A few thoughts on the 2008 presidential election

Over the past few weeks Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has shot up in the polls despite being outspent by his rivals, a distinct lack of organization, and most notably a string of exposés of questionable things he did as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. Today I read a particularly damning and exhaustive article about Huckabee's term as governor on salon.com. The article was originally published November 13, 2007, but was just posted on Digg.com today. Here's the link to the article:

The dark side of Mike Huckabee by Max Brantley

While this and the other recent articles exposing Huckabee's record as governor of Arkansas are interesting, frankly, I think everyone needs to shut the hell up about what a terrible person and candidate Mike Huckabee is until the primaries are over. If Republican primary voters haven't figured out already how awful he is, and by his recent rise in the polls they have not, then they deserve to be stuck with a horrible candidate. After the heartbreak and disbelief of the election being stolen from Al Gore in 2000, and the depression after John Kerrey lost a close race in 2004, I would like nothing more than the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she may be, after emerging from a difficult primary process, to have a cakewalk to the white house facing Mike Huckabee. While it seems likely that the Democratic nominee will become president no matter who the Republican nominee is, he would no doubt have an easier time pushing his agenda if he were to get 300, 350, 400, or even 450 electoral votes. Plus, if Huckabee was the Republican nominee, as knowledge of his misadventures as governor of Arkansas grew, and horror spread at the prospect of President Huckabee, this would probably help Democrats in Senate and House races, hopefully helping them to get a filibuster proof majority of 60+ in the Senate and an even larger majority in the House. Surely the major reason for the negative approval ratings of the Senate and House has been their inability to get things done with the Republicans not letting anything move forward, not the Democratic agenda. What an appropriate rebuke for the Bush administration than for him to be turning over power to a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate and House that the Republican minority can't stop.

As for the Democratic candidate, I think John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton would all do a fine job as president. Even though Clinton is the most conservative of the three, it seems pretty clear that she'd have the most difficult time in the general election. If Huckabee does indeed get the Republican nomination, The Last Thing In The World I'd want is a close race heading to election day. So that leaves Obama and Edwards, and I'm currently leaning towards Edwards. For the longest time I was hoping that Gore would run again, and if he did Obama would make a good vice president. Then after 8 years of experience as vice president, he'd have the experience in governing, as opposed to just legislating, to be a great, as opposed to just good, president. While I prefer Obama's personality to Edwards', I agree more with Edwards on the major issues, and I also think he'd have a more aggressive leadership style. This was made perfectly clear when Obama attacked Paul Krugman after he criticized the obvious deficiencies in Obama's health care plan. Obama seems sincere when he says he wants to put an end to the partisanship that have marked the Bush years. This is what people say they want, but then they also say that they don't like mudslinging in campaigns, even though the evidence clearly shows that negative ads work. After 8 years of the Bush administration, I think the first thing we need is not less partisanship, but a quick reversal of all the horrible policies that Bush has enacted. Then when Bush's policies have all been nullified and replaced with progressive alternatives, then we can try a less partisan adminstration. While it isn't as attractive as the no longer possible Gore / Obama, I think Edwards / Obama is the best option available.

So, in short:

1. Huckabee sucks, but please stop telling everyone until the primaries are over.

2. Edwards / Obama '08!

Keith Olbermann on Bill Moyers Journal (2007-12-14)

Last Friday Keith Olbermann was a guest on Bill Moyers Journal. The interview provided a fascinating glimpse of some pivotal behind the scenes moments at Countdown. Here's a link to the video along a transcript of the interview:

Keith Olbermann on Bill Moyers Journal (December 14, 2007)

Al Gore's acceptance speech of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore's acceptance speech of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

Keith Olbermann's Special Comment from December 6, 2007

Bush: Pathological liar or idiot-in-chief?

My ranking of Season 1 episodes of The Office

With no new episodes of The Office in the foreseeable future because of the strike, OfficeTally is once again having a Survivor Poll, this time for Season 1. The first 2 rounds are done, and the 3rd round started today. Here is the link if you want to vote and/or see how the poll has gone so far:

OfficeTally Survivor Poll: Season 1

Here is my list ranking the episodes, which wasn't very difficult to decide:

1. Diversity Day
2. The Alliance
3. Hot Girl
4. Health Care
5. Basketball
6. Pilot

Presumably after this one is done there will be a Survivor Poll for Season 2. Considering the fact that Season 2 of The Office is one of the greatest seasons of any show ever, ranking those episodes will no doubt be much more difficult. It will also be more interesting to see how the fans collectively rank them.

I ♥ The Onion

Conservation Group Condemns Waterboarding As Wasteful

December 4, 2007 | Issue 43•49

WASHINGTON—National Water Watch, a Washington-based conservation group, criticized the government's use of waterboarding Monday, calling the practice of stuffing a cloth into a detainee's mouth, immobilizing him, and pouring water over his face and body to simulate the sensation of drowning "a tragic waste of resources." "The idea that the United States could condone the despicable act of squandering several pitchers of water is shameful," NWW spokesman Gregory Hammil said. "It is amoral, unconscionable, and in direct opposition to all internationally recognized water- saving techniques." Hammil recommended the government switch to more eco-friendly means of enhanced interrogation, such as waterboarding with a return-hose device in order to reuse old water, or simply beating suspected terrorists to a bloody pulp.

This is nuts.

Official Leaves Post as Texas Prepares to Debate Science Education Standards

No response yet from the NBC Universal Store

It's been 3 days now and I still have not received a response to my question at the NBC Universal Store about whether or not the Dunder Mifflin Infinity players whose logos are being featured on merchandise sold in the NBC Universal Store are being compensated for the store selling items featuring the logos they designed. So a little bit ago I sent the question again, with a slightly different wording:

Are the people who designed the logos featured on the Dunder Mifflin Infinity Custom Gear merchandise being sold in the NBC Universal being compensated in any way for the use of the logos they designed as part of the Dunder Mifflin Infinity game? If so, will they be getting a percentage of the profits from the sale of items featuring their logo, or a flat fee for the use of their logo, or something else?

I'm sure you guys are very busy with the holiday season and all, but I would greatly appreciate a response to my question at your earliest possible convenience.

I dropped the part where I asked what percentage of profits they're getting, since if they are getting a percentage of profits, it's not my business what percentage they're getting, as long as they are getting a percentage, or some other form of compensation for the use of their logos, then that's all that really matters.

I don't know how good the odds are I'll get a response this time, but as before I'll post here if I do.

Something rotten at Dunder Mifflin Infinity

So I logged on to Dunder Mifflin Infinity this morning to see what the new task was, and while the new task isn't up yet, I saw this news item which was posted last night:

Nov. 29, 10:00 PM ET
BRANCH MERCHANDISE NOW AVAILABLE!

Attention all DMI Employees:

T-shirts, mugs, posters, cards and mousepads featuring all of the official branch logos can now be purchased exclusively at the NBC Universal Store! Show your DMI pride, click here!

Dunder Mifflin Infinity, for those that don't know, is an online game where people form virtual branches and participate in various tasks each week to earn SchruteBucks which can be spent on virtual items to decorate a virtual desk. Creating a branch logo was the very first task that was assigned, about 2 months ago. For completing the task we were each paid $50 SchruteBucks for completing the task, which is a meager sum, even in SchruteBucks, which have no monetary value outside of the game. Then we voted on our favorite logo in our branch, and the logo that got the most votes became the branch's official logo. While most of the logos are OK, there are a few that are awesome (e.g. Racine, Topeka, Spokane).

The big issue here, though, is whether or not the people that designed the logos on this new merchandise that's being sold are going to be compensated with a percentage of profits from the sale of items featuring the logos they designed, or will receive some other fair form of compensation.

Shortly after seeing that items featuring the logos we created were now being sold, I emailed the NBC Universal Store with the following question:

With the new Dunder Mifflin Infinity Custom Gear being sold in the NBC Universal Store, what percentage of profits or other compensation will the creators of the branch logos that are being put on the various items being sold receive in return for their designs being used?

I have not yet received a response, but I will post as soon as I do.

If it turns out that the logo designers will be getting a % of profits or other fair compensation from the sale of items featuring their work, then that's great!

But If it turns out that the logo designers will not be getting a % of profits or any other fair compensation from the sale of items featuring their work, then this is an outrage that must be responded to.

This is the same bullshit (on a much smaller scale, obviously) that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) tried to pull on the Writers Guild of America (WGA) regarding online use of programs without compensating the writers.

If the logo designers are not going to be fairly compensated, then I think we all must do the following:

1. Boycott the NBC Universal Store for as long as these items are being sold without fair compensation going to those who designed the logos.

2. Express our dissatisfaction with this at Dunder Mifflin Infinity, by either quitting the game until those who designed the logos get fair compensation for their work, or continue to play the game, but express our dissatisfaction with this in every way that we can (e.g. every new task, message board posts, emails to DMI) until this is resolved.

Would Hillary lose to each of the major Republican candidates?

Today on Digg an article was posted with a new poll by Zogby suggesting that Hillary Clinton would lose to all the major Republican candidates if the election were held today.

From the article:

In the new survey, Clinton trailed Senator John McCain 42 percent to 38 percent, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani by 43 percent to 40 percent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney by 43 percent to 40 percent.

She also lagged behind former Arkansas Republican governor Mike Huckabee by 44 to 39 percent, and former Senator Fred Thompson by 44 to 40 percent in hypothetical general election matchups.

So Hillary trails in each of the match-ups among those with an opinion, with the percentage she trails in each match-up ranging from 3 to 5 percent.

But I think the key number here is the percentage of undecideds for the various match-ups, which ranged from 16 to 20 percent.

With the anti-Bush, anti-Republican mood of the country as strong as it is, I would guess that the undecideds, if forced to choose (as they would have to if the election were actually held today), would overwhelmingly break for Hillary, giving her the election easily.

The article also states that Obama and Edward both have leads over every major Republican candidate among those with an opinion, but if does not state how big the margins are, or what percentage of respondents were undecided.

Bill Callahan Fired

This morning Bill Callahan was fired from his job as the football coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He joins athletic director Steve Pederson, who was fired last month. Even though they were fired, they both stand to make several million dollars over the next few years, as they're both under contract until 2012.

I personally believe that they shouldn't get millions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing, so I've come up with an alternative idea that would benefit both individuals and the university. I first got the idea after seeing this awesome cartoon by Neal Obermeyer after Pederson was fired:



That cartoon reminded me of the scene in Fun Run, the Season 4 premiere episode of The Office, where Eizabeth the stripper accepts the Big Check that cost $200 made out for $340 to Science. Which in turn reminded me of what happened to Elizabeth the stripper on her first appearance on the show, in the Season 3 episode Ben Franklin, where she's hired to dance at Bob Vance's bachelor party, but the party is cut short after Elizabeth dances on Michael and he has a sudden twinge of conscience, cutting the party short. Then Dwight, in his genius, takes Elizabeth up to the office and sits her down in Oscar's seat in accounting and this priceless exchange occurs:

Dwight: Elizabeth, I want you to sit here. When the phone rings, answer it.
Elizabeth: You want me to answer phones with my clothes on.
Dwight: We hired you for three hours work and we're going to get it.

Like Elizabeth the stripper, even though Steve Pederson and now Bill Callahan have been removed from the jobs they were originally hired for, that doesn't mean they should get the money from their contracts for doing nothing.

My modest proposal, then, which I guess is just Dwight's idea in a different situation, is that Steve Pederson and Bill Callahan should have to do some other job for the university until their contracts expire. While they both failed spectacularly at the high-profile jobs they were originally hired for, Pederson and Callahan would probably make acceptable janitors. Their job would be to clean up Memorial Stadium after each home game. I think that would be the least they could do to clean up the huge mess left in their wake.

FAIL

Well, yesterday I managed to go 22 hours without buying anything. And then, with less than 2 hours until midnight, I went to Joystiq to answer the day's question for their contest for a $5K gaming computer from Falcon Northwest. Before I could do so, however, I saw a post that Best Buy stores were selling the PC versions of BioShock and The Orange box for $25 each instead of the usual $50. While the nearest Best Buy is over 2 hours away, I checked bestbuy.com and found that the offer applied there, too, with free shipping no less, and I bought them both.

The sick thing is that I can't run either on my current PC, which is 6 1/2 years old, and if I can keep it running until Intel's Nehalem processor is released late next year, it'll be a year or so until I get to play either game.

A few weeks ago GoGamer.com had a sale on BioShock for $30, and I almost bought it then, but I figured that by the time I get a computer that could actually play it next year, the price would probably drop to less than $30 anyway, and maybe $20 or so during a sale.

Now that I've bought both games I'm in a little quandary: Do I root for my computer to fail so I can get a new computer and be able to play them, or do I keep hoping my computer continues working until Nehalem is released, knowing that I won't be able to play my new games until I get a new one?

Buy Nothing Day

New Maddox

Today Maddox finally posted a new essay:

Fashion tips for women from a guy who knows dick about fashion.

New Maddox essays have gotten more noteworthy over the years since they've become so infrequent. There used to be a couple new ones a month, but now there's only a new one every few months. In fact, this is only the 5th one of 2007, and I just noticed that there were only 4 updates in all of 2006. On the bright side, I think the quality of his essays has improved, as he used to be pretty hit and miss, but every single essay from the last 2 years has been great. This one continues the streak, as he makes a lot of hilarious comments and valid points, although I did disagree with 2 things.

Writing about how ugly and disgusting "Crocs" women's shoes are, Maddox writes:

"People who wear Crocs go on and on about how comfortable they are, and how it's supposedly odor resistant because it's made out of some kind of anti-bacterial foam. Great point, dipshits! You know what else it's resistant to? You getting laid."

I'm sure Maddox is like the Soup Nazi with impossibly high standards when it comes to deciding who to sleep with, but for 99% of men (and that's a conservative estimate) what shoes a woman wears does not figure into deciding on whether or not she's worth pursuing for sex.

Then a little bit later he's talking about the ridiciulousness of nearly identical lipstick colors. To prove this he has a picture showing 2 "different" shades of lipstick sold by Revlon, "Red Reinvented" and "Cherry Delicious." The two shades of red cropped from Maddox's comparison image:



While it is ridiculous that Revlon makes both colors, on my monitor the 2 shades are clearly different, even though they are very similar. "Red Reinvented" (left) is redder, while "Cherry Delicious" (right) is duller, and looks like it has a very slight pinkish hue. I looked at the samples one after the other a bunch of times and I correctly identified which is which every time. I wouldn't be able to identify them I could only look at 1 without reference to the other, and I doubt the actual lipsticks are as easy to tell apart, especially when someone's wearing them, but that doesn't change the fact that telling them apart from the sample colors on my monitor is easy.

Except for those two minor things I thought the essay was right on. I especially liked the part about the curtain dresses, which reminded me of a blog Mindy Kaling wrote a while back with some pictures of dresses like that that she said were really comfortable or something, which in turn reminded me that I still haven't tried the Kookaburra Liquorice that I've wanted to try ever since she wrote about it several months ago. Tonight I looked online a little bit for it and it's super expensive, about $5 for a 10-ounce bag. As if that isn't bad enough, with shipping it's usually more than twice that. You can get a much better deal buying it in bulk, but I don't want to be stuck with a case (12 10-ounce bags) if it turns out I don't like it. And even if I do like it, it would probably take me at least 6 months to eat that much licorice, and by the time I got to the last few bags the candy would probably be stale.

John Cusack conversation with Naomi Klein about The Shock Doctrine

Over the past few weeks several segments of a conversation John Cusack recently had with Naomi Klein about her new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism have been posted on The Huffington Post. The conversation has covered several different topics, and it's been fascinating and more than a little terrifying. Here are links to the 4 parts released so far:

Part 1: HuffPost Exclusive: My Interview with Naomi Klein (Video)

Part 2: Calling Things What They Are: More From My Conversation with Naomi Klein (Transcript)

Part 3: The Real Blackwater Scandal: Build a Frontier, You Get Cowboys (Transcript)

Part 4: The Real Blackwater Scandal: Build a Frontier, You Get Cowboys, Part II (Transcript)

I haven't yet got my hands on The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism or seen Cusack's new movie War, Inc., but I'm look forward to them both.

Chuck - S01E02

So despite my mixed thoughts on the first episode, I decided to give Chuck another chance and I was not disappointed. The second episode was funnier, the plot was more interesting (even though it seemed like just something they had to get out of the way, kind of like the episode of Futurama where Fry checks his old bank account and finds out that he's a billionaire), and the question of which, if either, agent could be trusted made things pretty interesting. One thing I didn't like was that the whole computer secrets stuck in his head thing is even more ridiculous than I thought it would be.

I liked that LOST was referenced when in the middle of reciting some of the secrets he knew he said, "Oceanic flight 815 was shot down...," but I have to wonder if the writers actually watch LOST each week since we learned in the Season 2 finale that Desmond not entering the code in time was apparently what brought the plane down. It would have been better if he had said "Oceanic flight 815 crashed on an island located..." or something like that that alludes to something we don't know.

Chuck x2

Good Luck Chuck

I have no interest in seeing Good Luck Chuck, but I was interested in seeing how it would do at the box office over the weekend compared to Shoot 'Em Up (which I have no interest in seeing other), which was released a few weeks ago, based on their very different advertising strategies. I had never heard of Shoot 'Em Up a week before it was released, and then the whole week prior to its release it seemed like every other commercial on TV was for it. The blitz didn't work too well, as during its opening weekend of September 7-9 it finished in 4th place and took in about $5.7 million. In contrast, it seems like there were a small but regular number of ads on TV for Good Luck Chuck over the last 2-3 months. Over its opening weekend September 21-23 Good Luck Chuck finished in 2nd place and took in $13.7 million. From the reviews, both of these are pretty bad movies, so I'm guessing that had something to do with the creative advertising techniques for them. I wonder how much, if any, of the difference in their opening weekend performance is because of the different advertising methods, and how this might affect future advertising. I guess I should be thankful that they haven't resorted to advertising crappy movies with the same despicable advertising technique used for that Head On thing, which I suppose is used because the stupid thing doesn't work at all (and even if in some parallel universe it did work, I think everyone there should boycott it on principle, to not reward the sleazy advertising used to sell it).

Chuck

I had seen some ads for this but I wasn't going to watch it until during a rerun of The Office last week there was a commercial for it and I heard what I thought was Adam Baldwin's voice. I was cleaning dishes at the time so I didn't see if it was him or not, but after I got done I looked it up on IMDb and sure enough it was him. Since the show had the guy who brought to life one of the funniest characters in the history of television, Jayne Cobb on Firefly, how could I not check this show out? So I set my VCR to record it, which ended up being a good thing since I forgot about it until 5 minutes or so after it started. So I watched the rest of the show, slightly confused. After it was over I watched the first 5 minutes and of course that helped everything make sense. Still, I thought the show was mediocre overall. The basic premise was pretty far-fetched (that's not how human memory works), and for a show about tech geeks (sorry, nerds) there seemed to be a lot of questionable computer things. For example, how does a virus destroy a computer? Even a really nasty rootkit wouldn't survive a hard drive wipe, would it? The best I could think of is if the virus somehow told the PSU that the mother board, CPU & hard drive(s) weren't getting enough power and when it put out more juice everything was fried. And how does a computer suffer complete destruction when it falls a few feet onto the ground, including a hard drive being in multiple pieces? I tried to put these quibbles aside and just enjoy the show, but it just wasn't that good. Adam Baldwin's character was not funny at all, and there were only a few laughs during the whole show even though from what little I knew about it, I thought it was supposed to be a comedy. It wasn't all bad though, as there were some funny parts in the beginning in the store. And then my favorite part was near the end show when Chuck diffused the bomb by searching for porn to kill the computer. I'm embarrassed I didn't see that coming, but I ended up laughing a lot harder than I would have if I had. Perhaps the overall lack of humor was because they had to setup all the plot stuff, so I think I'll give the show one more chance next week to see if they can bring the funny. Hopefully it turns out to be worth watching, but if not (and even if it does, for that matter), it completely sucks to see all the talented actors who were on Firefly, easily one of the best shows of all-time, appear in significantly lower quality shows (e.g., Nathan Fillion on Drive, Gina Torres on Standoff), so many of which fail, and they just keep coming up with new show ideas, most of which completely suck, all the while the Firefly 'verse is just waiting to be explored. I really hope Fox decides to give it another shot (or another network when Fox's TV rights expire at the end of the year), especially now that Kevin Reilly is there. He had a large part in saving The Office from cancellation after Season 1, and maybe if he'd been at Fox when they cancelled Firefly in 2002 and Futurama in 2003 (and then gone on to NBC to save The Office), maybe they'd both still be on the air.

An international unit of measure for pelvic thrusts.

Starbucks, Dell, Google, the list goes on: Huge business successes from meager beginnings. Today I thought of the idea which could form the basis on which to build the foundation of the next big thing to make that venerable list: The design of an an international unit of measure for pelvic pelvic thrusts. In addition to that, a way to do the measurement en masse, including location, velocity, distance, and any other relevant information. Then a comprehensive and searchable online database of pelvic thrust data could be created, which would be at one's fingertips at all times. Kind of like a Google Earth for pelvic thrusts. While I strongly believe that the pelvic thrust data itself should be free, I see no reason why it wouldn't be ok to make a little money (who are we kidding - we're talking huge bucks here) on the side with some tasteful, unobtrusive advertisements that appear whenever anyone accesses the data. If my projections are accurate, a few months after the database goes live, its bandwidth usage will put YouTube's to shame.

New Asha Ali single & Chungking's new album

The other day I noticed on Asha Ali's MySpace page that "These Months" had been deleted from the playlist and a brand new track, "A Promise Broken," had been added in its place. The new song has a quite different sound than that of her debut album. This is apparently attributable to the song being for a movie. The vocals are really strong though, and it's certainly nice to hear something new. There's a good, short review of the song, as well as a higher quality file of the song than the streaming version that plays at MySpace over at It's A Trap.

Also, it's been almost a month since Chungking's new album, Stay Up Forever, was officially released. Chungking's debut album (which was released twice: first as We Travel Fast in 2003, and then re-recorded and rereleased as The Hungry Years in 2005) was very laid back, and all about Jessie Banks' beautiful, lush vocals. Stay Up Forever, on the other hand, is pure electro-sleaze bliss. The music is now on equal footing with Banks' vocals, and the album starts off with a breakneck pace that I would have thought uniminaginable after listening to We Travel Fast/The Hungry Years more times than I can count.

The only thing I don't like about the album is track #5, "I Love You," which brings the breakneck pace of the first few songs to a dead halt 1/3 of the way through the album (is that the point?). While the tracks on the tail end of the album do slow down, this is fine since it would be disconcerting if the album were to end while still at the full-tilt pace established by the first few tracks. I think the album would be much better without "I Love You," and instead had a more gradual transition from the fast early songs to the slower songs at the end. The CD single for Love Is Here To Stay, the first single from the album, has an excellent b-side called "Jeans On." I think this song should have taken the place of "I Love You" on the album. If this were the case, this album would have been just about perfect.

My Statement

Tonight I rewatched Serenity (on the awesome new DVD), completing my little Firefly rewatching marathon that I had to do after reading xkcd's awesome comic from Monday. Afterwards I got on the computer to surf a little before going to bed. I checked my gmail and saw James Gunn had posted a new blog post, so I went over to MySpace to check it out, and it was just about the last thing in the world I expected:

"We (James and Jenna) need to announce that we have chosen to separate. We are sorry for any pain this causes family and friends. The enthusiasm we have expressed for each other's lives, spirits, and careers is real – we have been each other's cheerleader and friend during the past six years and continue to be so now and in the future.

"And a special note for our MySpace fans – We appreciate your support over the years, and would be overjoyed to have you continue supporting us both. You might be tempted to make one of us "feel better" by putting the other one down in a post. Please don't – we still have the utmost respect for one another, and we'd have to delete you. We aren't taking questions or doing interviews about this particular aspect of our lives. We're also avoiding reading any press on the subject, so don't send us any clippings or links about the split. Thank you in advance for respecting our privacy."

(Source: James Gunn's MySpace page and Jenna Fischer's MySpace page).

My first thought was that it had to be a joke. So I checked Jenna's page and saw the same statement. My next thought was that maybe their MySpace pages were hacked. Then I saw the time of the posts, about 3:30 this afternoon. If it had been hacking that would have been fixed by now. Just to make sure I googled their names and apparently it's on news sites, apparently with the MySpace messages as the source. As if that wasn't enough, if you think about it, the day after the release of a season of The Office on DVD is probably the perfect day to announce something like this for maximum privacy to keep immediate fan reaction to an absolute minimum, since everyone's spending all their free time in front of their TVs and not their computers.

Since it's real, my reaction is mainly shock. In interviews Jenna always described James as her real life Jim, and they seemed to be the perfect couple. So what happened? Were they both so busy with their mutually successful careers that they were left with too little little time for each other? Did Jenna's back injury create / exacerbate problems they were having? Did one or both of them meet someone else? It's certainly not any of my business, but I can't help but wonder. I mean, if the real Pam and the real Jim can't make it, what chance do the rest of us have?

I don't know either of them personally, but I'm a big fan of both their work, including James' Slither, The Toy Collector, Lollilove, etc., and Jenna's The Office, Blades Of Glory, Lollilove, etc.

In any case, regardless of what happened or what comes next for them, I wish them both the very best.

My ranking of Season 3 episodes of The Office

I've been meaning to make a list ranking my favorite episodes from Season 3 of The Office for awhile, but I planned to wait until after the Season 3 DVD set was released. Well, I ended up making my list today, as today marked the beginning of the OfficeTally Survivor Poll. Not wanting to have to think for a long time to pick my least favorite episode each day, I made my list today so I can just refer to it and make my pick without having to think about it (this might seem obvious, but evidently it never occurred to the Minnesota Vikings). This way I can save my mental energy for other cognitive tasks, (such as deciding whether to get Hot Fuzz through Columbia House or the 2-disc set from Walmart, deciding if I'd rather travel into the future 50, 500, or 5,000 years, or deciding if I'd rather have sex with Penélope Cruz or Monica Bellucci).

Making the list ended up being easier than I thought it would be. While the top few and bottom few episodes are pretty much set, I'm still working on the rankings of the middle 15 episodes or so (And since I originally posted this I have made some minor changes - the list below is the current version). Here is the current list (from favorite to least favorite):

01. The Job
02. Traveling Salesmen
03. The Return
04. Women's Appreciation
05. Product Recall
06. Branch Closing
07. Gay Witch Hunt
08. Beach Games
09. The Negotiation
10. Business School
11. Grief Counseling
12. A Benihana Christmas
13. The Merger
14. Safety Training
15. Cocktails
16. Diwali
17. The Convict
18. The Convention
19. Back From Vacation
20. The Coup
21. Initiation
22. Phyllis' Wedding
23. Ben Franklin

It should be interesting to see how the Survivor vote goes. I think The Job will probably win pretty easily, but it should be interesting to see how it the other episodes go.

Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Final Voting

There were a ton of great entries every week, and the entries for the last challenge in particular were amazing. I reread all the entries a bunch of times just for fun, as I was hesitant to start the inevitable task of reading them critically and somehow picking out 3 favorites. I ended up having 2 super-favorites, and 4 others that were right behind. I couldn't decide based solely on rereading them over and over, so I had to take a step back and make a mental list of what was most important, and I was eventually able to choose #3. As was the case every prior week, if my top 5 (or in this week's case, 6) entries hadn't been submitted, or I was for some reason barred from voting for them, I would feel fine about voting for my next 3 favorite entries. For the final week's entries that was true several times over.

There were so many great entries each week, I think the 3 winnners will have gotten the most votes not necessarily because their entries were better than everyone else's, but probably because their sense of humor, things they focused on, and interests appealed the most to the other voters. I guess that's pretty obvious, though.

Regardless of who the top 3 vote getters are, I predict the following 2 things will be true:

1. Everyone will agree that the 3 winners are very deserving.

2. Everyone will agree that there are other people who were just as deserving of winning, although we'll probably disagree on who among the non-winners was most deserving.

In any event, it was an awesome contest, and I look forward to next year's contest!

Amazing pictures of Earth

Most detailed pictures of Earth ever seen (Daily Mail)

Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Week 8

There were 24 entries for last week's challenge, so that was pretty cool. Reading all the awesome entries over the course of the entry period, I thought it would be really tough to pick 3 favorites when it came time to vote. While it was tough to pick 3 favorites, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

A day or two after I submitted my entry for the Jim & Pam / Dwight & Angela double date challenge I had an idea that I really liked: Beet pizza. It seemed obvious enough that surely most people had thought of it before, and it would probably be used for that challenge, but it wasn't. So going into the 8th and final challenge, I was determined to incorporate beet pizza into my entry, no matter what the challenge prompt might be. It didn't have to be in any big way or anything, just enough to use the words 'beet' and 'pizza' consecutively. To a lesser extent I also wanted to incorporate a casual Friday into my entry, including Dwight wearing a Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt. So, what was the 8th and final challenge? This:

"Pick a character and describe their childhood."

So the casual Friday / Happy Smile Patrol t-shirt idea was out, although hopefully I'll be able to use it if there's another contest next year (which would be awesome), and beet pizza would certainly be difficult. But not impossible. Here's my entry for the final challenge:

Writing Assignment #8: The Wonder Years

Angela Martin didn't have many friends growing up. Instead, she spent her free time with her cats. Concerned about this, Angela's dad Freeman decided to take action. He used to know a guy that taught lessons to misbehaving children, but J. Walter Weatherman moved to California awhile back. A friend referred Freeman to a man who recently moved to Scranton. The man, a musician, agreed to take Angela's favorite cat Daisy for two weeks, to break Angela's attachment.

Two weeks later the man went to return Daisy. Besides Daisy, he also carried on his bicycle three pizzas topped with mounds of beets that an area farmer hired him to make for his grandson, who will have to eat the pizzas in one sitting as punishment for eating the 'money beets' from their beet stand. The man rang the doorbell, but there wasn't an immediate answer. He set the pizzas down and walked around the house. Hoping a neighbor found Daisy, Angela opened the door, but instead saw the pizza boxes. There was a post-it note on top, which simply said, "Daisy." Angela was confused until she opened one of the boxes, saw some strange crimson matter, and shrieked in horror. Just then the man walked around the corner carrying Daisy to give back to her.

While her terror lasted only a moment, the damage was done. Since that day Angela hasn't eaten meat, nor has she figured out why Dunder Mifflin's quality assurance representative has always looked strangely familiar.

-------------

I think I did more revision to this entry than any of the others in the contest. Originally the first part of the story involved Angela sneaking a cat into church and it escaping and her getting in trouble for that with her parents, them talking to the pastor for help, him going to Poor Richard's for a drink, Creed playing there, and at the end of the set saying that he also played children's parties. Also, originally her parents gave her cat to another family and she didn't know, and so when she thought Daisy had been made into a pizza, she never found out it wasn't Daisy, and she buried the pizzas in her back yard. I thought that was too dark, though, so I reduced the time frames on everything, especially the amount of time she thought the cat was dead. I also tried briefly to make the entry into 2 talking heads, 1 long one by Angela explaining why she was a vegetarian, and 1 short one at the end by Creed, saying something simple like, "Back in the '80s I did a lot of odd jobs for extra money." But there was no way for Angela to know everything for the story to make sense. The other major challenge getting it down to 250 words. I had a little trouble with the double date entry, but I was able to cut some unnecessary stuff pretty easily. This one was 280 without anything obvious to cut. I remember I got really frustrated that I wouldn't be able to get it to 250 without cutting something essential, and I briefly considered trying another idea, but I took a break and when I looked at it again, I was able to trim 20 non-essential words pretty quickly, and the other 10 or so didn't take too long to get rid of, either.

Despite all the words I've used to talk about writing my entry, I haven't mentioned one simple fact: Compared to the other entries for Challenge #8 so far, mine isn't even that good. The other entries this week so far are so good, they collectively might be the best entries since Week #1. And there's only 8 entries so far!

Wii!

Today I went to Target to get some cereal and my (very uncreative) contribution to the prize pool for Northern Attack's writing contest. While there I saw something I'd never seen before: A Nintendo Wii in stock. So that was pretty cool.

Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Week 7

There were only 13 entries, including my own, to the writing challenge from week 6. So that sucked. But there were some pretty interesting ones, and I'll take quality over quantity any day. This time I had 2 favorites and 2 that were close behind. I filled out the email with my 3 votes, and right when I was about to send it I changed my mind and switched the 3rd one I voted for. I think I made the right decision.

The writing challenge for this week was quite different from any of the other challenges, either from this contest or the previous one. This week we had to take a quotation from the office and attribute it to someone historical / famous in the real world, or a fictional character, etc. Whereas in past challenges the main work is to flesh out a decent idea, this week it's all about 2 simple choices: the quote & the attribution. So instead of debating about a little change here or a little change there, the big task for this week was deciding between possible entries. I'd imagine that everyone approached this challenge differently, but my way to handle it was to rewatch every episode of The Office over the past week to try to find some good quotes, and then go through them and find creative / interesting / funny attributions for them. In all I came up with 13 possible entries, maybe half of which I considered actually posting. I was hoping to come up with one that I'd knew was it as soon as I came up with it, but that didn't happen. So I went with my nerve-ending rich gut and posted my favorite last night. Here is the entry I submitted:

Writing Assignment #7: That's What They Said

"Hey, Clapton! Keep an eye on her, all right?"
-George Harrison, referring to Pattie Boyd

I kind of felt bad not using the 235 other words at my disposal, but whatever. Here are the other 14 possible entries I came up with:

"Yeah, here's the deal. I did not understand this was supposed to be a full on, like, report or whatnot... I was under the impression this was more of, like, a meet-and-greet type of deal."
-Hans Blix, February 5, 2003

"People are always coming to me, 'Mark, I have a secret. You're the only one I trust.' No thanks, because keeping a secret can only lead to trouble. Like, I was watching Cinemax last weekend, this movie. Portrait of a Prostitute, something... Secrets of a Call... More Secrets of a Call Girl. And the lead character, Shyla, is framed for murder, goes on the run, and winds up working at a bordello in Malibu. I don't... I don't wanna live like that. I like it here. I don't wanna be Shyla. I like being Mark Felt."
-W. Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat

"I wanna be married and have 100 kids so I can have 100 friends, and no one can say no to being my friend."
-Mulai Ismail Ibn Sharif, Age 11, who went on to father over 1,000 children

"When I was little, my dad and I played a lot of games together. My dad cheated a lot, but I never busted him on it. I would have, except I didn't know about it. He didn't tell me 'til years later. I was shocked when I found out."
-Eddie Ford, son of Whitey Ford

Ryu: Ooh, yeah. Good move.
(Ryu moves behind Chun-Li and puts his arms around her, Chun-Li laughs)
Ryu: Ooh, yeah. Good move. Ooh, not such an ultimate fighter now, huh?
Chun-Li: (Laughing) Oh, hey, put me down. (Laughing) Put me down!
(E. Honda glances over, Chun-Li notices)
Chun-Li: (Serious) Oh my God. Hey, put me down.
(Ryu puts Chun-Li down)
Chun-Li: (Annoyed) Hey.
(Ryu steps back, bewildered. Chun-Li pulls her shirt down and joins everybody else)
(Ryu is left looking severely confused)
-Overheard on the sideline during a fight between Blanka & Dhalsim in the Street Fighter II: The World Warriors fighting tournament.

"I look really good in white."
-Jenna Fischer, at the Blades of Glory premiere

"Okay, first off, my fans. Because I couldn't have done it without them. Thank you. Let's give [host TBA] a round of applause for MC-ing tonight because this is a lot harder than it looks. And also because of the orchestra, too. Um, so, finally, I want to thank God. Because God gave me this Emmy. And I feel God in this auditorium tonight."
-Jenna Fischer, accepting the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy at the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards on September 16, 2007

"Can I trust James? I don't know. Do I have a choice? No, frankly, I don't. Will I trust James? Yes. Should I trust James? You tell me."
-Oprah Winfrey, on James Frey

Sean Hannity sitting in for Fox News HR Guy: All right, Bill. You are accused of making sexually suggestive remarks to Andrea that made her feel uncomfortable. Solution. Andrea, you are to make sexually suggestive remarks to Bill that will make him uncomfortable.
Bill O'Reilly: I accept your decision.

Jeff: I have to fire someone today. Okay?
Ben: Fine. Fire someone else. Fire Kevin, he's terrible. I am so much better at my job than Kevin.
Jeff: Okay, well, I already picked you. And you know that. So, unless I just go through with this, you're always gonna look at me as the guy who almost fired you.
Ben: No, no, no, no, no, I will forget so fast. You will be my savior. You're they guy who gave me my life back. Thank you.
Ben: I knew you'd see it my way, Jeff. God Bless you. You're a fine man.
Jeff: Don't...
Ben: Listen, you will not regret this either. Kevin's terrible, no one's gonna miss him. Good, good, good.
...
Jeff: Kevin, could I talk to you for a sec?
Kevin: Ben's an idiot, you know that.
Jeff: Well, he...
Kevin: No, no, no, no, no. You had it right the first time.
Jeff: Well, maybe I did.
Kevin: Exactly. You gotta go with your gut man.
Jeff: Huh, well... no. I can't, no. I can't go back. I would look like an idiot.
Kevin: That's why I'm being fired?
Jeff: No.
Kevin: So you might not look like an idiot?
Jeff: No. It was all the stuff that I said. It was business downturn, the cutbacks, and, and...
Kevin: This is unbelievable!
Jeff: I just hope that you and I can remain friends.
-Jeff Zucker trying, but failing, to fire Ben Silverman, and then firing Kevin Reilly

Katie: How do you come back from that?
Bryant: Um, you don't. I don't think, come all the way back, you know?
Katie: No, I mean, doing that with Michael. How do you come back from that, as a human being?
-Katie Couric and Bryant Gumble on Today after it was announced Lisa Marie Presley had married Michael Jackson.

"Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can, and do, cut my own hair. I did, however, tip my urologist. Because I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones."
-Mr. Pink

"You know, sure, playing the field is great. Don't get me wrong. But there's more to life than notches on my bedpost."
-Pope Benedict XVI

It starts with xkcd and ends with Beautiful Katamari

xkcd is a great webcomic, and last Monday's cartoon is one of my recent favorites:



Back in the day Super Mario Kart for the SNES drove me to wit's end. The 50cc and 100cc classes were easy enough to handle, but the 150cc class Special Cup races were just insane. The Donut Plains 3 track was particularly infuriating - it makes me angry now just thinking about it. I don't think I ever did get the gold trophy in the 150cc Special Cup. I don't remember if I just gave up, or I started playing another game and forgot about it, or what. The only other Mario Kart game I played was the N64 one, and it wasn't nearly as frustrating, leaving Mario Kart for the SNES the undisputed frustration inducing champ.

Until I got a PS2 and Katamari Damacy.

While most of the levels are a blast, as the goal is to just roll up everything in sight, there are 2 notable exceptions: Ursa Major, where you are trying to find the biggest bear possible (the Kintaro Bear), and Taurus, to catch the largest cow possible (the Holy Cow). But, the level ends the second you touch any bear or cow, no matter how small it is. After a few hours (and a few hundred swears) I was able to master the Ursa Major stage, and I can now get the Kintaro bear just about every time. The Taurus level was more difficult, though, since I didn't know that the Holy Cow appeared in the forest, and I always did a shooting drop into the enclosed village area, with the Holy Cow moving around, and the 4 cow men standing around the middle. If I didn't hit one of them on the drop, I usually grazed one as I bounced after a dash trying to flip the Holy Cow. Eventually I managed to roll up the Holy Cow, leading to much relief. I assume that I'd be able to get the Holy Cow most of the time now that I know how to get it in the forest, but I don't have much of an urge to play the level again to find out.

I recently played through Katamari Damacy's sequel, We ♥ Katamari. While the graphics are slightly better and there are some more inventive levels, the control doesn't seem as tight and the music isn't nearly as good as in the original. The one area where the sequel outshines the original is frustration. The Cowbear stage, where the goal is to roll up the huge Cowbear, and touching any cow or bear instantly ends the level, is even more infuriating than the Taurus stage from the original game. You have to get to just shy of 8 meters to flip the Cowbear, and it's pretty easy to get up to that size without touching a cow or bear, but it can be tricky getting into position, dashing to flip the Cowbear, and then adding it to your Katamari before some random little cow or bear prevents you from claiming your prize. Like the Taurus stage, I haven't played the Cowbear stage since beating it, and I don't plan to anytime soon. But, unlike the 150cc Special Cup on Mario Kart, at least I did beat these ridiculously frustrating Katamari levels (on the other hand, I'm not even close to collecting 1,000,000 roses, which is just torture).

Still, the fun of all the other levels of these Katamari games more than cancel out the frustration from these cow/bear levels. The fourth game in the series (besides the two PS2 games there was also a game for the PSP, Me & My Katamari), Beautiful Katamari, is going to be released later this year. It'll either be an XBOX360 exclusive, or it'll be on the Wii as well. I don't own any systems from the current generation yet, and as long as Beautiful Katamari isn't released for the PC, it'll probably determine which system I end up buying. The graphics look great, and there should be less intra-level loading (which was another major frustration in some of the later levels in We ♥ Katamari), but the major thing I'm looking forward to is online multiplayer. The multiplayer in the first game was awful, and in the second game it was only slightly better. Hopefully with the power of the new systems and the online multiplayer with up to 3 other people, Beautiful Katamari turns out to be the best Katamari game yet.

Trip-Hop Is Not Dead, Dammit

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Week 6

With the entries for Week 5 of Northern Attack's 2007 writing contest, there's good news and there's bad news.

The bad news: There were only 18 to the writing prompt. Although I suppose that with the holiday in the middle of the week, the drop off probably could have been even worse.

The good news: The 17 responses besides my own were some of the best of the contest so far.

After reading all the entries a bunch of times I had it narrowed down to 5: 1 super-duper favorite, 1 super favorite, and 3 favorites. Eventually I got it down to 4, at which point I didn't think I'd be able to choose the last spot except by flipping a coin or something. I finally picked the third one (non-randomly). I might have to give the writers of the 2 favorites I didn't get to vote for this week extra consideration next week or something.

For this week's challenge, I came up with an idea I liked not long after the challenge was posted and started getting my ideas down, and I ended up just writing it all right then. I like my entry, although I'm sure I'll think of a lot of things I should have used over the next week. But at least now I'll get to enjoy the new entries as they're submitted instead of having to wait to read them all at the end. One thing: I forgot to add the second set of parentheses in Andy's talking head in my official entry, but I added them below.

Writing Assignment #6: ...regardless of Creed...

Kevin (TH): I have never visited any of those websites... What was the first one again?

Phyllis (TH): No, Bob and I have never done that in the women's bathroom over the lunch hour. (Blushes)

Stanley (TH): (Laughing, but stops when he notices Michael by the doorway.) I never said any of those things. (Turns and sees Michael is gone.) It's all true, and I think it's hilarious. (Resumes laughing.)

Meredith (TH): I know for sure that Creed is not Jake's father. (Ponders) Maybe...

Jim (TH): Apparently Creed self-published a tell-all book about everyone who works here. (Holds up book.) 9 To 5 Confessions: An Office Insider Spills The Beans About Dunder Mifflin by Creed Bratton.

Michael (TH): (Reading, then looks up.) All these incidents are taken out of context. And what the heck is some of this stuff. Flonkerton? But the worst part is he had Kinko's do all the printing.

Andy (TH): (A tall stack of books in front of him.) I bought all the remaining books and paid the guy at Kinko's to destroy the master copy. This will help me get on everyone's good side. Don't know what I'm going to do with all these, though... (Flips through one of the books, stops, then turns the book sideways.) Dwight and... Angela?

Creed (TH): (Counting a handful of $20 bills, then looks up.) Book? I have no idea what you're talking about. (Smiles, then goes back to counting.)

Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest - Week 5

It took me quite awhile to pick my 3 favorite entries from challenge #4. Once again I had 2 favorites and 3 more close behind. But after reading all the entries many times I was finally able to choose my 3. One nice thing about challenge #4 was that slightly more people posted entries than had posted entries for challenge #3. Hopefully this trend continues for the rest of the contest.

Earlier today I posted my entry for challenge #5. I thought this was the toughest challenge yet. Whereas with last week's challenge the big task was getting the content to fit the constraints of a limerick, the big challenge this week was coming up with content that fit the characters, made sense, and was interesting. I'm not sure if my entry accomplished any of those 3 things. Two other problems I had along the way were 1) my first draft was too long by 50 words, and 2) in my first draft Jim had most of the dialogue. Fixing the first problem wasn't as tough as I thought it might be, as I just had to cut 2 things and then got rid of the rest messing with wording. Although I did have some other things I wanted to include, after I did the word count and saw 300, I just stopped with what I had and started editing there. And I had an even easier time fixing the second problem. As a non-writer, I find my solution hilarious, although I'm sure real writers would cringe at what I did, which I consider a testament to how bad I am at writing dialogue: I simply changed the attribution of a few lines from Jim to Pam, without changing any of the actual dialogue. That I could do this without having anything else is pretty cool, not to mention depressing. Anyway, here's my entry.

Challenge #5 - It's A Date

Nighttime, Jim and Pam standing outside.

Jim: A lot has changed since your original documentary stopped filming.

Pam: I've been staying at home with the kids and trying to paint.

Jim: She's being modest. Her painting has really taken off. She was even featured in Fine Arts Aficionado Monthly.

Pam: And after the documentary started airing, Dwight sold a bunch of Dwight bobbleheads on his website. He used the money to open up a restaurant with Angela, which opened last week.

The camera pans to reveal a brick building with a large “Dwangela's” sign. They walk into the restaurant.

Mose: Ah, you're finally here. Follow me.

Mose leads them to the party room, where Dwight and Angela are already seated at opposite ends of the long banquet table. They all greet each other. Jim and Pam take seats across from each other in the middle of the table. Jim motions to Pam to look behind her. She turns and sees one of Angela's baby posters.

Pam: Classy!

Jim: Um, do you serve soft shell crab?

Dwight rolls his eyes.

Dwight: They'll have Dwangela specials. Four Dwangela specials. Pronto!

Pam: What's the Dwangela special?

Angela: A beet salad, followed by a beet burger with a side of roasted beets. Beet wine to drink, and for dessert, a slice of beet cake. It's all vegetarian.

Jim and Pam grin at each other.

After dinner, Jim and Pam say goodnight to Dwight and Angela, then walk outside.

Jim: That was... interesting.

Pam: Definitely.

I Got Goosebumps...

July 3, 2007 - Keith Olbermann's Special Comment - Bush, Cheney should resign

Northern Attack's 2007 Office Writing Contest - Week 4

The entries for Week 3 of Northern Attack's 2007 Writing Contest were once again very good, and once again after reading them all a bunch of times I had 2 favorites and 3 that were close behind. After reading all the entries a few more times I was able to pick the 3rd one I'd vote for. Since I cast my votes, though, I've been second guessing myself on whether I chose correctly for my 3rd vote. In any case, I can't change it now.

The challenge for Week 4 was to write a limerick about an Office character or characters. I remember writing haikus in school, but I don't ever remember writing, or even learning what a limerick was. In fact, I had to look limerick up on wikipedia to find out the rules / structure.

I didn't particularly like having to write poetry, and I disliked even more the aftereffects. After I play Tetris or Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo for awhile, when I close my eyes I still see the blocks dropping. Something similar occurred to me over the past few days, as after I worked on my limerick for awhile, I'd try to read a news article and I'd continuously be distracted by detecting rhymes, even though I wasn't consciously looking for them. Or worse, I'd find myself randomly counting syllables throughout the day.

I was going to submit this last night before the Office marathon started, but I figured I'd wait to see if I could come up with an extra verse for each person. I tried a couple ideas out, but decided to just go with what I already had. Here is my entry, which I submitted a little bit ago:

Writing Assignment #4: Uh, Booze Cruise Is Just A Rhyme...

The Accountants

He had a health scare on Mike's birthday
Tests were negative, which means OK
And those anal fissures
Got him some well wishers
Hoping Kevin's all better one day

Better hope all goes without a hitch
'Cuz she'll get irate if there's a glitch
With her stern demeanor
It's really no wonder
Creed said Angela's the office bitch

Caught faking sick with a shopping bag
Detective Dwight missed a bigger snag
But Mike let the word out
What's all the fuss about?
Big deal if Oscar's a... private guy

OfficeTally's Banner Contest

Summer can be a boring time for television fans since there aren't any new episodes of any of the best shows (e.g., The Office, Family Guy, LOST). So we must fill our time doing other things, one of my favorite of which is contests. The most recent of which was OfficeTally's banner contest, which ended last night. OfficeTally has had a ton of great contests over the past year and a half, and this one was no exception. There were a ton of great entries, including many that looked to be professional level. I'm a novice when it comes to Photoshop (I didn't even know how to use layer masks when the contest began), but I ended up entering 8 different banners, as well as 2 alternate versions. The winner and finalists for the vote have yet to be announced, but I don't like my chances considering all the great entries. If nothing else, though, I learned a lot about Photoshop making the banners. Here are the banners I entered into the contest (click the thumbnails for the full size versions):





















And though the contest ended last night, this morning I made what I think is a big improvement to my last banner:

10 Years Later... 10 Times Worse

Tonight on CBS they aired AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).

The original list, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies, which was released in 1998, was okay. It was an interesting project, but the order in which some great movies appeared on the list was pretty bad (e.g., 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather Part II, and especially Fargo, were all way too low on the list), many great movies were excluded from the list (e.g., The Lost Weekend, The Night Of The Hunter, Being There, Hannah And Her Sisters, and The Usual Suspects) and some movies that are certainly not in the top 100 American movies nonetheless made the list (e.g., The Searchers, Easy Rider, and Dances With Wolves).

With the new list, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition), few of the problems with the first list were corrected, and many new problems were introduced.

What didn't make the list, rightly so:

Dances With Wolves

What didn't make the list, but should have:

The Lost Weekend, The Night Of The Hunter, Being There, Hannah And Her Sisters, The Usual Suspects, were all still embarrassingly absent.

Some great movies that have been released since the first list, including The Big Lebowski, Being John Malkovich, Mulholland Dr., Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, as well as my current favorite movie, American Beauty, all failed to make the new list.

Some of the deserving movies that made the first list, including Giant, Rebel Without A Cause, and Fargo, which should have been much higher than #84, inexplicably fell off the list altogether.

What did make the list, but shouldn't have:

The Sixth Sense - This terribly overrated movie, which isn't in the top 1000 American movies, made the list at #89.

Titanic - This was seriously overrated when it was released, but I thought all that was long over. I was wrong. It made the list at #83.

The Searchers - One of the worst movies to make the initial list, barely, at #96. Instead of falling off the list like it should have, it shot all the way up to #12.

Raging Bull - While Scorsese has made many great movies, this is not one of them. It was too high on the first list at #24, and somehow this managed to make it all the way to #5 on the new list.

What did make the list, but should have been higher:

North By Northwest - One of Hitchcock's best movies, dropped from #40 on the first list, to #55 on the new one.

Dr. Strangelove - Easily a top 20, or maybe even top 10 movie. The first time around it made the list at #26. This time it dropped 13 spots to #39.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Dropped 13 places from #20 to #33.

The Godfather Part II - One of the most curious things about the first list was how this managed to only rank #32, considering how many top 10 lists it's made, and that it's currently #3 on the IMDb Top 250. Its rank was unchanged.

2001: A Space Odyssey - This managed to go up from #22 to #15, but it should have been in the top 10. Perhaps the reason this and Dr. Strangelove were so low was because while they're both great movies, they don't belong on a list of the best American movies, as they're British (along with a couple other movies on the list).

It does not take brains to be this stupid.

Northern Attack's 2007 Office Writing Contest - Week 3

It was really difficult deciding on my 3 favorite entries from Challenge #2. So many creative and hilarious entries. But I was eventually was able to whittle it down to 3. I am really disappointed that 9 people that did the first challenge didn't do the second one, including one of the people that I voted for on Challenge #1.

I posted my entry for Challenge #3 a little bit ago. Writing dialogue is definitely not one of my strengths so I did something different for this one.

Writing Assignment #3: It's a (Less) Wonderful Office

www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts

February 1, 2008

Haven't seen the redhead at work lately. I asked the midget lady about it. She said we had a big going away party for her and that I was there. Something about her marrying that Knight Rider guy and moving to California. She never gave me back my signed copy of Charlotte Light and Dark.

February 15, 2008

The air here at Dinder Mufflin seems different somehow recently. Also, I've had to drink an extra bottle of wine to get my same buzz on.

February 29, 2008

I started off my 3-day weekend at Poor Richard's. They now have a presidential style portrait of Mary Beth. The owner said they paid $1,000, the same as Mary Beth's monthly tab, to have it commissioned.

March 3, 2008

Evidently leap day isn't a holiday. Please write your Congressperson to have this changed before the next one in 2016.

March 14, 2008

Poor Richard's hasn't been as busy as usual. Haven't been selling many fake IDs lately. If things don't pick up I won't be able to attend this year's Katamari Damacy world championships in Yokohama.

March 28, 2008

Heard back from Professor Hawking regarding my paper explaining dark matter and dark energy. He said some of it was over his head and that he'll have to confer with some colleagues about it.

April 11, 2008

Went to Poor Richard's for a few drinks over lunch, but there was a sign that they were out of business.

='-(

It takes brains to be this stupid.

In the June 2007 issue of Scientific American there's an interesting aggravating article about the "Traveler's Dilemma," which is this:

Lucy and Pete, returning from a remote Pacific island, find that the airline has damaged the identical antiques that each had purchased. An airline manager says that he is happy to compensate them but is handicapped by being clueless about the value of these strange objects. Simply asking the travelers for the price is hopeless, he figures, for they will inflate it.

Instead he devises a more complicated scheme. He asks each of them to write down the price of the antique as any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number, he will take that to be the true price, and he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will assume that the lower one is the actual price and that the person writing the higher number is cheating. In that case, he will pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty--the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more as a reward for honesty and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less as a punishment. For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44.

What numbers will Lucy and Pete write? What number would you write?

The obvious answer is $100, which if chosen by both people will net them each a crisp new Benjamin. But, if 1 of the persons choose $99 instead, and the other chooses $100, then the first person will instead get $101, and the other will get $97. And if the other person realizes this and then decides to choose $98, and the other person stays with $99, then the first person will get $100, and the other will get $96, and so on. In the article, which can be found here: The Traveler's Dilemma by Kaushik Basu, this is taken to its logical (illogical?) conclusion, all the way down to $2. To outthink oneself so horribly to come up with an answer that will net you at most $4 ($96 less than if you both chose $100), and then to justify it as the "logical" answer is ludicrous. It takes brains to be this stupid.

In the article Basu details how that when people choose a number other than $2 it goes against game theory. How in the world does trying to maximize the amount of money one gets, and assuming the other person will do the exact same, go against game theory? Choosing anything other than $100 will get you at most $101 (if you choose $99 and the other person chooses $100, which is a full $1 more, w00t!!!), and could get both of you much, much less. If anyone was dumb enough to follow the regress all the way down to $2, then hopefully they'd realize, "Hey, if I put $2 down, the other person is going to punch me in the face!" So they'd have to go up to $3, and realize, "Yep, I'd get punched for $3, too," and so on, all the way back up to $100. Unfortunately, the article doesn't cover this "Avoid Being Punched In The Face" (ABPITF) aspect of the Traveler's Dilemma. Hopefully someone will point this out in a nasty letter to the editor.

I could maybe see choosing $99, to try and get the extra dollar, or maybe even $98, which would at most get $100 as long as the opponent chose $99 or $100 (although I'd probably feel so bad about it afterwards I'd give them a few dollars so we'd both walk away with the same amount). But one would have to be a fool to go to $97, since at most choosing that would get you $99, which is less than if both people just chose $100. In a multiple trial scenario I think I'd go with $100 every time, and if my opponent wants to choose $99 to instead make $101, leaving me with $97, fine. I'd much rather get $97 each trial than get into some mutually detrimental bidding war where the only person that wins is the sucker who's paying out all the money. And if someone thought it through enough to choose the idiotic $2, then of course the game would have to pause for a few moments while they learned that if for no other reason, a person doesn't put down $2 or any other small amount to avoid being punched in the face.

Northern Attack's 2007 Office Writing Contest - Week 2

Northern Attack's 2007 Office writing contest is in full swing. Submissions for the first challenge are closed and submissions for the second challenge are open, as is voting for the first challenge. I waited until the submissions for the first challenge were closed to read all the other entries. That way my judgment wouldn't be affected if I was in a good mood while reading some entries, or in a bad mood while I read others. My mood is pretty stable, but I wanted to be sure. After the first read through I was really impressed by the quality of the entries. I had high expectations going in, but wow. After my initial read through I had 1 favorite. After 3 more read throughs I had 2 favorites and 3 more that were close behind. My initial favorite was now in the 3 close behind group. I read through all the entries 3-4 more times before I was able to pick the one for the last slot. And it wasn't my initial favorite. Once the contest is over I'll make a post with who I voted for each challenge. Until then...

A little bit ago I posted my entry for the second challenge. I haven't yet found any changes I'd make, although shortly after I posted it I found out that Open Office Writer was reporting the word count wrong for some reason. I spent something like 30 minutes fiddling with wording trying to get under 250 words. After I submitted my entry I copy and pasted my entry into a new document and did a word count and it came up 226! I don't know how that happened. I checked my first entry and it was 250. Anyway, I'll have to be sure to doublecheck that before posting next time. Had I known I had 24 more words to work with I could have included Ryan's and/or Dwight's reaction at the end.

Writing Assignment #2: So Much for Sunday School

Kelly steps out of the bathroom into the kitchen area and sees Ryan walking into Michael's office.

Kelly (Talking Head): It's been tough since Ryan broke up with me. I've been trying to show him what a huge mistake he made, but he won't return my calls or emails. I'm going to have to find another way to get his attention.

Kelly unbuttons the top button of her blouse, goes through the door to the main office area, and walks toward Dwight, who's sitting at his desk.

Kelly: Hey, Dwight. How's it going?

Dwight: Okay. What do you want?

Kelly: Nothing. Except oh my god, did you see Andy Stamberg on SNL the other night? He is so funny! Rap song, rap song...

Angela looks over at Kelly talking to Dwight. Concern crosses her face.

Dwight: I'd like to see Andy Stamberg spend a week at my farm picking beets during the harvest.

Kelly: Oh.

Kelly looks to Michael's office and sees Ryan getting up, then turns back to Dwight.

Kelly: (Under her breath) Here I go again.

Kelly grabs Dwight's head and kisses him on the lips. Dwight's eyes bulge as Kelly's kiss caught him by surprise.

Angela stands up.

Angela: (Shouts) Get away from my man you hussy!

The office goes silent. Angela gasps, then looks around. Everyone is staring at her.

Angela: Frak.

ONN / Hodgmania

While it's been around for almost 115 years, it seems like the Onion News Network (ONN) has only started to get the accolades it's deserved for such a long time over the last few months. Their newest report, on Alzheimer's, represents journalism at its finest. Here is the video clip:


Study: Alzheimer's Patients Say They Do Not Have Alzheimer's

Similarly, John Hogdman's "Resident Expert" segments on The Daily Show have been one of the most consistently hilarious things on the show since they began over a year ago. In the newest installment, which aired on Monday, June 11, Hodgman covers Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Here's the video clip.



More video clips of Hodgman on The Daily Show can be found here.

The Best Thing Ever

The scene from Women's Appreciation of Kelly jumping up and down in Victoria's Secret cracks me up. Here is an animated gif I made of it, in a couple different sizes.

Small (300x166 - 328kb):


Big (500x276 - 986kb):

Northern Attack's 2007 Office Writing Contest

Last summer Northern Attack and OfficeTally had a writing contest with nothing less than a video iPod going to the grand prize winner, and 5 runner-ups getting The Office Season 2 DVD boxsets. I participated in the contest, but I was no match for the other contestants. More information about that contest can be found here: The iPod Giveaway!.

Now, for the second year in a row, Northern Attack is once again having a summer Office writing contest. Full details about the contest can be found here: Hiatus Entertainus: We’ve got that covered: A Summer Contest.

If it's anything like last year's contest, it'll be fun coming up with ideas for an entry, it'll be agonizing realizing all the things that could have been better, it'll be fun reading all the great entries, it'll be agonizing realizing how much better they are than mine, it'll be fun looking forward to next year's contest, and of course all the fun & agony that entails.

I submitted my entry for the first week's assignment earlier today, and I already have several small changes I really wish I could make. Unfortunately, editing entries once they're submitted is strictly prohibited, so I can't do that. But, there's nothing stopping me from posting what I wish my entry was here. So here it is in all its edited glory.

Writing Assignment #1: Northern Attackers Make a Scene

Conference room

Michael: Last night after work one of you walked in on me when I thought I was alone and saw something she shouldn't have.

Pam (Talking Head): I had to come back to the office after work last night because I forgot my sketchbook. When I came in I heard "C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)" blaring. Then I turned the corner and saw Michael dancing in his underwear.

Michael (Talking Head): A few weeks ago I got an email from a company offering me the chance to buy a prototype invisibility cloak at a special introductory price. I received it yesterday and tried it out after work. But I must have been using it wrong because Pam came in and she saw me.

Conference room after Michael's explained things to everyone.

Michael: It's only fair that I should get to see Pam in her underwear. And she has to do a little dance.

Kevin nods in agreement

Pam: No. That's ridiculous.

Jim: There's no such thing as an invisibility cloak, Michael. Didn't you realize that when you could still see yourself?

Michael: The instructions said I would be able to see myself since my eyes were under the cloak.

Dwight: Michael, if it makes you feel better you can watch me dance in my underwear.

Michael: Ugh.

Michael shakes his head

Michael: We need an "arbotrator."

Pam looks at Jim for help.

Jim raises his hands near his head and does a little dance move.

Pam smiles.

==========

In order to better prepare for this year's contest, here are my 8 entries from last year's Northern Attack & Office Tally summer writing contest. Following each of my original entries are some notes on what I think of them now, and what I would have done differently if I could do them over again.

Writing Assignment #1: Create a new office character. Name, occupation, and personality.

Sarah Rogers - Advertising Specialist. Sarah is 28 years old and single. She grew up in Minnesota and went to college at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Since graduating college she has worked at several different jobs around the Northeast. Sarah is hired at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin to help them reach a more diverse customer base. She has a somewhat quiet presence in the office as she is focused on her work, but outside of the office she is quite energetic and extroverted, especially around friends. She quickly becomes friends with several people in the office including Pam, Jim, and perhaps surprisingly, Creed.

Jim is disappointed that Pam decided to stay with Roy after he finally told her how he felt, although the postponement of their June wedding date has left things unresolved. Eventually he decides he needs to try and move on and asks Sarah out on a date, which she accepts. Between Jim’s enduring feelings for Pam and Sarah’s tendency to move often the relationship is kept from getting too serious, although they both enjoy each other’s company. Pam is glad to see her friend happy but wonders if she made the right decision.

=====

After the contest was announced and before it started, I thought it was going to be some kind of discussion thing, where there were opinion questions or something about the show and everyone chimed in about something or other. When I saw the first assignment, my expectations for the contest were wildly changed. My main goal was just to write something - anything - so I'd be in the contest and try to do better the following weeks. I think this entry is pretty bland, even though a similar scenario did end up playing out in Season 3 (though without Karen and Creed being close friends, sadly). If I had it to do over again I'd definitely be more adventurous in making my character. And instead of "Sarah Rogers," I'd make it "Megan Albini," daughter of James P. Albini.

==========

Writing Assignment #2: Pick a character and develop a scenario for how they might have turned out in an alternate universe.

Kevin Malone, LFL Placekicker, 22nd Century

Kevin Malone is the starting placekicker for the Colbert Shredders in the Lunar Football League (LFL). Malone played for the Chappelle Ligers during his first two seasons in the LFL before being traded to the Shredders, where he has played for the past five seasons. He wears jersey number 69, which he has worn for the duration of his career. Malone holds several LFL records, including the record for longest field goal (219 yards).

Prior to his career in the LFL, Malone was a member of the United North American States Navy SEALs. In order to join the SEALs, Malone received several genetic enhancement procedures. This has led some to dispute the legitimacy of the LFL records he holds.

Malone is married to actress Aishwarya Leibowitz, whom he met while vacationing at Hedonism XIII on Mars. Malone had a cameo appearance in a recent holofilm starring Leibowitz, Summer At Greenland Beach, which was a remake of the early 21st century film American Pie 2.

During the off-season Malone is lead vocalist and drummer for LXIX, a Wyld Stallyns tribute band.

=====

This is my favorite entry that I made for the contest, and there are a ton of things I'd change with it. First, I'd change how it's structured. It's written like a Wikipedia entry or something. I think I'd change it so it was an obituary. Second, I'd have Kevin Malone be traded to the Colbert Shredders from the Chappelle Ligers in exchange for Oscar Martinez, to make clear that my entry was an alternate take on the paper football game (i.e., hateball) that Kevin & Oscar played in Office Olympics. Finally, I'd try to figure out a better way to end it, since I didn't even have an ending, and I'd be sure to use the remaining 11 words I had at my disposal. OfficeAddict's entry for this assignment, which featured a Prohibition era Meredith, was my favorite entry of the whole contest.

==========

Writing Assignment #3: If you could follow one Dunder-Mifflin employee around on the weekend, who would it be and what do you think you’d witness?

Friday night after work Michael Scott goes to Scranton High for his weekly improv group meeting. When he arrives he finds the group just getting finished. Apparently they changed their meeting time and no one told him. Michael then goes to see a movie, but all that's playing is Over the Hedge, which he already saw. He decides to call it a night and when he gets home he finds the new issue of MAD Magazine in the mail. He reads that until he dozes off to sleep.

On Saturday Michael calls Carole to ask if she and her two kids want to go with him to Claws 'N' Paws that afternoon. They go and everything is going great until Michael gets too close to one of the porcupines and gets a bunch of quills shot into his foot, forcing them to end the trip early.

On Sunday Michael drives to Dickson City to take his mom to church. Afterwards he takes her out to eat at Chuck E. Cheese's. Michael then heads back to Scranton and spends the rest of the day playing poker online so that he'll be prepared for the next time he faces Toby.

=====

This is another one of my favorite entries from the contest. It's also probably the one I'd make the fewest changes to. In Office Olympics Michael said he subscribed to Cracked, not MAD Magazine. I just got the two mixed-up, and I'd probably change it to Cracked, although I kind of like it how it is, so he reads both magazines. I did a ton of research online for this entry, looking for interesting things from Scranton that I could add to my entry to make it flavorful. I finally decided on Claws 'N' Paws, which is a zoo about a half hour outside of Scranton. I wish, though, that I could have come up with something better to happen there than a trite reimagining of The Injury. And even reading it now, I still think the idea of Michael taking his mom out to eat at Chuck E. Cheese after church is really funny.

==========

Writing Assignment #4: What new pranks would you like to see Jim pull on Dwight in Season 3?

For Halloween Jim comes to work dressed up as Dwight, complete with the brown suit, dark yellow shirt, gold tie, glasses, and a similar hairdo. When Dwight sees Jim he turns red with anger, which is appropriate, since he is dressed up as a giant beet. Pam finds Jim’s costume too disturbing, though, so she asks him to change. He agrees to change back to plain white Jim over the lunch hour. Before he can go home to change, though, Jim notices that, peculiarly, Angela is continually glancing at him and finding excuses to come talk to him.

When Jim gets back from lunch he sees that Dwight is still gone so he hides a walkie-talkie in Dwight’s desk. Then after Dwight returns, Jim and Pam go to the kitchen area and make strange noises and whisper things into the other walkie-talkie. Before long Dwight becomes convinced that his desk is haunted.

Eventually Dwight finds the walkie-talkie and is outraged. Dwight tries to call corporate to report Jim’s malfeasance, using speed dial. Unfortunately for him, earlier in the day Jim reprogrammed all of Dwight’s speed dial numbers to instead dial a Scranton mental health clinic.

=====

The somewhat cool thing about this entry is that in the Season 3 episode Product Recall JIM ACTUALLY DID COME TO WORK DRESSED AS DWIGHT!!! To me, that made up for not winning any prizes. Well, almost. I mean, it was an iPod. Anyway, I think my first two pranks are fine, although I'd change some details, but my third one is blah, and I'd scrap it and try to think of something more interesting.

==========

Writing Assignment #5: Pick a character from the show and write their profile as if it will be used in an online personality test.

You are Dwight Schrute

You are a natural born sidekick. You work hard and perform your job to the best of your abilities. In addition, you often seek out extra work and responsibilities. You consider protecting your boss to be one of your primary duties. You view work as a kind of war, and look down on those who use time at work to socialize or make friends, which you haven't done. You follow nature's law of survival of the fittest and refuse to coddle the weak.

Positive qualities that you pride yourself on include discipline, intensity, strength, punctuality, enthusiasm, and above all else, loyalty. If a situation arises and you must choose between following the rules or being loyal, you will choose loyalty. You try to remain calm and logical whenever possible, although this can be difficult when dealing with what you perceive as incompetence or something threatens your relationship with your boss.

You consider yourself an expert on human behavior, but in actuality you still have a lot to learn. Others are able to take advantage of you because of your gullibility. Your reverence for authority often leads you to take foolish actions.

=====

The only good thing I can say about this entry is that I like my first sentence. Other than that, I think this entry is total garbage. Giving it an F-- is too generous. Since I like most of my other entries, I like to tell myself that this abomination was the reason I didn't win any of the prizes. Even though others had much better entries for all other writing assignments, singling out the obvious horridness of this one keeps me from appreciating how far down the list I must have been even with my best entries.

==========

Writing Assignment #6: Besides mung bean sprouts, what else do you think Creed keeps in his desk drawer and why?

Creed’s middle desk drawer contains reading material for times when work is slow because no one needs to be assured of the quality of Dunder Mifflin paper. This includes a copy of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu in Simplified Chinese that he checked out from a Hong Kong public library in 1983 and never returned, a Grand Theft Auto strategy guide, several issues of Warren Ellis’s Planetary comic book, the Summer 1974 issue of High Times, and the weekly menu for St. Francis of Assisi Kitchen.

Creed’s bottom desk drawer contains a disheveled melange of various items. Near the top are some Dundie Awards from past years, including the “Hope You Had Fun Wherever You Were” award, which he won after the time that he didn’t show up to work for two weeks without any prior warning. Then when he returned he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Other items include a sequined cornflower blue purse, a winning lottery ticket that would have been worth several hundred thousand dollars if only he had remembered to redeem it before it expired in 1998, schematics for a working space elevator, and a bag of oregano.

=====

I think this entry is decent, as I really like most of the things I came up with. I included the issue of Planetary because Creed Bratton shares a slight resemblance to the main character of Planetary, Elijah Snow:



A short time after I posted this entry I thought of some more things I wish I had included. They were:

-Charlotte Light and Dark by Gareth Feinberg Ph.D.
-Bronze medal from the 1957 hopscotch world championships - he might have won silver or gold if his right foot had 5 toes
-Hat FM baseball cap with built in radio
-Key to safety deposit box, which is empty except for a key to a storage locker, which contains over 3,000 stolen Post-It Note Pads

I'm not sure if I'd use all 4 of these things, but I'd definitely take out the Grand Theft Auto strategy guide (a reference to Creed playing at the arcade in Michael's Birthday), as well as "the weekly menu for St. Francis of Assisi Kitchen" (Scranton's soup kitchen), as I don't really like either of those.

For this entry, more than any other that I'm aware of, it would have been really helpful to know in advance what the two judges, tanster and James, were looking for when judging entries. I thought it would be best to think of mostly plausible things (with the obvious exception of the schematics for a working space elevator). In contrast, the grand prize winner's entry for this assignment was a list of mostly ridiculous things and very unrealistic things (including "8453 Florida ballots from the 2004 Presidential Election" - I'm not sure if having the ballots be from 2004 was a mistake on the writer's part or intentional, and having the ballots be from 4 years after the election when Florida's ballots were so important was the point, that being something Creed would do. Still, ridiculous or not, the grand prize winner's entry was without a doubt extremely creative, so maybe that's what mattered most. To this day I don't know for sure, though, since as far as I know the judges never explained what they judged the entries by, and all we have to go by is by reading and rereading the winning entries.

==========

Writing Assignment #7: What should Roy do if he ever finds out about The Kiss?

Roy decides to do something unforgettable for Pam to show her that he's serious about saving their relationship. Roy knows that Pam is a big fan of Taylor Hicks, and that in a couple of weeks Hicks is going to be performing at the Wachovia Arena in Wilkes-Barre. Although the show is long sold-out, Roy has a connection, and not only is he able to get tickets for seats near the stage, but also he's able to obtain Hicks's phone number. He calls Hicks to explain his situation and say that it would mean a lot to him if Hicks was able to do something special for Pam at the concert. They go to the concert and as the night progresses, while Pam is clearly enjoying the show, Roy is growing increasingly worried that Hicks forgot about his request. Hicks gets to the end of the set and announces that the next song will be the last one, and that it's dedicated to Pam Beesly, from her fiancé Roy. He then gives a spellbinding performance of "You Are So Beautiful" by Joe Cocker. Pam is overwhelmed, and at least for one night, she forgets about Jim Halpert.

=====

True story: After I had this idea, I was so worried that someone else would come up with it and submit before I did that I dropped what I was doing and raced to write it up and submit it. Anyway, this entry was definitely my most "out there" one of the contest, and I don't know if it hurt me or helped me. I had several other ideas before this one, including one about Roy going to Poor Richard's to meet Captain Jack to talk about things. Here's the unpolished 457 word rough draft:

Not knowing who else to turn to, Roy calls up Captain Jack and asks him to meet him at Poor Richard's to discuss a personal problem. They meet and over several rounds of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer Roy explains the situation and asks Jack for advice. Jack knows about the documentary that's being filmed, so he says that actions that might normally be reasonable, such as confronting Pam, confronting Jim, or trying to treat Pam better, might not be the best course of action in this case. Instead, he recommends "forming a crisis" in order to win over both Pam and the audience of the documentary with sympathy, so that she will have no choice but to stay with him. Over several more rounds of beer, they decide that Roy will fake an accident on his WaveRunner that will leave him incapacitated enough that will require lots of help, but not so severe that he can't do his job. Jack recommends that Roy meet with a personal injury lawyer to get all the details of the fake injury correct so that it will be convincing as possible. Roy mentions that he drives past a billboard for James P. Albini everyday to work, and Jack says he would be perfect. Satisfied with his plan, Roy orders Jägermeister shots for everyone in the bar. As he's driving home Roy, who is completely inebriated by now, loses control of his truck and crashes into a building, killing him instantly.

=====

That's too dark for my liking, so that probably partly explains why I was in such a hurry when I came up with the idea I ended up using. But as soon as I submitted my entry I immediately started having second thoughts on whether I should have used the idea I did. I don't think there's any point to picking little things I might have changed, as the only real decision for this entry was to either use this idea or come up with something entirely different. If I had it to do over again I'd probably go for something entirely different, although I don't know what.

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Writing Assignment #8: What song would you most like to hear from Scrantonicity, where, and why?

Michael decides to hold a soirée for representatives of 50 area businesses that used to have their paper supplied by Dunder Mifflin. He hopes that he and the sales staff will be able to convince some of them to once again give their business to Dunder Mifflin. Since there will be too many people to hold the event at Chili’s, it’s instead held in the Station Ballroom at the Radisson. The night includes dinner, business presentations, and entertainment provided by Dunder Mifflin employees.

Lonny from the warehouse does a stand-up comedy routine and he gets a lot of laughs. Creed takes the stage and announces that he’ll be doing some magic. He then requests a $20 bill from the audience which he says he’ll make disappear. Someone gives him one and he makes good on his word by walking off the stage and leaving. It’s silent for a little bit but then everyone starts laughing. The highlight of the entertainment though is Scrantonicity. They perform several songs, the most memorable of which is “Working for the Weekend” by Loverboy. It is quite entertaining to see the usually lethargic Kevin perform such an energetic song.

=====

For the final writing assignment, I put the most effort into coming up with a scenario where Scrantonicity might play, and comparatively little effort into thinking of the song they'd play, and even less effort coming up with what else happened at the event. If I had it to do over again, I'd definitely spend more time working on the latter 2 things.

==========

So there are my 8 entries with analysis from last year's Office Tally & Northern Attack writing contest. Realistically, though, the entries of the other contestants, not only those of the 6 who won prizes, but also everyone who entered, were really good, and even if my 8 entries were ones that I was happy with now, I think I'd be lucky to land somewhere in the middle of the pack. Based on the early entries for this year's contest, and considering the vastly different judging system, I'll be lucky if I get 1 vote over the course of the entire contest. Still, like I said at the outset, even without the hope of winning a prize, it's still a lot of fun just to participate.