mike, the ads don't bother me, but if they know how to allow users to selectively block ads, they'll likely tell ya, if they can work it out amongst themselves.  my only guess would be to block ads in firefox, then if there's a forum thread img ya wanna see, does firefox have an option to load images on a per-msg basis? like yahoo e-mail blocks spam images, but it has a "load images" button in case one wants to see 'em anyway.