If you ever wondered what high school was like for me, look no further.

not so gross

I never would have thought of James Woods as competition.

GROSS!!!

Seriously. Meanwhile, everything I thought I hated about iPods/iTunes is not really true at all. There are some slight annoyances - mainly issues of customization - but I guess it's everything it's supposed to be.

to run amok

So that's what it means ...

(this is even better)

zing

The Amazing Brinn Black

he's been with someone else
and she ain't you

I think that says it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Festival

The Clash's ironic criticism of the festival in the press conferences and interviews prior the event caused an argument backstage between Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth and The Clash singer Joe Strummer. This may have also been kickstarted by a comment guitarist Eddie Van Halen made in Rolling Stone magazine one month prior regarding the punk movement ("..that's like what I played in my garage when I was a kid, man.."). A clearly intoxicated Roth compounded this rivalry by insulting The Clash onstage during Van Halen's headlining set and took some humorous jabs at the influential punk band regarding their manhood, drinking habits, and sexual orientation.

This is interesting. At the very least, it's information which can be used to tip the scales in Sammy Hagar's favor during spontaneous games of "who was the best Van Halen singer"?

Georgia got SO LUCKY today. So, so lucky. That was fun to watch. Everything else was boring, except the first half of Penn State/Ohio State, and maybe the first half of Wisconsin/Michigan. (Lloyd Carr's typically sarcastic interview at the end was worth the wait, however.)

I didn't watch the Florida State game. I'm glad we scored 55 points; I can't remember the last time we broke 30. This year has been weird with teams being so inconsistent from week to week.

Crap. I was going to watch The Last Waltz and I forgot I lent it to somebody. Oh, well. Back to making clothes and Futurama.

I got sidetracked during the last post looking for a picture of this 20 Questions game. I ended up here.

I wasn't too impressed with this "20 Questions Rock & Pop Edition" because it took 2 rounds to get Marc Bolan. Then it got Morrissey in only 17 questions, so I guess it evens out.

us

them

eh? ehhh?

I misheard part of this lyric as:

with one eye open you can focus like a killer
on whomever you are capturing

Now that I know he says "camera" (or "camera lens"), I think I like my version better. Still, this record is freakin' great. I don't even care that it's only 5 songs played twice.

Jalapeño jelly beans taste pretty much like one would expect them to.

So Miami's loss to Louisville made FSU look like a bad team - well, our own loss to Clemson did that - but it was worth it. At least we put up a good fight. Also, it's good to see Auburn can probably make a run for it this year. UF/Auburn for the SEC championship? Sounds good to me.

yeehaw

the dark side.

iPod nano 4GB personalized - Black

Estimated ship: 1-2 business days
Delivered within 5 business days after shipping

MacBook 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo - White
Part Number: Z0D5
SuperDrive (DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
2.0GHz Intel Core Duo
80GB Serial ATA drive
512MB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x256
Accessory Kit

Estimated ship: 5-7 business days
Delivered within 5 business days after shipping

Ed Choate

This man is seriously running for the US Senate. Here's a couple of gems from his website:

MARRIAGE EMENDMENT [sic]
If homosexuals wants to live together is their problem but they should not have any rights. We need to stop rewarding bad behavior.

WHY AM I RUNNING
Because I want to help the hard working, man and woman of this country accomplish the following goals:

Make sure that no one goes to bed hungry in America. [I'm sure this means everyone except gay and/or non-white people]

Make sure that the school curriculum of all schools, from kindergarten to university, are strong and focused in preparing our children for a good paying job in any field of work they choose. [Wow - so this sentence actually made sense, but the next...]

That no one has the right to take away our right to worship the god we believe in.

AND [the real kicker]

That our borders are secure and that anyone trying to enter illegally are considered “a treat to the nation”.

I can't believe that someone would say these things in public, much less make them a cornerstone of a Senate campaign. And what's worse is at least six people support him. (Thanks, Facebook news feed!) Anyway, check out the website if this kind of political hilarity is up your alley.

pik shuurs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other downloader advocacy groups have suggested forms of compulsory licensing as one possible solution to the legal conflicts surrounding file sharing. In a typical scenario, those who hold the copyrights for the music traded between network users would be legally barred from suing the infringers. In return, the government would extract payments from listeners, perhaps electronic pay-per-song fees or perhaps sales taxes on peer-to-peer file-sharing software, blank storage media, or even Internet access itself. Assisted by some form of P2P "charts," music industry groups would theoretically distribute these royalties to the rights holders.

Wow. I had no idea this concept had a real name, or that it was actually already practiced in some form.

compulsory mechanical licenses = the perfect solution to the "problem" of file-sharing

Think about it. No more tedious DRM, no more bulky, expensive copy protection - not to mention this would pave the way for compulsory licenses for other digital media (movies, games). Everyone wins - literally. Consumers get the digital versatility and content they demand, companies/copyright holders get paid, and we as a society revise the ridiculous concept of "ownership" (especially intellectual property ownership) that has simply become obsolete in this day and age.

There is a time in every man's life when he must buy socks. We are not inclined to do this often, even though you can get 12 pairs for around $8. For whatever reason, we choose to hang on to what we've got.

Well, not me. Anymore.

So I got some new socks, and one of those automatic shower cleaner things, and some cat litter that actually sort of works. And some new drinking glasses. All this stuff is really cheap and necessary but for some reason I always avoided buying them.

I would also like to say that I always ridiculed the boxer brief as being a useless hybrid of two slightly less useless types of underwear, but now I understand why they exist. It's really the function of one with the comfort of the other. Anyway, that's all I'll be saying about that.

In other news, for a very long time (many years) I never ate breakfast. I would either wait until lunch or just grab something on the way out the door. Since I was almost always late during my breakfastless years, this meant I usually didn't have time to grab anything. Anyway, I tried the breakfast bars (they suck) and various other things. But a couple of months ago I got into having cereal for breakfast. And I ate lots of cereal. I couldn't understand why I started getting very tired after lunch, until I realized all the sugar I was super-charging myself with in the morning wore off pretty quickly. So then I quit eating cereal and went back to crummy bars. And every now and then I'll go nuts and buy donuts or some other kind of sweet breakfast food and just chomp away. Man, I'll tell you what, there's nothing more fun than to have a reasonably balanced diet, and then to deliberately go on a sugar/caffeine binge. You know, only when necessary. I don't do it that much.

I cleaned the entire apartment. It's not quite done yet, but the only thing left is my room and I did about half before I quit for the day. I even vacuumed and mopped. It feels good knowing that my cats will probably not be able to eat anything they're not supposed to. They've been good about not destroying things. Leon even said he hates cats but he likes mine.

I'm trying to decide whether the best rock vocal ever recorded is Little Richard's "Keep A-Knockin'" or Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out". Little Richard can scream, but Bruce can really punch it in there. I dunno. The other option is Andrew W.K.'s entire first record. Now that I think about it, I'm inclined to go with that.

I spent most of the day today looking for shoes. My shopping companion was very patient and well-behaved, perhaps on account of our trip to IHOP earlier in the day. I went to many stores; none of them had anything interesting. I asked around, and the word on the street was the Cool Springs area only gets white and black shoes sent to them. Hickory Hollow and Rivergate get neat colors. Since I didn't feel like trying to find those places, I gave up.

A short while later, I decided to go check out the Ross near my house. I walked in and this was the first thing I saw.

I could not believe my eyes. BEST SHOES EVER. (Cat not included.)

Wow. I was way off about Texas.

Meanwhile, this David Bazan EP is great. Did I expect otherwise? Not really. But it's nice to expect lyrical excellence and still be surprised by it.

He's also one freaky-looking man. Seriously, beards went out of style with the Treaty of Versailles.

College football, yeah!

I made my picks this week just in time. I'll post my stats soon. I did pretty well last week, despite picking Tennessee to lose.

although [the Raiders] did end up going down as the greatest Tecmo Bowl team of all time

Handoff to Bo Jackson, swoop left, touchdown. Rinse and repeat.

Later on, the football milestone that was Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football would enable the player to run/pass for a touchdown, cut hard just before the goal line, and head back the other way, leading the entire defense on a Keystone-Coppish chase for as long as it felt right.

me at work

I consider myself lucky that I've found an employer that lets me make either choice whenever I want.

Isn't Texas just about the best name you could give anything? Say you name your kid Texas - they're going to grow up tough. John Wayne tough. They will name airports after themselves.

It's fun to say, too. It doesn't get old, like some names I know.

This one was fun. I had to do it in the space of a single day for reasons too boring to list here. So I went to it, programmed me some drums, played me some bass and guitars, and sang me some vocals. That's about it. I think it stands a pretty good chance of helping me get into the showcase.

TAPE DELAY

I LOVE TAPE DELAY

holy crap (gotta use IE for this link, sorry)

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Q: Other than your parents, who has been the most influential person in your life and why?

A: Aragorn, because he taught me that the best way to rid Middle Earth of evil is through superhuman feats of ass-kicking.

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(This was after they told me I was unmatchable. Ha.)

First of all, Eminem decides to drop by around 1:18 and proceeds to destroy Jay-Z on what is generally considered his best album ever. Just thought you should know that.

one
two

This type of video game humor suits me. I'll enjoy telling my grandkids about text adventures.