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If you read this post tonight, be aware that Mythbusters, Alias, and the return of Crossing Jordan are all on tonight, at 8, 9, and 10 pm, respectively.  If you like the shows as much as I do, that is.

Regular readers of mcgees.org will know what high regard we (that’s a royal “we”) have for the idiots in the ranks of the religious right (the religious right is bad enough, but their idiots are especially bad.)  One of their recent crusades?  Janet Jackson’s publicity-stunt exposure at the Super Bowl.  To begin, here is one of their mighty savants.  Read on, but make sure you invest in Sic Industries first:  “Mr. Powel [sic], I don’t consider myself to be a finatic [sic], but i [sic] do fear the wrath of GOD if our country continues it’s [sic] moral decline.”  The author speculated that if we allow a bare breast to be shown at the Super Bowl, in a few years half the population will be walking around naked.  The author goes on to acknowlege that this “sounds a little extreem [sic]“, but is adamant that what happened to “Sodom and Gamora [sic]” will happen to the United States.

Another petitioner penned the disarmingly honest sentiment that “to mix sex/violence like this gives a really wrong message”.  Surely it is not what was intended, but isn’t that the basic point?  How dare Janet Jackson pervert our celebration of violence with a hint of sexuality?  Regular readers of mcgees.org will know our (that’s a royal “our”) high regard for the Super Bowl as well — no need to cover that ground again — but allow the brief quote of someone who found not at all alarming the introduction of a breast into “a ‘game’ where men are paid huge sums of money to essentially beat each other up”.

Of course, idiocy and inarticulateness is not reserved for the right — note the amusing but not terribly erudite imprecation “Nazi government daughter of an illegitimate street walking hooker from hell“, which I believe should be shortened in casual correspondence to “NGDoaISWHfH” — but the right is always more fun to make fun of.

One of the bits of fluff TV I like to watch is the BBC’s program Cash in the Attic.  If you’ve never seen it, the concept is simple.  A couple or family will want to raise some money for a particular project, so they call in an expert appraiser and a bubbly, good-looking host to rummage through their oldest and dearest possessions in cellar, closet, lounge, and the namesake attic, and quote a ballpark value for them.  Then two weeks later said possessions are shipped off to auction where the host, expert, and participants watch with glee (or horror) as strangers battle (or not) to acquire these goods.  The producers then append a 30 second segment on what the family has done with the money.

Sometimes the goal is admirable, like the woman who wanted to go back to see her friends in the Canadian Arctic town she left 40 years ago.  Sometimes the goal is monumentally silly, like the parents who sold all their antique family silver, which could have been divided into several tidy lots, to purchase one phenomenally ugly modern painting that, I suppose, their three children will get to slice into thirds at some point in the future.

What is most breathtaking about the show, however, is when the expert (such as the wizardly Jonty Hearndon) will spot a piece of pottery from across the room and will instantly know what it is, how many of it were made, who made it (and when), and what it’s worth.  It just doesn’t seem possible.

But then I found myself doing something similar, albeit on a smaller scale, the other day.  I was watching another of my BBC shows, MI-5.  In the background of one of the scenes, out of focus, were three bottles.  I expect most people wouldn’t have even noticed them.  “Oh,” I thought, “That’s two Glenfiddich bottles — from the coloring I think the 12 and the 18 — and a Balvenie.”  Then I immediately wondered if William Grant & Sons had paid for the placement, as the two distilleries are owned by the same company.  (Note added 25 October 2003: I think they were paid placements.  A different episode of the show featured the same three bottles in the background of a different location.)  Yes, there are far, far fewer scotch whiskies than types of pottery.  But it’s still kind of cool pattern recognition.  How about you: do you surprise yourself with bits of instant recognition?  Post at the discussion page, if you are so inclined.

Alias season 1 and CSI season 2 are both released on DVD the 2nd of September (my wife is a big fan of the latter; we both like the former.)

I have started watching televised billiards.  I find this to be a fascinating game.  There is a great deal of logical and geometric reasoning involved coupled with precise training of bodily movements, sort of chess meets figure skating.

I followed the women’s world semifinals and finals, with players from the U.S., U.K., and Ireland reaching the top ranks.  The two finalists both have “a snooker background”, say the announcers, and explain that snooker is played on a longer table (so they are very good with use of the bridge) and with smaller balls (so they have good ball control.)  And watching Jeanette Lee, known as The Black Widow, lean over the cloth, chest touching the table and long black hair brushing the felt, I noted that billiards is the only women’s sport in which the sportcaster can get away with proclaiming “Nice rack!”

For those following the story, my digital cable was finally installed this past Saturday, with another conversation worthy of the one with dear Ernesto.  This one was with the cable installer:

Installer:  I called this morning and you didn’t answer.

Josh:  Really?

Installer:  Yes, but the base said I had to come anyway.

Josh:  Well, I’m glad you did.  What number did you call?

Installer:  Both of them.

Josh:  What were the numbers?

Installer:  I left messages on both numbers.

Josh:  Could you please read the numbers?

Installer:  Yes.  The first one is 373-4027.  The second one is 373-4027.

Josh:  (pause)

Installer:  Oh, I guess those are the same.

Josh:  Yes, and that’s my work number.

Alright, time for admission of guilty pleasures.  You are never going to believe what show I have fallen in love with: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It came on  the air while I was in college and watching exactly one hour of television per week (The X-Files), so I never caught on to it when it was new.  I saw my first episode a couple of weeks ago when I was home sick.  It is a lot of fun: the writing is witty, with good jokes and a well-developed mythology, the acting (by a few of the actors, anyway) is pretty good, and the whole thing is so campy that it is pure fun to just sit back and watch.

The cable station FX has been broadcasting repeats; the first episode I saw was near the end of season 5, and after the final episode of season 5, they looped back to the pilot.  Coincidentally (or perhaps not) this is exactly the same point when UPN started re-running season 6.  So I am currently in two timelines.

I have fallen in love with the character of Willow, played by Alyson Hannigan.  She is absolutely adorable, especially in the early episodes.  She convincingly played a 15 or 16-year-old, and if I had gone to high school with the character I would have had a crush on her character that would have torn the world apart.  The character is a good girl, witty but shy, brown hair and brown eyes, is a computer hacker and perfect student.  In those episodes I find her ten times as cute as Sarah Michelle Gellar, the blond lead, who does not at all pass for a high schooler.

I knew I shouldn’t have gone looking around IMDB.  I told myself that I would find out Hannigan was a crazy drug fiend or something and it would shatter my retroactive fantasy of a fictional character.  But I looked anyway.  To start with, she is older than I.  She is three years older than Gellar.  She dated the drummer from Marilyn Manson’s band.  She played a raunchy character in the “American Pie” movies.  So much for the good girl crush (I know I should be able to separate the actor and the character, but I’m not very good at that.)

So I read the bio trivia on Gellar.  While pursuing her acting career she gruaduated with a 4.0 average from high school.  She collects antique books.  She has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.  She dated nice guy Jerry O’Connell, and is now engaged to nice guy Freddie Prinze Jr.  And she plays the slightly trampy character on “Buffy”.  Aye, me.

OK, guilty admission II.  I also love the program Alias.  It is just as campy and just as fun as “Buffy”.  I suspend my Coleridgian disbelief on the coatrack by the door and let myself become invested with the soapish characters.  Pure fun.  And it does not hurt that Jennifer Garner is gorgeous and that she is frequently costumed for her undercover work (get your mind out of the gutter!) in revealing outfits.  You will note that there is no hyperlink associated with Garner’s name above.  You know why?  It’s because I am intending to stay far, far away from her IMDB bio page.  May the fantasy continue.

Note added 19 June 2002:  So far four friends have contacted me letting me know that they too are fans.  This rampant Buffy-watching may be a silent epidemic of catastrophic proportions.

Indication #1 that you should turn off in disgust the animal documentary that you have playing in the background:

Conservation groups in Asia are also working to protect another member of the bear family: the giant panda.

This week the Pentagon publicly appealed for help in “defeating difficult targets” - announcing a competition for ordinary Americans to come up with snappy ideas on ways of thwarting the terrorists.  “We’re open to ideas from just about everybody,” said Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood….

Our current prime minister may have got wind of the Pentagon’s novelty competition for lateral ideas, because I’m sure I heard him saying that Britain will be contributing our very own Ground Force.  So the Americans are sending in thousands of highly armed marines and we’re contributing a BBC gardening programme.  Mind you, once the senior clerics in the Taliban are confronted with the bra-less Charlie Dimmock jumping about, the regime will probably cave in overnight.

                   - John O’Farrell writing for The Guardian, Answers on a postcard please, 27 September 2001

Law & Order is garbage.  The subject of the last episode of this police/courtroom drama was a potential international terrorist and vigilante Americans.  But despite the promise of this topic, the program fell into the same unsophisticated pattern it has repeatedly walked in episodes on computer crime, child abuse, and so on.  My objection is not that it espouses positions with which I disagree; it is that the writing is hackish, choosing show characters to hold opposite but equally naïve positions in order to generate dramatic tension and (presumably) to raise the ire of the viewer.

Jamie “Hello, I’m a scum-sucking nematode” Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, has voiced his opinions regarding TiVo and other modern recorders.  In his view, skipping television commercials is theft, the violation of an implicit contract between the viewer and the broadcaster.  This is hogwash.  When I sign my name to the dotted line of a cable television agreement in the United States, I am agreeing to pay a certain amount of money per month to receive a particular spectrum of video streams.  I am not in the business of subsidizing content providers.

It is impossible to feel sympathy for these gigantic broadcasters.  They are not broadcasting out of charity and benevolence, they are in it to make money.  The broadcasters have chosen one revenue model among many: they sell portions of airtime to third parties.  If a subset of consumers fail to watch the advertising, then the value of these ad slots will fall.  The broadcasters may complain that the resultant loss of revenue will put them out of business, but it is not my concern whether TBS continues to air.  If it goes off the air, we will have to do without, but that is the market’s prerogative.

There are other revenue models for broadcasters.  The broadcaster could charge the consumer for receiving the content (HBO).  It could rely on voluntary and/or governmental support (PBS).  Or the whole system could be overhauled, such that one must license a television and pay annually to renew it (BBC).

I am aware of the risks.  If a broadcaster runs out of money they will go off the air.  LIkewise, if people stop buying M&Ms, the producers will stop making them.  This is capitalism.  Someone should let Kellner know.

Ernest Miller at LawMeme has issued a tongue-in-cheek list of other new copyright violations, including getting to the movie theatre late and missing the previews, inviting friends over to watch pay-per-view, and changing radio stations in the car when a commercial comes on (”The RIAA has not yet taken a position on whether it is permissible to switch channels when the listener doesn’t like the song,” Miller notes.)  The full list can be found here.

The overpriced cable company that serves the new house has one of the most frustrating sales departments I
have ever dealt with.  I am ordering from them cable television and cable modem services.  To
get the cable television installed, however, I have to wait until the cable modem gets installed.  I
cannot even schedule an installation for the cable television until the cable modem is
installed.  This was scheduled for the 30^th of last month, but the guy never
showed up.  It was rescheduled for this morning, but the guy did not show up until 2 p.m. (Jenn waited
around for him.)  Jenn told me he had finished, so I called Ernesto (my rep) to schedule the installation of the cable television service.  Here is the conversation:

Ernesto:  Hi Josh, we can get the home installation taken care of now.

Josh:  Great!

Ernesto:   OK, how many televisions do you have?

Josh:  Two.

Ernesto:   OK.  So on the first one we’ll set up a cable box.  That’s 64
basic channels, plus 77 digital channels, plus [some number] of music channels, plus four talk radio
channels, plus ten HBO and eight Showtime.  On the other television you will just have the 64 basic
channels.  After the first month [that I'm receiving for free as a promotion], if you choose to
keep it, it will be $65 per month.

Josh:  The $65 includes the pay channels?

Ernesto:   Yes.

Josh:  And how much would it be without the pay channels?

Ernesto:   $43 per month.

Josh:  OK, so I would then have the sixty-whatever basic channels, the 77 digital
channels and the music.

Ernesto:   No.

Josh:  I’m sorry?

Ernesto:   No.  You wouldn’t have the digital channels.

Josh:  I’m trying to figure out how much it would be if I just dropped the HBO and
Showtime.

Ernesto:   So you don’t want the digital channels?

Josh:  No, I am interested in the digital channels, and I’m trying to see how much that would be without HBO and Showtime.

Ernesto:   $65.

Josh:  (pause)

Ernesto:   (pause)

Josh:  Ernesto, does that include the HBO and Showtime?

Ernesto:   Errr, yes.

Josh:  How much would it be for the service without HBO and without Showtime?

Ernesto:   $43.

Josh:  $43?

Ernesto:   Yes.

Josh:  Does that include the digital channels?

Ernesto:   No, but if you, I mean if you want to, I mean you don’t have to decide right
now, you can tell us after the first month….

Josh:  Ernesto, I’m not trying to be critical or to complain here.  I’m just trying
to find out how much this will cost.

Ernesto:   OK.

Josh:  OK.  Can I get the digital channels without subscribing to HBO and
Showtime?

Ernesto:   Of course.

Josh:  How much would it be to have the digital cable box, but not have HBO and
Showtime?

Ernesto:   $6 more per month.

Josh:  OK, $6 more.  So the total cost would be $49 per month, right?

Ernesto:   Errr, yes, $49.

Josh:  That sounds pretty good.

Ernesto:   OK.  And if you want the digital channels at some point, that would be
only $10 more per month.

Josh:  (pause)

Ernesto:   (pause)

Josh:  I thought you just said $6.

Ernesto:   Yes.

Josh:  For the digital cable box it would be $6 per month.

Ernesto:   Yes, $6 for the box.  And then if you decided you wanted the
digital channels that would be only $10 more per month.

Josh:  Why in the world would I want a digital cable box if I didn’t have digital
channels?

Ernesto:   (pause)

Josh:  One can’t be used without the other, right?

Ernesto:   Right.

Josh:  So it’s just that you guys list them separately, you need both to get the digital
channels, right?

Ernesto:   Huh?

Josh:  To get digital channels, I would need to pay $6 per month for the digital cable
box and $10 per month for the digital channels.

Ernesto:   Yes.

Josh:  So it would be $16 per month in addition to the $43.

Ernesto:   Uh, $16 … err … right.  That would put you around $60 per month.

Any West Wing fans out there?  Look at the New Hampshire signatories on a copy of The Declaration of Independence.

When I first started watching BattleBots my mind jumped to three weapons strategies that no one seemed to be employing.  They seemed so effective that I suspected the strategies were explicitly disallowed in the rules.  I downloaded the Technical Regulations [pdf].

Not only are all three strategies disallowed, they are disallowed in the same sub-subsection:

11.4.1 Electricity

Electricity or electric fields may not be used directly as a weapon.  This includes, but is not limited to:

   a. Stun guns and cattle prods.

   b. Radio jamming equipment.

   c. Electro-Magnetic Pulse output.

[Donna] doesn’t know that [man-made objects in orbit] fall out of the sky all the time.  Once every ten days, as a matter of fact.  Since the first year we started putting man-made objects in space, 17,000 have come back and remarkably, not one person has been hit.

                – The West Wing, “The Fall’s Gonna Kill You”

Thus, we started putting objects in orbit about the time (1535 C.E.) that Henry VIII formed the Church of England.

Another television observation to assure you that I have no life at all.  I watched the beginning of an X-Files episode (“Pusher”) and was thinking to myself that they did a great job with Gillian Andersen’s makeup in the episode.  They used a prominent but not garish red for her lipstick, gave her a smooth, red-tinted patina of makeup, brownish-red eyeshadow, and they dyed her hair a few shades darker.  She exuded a 1930s glamour.  It was then that it occurred to me that having Andersen play a ’30s fashionable lady in “Triangle” was inspired; she fits it perfectly.

But just as I was thinking about the effectiveness of her hair color in this episode, her character speaks the line “Inducing someone to buy hair color is a little different than inducing them to drive in front of a speeding truck.”  True: it doesn’t take three seasons to induce someone to drive in front of a truck.

I just watched the final episode of the first year of Scrapheap (later Scrapheap Challenge).  The program was originally produced for Britain’s Channel 4 television, and is being re-run on TLC in America under the name Junkyard Wars.  (Watch out: they call both the original and the lame-ass US knockoff by this name.  Here is a clue to tell them apart: look for a loud, obnoxious, dumb American presenter.)

Scrapheap was apparently a sleeper that built up quite a cult following in the UK.  You can read about the premise through some of the links I’ve provided; it basically boils down to two teams each given ten hours to construct a given object from the materials in a stocked junkyard.  I was turned onto the program by my friend Chuck in San Diego who had gotten his hands on two videocassettes from the second season, Scrapheap ‘99.  Even by the second year, some of the endearing innocence was gone.  For instance, the first year consisted of six contests, which made a tie possible.  But to add the element of cutthroat competition, they made it seven contests for year two.  While the episodes were fantastic, they lacked the freshness, the unassumingness, of the original.  I became rather attached to the year one participants, and I am now thankful that I missed one of the six episodes (”Power Puller”) so I can catch it on a rerun.

It’s worth looking for.  And even the American one is enjoyable; but try, if at all possible, to find those gems of the early episodes.

It is hard to believe that it is after midnight now.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time to do everything I want to do these days.  This is mostly a good thing: there are a lot of activities that interest me at the moment, so I am never at a loss for something to do and enjoy.  Here is a list of activities I have wanted to pursue in the past couple of days, only a subset of which have been accomplished or attempted.

1. Play with Cakewalk.  Use it to record some of my musical compositions, with multiple vocal and instrumental tracks.
2. Order more stamps from Iowa Stamps & Coins for my ongoing (but unnamed) philatelic art project.  Work on the art project.  Transfer the pieces to a new album.
3. Work on a redesign of mcgees.org.
4. Install the new printer that has been sitting on my floor, in a box, since the day after Christmas.
5. Play some more with the new TiVo.
6. Watch some of the movies recorded by it.
7. Listen to my new CDs from Christmas.
8. Research the sport of fencing.
9. Add advertising to ScotchFinder (the advertisers are arranged, I just need to do some re-coding of the site.)  Add the ability to search the database via a toll-free telephone number.
10. Research whale deafness.
11. Continue reading The Annotated Alice, Infinite Jest, and The Life of Samuel Johnson.
12. Research PocketPCs, potentially to buy one soon.
13. Make hotel reservations for the UK trip.
14. Search Fresh Air archives.
15. Buy add-ons to the hamster habitats.
16. Clean my study.
17. Reinstall Microsoft Visual Studio at home from my CDs, which I haven’t done since my hard drive crashed.

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.  (You probably think some of these are fake, thrown in for humor.  That is not the case.  Even the whale one.)  Implicitly on the list, of course, is to write about the activities in this ‘blog.

My makeshift way of dealing with the situation has been to get 5.5 hours of sleep per night.  I think this is beginning to take a toll.  It’s getting close to 12:30.  I will probably go watch half an hour of “Antiques Roadshow” on TiVo, pour a malt, maybe scoop a bit of Ben and Jerry’s (which is, by the way, now the most popular tourist attraction in Vermont.  Yikes.)

More descriptions of the activities on the list will follow, as time permits.  I have found that it is frequently easier to write about one’s experiences doing something after one has already done the something.  Wish me luck for making the time.

My vacation is officially at an end: I have work tomorrow (today) morning.  Prudently, therefore, I only played THPS2 until 2:30 a.m.   :-)

Television alert: It looks like Outdoor Life Network is running “a full day of skiing and snowboarding” on Christmas Day from 8AM to 8PM.  The highlight:

“The day culminates with OLN Special Premieres: First, at 6pm ET, back-to-back brand-new episodes of Skier’s World from Heavenly Resort in Lake Tahoe and the slopes in Banff, Alberta. Then, catch No Boundaries — Snow, featuring a man who wants to be the first to snowboard Mount Everest, even if the odds are not in his favor.”

This sounds impressive.  Even better, there is no way it will be a live broadcast, so we can probably be guaranteed that we won’t watch him plummet to his death (OLN isn’t FOX, after all.¹) I’ll be setting my VCR.