www.simoncollier.ca

Sometimes I feel so defeated by the society that I live in, that I’m consumed by. I try hard to live in a way that is at least moderately socially responsible. I know I’m not a “good” person, I know I don’t do as well as I could at buying the right products from the right stores, but I do TRY.

It doesn’t seem fair that it is SO complicated though. For example, I know The Gap are basically evil. Same with Wal-Mart and Nestle. They’re the easy ones.

What about Kraft? I have to say I haven’t heard anything bad about them. I’m sure their K-D meals aren’t all that good for your insides but they don’t claim that they are. They have a nice free quarterly magazine with pictures of children making meals and quick recipes for parents in a rush. They have meals and deserts and dairy products in stores that are instantly recognisable to any 5-year old.

Did you know they also make cigarettes?

Not Kraft exactly, but Kraft are mostly owned by Altiria Group, which is owned by Philip Morris, who owns Marlboro. You know what else he owns? SABMiller, so buy Bavaria, Miller light, Carling Black Label or Pilsner and you’re supporting a cigarette manufacturer.

Maybe this is good… Maybe I’m looking at it wrong. Maybe they’re looking to move into other markets so they don’t have to give up business entirely and fire everyone because they KNOW cigarettes are sinking fast. Maybe that’s it. It’s for the families of the workers.

Still though… Yuck.

MySpace is the absolute worst piece of crap excuse for a web service ON THIS PLANET. I see more error messages than I do real pages, I have to resubmit blog posts many, many times in the hope it actually works… Then when it DOES work it’s posted multiple times, so I have to try-and-fail-and-try to remove the duplicates before it crashes on me again. How many times do you have to see the “An Unexpected Error Occurred” before you think, “how unexpected can this really be??”.

It’s great to see rags-to-riches stories when people invent a new technology or service or way of life that truly revolutionises the way we operate. The kid that invented Napster, the eBay creators, PayPal, BitTorrent, TVUplayer… All GREAT things.

MySpace? Crap.

Crap crap crap crap crap. It’s USELESS. They need to upgrade their servers, they need to move away from ColdFusion and they need to stop taking for granted that people will keep using that “service” just because a lot of celebs use it. (Even if I do love Fearne Cotton!).

One day someone else will take the MySpace concept and do it right… And take the celebrity bloggers and advertising revenue with them.

GoogleSpace anyone?

Valentines Day. This is another one of those “checkpoints” I have, and hate. One of those times in the year that I can’t help but evaluate my life. For today, of course, that’s my love life.

Valentines Day for me is a day where I take stock and wonder, am I in a relationship with someone I’m in love with, or am I not? It feels like such an unfair test. It’s very binary; either I pass or I don’t. It’s a simple litimus test for the success of my love life, one which I spectacularly fail, but I don’t mind because it’s much better to fail because I’m single, than fail because I’m dating someone I don’t love.

In September 2005, I got pissed off with my bank because they refused to give me a line of credit, despite my account being in good standing for five years (incluing credit card), me having good credit and I doing ALL of my banking with them.

Bollocks to them, I thought, and opened a new chequing, savings and RRSP account with a rival bank. I transferred my RRSP over to my new account, activated my credit card, and put $10 in my chequing account.
Unfortunately the rival bank charged me insane fees for just existing, so I got huffy with them and didn’t ever do anything with my accounts there. Once my chequing account was $40 overdrawn from bank fees alone, they closed it.

I went back to them this weekend to rescue my RRSP savings (this is 18 months on now). They have no record of my RRSP existing. My other RRSP account closed because the money LEFT the old account… And apparently didn’t ARRIVE in my new account.

That serves me right for being moody, I suppose.