Secondly, a regular Blu-ray movie costs around $30, so I don’t even want to know what they’d be charging for adult films. I seem to recall from my pre-internet youth that a 45-minute VHS tape of really horrendous compilation porn scenes from the 1970s – complete with non-ironic afros, poor film stock and even worse lighting – was about three times the cost of a normal VHS tape.

But perhaps the most obvious reason I don’t own Blu-ray porn is because the very idea of it is ludicrous. I’m no expert on high definition technology, but I’m pretty sure the goal is to provide a brighter and more finely detailed video image. Porn is not something that does well with bright lighting or increased visual details. In fact, throughout history, porn has been produced with the distinct goal of hiding all visual details.

I don’t want to know what a porn actress looks like when her makeup can no longer hide her hepatitis symptoms. I don’t want to see brighter money shots or BJs with impressive levels of contrast. If I want to view vaginas with 1,080 lines of progressive scan resolution, I’ll find a real vagina to look at instead. If high definition video makes Cameron Diaz’s pretty face show more acne craters than a moon landing, I don’t even want to know what creepy flaws are going to show up on a porn actress. Every minor imperfection would become as subtle as Al Jolson doing a blackface routine.

Some things – mostly those involving bodily fluids – are better handled by poor quality video players.

Part of the allure of porn is that the poor lighting and generous use of makeup tricks us into believing that porn actresses are actually attractive. But anyone who has ever dated a legitimately attractive woman, or is acquainted with someone who has, knows two things for certain: 1) Attractive women don’t need to do outrageous things in the bedroom to keep men interested. They can lie there like a dead fish and we’ll still be thrilled to have sex with them, and 2) If you ever suggest that your attractive girlfriend do the sorts of things seen in porn, she will look at you as if you just asked her to build an igloo on the moon.

Therefore, it is simply impossible that the “hot chicks” seen in porn are actually hot. If adult movie producers could really find that many attractive women willing to do outrageous sexual acts, the world as we know it would not be planet Earth. It would be heaven.

Perhaps I’m alone in my belief. Perhaps other people find HD porn intriguing. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to clearly see the STDs, heroin injection marks and bruises from abusive boyfriends on porn starlets, but to each their own. You just won’t find any of those sorts of movies in my apartment. I once considered purchasing a painting of a horse kissing a clown, but that’s as close as I’ve ever come to purchasing finely detailed pornography, and it was a standard-definition painting anyway.

So spread the word, dear reader. Tell your friends, family, relatives, significant others, co-workers, casual acquaintances, pastors, clergymen, and God Himself: Stop asking Paul about Blu-ray porn. He doesn’t have it, he doesn’t want it, and he disagrees with any technology that could put thousands of mediocre skanks out of work.

By God, our community colleges are full enough.

I don’t want to know one “The Hills” actress from another. I don’t want to know how many babies Jamie Lynn Spears has pooped out. I don’t want to be notified when Hulk Hogan’s daughter is wearing sweatpants instead of real people pants. I don’t want to know what Kevin Federline is doing now, and I certainly don’t want to watch videos of it. I’d rather go back to my old weekly newspaper job covering zoning hearings and hillbilly horse pulls than write a single paragraph about Daniel Craig’s eyebrows or 14-year-old Dakota Fanning’s thoughts on the science behind global warming.

Celebrity gossip blogging is not my cup of tea, in the same way that dancing with my pants down near a freeway entrance for spare change is not my cup of tea.

Yet I found myself regretting my decision this week when Lisa informed me that she was eating breakfast while looking at photos of Jennifer Aniston’s boobs. Mind you, I’m not a huge Jennifer Aniston fan, but I am insanely jealous that Lisa is allowed to look at boobs at work. My workplace specifically prohibits the viewing of boobs on company time, even going so far as to block all instances of boobs from the company’s internet connection.

While I’ve found loopholes with various National Geographic photos, it’s still not something I can get away with without risking my job. Lisa’s bosses, on the other hand, don’t just encourage her to look at boobs, they demand it. This information changed my entire opinion of her profession.

Granted, I also looked at Jennifer Aniston in that GQ cover shoot, but I did so on my own time at home. The fact that Lisa was able to spend her employer’s time on porn sent me into a jealous rage. The only way I could get that at work is if I had a girlfriend who texted me photos of herself, but the chances of that in life are even rarer than getting paid for blogging.

But just in case, my cellphone number is [redacted].

Lisa countered my outrage by claiming she’s forced to look at naked women at work, as opposed to joyfully looking at them. I guess that makes sense. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy my job if it involved looking at men’s balls. To make even clearer how uninteresting boobs are to her, Lisa noted, “I can even grab some at work if I feel like it.”

I don’t think looking at or grabbing your own should really count.

However, the thrill of being paid to boob watch at home in my boxers still calls to me, more so than my dream of watching a plague of locusts wipe out all celebrities. I doubt my friend’s job offer from a few years ago still stands, especially in this economy where people are saving money by cutting back on the number of boobs they’re looking at on the internet, but the idea of it is still tempting.

I’m guessing most of us feel the same way. This new digital era has put running your own blog titled, “Stuff Paul Looked Up on the Internet Today” at the top of everyone’s dream job list. Or at least everyone named Paul.

But in this case, I think it’s best to stay where I am. The illusion of a perfect job is always better than the reality hiding behind the curtain. So I’ll continue working dull jobs that give me time to write, and Lisa can continue working comfortably from home, but also cursing her luck every time she has to work a 14-hour day because Jessica Simpson came out with a brand of perfume.

As Mark Twain once said, “A man’s got to be in his own heaven to be happy,” and my heaven doesn’t involve waking up to Jessica Simpson’s screeching howler monkey face every morning.

It’s also an indicator of seasons. You can tell the Christmas season has begun when the cranberry sauce in the fridge starts to droop, the thick grooves from the can sagging like a middle-aged woman’s cleavage. You think there’s more of it, but really it’s just the same amount stretching lower.

Once it can sag no further, the cranberry sauce gets watery, as if its elderly state had caused it to lose control of its bowels. If the cranberry sauce could complain about younger cranberry sauce and make racist comments without realizing it is being offensive, the entire transformation would be like a tragic food opera that mirrors the futility of human existence. That’s more than most people want from their can of cranberry sauce, but I have unusually high standards.

It’s at the watery point that most sane people would throw it out, but I am neither sane nor stable enough financially to do such a thing. I’m an impoverished bachelor, and in my home we play by homeless people rules. This cranberry sauce in my fridge will be eaten. I will continue consuming it until it grows a moldy beard.

Judging by the look of it, that moment is probably not far off, so I’d better hurry.

This year I spent Thanksgiving with friends, and someone brought homemade cranberry sauce. The host also had a can of cranberry sauce to give us a choice, but it would have been rude to not use the homemade stuff. So the can sat unopened, and I took it home with me. A dish of the cranberry sauce now sits in my fridge having only been used once. I consider it decoration.

What I’ve learned is that beyond Thanksgiving, there really isn’t an appropriate time to eat cranberry sauce. It’s not a good snack. It’s jelly-like, so it slides off or squishes out if you try to use it as a topping on turkey sandwiches. It’s not really a proper dessert. Unlike chips or other side dishes, it’s not easy to eat while watching cartoons on TV. It’s wet, so you can’t sneak it into a movie theater very easily, and it’s a dark red color, so even if you did, you’d have trouble finding it once the lights went down and the movie began.

After fighting so hard to keep this leftover cranberry sauce in my fridge, I just don’t know what to do with it. Cranberry sauce is like nieces or nephews: They’re fun as long as they don’t stick around too long. One day is good, but by the third day it just gets awkward.

I guess a last resort would be to freeze the log of cranberry sauce and chuck it at a moving bus. This would not only be fun, but environmentally friendly as well. Afterward, rats and pigeons and stray dogs and homeless people and vampires and other things that dwell in the city at night would eat the remains. Even if the impact of the moving bus bus didn’t knock the mold off it, they’d probably still eat it.

If for some reason these bottom-feeders of society developed dignity, the cranberry log would eventually just melt into the gutters, drain into the ocean, and unknowingly be consumed by dolphins as it flowed through their gills. Somehow that’s a comforting vision. Creepy, but comforting.

Regardless, I still have time before we reach that stage. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This morning I’m going to cut myself a nice slice of leftover cranberry goop and put it in my cereal. For lunch, I’ll put tiny chopped-up bits of it into a salad. Damn it, if I can’t find a use for this stuff, it won’t be from a lack of effort. Cranberry sauce shall not be a secondhand citizen in my household.