How about we just crown you whiney bitch of the decade and be done with it?
Re the moving to next image, that discussion goes back a long, long time (back to 2004 when Revert still existed here) where I think he wanted it to go to a random image and I said that I wanted it to go to next image after somebody voted. The idea being that, at least when we had a small number of pictures, it'd be easier to find the oldest (new) image that you haven't seen and then vote your way through to current.
I think it was even implemented as random image for a while, and the link at the top said "next image" instead of "random image" if I recall.
New images since my last visit would be cool though, particularly on the porn side, not quite as relevant here (though there's been a few pics posted lately which is nice to see). Though that would also tie in with my idea of finding the image and voting your way through.
The counter.. well, as far as the site is concerned it's served you again so it's a new view. In the same way that if you go to McDonalds and buy a Big Mac every day, just because they've fed you before doesn't mean it's not a new burger
The page generation is still loaded from the database, so it's a fresh hit every time (even the side boxes will change if you refresh - it's all dynamic).
It's not so much a commercial reality on this site though, as we don't have any paid advertising here - it's porn that keeps things afloat (well, it used to generate about 80% of the costs but now with the new server it's probably closer to 35%).