MP3s In My Pants

So Laura told me something to do to get a quick laugh: open up your MP3 player of choice, enqueue up your entire library, and hit shuffle. Then take the top 20 songs of your playlist and add the phrase "In My Pants". Hilarity is sure to ensue.

My hilarious results:

One-Legged Girl In My Pants [Pain]
Everything Reminds Me of Her In My Pants [Elliott Smith]
Jesus Walks In My Pants [Kanye West]
The Art of Losing In My Pants [American Hi-Fi]
Keep Fishin' In My Pants [Weezer]
Santa's Beard In My Pants [They Might Be Giants]
Watch It Die In My Pants [Bad Religion]
Bored and Extremely Dangerous In My Pants [Bad Religion]
Cure for the Itch In My Pants [Linkin Park]
The Infanta In My Pants [The Decemberists]
And Now For Something Completely Similar In My Pants [NOFX]
Cry Me A River In My Pants [Justin Timberlake]
Rain King In My Pants [Counting Crows]
Plant A Nail In The Navel Stream In My Pants [The Mars Volta]
She's Actual Size In My Pants [They Might Be Giants]
Numb In My Pants [Linkin Park]
Silver Lining In My Pants [Beulah]
Rites of Spring In My Pants [The Bravery]
Material Boy In My Pants [Millencolin]
I Hate Everybody In My Pants [Dover]
Hard Times In My Pants [Millencolin]

Not bad, eh? Give it a shot.

From The Home Office In Des Moines...

Have you ever thought of how hard it would be to rank your ten
favorite songs of all time? For me, at least, it's quite a daunting
task. In my collection of music, I've got well over 30,000 songs - and
I'd say I know quite a few more. So how in the heck do you pick out 10
songs out of 30,000? How do you do it without forgetting a bunch of
songs? Simply put, you can't. Or at least, I can't. But for
curiosity's sake, I'm gonna try anyway.

10. Basketcase by Green Day
I can't hear the beginning of this song without listening and singing along to the whole thing. I fondly remember sitting in the back of the school bus back in 1994, singing this song with all my friends as we sped away to school. This is one of the few songs that I would imagine everybody in their twenties who lived in America in the 90s should know. Possibly the best pop-punk song ever.


9. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John
Elton didn't write his own songs, but that doesn't detract from the fact that he was a part of some pop masterpieces. GYBR is one of my favorite songs ever, if for nothing else than the fact that the song is a sweet one.


8. Duckpond by Millencolin
Punk rock is what I am. Punk's my favorite kind of music, and I love nothing more than an energetic punk song. And that's what Duckpond is. Swedish punkers Millencolin scream and wail throughout this whole song, and I can't hear it without wanting to scream along. One hell of a track off one hell of an amazing punk album, "Pennybridge Pioneers".


7. March of the Pigs by Nine Inch Nails
This song is the closest thing I could find to pure energy in sonic form. This song just rocks me to the absolute core every time I hear it. I can't hear this song without my blood starting to boil, inciting me to just jump up and smash something. A rage inspiring song, this is. Trent Reznor truly knew what he was doing with this track.


6. I Want to Conquer the World by Bad Religion
Punk rock at its finest. Brash and intense. This song is basically a huge middle finger pointed squarely at the world. A song this raging and powerful has no choice but to be short - and it seems to just whizz by. From the spectacular punk masterpiece 1989 album "No Control", this Bad Religion song is among their finest, and one of the best punk tracks I've ever heard.


5. The Moldau by Bedrich Smetana
Contrary to the beliefs of some out there, I do listen to more than just punk, rock, and rap. This symphonic poem by Smetana details the story of a river (the Vltava, which I stood above on a bridge in Prague about a month before a catastrophic flood) as the river grows from its roots as a tiny, meandering stream into a powerful, raging river flowing by castles and great towns. The orchestration is superb, and I truly fell in love with this song when I heard it for the first time in Prague. This song will forever remind me of my few days in Prague and the Czech Republic.


4. Baby, I'm A Big Star Now by The Counting Crows
I'll never forget the first time that I heard this song. I was sitting in a movie theatre, watching the movie Rounders, and the end credits began to roll. I was getting out of my seat when this song began playing. I was taken aback, sat down, and listened to the whole song play through. It instantly became one of my favorites. Only available on the soundtrack to the movie, this is one well worth listening to.


3. Coffee and TV by Blur
This song is rediculously chill. It's my go-to song when I need to chill out. What first got me interested was the amazing video documenting the adventures of a milk carton sprung to life. While I'm not a huge Blur fan, this song is one of my favorites of all time. Seriously, go check it out.


2. Crestfallen by The Smashing Pumpkins
This song is a sad and beautiful one by one of my favorite bands of all time. From the often frowned upon album "Adore", this song is just a sonic masterpiece. A great song to listen to and mope around. Especially good if you've just had your heart broken. In fact, every time I hear this song, I feel as if my heart's being broken all over again. It's that powerful.


1. Golden Brown by The Stranglers
First off, yes, it's a song about heroin. Subject matter aside, I think I fell in love with it when I was first watching the movie Snatch. In the scene where Gorgeous George has the bare-knuckles fight with Mickey (Brad Pitt), the music that plays when George is knocked out is this song. It's hauntingly beautiful, the frail vocals and the harpsichord (possibly my favorite instrument to listen to) just lead the way to a great song. It's short, it's sweet, it's sustaining.

Honorable Mention:
The Best Imitation of Myself by Ben Folds Five, Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake, Jump Around by House of Pain, All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix, Say It Ain't So by Weezer, Everlong by the Foo Fighters, Marche Slav by Tchaikovsky

Now is this list 100% correct and with no omissions? Of course not. Eventually I'll get it right.

Boys and their Toys

Every once in a while, I tend to go completely off the deep end and buy myself a big toy. Selfish? Sure. But don't lie and pretend you don't do the same. Some buy expensive clothes, some nice food, some go on lavish trips - I just buy tech gear. The bounty this time? A 1GB iPod Shuffle and a PlayStation Portable [PSP].


My new toys. 

What do I think of them so far? Well, I'll start with the shuffle because I've had that longest.

The Shuffle is great. With only 240 songs on it, you really don't need a display. I simply have a playlist called "Shuffle This!" in iTunes, and from there determine what I want on my Shuffle. If I get tired of hearing the same stuff, I sometimes use the Autofill function, and tell iTunes to fill my iPod with nothing but 4 and 5-star rated songs. Battery life is incredible, the Shuffle weighs next to nothing, and it's rediculously portable. All in all, a great, great device. My only previous portable MP3 players have been MP3 CD players and a massive 40GB Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, and I have to say that since I bought the Shuffle, I haven't used the others with the exception of in the car on a long trip. The Shuffle was well worth the money, despite what other iPod users might say.

I've only had the PSP for about a week now, and I have to say I'm rediculously impressed by it. I had no desire to own a PSP until I saw one in action. So less than a week later, I had one - along with Tony Hawk's Underground 2: Remix and Wipeout Pure. Both games are quite pleasant suprises. THUG2 plays exactly the same as it does on my Xbox, though it looks a little less impressive graphically (as to be expected) and a lot of the voicework has been cut out of the game (no big deal). Wipeout plays a lot like F-Zero GX does on my Gamecube, and I'm really enjoying the racing action. I'd also like to pick up the puzzle game Lumines (made by the same guy who did Rez for the Dreamcast/PS2) and Twisted Metal. I think the real killer app for both the PSP and the DS is over-the-internet multiplayer. PSP has 5 games enabled as such, DS none yet. The future of portable gaming is wi-fi, and I can't wait to sit on my couch and play a game of Burnout against my friend living in another state. Speaking of Burnout, I wish Burnout 3 was on the PSP. I would've bought that in a millisecond.

Oh, and a slight bit of congratulations for my linux box, it hit 100 days of uptime a couple weeks back. Though that was all negated by this past week's nasty thundershowers and accompanying power outages (no, I don't own a UPS).


106 days of uptime! Hooray linux! 

Oh well. I'm in the process of making my old K6-3 233mHz 64mb-RAM machine into a DSL box. That's "Damn Small Linux" - it's currently an XP box. Just got to get the wireless working...

2004-5 Georgia Tech Basketball: A Season In Review

With Georgia Tech's recent exit from the NCAA Tournament at the hands of Rick Pitino's Louisville Cardinals, it's time to look back on the season that "could've been."

We started #4 in the preseason polls, behind conference foes North Carolina and Wake Forest, and also behind Kansas. The season went well going into the game against Kansas on New Year's Day at Allen Fieldhouse, where the season hit a snag. BJ Elder hurt his leg late in the 1st half, and a large GT lead evaporated into an overtime loss. Tech would proceed to lose badly against Gonzaga, North Carolina, and a few other conference foes to fall completely out of the top 25. Though Tech did end up ranked in the final rankings (#25) the expectations for a team that last year reached the finals just ended up crushing the team.

Best win: North Carolina in the ACC tournament.
Worst loss: Virginia Tech at home.
Most Painful loss: Louisville's slaughter in the NCAA tournament.

So goodbye to BJ Elder, Luke Schenscher, Anthony McHenry, Will Bynum, and probably Jarrett Jack. I know I'll miss you guys.

And to the rest of you: Mario West, Zam Frederick, Ra'sean Dickey, Anthony Morrow, and Jeremis Smith - kick some butt next year.

2005 NCAA Tournament Update #1

Okay, in a quick nutshell, here's an overview to how my bracket's doing.

SWEET SIXTEEN TEAMS I HAVE GOTTEN CORRECT:



SWEET 16 TEAMS I DIDN'T GET CORRECT:



SWEET 16 TEAMS I STILL HAVE A CHANCE WITH:


TOKEN 1 TEAM THAT OBLITERATED MY BRACKET:


Yes, I had Syracuse in the championship game. Yes, they killed my bracket. Even Kansas losing to Bucknell and Wake losing to West Virginia didn't hurt me too badly - I had each losing the next round. But having Syracuse lose just made me cry.

If GT loses to Louisville today, I'll cry more. A lot more. And then probably ball up my bracket and hide under a rock till after the first week of April when all this nonsense is over with.

GO TECH! WHIP THE CARDINALS!

Having-A-Blastketball

How can you not love March Madness?

First off, much love to my Yellow Jackets for battling their way through the ACC tournament, only to have some completely bullshit calls giftwrap Duke the victory. Duke sucks, and we all know it. A picture lifted from Fark a while back basically sums it up:


Duke sucks. 

GT did however blast a good VT team and hold off an incredible UNC team en route to losing to Dook in the conference title game, so I was expecting a seeding of 5-6 for GT when the brackets were announced. Sure enough, Tech ended up a 5 seed in the Albuquerque regional [from now on, I'm calling it the "West" regional] with a potential date against Louisville in the 2nd round. Winner of that game wins the region - mark me down as saying that. Nobody in that region scares me except Gonzaga [they're big!] and Louisville [they're good!]. Wake, Washington, and Texas Tech sure don't scare me.

So without further delay, my 2005 NCAA tournament bracket:


Wishful thinking or blind homer-ism? GT to win it all in 05! 

[For reference's sake, my old brackets from 2000-2004 can be found here]

And since we're just shooting fish in a barrel half of the time when we're doing these brackets, why just stop at the NCAA tournament? Here's one more:


My 2005 NIT Bracket. A lot of guesses, honestly. 

Check back in a month to see how I fared. But before that, why don't you join my NCAA Tournament Pick'Em at Yahoo! Sports? It's free. It's fun. It's for shit-talking rights. Don't know anything about sports? Who cares?! Just pick for the teams with the coolest names, the best mascots, whatever you want. The more the merrier. All you need is a free Yahoo! account. Chances are, you already have one.

NCAA Tournament Pick'Em:
http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
Group ID#: 49030
password: gotech


The best article of clothing to own in the month of March. 

Avalanche!

Glancing at the counter at the bottom of this page, I noticed a fairly sizeable jump from the last time I looked at it. So I clicked on the counter to look at the stats page, only to see this little graph:


What the shit happened? 158 new visitors? 

Color me confused. Any idea where all these visitors came? And why yesterday? I was out of town for most of it.

Odd.

If you've got an answer, throw it in the comments.

Spring Break 2005

Well, technically since I'm not currently enrolled in college this can't really be called a Spring Break trip - but I'm gonna do that anyway. Here's a quick rundown of last weekend's events.

THURSDAY: I-75 and Atlanta, GA

So after Zack finishes work for the day, we both head to Burger King, get the phenomenal TENDERCRISP BACON CHEDDAR RANCH sandwich, and hit the road. The road ahead is from Tallahassee to Atlanta, about a 4.5 hour drive.

Before the drive though, we got the real fuel we'd need to make the trip - food and drink. Typical of any road trip I make, Funyuns and Slim Jims were there, along with Chex Mix, BBQ Fritos, and 12-packs of Mountain Dew for Zack and 12-packs of Diet Pepsi and Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper for yours truly. We were ready for the road.

We arrive at Georgia Tech to crash at my buddy Steve's place. Steve studied abroad with me at Oxford in 2002, and is an all-around kick-ass guy. I only regret that we didn't get to spend more time with the guy [it was a school night and we got into town around midnight], but he's coming down for GT's spring break along with my favorite Tennessee Vol, Mr. Ravi Pentapaty, for some drinking later this month. That should be hot.


Steve: bad-ass. The GT apartment? Not quite so bad-ass.

We crashed at Steve's, and rode out for Chapel Hill the next morning.

FRIDAY: I-85 and Chapel Hill, NC

After being woke-up by Steve on his way out the door to class, Zack and I get off our collective asses and go get some breakfast before we hit the road. What did we get to fuel our day on the road? Krystal Scramblers. Breakfast in a bowl. Simply put, a Scrambler is a styrofoam cup with layers of breakfast goodness. Grits on the bottom, topped with butter, a scrambled egg, a piece of cheese, and a sausage patty on top. Simply delicious. I got two, one normal - one Southwestern [which I couldn't finish and later ran over at a rest-stop in South Carolina while yelling the word "SCRAMBLED!" and laughing] and Zack got introduced to them. After breakfast we hit I-85 and followed it through north Georgia, South Carolina, and all the way though North Carolina to Chapel Hill.

In the Hill, we met up with David McCaleb, who Zack crashed with and hung out with for the afternoon - I went over to see Meg for the day. That night, the four of us met up and went to Kemp's Seafood House where we literally collectively ordered 48 pounds of fried seafood. It was glorious, but way too much food. I couldn't even finish, which is extremely rare. We then headed to Carrboro to the Cat's Cradle to meet up with Alexandria and Andrew, who had just gotten into town.

The concert we saw opened with The Crimea, who were decent but we really didn't get to see much of them. David McCaleb called them "Bright Eyes", which isn't too far off.

Following them was The Bravery, who were simply awesome. You should go to their website and listen to some of their songs. I'm really looking forward to their new album, which drops March 29th. If you live near a Best Buy, you might be able to score a sampler for the new album for $0.01. At my Best Buy in Tallahassee they had a bunch, and I bought 6-7 of them for my friends. A worthwhile purchase.

Ash was the headliner, and they really brought down the house. I really enjoyed Ash's entire set - every song I wanted to hear, they played. And every song they played, they rocked. Hearing "Vampire Love" and "Walking Barefoot" and "Orpheus" live was worth it all. I recommend if you live where their tour is coming, get off your butt and go see them.

Friday was Alexandria's birthday [Happy Birthday, Alexandria!], so it was good to catch up with her and Andrew. Thorougly exhausted from a long day, I retired for the night.

Also of note: Georgia Tech destroyed Virginia Tech in the ACC tournament, leading me to mock Andrew [a current VT grad student]. UNC also nearly lost to Clemson, leading me to mock Carolina fans David and Meg. This set up a Saturday matchup of Georgia Tech and UNC in the ACC Tournament Semifinals, and a potential for some great smack talk.

SATURDAY: Still in Chapel Hill

Meg left town in the morning to head off to her Spring Break extravangza in Hilton Head, so after saying our goodbyes I met Zack and The Marders at A Southern Season for lunch. The place was absolutely great, and I recommend it to anybody who visits the area.

After lunch, Zack and I went over to Dave's place to watch Georgia Tech beat UNC in the ACC tournament, while The Marders went shopping. After meeting back up and playing some Monopoly, we picked up some Jack Daniels and went to dinner at Champps. Following dinner, we sat around our hotel room, drank, played dominoes, talked, and sang along to music. It was a good time, and it does make me sad to realize that these "occasional weekends" are pretty much all I'm going to see of Alexandria and Andrew for pretty much the rest of my life. A sad realization.

After enough dominoes and booze, we all retired for the night.

SUNDAY: The long haul - Chapel Hill to Tallahassee

So Zack and I picked up D-Mac and hit the road. Zack got bored and started taking pictures [hey, you gotta have something to do on a 10-hour car ride] and here's what we've got:


I need a t-shirt for these trips that says "Zack is my Co-Pilot" 


Three MP3 players in-view [L to R: my 40GB Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, Zack's 20GB Apple iPod, my 1GB Apple iPod Shuffle], one more above it [my in-dash Aiwa CDC-MP3 cd player]. So that's 61.7 GB of music. Wow. 


Me and Zack, somewhere in North Carolina. 


David McCaleb throws up the horns in the background.
David McCaleb is metal. 


I-85 in Gaffney, South Carolina. I only know that because of the ginormous peach. 

Overall, a great trip. Not the last one I'll make to Chapel Hill, either. Consider UNC officially added to my Med School application list along with UF, FSU, JHU, Emory, Duke, UVA, and Louisville [for now - list subject to change].

Have It Your Way

Every once in a while you see something that makes you just say "what the hell?" and it just draws you in. You want to see more. You want to watch it over and over again till you're absolutely sick of watching it.

And seeing Darius Rucker (aka "Hootie") sing in a Burger King commercial full of b-list celebrities definitely fits the bill. Haven't seen the ad? Go watch it right now. No seriously, go. I'll wait till you're done.

[PAUSE FOR SCREENING PURPOSES]

Okay, now wasn't that great? Let's break down what makes the commercial so incredible:

1. Celebrities
2. A good, catchy song from a good singer
3. Rediculous scenery
4. The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
5&6. Brooke Burke
7. The sandwich looks delicious [and it is! advertising works! I got one!]
8. Humor - the commercial is obviously making fun of itself [not too serious]
9. Hootie. How can you not love that guy? I hope you're not broke, Darius!
10. Brooke Burke! [Hot!]

I have a new favorite commercial, hands-down. Of course at the opposite end of the spectrum, my all-time least favorite commercial will continue to be Ore-Ida using the song "Golden Brown" by the Stranglers to sell french fries. Why? Because it's one of my favorite songs of all time. It doesn't make any sense to use that song! It's a song about heroin! Using heroin ballads to sell frozen french fries? I will NEVER buy an Ore-Ida product for as long as I live for that atrocity. Seriously. I'll get all my fries at Burger King. With one of those damned delicious looking Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch sandwiches.


TENDERCRISP BACON CHEDDAR RANCH!!

2005 ACC Tournament Preview

So the 2005 ACC regular season came to a close, and the seedings for the ACC Tournament have been finalized. All that's left is for the boys of the conference to suit up and bring their A-games to the MCI Center in D.C. this weekend. How do I think it will pan out? Here's my bracket:


My 2005 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament bracket 

First Round Games: March 10, 2005

#8 Maryland vs. #9 Clemson
Prediction: Maryland 65, Clemson 59. I've got Maryland winning this one, only because I don't think Gary Williams will let his team get beat by the same lowly Clemson squad three times in one year. If the Terps do however get beat, which wouldn't be that big of a suprise [Clemson did beat them for a reason, they match up extremely well against UM] and the Terps could kiss the NCAAs goodbye and join the NIT parade.

#7 North Carolina State vs. #10 Florida State
Prediction: NCSU 80, FSU 66. North Carolina State has hit their stride as of late, as opposed to FSU who has lost their last 9. Better make that 10, as the Noles are one-and-done in the conference tournament this year. NCSU needs to make a serious run in the ACC Tournament to get to the big dance.

#6 Miami vs. #11 Virginia
Prediction: Miami 75, Virginia 60. I see UM winning this one in blowout fashion. Pete Gillam's team is crap this year, as their dead-last in the conference finish points out. UVA won't last long against Miami's superior guard play.


QUARTERFINALS: March 11th, 2005

#1 North Carolina vs. #8 Maryland
Prediction: UNC 98, Maryland 85. The score will be closer than you think, but I think UNC's explosive offensive firepower will be too much for UM to handle. An upset would be a suprise, but not completely unexpected - Maryland is a very dangerous team. For evidence of such, look at this year's wins versus Duke and last year's ACC tournament run.

#4 Virginia Tech vs. #5 Georgia Tech
Prediction: Georgia Tech 62, Virginia Tech 60. I really, really want GT to win this. I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased. I think this will be a close game because while I think GT is the much, much better team, my Jackets have a horrible tendency to blow big leads [see the Kansas, Wake, and Duke games this year] and I think a 10 point blowout will turn into a 2 point squeaker. Though GT did that last year in the NCAAs, so as long as they get the W, I don't care about the margin.

#7 North Carolina State vs. #2 Wake Forest
Prediction: NCSU 73, WFU 71. Yes, you read that right. With the suspension of Chris Paul for one game for a low-blow, I think NCSU has a fighting chance to upend Wake and create a big, big upset in the tournament. If NCSU can do this, and they have the talent to do so, then mark NCSU as NCAA bound.

#6 Miami vs. #3 Duke
Prediction: Duke 91, Miami 72. Duke wins in a blowout, nothing more to say.


SEMIFINALS: March 12, 2005

#1 North Carolina vs. #5 Georgia Tech
Prediction: UNC 101, GT 97. As badly as I want GT to win, and as capable as I think they are of winning this game, UNC has just been too consistently good. UNC wins by a little.

#7 North Carolina State vs. #3 Duke
Prediction: Duke 82, NCSU 71. Duke has been consistently good, and I just can't see NCSU beating Duke's interior or exterior game. Reddick is hot right now [as always] and the big men for Duke are playing excellent ball.

CHAMPIONSHIP: March 13, 2005

#1 North Carolina vs. #3 Duke
Prediction: Duke 92, UNC 87. Duke wins, barely. A slim lead is lengthened by last-minute fouling of Reddick, who has the best game of his ACC Tournament career. Though I could be completely wrong and UNC could slaughter Duke. Don't see that happening though. [This game could be a regional final, by the way].

Now let's wait a few days and see how wrong that'll be. Hah! [I love college basketball!]