In the past 2 days I've been a witness to two kind of neat occurrences. The first was yesterday when, as I was sitting on the shuttle ready to ride home, I noticed that two police officers were examining a car that was in the lot. The driver was standing off to the side, and the officers were dusting the steering wheel and trunk for fingerprints. There was no cool flashlight-y thing that showed the presence of organic stains, there was no quipping going on between the two policemen, and there was no healthy mix of ethnicities and genders, but it was still pretty sweet.

Not nearly as sweet as today, however, when in between failing my two exams Lucas and I were walking down the hall on Bryan 5 when what should come from around the corner but a random old man riding a Segway. He zipped into the CS office and chatted for a minute (making sure to duck as he went through the doorway) and then zipped into the bathroom, all with the amazing power of gyroscopes and leaning. This man was truly a Master of Science.

One exam...TWO exams? Oh, my medication...

Tomorrow is my birthday, but rather than spend it in a hot tub with a naked harem, on a hovercraft, or doing anything remotely fun, I will be studying for my two midterms on Thursday. As such, I may or may not be posting in the next few days. If I do not find myself with the time or inspiration, feel free to leave comments and have a scintillating discussion in my absence. Suggested topics: Anything controversial about politics, religion, or why Gambit is not in the next X-Men movie. Talk amongst yourselves...

Oftentimes I post here about my various archnemeses, of which I have quite a few considering my tender age. Today I want to post about one of my heroes: ESPN.com and Jimmy Kimmel Show writer Bill Simmons.

Bill Simmons gets to do what I do, that is make rambling posts about popular culture and sports, but he gets paid for it. He does movie reviews (his reviews of Rounders and Hoosiers were some of my favorites) as well as keep diaries during award ceremonies and sporting events. And for all of this he makes money. This, along with writing jokes for a late night television show, is his job.

And he and I are in agreement on many things. In his latest diary of last night's Grammy awards, he makes the following observation:

9:02 -- The Dixie Chicks cover "Landslide." Wait a second ... the Smashing Pumpkins already covered this song. Shouldn't there be a rule that you can't cover a cover? Is that a re-cover? What happens when P. Diddy samples it for one of his crappy rap songs, does that make it a re-re-cover? I'm really annoyed.

If this looks familiar (besides the P.Diddy stuff), it's because I registered a similar complaint here month or so ago. Here, finally, is a writer who speaks to me, who says the things that I want to say only with the benefit of a copy editor, who remembers the same obscure sports moments from spring training baseball games 15 years ago that I do. All this and he came up with The Unintentional Comedy Ratings Scale, which we should all know and memorize.

So let's all give a Festival salute to Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy. "He writes like people talk..."

Only in St. Louis can the forecast for the next day be "6 inches of snow" but when that day actually arrives it magically becomes "cloudy". It's one thing for them to forecast snow and have it not end up getting cold enough for snow, but how do we go from 6 inches of precipitation to zero inches of precipitation? Now that they changed the forecast, it'll probably snow anyway...

On my way back from getting my oil changed in the blizzard this morning, I stopped in at Schnucks to pick up some random things. Outside, parked in the fire lane with lights flashing, was a fire truck. This in itself isn't all that uncommon, as I've seen them out there before because of people fainting and old ladies falling and stuff, but not this time. This time the firemen were, dressed in their full fireproof jackets and boots, shopping for groceries just like me. Only I was parked in a normal car in a normal parking spot. But at least we can rest easy knowing that our city's Bravest only had to walk a few feet on the slick icy pavement while the old ladies slid across the parking lot.

So the other day I had this idea to come up with categories (Best Review, Best Drawing or Image in a Post, Funniest Post, etc.) for posts on the weblogs in our little community and then have everyone nominate four or five for each category and vote on the best, a la the Oscars. However, it has been brought to my attention that someone already came up with this idea (on the weblog scale rather than the post scale).

Three years ago.

If only I had a time machine, I could zwoosh backwards in time to the year 2000, introduce this idea myself, and be showered with critical acclaim. Or I could just write a movie about this concept, although instead of blogging I could bet on sporting events...

I don't really think any post of mine could do justice to Dustin Diamond's "stand-up comedy" performance this evening, and not because it was insanely funny. I know that in real life he is not Screech, the television tool, but I at least expected him to make an effort to be amusing. Instead, he spent a few minutes making wisecracks about Saved by the Bell (the only part that was mildly entertaining) before launching into a half-assed routine with recycled toilet humor the likes of which I probably heard in 3rd grade.

But even this wasn't too bad when compared to the numerous times during the show where someone in the audience would boo or make some smart-ass comment and he would literally talk about how much he wanted to kick their ass. As much as he tried to distance himself from the Screech character by cussing left and right, in the end it just really seemed like he was Screech: desperately trying to be "one of the guys" and failing miserably. And I couldn't even feel bad for him, that he will spend his whole life being typecast and the butt of everyone's jokes, since he was just a complete jackass to everyone in the audience.

It was just really really bizarre. I don't know how to describe it.

I don't usually use my blog to send personal messages, but these are dire straights. It has just been brought to my attention that Dustin Diamond, aka Screech, is doing a standup comedy routine tonight in the Gargoyle at 9 PM. Does anyone want to go to this? The Unintentional Comedy scale will be off the charts...

Lots of you have posted comments about WashU's bionic squirrels on your own weblogs. They startle you with their trash-diving, run up to you unafraid, and have sex on your windowsills (or maybe that was just on mine sophomore year), and you've all just about it had it with them.

Earlier this evening I embarked upon a journey to TA hours for Not Machine Learning, and upon trying to open the back gate to our apartment I found that it wouldn't budge. I examined it more closely and discovered that the reason the gate couldn't open was that the track that it runs on was blocked by a squirrel, which had apparently wandered too close while the gate was closing and gotten caught in the track (and obviously was killed). If you're curious to see this gruesome sight, David and michael took pictures later in the evening and will probably post them at some point.

So we humans have finally gotten our revenge on the squirrel, right? Maybe so, but in death this particular squirrel prevented everyone in our building and the neighboring building from using their vehicles, which for me was an inconvenience but for others may have meant missing work or some other important function. It appears that once again the squirrels have won this round.

Is there any more annoying sound that that of someone packing their cigarettes?

If you're in a band that sings nonthreatening weenie-rock, why would you name your group Savage Garden?

When a chef trains for years preparing all sorts of exotic dishes and finally gets to be on the Iron Chef, doesn't he feel a little gypped when the main ingredient is something like rice?

As Dave pointed out, why does everyone on the Batman tv series call him "Millionaire Bruce Wayne" when they are speaking of him in the 3rd person, including Bruce himself?

Did the people who claimed that they would "never trust FOX again" after last week's Joe Millionaire non-finale forget that this network (which in the past has broadcast, amongst other things, footage of animals mutilating people, grisly stunt accidents, and a game show where people are subjected to jets of flame and ice) once advertised two consecutive Simpsons episodes as "season premieres"?

Why does the WashU Athletic Complex now require you to swipe your ID card rather than just show it to the person at the desk, even though I have seen their system let in people who haven't been enrolled here in 3 years?

If hunting is a sport, why don't we ever see any competitions where the hunters compete directly against each other, where the winner is the one who bags the most other hunters?

Why is Michael Irvin a studio commentator for Arena Football, a sport which he never played?

In retrospect, can't everybody finally admit that capri pants looked ridiculous and that they, like spandex, made everyone look unattractive?

Oh the things I do for my readers...

Recently a female friend of mine found out about a nasty little secret of mine, specifically that I have been blasting Moulin Rouge for the last year and a half or so without having actually seen the movie. Normally I subscribe to the "Know Thine Enemy" school of thought, but in this case Thine Enemy seemed so awful that I made every attempt to avoid it.

Now that my secret was out, however, I could hide from my fears no longer. She lent me her DVD so that I could educate myself, and so I did.

First of all, whoever did the editing for this movie must've had ADD or something. The scenes would flash from one over-the-top scene to the next in a seemingly haphazard fashion. If I adopted the same slick style for my posting as they used for the movie, it would look something like this:

Moulin Rouge was a Wow does the new Avril Lavigne song Apartment 12 The Movie! Monkeys wearing Midgets shooting James is posting again!

It doesn't work for writing, and it certainly didn't work for this movie either, as none of these scenes added anything whatsoever to the film except a big fat "please give us an Oscar for costume design" plea.

Rather than mention the too-numerous-to count anachronisms, I will pretend that they didn't exist. The intentional musical anachronisms were, for the most part, quite painful, including a excruciatingly-long rendition of Like a Virgin sung in a falsetto voice by a creepy man with a mustache. And it goes without saying that Kurt Cobain is rolling around is his grave due to the inclusion of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Then there is the plot, which goes like this: writer meets diseased prostitute, writer falls in love with diseased prostitute, diseased prostitute falls in love with writer because he sings her a song, evil Duke with annoying voice tries to buy diseased prostitute's love, evil Duke tries to kill writer, diseased prostitute dies of disease. I don't feel bad in spoiling the ending, since the reveal it about 20 seconds into the film. This kind of spoils the surprise.

My biggest issue with the film, though, is that the characters' motivations make no sense. OK, so I guess I can accept that the writer fell in love with prostitute at first sight, but why exactly does she fall in love with him? It sure would be nice if all it took to make someone fall in love with you was to sneak into their room at night and sing them a song, but sadly you are more likely to be the recipient of a restraining order or a faceful of mace than a romp in the sack.

In order to verify this with empirical evidence, my old roommate Bryan actually wrote a song for our friend Elizabeth and had me write music for it and sing it to her. She did not fall in love with either of us, as predicted.

Despite all of these issues (plus the fact that John Leguizamo, the most annoying actor in the world, is in the movie), it still managed to get nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including one for Editing!

In summary:

Pro: midgets, fire breathing.
Con: John Leguizamo, butchering of popular songs, Editor needs ritalin, drooling man with creepy mustache a la Wild Wild West, predictable plot resolution is revealed at the beginning of the movie, people are singing and dancing while they're being shot at, Duke character has grating voice, no monkeys.

I am in a class right now, we'll call it "Not Machine Learning", that is driving me crazy. There is a very low correlation coefficient between the homework questions that are assigned in Not Machine Learning and the topics that are covered in lecture. The lectures also seem to be aimed at the One Annoying Guy (OAG) who sits in the middle and asks intricate questions rather than aimed at everyone else, who collectively have no idea what is going on. Then there are the programming assignments, which went from:

Assignment 1: Fill in the blank of this basic C code

to

Assignment 3: Write your own multithreaded C application

Without much in between. On the newsgroup, there are many threads by one person (possibly OAG) about topics that are way out of the scope of this class and apparently have something to do with his job.

I took this class because I felt like my knowledge of how Unix and Linux and such really worked (and my ability program in C) was severely lacking, but assuming I complete Not Machine Learning I'm not really sure that I will have gained anything in either category.

Recently there has been a bit of controversy in the NFL regarding minority hiring. Actually there has been a little controversy about Peyton Manning calling his teammate an "idiot kicker", while the minority hiring thing has caused a bit more of a ruckus.

In case you don't read ESPN as often as I do, here's the rundown: The NFL has a silly policy that teams are supposed to "strongly consider minorities" when hiring head coaches, which is usually interpreted as a team should interview at least one minority coaching candidate when they have a vacancy.

The Dallas Cowboys, however, did not interview anyone when choosing a new coach this offseason. They instead pried notable quitter Bill Parcells away from the television studio without considering a single other applicant, caucasian or non-caucasian, and the NFL said nothing, with the general consensus being that Parcells was the best coach available so the Cowboys shouldn't have to interview anyone else.

A few weeks later, the San Francisco 49ers inexplicably fired Steve Mariucci after he took a team with essentially no defense and one of the league's biggest loudmoths on offense to the 2nd round of the playoffs. The Detroit Lions, who had previously said they would retain their crappy coaching staff for another year, immediately fired their staff and hired Mariucci. This time everybody went nuts.

Double-standard aside (most likely due to the NFL being afraid of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones), the fact that there is even a controversy about this is ridiculous. Clearly the Lions were not planning on changing coaches unless they were able to get Steve Mariucci, so an interview process would have been a pointless charade. It seems kind of demeaning to the qualified minority candidates for the NFL to impose a rule that they need to be interviewed even if they are not under consideration.

I mean the Lions might as well have interviewed me for the job, since I had as much chance of being named head coach as anyone not named Steve Mariucci would have. Why should they waste the time of qualified coaching candidates who could have used the time to prepare for an interview with a team that was actively performing a search?

Jackie Robinson did not break the color barrier because Major League Baseball required every team to sign one African-American player, and if he had the milestone would have been meaningless. It has much more significance that he earned his place on the Dodgers because of his abilities than if he had been placed their to make a political statement.

Everyone is applauding the 49ers because they interviewed three minority candidates in their own search (before settling on [shudder] Dennis Erickson), but it's not as noble a gesture if the only reason they did so was to "look good" and not because they were actually considering them as viable head coaches.

It's also kind of amusing that while there are minority hiring rules for the head coach position, there is no "you must bring a minority quarterback to training camp every year" stipulation. And before Steve McNair joined the league there were probably just as many minority quarterbacks as there were minority coaches. Are we to believe that the quarterback position is so important to the sport of football that the league would not taint it with such policies, but the job of head coach is one that is so unimportant that the league should be able to legislate who holds it based on the color of their skin?

Anyone who watched the Patriots win the Super Bowl last year knows that in many cases a quality head coach is just as, if not more, important than an individual player. And there are plenty of quality assistant coaches and unemployed head coaches who are minorities, enough so that a team that is conducting an open search without considering them would be at a severe disadvantage.

And it's not as if every minority, player or coach, is inherently better than his caucasian counterpart but hasn't had as many opportunities because of "the system". Just ask the Bengals how the whole Akili Smith thing is working out for them...

Today on the 60's version of Batman I learned that robots are identical to humans in every way except without a "sense of humor" or "a single shred of loyalty". I've also learned that radiation turns fabrics pink and that radiation poisoning can be prevented by pills. And people say that television is mindless.

The Festival is exactly one year old today. Hopefully you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed using it to complain about stuff.

Speaking of, Oscar nominations are out and the general consensus seems to be...Who the hell cares? Of the films nominated for Best Picture, I saw exactly one of them (Lord of the Rings) and have no desire to see the others. Yet for the next month, E! will feature round-the-clock coverage of what all the stars plan on wearing and which movie that nobody actually saw will win the most awards.

Basically, if you are in any way involved in a movie that is a period piece or a musical, you will be nominated for lots of awards. For the past 2 years, we have had movies that have been a craptacular smorgasbord of both genres (Chicago and Moulin Rouge, which I will write about in depth at a later date), and as you can probably imagine the Screen Actors Guild has had a collective orgasm and nominated them for everything. Last year, common sense prevailed and Moulin Rouge did not win Best Picture, but how long can they delay the inevitable?

I, for one, couldn't give a shit whether Meryl Streep shows up wearing three strategically-placed cocktail napkins or a dirty burlap sack, since I would smash my skull with an award statuette before I turned on the tv on Oscar night. And no matter which movie ends up with Best Picture, it will be a snub for the film of the year that was not even nominated...

Extreme Ops.

3 months have passed since their last adventure, and the guys of Apartment 12 are almost ready to graduate [happy music playing]...but all that is about to change [ominous music playing].

Full Professor Ron Cytron gets caught embezzling grant money in a devious attempt to reverse time, but his advisee Chris takes the fall [shot of generic "courtroom drama" scene]. Meanwhile the Big Red Robot has gone haywire and it looks like michael's code is responsible [high-budget action sequence of the robot at a wedding in "kill all humans" mode].

But when someone begins killing off CS grad students and replacing them with superintelligent apes, Chris and michael must escape from island exile [shot of hovercraft chase sequence] and join with David to clear their names and save the department.

All this plus David's evil clone, buried pirate treasure at Casa Delmar, and an ancient secret as old as apartment 12 itself...

Apartment 2welve: The Adventure Continues...coming to video, DVD, and the FOX network October 30th.

(I told you people I could make movies. These things write themselves...)

[Narrated by the guy who does the voiceovers for the WB]

They were three ordinary grad students, working hard to make ends meet [shot of David chugging a soda while coding on his multi-monitor system]...but when their neighbor's car gets broken into again [shot of Lucas pounding his fist on the hood of his car], they must take matters into their own hands. Summoning all of their extreme sports abilities [shots of David snowboarding down Forest Park Parkway smashing windows with a crowbar, michael hang-gliding through the Arch with a flamethrower, and Chris standing on two motorcycles and jumping off the MLK Memorial Bridge], they invade East St. Louis and exterminate car thieves with extreme prejudice.

Their job done, they returned to their programming thinking that the city was safe. But they were wrong....dead wrong [shot of man shooting a gun]. When Rachel is kidnapped by rival gang members [played by Kid Rock and Andrew W.K.]...it gets personal [shot of michael looking to the heavens and screaming with rage].

From Columbia Pictures and TriStar Entertainment comes a story of pride [shot of David drag racing his Echo in front of Joy Luck Chinese Buffet], vengeance [shot of michael roundhouse-kicking Kid Rock], and lust [shot of Chris smoking a cigar with a fistful of hundred dollar bills in a hot tub full of naked women].

Dixon.

Warner.

Hill.

And introducing Katie Holmes as Chris' girlfriend.

Apartment Twelve the Movie. Coming next summer to theaters everywhere.

It's a sad day in movieland when I actually consider seeing Final Destination 2 due to the dearth of quality film alternatives. The fact that Kangaroo Jack held the top spot in the box office a few weeks ago despite terrible reviews and ticket sales should clue the folks in Hollywood in that if they released a movie, any movie, right now with half a chance of being good it would break February records.

Just look at Titanic, a corny, factually-inaccurate Leo vehicle, but because it came out in the winter months people saw it 50 times each. Pearl Harbor was basically the same movie, but it flopped because it came out in the summer when people actually had the opportunity to watch other quality movies that weren't 3-hour-long snoozefests.

I know nothing about the film, nor have I read the comics, but I am willing to bet that despite the unfortunate Valentine's Day release, Daredevil will be a smash next week. I can say this because the only other movie that is being released nationwide is The Jungle Book 2, starring an already-preparing-for-a-Where Are They Now?-episode Haley Joel Osment's voice.

They could make a movie about Apartment 12 and it would gross at least 5 mill in February, and that's sad.

You know what really makes my day? Opening my email and finding a message that reads: "Rufus Fish, your recent entry to win the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes is now confirmed!" Now if only the prize patrol would show up with a gigantic check written out to my aquatic pet, that would truly be priceless.

You know what really does NOT make my day? Being constantly bombarded with Valentine's Day-ness, even by spam messages. As much as I want to respond to the "Are you ready? Valentine's Day is almost here..." bulk mail from the Hotmail staff with a scathing "I have nothing to be ready FOR, you filthy bastards, thanks for reminding me...", somehow I don't think it would do much good.

I know that I have been flamed in the past by certain people for posting links from CNN.com, but this story about Michael Jackson's continuing quest to be the strangest person in America is required reading for everyone.

Words can no longer describe the things that Jackson does, but here are some entertaining tidbits in the article, like the fact that he has nicknamed his young son (Prince Michael the Second) "Blanket", and the following disturbing quote:

'He revealed that after Paris was born "I snatched her and just went home with all the placenta and everything all over her. I'm not kidding. Got her in a towel and ran. They said it was fine... And I got her home and washed it all off."'

WHAT?

In other random news, in an effort to make the 4th member of Apartment 12 not feel left out, we are going to start signing Admiral Rufus Fish up for things (Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes comes to mind) so that he can receive mail here at the apartment. If you have any funny ideas, leave me a comment or drop me a line.

The folks over at Weather.com decided to post a forecast of mid to upper 50's today through 6 PM. I was so confident in their numbers that I wore shorts and proceeded to taunt Lucas since he-of-the-cold-white-north wore jeans.

However, as you St. Louisians are well aware, it is currently 42 degrees outside. My walk from my place of employment to the shuttle stop was quite painful. Damn you Wea them go something like this:

Hi there, I'm a new girl in town (22 years old).

New girl in what town? Some of the messages I've received also specify the occupation of the "new girl in town". My favorite was a 26 year old chef.

I saw your profile on Internet and found it very interesting.

That is interesting, since I don't really have a profile on "Internet".

I am new to the area and don't have any friends yet :=[

And what better way to make friends than mass-mailing spam messages to people?

I recently purchesed web cam and looking for friends to talk to.... who knows maybe one day we'll be more then friends ;-)

Apparently, you are very new to the area. In English we have these things called "articles" which are often used before nouns. For instance "the Internet" or "a web cam". I don't know if I can be more than friends with someone with such a limited mastery of our nation's grammar.

If you interested email me back at elisabeth_348_douglas@hotmail.com and we can maybe video chat, exchange pictures or share stories.

In English we also have these things called "verbs"...and why is your reply-to address different from the one that you sent me this message from?

It seems to be a pattern that viruses and fake porn spam are rife with incorrect spelling and grammar. It kind reduces the effectiveness of your virus when the message that it is attached to contains text like "I make new game! You first to try new game." There are probably tons of gullible people out there who only recognize the file as a virus or the message as spam because it was quite obviously translated poorly from Dictionary.com, and these people would quickly and easily open any viral attachment if the accompanying text were written by a native speaker. Just something to think about next time you're planning the best and quickest way to take down Internet.