The Toadless Boy

I use the term “underpants” but don’t technically know the definition. I doubt you do too.

Are they things you would wear “under pants” or are they “pants” that you wear “under” things?

Doesn’t that just blow your mind? That means that our whole solar system could be, like, one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being.

My favorite thing a “computer user” does: self-diagnosis.

Self-diagnosis typically involves these steps:

1. Notice something looks/works/sounds/feels “different than it used to”
2. Wiggle mouse
3. Tap monitor
4. Email (or call, if it is the email that looks different) computer guy
5. Suggest “I think I have a virus”

The number of emails I get that are signed off with “Do I have a virus?” or “I think I have a virus” is about the same as the number I get signed off with “Thanks” or “Please help.”

Possible symptoms or causes of a virus, according to a user:

• The bag of Cheetos they found in the trash suggests someone was here overnight putting a virus on their specific computer
• They got spam sent from their own address
• The screen size does not match the size of the monitor because a virus caused “the pixels to stop talking to each other”
• They have not had their computer plugged in to a surge protector for YEARS

I’m talking Papa John of pizza fame, not John Pappajohn of College of Business fame.

This post is a present to my loyal readers.  I’m not sure who all is reading me yet, seeing as many of my friends have not added me to their blogroll and I have received 6 comments (4 being spam and one being my own test comment) since this blog’s start.  So here is your reward.

I frequent many deal websites.  Thanks to these sites and my own constant cyber-window shopping I know reasonable prices for many items I would never ever get.  Occasionally I catch some awesome deals.  I have some sweet Bluetooth stereo headphones that I purchased from Woot!  I’ve rocked these for a while now on my iPod as a proud early adopter.  There is rumor that iPods may eventually get wireless capabilities but did they have them in February of 2006 like this guy? No.  Woot also hooked a brother up with a sweet MIMO router set with 6 wireless cards for under 100 bucks.  I now get wireless in my basement, my attic, most of my barns and out to my pond.  The router supposedly gets one mile range with line of sight.

Anyway, this post is not about how awesome Woot! is. (That will come later.)  Most deals I find would probably not interest the average person but this should as everyone has to eat.  I stumbled upon a promotional code for pizza on a couple of the sites I check out that is hard to beat.  I’ve successfully used it once.

The code requires you to order Papa John’s online.  That seems like a weird idea to some, I’m sure, but I have ordered online for a long time and I love their interface.  It makes the process of removing/adding an item on half of a pizza very simple.  Anyway, once you have an account and are ready to order, choose Enter Promotional Code at the top navigation and then enter PHILLY.  This is for a buy one, get one free on any type of pizza of equal or lesser value.  Yesterday, for 15 bucks, I ordered Jayne and I two large BBQ chicken and bacon pizzas (mine without onions).

The deal is good on anything that I’ve plugged in.  It also runs till December 31 so you can get many a use out of the deal.

50 bucks for wireless headphones may not be a grand deal because you don’t need wireless headphones (until you’ve tried these badboys).  But everybody eats pizza.  Might as well eat free pizza.

Thanks to Our Town: Independence by KCRG, TV9, I am now aware of some sort of marketing firm in Independence. I caught only a quick glimpse but they were called something along the lines of Marketing In B____. I did not catch the final word and being a reputable marketing firm they have no phone book or Internet presence so to keep only the most passionate clients. They were most recognizable however for their groundbreaking logo. Being a bit of a logo nut, I immediately made note of the fine MIB logo they made to look just like the critically-acclaimed movie of the same name.

I immediately relayed my knowledge of such a firm to my lady, Jayne, and being an award-winning journalist and an aspiring lawyer, she recognized the importance of good marketing. I could tell she was getting quite excited at the prospect of a powerful marketing firm in her own backyard. To be honest, I was a bit offended.

With 5 years of school and a business degree under my belt, I was a little hurt she didn’t think to turn to me and my vast marketing experience. So I panicked and began to vamp, offering up (for free) all the clever marketing slogans that MIB would have charged an arm and a leg for:

!Yo quiero Jayne!

Frogs all croaking “Jayne - Lay - Dee”

A well written editorial: 2 hours pay
Website updated daily: 3 hours pay
Award-winning newspaper: priceless
There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there’s

Damn, that’s groundbreaking! Slogans coming soon to a blog near you!

I believe I’ve railed on this before, if not in cyberspace, at least in meatspace.

I’m getting in to more coding lately (PHP, CSS, HTML, ASP.Net and SQL mostly) so I’ve been throwing myself in to a lot of tutorials.  Some of these tutorials teach you to do pretty cool things.  Most programmers (and general internet nerds) are horrible at spelling, though and I don’t get why or how.

These are the types of guys who make a living (or at least a hobby) with words.  Program languages are unforgiving too.  Most of the time the Internet’s excuse for bad spelling is “well u new wat I ment.”  But in programming, if you spell a word wrong, most likely the computer is not going to know what you mean.  You have to pay very close attention to detail and remember the syntax of everything you are writing.  How does this not come natural to someone when writing any other language is like poetry to them?
Mad props to these programming studs for their cool CSS navigation menu but dude it’s a “hazard” when some site stops accepting entries and the Dukes lived in “Hazzard.”  And yeah I called programming poetry.

Lily is younger than me and making damn good music, the kind that depresses me when I find out she is younger than me. From what I have heard, she is somewhat self-made thanks to MySpace (and YouTube for me). The single, “Smile” should be enough to get you hooked. The rest of the album matches up to it.

Lily has kind of a constant theme of revenge and general anti-boyfriend-itude throughout. Oddly enough, I am not threatened by her style or themes even though she sings about having sex with all of a guy’s mates and letting everyone know he’s quick and no fun in bed. Maybe it’s the tone she has and the fact that she could say anything with the beats, melodies and voice she is using. I also think it may be because she delivers her lyrics really well. Nothing seems fake and I find it easy to understand her tone of voice through the songs. Those parts of the song just seem like her defensive tough girl facade. The music isn’t filled with any “ooo baby”s or anything else to lead me to believe that it should be awkwardly mouthed while attempting to look sexy while rolling in the sand. Sand is not sexy. It is scratchy.

I’ve heard Lily even called a British rapper. She “raps” occasionally but she is no rapper. She has a great voice and some of her songs have an upbeat hip hop beat. I am not very familiar with the workings of pop music but I assume what are the samples she (or her producer) uses are really interesting and very well delivered. “Everything’s Just Wonderful” sounds like she is standing in an elevator laying down some sort of tune to the Muzak playing in the background. The beats all banging in her head. “LDN” is about riding her bike through town on a sunny day because she lost her license. It sounds just like that.

9/10

The Title: Someone I know worked in the evenings grading tests. Funny responses come up often and one of the better sassier responses to a “science” question from a fourth grader simply read, “Why do I have a ruler, how will that even help me?”

The Album Art: I had an SLR (not a digital) handed down to me. I have had SLRs before so it wasn’t all that huge but it did come with two lenses. One was a zoom lens with auto-focus and another a macro lens with auto-focus as well (although my anal-retentiveness tends to switch over to MF). Anyway, I thought I would try it out so I hooked it up to my dad’s digital SLR and shot the lilies around the farm. I got some great shots of lilies and lettuce and ants and anything small.

Song with a Mission (The Sounds)
This was the first single on The Sounds’ excellent newest album and I didn’t think anything real special as an opening song but I saw the Sounds in Dallas and this song really kicked.

Eat This City (Thunderbirds Are Now!)

Smile (Lily Allen)
This is the new single from a British pop singer. She gained her fame through everyone’s favorite website that will molest your child, MySpace. I don’t know about molesting your child but it does molest my eyes and my sense of style everytime I go there. Anyway, her entire album is really good pop. This song is holds the tone of the majority of her album: sugary pop masking bitter bitchiness. Possible album review coming shortly.
September (Earth, Wind and Fire)
Honestly, this song should have been in a monthly mix a lot sooner. I’ve been opened up to EWF and I’ve been hearing this song in several places. Not during June, but in an earlier month Jayne and I were doing our pointless, trips to Hy-Vee with “no shopping agenda” at 2 in the morning. They play some really damn excellent music there. Try it out. Go after midnight and listen to the tunes. Anyway we always dance in the aisles and it is often to this song. A fine song. They’ve sold many a Brach’s candy and 7ups to this song.
First Day of My Life (Bright Eyes)
Evil (Interpol)

Shasta Beast (Eagles of Death Metal)

Four Word Letter (Part Two) (mewithoutYou)
I saw mewithoutYou (alone) at Gabe’s before it shut down for renovations in June. It was a good show and I have seen this band more than anyone else. They got some new stuff coming in September and I am super prepped for it. The folks in the crowd sure knew the band (kind of surprised me) and were singing along to many of the songs. It was my first time at a show in a while (thanks to Iowa’s huge scene) and I thought I was playing it cool by picking out a spot behind a fat, short girl. This is prime standing space up front because she’s fatter creating more of a buffer zone for other people around me and she’s short so I can see over her. A song or two in to the mewithoutYou set, I was puked on. My prime spot turned in to a disaster.

Girl Is On My Mind (The Black Keys)
This band is a simplistic retro band with two members and they happen to be from Akron, Ohio, perhaps why their album is called Rubber Factory. When I listened to this album, this month I was wearing a tight shirt and pants and rocking the headphones while strolling through Iowa City in the summer. I felt pretty badass, to say the least. Very soulful, pensive and sunny.
Like U Crazy (Mates of State)
They’ve made the list before. Seriously, if you haven’t checked them out, please do. Ignore the fact that they are traitors and left the “Heartland” (Lawrence, KS) for LA.
Crooked Teeth (Death Cab for Cutie)
At work, my boss runs a free Musicmatch station. By free, it means they don’t have any obligation to stream more than 15 songs a day. I’ve heard Rose Royce’s “Car Wash” a million times and other songs I am not familiar with. One day he went home early and so the new guy I’m training and I hooked up the old iPod. I let him choose as I obviously should like anything on my own Pod. This album was the choice and it was a refreshing change of pace from Bonnie Tyler.

Mess (Ben Folds Five)
Lyrically not applicable but such a great cathartic song. Puts me in a Hy-Vee parking lot on a rainy middle of the night with Jayne. Yeah, we shop Hy-Vee a lot.

Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt (We Are Scientists)
The video for this band was done by Kiv of The Lonely Island fame. QB question someday.

Heel on the Shovel (Sixteen Horsepower)
This is a really odd Christian band I listened to back in the day. They strike me as one of those weird dirty Hippies for Jesus kind of groups. I don’t know if that’s what they really are but their sound definitely lends you to believe that. A great sound of a strange bluegrass you haven’t heard before.
Between Us and Them (Moving Units)

Kicking the Heart Out (Rogue Wave)
This song is very cryptic and I’m sure it doesn’t apply to me (besides being good music) but one lyric talks about how his baby wants another degree. His name is also Zach. So we have two things in common.
Vision of Division (The Strokes)

Eli, The Barrowboy (The Decemberists)
Some would say it is weird how much I care that my dad finds some of my music enjoyable. I don’t know what to attribute it to but I have a few ideas. The early years of my life I raided his record collection so now I want him to hear the fruits of the seeds he sowed. Also, we spend a lot of car time together and if I can get him to listen to something I like as well it works out well in the end for both of us. I tried to get my dad on these guys a couple years ago but he wasn’t in the right mood and turned it down. This month while cleaning the garage I played these guys and he loved them.

This month, I whittled down my final list and then made even further cuts. Some of these songs didn’t make it despite having some role in my month.

Honorable mention:

Catch My Disease (Ben Lee)
He played Iowa City for the Arts Festival and it was an enjoyable show. I prepped by listening to his very poppy album. This is a decent single but definitely not a lasting song that deserves such a high honor as one of my monthly mixes.

Tent In Your Pants (Peaches)
Believe it or not, this woman used to be a kindergarten teacher. She has some crazy songs but her newest album, Impeach My Bush, is really quite decent if you are in to her sound. She has some messages in her songs aside from most of them being sexual. She rails on pimps, war and Bush among other things. I think in a genre popular with so many Bush followers, freaky dance-y sex rock, it is very daring and noble for her to take a stand against Bush. I imagine the backlash she may feel may put her in the same sort of situation the Dixie Chicks had to endure.

Vicarious (Tool)
This song is like any other Tool song. It’s single worthy although it is 7 minutes long. It builds and builds until it has some staccato moments by Maynard and then a huge double kick drum fill by Carey and then a quick finish. Interesting also that they open their album with 7 minutes. Most albums hit quick to get you hooked. I guess though if you are still buying Tool albums you don’t really need a quick introduction to their sound, just listen to all their previous stuff. Either way, I really liked this song but there was no way I was carving out 7 minutes for Tool in my month. Plus the sound never really fit anywhere.

Bucky Done Gone (M.I.A.)
This song was playing between sets at the mewithoutYou show and I was laying down some mad rhymes while I was waiting for the show to start. I tried to get it in to this mix but not a single transition from a previous song worked. Sadly, it got cut.

Muse released an album on Tuesday called Black Holes and Revelations. It sounds like other Muse I have heard, namely Absolution. It also is very “eclectic” one could say. Each song seems like it is easy (for me at least) to make at least one comparison to some other specific band or song. I guess I never was a diehard Muse fan or I would have maybe taken offense to them sounding like they are doing Muse-infused impressions of their favorite influences. But really I see it as a pretty good album because all of the “impressions” of other bands they are doing sound pretty good.

Don’t misunderstand me. This album isn’t like some cheap ripoff of other bands; there are just songs that are heavily reminiscent of other bands. For example, remember how the Keane album that just came out was supposed to be “edgier” or something like that. I think this is it, because that Keane album blew and if anything was more girly. Also, despite the album cover looking like Pink Floyd, I don’t necessarily hear any Pink Floyd in the album. Of course, I don’t hear too much Pink Floyd ever.

The first song, “Take a Bow,” is the type of Muse I know from Absolution with a slow build up in to a sort of anthem. Muse songs always have a “here we are, here we are, here we are, HERE WE ARE, there we were” element to them. The next song, “Starlight,” has got to be their single (I don’t know without keeping up with the radio). It also should have been the first single for Keane’s “edgier” release. It’s the Keane I was hoping to hear. It’s also better then Keane, in that, it goes somewhere.

“Supermassive Black Hole” is a weird song. I read it as a joke. They strike me as drama nerds and in this song they are kind of like, “Haha, aren’t we coy with our cute nerdy attempt at being sexy and soulful?” We all know drama nerds are neither sexy nor soulful. I read it the same as a nerd’s take on Justin Timberlake or Beck during the “Debra”/Midnite Vultures-era. Surely Beck wasn’t taking himself seriously then. The song can’t fully be devoid of drama nerd influences so the chorus has to call to NIN. I mean look at the title of the song, for deus’s sake.

In the “single,” I was getting a brief hint of the arena-tude of Depeche Mode (along with a hint of treason); “Map of the Problematique” not only tastes the DM wine but it swallows it. I love this song, but I sure laugh when I listen to it because I picture the guys in Muse listening to Depeche Mode in a dark basement as youths.

“Soldier’s Poem,” a slow somewhat boring poem, reminds me of Rufus Wainwright as does the next song, “Invincible.” “Invincible” sounds like Keane was commissioned to do the closing credits song for 28 Days Later. The cheese factor of Muse really comes out in these two songs.

Muse definitely finished this album too. The biggest sign of a weak album is one that doesn’t finish, an album where single #1, 2 and 3 are tracks #1, 2, and 3, respectively. Most pop albums read this way. “Assassin” is quick moving and opens like some old Nintendo song where you are in a hurry before time runs up on shooting the bad guy with your little pixelated ray. “City of Delusion” covers a part of Muse that I felt was missing from the rest of the album. When I think of Muse I think of flowing strings and orchestral pieces. The song contains some of the strings and at the end has a trumpet break. The break seems out of place which makes it even more kickass.

As the Muse likes to build up the album, they must like to finish it up too because the last song, “Knights of Cydonia” sounds like the farewell song while credits roll of some Tarantino-esque Western or Bubba-Hotep. Have you seen that movie? It’s excellent.

Black Holes and Revelations is solid and definitely fits all the rules that this anal-retentive album listener has laid out for it. For it to cover, other people’s ground (and sound) is just an added bonus.

7/10

Surely by now, if you have the Internet or cable, you have heard about or read the transcript to Alaskan senator Ted Stevens rant about the Internet. This was last week’s news and I was going to say something about it then. People have been giving him a hard time about it. There was a song created (then supposedly taken down by MySpace) based on his rant and Jon Stewart made fun of his tube analogy. I think the points people are making fun of him for aren’t the ones I would focus on.

This man obviously doesn’t know much about the Internet. What old person from Alaska does? But either way he’s still driving the legislation that could affect the Internet. And if I was trying to explain bandwidth to old people I would probably use the tube analogy myself. There are some flaws in his analogy because of the complexity of the Internet and I wouldn’t be able to fully grasp it. People also seem to be riding him for the whole “personal” Internet idea and how he said his staff sent him an Internet. He very much meant email and I’m sure he knows that.

The part where he really scared me and I could tell he was just a crazy, angry old man was when he started going off on that “Internet” a member of his staff sent.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

No, sorry dude, that is not why.

Reading the text of this excerpt doesn’t do it justice. You can tell he doesn’t know what he is talking about and is just rambling, but if you listen to the audio, you can tell why he’s rambling. He’s rambling because he’s angry. He’s angry because he didn’t get an email. An email that his staff probably actually didn’t send until yesterday but told him they sent it Friday.

Listen to the audio to really understand. He’s just grumpy and wants to legislate based on absolutely no facts.

I reference Achewood constantly and will do so until everyone and their brother is reading it and overusing jokes like it was Napoleon Dynamite or Family Guy. In my previous post I was looking for a past Achewood comic to reference when I said, “for a good 8 seconds” because it reminded me of one of the best side characters in Achewood, Nice Pete.

I could not find the archived comic and thought I would come back to it and just discretely add it later. I emailed Jayne because her Achewood knowledge is much greater than my own. In the meantime, I began my own search. In doing so, I re-remembered several things about Nice Pete.

Did you know:

• Nice Pete is from West Virginia (this is what WV is like, much like the movie Bubble)
• Nice Pete plays basketball
• Nice Pete is not allowed in ANY McDonald’s (this is the one I referenced above)