So I played a session yesterday at the Ocean Way. You know, where all the famous important people go to record their stuff? It was just a bunch of students messing around, but this is what we came up with.

It's only a rough mix, but I'm warning you, it's cool. (Just for the record, I'm only one of the many string players. I didn't sing or anything. But it's still cool.)

You wanna see something disgusting?

You know you do.

That, to me, is ... disgusting. 3 new records, but one's a double, so it's really 4 new records. All in 2005 and I'm sure they'll all be brilliant.

Punk.

Also, check out the Lost Highway website for a nice interview. Click on the door and then click on "interviews". (If you want to stop the music, the controls are in the bottom right. They have a ton of cool songs on the jukebox though.)

A strange turn of events has led me to consider a career as a blog ghost-writer. Don't ask me how it happened; it's much too complicated to explain. Of course, you'll never know if it really is complicated - perhaps it's simple but embarrassing. At any rate, I was surprised to learn that ghost-written blogs are not a new idea. In fact, my good friend Google sent me these links:

netlawblog (try saying that 3 times fast!)

some site called f/k/a (formerly known as? fundamentally kick-ass?)

On a side note, I didn't know there was such a thing as a "lawblog". Nothing at the above links made any sense to me. I think lawyers do this on purpose, the same way that all groups and cliques make up their own slang. However, the legally-minded among us have a distinct and unfair advantage, because they have access to all kinds of crazy-ass words from "The Lexicon of Laws 'N Stuff". Doctors too, with their medulla oblongata and their serendipitus maximus, acting like they're so much smarter than the rest of us. I know how to fix a car, doctor! You can't fool me! I know when I need to fix a car, I just go get the book and look it up and it tells me what to do. Somebody comes in there with stomach pains, you got a nice little setup where the nurse plays around and they gotta wait 20-30 minutes - I know what you're doing! You're in the back room, looking up "stomach pains" in "The Compendium of Sundry Aches".

Nurse: Doctor, Mr Carter is here to see you. He's got severe abdominal pain.
Doctor: You tell him wait right there about 20, 30 minutes. I gotta go kill two birds with one boot!
Nurse: Oh doctor, you so crazy!
Doctor: I tell you, turd-proofing these books was the best investment I ever made.

So, despite all kinds of reasonable efforts on my behalf, I absolutely failed to accomplish my goal this weekend. This is pretty much why. Free AO! It's fun in a nerdy online sci-fi sort of way.

To my credit, I did actually get a ways into the piece. Orchestration is fun! I'll finish it anyway for the practice.

Time for a late lunch. Mmm. Lunch.

The Top Albums of 2004
(as selected by allmusic.com)

This is a good list. Not as good as my first list. I miss my first list. But this is still a good list. Sometimes you have to take what life gives you, 'cause life is like a list. Sometimes life gets full of dirt, crud, bugs and hairballs and stuff. You, you, you gotta clean it out. You, you, you gotta put it in here and rinse it off and start all over again. And sometimes, sometimes life sticks to the floor so bad, you know a list ... a list, it's not good enough. It's not good enough! You gotta get down there, like, with a toothbrush, you know. You gotta really scrub. You gotta get it off, gotta really try and get it off. But if that doesn't work, if that doesn't work, you can't give up! You gotta stand right up, you gotta run to a window and say, "HEY!!! THESE FLOORS ARE DIRTY AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!"

1. What time is it? 6:30 P.M. This is a great way to start my day
2. What is your full name? stupid
3. Nickname? stupid
4. Piercing? No
5. Eye Color? Yes
6. Place of birth? I was born in the back seat of a Greyhound bus rollin' down Highway 41
7. Favorite foods? stupid
8. Ever been to Africa? Vicariously, through Shaft
9 ...curioser and curioser... huh?? "I think Gwen might have removed a question from here. I'll make up my own question:" (said justin)
9a. Who are your favorite drummers? Colonel Sanders
10.Love someone so much that it made you cry? I loved your mom so much it made YOU cry
11. Been in a car wreck? "Oh yeah!" I hit the Kool-Aid man
12. Croutons or Bacon Bits? I think the more important question here is, "Gary Sinise or Kevin Bacon?"
13. Favorite day of the week? Is this a ... what day is it?
14. Favorite Restaurant? All of them
15.Favorite Flower? Edible ones
16. Favorite Sport to watch? College football
17. Favorite drink? Another caucasian, Gary
18 Favorite ice cream? Ice cream was created by the man to keep me down
19. Disney or Warner Bros.? Dreamworks
20. Favorite Fast Food Restaurant? stupid
21. Car color? stupid
22. How many times did you fail your driver's test? I failed it once, then I went and found my waiver from Driver's Ed and went to a different location so I wouldn't have to take it again
23. Before this one, from whom did you get your last e-mail? stupid
24. Missing? No, I'm ok
25.Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? stupid
26. What do you do most often when you are bored? Nothing. It doesn't really help
28. Who will respond to this email the quickest? stupid
29. Who is the person you sent this to that is least likely to answer? stupid
30. Favorite TV Shows: Arrested Development, The Office, Chapelle's Show
30a. (here's a new one) What's your favorite radio show? stupid
31. Last person you went out to dinner with? stupid
32. Ford or Chevy? I'd buy a Corvette before I bought a Mustang. But I'd buy a Viper before I bought a Corvette
33. What are you listening to right now? Nothing. That reminds me - I bought "Smile" yesterday. I should put that on
34. What is your favorite color? A nice dark green or blue
35. Lake, Ocean, River? Emerson, Lake, Palmer?
36. How many tattoos do you have? stupid
37. Time you finished this email? I finished this question at 6:43 P.M. But now I have to go back and fill in all the stupid ones I left blank

I've been really out of it the past couple of days. Not because of school - nothing really going on there - but just the general state of things. But I'm slowly getting into the groove, actually doing some good composition work, and now I have a challenge. Monday is the submission deadline for a competition here. I need to have an orchestral piece between 5-10 min. in length. The good news is I have a great piece that just needs to get orchestrated. The bad news is that's still a lot of work. Still, I'm set on finishing this. Wish me luck. If I get the chance, I'll work something funny in, like the Knight Rider theme or some Zeppelin riffs.

Moving on, Kanye West is great. But even his greatness can't save that new "Confessions" remix. Oh man! I got a cool new keyboard the other day. It's this dinky little thing from who knows how long ago. It's not even a Casio ... it's a fake Casio! (Realistic, baby!) Anyway, the sounds are amazing. It makes me want to do a whole record with just this keyboard and my drum machine a la Postal Service. One thing at a time, though. I still have to finish this record I'm working on now. It's getting there. I have 3 songs just about locked down now - no wait, make that 6. Wow, I had more than I thought. Just have to finish a few more and then it's studio time!

Man, I feel good tonight. We started out with a bang by going to the gym at 10:30. (We were supposed to go at 9, but that's another story.) A little bit of shoulders, a lot of legs - a lot! Some bike to cap things off since everybody was hogging the Precors. (Mmmmm, Precor ...) Then a good comp lesson, a fun class (Sabrina is a trip - you probably don't know her, but trust me), and an ok orchestra deal. (I had spent some time actually preparing bowings, but of course they absolutely sucked. What was I thinking?)

I came home and thought that I really wanted to hear "The Rain Song". So that means I'm listening to Zeppelin again. Man, it's been ages. Bunch of coked-out hippies.

There was going to be a cool quote here, but the one I thought I wanted to put here wasn't that good after all, and this post is already too sappy and personal. It's bordering on Dashboard Confessional lyrics.

Next time: less talk, more rock!

Stupid.

So incredibly stupid.

A long time ago - had to be at least 2 years, if not longer - I found out about a game in development called Wish. Ok, it's going to be this big dynamic online world, yeah sure, I'll sign up for the newsletter and maybe try out the beta when it comes along.

Time passes. Things happen. I graduate from college, have my appendix out, and discover the Smiths (not necessarily in that order).

About a year ago, I got an e-mail inviting me to join the Wish beta. I had forgotten all about the game at this point. Since I was on dial-up at the time, I decided not to even try downloading the beta client, but I held on to the e-mail in case I changed my mind.

Some more time passes. I quit my job and moved to Nashville to go back to school. In comes the cable modem, and one day in a fit of boredom I try to download the beta. Denied! I figured that might happen, since this was 8 months after beta had started. So I went on my merry way.

Then, while I'm home for Christmas, I get ANOTHER e-mail asking me to join Wish beta 2.0! Apparently they had made some significant progress and were opening it back up to try to get people interested. In this e-mail they claim to have received 60,000 beta applications. I thought, "Wow, this must be a pretty good game if that many people are interested." I made a mental note to check it out when I got back.

Tonight, I remembered about this and went to download the client.

I found this instead.

Wish beta 2.0 lasted a total of 9 days. I don't get it, and I'm not sure this is such an interesting thing to write about, but something smells funny, and it ain't my apartment (we took care of that yesterday). I probably won't ever know the truth, but the conspiracy theorist in me wonders what really happened to cause such a huge crash and burn when the game was supposedly almost finished.

The only thing I'm going to say is one of the screenshots on the main page looks like it was pulled directly from the original Everquest. Seeing how that game is 6 years old now, that ain't a good thing. All the games coming out now look way better than that, so maybe the Wish guys came to their senses, realized their game sucked and pulled the plug. Maybe their investors got nervous. Maybe it was just a big joke.

Maybe I should just get "Super Nerd" tattooed on my forehead. Nah, you guys understand, right? You're gamers too, right? C'mon - holla atcha boy.

I'll try and explain it like this:

Tish told me yesterday that she's binging on the White Stripes right now. Caleb said something today about garage rock, which reminded me of that great scene in The Life Aquatic where Bill Murray bum rushes the Filipino pirates while "Search and Destroy" blares. (This also makes me wonder if Tish is into the Stooges and the MC5? That would be so freakin' cool.)

Anyway, the end result is I'm binging on David Bowie and T. Rex right now.

I made a vow to finish a certain song today and ended up finishing a completely different one. Oh, it's good. Real good. (Another check mark next to "new album tracks". That means I've got - one. No, two. I think.)

The bugs in Florida are so large and disgusting that, relatively speaking, bugs do not exist in Tennessee.

"Early decision" admissions are a scam. "Early action" is ok, though.

This is probably not even worth posting about, but I thought it was quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen on the Internet. Seriously, I mean worse than the dancing hamsters and Something Awful combined:



This beautiful question comes to you courtesy of Amazon.com. Is this really something people are likely to click on? And if so, what kind of people? I guess if you're shooting for a 12-to-15-year-old demographic ...

In other news (read: shameless self-promotion time), I've got some new comics up and ready to be deployed over the next two weeks. The updates are scheduled for MWF so stay tuned! This is a rare event. I probably have enough material to keep this up for maybe a month or two. Plus, it's a really cool storyline! One that I wrote about two years ago, so I apologize for any outdated references.

In closing, I find it absolutely hilarious that "What's My Name" by Snoop Doog has a catchy vocal hook that ends with a really low voice saying "your mom". Ok, now that I listen again (and check the lyrics online) he's actually saying "the bomb", but that isn't nearly as cool or funny.