WEEKLY WHINE

Isn't that neat!

So I was watching some kind of commercial, and they had some customer talking about how great the product was. As you'd expect, they put the person's name on the screen: "Tori Somethingorother, Virgin". I read that, and I thought about it, and it seemed completely illogical. And so I looked at it again, and this time it was "Tori Somethingorother, Virginia". I thought that made more sense.

So I was watching a game from the men's NCAA basketball tournament today, and I saw that Gonzaga was making lots of three point shots. But they weren't making very many shots from inside; in fact, they seemed to miss a lot of shots that other basketballers would consider easy. [I, however, would not consider them easy.] I decided that Gonzaga must have a non-increasing shot probability function. It appears that their shots are most likely to fall if taken at some radius between 5.5 and 7.5 meters from the basket. More experiments are necessary to determine this distance more precisely.

So I was in the Pittsburgh airport, and I was waiting at gate A9 to get on my flight. They said, "We'd like to board everyone in rows fifteen through thirty three." I looked around, and two people got in line. The flight was that sparse.

So I saw Mission to Mars, and it was just a low quality film. If you'd like to know about the technical problems that the film had, you can ask Chris. But his father had a more helpful remark: "I think the Mars Society should try to distance itself from that movie." Actually, I think humanity in general should try to distance itself from that film, in particular that section of humanity responsible for it.

So I just realized that I didn't provide a link to that film's web site. That's because it was such a low quality film. I don't want to have to expose you to that. However, you may notice that I routinely link to the web sites of the best film ever made and the second best film ever made.

So I have approximately three ideas for films. But I don't know how good they are. All of them take place in space, at least partly. All of them take place at some point in the 21st century. All of them can be described as "sci-fi romantic comedies", but they fit that description to varying degrees.

So Mike and I came up with yet another idea for a film, inspired by all those romantic comedies involving Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. This idea is far less serious. I don't want to tell you all the details, but does the phrase "Meg Ryan as Ann the truck driver" mean anything to you?

So people tell me that "Yes, I do, dammit" is never the correct answer to the question "Do you love me?"

So I keep seeing all these commercials for things, especially automobiles, and none of them make me want to buy the product. That's to be expected, of course. But they never seem to have anything to do with the actual product. I just think that if you're going to spend money on making a commercial, it should not feature a shopping cart crashing into a car.

So the Montréal Expos and the St Louis Cardinals have been playing their spring training in Jupiter, FL. No word yet on which team will be the first to play on a moon of Jupiter. However, the Reds and the Red Sox expressed interest in a game in Jupiter's Great Red Spot but changed their minds when they discovered that the Red Spot is actually an immense storm system that is at least hundreds of years old.

So I just saw a commercial featuring some insurance agent who says that floors should be safer. I guess that's true, but I'm happy with the safety of most floors. Anyway, that insurance agent actually reminded me of Ben Stein.