One of the nice things about being in a graduate marketing program is the homework.

Let me be a bit more specific about that: Sometimes the homework sucks - ‘do advertising-budget modeling concepts and report on it next week’ - but other times, it’s ‘make sure to watch television ads, especially during the Super Bowl.’

So not only is it going to be a night of gripping television because of the Bears, but it’s also going to be a night of gripping advertising. So far, I’ve noted

• CareerBuilder is getting rid of its office monkeys;
• We’re going to be invited to the bachelor pad of the Geico caveman;
• And K-Fed’s turn as a fry cook is actually pretty funny. See for yourself:

The only problem with trying to watch the Bears win *and* watch all the commercials is the fact that I won’t have any opportunities for bathroom breaks. And, considering that last year I missed the MacGyver/Visa spot, I’m determined to make my only break to be during Prince’s halftime show.

Some time ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Robert Ballard, the man who discovered the ships the Titanic and the Bismarck and who was responsible for finding chemosynthetic bacteria on the ocean’s surface – thus ushering in a new era of exploration on the seafloor.

We talked about pushing the limits of human exploration, about man’s constant search to push beyond the limits of what is currently known, and how that drive has created the world we live in today, complete with its technology and its medicine and all that. This was a man who was and still is at the forefront of his chosen field, and whose name has become known to everyone around the world because he chose to push himself.

There were some other great parts of the interview, too – about finding perfectly preserved wooden ships at the bottom of the Black Sea and so on – but those are stories for a different time.

In any case, last Friday I got to spend some time talking with William ‘Billy O’ Oefelein, the pilot on the last Space Shuttle mission. You don’t get many opportunities to talk to real astronauts, because – as opposed to other childhood-memory careers like ‘fireman’ and ‘policeman’ and baseball player’ – there just aren’t that many astronauts. He was full of bons mots like ‘The history of humankind has always been about exploration, and that’s what we need to do with space’ and ‘it’s fun to tell people why we continue space exploration, because it’s an investment in our future.’

His accompanying photo was one of those ‘that looks really, really super hip’ moments, since he’s just, you know, floating in space with the Earth visible behind him.

Apparently being an astronaut isn’t all fun and games and Space Shuttle flights, though. He’d been working for NASA for more than eight years … and in that time, he’s done one 13-day mission. Let’s do some quick math:

(8 years)(365 days) = 2920 days.
13 days / 2920 days = 0.45 percent working days

In the three-and-a-half years that I’ve been at my job, that ratio is like me publishing a magazine for five-and-three-quarters days. Just 5.75 days out of 1,277. But the payoff of being shot into space is probably a more exhilarating experience than, you know, putting out an issue.

Oh … and apparently astronauts have blogs, too – finally bringing the power of instant publishing to space. It’s about time.

I’ve spent the lion’s share of my music-listening time for the last three days with Rodrigo y Gabriela.

You know, Rodrigo and Gabriela. The guy and the girl who were in a speed-metal band in Mexico who didn’t find their scene, so they moved to Ireland and played as a classical-guitar duo, informed by flamenco as much as Slayer? Right. Rodrigo and Gabriela. They’re hurting my brain.

While the video is pretty bad - it was apparently put together by someone who had just discovered Final Cut Pro and multiple camera angles - you’ll see what I mean when I say that ‘they’re hurting my brain’ here:

And I’ll get back to work on that best-of list for 2006 … I’m going to have to rethink my top songs because of these two.

Two news items came to light today that illustrate the idea that just because we can, we should.

Item the first: over-zealous metadata researchers.

Apparently a Welsh researcher decided that there just had to be one day out of the year when people, taken as a whole, felt the worst. It turns out that today - well, yesterday, or January 22 at any rate - has become Blue Monday. On that day, you will simultaneously break your New Year’s resolution, receive your holiday-season credit-card bill in the mail and sleet will hit you in the face. Sorry to break the news.

Right here is where I started singing New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ - How does it feel? To treat me like you do? - over and over. But I realized that the Blue Monday Condition as Described by a Welsh Researcher is a Serious Business, about which we should not be joking.

But this is what happens when you hand reams of data those looking to prove nothing in particular: you get a day that should, by no means, exist. I suppose it’s good in the sense of raising awareness, but when reason number one to beat those blues is ‘Make sure you get up, get dressed and try to look good - don’t leave off make-up,’ I have to question what’s really going on. Maybe I’ll just go watch television to make myself feel better. Oh, that won’t work, because of

Item the second: high-definition pornography.

Apparently those in the adult-film industry are just as flawed physically as the rest of us, except most of us haven’t dropped five figures on aesthetic surgeries. But plastics can’t catch all those little blemishes, and performers are worried their small imperfections will be a deal-breaker when viewed in high-def.

What I thought was a glorious, wonderful and brilliant thing, watching last year’s World Cup in high definition, will be the next technology destined for the junk bin. Who would have thought that the backbone of the interweb, pornography, would prove to be the death sentence for HD TV?

|t was a good day for football: The Bears are set to play the Colts in the big game, Bill Belichick acted like a baby, I’m stoked for Peyton Manning, Arsenal beat Manchester United on Thierry Henry injury-time header.

Granted, only about five people within 300 miles care about that last bit, but it’s still ‘football’ news, nonetheless.

In any case, I’m looking forward to what I’m calling the ‘I-65 Super Bowl,’ despite the fact that 65 doesn’t hit Chicago - it actually ends in Gary, 30 miles away - and the fact that those of us from the Midwest can, in a twist of fate, be the ones pretending the East and West coasts don’t exist.

I was so excited after the game, in fact, that quite a few people were sent a text message stating ‘we’re not here to start no trouble / we’re just here to do the Super Bowl shuffle.’ So, in honor of the occasion …

The Chicago Bears - ‘Super Bowl Shuffle.mp3′