(Last updated, January 2004) I've made some discoveries about the world recently. Here's my thoughts on them...(most recent additions are at the bottom of the page): LEGAL CRAP: These thoughts are mine only, of course. If you disagree with something I have to say, no problem. Everyone has their right to their opinion. Or is it just a matter of time until someone simply censors me and forces me to remove my opinions from the net? My guess is that it's only a matter of time. All it will take is one person not to agree with me and I'll be getting the 'removal' threat in email. Sigh. (see below) "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire Firstly, there is NO privacy on the internet...except from my homepage. :) There is always someone somewhere who is watching you. We live in a society of "big brother", and he is always watching. Be careful what you do. Be careful what you say. Canada is a free country....supposedly. How come some people won't let me express the way I feel. I'll tell you why....as long as there is someone in a position of authority, their opinions are always the ones that matter. Yours don't. Mine don't. All it takes is someone with power to totally stir up the shit and give you a hard time. That's just the way it is. Privacy....indeed. Not in this country. Not on the internet. Your ISP is logging you right now. Every site you have ever visited is tracable. Every news article you've ever read is tracable. Be careful what you say.......if someone doesn't agree with it, they'll do everything they can to destroy your rights. Next...insurance companies. This has got to be the biggest legal scam in North America. I don't know what it's like in other parts of the world...but over here, it's pathetic. Why is it that you have to pay hundreds of dollars per year to a company that is supposed to be there 'in case' something happens, and then when something happens, you still have to pay them more?? Even if it's not your fault!? This doesn't make sense to me. To ME, all I see an insurance company as is someone that will give you a loan with a very high interest if you get in an accident. An example: Last summer I was on a freeway in Nova Scotia. At the crest of a hill, a bridge was under construction. They didn't make any kind of grade to go between layers of pavement. I measured it after I hit it....4 inches! After talking to the construction company that was doing the work at the time (highway 104 near Amherst), they said that this was within legal guidelines. ???? What? Do you have any idea how hard that is on a vehicle? Do you have any idea how big 4 inches is...at speeds of 30m/h, let alone 60?? Give me a break. Anyways, this "HOLE" in the bridge (across all lanes) made me briefly lose control (and I wasn't even going 60m/h -- maybe 50m/h (80km/h)). A short distance ahead of me on the crest there was a WHEEL from a tractor-trailer in the middle of the lane. Not just the tire....tire AND rim. My suspicion is that it fell off after hitting the poor construction. There was no way I could see it, or avoid it. From my driving experience, the safest thing to do was hit it square on, rather than risk it hitting one wheel and flipping the car. I did. It dented two of my rads, cracked my bumper, and smashed one of my two horns. There was NO WAY I could have avoided this....it was not my fault. I got an estimate done....$1,500. !!!! I went to my insurance company with it, and they told me that ANY single vehicle accident is the driver's fault, and that they wouldn't even consider covering it. Sigh. My deductable...$300...my insurance would go up by $300 a year for five years...for a grand total of $1,800 to fix $1,500 of damage. Excuse me? So you're giving me a loan, basically....? Needless to say.....I didn't get it fixed, and am driving a damaged vehicle. :( The thing that I consider a scam is that we are all FORCED to have insurance in order to drive. The goverment requires it. !??! So I have to pay someone almost $1,000 a year to be able to give me a loan with high interest to fix my car when something happens. Makes sense....not. I know, I know...you are only forced to have liability. Do you honestly think that if an insurance company has to pay out money in a liability claim that they will just forget about it? No way. Your rates will go up to pay them back with interest. If someone wants to give me an example of a case in which it hasn't, I'd love to hear about it....and to get the name of your insurance company. (I'm not mentioning mine, both for reason of lawsuit (over telling the truth), and that they don't deserve the free advertising). UPDATE (October, 2003): I just moved to New Brunswick (Canada) after spending about six years in the Eastern US...and I have a new gripe about auto insurance... Apparently NB has the worst insurance in Canada. And it shows. The problem is, you hear all the radio and TV ads about "we have to raise rates to combat all the false claims that happen". Here's a thought...rather than fuck everybody, why not make the person give better PROOF for a claim, and try keeping rates down. Don't give the bullshit excuse that you're trying to combat insurance fraud. The problem is, the insurance companies STARTED IT, but making insurance premiums (which, again, are we are forced by law to get) to be at astronomical prices. People get sick of paying tons of money for nothing, and they are becoming more likely to make a claim. You want to stop false claims? Lower your rates. It's the insurance companies that are causing the snowball effect, not the consumers. Wake the fuck up. (OK, back to my preious bitching)... Thirdly....telephone systems. I pay $5 a month for call display. I find it useful to know who is calling me. There are a couple problems, though. There is a way to block it. Telemarketers (which I DETEST, BTW) can simply disable their call info before calling me. The problem here is that I don't know they're TM until I pick up the phone. So you ask....why bother to pick up a 'Private Number' one at all? My cell phone comes up as PN/PN, so I don't know if my wife is calling me from a cell phone (or I'm calling her), or it's a TM. Nice. Here's something else that pisses me off about it. I have got several VERY offensive prank calls in the past. From the same group of kids. They are smart enough (I'm SURPRISED) to block their number before they call... so I don't know who they are. After I hang up, I can't call them back....*69 won't call back on a private number. The best I can do is pay $5!!! to do a trace on it and send it to the police. Just do that, then, you say. I've tried. The problem is, the phone company isn't willing to do any work on it, and the police don't consider it worth pursuing. Nice. So there's only one other thing I can do about it....I can pay ANOTHER $5 per month to get call screening put on my phone to block out people that I don't know who are calling me to harass me. What a system. Fourthly....how great it is to be male. Right. Okay, fine...50 years ago women were not treated equally. Feminism helped to bridge that gap and get women more rights. But why is it that things have now taken a 180 degree turn? Two wrongs don't make a right. Making the world more difficult for men isn't going to make up for the past. That's revenge...or is that what modern feminism is about? That's not what it's supposed to be about. Why is it that when laws are written about 'treatment' of people, that they only mention women? Why is it that women are ALWAYS given lighter sentences than men in the legal system? Why is it that all men's dormatories in universities have to be converted to co-ed but women's dorms can stay all same-sex? Why is it that women are able to have women-only clubs but all men's clubs have to allow women? There are many more examples. Why is it that it is supposedly funny to see a woman hit a man in a movie, but it is the most terrible thing on the planet to have a man hit a woman? I don't see why it should be different. (RE: off the top of my head, I can think of two....the scene in "Christmas Vacation" where the woman strikes her husband after returning from Chevy Chase's house. Why is this funny? I don't see it as funny. Another example is when Jamie-Lee hits Arnie in the movie "True Lies". It's intended as funny. Would it have been equally as funny if the roles were reversed and Arnie hit Jamie-Lee? Indeed not. The movie would be banned instantly. Only villans in movies are allowed to do that....now THERE's equality). Here's a new one. My fifth bitch... How come people are so quick to say that "speeding" causes accidents? Anyone with any driving experience will tell you that this is total bullshit. I have had two professional driving courses (not "Driver's Ed", PROFESSIONAL driving courses) and have my 404 Military license, and have over 500,000 miles of driving experience in every major highway and city in the United States and Canada. If you do not have this experience, don't talk to me. If you do, we'll have something to talk about. If you don't, LISTEN, and learn something. The fact is over 85% of car "collisions" happen at intersections, in which speed has no bearing. In EVERY case of this, the collision is caused by either lack of attention or poor judgement (in some cases, jumping a light, for example...this is poor judgement, or just stupidity, either one). In almost EVERY case, the collison could have been prevented if either A: better judgement was taken, or B: there was ONE SECOND more of time to make a decision. One second...that's all it takes to prevent a collision. You ask, you do you keep saying collision, instead of accident. Because there's no such thing as an accident...it's a collision, and it's preventable. Next thing you'll say is, What about the other 15%? They must be speed related on the highway. Here's the facts...of these 15%, almost all are alcohol related. How often do you hear a report of an "accident" that the police will say, "Yes, SPEEDING was definately a factor.......oh yeah, and the blood-alcohol content was twice the legal limit.....but if HE WASN'T SPEEDING, this wouldn't have been as bad." Bull fucking shit. If he wasn't DRINKING, he wouldn't have crashed AT ALL. The fact is, less than 1% of collisions can be related directly to speeding, and of these, ironically, most are because of persuits from police for other violation. Hmmmm..what does this tell you. Please learn the facts first. Here's a couple more...note them and learn well. FACT: If everyone drove at a TWO-SECOND distance from the car in front of you, and do not drive erratically (ie: jumping lanes and cutting people off) almost ALL highway collisions would be prevented. So you say, why doesn't everyone just do this? Because this is North America, and everyone is an impatient ass...and that's just the way it is. I try to drive with a 2-second distance in front of me, and if I had a dollar for every time some impatient person saw this "gap" as an opportunity to get 10 feet farther forward, I could buy another car right now. NO ONE THINKS...and that's the problem. DON'T TAILGATE...you won't get in a collision. FACT: Many people drive with their hands in "ten-two" position. WHY? Because this was the old way of being taught how to drive. PLEASE people, drive with your hands at "nine-three". Your hands are centered on the wheel, and if you ever have to make a sudden movement, you have a MUCH smaller distance to move your hands, and will have a far higher reaction time. FACT: Many people drive with their mirrors pointed along the side of their car. WHY? I ASSURE you, whenever you get where you're going, the side of your car will still be there. Learn something here...point your mirrors OUT more, so that you can see the lane without tilting your head more than 30 degrees to either direction (helps if you have a mirror on the passenger side). If you do this, YOUR CAR WILL HAVE NO BLIND SPOT. I do not buy the argument, "I couldn't see him, he was in my blind spot." Well then, you're an idiot, because if you had your mirrors angled correctly, there would be no blind spot. In doing this, you can also avoid doing a "shoulder check", because you no longer have the infamous "blind spot" in which you have to check. In heavy traffic, this can save you seconds of time from having your focus AHEAD of you on traffic. You'll be surprised how many less "close calls" you have in rear-ending someone in heavy traffic. ONE SECOND extra in timing could almost prevent all major collisions. One second. If you can take less time away from your focus by using this "mirror trick", you'll gain a lot more of this one second. And DO NOT TAILGATE. Here's another thing that pisses me off. Why is it when I'm stopped at a light, that the person behind me insists on stopping one foot from my bumper? Here's something to think about... IF YOU GET HIT, YOU'LL HIT ME, AND I'M GOING TO SUE YOUR ASS OFF FOR BEING A FUCKING IDIOT. DO NOT stop so close to me. DO NOT stop so close to ANYONE. Stop a good distance away from the vehicle in front of you. If you get hit, you won't hit them, and that saves YOUR ASS from liability...because the fact is....every rear-ending is the person behind's fault. You shouldn't have been so close. Almost EVERY rear-ending can be prevented....it starts with common sense. And if I think you're too close to me, and I inch up.... DO NOT INCH UP WITH ME!!!! I'M NOT TRYING TO GET CLOSER, I'M TRYING TO GET A BETTER DISTANCE AWAY FROM YOU! FUCK this pisses me off. EVERY time I get to a light and someone stops RIGHT behind me, I inch forward to get away from them, and EVERY FUCKING TIME, they inch up with me. WHY? Do you think you'll get a jump on the light by 1/2000th of a second. Don't be a fucking bonehead. DON'T pull forward. Get some distance. New one (January 2004): Why the fuck is it that music companies are allowed to get away with saying that "music swappers are killing our industry". They're claiming that sales are down some 20% in the last three years. Yes, I'm sure that the file swapping does add to the downfall...BUT...here's another thought that the media fail to recognize. MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE LOST THEIR JOBS IN THE LAST THREE YEARS. Now I don't know about you, but when I'm unemployed, buying a $13 CD isn't exactly at the top of my list. Personally, I'd rather eat and stay alive. Yet the music industry ignores this fact, or bastardizes the file-sharing only. Wake the fuck up morons. People can't afford CDs when they don't have jobs. Figure this into your statistics, and you'll see that the drop in sales is fairly proportional to the number of jobs lost. The so-called "unemployment rate" is a total fuckup, since it doesn't reflect people that have stopped looking for work BECAUSE THERE IS NONE and/or the people that have had UI/EI benefits run out. Sales are down because people don't have jobs...period. Stop spreading your nonsense bullshit propoganda. Due to your greed, quite frankly, you DESERVE to continue to lose money. Fuck-holes. Oh yeah, Kobe Bryant -- innocent. Notice how the freakazoid that's making the claim is scared to have her history put out into the media. Notice how every time the defence asks for something to aid in their case, it's struck down -- yet every time the prosecution asks for something, it's upheld. The legal system is fucked. If you are a male, and a female accuses you of anything, just fucking hang yourself and get it over with, because you're going to lose because the fucking world revolves around women. Final thought for now...the so-called "nipplegate". Janet Jackson showed her bare breast for ONE SECOND on television, and suddenly it's the end of the world. Give me a mother-fucking break. The chairman of the FCC immediately piped up "We will waste as much resources as possible to find out how this atrocity could have happened!" Well, OK, he didn't word it like that, but that's what it is. They're wasting shitloads of time and money investigating how this possibly could have happened, and now they're looking to remove what freedom television has left because of it. I want everyone that is involved with this investigation to stop for a moment, take a deep breath, put a brick in a sock and smash yourself in the face with it. Now, are you awake? Good. Grow up. It's a fucking nipple. If the western world is this anal (oops, can I say that?) over a ONE SECOND shot of a breast, which had the nipple mostly covered, then the world has finally stooped to as low as society can go. This is as fucking pathetic as it gets. A breast, people. Do any of your at the FCC ever go to the beach? Holy fuck. And it's not like he was screwing her on stage. "Oh, the children!" Puh-lease. Here's a newsflash for all the braindead people out there that waste time and just to get a paycheck to investigate bullshit problems like this.....kids have been watching animated violence in cartoons since the 1930s. Before that it was just on paper instead of TV. You go on and on about how violence affects kids (though it doesn't, it's the environment around them that causes violence, not watching TV or playing video games -- didn't I already cover this?), and yet the showing of a natural part of the body is the end of the world. Newsflash #2...we all have nipples. Unless you have some body deformity, you should even have two of them. This may come as a shock to you, but it's true. Stop wasting time and resources and wake the fuck up...let the tit go. Enought bitching for tonight... That's all I have to say right now.....I may write more if I get bitter some other day. -Wolf Again, my opinions are mine alone...I speak for noone else on my behalf. I do not intend to force my views on anyone, I just call it as I see it. If you want to discuss something, or agree with me, feel free to email me. If you disagree, let me know what you think. However, flames from radical-feminists and anti-male organizations will be immediately directed to /dev/null with a very nasty response sent back to you, instantly putting you into my killfile. Have a nice day... :)