The Best Links

There are only two reasons I go to YouTube:

1) Someone sent me a YouTube link so I click on it
2) I want to search for a specific video

I never just "head to YouTube" to click around and procrastinate.  Does anyone do that?  I don't think so, right?

For this reason, other than the occasional YouTube Death Spiral (when I watch a YouTube video and then click on one of the "related videos" and so on and so on until I despise myself), internet videos have never really caused me to procrastinate.

At least they never used to.

Recently, several treacherous "link sites" have invaded my life and taken away my freedom.

First, a commenter on this blog told me about wimp.com, a site that lists five videos a day.  They range from short to long, science-y to silly, and I am now forced to watch every video they publish.

I don't go to Wimp every day.  But when I do go there, I have a lot of trouble not clicking on video after video until I've seen all the new ones since I was there last.  Like, a lot of trouble.

Then, with no consideration for my personal weaknesses and shortcomings, a friend of mine started a site called linksoftheweek.com.  Links of the Week publishes 12 links every Tuesday, each from one of their "categories," and forces me to view every link they post, whether I like it or not.

And then there are the links people send me over email, which are showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

So I've been kept busy.

And knowing that I have this blog that I write things in, I figured that whenever I came across a particularly interesting or entertaining video or photo, I'd copy it to a list which would one day allow me to take away some of your freedom.  Today is that day.

And so, I present to you the very best links I've come across:

Pets

There are more pet videos out there than grains of sand in the Earth.  And most of them are mediocre.  But the great ones are delightful.

Pet 1 - Excellent.
Pet 2 - Along the same lines. 
Pet 3 - He's like, "Try as I might, I can't seem to exit this place."  20 seconds is enough.
Pet 4 - Dogs being dumb is funny for everyone.
Pet 5 - This looped at least six times before I stopped watching it.
Pet 6 - Eight times.
Pet 7 - This is someone trying to make a funny video and succeeding.  Where have I heard that music before?
Pet 8 - Someone else trying to make a funny video.  Someone else succeeding.

Astronomy

Company Grades

We all interact with a lot of companies.  And companies that become a part of your continual existence usually fall into one of three categories:

1) Good companies that you like interacting with

2) Less-than-good companies, but good enough that out of laziness and inertia, you'll continue to interact with them

3) Companies that you hate, but that you're forced to interact with because they're the best/only option for a product or service that you need

In discussing some common companies, let's start on a positive note.  Then we can end on a really negative note, which is always nice.

Category 1:  Good companies that I like interacting with

Company:  Google
Personality:  Smart; logical
Intelligence:  Incredibly high
Dickishness:  Low
Creepiness:  Low
My general mood when interacting with them:  Varies; that's like asking, what's your general mood when breathing oxygen?
Grade: A

Comments:  Google is as good as it gets.  Every product they put out is innovative, user-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and utterly practical.  Everything they do makes sense.  They're always a step ahead of my thinking, always surprising me.  If they buy a company, they're going to make it much better (the site you're on, Blogger, is an example).  4/5 people are on Gmail now, and that's for one reason only—it's much better than all the existing options (same reason everyone ditched their default web browser for Google a decade ago).  Google is just run by smarter people than the other companies.

Company:  Apple
Personality:  Delicious
Intelligence:  Incredibly high
Dickishness:  Low
Creepiness:  Moderate-Low
My general mood when interacting with them: Wide-eyed; happy
Grade:  A