Another Wednesday, another West Wing. I was just able to catch up on the last few episodes in a tape-viewing session with Matt. I see the question of who will replace Mr. Lowe has been answered, and I’m bullish on Lily Tomlin (if I can even use that word without it sounding like a horrible pun.)

I did have one question about the last episode, related to an exchange between Donna and whomever Christian Slater is playing: Donna complained that Pentagon procurement was way out of control, giving the example of a $300 ashtray. (Iowa Senator Charles Grassley actually rose to prominence on this issue.)

Slater‘s character smoothly fields it, noting that on impact, the super-ashtray would break into 3 smooth chunks instead of millions of sharp shards. (No word on what superpowers the $76 screw has.)

Donna failed to ask the simple follow-up question: why the hell are you smoking on a submarine, anyway?

As I was waiting for Seinfeld to start last evening, I flipped around to see what else was on (my 4 total channels.) I caught the start of a WOI 5 news cast reporting that PeTA had been rejected in its efforts to run a billboard in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines.

The billboard (PDF) draws a direct line from pork consumption to impotence. The accompanying copy includes such gems as “with pork out of the grocery bag, maybe you can get porkin'” and “this little piggy…makes it harder for your wiener to get jiggy.” And then there’s this:

Slimmer, sexy vegetarians also have the upper hand when it comes to stamina and increased blood flow to those oh-so-vital organs. And let’s face it–a man who stuffs his belly full of dead pigs in the kitchen only to deliver dead wood in the bedroom becomes a big bore.

I know they’re crazy. But the concept haunted me all the way to Hy-Vee tonight…where I bought turkey dogs.

Update [14:15]: They’re actually not so bad. Who knew?

Dorky title, I know, but if you watch the movie in question you’ll understand.

What movie, you ask? Why, Martin Scorsese‘s The Big Shave, one of the features currently running on the TriggerStreet showcase on Yahoo! The six minute short was made in 1967, six years before Taxi Driver. The page says the film “shows how bloody wrong things can go when a man cuts himself shaving,” and I suppose it does, but I’m wondering what the point is.

I’ve mentioned TriggerStreet before. It’s nice to see that Spacey is really serious about this (check out the video of him and Billy Crystal trying to drum up interest in the populace) and I hope it succeeds. I also hope at least some of the submitted projects have something Scorsese‘s film doesn’t: a story.

Someone said I should cover religion today, but it will take me some time to do it right. So instead I present: What Would Jesus Drive? It’s a campaign to advocate environmentally friendly cars with the argument that we have a spiritual imperative to be stewards of the Earth. At least that’s what I got with a quick scan. (And hey, some of them actually have a sense of humor!)

Joking and gimmicks aside, the continuing fascination with SUVs is not a good thing for our air or our roads. I don’t want to be preachy or to push polemics, but I do wonder: where is the innovation? Where’s something to get excited about? We’ve had the same gasoline combustion engine for a long time, and it’s served us well with increased performance, but I want to see big leaps in fuel conservation, not incremental ones.

Each year Detroit‘s ads promise us some new tweak is “revolutionary.” That’s never the case, and I’m tired of hearing it. As usual, the only thing close is coming out of Tokyo.

In a previous entry I detailed my swiftly decreasing enthusiasm for the M.S. track here at ISU. I expressed much of the same frustration in conversations with my mother and my friends. The answers that come back are very similar: you can do whatever you want. What do you want?

So, the options:

• Law school. Always been in the back of my mind, recently came to the forefront following a conversation with my father. After I finished ranting about the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, he asked me if I’d ever considered it. I said yes, but…
  Pros: Works well with my individualist/confrontational mentality. Potential for excellent earning. Considered a respectable, worthy profession by almost everyone (and those who don’t feel that way fear it.)
  Cons: Three years of schooling. Expensive. Tough and competitive as hell. Very detail-oriented. Not creative in the traditional sense. Difficult to translate to work outside the U.S.
• Film school. Another always-present option. This recently came to the forefront following a conversation with… my mother. I’ve always loved films and the all the technical details surrounding producing and marketing them.
  Pros: Also individualist. Very creative. Chance to impact many people with a moving narrative. (Small) potential for fame and very good money. Entertainment a huge and growing part of the economy and computers are invading Hollywood with a vengeance. Plus international potential.
  Cons: Cliché. Very difficult to break into. Graduating law school (plus the bar) makes you a lawyer. Graduating film school makes you another schmuck with a film degree. I lack connections.
• School of hard knocks. Get a regular job, start earning.
  Pros: ? (Money, maybe?)
  Cons: You pick ’em. Economy sucks. Work sucks. Where will I move? What will my lackluster GPA and limp résumé net me?
• School of hard knocks, London branch. Get a BUNAC blue card and bum around London for the next six months. Possibly with sister. Can be combined with above options, as most wouldn’t commence until Aug 03.
  Pros: London. Also, not in U.S.
  Cons: Only six months. Then back to real life. Putting off the inevitable?

I don’t know what the answer is. I want to do something creative, but I also want to do things that are important. I know that doesn’t make me any different than anyone else out there, but I just wish I felt more assured in making this decision. Oh, and the fact that I have a lease here for another 7 months isn’t helping one bit.

Update [23:00]: Originally, I enabled comments on this post, but people preferred to respond through other channels. The tally at this moment:

• One person thinks I’ve made up my mind and all the options but immediate work are just delaying the inevitable.
• Two people agreed with law school in principle, but didn’t flat-out advocate it.
• Two people flat-out advocated law school.
• One person agreed with film school in principle.
• One person can’t really see either option, except perhaps film as “a Michael Moore-style director.” Suggests “non-fiction author.”
• One person is “baffle[d]” that I am “soliciting the advice” of friends.

I’ve just discovered the place where MT logs the search queries. A few people have sent me a personal message using that approach. Let me first start by responding to those people.

Adam: why, thank you. Thank you very much.

Pech: an oversight, let me assure you.

Everyone: Pech represents all that is good and true in this world. Pech is funny. Pech is wise. Pech is grounded. Pech is ready for adventure. PechPechPechPech.

Pech: that better?

Now, those were the exceptions. The rule seems to be people asking about that Web technology that I refuse to name. (Queries include “code”, “println”, “cachefs”, “download” — come to think of it I shouldn’t be listing these because Google will just pick them up as keywords.) I’ve considered making some sort of a page for these people, but I refuse. I registered this domain before that other thing existed, and if you’re so stubborn/stupid that you’re willing to still use search even after you see what the site looks like, well, go for it. (Just do it knowing Pech is smarter than you.)

Sometimes your brain just works on autopilot, falling back on the finely honed, perfectly tuned instincts that come from thousands of hours of experience.

When that’s the case, you can finish a call, look at your computer, and realize “oh, hey, I did it again.”

The projections* are in and Harry Potter is once again cleaning up at the box office, this time to the tune of about $90 million. The big take is to no-one’s surprise.

I mentioned last weeked that it would be interesting to see how Eminem fared in his second frame, and the results are now in: a drop of 58%. That’s steep, considering HP2 likely has very little overlap with the Slim Shady audience. On the other hand, it’s still good enough for #2, and as all the analysts love to point out, “more people had already seen the picture [in its opening weekend] than purchased his latest album.” That may be true, but it smells like a bullshit statistic. It doesn’t allow for the number of people who follow him on radio or MTV (and I hear there’s ways to get albums without buying them these days.)

* Note about that link: at least when it first showed up, Y! was using the wrong template for the movie story. Instead of entertainment, the money made by Mr. Potter & Co. was filed under “world politics.” (See screenshot.) I know HP is a worldwide phenomenon, but…

It’s real classy and a bit dated, I know… but still hilarious. The Real X-rated movies based on another movie[‘s]-title page lists some of the clever (and not-so-clever) variations that the country’s “erotica” creators have made on theatrical releases. In addition to such classics as Indiana Bones and the Temple of Boom and White Men Can’t Hump, enjoy the lesser-known I Know What You Did With the Plumber and G.I. Came. This country, I tell ya.

One of the perks of having a 3-letter domain name and a Web technology that borrows your initials is you get all sorts of unusual traffic. To wit: as of this writing, jsp.org has been accessed by visitors from 35 countries, plus users from the United States government (.gov) and military (.mil).

This includes the usual suspects plus a few surprises (e.g., Turkey, Romania, Estonia.) I hope to return the favor by visiting all of those countries — in person, that is.

A friend who stumbled on the road to a bachelor’s degree asked me to review his essay for re-entry. After reading it, I told him he didn’t explain his role in getting tossed from school. He didn’t own up to the decisions he made. I can only tell people that sort of thing in good conscience if I can be expected to do the same thing.

So, the situation: I’m in a bad place. My interest in (and attendance of) Statistics has dropped off a cliff. I’m on auto-pilot in my other classes, and I haven’t picked up a book in a long time. I haven’t registered for any courses next semester, just as I haven’t applied for formal entry into the graduate college (right now I’m a “non-degree” student — all very legit, but I need to switch over at some point.)

While none of this is beyond repair, I don’t know if I care. The idea of even another semester here makes my skin crawl. I’ve spent far too much of my life in central Iowa. The 18 months more an M.S. would require sounds like too high a price to pay.

Next: the options.

For the West Wing’s 100th anniversary, the White House web site features room tours in
streaming video. They’re surprisingly bad in terms of camerawork and encoding (inexplicably, the clips have a lot of black space around them.)

Production values aside, it’s interesting to see how each player handles it. George Bush, the only host to rate a title screen and a second language option, refuses to make eye contact with the camera and offers up gems such as “The windas are magnificent, uh, they let in the sunlight” and the ever-controversial “My family is a priority in my life.” He chose to decorate the room with busts of Churchill (right), Lincoln (gotcha), and Eisenhower (huh?). And of course one can’t have enough bad Texas art.

Laura Bush, who’s probably responsible for some of it, stays firmly planted in one spot of the Diplomatic room, and she suffers an unfortunate editing slight when the editors add artificial pauses to her description of wallcoverings.

Dick Cheney stows the smirk for a bit to show his ceremonial office. He has a few interesting things to say about the role of a vice-president and does some cool show-and-tell when he opens up a miraculously clean desk drawer and reveals that all the vice-presidents who used the desk signed their names in it. (I’m going to assume it was just a coincidence he used the middle finger to point out Al Gore‘s signature.)

Lynne Cheney opens next to a huge fucking cow-dog. Surprisingly, she rates by far the most time with over 14 minutes. Unfortunately, other than the huge fucking cow-dog, I can’t tell you much because I couldn’t bear to listen to her for much longer than a minute.

The other people aren’t very memorable, but it’s interesting to see the rooms and wonder what the next occupants will do with the place in 2004.

…you take to Googling the names of your high school classmates in hopes that you discover something interesting. (For the record, the most “interesting” thing I’ve discovered so far is that the Stedmond website has gotten even worse since I last saw it.)

The D.C.-area shootings, the slow economy, and the recent slide in consumer confidence make individual buyers, who account for 40% to 50% of total U.S. PC sales, less likely to pick up a new machine in 2003…
— Why PC Makers Are Saying “Next Year”, Business Week 12 Nov 02

What? The sniper shootings are depressing PC sales? Is this writer serious? What the hell does that have to do with getting a Dell (dude)?

Well, the Matrix presentation may not have gone as smoothly as I’d hoped, but the professor still seemed pleased. We got an A, and his evaluation sheet begins: “An excellent job, in every way, by each and everyone on the team!” The man’s a sweetheart, of course, so you have to allow for that. (Random thought: I wonder if B-don has ever used the word “sweetheart” to describe any person. Ever.)

Team B presented on What Dreams May Come today, and while it would not be sporting to comment on their visuals, I will say that their frame grabs were muddy. It looked like they had to run a DVD player through some sort of Dazzle-like device, pausing the machine to grab stills. Bummer. (They also hooked up the player to show scenes, which is by far the smarter way to save time. We of course used custom AVI clips.)

We talked and decided to re-work the three upcoming presentations. Now instead of being part of 150 minutes of group presentation + 20 min individual, we will each be part of about an hour of presentations.

This leaves two questions: 1) How will my group of 10 split into two? There’s politics involved, as you’d expect. The fact that we have 5 foreign nationals makes things a bit more complicated. 2) What will my individual presentation be on? One of the assignment choices lists sexual orientation. I’d really like to do a comparison of the visual style of QaF UK vs. US. But standing up in what amounts to an open hallway, in front of 20 people, talking about gay stuff? I really don’t think I have the stones. The queer thing is totally my kryptonite.