To be honest, most of the time it’s not bad to earn money for doing nothing, and it was a great way to ward off boredom in the classroom while somebody else has an endless debate on the relevancy of Socrates. I don’t think it affected my work in the class, but god, if I keep this up in law school I’ll be on the first train to failure. Unless I can rev up my multitasking capabilities.

So, what do I get in return for my wasted youth? You’d be surprised at the amazing amount of money/prizes that marketers give people for filling out simple forms. Just off the top of my head, I’ve gotten money in the form of cheques. I got free wireless Internet access for a year (thank you, Bell Sympatico). I got a free Zune before they were even out in Canada (thank you, Matchstick). I got countless spam emails (no thanks).

But today I’m bitching about the very surveys that earn me actual cash or various incentives. Have you ever filled out an online survey? They’re fucking boring. Here’s an example of a PAGE out of dozens you’ll have to fill out:

Snore.

Seriously, it’s enough to make you hate marketing people. What are they hoping to achieve with a survey like this? Who had the bright idea of making choices from 1-10? Do you know if your love of Smarties is a 7 or and 8? Does it fucking matter?

Which brings me to my main point: marketers would be screwed if they relied on my data for market research. When I see forms like the one you witnessed above, I just randomly click or select 5 for all of them. Who has time to read them all? Just when you’re done one page like that, another 30 come up right after. The pain I go through to earn $5 is evident, even if I make up false data. It’s not beneficial for me or for them to make their surveys like this. I get bored, and they get fake data.

Of course, they don’t think like this, and since they don’t have to do the damn surveys themselves they have no idea what a fucking chore it is. In their minds they’re probably popping up their collars and collectively slapping each other’s asscheeks while commending themselves for their impact “synergy”. I’d like to give them an impact myself, and “empower” them with a nice knock upside the head.

So, the next time you wonder which brilliant product group thought green ketchup was a great idea or that people would buy reuseable tampons, you have me to blame. I’ll then subsequently pass on the blame to the marketing types for making boring surveys.

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1. They’re both islands, separated from the mainland. Technically, Kowloon is on the mainland, but then, so again is Labrador. Historically, they were both “independent” at some point, which is to say they both had different owners a century ago.

2. People speak a different dialect than those from the mainland. In Hong Kong’s case, people speak Cantonese that sounds different from the mainland Cantonese, and very much different from standard Mandarin. In Newfoundland’s case, they speak a dialect that hails from colonial times. Neither can speak understandable English properly.

3. The ego. Both places think they’re better than the mainland, and in some cases rightly so. Both bitch about bad mainland administration. The source of Hong Kong and Newfoundland’s problems lie in Beijing and Ottawa alone.

4. They both used to have a strong fishing economy. However, Hong Kong gets the advantage in this one over Newfoundland because Hong Kong has managed to move on to become a major trading hub and international financial centre. Newfoundland? Not so much.

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A poor women was dead 12 783 days without anyone knowing.   Now all her neighbors can do is fight over her apartment.  How sad is that.

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Yet to this date I have hardly ever beat a handful of those games, let alone play them for more than a few hours at a time. They’re not bad games either, and I’m no horrible gamer. I’ve blamed school and work for taking my free time away, but now that school’s over I haven’t even cracked open a game case yet. The only thing I play on a consistent basis is Eastside Hockey Manager, and that hardly qualifies as a game. More like a spreadsheet you fool around with. Then there’s Pokemon, but it’s just something I play with for a few minutes when I’m bored. I haven’t even beaten a kid’s game.

Thus, I think I’ve come to the realization that I’m just not that into video games. Despite my intentions on amassing a nice collection and hoping to spend hours enjoying it, it just never happened.

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1. Because it is expensive… Things that are not healthy for you should be expensive; perhaps to deter people from buying them. Now that pop is cheap people will consume more pop, raising the obesity rate,  diabetes will skyrocket- especially in children thus causing your tax dollars to increase.
2. Everywhere else has cans… Insert bridge jumping analogy here.
3. Cans are more convenient… Tell that to the people at Siemens Bottling Company who lost there job,  to people that now have to drive out of their way to return bottles, instead of taking them to there local grocery store or the people who pick up other peoples litter. At least with a glass bottle, you were less reluctant to throw it out your car window

With the perks of canned pop comes the dreaded dime deposit, nickel return. Say you drink 3 pop a day, that is $109.50 in deposits, but you are only getting $54.75 in return.  According to Wikipedia, the islands population is 139,089 people. Lets assume they all drink 3 pops a day (this is a conservative estimate).  The government profits $7 615 122.75 a year.

It might take Islanders a couple of years to realize this, but the only people who are benifiting from canned pop are

1. Big soft drink corporations like Pepsi and Coke.
2. The PEI government, they are loving that extra nickel.
3. Dentists.
4. Insulin Manufacturers… because drug companies don’t have enough money.

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I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to change the file permissions in my Wordpress install. I really should host my own site instead of relying on someone else’s server.

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“[There's no reason why somebody can't quit smoking; You're telling me that your life can be controlled by a tiny stick]“?

I wonder if this is why I don’t get addicted easily, except my weakness toward purchasing technological stuff.

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