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Sunday: February 01, 2004 - February Crankiness I'm not sure what it is about February but everyone is cranky, myself included. I've decided to regrow my hair via the power of positive thinking. Being a very positive and optimistic person, I should be completely bald by the end of the month. Today I couldn't find a parking space even though I left for rehearsal with ample time. I was late, naturally and the result? Crankiness on all parts. I don't really felt like we got much done. If nothing else, I enjoy playing even when I'm cranky and so is everyone else. After rehearsal Matt Flynn came over and I transcribed a couple pieces for him to play at Leon with the kids. The pieces were written by a band he used to play in and I have to admit, they were pretty cool. Jamie, The Ab, Chompy and I had a Superb Owl party even though we didn't really care about the teams. The Ab ate most of Jamie's 7-layer (it was really only six) dip and I burn the HELL out of the pizza. After the game Theory-Chris and I struggled over the Atonal homework and I worked on the prospectus for my thesis. I have a good four pages of it done so hopefully that will spare me the wrath of Dr. Clendinning. I don't know why I'm so tired right now...oh wait it's 2:29am. I should have followed my parents' advice and gone to school for business. Then I could eek out my mindless existence and go to bed at 10:30pm every night. I guess there are some trade offs, though--they make lots of money, have time to go to the dog park and drink beer, accumulate possible housewives, drive nice cars, have little stress (didn't you get that memo about the TPS Reports, Peter?) and they never and I mean NEVER go bald. Even this guy in the picture isn't going bald. Tomorrow my goals include: sending out another batch of job applications and cleaning up after the Superb Owl. Maybe I'll make some sort of great Superb Owl graphic. And maybe some sort of Superb Owl song to sing. I also anticipate the 1500th hit to my journal. Don't let me down! Check in fifty times tomorrow just to be safe! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 02, 2004 - I Suck At Euchre This afternoon I took Chompy to Wendy's for a quick lunch. I was going to make up a story about my new healthy eating habits but apparently Marty saw me with Dr. Chomp. Busted! My plan for the afternoon was to do some laundry and finish sending out some more job applications. I was tired from eating lunch and decided to play some online Euchre (just a few games, I swear). After a couple of games, I was asked to play in an impromptu tournament with 15 other people. Much like the NCAA tournament, we were paired by our rankings (mine a decent 1550 at the time) and although I thought my ranking was high, my partner and I were seeded numbers 11 and 12. It was single elimination with the finals determined by best of three set. Amazingly, my partner and I breezed through the competition and and wound up in the finals after absolutely destroying the higher seeds. We won in the "East" bracket and played against the #1 and #2 seed from the "West" bracket. We won the first game 10-2 but lost the next two 10-9 and 10-8. I typically like to blame the cards but in the finals the other two people simply just outplayed us. Our downfall was my fault, of course, as I called a set with the game 7-7 in the 3rd game. It was fun to play with people who normally would kick me out of the room because my rank of 1550 would never allow me a seat in their 2100-2500 rooms. For my first tournament I think it went really well and I hope I get to play with the same guy sometime in the future. Now that I have "red square" status again I think I can play against anyone I want and not have people curse their monitors for having me sit down across from them. If you've never played with Yahoo Games, it's free and you should. You're assigned a color based on your rank: grey, green, blue, purple, orange, red (in order from suckiest to best). At the end of the summer I had finally reached an extremely difficult red square in Canasta and now I'm too afraid of losing to play anymore. Unlike in Euchre, the points in Canasta are extremely difficult to receive--you typically get between 2-10 in Canasta as opposed to 10-30 per match in Euchre. Starting at 1500, to hit the 2300 mark in Canasta took a summer of ass-kicking and I think my record by the time school started was something like 180-25. Had I not stupidly used that screen name when I played my friends and played carelessly, I'm sure it would be closer to 200-5. My grandma taught me to play canasta when I was in the womb and, at the risk of being arrogant and assuming we're dealt fairly even cards, I don't think anyone can beat me. I know people throw that term around a lot "anyone" but I mean it in the truest sense of the word. Go out, herd some people up and sit them down. At my peak of confidence, I once played against two people and still won (by about 1500 no less). I'd share my strategy but that might take away my title. There have been, of course, where I had to play against the very, very small minority of people who play the same way that I do and those are usually the games I lose if my opponent is given even the slightest "luck-advantage". I'm not sure why I'm so chatty tonight but I think it has to do with the iced coffee Jamie brought me from Java-Sucks down on Railroad or the fact that Chompy and I were almost involved in a fatal collision about a half hour ago.

Returning from the gas station, I was making a left-hand turn with an arrow. Out of nowhere, the car facing me (waiting to go straight) just decides to go and comes within inches (like, if that car were parked in a parking lot, I would park my car with a greater distance away) of hitting me head-on. Fortunately, the person behind me was also sober and avoided rear-ending me. My gut reaction was to roll down my window and yell. I pulled up next to the beat up Suburu and yelled out my window at the crying girl at the next light. I'm not sure her driving with her crying head in her hands was such a great idea, so I gunned it and put myself about 4 miles away from her. I still can't get over the absolutely glord-awful driving in this town. I just can't believe it. And glord help that bitch if anything had happened to Chompy because I would have strangled her with my jumper cables until she was good and unconscious and then electrocuted her.

Tonight also marked the end of Mike's fish-friend sleepover. The little fish I moved to the hospital tank died last night. I cleaned some of the water out of my bedroom tank and I think my fish-friends will sleep a little more soundly tonight because of it. I'm sorry this is so long but I have a lot of work to do and I love to put it off. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 03, 2004 - How To Blow A Rehearsal Today was a more bearable Tuesday for whatever reason. It started off in the typical horrific way, of course. I'm getting really sick of teaching my classes. If I were teaching Sight-Singing again, I would have no problem at all going over my cap for the class. Fine, pull up some extra chairs and I'll spend the extra two minutes grading; big deal. With only 12 computers in the lab and when only 9 work, having 22 people in the class just breeds disaster and contempt. I finally conceding to letting some people use the Mac side but some of the things we are working on don't transfer well. And the people that usually go over there go at the beginning of class and don't sign the attendance sheet, so I now have three class dates with completely useless information. OTTO is another huge pain in my ass. When someone needs to change a password, or forgets theirs it takes 24 hours for a reset. This voids any work that can be done in class that can be done on any given day so people fall behind more quickly. In and of itself, this isn't such a huge problem if it were one or two students but it's almost 1/4 of them. Although I had some terrible, terrible students last semester, the vast majority of them were excellent. This is not the case this semester. I'm just sick of everything in that room from the fact the carpet is never cleaned so I sneeze no less than 30 times a class to the fact that Office 97 is completely worthless.

After my second class, I came home and played a little Euchre before going back to Bibliography. I upped my score to 1790 before somehow managing to lose nine in a row. I didn't fare much better in Bibliography, where we had a quiz that I had completely forgotten about. Maybe it was because we were supposed to have this quiz 3 classes ago. The extra credit was "Define any German word from the reading" and I put: dissertation=dissertation. Dissertation was in fact one of the words from the reading in German so I hope my professor has a sense of humor about it. The rest of my afternoon I managed to avoid doing anything substantial and in the Caribbean class I managed to beat the PalmOS version of Minesweeper on the setting "Impossible" for the very first time. It took me 56 minutes but at least I didn't fall asleep. We wasted a TON of time in rehearsal tonight "practicing" the two easiest pieces instead of focusing on Pan In A Rage. When we did finally start it, we rehearsed the exact same material as last rehearsal. I will be the first to admit that I need to go in and look at a couple of spots but I certainly don't need to waste rehearsal time to learn my damn personal parts. I could tell that Chris was the most pissed person in the room, most likely because rehearsal is a 100% waste of his time. He needs to become jaded like me and stop practicing.

Jamie and I had Ruby Tuesday takeout tonight and while she studied I rearranged my bedroom, complete with ceiling fan dusting. I still need to do a lot of work in there but that white desk is gone. Maybe at some point I'll get the monitor my brother gave me for Christmas out of the Taurus. In other news I received an email from Dr. Olsen regarding my direction of Mas next year. It sounded like the collective faculty was very much for it but since money is an issue AND they're already getting one graduate student who plays pan they might go that route. I know the kid of whom they're speaking and while he is very nice and I'm sure somewhat qualified for the position, if anyone is going to kick the group's ass and gain some recognition for the university, it's going to be me; not some polite guy. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 04, 2004 - English Translations All good things must come to an end so February 3rd was the last day of daily journal updates. The reason for this is because I set up my second computer (my "work" computer) after having it down. With them both connected, I needed to use my router again, which apparently alters the IP address of this computer, making logging in to OTTO to do daily updates a fiasco, complete with crawling around to change cords. Since this is the case, I will only be posting on Sunday nights from now on.

I heard a very nice presentation in Atonal today. I have no complains. I don't really care for the guy because he once gave me a dirty look because I asked a "stupid" question but he did a really nice job. After class I ran some errands--video store, Home Depot, PetSmart, OfficeMax, Best Buy, etc. I finally hauled out the huge monitor from the car and set it up with my work computer. Everything seems to be working well except for the fact the router costs me the ability to FTP to the SSL OTTO. Oh well. I emailed the guy who runs it (Doug) and hopefully he will have a solution other than having to change all my cords around daily. Last night I did two hours worth of ironing and did some dishes. I also made a huge feast for myself, which dirtied an amount of dishes equal to what I had done. I had my quiz in Bibliography and let's just say it could have gone better. I forgot completely about it. The extra credit was "Give an English translation of any word found on p. 8-9" and I put: "Dissertation=Dissertation". [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: February 05, 2004 - Long Daze What a long day. I hate Thursdays. This is becoming a recurring theme. We watched the first batch of presentations in class today and they were all pretty good. One student in my second class literally gave a perfect presentation. After class I went to the library and did my Mas presentation. I came home, played with Chompy then went back to Bibliography. I got an 82% on my first homework assignment. She is a tough grader, which isn't good when she's so unspecific with her questions. I ran home after class, thought about taking a nap, didn't, and then went back to Caribbean class, where I promptly fell asleep for a good 20 minutes. I woke up and Dr. Olsen was looking RIGHT at me. I then played Minesweeper on Impossible difficulty until it was time to go. We had a pretty good rehearsal and a nice small-group rehearsal afterwards. Jamie and I ordered pizza for dinner and I fell asleep at midnight. Boring. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: February 06, 2004 - Daniel Harrison Speaking of nerds, it's that time of year-Society for Music Theory Conference time. Daniel Harrison from Yale is the big guest and he presented today in Atonal. Everyone who has ever muttered the word "theory" was there and although I arrived a couple minutes early there was no seat for me. I eventually found a seat behind the piano where I could see nothing. Dr. Harrison seems to be an interesting guy. I know he's into the Beach Boys and I was hoping to talk to him about Boyz but that didn't happen. I skipped the pot luck dinner tonight to work on some scores. Composing is way more fun than theory and even arranging music is better than reading stupid articles. I found an ideal job for me in Cleveland working at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Truly, this job is perfect for me in every way. Big city, rock n' roll, teaching. What else is there? Nothing, that's right. Nothing. Today is my brother Steve's birthday. He is the big 2-0. I remember that birthday but only vaguely. I had some thoughts about being a man and acting like one. I've had the same talk with myself on every birthday since. I'm still not a man and to be honest, I don' t really want to be one just yet. Being some sort of man-boy is considerably more fun. People started to send me the first batch of "where the hell are the updates" today including some more hidden ones like the google search for "where are the updates to mike's journal!!!!!" [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: February 07, 2004 - Applying to the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame Man my back hurts. This morning I got up early (9am) and finished the MIDI version of Outkast's Andre 3000's Hey Ya finale/midi file. I still need to finish up the Chopin small group piece for rehearsal on Tuesday. I went to hear Dr. Harrison's lecture. It was interesting enough--I didn't fall asleep but the more theory I learn the less practical it all seems. True, some theories are really beneficially to music. Things like Schenkerian analysis and rotational theory are very useful and still relatively new but my Glord, most of it is so useless. Sure, it's interesting to the nerd in me (and others) but just completely unhelpful when I'm actually listening to music. Speaking of unhelpful things. Here is a list of unhelpful things: Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Survivor All-Stars, Paris Hilton and Chingy. I guess those are more unhelpful people. Or so I hear. I've never had any of them wait on me. Jamie and I ate some McDisgusting for dinner. For some reason my house smells like feet. Jamie's feet. With stink lines. I saw them myself. Seriously. I thought about making some flash applications for this site so people would have a special treat but my talking cactus didn't work out. Sorry. My brother Steve didn't send me a picture like he said he would so there will be no birthday picture for him. Chastise him!. He also took credit for this book I wrote in high school for a Sociology class. It was called I'm a boy and I'm superior. I have the link for it somewhere.... Oh, it's right here. Anyway, Steve claimed partial credit for it even though it was MY BOOK and MY FAILING GRADE on the project AND MY D as my final grade. And now, here's Steve, leeching off MY apathy and caustic wit--all the time while he's getting straight A's by not breaking any rules or fighting against pathetic high school "teachers". Shaking my right hand in a single up-down motion, I have no choice but to say, "This is bulls* motherf*". Oh, I also took care of Jamie's parents' dogs today. That was fun. I had to deactivate the alarm code while her parents' dogs were barking and Chompy (still on the leash) was pulling me away from the keypad. Fortunately, I was able to get it done before the doors with the ninjas opened up and sliced me from 50' away with their sharpened shirken. Tomorrow I am going to write the world's greatest cover letter to get the job at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: February 08, 2004 - I miss Brian With Brian far off in Virginia, I had no choice today but to clean my apartment by myself. The kitchen and pool room look great. Tomorrow I hope to tackle the bathroom and the loose ends of my bedroom. The bedroom is still pretty clean from last time but my bathroom has digressed considerably from the last cleaning. Nothing really notable happened today. I put a new picture up for Steve's birthday since he hadn't sent me one yet when his actual birthday arrived. He apparently attended a party at the Playboy mansion. He complained that the girls there were not large enough to support the enormous bosoms that he so desperately loves; at least he got to play ping-pong with Hef.

Send Steve a birthday Instant Message. It took me about a half an hour to get that one stupid line to "work" and I don't even know if it does. It might also blow up your computer if you're not logged into AOL IM, so use it at your own risk. I bought Chompy some food at PetCo. They were doing pet portraits and Chompy decided to play with this dog in the middle of its portrait and it ended up knocking over the whole set-up. Good thing I'm a regular there. I then went to the library to make some copies but I only had a $20 so I ended up wasting all that moolah on my FSU card. At least whomever stole my treatise put it back. Now if only the bastard who has had ALL the Soler information checked out since the first week of October would bring it back, I'd be a happy boy. Sadly, I did not write the world's greatest cover letter. I didn't write one at all. I guess I could put off working off working on my thesis right now. I also just discovered control-delete deletes the whole last word, which is great for me because if I make a mistake typing I compulsively delete and retype the whole world. Speaking of mistakes, the grammar I use is terrible. Maybe someone could write a guest entry on comma, usage. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 09, 2004 - Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame Today was your typical average Monday. Atonal was great but Dr. Clendinning dashed my hopes of getting the job at the R'N'R Hall of Fame. She pointed out that the job was more of an Arts Administration opening and she didn't think I'd be qualified. She's right, of course. I still plan on applying. Hopefully I can drop my Dr. Hodges office (the main professor of Arts Administration) and she can give me some hot tips. She wrote me a very nice email and I feel better already. Jamie and I went to Mori's Japanese Steakhouse for dinner. Other than we were sitting with some redneck teenagers (who turned out to be rather nice ultimately), it was an ok experience. I didn't eat any of the weird vegetables but I at least tried to eat everything else. The chicken was not particularly good but the steak was. I also took a two hour nap today so I'm not tired even though it's 12:34am.

Pupdate

I just added a new page to the Mas N' Steel site that deals with the small group stuff. I also typed in "Mike's Journal" to Google and forced myself to read every entry by every link before mine. It took six pages and about 30 minutes but I got it all done. My God, y'all are lucky to have me because I saw some terrible ones. Here's one in particular that was very sad and yet very funny. Here's one that just makes me sick. No one likes that type of music anymore, you hippie! AND you are crazy. Certifiably crazy you crazy guy! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 10, 2004 - Minesweeper Tips Just when you think you have friends, you make a little online quiz and they prove that they're not really your friends. Either that or you just don't hang out with them enough. Ok, at least one of the questions (about the amount of art in my home) no one other than me would really know the answer but the rest I thought were knowable. Anyway, I got to see some really good PowerPoint presentations in my classes today. I admit that I am starting to get really annoyed by the amount of absences some of my students are starting to accrue. When you're on five in the sixth week of school and your 6th fails you, it might be a good time to re-evaluate your priorities. Not that I'm the model student by any means but I've never failed a class because of attendance. In fact, I can count the number of classes I've skipped in my extensive seven years of college on my fingers. If I was going to do the homework, the least I could do was show up. Whatever. The sad part is one of them is a grad student. I've always been a believer in the unwritten law that a grad student can never give anything less than an A- to another grad student but this semester could pose a problem. Fortunately in the past no grad student has ever earned less than an A, so it's been a non-issue. However that was then and this is now. (Name that Wyclef Jean tune anyone?) I SOMEHOW managed to get a 100% on my Bibliography quiz because I was awarded the extra credit question "Question: Define any German term from pages 8-10. Answer: Dissertation: A Dissertation" I didn't think I'd get the point but I guess technically I answered the question accurately. (See February 3rd) After Bibliography I came home and got my ass kicked in online Euchre. For the first time ever, I was not even close to falling asleep in the Caribbean class. Today was no less-boring that previous days and I certainly didn't get any more sleep last night but I somehow was able to stay awake even though my Palm Pilot ran out of batteries as I finished my third Euchre game. I tried to squeeze out some Minesweeper but the batteries kicked it with 40 minutes left of class. There were lots of absentees from rehearsal tonight. I also received the "contract" for a gig. True, it pays $100 but it's for five hours ($20/hr) of performing plus the 2.5 set-up/tear down. Now we're up to 7.5/hrs ($13.33/hr). Ok, this is already starting to get a little low...especially since the rate we agreed upon was $50/hr/person. So as I'm reading this "contract" I notice there's a CD in there with six pieces that they want at their wedding. With the exception of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire, I've never even heard of the songs requested. Seeing as the average piece that requires a full transcription and then an arranging takes between 30-35 hours, with six pieces this puts my total investment at 187.5 hours (30*6+7.5). Now I'm suddenly making $0.53/hr, well beyond the Ugandan minimum wage. Throw in the (MINIMUM) four rehearsals (4*2) and the total is now 195.5 hours. So my end total for this "great" gig is $0.51/hr. Now, I'm not saying this the customers' fault. They didn't know--the problem is that they're misinformed. They agreed to pay for two new arrangements for $20 each according to this contract. Even if they bought the already-printed music from Panyard that would cost them $80 a score. So it's absolutely ridiculous to me that they were quoted $20 each. While it's true I could probably slop a MIDI-skewed version of Ring of Fire together, it would anger everyone: me, because its my name on a crappy piece; the other group members, because the parts would be unplayable and most likely not in their range; and finally the happy-couple-to-be, because it will sound awful. As for the other five songs, they need to just flat out be transcribed. That said, let me dispel a common belief. Perfect pitch does NOT (NOT NOT NOT NOT) allow you to transcribe a piece in one playing. It does NOT make the arranging any easier. It does NOT save any time when typing things into Finale. Contrary to popular belief, the parts do not fall obviously into linear lines when you're listening to it. And GLORD HELP YOU if you have to transcribe a steel band recording. If it's not the intonation completely screwing with you, it's that all the instruments have the same general sound, so it's not like you can easily discern which part is which. WOW WOW WOW WOW. I just got a very nice yet very surprising call from a big group of my college friends. I'm now feeling very Milwaukee-home-sick. It sounds like nothing has changed and I miss that. Those were the best years of my life. My friend Dave is a sales rep for Hal Leonard and I found out one of his states is Florida. On top of that, he will be coming down to Florida in March. I hope I get to see him. Although everyone says that they want to come down here, I know they won't. I can't say I blame them. Anyway, back to my gig rant...I need to call this woman tomorrow and let her know what's going on because the current arrangement is just not going to work. Hopefully we'll be able to reach a happy medium but if not, I guess I'll just have to be a complete ass. Wow, this is a long entry... [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 11, 2004 - Lemonde Flashback FLASHBACK: Wednesday February 11th, 2004 3:48am. There was a massive spillage of lemonade in the kitchen. Roughly four liters of freshly made lemonesque goodness were spilled onto the floor in a freak accident, causing serious damage. I am pleased to report there were no injuries. I'm not sure if it was the late hour or what but for a good ten minutes I stood in the kitchen and just looked at the mess. I tried to convince myself it was a dream and tried jostling myself awake. It was not a dream, though and the reality was in the form of a roll of paper towel and almost a half. Since I only had about four hours of sleep I was officially zombified for Atonal. There was a presentation on Contour Theory, easily the most ridiculous music theory topic I've seen. Apparently, you can make graphs for what is readily apparent in the music. It is my understanding that this graph shows you...well, the contour of a piece. Let's take a little look-see, shall we?

Let's just look at the music example. Note the graph to the right of the page. You (too) can build a graphical representation of the contour of the musical example. It's done by taking the contour, removing the staff, beams and stems, then coloring the noteheads red, making them into true circles and connecting the dots. As this example demonstrates, you can now determine the contour of the line because of the graph. The only other way to determine the contour is to look at the contour of the line of music. But that's no challenge...and you don't get to make little pictures.

In other news, I just saw Kid Rock's cover of Bad Company's Feel Like Makin' Love. It makes me Feels Like Blowin' Chunks. Whatever, I know that was the type of not-funny business-humor running rampant throughout America but I couldn't help it. My day continued essentially with a long, long nap. The four-hour type. Chompy woke me up to go out, so I yelled and tried to reason with her. She was obviously not winning the 10-minute argument and I told her just to get out of my bedroom and to play with her toys. She obediently trotted into the living room and brought back a toy I've never seen her play with. It's this giraffe-print bone and is one of only two squeaky toys in the house. She stood by my bed and squeaked it at 3-second intervals until I finally got up and took her out. The part that kills me is that she only did it to wake me up. Sure, she's brought bones and other (quiet) chew toys to play with when I'm napping but I know she only brought this one to wake me up. That wasn't very nice. Tonight I made a new recipe for dinner--chicken dumpling soup. It was pretty good, though not at all creamy. I think the broth would have done better with wild rice or something but live and learn. Or let die. Also, congratulations to the 1750th visitor. Whomever you are @Home, thank you. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: February 12, 2004 - Caribbean Music Class I'm too tired to write much of an entry. Today was your average Thursday. I didn't go to my Caribbean music class because, quite frankly, I didn't feel like. I had a bit of a stomach ache and I knew sitting there for an hour and a half was going to pose some sort of bowel problem. Jamie and I exchanged V-Day gifts today because her present came via UPS and there was no way I was going to be able to hide a TV. I got her a TV. Duh. A 19" Sharp to replace the 1934 model in her bedroom. She got me an AWESOME signed Led Zeppelin LP. She was able to get one with all four members, which is rare because, of course, John Bonham is dead. It's nothing short of awesome. Awesome. She even framed it. I took the matters of the evil gig into my own hands by writing the bride an email. I tried to be as polite as I humanly could (not very) and hopefully everything will work out. It took me well over an hour to phrase everything right. I hope it doesn't blow up in our collective face because its really not her fault. But at the same time, it's not my fault either. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: February 13, 2004 - Spooky Friday the 13th Since it is Friday the 13th, let me present you with a paper I have been working on. (Don't worry, the real entry is below).

A Transformational Reworking of Otherwise Unreadable Away Messages

Without a doubt, one of the most significant problem in this day and age is the illegibility of computer text. These problems occur for many reasons, current trends in short-hand typing, lazy typing, poor font selection and random acts of carelessness. It is this last category which is the focus of this paper. The particular problem came to my attention around midnight, February 11th. It was at this time I witnessed the following example (ex 1-1)

(Ex. 1-1)

This message appears to be in some sort of code in the form of a Virginia Woolfe quotation. At first glance, the first half of the quotation is completely encrypted. It was my intent to discover the operation that transformed the standard-English into the near-gibberish "code". I started by identifying if it was a right-hand or left-hand error. Let us start by assigning each letter of the alphabet a number 0-25--MOD 25. For sake of understanding, let us speak (when discussing the mapping) in terms of letters instead of a numbers until the very end, when the formula is needed. I noticed the words "gave served" and assumed since they were coherent sentences and could all be typed exclusively with the left-hand, that only the set (Set-A)was going to appear correctly. This left a complimentary set of (Set-B). The only problem with this initial set-up is the subset of (Set-X). This is a problem because this set can be indiscriminately be typed by either hand depending on the individual user.

I thus started by using a right-hand model of I mapping one location left, to U. This initial map did not present valid words (Wineb = Wubev). I then substituted an I/O mapping. The yield for this mapping was very fruitful. This right-hand single-character-to-the-right (herein RHSCTTR+1) mapped "wineb" into "women". The next problem I encountered was the expression "Women gave served". This problem was easily avoided when presented with the possible subset composite of {T,Y,G,H,C,V,B} (Set-X) . This gave me the option of substituting out the "g" of "gave" into an "h" to create "have". By using a composite set of (Set-Y) as a subsistutional set, I was able to extract what I believe to be a coherent quote: Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Admittedly, Set-Y is not consistently used, but in my opinion this was not done for any logical reason by the author. It is my conclusion that this away message is best explained by the operation RHSCTRR-1 (the opposite operation created the problem [RHSCTRR+1]) until the word "glasses".

Wow, who knows--maybe I *can* be a theorist! Atonal class was great today. I came home and tried to take a nap before I was interrupted by the woman from the gig. She could not have been more pleasant. We were able to clear up most of the discrepancies and I am going to see the site on Sunday. Jamie cooked a great dinner of beef tips and mashed potatoes. Chris and Mike came over for a very fun night of drinking. They had to leave early but it was a good time nonetheless. Hopefully as the semester goes on we will be able to get together more frequently. I also met with Dr. Hodges today. She was extremely helpful and I left very motivated to send out job applications. I didn't send any out today but I still felt very confident about getting at least an interview at the Rock and Roll HoF. We had the first visitor from New Zealand tonight. Now I am only lacking Asia, Africa and South America for my world-visiting-my-website to be complete. Hooray! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: February 14, 2004 - Happy Valentine's Day Happy Valentines Day. Just when you thought my color scheme couldn't hurt your eyes anymore...Surprise! Jamie and I went to Longhorn for a VD lunch. Afterwards, I went to Publix so I could cook us up a feast for dinner but we weren't really that hungry so we ordered some Pizza Hut a few hours later. Before Pizza Hut, though, Jamie blindfolded me and took me on a surprise outing. It was to Fun Station! I ran into two of my students there but it was ok--they didn't try to really talk to me or anything. Sadly, the batting cages were closed but we still go to play air hockey. Jamie kicked my ass at the moving-rim basketball game, much to the chagrin of the horde of ghetto youth watching. After that, we ate our pizza and then watched some TV. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: February 15, 2004 - All About Mike Quiz It looks like those of you who put the second dog's name of "Bitey" should probably get a point. Although I did not think I'd want a second dog, Jamie and I saw Bitey (you can click on the picture) at PetSmart today when we went in to buy dog treats. Bitey's name is really Dusty but I like Bitey. He's a pit-bull/chow mix and has the exact personality of Chompy from what I saw at PetSmart. Not to mention he looks like a little Chompy. Well, I didn't get little Bitey, for the record. He was adopted by this weird family that has literally dozens of pets. It's probably better that way. I think Chompy is a one-house dog. However, we did go back just to make sure he had, in fact, been adopted. I don't know if I'd be able to help myself if the Hick Family brings him back. Then you really wouldn't want to mess with me. My two angry pits. Grrr. I also bought some much needed office supplies so I can mail out some more job applications. We also met with the couple that is having the wedding. They couldn't have been more pleasant and were more than willing to meet us at $240/hr (well above the $120/hr Ryan had offered). It sounds like its going to be a fun little gig. They're both on their second marriage and are more focused on fun than cheese, which is a nice change of pace. And the best part is that all six of us can make it! Hooray. Bitey the dog! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 16, 2004 - Car Wreck Today was not a good day. Let me tell you. I shouldn't say it wasn't a good day, because the first 3/4 were great. Atonal was ok, despite a confusing presentation and my meeting with Dr. Clendinning went the best it ever had. Upon coming home, I got to take a great nap. Even the nap was great--I literally dreamt a bass line for a new funk piece, which I was able to write in its entirety in one day. It's called Car Wreck (MIDI)...ooh, I hope that doesn't give away what happens later in my day...

If you were able to guess from the picture and the aptly titled piece, I got myself into a car accident today. I was turning out of the GATE station on Tennessee Street and approaching a red light when it became readily apparently that the pimp behind me in his chromed out Honda civic with 24s and neon glow underbelly was not going to stop in time. A very defensive driver, I tried to get out of his way into the next lane over. This was somewhat successful as I was able to not die by getting out of the way of the pimp but I hit the girl stopped at the light. We both pulled into the BP across the street and a policeman that witnessed it came by to get our (my) information. The girl was about my age and very nice about the whole thing. Blah, blah, blah I was charged with Careless Driving ($93) instead of a Reckless Driving ($190) but that really doesn't make me feel any better. I, of course, had Chompy with me and when I knew impact was certain I held onto her as tightly as I could. She too was unscathed from the incident, thank God. I mashed the girls rear bumper in and bent my license plate and license plate holder.

The worst part was not the actual wreck, or the rise in insurance. I told my dad and he was pissed. He was pissed that I didn't let the other guy hit me. Seriously, he was pissed that I DIDN'T LET THE OTHER GUY HIT ME. This guy was going no less than 45mph and had absolutely no intention of stopping (he was later pulled over when the officer taking my information called another cop to get him). Apparently my dad is more concerned with saving money than the life of his own son. I can't believe he yelled at me for hitting someone at 5mph instead of being hit at 45mph. I just can't believe it. Sorry Dad, as hard as you tried to breed it out of me, I still am hanging on to that basic "don't-die" instinct. My mom (as usual) was very calm and collected and (like a decent parent) was more concerned that I was alive. I just don't understand my dad. At times I think I'll regret not having that "bond" in later years but just because he had poor communication with HIS father doesn't excuse him (this is always the reason my mom cites). I admit, I am not the best communicator in the world, or even in my apartment building but if you think I'm bad, my dad is 1000x worse. And I mean that figure literally. At some point he will hopefully recognize me as an adult (a topic in many posts) but I don't foresee that day arriving any time soon. If he asks me to support his bid in the 2008 Presidential campaign, I will of course. I can think of no one else more qualified in the category of "Must control everything" more than my dad. (Apparently, according to my mom, he was just "grumpy" tonight. I don't care, your damn kid was in a car accident). The other thing I hate is the "call home more" speech. "It only takes five minutes..." Hell no it doesn't. It takes at least 90 minutes every time. You ask me "what's new?" at least a dozen times in that span and every time I give the same damn response. Howabout YOU call ME when YOU have something new to tell me. My days are the most inane, boring, repetitive things you can imagine. You sure as hell don't tell me what's really going on in your life, why the hell should I tell you about mine? Future parents: There's nothing wrong with letting your child know that you are a real person too. Some people actually respect "real people"...just not in my family.

=====Monday, February 16: Pupdate!=====

2:55am: I am saddened to report that Dr. Mean passed on tonight at 2:50. Attempts to resuscitate him failed and he was flushed. He was one of the original batch of fish and will forever be known as being very, very mean and for killing the other fish (in case that wasn't covered in the description of "mean"). He will be missed. He was given a single flush salute. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 17, 2004 - Where Did My Life Go? My brain too is fried.

Today was one of the days, when on your deathbed, you try to think of where your life went. It was just a very ordinary day. Ordinary. What a terrible word. My classes went ordinarily enough with the same people having the same problems they always do. The same people missed class and the same people that sometimes-miss class have the same excuses they always do. I did average on my bibliography quiz. I studied the wrong material so I think I probably got a 3/5 but whatever. I fell asleep (though only briefly) in my Caribbean class again. Rehearsal was slow and uninteresting. We reviewed the same things we always do. True, we did look at some new letters in Pan In A Rage, but I had already practiced them (not that you'd be able to tell--just ask Chris). I did get to play some NBA Jam with XXX, SEX and EEN tonight after studying for my upcoming atonal quiz. EEN and I (PEE) were able to win the two (of three) required of any sort of video game playing. It's now 1:25am and I still have to finish the mock quiz and finish my prospectus to turn in tomorrow. The only atypical thing that happened today was as I was walking home after teaching my first class someone rolled down their window as they drove by and yelled, "YOU SUCK!" While I wouldn't put it past anyone I know to do that, this guy was someone I'd never seen before in my life. It's the time of the semester where we all fall into our respective ruts. This being the case, I thought I'd leave some personal messages for people.

Jamie: You'll be fine. If there's one thing I know about you it's that you always get your stuff together when it needs to be done. I know you have a ton of other things going on and feel like its all spiraling out of control, but we all feel like sometimes and we usually make it. Sending in the application is the hardest part--but it makes their accepting you that much easier.

Brian: I miss you. Things just aren't the same without you. In addition to the fact we all actually need to pay attention to when things are due now since you're not here to tell us, it's really hard being the best video game player. When you were here, after about an hour, you could beat anyone at anything.

Kathy: Be strong. He's a bastard. Don't let Strong-Kathy hide behind Sad-Kathy. You're so much better than that.

Marty: I have nothing sincere to tell you but, on a positive note (maybe), Beth is still in love with you (allegedly).

Chris: I completely understand how someone like you hates about 99.9% of the world because they can't get it together. We, collectively, are very sorry. Well, many of us are anyway. You do a great job of leading by example, even if its not readily apparent that we're following it.

Michael: You are very, very, very good about not getting down about things. So good in fact, that I don't know if you need any consoling. If you do, though, I think everyone likes and respects you because you do more than anyone currently living in Tallahassee.

Steve: I'm sorry that you have to be in the middle of the inner-family fights we have. As you probably have guessed, I've abandoned the idea of not trying to win you onto my side. I know you're not very confrontational and that's a good thing.

Mark: Watch ESPN tomorrow morning so that you can tell me the minute Greg Maddux signs with the Cubs. And don't be so hard on yourself about things. Things will ultimately turn around if you just give it a chance with some positive thinking.

Sorry if I missed anyone, I can only tell who comes here regularly by the ISP and there's a lot of Comcast. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 18, 2004 - Greg Maddux is back! Go Cubs. Seriously. After wallowing in misery for the past 90-some years, the Tribune Company has decided to invest in its post profitable subsidiary, the Chicago Cubs. They missed the World Series by a mere five outs last year and rather than throw in the towel for the next 48 years like they did last time, they actually decided to make a brave run at it again this year by signing a bunch of top players. Today they signed my hero growing up, Greg Maddux. He played for the Cubs in the 80s and I loved him. He was amazingly good yet a very personable guy. Despite racking up the awards, the Cubs got rid of him for money reasons and he played (extremely successfully) with the Atlanta Braves for the last 11 years. When they got rid of him, I promised myself that I won't not be a Cubs fan anymore, so I turned my allegiance to the White Sox. That didn't last very long but nonetheless, I admit it. I know every fan of the Cubs says "this year will be our year" but I think we can say it this year without having to blatantly lie.

I made a STUPID mistake on my atonal quiz which cost me a 100%. Add in the fact that my basic arithmetic skills were not functioning and it make the quiz a lot more difficult. Jamie set a pot of oil on fire at her house, so I watched Ab. We also went to the dog park where a little girl was almost killed by a crazed Doberman. I'm torn...one of the rules to the dog park is that no one under 12 is allowed. Another rule is dogs that are obviously aggressive are not allowed and need to be watched by their owners at all times. In this case, the girl was obviously under 12 but even as the doberman growled and jumped on this girl occasionally biting, its sorority-girl owner very casually walked over while her dog was very much out of control. Dobermans are the only dog I really have a fear of. I can handle the pit bulls and rottweilers but there's just something really scary about Dobermans. I can't believe this sorority girl would let this happen. Her dog had almost gotten into a fight with this huge rottweiler earlier and she didn't even notice. That poor little girl, though, will now have the same unhealthy fear of dogs that I did growing up.

Matt came over tonight and we worked on his wedding music. While a lot was not accomplished, we did manage to get a solid 40 bars of music. Tomorrow I have to teach again and finish the Chopin arrangement for rehearsal. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: February 19, 2004 - Side Income Ah, there are few things like being reminded you were a huge nerd in high school. Thanks Mark. Thank you so much. Here's a little "Then vs Now" picture. I have to say that I'm pretty pleased and feel fortunate that I was able to reshape myself into the me we all now know and love.

Today was another dreary Thursday. Teaching: fine. Class: fine. Mas rehearsal: fine. Small group rehearsal: fine. I sent an email to the Rock and Hall of Fame with my resume and cover letter attached. Except for the fact they weren't attached. It makes up for the fact that the person that replied to me didn't remember to reply and just hit send. Now that's my kind of workplace. I agreed to do some notation stuff for a DM Piano student for her dissertation. Sure, it'll occupy my weekend, but it's a much need $100. With Brian gone, people now pay *me* to do Finale things. Isn't that frightening? I made some wicked awesome chicken noodle soup for dinner after rehearsal. Speaking of wicked awesome, why do people talk like that in real life? And why do they sign up for my classes? Just curious. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: February 20, 2004 - About Schmidt Need a pleasant movie that's both sad and funny--About Schmidt. That's all I have to say. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: February 21, 2004 - Pan in A Minor Never let anyone ever, under any circumstance, know that you know how to use Finale. After 18 hours, I'm finally done with the music examples for the dissertation. The good news, if there is any, is that I'm going to claim my $100 today (I'm writing this a day late). Last night I did nothing but work on this (sort of). Jamie's roommate Jenny had her 21st birthday party last night. Chris, Mike and I went. Before the party, Jamie asked me to pick up some stuff from Mike's Beer Barn, so I went through the drive-through in the back. Chompy hates being in drive-throughs and usually cowers on the floor of the passenger seat. This was no exception. What was an exception was that they had a dog and it leapt up onto the window and start barking in my face, scaring the living hell out of me. It was a little bigger than The Ab, maybe weighing 60 lbs tops. Sensing I was scared, Chompy climbed up onto the seat, made no noise, lowered her head and stared. After locking stares for a couple of seconds the bar-dog, Karma, stopped barking and started whimpering. Chompy continued to give the "death stare" as the dog climbed down on the window. Once the guy came back with the wares, the dog jumped up again and barked one last time. This time, Chompy emitted something like a cross between a wildcat and a yeti. This bar-guy, pulled Karma down and told her to shut up before she "[you] get ripped apart". Good ole Chompy. She then went back onto the floor, shaking, just as scared as ever.

The party was kind of lame and one of my former students was there. There was also some dillweed who claimed to know "everything about Led Zeppelin". I was in a particularly feisty mood and was ready to call him out for a Led Zeppelin throw down but it was time to go. Jamie defended him later, much to my dismay. You don't see me wearing Led Zeppelin T-shirts to prove how much I love the band. Let alone the unauthorized T-shirt of "Zoso". What a tool. I hope I don't see this guy again but I'm sure I will. Maybe next time we can settle it like men.

=====Saturday, February 21: Pupdate!=====

I was taking a break from working on the musical examples for the upcoming dissertation when I decided to go online and see where my hits had come from. I found a couple that brought up links to the University of Florida Steelband (the "Sunshine Steelers"). Naturally, I went to their website. Well, well, well. It appears they stole my format. Although the date "says" it was created in April 2000, that is a lie. When I went to design the Mas Site I looked at all the other sites I could find and only one had a steel drum with image mapping. And I can assure you, while I did steal the idea, I stole it from a company and NOT the University of Florida. As if that wasn't insulting enough, I clicked on the link for their "media" files. On that page is a link to their (version of) Pan in A Minor. Honestly, if we had a recording of our first rehearsal, it would have sounded better than this. What the hell are they thinking by posting it online? So people like us can laugh at it? What's even WORSE is they have the funding for THREE god-awful steel bands and they're all terrible! Why not invest in...something else (maybe a new basketball star?). Here are the links. Have a nice laugh.

Sunshine Steelers' rip off my site

Recordings Page (click on "Pan in A Minor" --it's a *.rm file; God knows why they did that. It doesn't save that much space) [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: February 22, 2004 - Rehearsal Techniques I spent my morning finishing up those scores. Hoorah. They were done but apparently I made a couple mistakes trying to decipher the Portuguese lyrics. Oh well, I hopefully will be able to fix them easily tomorrow. We had rehearsal at 2pm and it went ok. While I can't speak for the other members of the group, I think that very little gets accomplished every week. The problem is that its a very low priority for everyone and rightfully so. God knows I personally don't have the time either to put in as much self-practice as I should. The problem is the potential--we can sight-read something and it sounds pretty damn good. Concert-good if we were at the University of Florida but it just never gets good. What also contributes to the problem is that we really have nothing to practice for. Sure, we have a big gig in a month but that's really not enough motivation (for me at least). And even if people were clamoring for us to play, I don't think the six of us could all get the night off. If nothing else, though, they're great friends and I always have a fun time playing with talented musicians.

After rehearsal Matt and I hung out and wrote some more wedding music. We spent most of the time, though, talking about being old. I can't believe he's getting married! I'm glad I don't have to go through wedding planning. Gag. There's a guy on the Newlywed Game that looks EXACTLY like Dr. Shaftel. My god, they even have the same laugh. This guy's name is Mike, though. I noticed the cache Google has for my webpage is a month behind. Oh well. I had some hits from Finland and the UK today. I also saw a search for "Chompy is a stupid name". Oh yeah? Well ____ (insert your name here) is a really stupid name. And Chompy can kick your ass. Oh, today was the 2000th hit. 2000! Wow! That's like one hit a year starting in 0 A.D. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: February 23, 2004 - I've Got Sunshine: The Temptations Movie I totally almost fell asleep in Atonal today. I don't know why I was so tired--I had already been up for two hours so I thought the sleepies would have dissipated but they didn't. I met with Dr. Clendinning and she pointed out a TON of mistakes. Boo. After class I took a nap while watching The Temptations movie. I had crazy temptations dreams! I can't remember any of them, though. I then cleaned my kitchen. For dinner, I made some chicken dumpling soup and it's pretty damn good.

Tomorrow I am going to submit my plan for the takeover of the steel drum ensemble in detail. I figure I've bided my time long enough and I might as well just show all my cards. I laid out a proposal to set up a small endowment. Usually the initial investment of the endowment is $1m+ but we don't need to pay a professor salary. We only need it to produce $3k a year to buy essentials. With this budget, we can buy a new drum every year and by the time they all get replaced the first one will be ready to go too. Granted this may take some time but if we can get $35,000 together, then we can start to relax. There are a couple grants here in Tallahassee and I'm confident that we can get at least a few of them. Even if it takes 5 years to get the funds together at least then no one will ever have to worry about the Mas budget again. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: February 24, 2004 - Suckfish Where did this picture come from? Typing in "suckfish" as a picture search on google. Teaching was a breeze today! I am so proud of myself for preparing such a great lesson. AND I'm proud of my students for helping each other. Ah, teamwork. None of my friends were in Bibliography today. That left me working with the weird European guy. He's in love with me. He kept on trying to talk to me to flatter me. The flattery worked of course, but only so far. I also got a 3/5 on my quiz. There's the Mike I know and love! I didn't fall asleep in class tonight and saw a nice presentation on salsa drumming. The grad student in my class actually did a nice job. I should have given him more credit. So far there's been no to reply to my six page dissertation-email. I hope I'll hear soon so I can finalize my plans for next year. (Finalize!? Start thinking, more likely). I really have nothing interesting to say today. Sorry. I also have no fun links. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: February 25, 2004 - Music of the Caribbean What a rough day! A ton of people skipped Atonal today. I was extremely confused by the presentation too. I thought I understood it but I am definitely lacking the basic skills that I need. Oh well. I came home and got a lot of cleaning done. My vacuum still sounded like it was going to explode, but I managed to vacuum up a little bit of Styrofoam before the power went out. Unlike previous my-fault power outages, this one wiped out a mile square. Although chastised for buying so many clearance vanilla-scented candles on my last trip to Target, they came in very useful today. I tried to make the best of the power outage and cleaned my kitchen while there was still a considerable amount of light. This cleaning included, *gasp*, a mopping of the kitchen floor. I was able to get off a lot of crap but there are still a couple marks here and there. At least the second version of Chompy being constructed underneath my stove was able to be halted before the last 50 strands of her fur were collected. Once I had to revert solely to candlelight, I went into my bedroom to do some reading for my Music of Caribbean class. I made it through about forty pages before I fell asleep mid-sentence. I remember having weird dreams but I can't remember the topic. I would believe that it could have been about me being a conquistador but I'm not sure exactly. Jamie woke me up with a call and I cleaned up a little more in bedroom since the power had turned back on during my Van Winklesque slumber. After checking my email, the power went out again. I relit all my candles and found my battery-powered electric blue boom box, which I purchased to display my compositional wares for the Fulbright Committee a couple years ago. The sound was terrible but the Led Zeppelin Blues Tribute CD I was playing was even worse. Jamie and I went to Applebee's tonight. We also got some delicious coffee from Java Heads. I hate that place but man, their coffee is great. Fortunately this time I did not have to sustain a conversation with any now-enlightened individuals who had read the Cliff Notes of Kafka's Metamorphosis. I also thought it might be fun to explain some of the art pieces in my apartment, as I take some of them down to help reduce my constant feeling of clutter-claustrophobia. I fear that this page might becoming so large that it will take a long time for it to load. I hope that's not the case, but you never know--according this program, it allegedly takes 994 seconds to load. Although I don't have a degree in math, that seems like it would take about 16 minutes to full load and I have a real hard time believing that.

Today's featured piece is the only Mike-made art in my kitchen. The yellow panel in the lower right-hand corner was supposed to be a flower. I was trying to copy this piece of art I saw on a Soprano's episode when Mark and I used to hang out and eat pork roast every Sunday. This picture had a yellow background and this abstract looking flower with a HUGE blossom. Lacking any sort of artistic talent, I did not draw a small stem with a huge blossom but rather a thick stem with a tiny, misshapen blossom. Oops. It was so hideous that I decided to add some crazy stick-leaves. Once it was done, while I wasn't happy with it, I figured it could be salvaged if I made it into a grouping. I kind of picked the background colors by grabbing randomly into the paint-box. For some reason, I thought it would be more fun to have the crazy stick-leaves look sort of like they were dancing so I made them all go different directions unlike any of the others. Once I'm dead and famous, there will be a huge search for the mysterious fifth panel of this. Not being particularly detail oriented, my first attempt at the blue panel was painted on a canvas significantly larger than the first. I didn't realize this of course until it was done. Although I'm not sure where specifically it is, I think it's probably between the mattresses at Kathy's house. I have named it: Dancing Flowers: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bad Art. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: February 26, 2004 - University of Central Florida Steel Band Man alive, there were a lot of hits from the University of Central Florida today. I just glanced online to see why anyone from there would be checking out this page. They do have a steel band, Black Steel but I couldn't find any sort of recent information. I did find a concert program here but it's from 1998. I couldn't find any sort of site so maybe they're on the prowl to make one. Unlike the website Sunshine Steelers at the University of Florida, I have nothing against UCF. When we played at last year's Day of Percussion at Stetson, none of them really did anything to irritate me, which says a lot. In fact, the only thing that pissed me off was when they were looking for a soloist and someone from USF said something really arrogant--my reply was the now-famous "Just watch my solo. They're going to stop, look at me and say nothing but Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!." I can't believe that trip was over a year ago. In retrospect, that reply wasn't nearly as funny as I remember it at the time. Sadly, even if it was was funny at the time, it's now been replaced by "g--dammit, sometimes you just need a Twix". Unlike the attempt at humor in Lakeland, the Twix comment wasn't intended to be funny at all but Matt Flynn was able to make it funny somehow. That's the magic of Matt Flynn. Anyway, UCF is a-okay in my book.

Teaching was uneventful today and as far as I can tell most of my students got their projects done. Tomorrow morning I need to check them, which means getting up early so they don't have a chance to sneak into the lab and do it after the deadline. As I was walking to class, this huge guy was walking in the opposite direction as me. He was dressed to the nines and obviously had spent all morning getting primped and proper. He and I nodded as we passed but the he says somewhat quietly, "get a haircut". Pissed, I turn around and look at him. Unlike my clench-up at PetCo., I was able to whip out "Go on a diet--all the nice clothes in the world aren't going to help you." Ok, so maybe once the Friar's Club hears about this, they're not going to let me roast Ray Romano, but still at least I said something. I told my students about it. Music Bibliography was unbearable again. What a grandiose waste of my time. At least Meg was there today. I hope she was kidding about skipping next week. We had a surprisingly effective rehearsal tonight and afterwards I made some chicken and dumpling soup for Chris and Mike. Jamie is in Orlando until Sunday night. PARTY!

Art of the Day

This is called Mountain Passage because I couldn't think of a good name when I started it. Unlike with composing pieces, it's easier to name an art piece when its done. That way it's not called "Still Life: Grapes and Tobacco Tin" when it looks like "Baby Vomit: Cocktail Wieners and Mashed Plums". People always seem to like this particular painting and I have to admit that I do too.

As I take down the more hideous paintings, this will be one of the few to be framed and moved to a prime location.

I feel like I should fill in the rest of this space since it's here. Hmm...

Boy, I am just drawing a blank--I started to learn The Kinks' Lola on guitar today but I gave up after identifying a F# chord, which is just impossible for me to play. While I am getting the hang of barring chords, I can't really get to the ones up the fret board very quickly and rather than completely hacking through pieces, I figure it best to stick with U2 songs that only involve one chord for the whole piece. Ooh, burn U2. You like that? Speaking of two chords, we were listening to a piece in my Music of the Caribbean class that consisted of two chords which my professor misidentified as a I and a IV chord when it was clearly a I and a V chord. Admittedly, I don't hear function in music but I can tell you a D - A7 progression is not likely an A7 - D and back progression. Sorry, but it's not. I didn't want to say anything since the class is only about 1/2 music majors and of those, most are ethnomusicology students so I'm sure they'd collectively come up with some reason that "theory" doesn't matter to them. Well, if it doesn't matter--please don't use our labels for chords. You may call them...wait, don't even call them chords. Make up some B.S. term like you do for everything else whenever I try to have a real conversation with you. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Friday: February 27, 2004 - I never intended to create art Man, I was a sleepy dog today. More like a nearly-euthanized sleep. I woke up somewhere between 9am-11am today. At first I thought it was 11am but in retrospect I think it was more like 9am. Anyway, I took the good doctor out and went back to bed. And slept. And slept. And finally woke up around 5pm. Chompy talked me into getting some Chick-Fil-A and since I had nothing to do and could tolerate the peanut oil hallucinations. Around 10pm I decided I would do something...and that something was to clean out my bedroom closet. Now, 37 minutes later, I have to deal with the mess from dinner last night. There's a lot of mess. Seriously.

Art of the Day:

This is easily one of my favorites. The picture does not capture the texture, which is what makes more than just some smears of paint. The color choice was not intended to be patriotic--I only had red and blue paint. This was my first attempt at doing a painting "technique". I don't know what the technique was but it involved weird smearing. Sadly, this piece resides behind my new, enormous desk. The success of this piece inspired a lot more pieces with the same technique but the rest of them are pretty terrible except for one. And when I mean terrible, I mean really terrible.

Inane Art Quote:

"I never intended to make art" - Walt Disney [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Saturday: February 28, 2004 - I am not a Music Theorist It's official. I am not a theorist. How do I know, you say? Well let me tell you. I sat down today with every intention of working on my theory thesis. I hadn't even opened the program when I got a really great idea for a piece. I made myself a deal--once I had the basic sketch of the piece done, I would work on my thesis. Well, well, well...eight hours later I was still working on the stupid piece. It evolved from a soca-style small group piece into a fledgling panorama. It's already four minutes (and when you consider the half-note is 120, that translates to a lot of music) and about 130 measures of fully "orchestrated" music. For some odd reason, when I was a "composer" I never had the time or inclination to write. Now that I'm a "theorist" I've been able to crank out 13 pieces (8 of them good, five--well, not good. Not good at all) since the beginning of the school year. Why didn't I write my damn theory thesis last year to make up for this?

I cleaned up my disgusting kitchen after my 9am wake-up. I then made the rounds of pet stores, since Jamie wasn't here to tell me no. Dr. Chomp and I first drove out to PetSmart on Capital Circle and then to PetCo. I feel like we stopped elsewhere but I can't remember where...oh, Wendy's. The afternoon/night was killed solely by working on that piece. Tomorrow I only have three things to do: job applications (yes, more), atonal project and 7pm rehearsal. My house is completely clean and I'm feeling very future-motivated (just not right now).

Art of the Day

This is one of the small-canvas pictures I have that doesn't entirely suck (in my opinion). It's name: Orga(ni)sm. I don't know why I call it that. It's just a box spewing out some weird sort of squiggly lines. The weird squiggles were created because (shock) I didn't wash my brushes after the last time I painted and they were all caked together in rancid paint. This was my 8th attempt at painting.

In other news, why hasn't Google updated the cache of this page yet? I realize that it has billions of pages to go through, most of which update daily, but still--what about me? I read on their site that frequency of updates depends on how many pages link to yours. I guess I have to sex.com and just have it refer to here.

FSU Quote: "You guys line up alphabetically by height."

- Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach

Is it any wonder why FSU is starring on The Simpson? [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: February 29, 2004 - Leap Year! Well so much for my To-Do List from yesterday. I accomplished none of those things but I was able to cross some things that weren't on my list, such as play SNES NBA Jam and nap. Oh, I lied. I did cross off one real thing--I went to rehearsal. Despite waking up early again, I still did nothing. It was a BEAUTIFUL day today. Low 70s, slight breeze, sunny. So, I thought to myself, how can I waste it? Oh, I know, stay inside and putz around. Mission accomplished Jamie came back from her training thing in Orlando today too. Rehearsal was fine, I just need to stop making a certain facial expression. I totally know I'm doing it but I can't stop myself. Matt was unsuccessful at lighting his massive gastric releases on fire but Lord knows it wasn't from lack of trying. We played through my arrangement of Crazy Train tonight and I think it'll really kick ass. I couldn't believe how quickly Chris was able to play his part. My God. Seriously, my God. I also updated all the links from various CMA webpages so they'll correctly link to the Mas page. Not that it matters, really, because the School of Music redid the whole site, so all of the CMA is just kind of lost in space without any links from the main page. Great thinking guys!

I don't know what the hell this picture is. I found it and figured it shouldn't be wasted in the bowels of the internet any longer. It's so weird that I won't even follow up with a daily art piece. Maybe tomorrow I'll throw the January and February entries into a separate file so this page will load faster for you that are using modern technology...of the 1980s! ha ha. :(

Apparently this is the "Lazy" icon. Furthermore, the "music" icon for today is "Kenny Loggins" and the ogrophy icon is "Where the Wild Things Are". [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·