat's ass about. Aside from the psychotically short temper, I was a decent guy.

Cool.

Ughn! Good God! Sing it wi' me now!

Loves me that CSS. Loves it. My apologies to the unwashed heathens Netscape users, but this looks so pretty in a real browser...I'll add some kind of redirect script for y'all in the next little while.