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Tuesday: July 01, 2008 - Man Up! TOMORROW WILL BE THE SECOND ANNUAL LYRICS CHALLENGE!

Happy July! For whatever reason July is one of my least-favorite months but considering that this particular July involves seeing a bunch of my friends in person I think I will like it more than most.

Because I'm an adult now, an adult who does adult things like exercise and make his bed every day, I finally was able to cross "take vitamins" off my list even though I had to cheat by getting Flintstones Vitamins. I just can't do adult ones--they're like these 2" x 2" x 2" cubes of vile. I just make sure to take two of the kiddie ones to make sure I'm not really missing out on anything. Well, I'm missing out on Selenium because those are in my adult vitamins but sadly make up 0% of Barney.

I also did a ton of dishes last night. There's no amount of "manning up" that will ever make me want to do dishes. I might vacuum twice a week now but the thought of filling up a sink and turning my hands into prunes is about the most revolting thing I can think of. I wish they made disposable pots. Hmm. Now that I think about it, you could probably just thicken tin foil a little bit and stamp them out. Plus then they'd be recyclable (although that particular feature is lost on me anyway). Hmmm. [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: July 02, 2008 - 2008 Lyrics Challenge!!! It's time for the 2008 Lyrics Challenge! A lot has changed in the past year...like I actually know last year's winner (Anna) in person (and she still owes me a guest entry). Anyway, the rules are the same--there are lyrics from songs YOU SHOULD KNOW (there are no trick questions) that have been translated to French, then to German, then back to English. It's your job to figure out what song it is and then email me the answers. The winner gets a guest entry! Awesome!!! All entries are due by July 9th at midnight. Good luck!

Song #1
What's with this dissin' homies; my girl?
Why they have to make/received; to defy?
Which us has never, makes at
these types it made so violent?

But you know I'm of their.
And I know you; mine
And that's during the whole time.

To seem it I as fair holly the friend
And you Mary Tyler of Moorlands.
I don't care of this they say anyhow regarding we.
I don't maintain that.


Song #2
She saw that the sight in its eyes
And they knew them better
She wished this evening
And it is now or never
It does not form feels oh so sadly to him
Whoa Whoa Whoa cry Jamie


Song #3
Father McKenzie, that the words writes;
A lecture the person; becomes nobody hear comes near.
Examine, which works. For repairs its socks on the night,
If there's anything he cares


Song #4
If into sad she comes to me
with thousands smile it gives me the free clay/tone
that well she indicates, the clay/tone well
you take the imported that you want from me,
Something.

Fly you small bird arm,
Yes, yes, yes, small bird arm


Song #5
Before a long era me, my brother we made Kyle
From Self-stop sign down long and a road alone.
Suddenly, there a shining devil source…
on the average… the road.

And so it said: "Play best song at the world or I eat the souls"


Song #6
Sometimes I feel
Like I am a business partner for you
Sometimes I feel
Lke mine only friend
The city are which inside the city
Only the angel city
that I together am alone,
we cry


Song #7
He He, said of Mamma, the manner that you shift energy
to make sweat you, energy form to you groove.

Oh, oh, child, you those thing outward journey, agitate a manner
you who it fire to form going, she passage to form.

He, He, baby, if you open to install your honey gutter,
diagonal maintenance far.


Song #8
That is me in the touching of walls
That is me in the headlight
The loss of my faith attempts to maintain with you
And I don't know you
If I cannot do it with No
Me have said too much
Me have enough says me
Thought that I heard you laughing
Thought that I heard you chriping
I tended to think I saw you testing


Song #9
Celia you break my heart
that you shake my confidence newspaper
Oh, to Cecilia, are I downward on my Knee
I you please please to come to the house


Song #10
Where he began, I can not know to begin,
if, but the other part knows it develops much
Was the feather/spring,
and the feather/spring is become summer;
been to believe that you had come the long

Main affecting moving reach hands,
Those, outside ME, which concern you ah,
Oh, tender Caroline,
the good times seem never so well
I'm bent around you not never

Your Name:


Song #1


Song #2


Song #3


Song #4


Song #5


Song #6


Song #7


Song #8


Song #9


Song #10

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Monday: July 07, 2008 - Monday in Baltimore Yesterday I drove up to Baltimore early in the AM to see Rosemary--a friend from college who, along with her husband Matt, I feel like I "just" saw because I saw them most recently in 2002 when they visited Tallahassee. Ah, where does the time go?

My streak of not being late officially ended as I rolled into the Caribou Coffee at 9am instead of 8:30. I blame the Baltimore traffic since (shockingly) I didn't get lost. We immediately took off for the Inner Harbor to hit the Aquarium. Between the iPhone and the atlas, we had no problems navigating through the city (unlike last time) and we spent a good six hours watching big fish swim around. I was surprised to see how expansive the Baltimore Aquarium had gotten--they had all kinds of frog and bird and random animal exhibits. They also had a guide for roughly one out of every three exhibits so any time you wondered aloud why a particular deep sea fish was so gross someone was there with a convincing answer about its noodly appendage. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and I'm reasonably sure that was the first time I'd ever eat at one. 4pm rolled around and after saying our goodbyes and dropping her off at the airport I made it home (somehow) in 45 minutes. I got home at 5:03 and magically dodged both the Baltimore and DC rush hours. I really need to go on my Friends Of Mike 2008 Tour. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: July 08, 2008 - Cubs Get Harden While this might be my worst Photoshopping ever, I'm still excited that the Cubs picked up A's ace Rich Harden (not to be confused with Dan Haren). The A's losing an ace is apparently a ho-hum affair since I wanted to see how pissed off their fans were going to be after picking up perennial AAA All-Stars Matt Murton and Eric Patterson. Getting rid of Murton, to me anyway, is more important than getting Rich Harden. It's too bad Ronny Cedeno couldn't have been packed in that trade.

It's no coincidence that I photoshopped Harden into none other than a Mark Prior jersey (remember him?). Their similarities are striking and I suspect that his story will follow the would-be (Wood-be's if you will) story of Prior. If he stays healthy this year, the Cubs are the best team in baseball, hands down. If he doesn't, not a lot was lost except for small-town Illinoisan Sean Gallagher. I'm sad for him. Even without him (Harden), the Cubs could still win it all IF the NL wins the All-Star game and pivotal Game 7 would be at home. We'll see. [Comments: 4]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: July 09, 2008 - Lyrics Champion Announced! And 2008 Lyrics Contest Champion is...
Kathy!
...and Brian!
...and Anna!
...and Rebecca!
...Tie-Breaker Below!!!

Thank you to all those who entered--especially you from the Urizone who I see mentioned offhandedly from time to time.

If you're competing in the tie-breaker, send me an email (click here in case you don't have it) with your answers. On to the non-rock tie-breaker!




Tie-Breaker #1
Like I by the valley of shade of the death
go me take a sight with my life and carries out there's nothing
causes calm I've which is been a long time starting and laughing
whereas even my mother thinks that my understanding went


Tie-Breaker #2
Johnny, resin your elbows and strongly play your violin.
The hell ground of Georgia cowards and treats the devil's charts.
And if you gain, you receive a manufactured shinning violin
however, if you lose, the devil receives your heart.

Tie-Breaker #3
They all went to the party as you went on a boat
your hat under an eye scarf were strategically immersed an apricot
you had an eye in the mirror as you with of a dance
you are made to attention and all the girls that dreamed an ally and...

Double-Secret Tie Breaker
: Tell me a funny story. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: July 10, 2008 - Making of Chompy I think I've officially found the other "half" of Chompy's pit bull--Australian Cattle Dog (pictured). Chompy is not nearly that skinny but that's the pit bull giving her (as Elena so eloquently so many years ago) the Stegosaurus-like look. I found the picture on one of the many NYC papers in their list of Smartest Dog Breeds, where Australian Cattle Dogs placed #10 (pit bulls didn't place) and German Shepherds took home #3.

I have like ten thousand mosquito bites from being in my backyard with Chompy. There's a ton of standing water out there since my landlord is renovating and on my left arm alone there are 13. Fortunately only a few of them still itch.

If you're one of the people competing for the Tie Breaker, I need your answers by Tuesday at midnight--see yesterday's entry. Believe it or not, I received 1305 submissions for the lyrics contest. Unfortunately, about 1290 of them were from some asshole spammer in India who sent in gibberish in each box. It sucks that you can make things that can auto-post. What was particularly interesting about his spamming was that he went through my form--he did post remotely (like I would do if I were spamming someone). [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: July 13, 2008 - 2008 All-Star Game The All-Star Game is on Tuesday and on Sunday I found out Kerry Wood was going to be replaced by none other than Carlos Marmol. Although Marmol has been awful lately, if he's able to bring his "A-Game", he will be the most unhittable pitcher available. Too bad you don't know which Marmol you'll get anymore. For that reason I'd have to keep him on the bench which is pretty sad. In his defense he'd probably be nervous and overthrow and his fastball would likely be over 100mph so it wouldn't really matter if his slider was 50' off the plate.

Looking at the lineups, I don't really see how the National League could lose except that Cliff Lee is really good. As far as hitting though, I'd much rather have the NL lineup--especially as you work your way towards the bottom. Kevin Youkalis wouldn't even be an All-Star in the Glover Park Softball League, so the fact he's there at all is just fantastic for the NL. To a lesser extent, this is true for Dustin Pedroia. Thank God for stupid Boston fans voting in their crappy players (and crappy players voting for their crappy-playing friends).

The Cubs have too many All-Stars. I would have only sent Dempster and Soto. Fukudome is a fine player but not an All-Star. Whatever. This is the NL's year which is good because the Cubs are going to the World Series and clearly can only win at home. [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: July 16, 2008 - All-Star Game Recap First, to those of you who are in the Tie-Breaker, the results will be posted tomorrow as I evaluate the quality of your tie-breaking stories.

I went over to Jamie's to watch the All-Star game and I really, really thought the NL was going to win it. The pitching on both sides was dominant and although they gave the MVP Award to Red Sox (and FSU alum) JD Drew, I would have given it to Aaron Cook of the Rockies who pitched around Dan Uggla's three-error-inning with the bases loaded and no outs. All of the Cubs played well--even MARMOL who came in the game in the 13th and got through the inning in just 12 pitches with two strike outs. It was a good game so it's hard to assign the blame for the loss. Brian McCann for not blocking the plate when the winning run scored? Corey Hart for taking his sweet time to make the throw? Brad Lidge for pitching into that terrible situation? Clint Hurdle for allegedly making Lidge throw over 100 in the bullpen before he came in the game?

I watched the whole game and when 1:40am rolled around there was a little part of me that it was just thankful it was over. Now the Cubs will have their work cut out for them having to travel to Tampa for FOUR games in the World Series. [Comments: 8]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: July 20, 2008 - 2008 Lyrics Winner Due to an unforeseen glitch in the highly-complicated scoring system, we had to postpone declaring the winner of the 2008 Lyrics Challenge. Had an entry appeared on Friday, you would have seen that Kathy Smith was our tie-breaking winner! She got all of the questions right and while Anna's tie-breaking story was, for my dollar, a little bit funnier, it was first and foremost a lyrics challenge. Additionally, I mis-scored Rebecca's and Brian never sent me his tie-breaker. I think Anna's story was funny enough to merit reprinting so here it is:

So my sisters and I are all standing around talking, and my one sister Emily is lamenting how each of us seem to have something that we're good at and she feels like she doesn't have anything but maybe being good at sports. So she says "yeah it's not fair, Jen has good business sense and Julie is creative, and Anna and Becca are good at academics...I'm just the dumb JOCKEY." She doesn't ride horses...

Below are the answers to the game; the original questions can be found here.

1) Weezer - Buddy Holly
2) Van Halen - Jamie's Crying
3) Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
4) Jimmy Hendrix - Little Wing
5) *Tenacious D - Tribute
6) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge
7) Led Zeppelin - Black Dog
8) REM - Losing My Religion
9) Simon & Garfunkel - Cecilia
10) Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
T1) Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
T2) Charlie Daniel's Band - Devil Went Down To Georgia
T3) Carly Simon - You're So Vain

OMG, a talking muffin! [Comments: 2]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: July 22, 2008 - Life Trends Since I haven't updated for a while I thought I'd get back into it by showing the basic trends of how things have been going for the past week or two. As you can see, my work on the internetwebs has not been going very well and there is a guy in Minnesota to blame. Even though he has caused me great business distress, I wouldn't want to physically harm him--seeing him psychologically tortured would be fine with me.

The Cubs have also been doing really, really badly so I can't even take solace in watching them crush their opponents. When your starting pitcher gives up one hit in seven innings and you still lose...well, you're the Cubs.

The dog has received a lot more attention since I'm not as interested to sit in front of the computer when things aren't going as well. We've upped our walks from 1.2 miles to about double that. I've been breaking it up until two separate walks--one at 5:30 and one around 9pm depending on when the Cubs are playing losing.

In my new spare time I've been practicing and writing a lot more which is never a bad thing. You'll notice, sadly, that cleaning is still nowhere on the list.

And yeah, I'm pretty irritable. So yeah, that's what's up. [Comments: 4]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: July 23, 2008 - The Curse of the Fish When my brother went to Hong Kong he brought me back a camphor fish carving. It was pretty cool so I hung it over my front door in Tallahassee. Unfortunately, these fish were cursed because nothing good has happened since I've had them. Even though I have long-since taken them down, I think just because I have them in my house still I continue to feel the effects of the curse. Some of the things are stupid--like this company sending a package of musical goods to Tallahassee instead of my DC address (and then me embarrassingly having to ask Chris to get them as he prepares to move [which is in like a week!]). Some are more significant like the crushing internet blows these fish have dealt. Now, you might think that life is full of ups and downs and while I will give you that, I think these fish are singularly causing all of the downs. There are of course a number of things that are going my way but all of those were present before the cursed fish (like Chompy).

The reason I thought of the fish was last night there was a storm and when I let Chompy into the closet to hide, she knocked them over. The question fundamentally is: Do I destroy the fish? I feel like it's the best choice to make but if it doesn't solve anythings I'm going to keep having to set various things aflame until I find the right one. And that makes the dog nervous. [Comments: 3]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: July 24, 2008 - Pupis Here's a picture from Steve's gas bill. Last month, like most months, he used less than a 35-cent therm of gas--the bill for usage was $0.34. What I love about this particular bill is that it shows you explicitly how they're the screwing you. Below the usage is your monthly charge so you can see exactly how much they're charging you for...well, nothing. I understand everything has a markup. I recently learned that expensive belts cost just under $3 to produce and they sell for $30--that's a healthy 1000% markup. In Steve's case, he's paying over a 10,000% markup. I need to get into the gas business.

In other news, Jamie and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate the winning of her first case (it's the bottom one of course).

In other news, Chris is going to be here in less than a week! Get your Guitar Heroes ready! [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Sunday: July 27, 2008 - Criminoles I took this screenshot from ESPN's college football page. You might think with football season right around the corner we might be getting updates on...well, football. Living in Washington, I can see crime reports all day long. Yet there on that page all but two of the stories are about crime. Drunk driving, Joe Paterno (elder abuse?), rape, rape, rape, manslaughter, drunk driving, embezzlement, battery. Impressive, I know. It's sad when the Rich Rodriguez sneaking out of a $4m payback deal with WVU is the feel-good story of the college football weekend.

I love college football--I really do. And I went to a school that let the rapists, batterers, and DUI'rs play. What I don't care for is that attitude that it's a few schools--it's MOST Division IA schools and putting our respective prides aside, that's pretty pathetic. I realize that the football prowess of FSU let me go to school there for free but it's still pretty deplorable that these guys are celebrated. I'm not saying you shouldn't play if you've done anything wrong but really anything short of 1st degree murder is punishable by sitting out the first-half. Go Noles. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·