Canadian sensibilities

Watching North American television is an exercise in frustration. Firstly, are there an incredibile amount of ads. Normal programming goes something like this:

• Ad break
• End of programme 1
• Ad break
• Close credits of programme 1 (with ads placed next to credits)
• Open credits of programme 2
• Ad break

Which means you have 3 ad breaks for essentially one scene of television.

It only gets worse when you are watching a movie, as the ad breaks are placed based on the clock, not on convenient breaks between scenes. So during "Apocalypse Now" they cut to an ad break in the middle of the helicopter attack sequence set to 'ride of the valkyries'. An ad break in the middle of one of the most powerful scenes of all time. Way to ruin the atmosphere.

And then we have censorship. Everything get cut out. Last night I was watching 'Dumb and Dumber', and the following scenes were cut out (remember that the movie is hardly explicit to begin with):

• urinating in to a bottle
• getting punched in the nuts
• woman with flashing lights for breasts

You get the idea.

You will also note that if you carry an open beer bottle down the street, even if you are just outside a bar, you will get ticketed and fined. However, openly selling drugs and snoking pot in public is ignored. Go figure.

Moral of the story: getting people to buy the lastest car/medicine/burger = good. Boobs = bad.