Those of you outside the New York area probably missed the excitement, but ABC went off the air for several hours on Sunday, vanishing from LCD screens while the clock ticked down to the Oscars. The disappearance was a negotiating tactic in the dispute between ABC’s New York affiliate and Cablevision, who are having a gentleman’s disagreement on the topic of which one of them should bend over and bite his own ass. The argument goes more or less like this:

>10 PRINT “ABC: Bite your own ass.”
>20 PRINT “Cablevision: No, you bite your own ass.”
>30 GOTO 10

My neighborhood isn’t in Cablevision’s territory, so the whole situation was little more than a charming subplot in a day otherwise dominated by laundry and Mass Effect. Well, except for two things: A) The lingering specter that this would drag on until Tuesday, sparking an uprising of “Lost” fans which would cripple the city. B) The unshakable feeling that I had seen this before. Like, a lot.

The “Lost” uprising fizzled when ABC returned to Cablevision fifteen minutes into the Oscars telecast. And not a moment too soon — there were only five and a half hours to go until Best Picture.

He was their Neda. What, too soon?

However, I doubt I’m the only one who got that wave of déjà vu. This same exact feud keeps happening. Television networks and cable providers are having the same spat over and over. Earlier this year it was HGTV and The Food Network, which went off the air (okay, off the coaxial data stream) on Cablevision, and nearly did the same on Time Warner. In December, it was Fox and Time Warner. The CBS affiliate in Boston went at it with Time Warner in January 2009. Comcast and The NFL Network had their turn in May. Viacom nearly pulled their entire suite of cable networks from Time Warner and Bright House in 2008, which would have blacked out Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and several others.

The playbook for these match-ups only has two pages. Each side hastily sets up a “Save Television!” website, and then runs advertisements that cast the other side as blood-frenzied murderers of fun. Viacom’s ads against Time Warner depicted SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer crying. Crying! Are you kidding me? SpongeBob I get, he cries at the drop of a hat, but Dora? In tears? Now you’re messing with my nephew. Now it’s personal.

“We just crossed a line, Diego! Can you point to where Diego and I left our dignity? ………. Great! I knew you could!”

Meanwhile, those of us who just want to watch TV in peace are stuck in the middle. We’re getting treated like something here, though I can’t decide what. There are too many directions to go with this one, so I’ll list a few just to cover my bases:

• There’s the aforementioned divorce parallel — Mom and Dad throw dishes at each other while we lie on the floor of our rooms in the dark with headphones on, listening to “Pretty Hate Machine.” Or, you know, whatever the not-twenty-years-ago equivalent of “Pretty Hate Machine” would be.

• You could go with the image that we’re pawns in a chess game, but chess takes careful thought and planning. These feuds have neither. If anything, it’s more like we’re the checkers in Connect Four — it’s a little mind-numbing, nobody really wins, then we get dumped onto the table, swept into a fraying box, and crammed back into the hallway closet behind the winter coats.

• The networks and cable companies are Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone in “Casino.” We’re the safety deposit box full of jewelry and cash. Wait, they both might be Sharon Stone, staggering to their deaths in some filthy hotel hallway after their friends have bled them dry and used their cash for coke. Actually yeah, they’re both Sharon Stone.

• One is Don Draper and the other is Betty. Each had distinct visions of what this marriage was going to be like, each wants that vision imposed on the other, each has their own leverage. We end up as Sally in this one — stealing money from Grandpa, lying to get attention, and basically on a frantic collision course with the summer of 1968. What, like that’s not where they’re going with the Sally character?

• Both sides are Longshanks, King Edward I of Britain. “Arrows cost money. Use up the Irish, the dead cost nothing.” We’re the Irish. Sorry, I saw “Braveheart” on a cross-country flight a few weekends ago, it’s kind of been stuck in my head.

Those meatballs don’t look half bad. But why is the bottom of the pot so clean?

The knee-jerk reaction to these disputes is that it’s all about greed. Good ol’ American corporate soul-reaving, a sacrifice on the altar of the Almighty Dollar. To be honest, I’m not so sure that’s what’s really happening. The broadcasting industry has been around for decades, it’s not like they weren’t greedy before. This sounds more like desperation. Their way of doing business is melting. None of them know what to do, so they’re taking it out on each other, and on us.

Besides, you’d have to be desperate to piss off “Lost” fanatics. I mean Jesus Christ, taking away “Lost” in its final season is like canceling Christmas, only if all the children in the world were meth addicts. And orphans. And the government executed Santa on live TV. Some of the meth orphans won’t see the execution, because their cable company will have blacked out the network in a contract dispute. They will be considered the lucky ones, because they didn’t have to watch Santa die.

Well, lucky for a meth orphan, anyway.

Exciting news for those who live in New York and have sworn a blood oath against me! I will be descending from my mountaintop fortress an unprecedented eight times over the next couple of weeks. In fact, I will be out in the open, without bodyguards, without even so much as a Kevlar vest. You may never have a better chance to strike. And the reason for my carelessness? Living, breathing art — the kind where you pretend to be another person entirely.

This Wednesday night, Point of You Productions presents the return of “A Midwinter’s Tale,” based on the 1995 screenplay by Kenneth Branagh. We were proud to present the world premiere of the stage adaptation in 2004, and have brought back the production as part of Point of You’s 10th anniversary celebration. “A Midwinter’s Tale” is the story of a desperate man (me) going to desperate measures (trying to direct “Hamlet”) during desperate times (specifically, the week before Christmas). Not to give anything away, but the thing that ensues is hilarity.

When: March 3-13, Wednesday through Saturday @ 8:00PM
Where: The American Theatre of Actors, 314 West 54th Street, 8th Floor
Why: Bear in mind what I said about hilarity ensuing.
Tickets: $18
Reservations: Tickets can be purchased in advance through TheaterMania.

The smallest dinosaur fossils ever found belong to Apatosaurus pusillus, known to archaeologists as the “pygmy bronto.” Native to the western regions of what would later become the North American continent, pygmy brontos lived during the Lower and Middle Jurassic periods. Adult males stood around three quarters of an inch tall, measuring on average three inches in length from nose to tail. They roamed in great herds that often numbered in the hundreds. Vast though these herds were, they likely passed undetected through the plains, appearing to other animals as nothing more than a rustle in the grass. Indeed, evidence of pygmy brontos falling victim to predators is rare. They were herbivores, consuming what vegetation they could reach and standing atop one another — sometimes thirteen or fourteen at a time — to reach low-hanging leaves. Fossil records of Apatosaurus pusillus end abruptly 160 million years ago. Archaeologists believe that they were wiped out by the impact of a tiny asteroid.

First of all, it’s not called long underwear anymore, it’s called baselayer.
We knew in advance that the temperature was going to be somewhere between Iceland and Hoth. It’s been years since I needed long underwear, but I figured my life may well depend on it, so I did a little shopping. I wandered aimlessly around EMS for a good ten minutes before I realized I was looking for something that doesn’t exist anymore. “Long underwear” is something your mom made you wear to go play in the snow when you were nine. These days? Drop the term from your vocabulary. What you need is baselayer. Baselayer is … well, it’s long underwear, but it’s long underwear that sounds 500% more bad-ass. It’ll keep you warm in the tundra, it’ll keep you cool in the desert, and if you’re outside in extremely normal temperatures, I suppose it’ll keep you comfortable in that too. That’s the danger of walking around a place like EMS — they make everything sound so cool, you wonder how you ever got by without it.

We got to use flares! Without question, the highlight of the ditch incident.

Bing’s mapping software needs some sort of internal setting that knows what season it is.
Five vehicles made the trek to the cabin. I rode up with my friend/cousin (long story) Gerard, along with Amy the costume designer and Scott the sound guy. Gerard’s scenes don’t film until the spring, but he’s a jack-of-all-trades technician and kind of crazy so he volunteered to come stand in the cold with us and lend a hand. We hit the road at 7:00 PM Friday, with directions printed out from Bing Maps. In theory, Bing saved us twenty minutes by sending us on a nifty shortcut through some winding back-country roads. In reality, it was snowing in earnest and Bing sent us on a shortcut through some winding back-country roads. At one point, as we hooked a precarious left, I asked, “Wait, is this paved?” It wasn’t a joke, I actually wanted to know. Sliding into the ditch was probably inevitable, the only surprise was that no one was hurt and the car wasn’t damaged. However, it was definitely stuck. One of the front wheels had nothing underneath it, and was spinning freely in the air. There was no way to get out unassisted. We needed help.

If you crack wise a lot in your general day-to-day life, people will have hard time adjusting when you are serious.
Brad answered his phone, and I told him we were stuck in a ditch. He took the news in stride and sounded surprisingly cheerful. Then he figured out I wasn’t doing a bit. For once.

Much as we hate to admit it, we live in the future.
Look, I know, we don’t have jet packs. Or flying cars. Or robot housekeepers. The year 2010 doesn’t feel all that futuristic — I’m right there with you. But we veered off the road mere moments after drifting into a pocket of cell phone coverage. We grabbed our GPS coordinates from an app (42.22N 74.41W, if you’re curious) and texted them to Brad, who plugged them into a nav unit and showed up in his 4×4 pickup. Ten years ago, that’s science-fiction. Even two years ago, there’s no way he finds us that easily to pull us out of the ditch.

Well, eventually pull us out of the ditch. Because, as it happens …

Sometimes, meeting a truck full of guys from Long Island on a dark road is a good thing.
All we know about them is that they were two brothers and a buddy, up for a weekend of skiing. The brothers were Tim and Tom, though we never did catch the other guy’s name. Nor did I ever determine which was Tim and which was Tom — the only thing I can tell you is that the younger brother was 6′ 2″ and built like a cross between a bison and a Zamboni. They stopped to help, and didn’t leave until the job was done. At one point, Little Bro lumbered off into the trees like a golem and came back with a fifty-pound rock to stick under the dangling wheel. Brad didn’t have anything to tie to the car, so they drove back to where they were staying and returned with a heavy-duty tow line. We owe that truck full of guys from Long Island a case of beer, on the off chance that someone out there knows who they are.

Delaware County is the poorest in New York State.
After an hour and a half stuck in a ditch, getting pulled over by the state police wasn’t really a shock. The evening was clearly off the rails anyway, what’s another wrench in the works? We were following Brad’s truck at a very safe pace, so we knew it wasn’t for speeding. Gerard, no stranger to the glare of police headlights, ran the drill: Engine off, keys on the dashboad, interior light on, license and registration out, hands in sight. That led to this exchange:

State trooper: “Are you with the other vehicle?”
Gerard: “Yes we are, officer.”
State trooper: “He’s just got a headlight out, is all. Where you headed?”
Gerard: “South Kortright.”
State trooper: “Okay, but where?”
Gerard: “Not sure, we’re following him to a cabin. He’s directing a movie that we’re making.”
State tropper: “Oh? What brings you to the poorest county in New York?”
Me: “Uh … infusing the area with cash? Economic stimulus sort of thing?”

Alright, I never said that. But seriously, who advertises their county as the poorest in the state? Is it their motto? Does it say that on their official letterhead? Should I be capitalizing it? “The Poorest County in New York™” or whatever? If another county surpasses them, do they have to print new letterhead? If so, where will they get the money, seeing as how they’d still be the second poorest county in New York?

Mind you, this is at something like four in the morning.

A turkey sandwich, some proper(ish) tea and a glass of Old Mull can trick the body into thinking the night just started.
This is true even when the mind is looking directly at a clock that displays the time as 2:30 AM. Thus did we don our baselayer, crack open some pocket-warmers, run our lines a few times, and trudge outside to begin filming.

Deer are noble animals, and it is sad to see them suffer in the snow, even when they are fake and shipped in pieces.
Not to give anything away, but the movie involves the unfortunate acquaintance of a deer with an SUV. Brad found a place in California that rents out eerily realistic wildlife, and they shipped him a deer in three segments. The deer was more or less the V.I.P. of the weekend, since any damage would instantly make it the largest budget item on set other than the camera. They say it’s a good omen when the first shot of a film goes well, which ours did. But that was just a shot of the vehicle moving — once we had to, you know, move around and say stuff, things got more complicated. In between takes, we huddled together for warmth and took turns sitting in one of the cars with the heat blasting. The moment Brad called a wrap on the deer, the dark blue light of sunrise began to creep along the horizon.

If you go to bed at eight in the morning, don’t accidentally get up a few hours earlier than necessary.
“Ready to go at 1:00″ and “Out of bed at 1:00″ aren’t exactly the same thing. An honest miscommunication. Hey, at least I was the first one ready for the afternoon. Filming in daylight was a refreshing change of pace, as were the indoor scenes that lasted into the late evening. Then, as the clock sailed past midnight and the temperature dropped well below zero, we headed back outside. Right now would be a good spot to say something measured and poetic about the sacrifices one makes for art, but allow me instead to dip into the New England vernacular of my youth: It was wicked fuckin’ cold.

Morgan, Brandon, Alyssa and I try to learn lines, while Brad tries to figure out how to film us being murdered in real life without going to jail or getting sued.

Brains are weird.
Go long enough without sleep, and your mind starts to take artistic license with external stimuli. Down does a fairly good impression of up, while up develops some distinctly down-like tendencies. Conversations in the next room sound as if they are coming from a distant cavern. The air feels fuzzy. The people around you become shapes — glyphs written in three dimensions, representing the perfect essence of those people. As they move, so do these runes, forming new sentences in the air that are cannot be read, yet you understand them. When the woman next to you shifts her body, you are aware of it not because you hear it or see it, but because these shapes form a new context. Her motion is like a radio broadcasting in Braille. Also, Sour Patch Kids taste better than usual.

The weather will cooperate when you need it the least.
On Sunday, with the sun shining and the mild winter air inviting the world out to hike and ski and sled, we finished shooting in twenty minutes. Bloody typical.

Photos courtesy of Scott Smitelli and Katerina Sharm.

Exciting new for those who live in New York and wish to bring me cupcakes in person! I will be breaking security protocol to make an appearance outside my isolated mountain compound. The reason? To amuse the shit out of you, dear reader.

Point of You Productions, the theater company I helped found (and have been working from the inside to take down ever since), has reached its tenth anniversary. To kick off the celebration, we’re holding a night of stand-up comedy. All proceeds will go towards our 2010 season. I’ll be performing, as will several good friends of mine. Tickets are $20, and include a free drink ticket. Additional drinks and other concessions will be crazy cheap — because that’s just how we dot-orgs roll.

When: Friday, January 29th, 8:00 PM
Where: Gotham City Improv, 48 West 21st Street, 8th Floor
Why: To help support art and stuff
How: By making you laugh and getting you drunk, not necessarily in that order
Reservations: (212) 613-6138
No seriously, why: Okay fine, we need the money to build a meth lab, okay? We made some bad decisions and got ourselves into some trouble, and now we need to make a bunch of meth. It’s not like we’re happy about it. Is that what you think? You think we’re happy that we managed to get into this mess?

Ready? Here we go.

I resolve, on your behalf, to stop expressing amazement at daylight saving time.

It never fails. Every year, the day after the clocks have “fallen back,” someone looks outside and says, “My goodness, it gets dark so early now!” Which, on paper, I agree with — the lost hour combined with autumn’s fading daylight has bumped up sunset’s curtain time. No question. But we as a nation have done this for 91 years. Why the crumbling hell are you still surprised? There has never been a year of your life in which this change has not happened. Getting bummed that it’s dark, that I understand. Being shocked by that same fact? Sorry, you’re on your own. As far as I’m concerned, there are only two types of people allowed to express such feelings:

A) Those who fondly remember a time before we changed clocks (nonagenarians, centenarians, ageless beings of undeath, etc).
B) Those who recently moved from Hawaii or Arizona, the two states that do not observe daylight savings. And nobody leaves Hawaii, so that doesn’t even make sense.

I resolve, on your behalf, to stop making commercials that employ heavy use of eating/drinking noises.

I’m fighting decades of established advertising theory on this one, but hey, every revolution begins with a single shot. Advertisers assume that if we hear how unspeakably delicious their product is, we will form a visceral connection. They augment ads with sound effects to broadcast tastiness. When the guy eats the burger, we really hear him eat that burger, and when the girl drinks the beverage, we really hear her drink that beverage. Slight problem, though: Eating noises fill me with rage. My eye twitches with every bite, and I know I’m not alone. We are friendly fire casualties in the war between Coke and Pepsi. Crunching, slurping, chewing, swallowing. Horrible, horrible swallowing. (In the rough draft for this post, I actually left myself a note here: “Try to make that sound not pornographic.” Basically a fail, right?) Every time Madison Avenue brings in a Foley artist to make a food product “pop,” God tasers Linda McCartney.

What do you have against Linda McCartney, Madison Avenue?

I resolve, on your behalf, not to talk about Twitter with people who don’t use Twitter unless they ask first.

Look, this is not to say anything against Twitter. I’m on the Twitter. I like the Twitter. But Twitter is in a place right now that reminds me of where fantasy sports were ten years ago. Either you were directly involved, or had no earthly idea what it was or how it worked. There was no in-between. In 2000, I was in a play with a troglodyte of a man who happened to live in my neighborhood. Every night, I had to listen to him talk about his fantasy football team as the subway crawled from 28th Street to Astoria Boulevard. Even as a football fan, even as someone who likes stats, I could not possibly have cared less. Then a friend invited me to play, and within a year I had teams in multiple leagues. I didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, I poured it on my cereal and used it as hair product. The first time I caught myself talking about my fantasy team with an outsider, it hit me — Sweet Jesus, I have become the troglodyte.

I see the same thing happening today when a Twitter user brings up the subject. People’s eyes glaze over. They check their phones for messages, they glance at the appetizer table. They recognize someone across the room who may or may not be there. If they ask about it, that’s one thing, but if they don’t, save it for your followers.

With that in mind, this next resolution is only for Twitter users. The rest of you can skip ahead if you want.

I resolve, on your behalf, not to tweet questions about why things are trending.

It takes two seconds to click the hashtag. If you’re still not sure what it means, it has to do with one of the Jonas Brothers’ birthdays.

I resolve, on your behalf, to let go of the whole thing where technically a decade starts with 1 and ends with 0.

Certain people get bent out of shape about this, and I suppose I might seem like one of them, considering that “Science!” is the biggest tag in my cloud. However, this is one instance where “practical” kicks “technically” in the ass. The argument goes like this: There was no Year Zero, so the very first decade consisted of 1 AD through 10 AD. By extension, the 1980s technically started in 1981 and ended in 1990, despite the fact that “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” officially launched the horrors of early 90s fashion that February. The 90s technically ended in 2000, the 21st century started in 2001, and next year completes our current decade (which for some reason we still have not named). Everyone knows one smartass who brings this up, sometimes with a note of disbelief that the rest of us can’t grasp the concept. We understand math, smartass. Do the 1980s mind that we borrowed 1990 to complete the box set? As far as I can tell, the practice of labeling a decade’s identity began last century. Before that, things just didn’t move quickly enough for one decade to be significantly different from another. So why not make it official? Let’s claim the year 1900 as part of the 20th century. The 19th century had only 99 years. Any objections? No? Good. The 21st century therefore began on Y2K, and 2009 is, in fact, the last year of this decade.

This one pains me, but I have to do it. I resolve, on your behalf, to stop saying “awesome.”

We need to have a Viking funeral for the word. It has served with distinction, bringing honor to us all. But its time has come. Its own ubiquity has rendered it meaningless, even in the detached usage we have come to know and love. That plate of bacon over there? That’s a plate of awesome. Louis C.K.’s last HBO special? Sixty minutes of awesome. Zombies? Awesome. Chuck Norris? Completely awesome. We’ve taken it as far as it can go. It’s the “groovy” of the … decade we just finished (dammit, we really need a name for this thing). Hey, I’m as guilty as anyone. Do not mistake my call to action for a denouncement. Not to go all one-hand-clapping on you, but awesome is awesome. I’m not even sure we can extricate it from our vocabulary. It may not be possible.

In fact, hang on a second …

I resolve, on your behalf, to reduce incidence of the word “awesome” to 150 parts per million (PPM) by the year 2035.

Much better. The only way to go about this is to approach it like air pollutant reduction. We have to set a target level and work together to reach it. We can’t just lock ourselves in a room and sweat out the withdrawal pains. Oh sure, we’ll be clean for a while, but that never ends well. When we inevitably fall off the wagon, the crash will be even harder than before. “Awesome” will be the only adjective we say at all. Other languages will sadly shake their heads and turn their backs on us. They offered us help, and we took their money. We will have burned them for the last time.

So let’s start making a change today. We can build a cleaner tomorrow, one sentence at a time. And that, my friends, will be awes- … sorry, habit. That will be fantastic.

(Note: The above constitutes a legally binding document, and by reading it you agree to carry out all provisions therein, including the ones from last year.)

• Financial markets in Europe will grind to a halt due to a toothpaste shortage in Finland.
The world economy will once again teeter on disaster’s edge.

• Tectonic activity will cause major geological changes in the Great Lakes region, including a new volcano in Detroit.
Because really, what else can go wrong for them?

• The words “chimney,” “fulcrum,” and “hand-me-down” will come to be seen as unspeakably filthy.
Linguists will have to think up replacement words, which will be particularly tricky for chimney because “smokestack” is already a little dirty.

• The United States Supreme Court will relocate its chambers to a floating castle that drifts along the Capital Beltway.
This one just makes sense, and probably should have happened by now.

• Broncos legend John Elway will discover the lost city of Atlantis.
The “how” won’t be nearly as surprising as the “why.”

• The governors of at least seven states will turn out to be covert assassins.
The ensuing media storm will be called “Assassingate,” because we have lost the ability to come up with scandal names.

• Someone will show up at Oscars wearing a dress made entirely of leaves.
The Golden Globes will also happen, apparently.

• The National Hockey League will merge with Major League Soccer, creating a soccer-hockey hybrid called “kickpuck.”
Within minutes, children in Canada will be born with a natural ability to play the game.

• Opera mashups will sweep the Internet
Lady Gaga, we’re looking at you.

• The Prime Minister of Australia will lose a bet with the President of Portugal, forcing the populations of those countries to switch places.
Sooner or later we’ll guess right on this — and who will be laughing then, editors of Prognostication Monthly?

COMPLETELY ACCURATE BONUS: THE DECADE AHEAD

• By the end of 2018, nearly all birds will be able to speak Norwegian.
This won’t be as unsettling as it sounds.

• Cal Tech will clone Abraham Lincoln, including his memories and personality.
The project’s lead geneticists will be forced to file a restraining order against Doris Kearns Goodwin.

• To combat inflation, prices will be capped at five dollars.
Nothing, anywhere, will cost more than five dollars.

• Retailers will introduce DRM-encrypted physical items that disappear after a set amount of time.
Everyday necessities such as chairs, socks, garbage cans, etc. will be licensed, not sold.

• The 2016 presidential election will be settled with a jai-alai match between Kathleen Sebelius and Tim Pawlenty.
The winner will be revealed in the December 2015 edition of “Completely Accurate Predictions.”

Grade for our 2009 predictions: Solid B+ (We were close with the John McEnroe thing, but should have said Tiger Woods.)

1. Top 10 Reality Show Knife-Fights of 2009 — Access Hollywood
2. Top 10 2009 Corporate Decisions That Came Close to Not Losing Money — BusinessWeek
3. Top 8 2009 Media Trends Your 15-Year-Old Doesn’t Have to Explain to You — TechCrunch
4. Top 2 American Automobiles of 2009 — Car & Driver
5. Top 5 Ill-Advised Professional Rodeo Clown Comebacks of 2009 — Cowboy Sports News
6. Top Animal-Related Celebrity Arrests of 2009 — Wall Street Journal
7. Top 12 Extra-Solar Non-Planetoid Orbital Body Discoveries of 2009 — Astronomy
8. Top Microbrew Launches of 2009 — The Oregonian (65-page special report)
9. 2009’s Top 7 Vaguely Racist Myths About Swine Flu — USA Today
10. Top 250 Horrific Injuries of 2009: The Year in Pictures — Sports Illustrated
11. 2009’s Most Important Developments in City Zoning Legisl-OMG KITTIES! — Cat Fancy
12. Top 5 Moves in the Hotel Laundry Sector That You Didn’t Think Were Going to Pay Off (But Did) — Journal of the American Association of Hotel Laundry Technicians
13. Top 5 Moves in the Hotel Laundry Sector That You Thought Were Going to be a Sure Thing (But Missed Badly) — Journal of the American Association of Hotel Laundry Technicians
14. Top 10 Viral Videos of 2009 — New England Journal of Medicine
15. 2009 Top 20 Straight-to-DVD Movies That Were Actually Kinda Okay — Missives From Mother’s Basement (A Condé Nast publication)
16. Top 10 Things You Searched For In 2009 (Not “You” as in Collectively, “You” as in Specifically YOU) — Google, Inc. press release
17. Top 1,000 Most Banal Facebook Status Updates of 2009 — Time
18. Top 25 Things Oprah Did — O Magazine
19. Top Lists About Lists of 2009 — List Fancy (Our list made #7!)
20. People of the Year — Person Monthly

Wow, they’re all, uh … right there. Great scavenger hunt, guys.

The balloons were the centerpiece of an experiment, designed to test how accurately information spreads on the Internet. This past weekend, DARPA officials positioned ten red weather balloons at undisclosed locations around the country. The first group to correctly report the coordinates of all ten balloons would win forty thousand dollars. One person couldn’t possibly stumble upon all ten balloons, so online communication would have to be the key. The winner was a team from MIT, who will presumably be using the money to pay for World of Warcraft subscriptions and prank-related liquid nitrogen.

Look, we here at Analog Nation are not here to tell DARPA how to do their jobs. (If we were, we’d be demanding more hoverponies.) But if DARPA really wanted to know whether information travels accurately via the Internet, we could have saved them forty grand and ten balloons.

Here’s how it works:

• Someone sees one of the balloons, takes photo on a cell phone, and uploads it to Facebook.
• A friend sees the photo, comments on it, and adopts a duck for his farm.
• The friend’s friends see the comment and join the conversation.
• A three-degrees-removed friend sees another balloon, but misses the Facebook conversation because her News Feed is out of order and her Live Feed is too long.
• #Redballoons starts to trend on Twitter.
• Wired posts a “How-To Wiki” on coordinating balloon hunts.
• The BalloonFinder app goes live on iTunes.
• #Redballoons tops the trend ranking on Twitter, fueled mostly by tweets like “LOL whut’s redballoons?” and “#redballoons #redballoons #redballoons #redballoons.”
• A video of a red balloon gets half a million views on YouTube, though it’s unclear whether it’s one of DARPA’s.
• YouTube videos recording people’s reactions to the balloon video get well over fifteen million combined views.
• A giant red balloon appears in Second Life, and is immediately pelted with winged genitalia.
• Reddit and Digg vote up balloon-related stories. Slashdot looks on from afar with sad eyes.
• BalloonLocator, a competing app, gets stuck in approval hell at Apple and launches on Android Market instead.
• iPhone vs. Droid flame wars overrun Wired’s balloon wiki.
• Omigod you guys, kitties!
• Blogs start to cross-pollinate posts about the contest, creating a Möbius strip that has neither beginning nor end.
• TMZ breaks a story claiming that all ten balloons have been found.
• CNN begins to report the TMZ story as news. Fox and MSNBC polarize the issue and initiate a red/blue feedback loop.
• The true location of the balloons is forever obscured and can never determined, as one half of the country believes one thing and the other half believes the exact opposite.
• This happens.
• Pale nerds at MIT hack DARPA’s website and find the balloons’ exact coordinates without having seen a single one, wining forty thousand dollars.
• My mom forwards me the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe urban legend email from 1998.

There you go, DARPA. That’s what forty years has wrought.

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When writing each week’s “Completely True Fact,” I get my creative juices flowing with the help of some Eclipse™ Winterfrost© gum and a nice glass of Tropicana™ Pure Premium© grapefruit juice. They taste disgusting together, but that actually helps me focus.

Speaking of focus, Analog Nation’s tag cloud is made possible by Novartis, makers of Ritalin®. On those harrowing days when I am unable to get my hands on some Ritalin®, the tag cloud is made possible by can after can of Red Bull™.

Our archives are funded by a charitable grant from Anheuser-Busch InBev, whose products improve my ability to operate heavy machinery (results not typical).

As always, we extend hearty and continuing thanks to Kellogg NA, owners of The Keebler Company, who owns Sunshine Biscuits, who keeps sending us palettes of Cheez-It® for no real reason. It appears to be some sort of clerical error, but we are so not complaining.

Lastly, this post itself was sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC:™ Since 1914, America’s #1 Source for Federal Trade Regulations.©®”