DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here’s how I usually buy an electronics device:

Go to Costco, take notes. Stop by Good Guys on the way home. Compare brands and prices. Return home, research brands on the web for two hours. Ask experienced friends for opinions. Check manufacturers’ websites. Read epinions.com reviews. Do many Google searches.

Review ads in supplements to Sunday newspaper. Check Consumer Reports Buyers Guide for warranty and reliability ratings. Pore over specifications and features. Scan half.com and ebay for deals.

And then, 2-3 weeks later, after having spent 24 hours researching, I make a purchase decision. At a reasonable contracting rate, those 24 hours of work cost me in the neighborhood of $24 million.

So when it came time to buy a DVD player, I employed a new tactic. I can summarize it here:

• Wait until your wife says she’s going to Costco.
• Ask her to buy a DVD player.

There, I’ve just saved you an entire day of your life.

So now panhandlers are using the web to research how to beg more effectively. There is something really wrong with that, like panhandling is a viable career choice. What’s next, Begging for Dummies?

Here’s the site mentioned in the article: Market Research for Panhandlers.

This site has been upgraded to the latest, unreleased, beta version of Monaural Jerk. It should work much the same as before, even though radical changes have been made to the infrastructure. If you see anything that looks wrong, please send me an email.

The changes allow journal entries to be assigned into multiple categories — which in turn enables the new Greatest Hits category you’ll find in the Channels menu to the right.

I had dinner at Hooters last week.

My companions and I were on a mission: eat greasy food, drink lots of beer, and ogle well-endowed women. For seekers of sustenance and sexual fantasy, Hooters is the Holy Grail. It was, in a sense, wholly satisfying, and in another sense, wholly unsatisfying. (I’ll leave to the reader the exercise of identifying which two senses I’m referring to.)

If you’re not familiar with the “Hooters Concept,” I can paint a picture: chesty women in tight orange shorts and white tank-tops, serving an array of fried food and occasionally rubbing their breasts against receptive customers in a way that seems inadvertent, casually inviting, but is no doubt strategically calculated to maximize gratuities.

Here’s the thing that shocked me about Hooters: women eat there! Guys bring dates! This is why I’ll never be hired by a marketing firm; I always overestimate the ability of a typical American to be offended. Because I would never predict that three generations of Asian women would go out for a meal at Hooters… and yet, there they were. I saw several tables of families with young children, which just seems wrong.

The Hooters Media Statement is a great read. They justify the concept and address their critics directly. But I was surprised to learn that HOO.C.E.F., the Hooters Community Endowment Fund, is not designed to subsidize breast augmentation surgeries in low-income neighborhoods. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if cosmetic surgery is a covered benefit on the company health plan.

I’ve seen two interesting anti-Microsoft articles this week:

One Dead Opossum, in which Applelinks.com’s Del Miller compares Microsoft’s impending domination of the Internet to an attack by a diseased rodent.

A revolutionary pursuit: Freedom from Microsoft, in which the San Jose Merc’s Dan Gillmor compares consumers’ migration away from Microsoft software to the Revolutionary War, and the 13 colonies’ battle to reject the foreign rule of the British government.

I find the metaphors remarkable: Microsoft is a software company, but it has been compared to vermin and to an oppressive government. Think that through… according to these writers, you cannot afford to ignore Microsoft, or (like an infected rat, or an evil bureaucracy) it will harm you personally. Apathy is a dangerous thing.

Miller’s article addresses one of the most frightening aspects of Microsoft’s newest line of products: the subscription fee model. You will no longer be able to “buy” software from Microsoft; you’ll be forced to “rent” it, through expiring software and forced upgrades. I figure that within 3 years most of you will get a bill in the mail every month with this logo on the envelope.