The stupidest thing about me is that I am ALWAYS surprised by how charmed I am by Pixar's work. Every goddamned time I'm skeptical and then just blown away.
It seems like it should be so easy to make films like Pixar does. You just get some people who care about things like art direction and composition and comic timing and storytelling over things like demographics and marketing and pop culture cleverness. And yet no one else seems to do this.
The best part is, there is zero reason they have to make these shorts. I don't know if they can quantify any monetary gain from the extra billion man hours of work that goes into these, but they keep right on doing it as if to say, "lookit how neat this is! :D"