No Finale yet, because they decided to leave my apartment number off the shipping address. It's supposed to arrive today instead, along with an Amazon shipment including Peril's Gate and a wall calendar. Now maybe I won't be so chronometrically impotent. They're also changing all the locks in the building this afternoon. Looks like someone lost the master key again.

In my spare time, I've been playing Wizardry 8, the final game in a series that started back in the 80s. It's gotta an incredibly stupid and clichéd story, but it's fun, and has that cheesy retro-ambience quality of the old-school role-playing games. It kind of reminds me of Might & Magic VI on Ritalin.

It's supposed to get up to 80 today with sunny skies. I could really get used to this weather.

"Playing 'Bop' is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing." - Duke Ellington

I finally got a key to the audio closet in KMU 340, so my deprived ghetto class of sightsingers no longer have to pretend to hear the music. I don't see what the big security fuss was about -- the closet locks itself when you close the door and there's no way to forget to lock it. I especially like the part where I originally couldn't get a key because "we've had several things stolen from the closet because the door wasn't properly locked after non-music education classes". Theory/comp is definitely living the thug life. We steal records from other departments and sell them for profit at the local music store monopoly.

Tallahassee is not supposed to be this cold. This city can't do anything right.

I'm accepting a counteroffer from the sellers on the previously mentioned house. No doubt the next couple weeks will be a whirlwind of forms and expenditures.

Yesterday's notable search terms:

klamath weed storing, julia mays clarinet, facts about prostitutes, the meaning of i was married by a judge i should have asked for a jury, only animal with one ear, bryons molds

It was just this weekend that I finally wrote "2006" on a check without thinking about it, rather than writing "2005" first and then using creatively curvy lines to give the 5 a sex change (sex is German for six, you see). I like the fact that I was born in 1979, because then the last digit of my age syncs up with the year we're currently in 75% of the time, so I'm not as likely to forget that I am, indeed, 26 and not 25.

I've done a lot of adult activities in the past three years, from buying a house, and starting (then ignoring) a 401k, to designing and decorating rooms with gauzy curtains and walnut shelves backhoes and NASCAR photos. However, I didn't truly feel like an adult until Friday afternoon when I poured myself two teaspoons of Robitussin DM, swigged it down without hesitation, didn't grimace, and didn't require a chaser to evade the taste. Voluntarily drinking cough medicine and not minding the flavour -- how much more adult can I possibly get? There was a time when I'd rather stay sick than take any kind of medications (except for citrus-flavoured Dayquil, which is historically tasty).

I'm sure I'll revisit my level of adultery once I have kids, but that's a good three months away, at least. In the meantime, I'll just wait for my sister, or Anna & Ben, or any one of my many married or soon-to-be-married friends to start popping out the pipsqueaks so I can be the jovial uncle figure that swoops into town on holidays and spoils the kids rotten because they're not his own, and tells them that the sun sets in the west because of the big magnetic tractor beam in San Francisco. How cute would it be, for example, if there were a Kelley Jr., and it was a girl?

In a double whammy of an adult wake-up call, I also got called for jury duty on February 6 (my first tour of public service for the people of the United States). To prepare for this, I've been diligently rereading Runaway Jury by John Grisham, since it seems to be representative of the way you serve on juries. Maybe if I bring a bottle of cough syrup as a beverage, the prosecution will be unnerved enough to dismiss me with one day served and $30 in my pocket. Then I can blow that cash at one of those Hispanic brothels that are always in the news these days and call it a day.

First Annual Impromptu Weekday Virginia Tech Poker Night (without Doobie)

Kelley and Shac were in town yesterday, auditioning for the chance to play at Foggy Bottom when they open up the Metro stations to street musicians, and they convinced me to hold a mid-week Poker Night instead of writing an update for today.

1. Shac
2. BU
3. Rosie
4. Chris
5. Kelley
6. Jason

Happy Birthday Katie Meskil!

Memory Day: Comedy Records

While driving home from the super-secret pencil factory in Bailey's Crossroad yesterday, I stumbled upon an Interview with Ray Stevens on XM Radio channel 2 -- I was trying to get to UPOP on 29 and didn't hit the 9 fast enough. The interviewer himself was annoying, as most interviewers and talk show hosts are wont to be, but it was a fun trip down memory lane to hear some of Ray's greatest hits and his commentary on them.

To shamelessly milk this bit of nostalgia, I've decided to post recordings of my favourite comedy songs from my youth. While everyone else my age was listening to the New Kids on the Block or U2, I was enthralled with comic masters from the 1940s through the 1970s, and I'm fairly certain these songs played a huge part in the development of my obviously-hilarious sense of humour. Everyone has heard of Weird Al Yankovic, but there was an entire subculture of funny records and tapes before he was even born. There's nothing un-work-safe in this collection.

First comes Ray Stevens, whose ongoing career spans comic hits like Gitarzan and The Streak as well as popular serious tunes like Everything is Beautiful.

Next up is Tom Lehrer, a satire pianist from the 1960s. This song from his 1965 album describes how to make Catholicism more popular with the masses.

Allan Sherman's shtick was to write new lyrics for existing songs, and then sing them himself, even though he had a barely passable singing voice.

Before there was such a thing as political correctness, Bill Dana played the role of José Jiménez, a fellow with a very poor grasp of the English language, and a tendency to mix his H and J sounds.

Spike Jones, the earliest of the comic artists, rewrote popular songs of the 40s using a ridiculously odd set of sound effects and percussion instruments made from tin pans and washboards. His City Slickers band is best remembered for Yes! We Have No Bananas and the obnoxious song, All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. This sample is their take on the plot of the opera, Pagliacci.

The versatile Stan Freberg was both a satirist and advertising man, writing the musical, The United States of America, as well as the classic commercial for Chun-King Chow Mein, where Chinese people eat hot dogs every day.

Of course, not every artist made more than one funny song. For everything else, there was Dr. Demento, who made it his mission to compile all the funny songs onto single CD collections.

Hopefully these songs will bring a smile to your face at work on Hump Day. Which one was your favourite?

Friday Fragments

the underpants of the Internet

♠ A song that I'm currently addicted to is Sweet About Me by Gabriella Cilmi, yet another artist from the "my-voice-is-way-too-mature-for-the-fact-that-I'm-only-sixteen" ranks (like Joss Stone). I first heard it on XM Radio, and have been repeating it regularly ever since I downloaded it.

♠ Even though it currently stinks, I've decided that I'll renew my XM subscription for another year, because CDs get old and I can't imagine actually learning how to use the old-fashioned radio to find songs. This is more important now that my CD player sounds a little staticky, following the electrical problems I had last week.

♠ It turns out that my battery had become completely drained last week (damned car vampires) which meant that it couldn't even be jumpstarted successfully. Now that the new battery is installed, the car starts incredibly fast -- to the point where sometimes it revs up as my key is moving towards the ignition. I'm now out the cost of labor and towing, but maybe I can win it back at poker.

♠ This weekend marks the first game in the 2009 URI! Poker Tour, although kitchen size necessitates a smaller pool of players. Generally, we play Basement Poker where ten people can comfortably play together (nine if someone has EXCEPTIONALLY BIG... blinds), but in the cold winter months we move upstairs for Kitchen Poker. Maybe this summer we'll brave the mosquitoes on the back porch for some Itchin' Poker (and when we start our world tour -- Chichen Itza Poker).

♠ When I was a yuppy child who owned every single Choose Your Own Adventure book, Chichen Itza featured prominently in book 11: Mystery of the Maya, though I pronounced it as "Chickenitsa" which might also be a pasta dish. This book was only memorable for two reasons: it had really horrible illustrations (almost as bad as the ones in From the Mixed of Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, where the title character's head looks like the cross between a Cabbage Patch Kid and a cirrus cloud), and the illustrations suggested that YOU, the reader, might be a chick. As if chicks could read back then.

♠ Speaking of chicks, our wedding date has been set for October 3, 2009. The wedding colours will be puke puce and parchment yellow, and the ceremony will be officiated by Ella.

♠ Have a great weekend!

Weekend Wrap-up

Apparently, all you need to call yourself an Old Times Photo Booth these days are some props and a sepia-tone camera filter.

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken in the Spring of 1992 at the Alexandria City Science Fair. With a dad who was an economist, our science projects always had to involve statistical significance and run for about 18 pages longer than the teacher was actually expecting. This year's experiment was a survey of students to see if they would buy the larger bag of chips or the smaller single-serve bag of chips, and why. The overall conclusion was that kids will buy the cheaper one and don't care about the environment.

The worst part about this science fair backboard is the clash between the 2D construction paper border around the title and the 3D construction paper effect on the rest of the boxes. This is probably why I didn't not make it as a commercial artist, besides that whole colour-blind thing.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Built To Last by Jim Collins:
This was the latest reading for my work book club, and was not as good as last time's Good to Great. It felt like a 10-page pamphlet padded out to a full-sized book in search of a publisher. The anecdotes are less interesting and more repetitive, and most of the observations in the book aren't very actionable.

Final Grade: C-

Justified, Season Four:
This turned out to be my favourite season of the show. Although the long-term plot is obviously just a skeleton to hang the fun dialogue and characterization on, the characters remain complex and well-acted, and have grown organically over the series. I especially enjoyed Patton Oswald as "Constable Bob".

Final Grade: A-

Under the Microscope by Ripplegroove:
This is a fun mix of jazz fusion charts that reminds me of Chick Corea and Return to Forever.

Final Grade: B+

New Super Mario Brothers 2:
This might the laziest Mario game of all time. It's like there was a mandate that only the World or Galaxy series were allowed to do anything interesting or innovative anymore. The entire game is obligatory and expected, with ghost houses, a grass world followed by a desert world, and stupidly numbered levels on a pointless overland map. It's polished and fun enough, but you'll only have fun with it if this is exactly what you're expecting -- it's like the McDonald's in Paris of video games.

To instill some excitement, there is a meta game requiring you to collect one million coins to get a special prize. Since I was only at 3% of that after a complete run-through, I looked online to find that the epic prize was (hover for spoiler) that Mario turns gold on the demo screen when the game first starts up. I would have been pissed if I had actually tried to complete that challenge.

Final Grade: C-

List Day: This Day In Emails

• January 23, 1997: I get an email from a Canadian girl in the Role-Playing Games chatroom that I help run. "Hiya Bweeeeenie.. *huggs* aw.. so howjsa doin'?"


• January 23, 1998: John Ross, the professorial understudy for History and Analysis of Musical Styles (HAMS) sends out class notes about Bach's Vocal Music. "Most striking is noting how despite things change, things stay the same."


• January 23, 2001: The School of Music at University of Kentucky confirms that they have received my graduate application. "Your credentials thus far look impressive."


• January 23, 2003: I remind my ear training students to do their Practica Musica homework. "Please remember that Sanghee Lee is not obligated to help you with PM problems outside the lab."


• January 23, 2004: I communicate with my mortgage company, now that I've submitted a contract for my Sterling mansion.


• January 23, 2008: The Metadata Registry is down for 5 hours. "Walt Powell said that a symbolic link to an OS library became lost around 1 AM this morning, and it was easy to repair once they tracked down the BIOS password to the machines."


• January 23, 2011: My dad tells me what to look for when shopping for new kitchen cabinets.


• January 23, 2013: I inform Evil Mike that I have acquired my tux for his upcoming wedding. "The 2nd shirt is identical to the 1st one, so it must be for grass stain emergencies, following the Red Rover pictures at the Carlyle House."

Baby Consumerism Day

Because there is rarely a legitimate situation where you can say "As a mother..." or "As a father..." without sounding douchey, I am opening up the floor today to all URI! Zone readers who are farther along the progeny track than we are.

What should we buy that is indispensable? What seems useful but never gets used? What should we avoid?

The general rule of thumb I've learned so far is to avoid anything that only has 1 advertised purpose, and fill those needs through multi-purpose items and/or leftover Amazon Prime boxes. Enlighten me further!

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: 17 Years Ago Today

Seventeen years ago today, on Wednesday, January 23, 2002, I was in my first year of grad school at FSU. After a morning class of Pedagogy of Music Theory II which was about as useful as it sounds, I came back to my cinderblock apartment to work on the second movement of my string quartet. I then played Wizardry 8, a new game which I liked for about a week before getting bored.

In the afternoon, I received two packages. The first contained Finale 2002 which I used for music composition until 2011 when it stopped working with Windows 7. It also came with a stylish blue water glass that's still in my cupboard today. The other package, from Amazon, contained a wall calendar titled Cats Into Everything and the newly-released Book 6 of the Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts. I read this 700-page tome religiously over the coming weeks, interrupting my on-and-off reading of The Muse That Sings, a self-serving book filled with composers talking about themselves.

In the evening, Mike, Kathy, Mark, and I went out for dinner and then saw latest Oscar-bait movie, A Beautiful Mind. I remember liking the mid-movie twist, as we were all in the naive early days where twists weren't overdone and using "Shyamalan" as a verb (as in "They really Shyamalan'd that ending") still had a positive connotation.

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today, on January 23, 2003, the music theory basketball team at Florida State University faced off against the team from Lucy Ho's Chinese restaurant in the Tallahassee recreational league.

Unlike previous games, where we were awful and had people serious about trying to get better, only 6 people from our team showed up and none of them really cared about basketball. As a result, we were still awful but had a lot more fun than a typical game.

In spite of our latent ability to identify leading tones in four-note chords, we lost tragically to Lucy Ho's, 51-21 (2 of those 21 points came from me). By the time the season ended in February, we had a PERFECT record.