I’ve got some business-y posts lined up, but it’s Friday, I just got back from Mesh, so I’m both tired and thinking along these lines anyway, and I could probably insert 11 or 12 more excuses if I wanted, but I’m just going to go with this image that’s been in a browser tab for days because I can’t stop thinking about it:

First, the joke: it’s a still from Batman: The Animated Series, where a super-villain named Two Face is looking at a picture of what his life was like before he was horribly disfigured and went insane.  And apparently he has a credit or bank card under his super-villain name.

I’m a Batman fan, so I liked the humour here, but here’s the thing, it’s not a Photoshop job, as far as I know – I believe it’s a real still from the show.

Think for a moment about what just happened.

The show aired in the early nineties.  Back then, if you were home when it was on, you would watch it (fun fact, I once left an exam early to catch the show. Yes mom, I was done, had checked my work, got an A-, it was just a coincidence that the timing worked out but I like the story better the first, shorter, way, OK?)

If you weren’t home, you could tape it on your VCR, which probably would have been able to freeze frame on that image.

Then if you wanted to share the discovery, there were a few products out that could make a picture from your screen (I remember one that I think used Polaroid film,) but basically you’d have to take a physical picture of the screen, using a camera that tool film, either regular film or the aforementioned Polaroid instant stuff.

And then the only way you could share it would be to, what, fax it around?  By which point you might not even have a clear enough image for the joke to work – it’s been taped, paused, filmed, and then converted to black and white by now.  And how many people would you know who had both an interest in Batman and a fax machine?

That image was posted 3 days ago and according to imgur, it’s been viewed more than 8,000 times in the last 3 days, at broadcast-level resolution, and that’s just on this one site.  I don’t know the circumstances of the discovery, but someone could have spotted the joke, grabbed an image, and posted it in under 10 minutes, easy.

This is the stuff that I try to notice and acknowledge from time to time, but I have to limit it or my head will explode.

We’re living in a world where anyone over the age of eight can have a “back in my day” story, and that window’s shrinking every week.  How cool is that?

So 24′s done, at least until someone comes out with a movie, and just like with Lost, I’m OK with the ending.

But.

I really think the Seinfeld route would have been more appropriate:

When Seinfeld ended after (to lazy to Google) seasons, the characters were judged for their past actions and put away for a really long time.  Let’s take a moment to judge 24 and the Counter Terrorist Unit over their eight years of operation:

Moles within CTU: 3

Times CTU was attacked: 5

Nuclear explosions on their watch: 2

To be fair, I think they stopped at least two other nuclear explosions, so that’s something.  Also, those stats are on an “at least” basis, because I used IMDB’s episode list to pull them together.  To their credit, IMDB is at least a little aware of the concept of spoilers, with some entries coming in like this:

Yeah, I didn’t bother to make a count of how many times that happened.  I also skipped counting “Jack kills a guy,” though others have done that homework already…

So… Lots of disasters averted, but lots of disasters altogether as well.  I’m really curious what we’re all going to be afraid of now that the show’s gone.  But let’s take a moment to figure out at least one point of failure.

24: a case study in sleep deprivation

Here are the time periods of 24, by season:

Season one: midnight to midnight

Season two: 8AM to 8AM

Season three: 1PM to 1PM

Season four: 7AM to 7AM

Season five: 7AM to 7AM

Season six: 6AM to 6AM

Season seven: 7AM to 7AM

Season eight: 4PM to 4PM

I’ll be honest, I thought more of these seasons started later in the day, but in the cases where it did (seasons 1, 3, and you’ve got people up for most of the day already, and then staying up for 24 hours.  Staying up all night isn’t fun in any event, and back in 2000, before the series even began, we knew that staying up just 17 to 19 hours was the mental equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of .05.

By the way, why do we never see CTU agents slurping down coffee?  Do they get special government “go pills” instead?

So, builders of CTU 2.0: consider working in shifts.  Maybe add a nap room.  And then see if you don’t get blowed up quite as much.

(And thanks for 8 years of me getting to yell at the television.)

OK, if your character is making a 911 call, then yes, show the network logo on the phone:

However, if your character is arming an explosive device via his cell phone, then no, do not show any branding:

Lastly, if a mobile phone is being used to detonate explosives, take the whole faceplate off just to be sure we don’t imply that mobile phones can do anything bad:

(Why oh why can’t I just enjoy some television like normal people do?)