Red Zeppelin

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Weekend: October 01, 2006 - Happy PR Update Ah,cotber. My favorite month. First off, congratulations to Kathy and Fed-Chris Smiddick. Although Jamie and I weren't there physically we were there in spirit as you can see from the picture. We were able, simply by focusing our minds, appear. Unfortunately we disappeared upon opening our eyes so that's why they had to be closed in that picture. Secondly, Jamie aced the LSAT this weekend and we plan on celebrating her 180 in a few months. Way to go honey.

Google put out new PageRanks and the Chompblog finally crawled up to a four after three years as a two. I got all my laundry done this weekend and just about cleaned my kitchen to the point of a normal person's. Finally, all of my popular music CDs are now in CD books leaving me only with about 400 classical CDs to "organize". I discovered I have a lot of REM and I never really like them so. I also discovered I am missing a ton of my original Led Zeppelin CDs including: III, IV and Houses of the Holy. I think HoH might be in my car so I won't worry about that one. Happy October! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: October 02, 2006 - For Sale Google updated the page rank of the sites in their index yesterday and I'm pleased to report the Chompblog has moved up from a 2/10 to a 4/10. What exactly does that mean? Not a whole heck of a lot. It mostly just makes you feel good that you're moving in the right direction with things.

My birthday is a week from today and it was decided we'd be playing a big poker game on Saturday at 8pm to celebrate. Except for Ricky and tchris I really don't know who else I have left as friends. Matt will be coming with his two brothers and hopefully Tim will make the long haul down from Thomasville. christine and Erick never leave their house but maybe we can get them to come too. And that's it. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: October 03, 2006 - Michaer Micher! Lost is back; hooray. This will be the first season we watch in real time and I hope the commercials aren't too annoying. Watching Lost gave me nightmares but I can't help myself--I need to keep watching. I found out last night, while hanging out with Ricky, that Tim was definitely in for poker on Saturday night. Awesome! The day was pretty uneventful so go read barb's blog. Or markc's


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Wednesday: October 04, 2006 - How To Break A Blog If you've never really screwed up your blog by doing something retarded you're really missing out. Yesterday I accidentally deleted the "inc" folder. I would imagine most PHP sites have an Inc folder--it houses all of the files that are to be inccluded to contstruct your page. In this site's case it's really everything except for the individual entries. Long story short, don't delete it--it's very important. Fortunately I had an old backup and I'll finish rewriting decayed sections of it over the weekend.

pchris said it best: Damn Lost keeps coming on when I'm trying to watch my commercials. Since last night was the first episode we saw "live" we were shocked by the amount of commercials. What the hell is happening on that island? Now there are thick files on people? The Others have CD players and Book Clubs? Weirdy! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: October 05, 2006 - Wolfplop Well that sucked. FSU lost to a team that lost to the University of Akron. That's embarassing. Someone needs to be blamed for this loss but I'm not sure who. Drew Weatherford completed most of his passes and did a really nice job of avoiding many, many sacks. Even Lorenzo Booker didn't dance around as much and actually had several nice plays. Jeff Bowden was a little more aggressive. Hmm. Oh that's right the 3rd string defense was on the field. Let's start the blame with stupid penalties and then move to JR Bryant. Man, there are reasons you were playing in junior college. Now, let's move back to Jeff Bowden. Running it on 3rd and 20?!?! Talk about throwing up the white flag. I knew I should have gone to USC.

How little did FSU care about NC State? FSU rented a band! In place of the Marching Nerds was the NC Central Marching Band. They played all of the FSU songs and chants and honestly, they did a really good job. They threw in some weird harmonies to things and you can bet the halftime show was way more funky, if not just all-around better. We were speculating last night what would happen if the game had been in Tallahassee and NC State had decided to use their Phone A Friend to Florida A&M. Weird. Florida A&M hates FSU of course so who knows what would have happened. I bet there would have been riots though. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: October 06, 2006 - Pre-Birthday Weekend This weekend was very sports-y. First off, we played a game of Birthday Poker and everyone was kind enough to let me split the win with AJ although Jamie pointed out that I had more chips when we split and I should have finished her off. Oh well. What made the game so sportsy was the way we assembled players; it was like baseball waivers. First we claimed Tim off waivers from pchris and elena (an excellent pick-up if I do say so myself) and also Heather and Jimmy from chris and Michael. They are a healthy couple. The bicker like nobody's business but it's great to see. Ricky was the only friend that I had made myself and even through him we were able to get our grubby hands on AJ. We started at 8:30 instead of 8:00pm because we were waiting to see if christine and Erick, and Matt and his brothers were going to come. The game lasted until around 12:30am and it made us realize how old we were getting since everyone was so tired.

On Sunday Jamie and I went over to her mom's house for a birthday dinner that Jamie had to buy the stuff for. And cook. And do the dishes afterwards. We watched a pretty lousy episode of Desperate Housewives. Could that show get any more predictable? Seriously, have like a nuclear attack or something. I also tried to make the Guilt Links load faster last night but this version of PHP doesn't have the right attributes of file_get_contents so I still have to scrape whole pages, making things load really slowly. I'll have a solution soon so don't worry. I re-added barb and markc too. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: October 09, 2006 - Happy Birthday This picture is courtesy of jamie who sent it to me as a bitmap. That's right, a bitmap. Ok, keep reading I'll focus the rest of this entry on people who aren't dorks. I am now the big 2-7 which entitles me to a whole new world of things. We went out for dinner at Longhorn then I took myself shopping for presents. I ended up getting a new plastic garbage can for my kitchen and a little TV Stand that was on clearance at Best Buy. My mom got me a deck of playing cards with large numbers on them (because I'm getting old), a replacement for Led Zeppelin IV(!) and, haha, a GRE Book. Jamie's presents are still being flown in from exotic places such as the United States. I wish I had pictures of myself from all ages, so I could make a collage like brian makes every year. Sadly, that's not going to happen. Oh well. Happy Birthday me. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: October 10, 2006 - Ditchy I think I'm over karate. I was afraid this day might come and I'm doubly afraid that is has. The slow moving of lessons and the obnoxious people I have to work with has formally taken its toll. I don't like the fact that young people, the people in middle and early high school, do not have to be as good to test and move up. I do not like having to work with them. I do not like that they inadvertantly hurt me because they don't know what they're doing and should be yellow belts. I do not like that we have to spar with black belts. I do not like the fact there is no class that is right for me. I don't like going to the Easy class because we never learn anything new and I don't like going to the Hard class because they look over purple belts to help people with higher rank. I really don't like the Killer Wednesday class because I truly believe the only reason to go is to get destroyed in the workout. I'm hoping things will change soon because I'm totally burnt out. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: October 11, 2006 - Cheaty Oh Jeffrey, you cheater. It really does not come as a surprise to me that you might have cheated. You've got tattoos on your neck for crying out loud--the kind the wrap all the way around. And your wife...wow. I'd like to see a Project Runway for composers where you would get like a day, maybe two, to write some song with crazy rules. I could promise there would be a lot of drama and a lot of hurt feelings so I think that has all the makings of good TV. You know?

Ah, Lost. Last night I was begging the TV to show next week's episode. I also learned that I had been misspelling Sayid's name all this time. How did the ship-stealers get past Sayid and Jin? I was so worried Jin was going to die and then we'd stop hearing him say things like Miker! Rost! Who knew Sun was so slutty. Oh, oh, that's right--everyone. Next Wednesday will be an excellent TV day if I do say so myself. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: October 12, 2006 - John Bonham Last night I won poker and then forced tchris to watch videos of Led Zeppelin on YouTube. He used The Ocean as an example in his prelims and now knows the song better than me. Weird. I went back to karate last night and now all of God's Accidents have new belts as they tested last Saturday. Everyone with any amount of skill did not test and the ones with the most severe mental retardation moved up to purple. This includes Future Rapist and Raji. I had to work with Future Rapist last night and man, I kicked his ass all over the place. ALL OVER THE PLACE. I adapted the moves to make them way more painful and there was no courtesy holding when taking him down. It is my fear that now he too can attend the upper belt classes and will be my new, permanent partner now that Gorbechev most likely tested for his blue belt. Damn. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: October 16, 2006 - Atlanta Bread Company Boycott As of today I am boycotting Atlanta Bread Company. I think their food is delicious, especially the Oreo Cheesecake desert. However, their "service" is unacceptable. Last night, for the THIRD TIME, Jamie and I ordered take out. We then proceeded to drive across town (with both dogs) to go pick it up. Upon arrival they tell us that they're out of soup. Between us we had ordered three bowls. The THIRD TIME. It's not like they just ran out. They'd been out of soup according to the little bitch working behind the counter. "I'm sorry, I should have checked when you were on the phone". Hell yeah you should have checked. I guess for $6/hr it would have been too taxing mentally to walk over to the soup vat, lift the cover, and confirm the existance of steaming hot chicken and dumpling soup. You stupid girl, if you had told us you didn't have any on the phone it would have been fine. We would have found other things to order, including the tasty shortbread cookies, but no! No! Your blind faith in the contents of the soup trough caused you to err for what is now the third time. Thanks to your apathy the number of restaurants I will eat at in this town has been decreased by a third. Bitch. [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: October 17, 2006 - Que Bonita Last night the Mets lost to the hated Cardinals. Chris was asked by a second company to be a book reviewer for Linguistics materials. Jamie took the fact her cell phone sucks out on me. I watched a show about Asteroids on the history channel. I studied for the GRE a solid 90 minutes. I went to Publix and bought some bread and milk. I forgot to buy margerine and now the bread is essentially worthless to me. This easily-digestable entry is dedicated to our modern times. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: October 18, 2006 - Jeffrey...WHAT??!?!?! Since Kathy didn't get to see Lost yet I won't talk about it. Even if she had, the topic of this blog would have been Project Runway. How the HELL did Jeffrey win. Listen, Kara Saun should have won Season 1. She didin't but I was okay with Jay winning. Last year Santino should have won. He didn't but I was ok with Chloe. Jay and Chloe weren't AWESOME but they were both very talented. Uli should have won. She had the best collection period. Laura's was good and Michael's was hit or miss. Jeffrey's as...ugly. Like most of his stuff it was ugly. He went over budget. He dissed a mom. I don't know how he won. He might have had the best creativity but if you're churning out crap who cares? I could be the most creative composer in the world but what good would that do me if all my pieces were for amputated body parts being used as drumsticks on a bass drum made of tanned polar bear hides to be performed by midgets on unicycles while wearing masks of Gore Vidal? Would anyone even notice the piece was in mixed meter? [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Thursday: October 19, 2006 - Dedicated to Poker-Chris Last night at karate I formally complained about the low quality of my partners. I flatly told them that I learn nothing for weeks at a time because unless I'm working with Christine the people are simply too bad for me to get any better. Oops. There was no verbal reply just a nod. I went back into the dojo and within a few minutes out came Kolin, a blue-striped belt (two ahead of where I am for those of you playing at home) and despite his slow eyes and terrible stutter, he whipped me. Total and complete humiliation. AND my biceps have a ton of bruises from all the times he whacked me in exactly the same spot. Even though it totally and completely sucked I did learn more in that class than I had in months so as of now I am not going to complain about physical injuries provided I am learning. Speaking of physical injuries...
Abby some how got out of her cage while Jamie was at work. Here are the clues and you can play detective:
Abby is loose from her cage. Her landlord said neither she nor her husband were in the house during the day. There were streaks of blood on the floor. The blood came from Abby's ear and around her eye yet she had no blood on her, nor was any fur out of place. The cage is damaged--the bars are bent INWARD. All of the blood and drool on the floor was between Abby's cage and the front door. She did not veer off for the food bowl nor the water bowl. Here's the big one--the cage was LOCKED when Jamie got home. Chompy can unlock her cage by biting the cage door and shaking but she's never successfully relocked it from the outside. I went into Abby's cage and tried to push it open and could not widen the door from the cage far enough for her to get out. I outweigh her by 120 lbs and could leverage my feet against the back wall of the cage. Abby could not. She did not sneak out of her cage. Abby was also in good spirits although extremely tired. Solve the mystery. Speaking of mysteries...
Why can't anyone beat me at poker? Why am I so good? Special thanks to Ricky and AJ for their money! [Comments: 1]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: October 22, 2006 - GRE Madness I had an exciting weekend hanging out with Ricky and Jamie and doing a lot of laundry and cleaning. Had two sheets not been hiding at the very bottom of my bedroom closet I would have gotten all four hundred and sixty six loads done. Oh well. I found out my parents will not be visiting me next week so the serious cleaning I put on my kitchen might not have been as valuable although I'm sure anyone dining and and around my home will find it nice. I learned that I am not nearly as smart as I was 5.2 years ago when I last took the GRE. My diagnostic test revealed a 680 on the verbal and a whopping 430 on the math. Ouch. When I took it the first time my math score was way better than my verbal. I guess I read more than I do math nowadays so whatever. It was disheartening that after studying the geometrey section again getting a score in the 400s. The algebra and trig sections came up nicely though. I'm the most concerned about the writing. They suggest "changing the style of your sentences" and I don't even know what that means. Don't start everything with "I..."? At the end of the day even if I bomb and get 430s in each section and a 1/6 on the writing I can still go to FSU. Hah! [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Monday: October 23, 2006 - Six Feet Under I first saw Six Feet Under at Mark C's house in 2001. We would typically watch The Sopranos and eat a delicious pork roast that he would gingerly prepare Sunday nights. Six Feet Under just happened to be the next show on and, before we had more important things to do, we would just sit there and keep watching HBO. Flash-forward to now and I am watching the show again except this time the weird Edited For Basic Cable version that's aired on Bravo. They have to bleep out a lot of words (actually bad overdubbing) but last night they showed a naked man's ass. I had almost forgotten what a good show it was. Whomever did the casting should be canonized and who wouldn't love the droll writing style? I remember once hearing an interview with Michael C. Hall on NPR and Terry Gross asked him if he was gay in real life. His reply was something like, "Why doesn't anyone ever ask me if I'm a funeral director in real life?" I don't remember why exactly that stuck with me but it did. Anyway, it's a fantastic show if you've never seen it and I would highly recommend it to anyone. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: October 24, 2006 - List-y Let the applications formally begin! Man, I totally remember why I hate academia. Send these forms here, those forms there. Gag. It's now officially crunch time so I'm trying to be good in my spare time either studying for the stupid GRE or assembling clumps of information. I had been telling myself for as long as I could remember to "go big or go home" and only to apply to schools that were great and excellent. Last night I chickened out and added Wisconsin (Madison) to my list. I also decided to expand my list from Cornell, Yale, Michigan and Northwestern to include Princeton, Peabody, Cal and Wisconsin. Eight schools seems like WAAAAAY too many but once you pay the application fee the worst part is over. I'm pretty sure I will get into Wisconsin and Northwestern but the rest I really have no idea. I'll get into Wisconsin because it's not a great music school and Nothwestern foolish accepted me for the same program five years ago. I'm really hoping they don't look at the GRE and move right into the Publications and Performances list. I guess that's a best-case scenario and shouldn't hope for it. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Wednesday: October 25, 2006 - Tag! You're It! Tag rule (from ): Simply load your entire playlist on your favourite music-playing device (be it an iPod, WinAMP, your 99-disc CD changer, or a comely soprano named Katya) and hit the Shuffle button. Then, use the shuffled playlist make the soundtrack for the movie of your life, using the life events in the table below. The choices Shuffle bestows upon your life will range the gamut from completely nonsensical to eerily perfect.

Opening Credits: Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train - Oh God, this is not the way I wanted to start. Matt Flynn is somehow involved in this scene.

Waking Up: Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm - Dude, I don't even like this song. Apparently I wake up in a really creepy mood.

First Day Of School: Jimi Hendrix - Manic Depression - My playlist is 50% Led Zeppelin! Where is it??? I guess in this movie I get beat up a lot at school and it gets me down.

Prom: Kenny Logins - Danny's Song - Ok, it's a totally lame high school but this one could work.

Life's Okay: The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby - Looks like life is okay.

Driving: Eric Clapton - After Midnight - I am strung out on cocaine while driving.

Falling In Love: Led Zeppelin - The Lemon Song - Squeeze my lemons...till the juice runs down me leee-eeeg. I am obviously in love with a total tramp.

Breaking Up: Poison - Every Rose Has Its Thorn - Finally, one that's dead on. I was obviously in love with a total tramp in the late 1980s.

Mental Breakdown:Sublime - Summertime - I would have to be having a mental breakdown to be listening to this song.

Reconciliation: Beastie Boys - Three MC's and One DJ - Apprently we got back together after some sort of male-dominated orgy.

Wedding: Four Seasons - Working My Way Back To You - My 1980s whore-wife must have picked this one out.

Sex Scene: Ricky Martin - She Bangs - Awesome.

Birth of Child: Bad Company - Bad Company - Either the child was unwanted or is a little terror. Or both.

Dance Sequence: Silverchair - Findaway - I know this song about as well as I know how to dance.

Flashback: Motley Crue - Kickstart My Heart - I'm learning a lot about myself by doing this Brian.

Final Battle: Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina - I guess I lose the battle.

Death Scene: Led Zeppelin - The Wanton Song - The last good song Zeppelin wrote.

Funeral Song: Fuel - Shimmer - My bitch wife, who knows nothing about me, must have picked this one.

Closing Credits: Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me - Now there's a life well-lived.

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Thursday: October 26, 2006 - Weekly Poker Both and made good on their tags but we're still waiting on . Last night I won poker (again!) because I am simply too good to be beaten. Within a five minute span in head-to-head with Jamie I had four sixes twice! Ouch. It's easy to win when you have little skill and cards like those. It was a drama-free game with Ricky and AJ; was working. I still have not heard back from my very irresponsible recommenders and I've got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know it's not a big deal yet since it only takes about 30 minutes to write a letter (I wish I could use some of the one I wrote for students and then sign names to the bottom) but when you're in the dark on things it never feels good. I've made up a solid musical resume and the publications list looks pretty darn good if I do say so myself. I need to sign up for the GRE still and take it in a couple weeks just to get that hurdle out of the way. Good times. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Weekend: October 29, 2006 - Saw 3 Over the weekend I finished up my personal statements for my schools and started the "solo work" piece of my portfolio. I still haven't heard back from MW or EJ which is really, really, really starting to make me nervous. I go to meet with MS tomorrow morning and hopefully I'll at least run into EJ. I'm going to start stalking soon and that will not be fun for anyone. MW was a total flake when he was my professor and I would have to imagine that he's only getting worse with each passing year.

I also saw Saw 3 with Ricky and AJ over the weekend. The last time I went to the movies was to see Saw 2 with Miker and Kevin. Speaking of Miker, I had tagged Chris and he had in turned tagged Miker, who is slightly blogless. That being the case I was sent his iPod tag for posting. So, with no further ado, here is Miker's Tag:

Opening Credits: N’Sync, Bye Bye Bye: No, no, you just got here!

Waking Up: Sean Paul, Get Busy: Hop to it, Mr. Man

First Day Of School: Nickelback, Savin' Me: I was kind of a dork in High School...

Prom: Daniel Beddingfield, If You're Not the One: Aww, that’s sweet.

Life's Okay: The Postal Service, Sleeping In: Exactly.

Driving: Avenge Sevenfold, Seize the Day: I don’t even know this song

Breaking Up: The Beatles, Hello Goodbye: Well, there you go.

Mental Breakdown: Britney Spears, Boys: Haha, the cause of ALL my worries!

Reconciliation: Eagles, Witchy Woman: Make-up-sex with Bette Midler from "Hocus Pocus" mmmm

Wedding: The Little Mermaid, Kiss the Girl: I'm obviously straight in this movie... or I’m the best man or something...

Sex Scene: Black Eyed Peas, Pump It: Enough said

Birth of Child: Backstreet Boys, I Want It That Way: Selfish bastard...

Dance Sequence: 311, Beautiful Disaster: With all of the techno on my computer, I had to get an alternative song for dancing

Flashback: Dashboard Confessional, Hey Girl: Yes, looking way back into my past, like to another life I lived before this current one

Final Battle: Cascada, Every Time We Touch: "Today in Kitchen Stadium, it is the 'Love Battle.'"

Death Scene: Destiny's Child, Jumpin' Jumpin': I die in a bar fight at a booty club

Funeral Song: Good Charlotte, The Anthem: Yes, I would like the song at funeral to have a line about "Shake it three times, you’re playing with yourself again."

Closing Credits: Cake, It’s Coming Down: Grab your umbrellas. We’re obviously leaving the audience with the tone of the Breakup Scene.

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Monday: October 30, 2006 - Monday Monday I've spent the past couple days at working with a new hybrid of languages--AJAX. Thanks largely to and Ricky I've actually got a nice little program running. If you haven't read 's Tag then you should go check it out. broke the Atlanta Bread Company boycott and scored us some soup last night. Six Feet Under kept me awake until 12:30am again. And there was my day in a nutshell. Tomorrow I am meeting with Dr. MS in the morning so we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping pretty well but I guess we'll have to wait and see... [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·

Tuesday: October 31, 2006 - Harroween I skipped the first hour of work yesterday to go meet with MS before he left for the SMT conference in LA to explain to him why I felt myself worthy to go get a DM. I think he will write me a good letter; he remember more about my teaching than I did and made me feel really good about it. He also told me to not bother applying to some of the schools on my list because I wouldn't get in, including his thrice alma mater, Yale. If it were someone less nice I would probably ignore than advice but deep down I think he's right. I have been out of school for a long time and since Yale is free everyone applies there. He made it sound like Cornell and Berkeley were my best bets because they were the most liberal with their applicants. At first I was a little bit offended but it's true--I have a porfolio full of publications and awards but they're mostly for steel drum things. I've dropped out of school and let's face--there are more "willing" students out there. Not to say I'm not willing to learn because I am but there are students where the education process will encounter less resistance. I enjoyed MS' classes and I really got the sense he enjoyed teaching so I think he's a good example and will heed his advice. I have the GRE next Tuesday and will now only will worry about sending it to five schools instead of nine. [Comments: 0]· permalink · · ·