Heads will roll, as they should. Talk about a screw-up.

Note to marketing professionals: Just because I donated to an AIDS awareness/prevention charity doesn’t mean I want to be sent advertisements in the mail for gay porn videos. I just don’t swing that way, and your unfounded assumption wasted your paper and my time. Thank you.

…

On a related note, now would probably be a good time to mention the thoroughly useful Junkbusters site. If you’ve ever wanted to fend off an unwanted barrage of junk mail, commercial phone calls, etc. then check the site out. It’s quite the resource.

I suppose passive aggressiveness is preferable to active aggressiveness, but it’s similarly non-productive (perhaps even more so).

I don’t know. I guess I’m just a direct person. I know this turns some people off, but there’s almost nothing I hate more than dancing around an issue, worrying about how I will be perceived or whether I’m stepping on over-sensitive toes. It’s a waste of time and not at all interesting to me.

Those who wish to communicate with me on a level beyond day to day small-talk would do well to get used to it, as (despite my best efforts in the past) it’s impossible for me to be true to myself while feeling like I’m stepping on egg-shells or violating some sort of unwritten rule.

Those who can’t respect that will need to be content with “How’s the weather?” and “What’s up?” type conversation. If that’s fine for them, that’s fine for me - just unfortunate.

Free speech or not, there are some things you just can’t talk about in America. Politics, race, and religion.

Frustrating.

Funny results on a survey: 4 in 10 Americans favor annexing Canada.

While I’m not feeling terribly imperialist (and suspect that as a country we wouldn’t make any such moves), I certainly wouldn’t mind Canada joining us, as long as people didn’t get funny ideas about socializing health care or anything. From my admittedly brief time in the country (an extended weekend visit to Vancouver BC a couple years back), I found the people to be very friendly and outgoing. Then, of course, there’s the sheer beauty of the country’s natural features.

Of course, bringing Canada into the fold would likely require some thought on how we would merge the two economies. Plus, there are cultural considerations to think about. It’s not worth discounting, though.