Total Comments: 209
Old Names: Finicky
First Post On: 04/14/2003 11:19 PM
Last Post On: 08/20/2012 12:10 PM
#1) Monday, April 14, 2003
That is one cute cat pic.

#2) Wednesday, April 16, 2003
"Throwing in a triad or two" can often weaken the stylistic consistency of a piece of music. Using triads brings in a whole lot of tonal baggage. It is difficult to use "tonal" harmonic materials without letting them become associated with functional harmony. And evoking functional tonality should be a conscious compositional choice, not a side-effect of using certain chords.

#3) Thursday, April 17, 2003
www.llamaboy!.com, or www.uri!.com, or www.buri!.com, 'cause everything's better with an exclamation point!

#4) Sunday, April 20, 2003
That sunrise picture is Bootyful!

#5) Monday, April 21, 2003
As I often say: Because Finale is so complex, you can do absolutely anything you want with Finale, provided you can find the workaround or loophole in the programming that allows it to be done.

#6) Wednesday, April 23, 2003
I'm not quite sure I got what you're saying about your cat in your update today. The meaning was a little foggy ... and the tone, Sandburgesque.

#7) Tuesday, April 29, 2003
What is this magical book on how to work out without actual equipment?

#8) Thursday, November 13, 2003
The plural of "aircraft" is "aircraft."

#9) Monday, December 08, 2003
Rutter is the Mozart of banality.

#10) Tuesday, December 09, 2003
It is certainly "patently harmless, upbeat, and easy on the ears," ... and coma-inducing. It's great background music, and the lyrics are interesting enough to distract me from the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the music. And she's hot enough to distract me from the incessant drumbeat. (Compare to the drum tracks in the Who, the Police, Rush, the Beatles, or countless other bands, and you'll see what I mean.) And she does have a better voice than most of the recent American teen idols.

#11) Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Auricle should also have MIDI keyboard input that works just like your KeyboardModel. That's one failing of PRACTICA MVSICA. I can't wait to see the end result!

#12) Thursday, December 11, 2003
I haven't seen any of the four movies you reviewed today, but I look forward to watching the whole LotR cycle when it is all out on DVD.

I got little sense of "pretentiousness" from the Matrix trilogy, except perhaps from the "Colonel Sanders scene." The first movie was well written and fun to figure out. The second movie was a nice exploration of further aspects of the movies universe, but wasn't nearly as deep. Good thing "Reloaded" had some amazing fight scenes, because the third flick didn't even have that. And whereas nearly every event in the first movie could find an explanation, the third movie was way too mysterious about how the resolution was possible. That's just my opinion: YMMV.

#13) Monday, December 15, 2003
It's "Neapolitan", but I have no idea what SCALE that is!

#14) Monday, December 15, 2003
Where can I find a reference to this scale where it's called "Neapolitan"? Slonimsky, perhaps?

#15) Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Does he make you want to see the Matrix again? ;-)

#16) Tuesday, December 16, 2003
A couple of comments about Auricle:

1. Good job! It works nicely.
2. For many modes (I checked C-sharp Dorian) the chromatic scale degrees are not spelled correctly. (e.g. No sensible musician would spell scale degree sharp 7 in C-sharp Dorian as C natural.) The solution to this might be one similar to David Temperley's circle-of-fifths model of tonality: B sharp is closer on the circle of fifths to one end of the C-sharp Dorian scale than C natural is to the other.
3. The plural of "Javadoc" is "Javadocs".

#17) Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Do you mean "melodic minor"? (Harmonic minor is the same ascending and descending.) What do you tell the student who, while trying to perform a dictation of a chromatic melody, complains that the computer is misspelling the notes she plays? Most chromatic harmony has correct and incorrect spellings of scale degrees according to tonal function, even when a single scale can't be pinned down for longer than a few beats at a time. Most minor-flavored *tonal* music, including tonal music based on the Dorian or Phrygian mode uses a leading tone at some point (shall we suggest the existence of a "melodic Dorian scale"!) I don't think it would be too difficult to add some code that requires any note a half-step below tonic always to be spelled as a minor second below tonic. Maybe at some point it will be valuable for you to add a Common Sense man in between your Scale Man and your Simplest-Form Man. For right now, your applet works nicely and shows promise for future developments.

#18) Thursday, December 18, 2003
Thanks, Brian, for your informed commentary.

Okay, Mr. Bush. Here it is one more time so you can understand why you're here: The purpose of the U.S. government and the constitution is to protect human rights (i.e., the rights of human adults and sometimes children). This is not an opportunity for you to pass legislature deciding once and for all about moral issues that are dependent upon individual circumstances (e.g. abortion). Morality is a fine thing to hold in high esteem, as indeed having a poor sense of morality usually leads to violations of other people's rights and thus illegal activity. Whose rights are being hurt by gay marriage? It doesn't matter whether they are "living in sin", or "denigrating the sanctity of marriage" because they are doing nothing constitutionally wrong. The constitution is not a moral document--it is a legal document.

#19) Thursday, December 18, 2003
Umm. Let me know when you find that "proof" in the science journals. I'm not suggesting that it's not genetic: Just don't put words in the scientist's mouths (or Bush's for that matter).

#20) Thursday, December 18, 2003
The article you cite seems to me to be implying that human sexuality and sexual behavior is far more complex than can be accounted for by either genetic or environmental factors alone. Eye color, on the other hand, is a somewhat more tractable genetic question. Many people (some quoted in the article) are trying to legitimize homosexual behavior by reducing it to a simple genetic trait. This perspective simply ignores the (also *quite* complex, but far more important) moral and cultural issues concerning whether same-sex couples are able to provide the same quality of parenting to children. Successfully showing the answer to this question seems to me to be the point from where legitimacy of gay marriage can gain acceptance.

#21) Thursday, December 18, 2003
It's also about parent-child relationships, which aren't necessarily the same across all genders and sexual preferences. The optimum situation for a child is thus to have a parent of each sex. This does not automatically disqualify alternative arrangements. There may even be certain benefits for children living in gay-parent homes. I'm just sick of people on both sides of the argument trying to oversimplify the issue. Taking it on an individual basis is indeed one solution.

#22) Saturday, January 03, 2004
Maybe you can prune your list of search terms down to two or three of your favorites. Some of the searches are quite unexpected or funny, but I don't really want to sort through the whole list just to read those.

#23) Thursday, January 22, 2004
It's nice on the inside and cute on the outside. I like it.

#24) Saturday, January 24, 2004
The person who searched for "Carl Schacter" found your page (www.urizone.net/Words/Music/Enharmonic.htm) instead of a bookstores page (selling his books) because both you and he or she have misspelled the name.

#25) Wednesday, February 04, 2004

"How does one justify the spending of so much money on a program which is experimental at best when other programs are hurting for money within the borders of our own country?"

I know this is a rhetorical question. But if I'm to answer it properly, I need some specifics:

1. What programs are hurting? (And how do you know?)
   
2. Should we be considering the massive amount of government money that has been funding experimental science in other fields (physics, chemistry, etc.) for many years? Should we cut that too?
   
3. What happens to the economy when you redistribute funds away from scientific, technological, and product development research ventures?
   
4. Why is any of this (the visionary astronautical pursuits or the "hurting programs") the governments responsibility to maintain?
   

From the TV news it certainly looks like a war against terrorists now. I'd rather focus my attention on making the right decisions in Iraq now than on what we were doing wrong a year ago.

George W. was talking with his dad. George senior says, "I think I'm going to tell everyone that we've always had it in for Iraq." And George W. says, "Don't let the cat out of the Baghdad!"

#26) Wednesday, February 04, 2004
In the richest nation in the world, the government is not obligated to provide as much. No matter how much government money we throw at public schools, the private institutions will still provide a better education. (I am a graduate of a public high school and a private college.)

Too bad we haven't even figured out how to shield interplanetary astronauts from gamma and cosmic radiation yet. Until that issue is resolved were throwing money into a black hole. (The jokes just get worse and worse.)

#27) Wednesday, February 04, 2004
You are absolutely right that taxing people gives them a vested interest in where their money goes. According to classical economists, currently the U.S. government is overtaxing people. As wildly unpopular Laffer is nowadays, a notable case study for his theory is the recovery of the British economy when Margaret Thatcher slashed tax rates.

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dodson_revivingcities.html
http://www.bized.ac.uk/virtual/economy/library/glossary/glossaryqz.htm#supside

Allow me to make my point by combining two statements you made (in a way you would not have combined them):

"A country with a better infrastructure becomes cleaner, more efficient, and more productive, which would improve our economy in turn. ... At least, send it off to private commercial ventures -- the end result would probably be higher quality anyhow."

(This, of course, is too simplistic.)

Thanks for using the word "cowboy" as an adverb.

#28) Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Just to drive the frivolity home, a famous person once said, "The poor man never gave anyone a job."

#29) Thursday, March 04, 2004
You're going to have to convince me as to why the legality of beer and the illegality of drugs changes the responsibility of the impaired driver.

#30) Thursday, March 04, 2004
But should it? Legalize drugs and this distinction vanishes. (Further, the drug trade would be far less lucrative for the "providers".) If everyone is always responsible (only) for their own actions, justice would be served far more easily.

#31) Thursday, March 04, 2004
In legal terms, the girl was not an adult and the boy was. So, for example, he could buy cigarettes for her, and he would be responsible for the consequences of that. The same goes for providing alcohol to a minor: It does not matter that he was not himself old enough to legally purchase alcoholic beverages, he still committed the crime.

I have to admit this is a technicality more than anything else. The blame really belongs on the legal guardians of the minor who injured the other innocent driver whom she struck. Why didn't the girl's parents know what was going on that night? Misinformation or criminal negligence?

#32) Monday, March 08, 2004
That was a Ford Focus?? It looked like an old Honda Prelude to me. Sydney used to drive a blue Ford Focus all the time on the show. Plus, we get to see the parking garage scene twice in the episode: once focusing on the F-150, and once focusing on the Mustang. You forgot to mention that the first commercial in every commercial break during the show was a Ford commercial.

#33) Friday, March 12, 2004
I'm always bothered by people who pass on the shoulder during a traffic jam.

#34) Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Is there a picture of the birdbath we can see?

#35) Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Pink flamingos would be going too far, though.

#36) Friday, April 02, 2004
Pretty soon you'll be SD-6

#37) Tuesday, April 06, 2004
I think it's actually "Bailey's Crossroads"--definitely a happenin place: good stores, good restaurants, bad traffic (but Seven Corners is worse).

#38) Tuesday, April 13, 2004
I still use WS_FTP 95 LE, but I have to use SSH File Transfer much more frequently now. I eagerly await your evaluation.

#39) Monday, April 19, 2004
I think you mean "one of Anna's sister's house".

#40) Monday, May 10, 2004
I don't want to know how you know what ass tastes like

#41) Thursday, May 20, 2004
The word is DESPERATE.

#42) Thursday, May 20, 2004
You cut and pasted it in the past, right?

#43) Thursday, May 27, 2004
"Consecutive" means "successive" or "back-to-back". A succession of only one year is an odd concept to me.

#44) Thursday, June 03, 2004
Does this mean that, if we leave Iraq and Afghanistan, the terrorists will stop attacking American targets?

#45) Thursday, June 03, 2004
I don't like the "Domino Theory", but I would definitely like to see an end to terrorism.

#46) Monday, June 28, 2004
Here's what Ray Bradbury has to say about Fahrenheit 9/11 and its winning the Cannes award:

"I have won prizes in different places and they are mostly meaningless. The people there hate us, which is why they gave him the d'Or. It's a meaningless prize."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38776

Bradbury is obviously pretty riled up about Moore's appropriating the title without asking Bradbury. But as nasty as that quote makes Bradbury sound, there's a "nugget" in there too. Nearly everything one can say about this film is necessarily a political statement. This, like most political statements made through the public media (television, radio, etc.), is more about "soundbytes", "factoids", and "spin" than about careful consideration of facts and knowledge. This is just as true concerning Bush's speeches, Bush's television campaign ads, and John Kerry's campaign ads as it is of Fahrenheit 9/11.

The main theme of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is fear of society's becoming obsessed with "soundbytes" and "factoids" as opposed to independent thought and decision-making based on one's knowledge and wisdom. Bradbury: "I see Fahrenheit all over the place, these days," Bradbury said. "Programs like Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire are ridiculous. They're the stupidest shows in history. They're making us dumber. They don't give us information, they give us facts, factoids. You don't learn who Napoleon was and how he was motivated. You learn what year he was born, and when he died. That's useless."
http://www.raybradbury.com/articles_peoria.html

Why should we care *why* Napoleon acted the way he did? So we can learn from history, gain wisdom, learn to think critically, and perceive good policy and wise decisions. Ignore the "spin"! Eschew propaganda! Get the facts! Think critically! Educate yourself completely about it before you make up your mind! Most of all, find sources of *true* wisdom! (The internet has no inherent wisdom. Educated *people* are the best sources.)

#47) Tuesday, June 29, 2004
The movie Shrek 2 features FGM, Inc. (Fairy God-Mother, Inc.)

#48) Wednesday, July 07, 2004
You mean "nine years' worth", right?

#49) Friday, July 23, 2004
And if I *don't* have a good weekend?

#50) Thursday, September 09, 2004
"Howdy" is a western thing, I think, but I don't know about the West. I do know that "Hey" has been a southern greeting for a very long time now. Of course it has a much more extravagant diphthong in its original form.

#51) Tuesday, September 28, 2004
I enjoyed Jersey Girl as well. It wasn't exactly what I had expected, and it was a little sappy, but I appreciated its unpredictability.

#52) Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Take that apostrophe out of your possessive "its"!

#53) Thursday, October 07, 2004
Anyone who watched the presidential and vice-presidential debates saw that Cheney is a more intelligent man than Bush. So who are the "ultra-conservative puppetmasters", and how do you know? This sounds suspiciously like a watered-down right-wing conspiracy theory to me. The fact is that Bush is taking responsibility for his policies, even if he didn't come up with them.

From your description, it sounds like the Controlled Apathy party is a bunch of douche bags. Why not do the research, learn what the historical consequences of certain types of policies have been, spend some time evaluating each candidate's policy against established economic theory, and then make a real decision?

The candidates indeed sound too much the same on too many issues, but their political records seem to say otherwise. Bush may well be guilty of pertenaciously clinging to unsubstantiated dogmata about such issues stem-cell research and gay marriage. But legislating one side of moral issues is never going to fly anyway, so I'm not worried about that.

I've never seen any real evidence that Bush's political support for business was intended solely to line his own pockets. I am more convinced that a tax cut on the middle class will do relatively little to create jobs because the poor man never gave anyone a job. Jobs are created when investors have the confidence to take risks and back companies that they think will grow (and create jobs). It seems to me that this is a more reasonable idea than the idea that somehow the President of the Unites States is going to sit down in the oval office one day and say "Hmm, I think I'll create 10,000 manufacturing jobs today."

John Kerry's promise to allow the purchase of cheaper prescription medications from Canada is idiotic. Canada has a socialized health care system. The reason drugs are cheaper is because the Canadian taxpayers are all footing the bill. The tax-paying Canadians will probably not be happy about paying for drugs that they will never see. Why would Kerry make such an unrealistic promise? It sounds good in a campaign ad (when left unsupported by any facts). Both candidates are guilty of spin doctoring their claims by leaving out crucial background information. This is why it is essential for the voter to take the time to research the issues, the candidates' voting records, and the real reasons behind them.

Just as Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes last weekend: If you don't care about the issues, don't vote. If you don't know who your two senators are (or your local representative in Congress), don't vote. If you haven't done any background research on the candidates, their records, or their proposed policies, DONT VOTE!

Just my 2 cents; YMMV.

#54) Friday, October 08, 2004
Lost is indeed very different from Alias, but the soundtrack never fails to remind me of Alias.

#55) Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Don't double the final consonant of a verb when forming a participle if it is unstressed, e.g. "targeting" vs. "upsetting". But why isn't this rule applied as rigorously to verbs ending in L, e.g. "travelling" and "cancelled"? I guess either the final syllables are etymologically stressed (i.e. "travel" comes from "travail") or the word is derived from a root word with a doubled final consonant (i.e. "cancel" comes from "cancellare", which in turn comes from "cancellus", diminutive of "cancer".)

#56) Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Kerry looks more like Herman Munster.

Don't get me started on bad sitcoms!

#57) Thursday, January 27, 2005
Have you considered adding RSS capability to your blog? It would make it possible for readers to get your news updates without having to check the website every day.

#58) Thursday, January 27, 2005
My argument was for convenience, not importance. Frivolity is not much fun if it's inconvenient.

#59) Thursday, January 27, 2005
So how does "my time is too valuable" somehow equate to "I'm too lazy" in your brain?

#60) Friday, February 11, 2005
I watched the first two seasons of 24 and found them entertaining. I heard that season 3 stinks, so I didn't watch that one. I'd be interested to hear the URI! opinion on 24.3 once you exercise your way that far.

#61) Thursday, March 17, 2005
What's with the exclamation point that just looks like an amorphous blob underneath all the text?

#62) Thursday, March 17, 2005
Actually, it's spyware collecting YOUR information for the government! I know why you really got that fancy security clearance, Brian!

#63) Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Syndey?

#64) Tuesday, March 22, 2005
What about the power of 4,8,15,16,23,42?

#65) Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Maybe you should take measures to keep people from stuffing the ballot box.

#66) Tuesday, April 12, 2005
"Housal"? Your poll today is like . I vote for a revival of your "decorate Brian's house" game of Feb. 20, 2004.

#67) Tuesday, April 12, 2005
I would hardly call it "anonymous", considering my comment on April 6. Now that you've removed most of my extra votes, it looks like your polls haven't been all that popular. How about a poll on whether your readers think that the polls have been interesting so far?

(P.S. Thanks for voting for me, rather than voting for my stopping the revoting.)

#68) Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Is that a punny way of calling me "impolite"?

#69) Friday, April 15, 2005
Correction: The song says that "A cookie is a sometime food", playing off of the similarly-named Gershwin tune from Porgy and Bess.

#70) Friday, May 06, 2005
Many people don't know that the Bible is actually a "book by committee". The early church convened a council to vote on the inclusion or exclusion of certain books, and the specific versions of the Gospel that were accepted. With any luck, the Holy Spirit guided the council to choosing the most correct retellings of the Bible stories and the most true teachings on morality.

#71) Monday, June 13, 2005
Funny coincidence: At my all-night grad party (Annandale HS), I won $40,000 in play money at the blackjack table, and won a cheap dual-tape-deck boom box. I didn't regift it, though. It's still in my closet at my parent's house gathering dust.

#72) Thursday, June 30, 2005
Some might call flippancy "veiled angst"....

#73) Monday, August 01, 2005
I like the new color scheme, but not as much as your new style of blogging! I missed Molly, but now I may miss Booty's feet. Maybe Booty can step on Molly's head every now and then for old time's sake.

#74) Monday, August 01, 2005
What a spike!

#75) Friday, August 12, 2005
Cheese, Brian, that was a bad joke!

#76) Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Is that "kneaded eraser" the product of a "Number 2" pencil?

#77) Thursday, September 08, 2005
If I donate to the URI! HKRE, will you relieve us of your bad jokes? (Actually I like them.)

#78) Thursday, September 15, 2005
Don't you get it? It's Brian's BIRTHDAY SUIT!

#79) Friday, September 16, 2005
You had a little 222-things overflow with the hand scars, didn't you? We definitely couldn't let it get past that Sacred Number!

#80) Thursday, September 22, 2005
If you thought that Tallahassee was the "slow South", then you really are a big-time NOVA yuppy. Try living in Greenwood, South Carolina for a few months! (Don't forget, I'm from NOVA too, and I love it up there!)

#81) Monday, September 26, 2005
Is the cat on a leash played using the same technique as the bull-roarer?

#82) Tuesday, October 11, 2005
You can turn off all of that annoying quote and hyphen crap on MS Word, you know. Or better yet, throw out all of your Microsoft crapware and get some real typesetting software.

#83) Thursday, October 13, 2005
1. I'm fascinated with mood rings, but I don't really care what the colors mean. I guess I'm just into colors.

2. When I was little I wanted to be an architect when I grew up. I even took architectural drawing classes in high school and checked out architecture schools for college.

3. Bonus item: I too like my environment to be above 72? at all times. 75 - 77 is perfect for me.

#84) Wednesday, October 19, 2005
I too had a group of high-school friends who had a strange fascination with the purple platypus. Mine has green feet and a green bill, and sits atop my old computer.

#85) Tuesday, November 08, 2005
[dead link] Here's a service for those of us "blonde" enough to cut ourselves with a butter knife.

#86) Monday, November 28, 2005
But we DID just lose to UF.

#87) Wednesday, December 14, 2005
That first photo looks like Springfield.

#88) Friday, December 23, 2005
If "biweekly" were to mean "twice a week", then what word would you use for "every two weeks"?

#89) Friday, December 23, 2005
Twice a week is semiweekly. Twice a month is semimonthly. Every week and a half is sesquiweekly. Every two weeks is thus biweekly. Are you perhaps thinking of bid. meaning twice a day? That's "bis in die", not bidaily.

#90) Wednesday, January 04, 2006


#91) Monday, January 09, 2006
You need another option on your weekly poll for people who keep their calendars on their computer/handheld.

Mouse gets revenge

#92) Monday, January 09, 2006
Sorry: BI-weekly. No heterosexual weeks allowed!

#93) Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Here's how to give you a little more respect for SuDoku: I challenge you to write a computer program to solve any SuDoku puzzle ? easy, hard, very hard, whatever (as long as it's solvable)!

#94) Wednesday, January 11, 2006
The problem is divising the test to see if your programs solution is both correct and unique.

You would want to write such a program in order to test whether a given SuDoku is solvable, or to generate new puzzles. Writing such a program was the first thing Wayne Gould did before he brought SuDoku to the London Times in 2004. It took him several years to develop such a program.

OK, computer geek, let's see your code!

#95) Friday, January 27, 2006
Ahh, I remember Celeste Cheese Pizzas-For-One well. Thanks for that memory!

#96) Monday, January 30, 2006
And $30 and a Friends rerun are most definitely of comparable value!

#97) Thursday, February 02, 2006
I visit the Uri! Zone every day, and sometimes I don't realize that there is a new poll posted. Frequently I abstain from the polls because none of the answers applies to me. I think that this means that I'm a weirdo. Or a freak. Or maybe Brian's the freak. Or maybe anyone who spends time in The Zone is a freak. What do y'all think?

#98) Friday, February 10, 2006
Where was that second bedroom in Florida? Did I miss it on the grand tour of my own apartment in that ugly grey building wedged between the cemetary and the frat houses? (BTW, it's ugly beige now.)

#99) Tuesday, February 14, 2006
My memory is fuzzy, but I think that Dart Drug became People's Drug (before then becoming Rite Aid).

#100) Wednesday, February 15, 2006
It's scary how much your lunch evolution resembles mine, from lunchbox (with spoiled-milk-smelling Thermos) to brown bag in the band room or outside.

#101) Tuesday, February 14, 2006
The Dart-then-People's Drug on 236 in Annandale is now a Rite Aid. Maybe it wasn't a buyout, but simply other drug stores moving into the stores when People's went out of business.

#102) Thursday, February 16, 2006
There are three types of bloggers: those who can count, and those who can't.

#103) Friday, February 17, 2006
You should buy yourself a miniature dachshund wiener dog. That way you could really "Get a long little dogie"!

#104) Thursday, February 23, 2006
I'm havin a little trouble getting to the mp3s you posted.

Among my first students here at Lander (in the same class, actually) are two Ramonas. (Actually, one is named Romona, but I don't hold it against her.) Before this, I don't think I've ever known anyone named Ramona, except for the children's-book character.

#105) Friday, February 24, 2006
...

My two never-opened boxes of unused checks all say that I live in Harrisonburg, Virginia. And I pay for close to nothing with checks, now that I can pay all of my bills online (even the one's that don't accept online billpay) through the bank website.

#106) Monday, February 27, 2006
It's "accents aigus", not "accent egus" (although I only saw an "accent tr?ma", aka "Umlaut", in the titles). I loved your live-action short film plots, especially "Cashback"!

#107) Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Would "Good Night at Good Luck!" be better?

#108) Thursday, March 09, 2006
You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to;
You say orthagonal, I say orthogonal.

I probably would've said "tangential", though.

Why does "Pirate Mark" have an arm growing out of his head?

#109) Monday, March 13, 2006
Oh yeah! The back of Kathy's head is definitely

#110) Tuesday, March 14, 2006
I remember when Construx became popular because I had a set and played with them a lot. My older brother had Legos many years before that.

#111) Tuesday, March 14, 2006
"Music of the Night" = "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes

#112) Thursday, March 16, 2006
I need to get me a question-mark suit!

#113) Thursday, March 30, 2006
I'm always amused by the "Mood Watch" (read "Smut Meter") on Eudora, especially when a completely innocuous email gets a "three-chili" rating for containing a word like "cock".
Good post today, Brian! I would like to point out that, while curses should not be considered naughty, any *#$@in overuse of certain ~(&#@! words saps their *#$(^# power.

#114) Thursday, April 06, 2006
You asked for it!

#115) Thursday, April 06, 2006
Apparently he was alive, but did not live in the "material world". Or maybe those songs didn't really "thrill" him very much.

Or maybe any song that uses I, bIII, and IV is immediately vaporized from his memory. Oh wait! The first song used those chords too!

#116) Friday, April 07, 2006
I remember the parachute activity well! Ours was not brightly colored?just ugly brown and yellow. We had a game where kids would be chosen to run underneath the parachute and come out the other side. The complication was that the kids holding the parachute could lower it to the floor, trapping the poor victim underneath. I don't remember the rules for the game, though. I too never really got the point of the parachute days.

#117) Friday, April 07, 2006
Jinx!

#118) Tuesday, April 18, 2006
So you never Google yourself, Brian?

#119) Monday, April 24, 2006
I-95 boring?!? Obviously you haven't been on I-85 south of Petersburg.

#120) Monday, April 24, 2006
It's in Virginia

#121) Wednesday, May 10, 2006
I would never get a mouse like that because I'm a left-handed mouse user (most of the time). My mouse is symmetrical, wired, non-optical, and doesn't let me down. I'd only upgrade to another ambidextrous model.
You should feed your dead mouse to Booty.

#122) Tuesday, May 16, 2006
To fix your cornstarch problem, you should make a slurry first. Instead of heating all of your broth, put 1/2 cup or so of your broth in a small bowl or mixing cup and vigorously stir in the cornstarch before pouring the room-temperature liquid into the hot soup. Presto! No clumps!

#123) Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Where in my instructions did I say anything about cooling anything down?

#124) Wednesday, May 17, 2006
My sister used to be an avid watcher of Seventh Heaven during its first season. She called it "Stupid Show" because, with it's intended Christian audience, it was cleaner than The Brady Bunch. It eventually got more interesting, but I never was hooked on it myself. It sometimes bugged me when the show got preachy. But it's forgivable. Why? Jessica Biel!

#125) Friday, May 19, 2006
If "friend chicken" was a typo, was "some of my friend started signing their names" also a typo?

#126) Wednesday, May 31, 2006
I agree. My cousins had a house like that, and chasing each other around the house was the only thing that we ever did when I was visiting (as far as I remember).

#127) Wednesday, May 31, 2006
I find the results of the poll amusing since you never defined what the "next level" is!

#128) Monday, June 05, 2006
Hey BU! Good non-spoiler-laden review of Alias: Return of the Rambaldi (aka season five)! I agree with your review, but I was also bothered by some serious character development issues (esp. Sloane and Vaughn) that were unfortunately necessary to get the show back on track for the last hurrah. Also it was like the writers were struggling to do something interesting with Rachel and Tom while bringing back the old plot lines. I'm glad that I too "forgave its issues early on and just went along for the ride". Thanks for introducing me to Alias back in 2001!

Couldn't care less about the bacon contraption, though.

#129) Friday, June 02, 2006
Is Amy Acker not worth comparing to Jennifer Garner, Mia Maestro, and Rachel Nichols?

#130) Friday, June 09, 2006
It's not the journey that matters (at least if you're sitting in DC traffic). Nevertheless, a car is a dangerous place to be in a hurry.

#131) Monday, June 12, 2006
I totally agree with your "best spine-tingling acting moment".

Sloanes transformation in season five (IMHO) wasn't "somewhat forced and sudden", but ridiculous. I laughed out loud during his "change of heart" scene. I understood how it was necessary for the series to have a satisfying end, though. I do think that I could have accepted it given a few more episodes for the transformation to take place.

I don't know why I never got tired of Marshall's comic relief, even when it became overexaggerated. I think that the show needed it, somehow.

I'm with Kathy, though. Overall, LOST is a better show.

#132) Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Necessity is the mother of invention: Would anyone care to give me a digital camera? Such a camera would photograph the true eye candy that is Rob, and would thus be a candied camera!

On an unrelated note, I made some very yummy cheese dip today. (This was not an attempt to attract a camera.)

#133) Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Wikipedia says, "Many people mistake any outdoor cooking, including grilling, as barbecue, which is frowned upon by devotees." I'm no devotee, so go ahead and call your cook-outs and grill-outs "barbecues".

I'm the same way about going home (I hear Dvoř?k in the background) to "recharge". It's an introvert thing.

#134) Wednesday, June 21, 2006
All other things being equal, fat people use more soap.

#135) Monday, June 26, 2006
"People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.?

They must be saying that I'm one of those neoteny-boppers.

#136) Friday, August 04, 2006
It's called a jughandle. A roundabout is a small traffic circle. Maybe there will be a Jersey wall around the jughandle that leads to the toll booth that will be the site of the Garden-State nuptials!

#137) Monday, August 07, 2006
I don't see why you're complaining. The term URI! is already on nearly every blog. Just find where it tells you a blogpost's trackback, URI! Of course that's a noun, not a verb. But it can be made into a verb. You could say something like, "I URInated her entire blog post with my comment spam." Or "URIed that hottie's blog every day, man!"

#138) Monday, August 07, 2006
Fax is short for telefacsimile. The telegraph facsimile machine is much older than the thermal-printer image-over-telephone fax machines from the 70s and 80s. There was also a similar text-based technology and network called Telex dating back to the 1920s, which contributed to the prevalence of the abbreviation telefax for telefacsimile.

My mom (feigning technical ignorance) uses the term "Xerox" as a verb meaning to do anything high tech, especially if the term "zap" could be used instead. For example, "I think I'll just xerox some leftovers for dinner tonight." (Microwave) "Xerox me when you get back from the trip!" (E-mail) "We listened to some music that he xeroxed from his iPod to the car radio." (FM transmitter)

#139) Monday, August 07, 2006
Isn't that what R. Kelly would do with a hottie?

#140) Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Interesting coincidence: I almost bought Finale 2007 last night, because I've been frustrated with Finale 2002: the most bug-infested version of Finale ever. I decided, however, that $149 plus an outrageous shipping charge was not the right price. I'm using Lilypond from now on.

I find that inertia when it comes to upgrading or changing to new and better software is especially potent when it comes to programmers and their text editors. I've gotten used to the quirks and unique keyboard shortcuts of some old version of TextPad, so I'm not inclined to upgrade to jEdit, despite the obvious advantages.

#141) Wednesday, September 13, 2006
I think that I played nearly every game made for the Commodore 64 computer (and then the Commy 128). I think I wasted the most time playing Ultima II, III, IV, and V. Never got to play Ultima VI, though (not to mention VII - UO). U4 remains for me one of the most interesting games ever. This opinion means very little, however: I've never had a game system of any kind other than my home computer and haven't seriously played a new video game since about 1990 (with the exception of a brief addiction to Doom in my freshman year of college and a very brief addiction to Snood in 2000). But man was I good at Jumpman!

#142) Friday, September 15, 2006
Happy (belated) BUrthday!

#143) Friday, October 13, 2006
How many women in your office harem?

#144) Wednesday, October 25, 2006
The worst offender of ... talking in spasms with ... big gaps in between ... is Ira Glass. I can't stand ... listening to This American Life ... for that sole reason.

#145) Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Your trivialization of the democratic process is shocking. I plan on bringing charges against you!

#146) Friday, December 08, 2006
Last time I checked, WETA was PBS.

#147) Tuesday, December 05, 2006
http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/CodeMonkey.mp3

#148) Friday, December 15, 2006
Are you implying that Ultima ][ sucks? Well, I guess I can't deny it, except that it actually became awesome when I learned how to cheat.

#149) Thursday, January 04, 2007
Well you just totally shunned us bus patrols! Do we not exist? (It felt like it--like I could actually keep another kid from putting his foot in the aisle back then!)

#150) Wednesday, January 10, 2007
I think that you should do an "audience participation day" by writing a Mad Libs story. The readers submit their parts of speech in the comments section, and you publish the resulting story the next day. And the story should definitely involve several of your frequent visitors and several of your frequent felines. And if it's got Booty, it should also have boobies.

#151) Thursday, February 01, 2007
I don't get it. It still wasn't good enough once they cleaned up the words so that they don't refer to "darkies" or "massuh" any more?


#152) Wednesday, February 14, 2007
"You remember watching the Lawrence Welk show with your parents when you were a kid, right? Remember that guy playing the accordion? That's Myron Floren. He made a disco polka record. Accordion. Disco. Polka."

#153) Friday, February 16, 2007
But track meets are times that try men's soles!

#154) Tuesday, March 06, 2007
...especially if the pirate movie is rated ARRRR!

#155) Wednesday, March 28, 2007
"The first invite would always have a choice of three different dates (so I could pick my date from the remaining two)." I think that sexing up wenches is exactly what your parties were about!

#156) Monday, April 16, 2007
Hey - Apr 19, 12:11
That's not a real update.

Hay - Apr 20, 12:44
Agreed.

Hey - Apr 20, 12:49
I've got some hay.

#157) Thursday, April 19, 2007
Apparently Booty doesn't like Dr. Seuss.

#158) Wednesday, May 16, 2007
DFACE is tenor clef, not alto.

#159) Monday, May 21, 2007
Didnt you hear that Hasbro has put out sequels to Monopoly, Scrabble, and Sorry? They've updated them for the modern family with no time for bored games.

#160) Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Which Clementi Sonatina?

#161) Thursday, June 14, 2007
I had the single of "Freeze Frame" when it first came out!

#162) Wednesday, June 20, 2007
I have that same bottle, also received from college housing at the beginning of one year.

#163) Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Second most manly? I'm sure that Wagner would disagree!

#164) Friday, July 20, 2007
2005?

#165) Monday, August 27, 2007
1) There ought to be a law against bad grammar.

2) Michael Vick belongs in the ring with his dogs.

3) I hate having to choose between my two girlfriends. Just kidding.

4) In the future when tasty food is replaced completely by vitamin pills, I will wonder where we will get our carbohydrates.

5) The thing about babies is that they're small people.

6) Everything would be alright if only my blog would reappear in BU's bloglog.

7) The only thing worse than a politician is despot.

8) My life is full of part-writing grading.

I did this before looking at others responses, and my original answer for number 8 was puns.

#166) Friday, August 31, 2007
I suspect that for many the point of eggnog is what you put in it (and then how much of it you drink).

#167) Friday, October 12, 2007
You did an inside-the-fridge pic too?
Great minds think alike!

#168) Monday, November 05, 2007
Provide a detailed comparison of the relative merits of the fried chicken served by three major fast food chains, one of which must be Popeyes. Extra points if one of your restaurants is Bojangles. I guess I'm just asking, "What's so special about the Pontiff's Affirmative?"
I can't really answer this question myself, since I don't eat fried chicken. I remember liking KFC, but I don't remember what any others chicken is like. I'm guessing that in most cases it tastes like chicken, though.

#169) Tuesday, December 04, 2007
I'm only picking Trifid because "nothing is cooler than a bari sax", and I think that you should feature it at some point in your completion of that tune. And maybe add some violins, because every good work of art needs some sax and violins.

#170) Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Damp sounds strangely like Trifid.

#171) Wednesday, January 09, 2008
That post was campy! Why? Because it was in TENts!

#172) Tuesday, January 29, 2008
You only go to D.C. once every two years?

#173) Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Nice bari sax, but don't use viola! Use violin, because every Museday Tuesday needs plenty of sax and violins.

#174) Monday, May 05, 2008
I'd rather learn to play the accordion than the accordian.

#175) Monday, May 12, 2008
OK, just admit that you took a picture at 2:22 just to be clever.

#176) Tuesday, May 13, 2008
You mean Keira Knightley, right?

#177) Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Puns marred by typographical mistake.

#178) Thursday, July 31, 2008
Technology 1, Anonymity 0.

#179) Monday, August 04, 2008
You asked for typos. You're getting 'em! First, thanks for finally syndicating your blog. Now I won't forget to read it anymore. You probably want to "expose your finely-sculpted Java parts to unsuspecting passersby" more than you want to expose your pluralization mistakes. Also, there's no "e" at the end of the word lens.

#180) Monday, August 25, 2008
A guy walks into a bar, and the bartender asks, "What'll you have?" And the guy says, "Well, what's good here?" The bartender replies, "We have a drink called a grasshopper that you might like." The guy answers, "Sure I'll try that." On his way home from the bar, the guy spies a grasshopper in his yard. He excitedly says to the bug, "I've just had a drink named after you!" The grasshopper asks, "There's a drink named Eric?"

#181) Tuesday, August 26, 2008
404'd!

#182) Wednesday, August 27, 2008
You mean "forty-eight years' worth", right? B: A typical day in the young toddler days of Barack Obama.

#183) Thursday, August 28, 2008
2000 pounds of Chinese soup = won ton

#184) Thursday, September 18, 2008
I agree with you about No Country for Old Men and Dexter Part Deux (even though I'm only part way through the season). I am, however, really bothered by your use of the Greengrocer's plural.

#185) Friday, September 19, 2008
Speaking of things that "naturally occur in dozens", the box that my grandfather's tie/cummerbund set came in says "1/12 doz." on it.

#186) Monday, October 06, 2008
Ditto!

#187) Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Do you mean that birthday hat wasn't Photoshopped in? (I bet the balloon glare was, though!)

#188) Monday, October 20, 2008
I've been eating a golden delicious while reading your entry. You probably want to win a prize, not a price. You didn't find the apple festival even the slightest bit appealing?

#189) Friday, November 14, 2008
You can't think of any bawdy parts?

#190) Friday, November 21, 2008
I certainly hope that people don't accept whatever Google says is true. In the Deep South, Google Maps is wrong more than it's right. In Greenwood it takes them so long to repave after they've scraped off the top layer of asphalt that they actually paint new lines on the stripped-down road! (...making it also a striped-down road, I guess.)

#191) Tuesday, January 20, 2009
...written for a smattering of woodwinds and Plucky the Duck!

#192) Tuesday, February 03, 2009
It seems to have a little bit of tango mixed in there as well!

#193) Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Hey!!

#194) Tuesday, March 03, 2009
(Not to disappoint anyone...) They used a "butt double" for that scene.

#195) Thursday, March 12, 2009
Wow, I'm actually wearing my Freddy shirt today!

#196) Wednesday, April 01, 2009
URgay!?!

#197) Friday, July 10, 2009
Mu shu is the pancake thing. Moo goo gai pan is ... something else.

#198) Wednesday, September 16, 2009
http://acme.com/jef/singing_science/stratus_cumulus-160.mp3

#199) Tuesday, September 22, 2009
"[The ass bomber], who was on a local "Most Wanted" list, arranged a meeting with [his target] after insisting he had turned his back on terrorism."

#200) Monday, November 09, 2009
...because bacon makes everything better ... even bakin'!

#201) Tuesday, November 24, 2009
365 days project: http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365/index.shtml

#202) Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Everything you do is magic!

#203) Thursday, August 05, 2010
Why do you have to take a poll? Can't you just sense us? 1) Who are you? I'm a music nerd who teaches at Lander University. 2) How do you know me? Brian Uri! and I were at Florida State together and lived in the same crappy apartment complex. 3) How and when did you find this site? 2001ish one of my FSU music friends told me that Brian had a blog. I've been reading it almost daily since. 4) Where is your website? On the internet, silly! I guess the address would help you get there: http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/ And my rarely updated and never visited blog: http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/blog/serendipity 5) What would you like to say to the rest of us? Don't eat the yellow snow.

#204) Tuesday, November 16, 2010
"Listening to Steve Reich that day" is only six words.

#205) Friday, March 04, 2011
Two syllables? Or three?

#206) Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Like.

#207) Monday, August 01, 2011
1) 2002ish 2) Greenwood, South Cackilacky 3) I've enjoyed the URI! Zone over the years for its entertainment and witticism, but mostly I just want to be a part of the URI!Nation.

#208) Monday, March 26, 2012
The local weatherman is probably doing a poor imitation of the correct local pronunciation, which should rhyme with "book", except that the last syllable is unaccented. Maybe he just gets a kick out of getting away with saying the F word on TV.

#209) Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The alto saxophonist should have to play a unison duet with a violin, because every piece needs more sax and violins.