Sitting on my balcony this Sunday, this film crew randomly walks up to our house and starts filming. Apparently Japanese television has come up all the nutty things it can and has turned to documentary pieces on small Brooklyn neighborhoods.

The best part was the quick interview the producer gave with our neighbors, who were sitting outside enjoying the day like the rest of us:

Her: (thickly accented) Hello! You have a very pretty garden!

Him: (nothing)

Her: Are you warm?

Him: (nothing)

Her: It’s a very nice day are you hot?

Him: I’m good

Her: Is your car blocking the sun?

Him: Not really

Her: Okay thank you have a nice day!

I got completely burned by PJ Hanley’s this weekend. On Friday they put their gigantic smoker in their patio, which in turn stinks up all of 4th place. One would think this signals PJ’s loyal patrons to come eat burnt meat, but we were told that the smoker was preparing for Saturday. So imagine how foolish we felt when we again went to PJ’s on Saturday night, only to find out that the meat was actually for the street fair.

The brisket I got was terrible—the slicers they hired gave me an all-fat piece, so I could only eat half of it. Ah well.

I’ve been to a few New York street fairs now, and the ones in my neighborhood seem to have a much higher concentration of random crap than in other parts of the city. Most street fairs seem to have an ethnic theme or be focused on kids… our street fair is more like a giant yard sale.

Oh, and Roger Clemens is pitching for the Yankees. I don’t hate the guy, though I’ll admit he could be described as a jerk with an overinflated ego. But it seems to me like he would have to do way more than he’s done so far to counteract the fact that he’s probably still the greatest active pitcher.

I can find no deeper meaning in this tragedy than as a reminder of the frailty of human lives and minds.

On a personal note, I’ve thought carefully about whether this event will have any effect on my teaching next year, since I will likely have a sizable class of undergrads. And when I honestly consider it, I expect that I will have the rampage in the back of my mind, and probably form prejudices about students who seem too introverted. But, so it goes.

Then last Thursday, someone decided not to go to UMD, which opened up a seat for me. So I had to make an emergency trip to Maryland today to go check it out.

One thing that stood out about visiting Maryland over Washington and Oregon was the vast surplus of money they were throwing around. Maryland was able to pay for my lodging and car rental from New York, which believe me was not cheap.

But the best part? And the end of my visit, I got a goodie bag from Maryland containing a t-shirt and a USB flash drive. Okay, now I’ma go download 128MB of… math.

The picture reads, Your Ad Here: Google “Benchads” 1-800-4-BENCHADS. Become Part of Nadel’s Growing Media Co.

Google is one of the largest providers of online marketing media on the Internet. AdWords was launched in 2000 to provide a revenue stream, but in 2002 it was redone to conform with Google’s user-centric philosophy. Rather than deal with large corporations trying to target large demographics, as most marketing had previously done, Google AdWords allows small companies to target individual keywords. Although the effects of this revolutionary method have been underutilized and barely understood by marketers, its success has been part of the (dare I say it) leitmotif of the past five years of Internet advertising—the emphasis of direct communication with the consumer over demographics and uniformity. Of course, the fact that the past five years of Internet development in general has been focusing on communication and individuality is hardly a coincidence.

But enough preaching, the point is that my first reaction to seeing that bench was to imagine Google participating in some form of real-world corollary to AdWords, probably linked with its online twin. I imagined marketers being able to buy keywords and also checking the “BenchAds” option, selecting geographic regions where they would like their ads to be shown.

So I got home and starting researching, finding a few people who also found the benches, but still no indication that Google was associated with them.

I finally found the company’s site when it dawned on me that, distracted by my fantasy world, I had misread the benches. The benches weren’t associated with Google—the company was simply providing a resource location in the form of a search engine query. So I was just supposed to Google for the word “benchads”.

It’s still an interesting case in Internet marketing, considering how domain names are overemphasized. Some marketers seem to think that people are going to 1) Remember their domain name, and, 2) Type it into a browser when they get home. While a memorizable domain name is necessary, it is rarely useful to publish it or expect people to use it. The most common way we share sites (other than hyperlinks) is to say something like, “Just search for X”, where X is some unique keyword guaranteed to bring up the site as the first result. So I’m glad to see that some marketing companies out there are actually competent enough to realize that.

The rejections have begun rolling in in the form of emails. It’s kind of ruining my vacation, but at least I’ll finally have some closure. I knew I wasn’t a very strong candidate, but I was secretly hoping that this might be one of those years with little competition. I was clearly wrong.

Out of the ten schools I applied to, my fifth and sixth choices just rejected me. Since they’re pretty much ranked by how competitive their programs are, that only leaves the bottom four.

My biggest fear now is being rejected from all ten schools, which will pretty much end my academic career. I don’t expect that I will be have the strength to apply again, and after another year I will be an even more undesirable candidate.

After some reflection, it was my lack of dedication that led to these rejections. In the three years since graduation I have had to deal with more adversity than I faced in college, and one thing it has elucidated is that I simply did not work hard enough during those four years. I only hope that I have the strength to overcome this failure in the future.

Since I’ve never done this before, my first vow was to give up my Catholicism for forty days. I figured that would be something easy to start out my first Lent—I probably wouldn’t have to repent or anything like that.

I don’t exactly know the rules, but I don’t think you can take back a vow. Which sucks, because an article on the New Scientist blog inspired me to pick an every more relevant vice to give up, namely stupid Internet videos. I’ve actually been doing pretty well—I had my first temptation from Satan today in the form of a video of a guy getting kicked in the face. But I persevered and didn’t watch the video and get +1 Holy or whatever.

So to clarify, a stupid Internet video includes anything on YouTube (including, sadly, my new favorite show, Infinite Solutions). Stupid Internet videos do not include Ze Frank. Stupid Internet videos do include anything on CNN.

Give me strength O Lord baby Jesus…

I’ve been debating whether I’ll post where I am accepted on this site. I decided against it—that’s not something I want to broadcast. Instead, I’m providing the official Get This Man a Doctor Grad School Accept-o-Meter (at right) that gives you all the information you need to know. It is currently set to straight face… expect it to reach frowny sometime soon.