Glue

So the other day I had nothing much to do, so I went to work a couple hours early and went into a couple of these cool stores down yonder on Oak Street.

I went into this thrift store called Glue and was immediately assaulted by an extreme amount of incense. The heavily dreadlocked proprietors informed me that everything in the store was 50% off. Aerosmith's Greatest Hits was playing at a louder-than-normal-for-a-store volume. Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and many more posters were like varnished or whatever into the floor. So far this store seemed pretty sweet.

I browsed through their immense selection of t-shirts, but didn't find any that really caught my eye. I then started going through the button up section, and hidden among the usual weird thrift store stuff I found like ten so out of style that they're cool western shirts, complete with yokes and pearl snaps. I found this blue Wrangler one that struck a chord with me for some reason. I'm not really sure why but I was drawn to this shirt. Maybe I saw it once or twice during my childhood or something. Anyway I tried it on, and it fit like a glove. I bought it. And one more. I had to exercise restraint to not buy a dozen cowboy shirts. It helped that the store didn't accept debit cards and I only had 15 bucks on me.

Doggs I broke my toe maybe

On Saturday there was a big game of capture the flag on campus between my dorm and another dorm. It was pretty sweet. Just like back in the day when we'd play capture the flag like every night in Branson and I'd always get these crazy allergies from all the crawling around in the grass and hiding in bushes and whatnot. Those were the days.

Anyway, I was deep in the heart of Wall's territory looking for their flag. I was being crazy sneaky, inching along this wall, when all of a sudden a Wall spotted me. He did the thing where he pointed at me and pointed at his eyes, so I knew that he knew where I was. I took off. He chased. I was running down an alley at an absolutely blinding speed, and just when I thought I was home free my shoe started slipping off. It's really hard to pull a shoe back on while you're running as fast as possible, so it just kind of fell off. Sometime between the shoe starting to fall off and the shoe being completely off I jammed my pinkie toe hardcore. I didn't notice for five or so minutes, because of all this intense adrenaline, but by the end of the night I was going "sssss aaaah" and stuff every time I took a step. When I got back to my room and looked at my foot I was like ooooh snap! Because it looked brutal. I'd take a picture and show you but it's already not that spectacular anymore. But when I woke up Sunday morning I was like holy cow because it was half again as big my other pinkie toe and the purpleness had spread an inch away from the base of my toe in every direction.

I don't think it's actually broken, but now I have a ready made excuse to not run for the next couple weeks. Also I can't wear close toe shoes without wanting to weep.

The next two weeks will not be very fun.

So due to some poor planning, I may not be posting long epic stories about my incredible life or anything in the next couple weeks. I've got a ten page paper due in eight days and a five page one due in 12. I have a Spanish oral exam tomorrow, and I've got to read a lovely book called Londinopolis by tomorrow at 9:30. I haven't started on the book.

My last exam is over on December 11 at noon, so feel free to fly me home any time after that! You can start the countdown now if ya want. Well I'm off to go study.

Hurricane Ida is weak.

So today I rolled into my music theory class and everybody was talkin' about this hurricane. I was like what hurricane? They were all haven't you been outside? I was like yeah but it's just cloudy and drizzly like it is once a week. They were all like dude it's a hurricane. I was like puh whatever.

Then the professor slides up in there and is all like okay first things first: the hurricane. This one ain't a big deal but y'all need to have a plan. I was like oh jeez am I gonna have to evacuate this bidness? I started to get a little freaked out.

After class I figured I should check the weather reports so I headed to my room and got on the computer. I clicked on the beautiful little three colored circle of joy that is Google Chrome, typed in weather.com and waited. And waited. Frustrated, I began to hit F5 over and over. After the fifteenth refresh did nothing I let out an exasperated shriek and stared at the screen in stony silence. After over a minute a lovely screen popped up. "Tulane University Technology Services has detected that your IP address has been using P2P programs for infringement of copyright laws. Since this is your first offence your web access has been cut off for fifteen minutes." It was something like that, and it went on and on. I was like oh jeez, my evil ways have finally caught up with me. I opened up uTorrent and sure enough I was illegally downloading copyrighted material. Damn.

I was so depressed that I'd finally been caught in me piratin' act that I forgot all about the hurricane. Oh well. Turns out it's just a tropical storm anyway. It's not even windy.

I got another job today

So I know I'm supposed to post like every Monday Wednesday and Friday. I know this. I made up the rule, so I know the rule. I'm really sorry people. I am aware of the fact that it's 3:14 (2:14 for you crazy Mountain time people.) on Saturday morning, but since I haven't gone to bed yet I'm gonna count this as Friday. I was gonna just wait to post until Saturday, but now at 3:15 in the morning my creative juices are flowing like the mighty Mississippi river, in which I could be swimming in around 10 minutes if I really wanted to. I don't really want to because there's mad pollution up in that water. Nasty.

Anyway, today after work I rode my bike across South Carrolton to La Macarena Pupuseria and slotted up there and put my thing down. On Tuesday I went in there and put my thing down and the dude who was working gave me a job application. I filled out that job application. Today the owner was in there and he was all kinds of stoked to see me. I gave him my app and then he conducted an interview like crazy right there on the spot. It was the gnarliest interview ever. We kind of just talked. It was wild. He gave me "a very unusual mixture of papaya tea and blackberry tea," to drink and it was incredibly good. We talked for a while and he made me ask him three questions that I wouldn't normally ask my boss. I asked what his favorite alcoholic drink was, when was the first time he got high, and how many times he changed his major in college.

He seemed to like me, because he had the cook whip me up a pupusa so I could taste what I'd be serving. A pupusa is a tortilla like thing from El Salvador filled with queso, frijoles fritos, o chicharrones, or some combination of them, or other stuff entirely. It was the best thing I've ever tasted in my whole life. I was instantly willing to take this job because I'd get a free pupusa every shift. Then after he asked me if I had any problems with gay people (he's gay) and if I was a football fan (apparently some Saints fans would skip work to watch the games) he told me to come in on Monday for training.

So on Monday I'll be slingin' pupusas. I'll see how it works out, but from the little I've seen it should be a sweet gig and a good way to get a little spanish practice in (the cooks and owners are from El Salvador). ¡Muy bien!

This is Wednesday's Post.

Yo Peeps. I didn't post on Wednesday because I'm a bad blogger, so pretend this is Wednesday's post. Aight?

This is a paper I wrote for my songwriting class. I flex my music critic muscles. It got me "A GOOD JOB." Now I'm not sure if i just did a good job, or if I got an "A" because I did a "GOOD JOB." The A was above the GOOD JOB, so I'm thinking the latter.

The Top of the Modern Rock Charts
David Draiman and Benjamin Burley
Anyone who's listened to much hard rock released in the last five to ten years will have heard of Breaking Benjamin and Disturbed. These two bands have sold millions of records, sold out stadiums, and had numerous singles reach the number one spot on Billboard's Modern Rock chart. These bands do most of their songwriting themselves, with frontmen David Draiman and Benjamin Burley writing the majority of the songs for Disturbed and Breaking Benjamin, respectively. The bands play a similar style of rock and roll, putting emphasis on loud guitars, thumping basslines, and hammering drums. Burley and Draiman each make use of a wide variety of vocal techniques, from falsetto crooning to gritty rock snarls to full blown metal style screaming, and each singer often writes dark and haunting lyrics. Both bands have sizeable bodies of work, each having released four studio albums, so here I'll be comparing and contrasting Breaking Benjamin's Breath, a single which stayed at the #1 spot of Billboards Mainstream Rock Tracks for over a month in 2007, and Disturbed's Inside the Fire which reached the top of the same chart in early 2008.

Breath is a dark and heavy hard rock piece that features a prominent bassline, crunchy distorted guitars, a kick drum heavy beat, strong vocal melody and harmony, and emotional and relatable lyrics. Burley on rhythm guitar and bassist Mark Klepaski provide a strong harmonic foundation on which guitarist Aaron Fink plays strong melodies. Drummer Chad Szeliga pummels the listener's ears, driving home every word that Burley sings. The song features masterful use of dynamics: during parts of the song Fink's guitar without distortion is the only instrument, before the entire band rejoins him in a sudden crushing wall of sound. During the verses Burley croons a haunting melody over an intricate bassline while Fink plays arpeggios over a stripped down kick and snare drumbeat. Barely audible whispers in the background add to the creepy ethereal quality of the verses. The prechorus shifts back into high gear with full blown overdriven power chords and crashing cymbals underneath Burley's powerful yells enhanced by Klepaski and Fink's harmonies, quickly drops back to a single guitar and Burley's voice, and just as quickly kicks back into overdrive when the chorus comes in. The production on this song is masterfully handled: the intricate layering of multiple vocal parts on top of lush instrumentation couple with the continual changes from soft to loud and back again add to the emotion and intensity of the piece.

Lyrically the song is very relatable. The words are ambiguous enough that virtually any listener could apply them to their own situation. Anyone who's experienced loss or rejection can relate to Burley's painful howling of “You take the breath right out of me / you left a hole where my heart should be.” The listener may not know exactly what Benjamin is screaming about, but it definitely tugs on their heartstrings as they remember that girl they fell in love with who later shattered their heart into a million pieces. The stream of consciousness verses don't make a whole lot of sense, but the beautiful melody coupled with the skilled instrumentation make the verses very singable. The lines “This will be all over soon, / Pour the salt into the open wound / Is it over yet? / Let me in,” may not make perfect sense, but it paints a vivid picture of someone in agony, and the vocals are so well done that listeners can't help but be moved as they sing along. Between the stirring vocals, the intricately orchestrated dance performed by the guitars and bass, and the heart thumping drum beats it's small wonder that this song was so successful.

Inside the Fire dominated the charts last year, and was a big reason why Indestructible became Disturbed's third straight album to debut at #1. Inside the Fire is a fast paced rock and roll number, that features excellent guitar playing, heavy drums and bass, and powerful singing. While bassist John Moyer locks in perfectly with drummer Mike Wengren's powerful driving beats, and Dan Donegan displays impressive mastery of the fretboard in his guitar solo, the real strength of this song comes from David Draiman's incredible melodies and downright scary lyrics. Draiman has always had a knack for coming up with soaring melodies that mesh perfectly with the band's pummelling hard rock sound. As my friend Josh, the drummer in a band I was in during high school, once put it, “dude, Draiman's melodies are just... huge.” The staccato vocals in the verses complement the machine gun guitar riff beautifully. Draiman's voice starts to soar in the chorus, as he entreats the listener to “give your soul to me for eternity.” The lyrics of this song can be described as anything from haunting to straight up scary as hell. Even before really listening to the words I caught lines like “she was taken, and then forsaken,” and “fire, all you desire,” which conjure up creepy images which wouldn't seem out of place in the latest horror movie. If you really listen to the lyrics it becomes apparent that something very creepy is going on. Draiman is singing from the point of view of the devil, or someone like him, and trying to convince the listener to kill themselves to rejoin a lost loved one. The stark descriptions of “Devon,” the dead lover, during the verses, prepare the listener to pay heed to the devil's ever more insistent entreaties that they should join Devon “inside the fire” during the chorus. While not everyone may have contemplated suicide to be reunited with a dead lover, most can appreciate the story spun by Draiman, and the gravely growl he uses to spit forth his frightening lyrics is very appealing to hard rock listeners. The gritty unapologetic story is told through a gritty unapologetic medium, a formula Disturbed used before with singles like Down With the Sickness and Stricken.

Even if the listener has no idea what the song is about, as I didn't until I read the lyrics, it's still very powerful musically. A synthesized keyboard intro segues into Disturbed's easily recognizeable brand of hard rock, and the song opens and closes with Draiman laughing creepily in the background. The pummeling tempo never lets up, keeps the energy level high, and the way the vocals and instruments lock together provides a great listening experience.

Each of these songs brings something unique to the table, but they've got lots of similarities. Each song's subject matter is fairly dark and moody, which is reflected in the dark feel of the instrumentation. Burley shows his flair for soaring melodies, introspective lyrics and lush arrangements, while Draiman lets his powerful voice and masterful melodic abilities push his lyrics to center stage. Breaking Benjamin's sound is a little fuller and richer, due to an extra guitar and the fact that the guitars are tuned several steps lower than normal. Disturbed pummels the listener more, with faster tempos and more aggressive intrumentation. Draiman's voice is much grittier and angrier sounding than Burley's; Burley sounds like a velvety voiced smooth jazz singer next to Draiman's inhuman growl. Burley has two more voices (Fink and Klepasky) singing harmony behind him however, so Breaking Benjamin's rich vocal arrangements provide as full a sound as Draiman's raw vocal power. Both singers make use of screaming, and quick shifts in dynamics are prominent parts of each song. Lyrically the songs are very different. Draiman's song vividly tells a story, and if one listen's carefully to the lyrics it's fairly obvious what's going on. Burley's stream of consciousness style is harder to follow, but can be applied to many situations and is extremely relatable. Both singers are excellent at producing hooky melodies that stick in the listener's head long after the final notes of the song have faded.

Burley and Draiman have each discovered the way to craft a popular hard rock song. Stark and haunting lyrics sung over thick crunchy rock and roll instrumentation, coupled with tremendous and easy to remember melodies are what allows these songs to stand out in the sea of generic hard rock. Each man has crafted a song that is very unique and personal but is also relatable enough to be successful in the mainstream rock and roll world. Each singer is also lucky enough to have a group of extremely talented musicians behind him on the stage. Although each singer has a different band to work with and each takes a different approach to crafting a heavy rock song, both Draiman and Burley are masters of the modern hard rock scene.

I'm aware that most of y'all aren't really very involved in the modern hard rock scene, but here ya are anyway.

Halloween

Halloween in New Orleans is huge. It's basically the second biggest party of the year in this city, which practically means it's the second biggest party in the country. The big thing is to go downtown to Frenchman Street and party.

All of my friends and I decided that we should go experience this huge party, so Saturday night rolled around and we all got all fancied up in our mad duds. My homebody Martin and I were Connor and Murphy MacManus, or the Boondock Saints as they're more commonly known. If you haven't seen The Boondock Saints then do yourself a favor and go watch it right now. It's a cult classic. You wouldn't like it, Mom, and Dad would say it was "the stupidest damn thing ever" or something like that, but it's truly a piece of cinematic brilliance.

Anyway, we all got our costumes on and congregated in one dorm room. There were about 20 of us. We chilled in there putting the finishing touches on our costumes for about an hour, and then we set out. For some reason, several of our group started getting violently ill, perhaps with some kind of extremely fast acting stomach flu that seems common around here on Saturday nights. So before we even got to the streetcar stop the group of 20 was down to 16. It's fairly difficult to get a streetcar downtown at 10:00 on any Saturday night, but on Halloween it's next to impossible. We waited for the streetcar for over an hour, during which time two more people had to leave the group because one of them got violently ill, and a couple more got bored and wandered off.

I don't know exactly how many of us finally got downtown, but it wasn't more than 12. Frenchman street was crazy, there were awesome costumes everywhere. There were people on stilts and a skeleton brass band, and I saw Dr. Jacobi, or however the shrink from Twin Peaks is spelled. At some point on Frenchman The group got split in half and I ended out the night with seven people.

Because of the large percentage of our group who spent the night in the grip of some terrible disease we're gonna have a second Halloween in two weeks. It's gonna be brutal. Hopefully everyone will stay healthy and I'll be able to put up more pictures. Bam.

Doggs I am all kinds of arrogant

Here's a fun little anecdote from my life.

I've been trying to get next to this girl for like a month now, but it's been kind of hard. She's smokin' hot, and we hung out a couple times and things went well. A couple weeks ago she was all like "oh hey yo, I have so much homework that I can't really hang out much at all. Plus I am into things like interpretive dance and I must practice my dancing for many hours a day because I have a performance soon." I was all like, "oh that's cool, I totally understand where you're coming from because I'm a sensitive guy and understand emotions and obligations and all that." Then I smiled winningly and I could tell she was just going crazy for me on the inside. I knew this in my mind.

On Saturday I went to her dancing performance to show how much I cared about the things she found interesting and because my homegirl told me it would score me mad "[girl] points." (Her original phrase was more alliterative, but I'm reluctant to post it on a family website such as this.) The dancing was actually pretty cool, and after the performance I all was like "Yo girl that dancing was basically very cool. You were incredibly elegant and beautiful I was mesmerized by your fluid movements." She was all like "Oh man boy thank you so much for coming I'm very glad that you did." *Hug*

Then she like looked at some people who were her friends I guess, because she hugged them too. I didn't feel threatened, because my powers of observation ascertained that her friends were in fact two girls and a gay guy. I thought it was cute that her gay friend gave her a flower. Then I left and went to a party.

A couple days later I saw the gay guy and he gave me a look and I was like woah dogg why you got to be lookin' at me like that dogg. That is what I thought though I did not say it out loud. I thought it was unusual that a guy like him would give a guy like me a look, but then I had an epiphany all of a sudden. So I was like oh man maybe I just assumed he was a gay dude because I'm so arrogant that I think I'm the only guy who's interesting in the girl even though she's incredibly hot.

I was like maybe I should find out what's up so I was like "hey girl is that a thing with you and the flower man?" and she was like "yeah it's basically a thing" and I was like oh dogg. It turns out I am exactly as arrogant as I thought I might have been.

Ba dum dum psh!

Editor's note: Obviously I took some artistic license with the dialogue. The picture is related. I'm looking arrogant, and I haven't shaved my goatee in nine days. I'm starting to look like Dad.

The Library

So last night I headed over to the library to do some research on witch hunts in early modern England. I got a little research done, but mostly the library distracted me. That place is worse than youtube. I started out looking at historical studies of witch hunts, saw a book called Whores of the Devil, which I just had to flip through, then a few books later found myself browsing a 150 year old book about L'Occulte. The book was in French, but it was super cool anyway. Over an hour later I was sitting on the floor a few shelves over reading Nietzsche. I don't really get Nietzsche. I also flipped through the 1910 archives of the Journal of Parapsychology.

After 90 minutes of book hopping I remembered that I wasn't there to just wander around and actually started studying. I could totally wander around in there for hours.

My Job Gets Pretty Real

Today was a fairly standard day at work, for the most part. I helped a few kids with their math homework, apparently rounding is hell of hard. I tried unsuccessfully to remember this one little girls name. It was either Tejan or Tejar, which is pronounced either Tay-zhan or Tay-zhar. Ashley and Margot I can handle. Tejan slips right out of my mind, and I feel like I'm always mispronouncing it and I think the nine year olds are all gonna laugh at me.

After the tutoring part was over I went out on the playground to play. All the boys asked me to play Man on the Run, a tag-like game, and the girls wanted me to do flips with them on the monkey bars. The boys were more insistent, so I opted to play their game, but it turns out I probly should have chilled with the girls.

Naturally all these fifth and sixth grade boys have something to prove by outrunning a college kid, so I had to be it first. It went alright for awhile, until I started to get into it. I got really into it. So into it that I wasn't really thinking that I was 160 pounds of sheer testosterone and these were a bunch of 11 year olds.

There I was, running down this kid, he was kinda fast, I was a lot faster, when all of a sudden he takes a dive. I took a split second to analyze my surroundings. There's a fairly solid looking wrought iron fence about ten feet ahead of me. There's a fairly solid looking oak tree a few feet in front and to my left, with treacherous roots writhing about on the ground. There's a fallen 12 year old directly in front of me. I was going too fast to avoid all three obstacles. I realize I'm going to have to take on at least two of them. My cognitive powers told me that, because of the child's position in relation to the tree, there's a chance that I'd put him in the hospital if I used him to arrest my momentum.

I decided to not seriously injure a small child and did a graceful jump. I'm not really sure what happened next, but a couple seconds later I found myself pushing myself to my feet and spitting out a mouthful of sand. I started to express my feelings verbally, but then I realized where I was and said something to the effect of "Shhhiiiiiiiiuuh..."I did a quick check of my electronics, which were all fine. I feel a little dazed, I must have hit the ground kind of hard. The kids are yelling at me to start the game up again. I am still it after all.

I groggily take up the game, chase down some slow kid and make him it, and head over to the girls. Maybe they're not being so violent. "Mr. Ross you're really sandy," says Tejan/ar, studying me critically.

"Yeah I kind of fell down."

"Mr. Ross, you're bleeding," says Ashley, pointing to my elbow.

"Oh. I am." I am.

They pepper me with dozens of questions and I tell them to chill while I go wash my face. I look like a wild animal. My face is totally covered in sand. I try to wash it off, but the school bathrooms have those damn push button sinks so I can't ever actually get any water to my face. I kind of brush some sand off and head home early.

I've still got sand in every orifice on my head, and my elbow has a golf ball sized lump on it. Okay maybe not golf ball sized, but it's swollen. I got injured playing tag with elementary school children.

Editor's note: I'm incredibly white. I didn't realize until I saw my arm next to my tummy in that picture.

I'm moving farther south.

I woke up on a fine sunny morning, exactly one week ago. I watched the palm tree across the quad dance playfully in a light breeze and took in the warm glow of the tile roofs below my window basking in the sun. It looked like a beautiful day for a run around Audubon park. I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt and headed down on the elevator. When I got off several people got on, all wearing hoodies and jeans, and all acting like they'd just had to brave a blizzard. The girl working the desk had on a stocking cap and a winter jacket, and was telling someone that it wasn't supposed to get above 70 all day.

Pansies. I thought, You should see Cimarron County this time of year, and opened the door.

I was greeted with a furious gust of freezing cold air that took my breath away. What the hell is this? My sub-tropically minded mind thought. I immediately started shivering. I began to walk quickly off towards the park. After walking quickly for about a block I knew I'd have to run to keep my blood from freezing. I balled my hands into fists to keep from getting frostbite and ran off at a furious pace. After a few minutes I could feel the warmth returning to my legs and arms, and my heart wasn't feeling quite so sluggish, but my fingers still felt like little cubes of ice. By the time I reached the park my nose was running and my cheeks were surely nice and rosy. As I made my way around the park I noticed that very few New Orleanians were out in this monstrous weather, and the ones that were were dressed for the occasion. I saw an elderly couple powerwalking in knee length parkas with the hoods up. A mom pushed a stroller that contained a gigantic ball of blankets that nearly completely concealed a toddler. Here I was, running along nearly naked, about ready to drop dead of exposure at any moment.

After a couple miles my lungs were on fire, the bitter cold air seared them with every breath. My ears were aching from the punishing wind and my tears were turning my eyelashes into little icicles. Through an incredible feat of man vs nature I made it back to campus. I remembered that there was a thermometer on one of the buildings and ran over to check out what mind blowing temperatures I was barely surviving. Surely it was the low 40s, maybe high 30s. When I reached the thermometer I thought I was either hallucinating or I'd forgotten how to read one. 64? There's no way that's right. I'm about to die here. My cold numbed mind couldn't process this. I dejectedly walked back to the dorm and jumped in a hot shower until feeling returned to my toes.

You people have to come down here for Christmas, because I won't survive December in Holyoke.

Yo-Yo Ma!

That's right people. I saw Yo-Yo Ma, the world famous cello virtuoso and winner of over a dozen Grammys, performing with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. These tickets have been impossible to get for weeks now, unless you're willing to drop upwards of 200 bones. Luckily for me, a friend of mine purchased a couple tix back in June. Also luckily for me, but very unfortunately for her, Matt's date got mortally ill at the last minute and couldn't go, so the free ticket fell into my lap.

Matt was kind enough to let me borrow a suit, (he has like six or eight, it's crazy), and we headed off to the Mahalia Jackson Theater. The first act, or whatever they call it in classical music, was the LPO with a big choir and a little boy soprano soloist. They sang some psalms set to some totally sweet music and it was radical.

After the intermission Yo Mama himself came onto the stage. The sold out crowd went nuts, or as nuts as that kind of crowd will ever get, I guess. After running around stage smiling like a madman and jovially shaking hands with the first violin and the maestro several times he sat down to play. I thought maybe he'd just kind of sit there and play, I mean after all he's been performing since he was five, but he still put everything he had into it. Even though he's a true master of his art the music was still hitting him and you could tell he was feeling it. It was pretty inspiring, a lot like seeing Victor Wooten. I was a little bit disappointed that he only played one piece with the Orchestra and one short solo piece, but it was still a great experience. After he trotted off stage for the last time I was expecting for people to shout for an encore, I mean he had gotten two standing ovations and I sure as hell wanted him to play some more, but people just started to leave.

The music was great, but the crowd was ridiculous. They just sat and listened, which I can appreciate, I mean the drunken imbeciles at the Republic (a music bar downtown) can sometimes get annoying, but at the end of pieces there was merely polite applause. No cheering, no whooping, no bravos, no magnificos, no "I love you Yo-Yo!" or anything, just obligatory clapping. After Yo-Yo's solo piece I wanted to jump around and go woohoo!, but everyone just stood up and clapped, maybe a little louder than usual, and when he jogged (he jogged everywhere) offstage everybody immediately started to leave.

After the show I learned that if you're wearing a suit, go to a classy bar, and don't mind paying way more than you would at The Boot (the bar right on the edge of campus) you won't get carded. Useful knowledge.

Yo People: I'm gonna try to update M-W-F from now on, to keep things kinda regular. I've just been going haphazardly till now, and it annoys me when bloggers I follow do that. M-W-F means Monday Wednesday Friday, in case any of my readers are simpletons.

Some Stuff I've Learned

I've learned some pretty serious stuff in college.

I've learned that if I don't do any homework over fall break I'm gonna have to spend all afternoon on Sunday in the library, and the top picture is what my face looks like.

I've learned that I need to remember girls names, because after I've talked to them eight or ten times and theyf find it appropriate to hug me it's too late to ask them again. I've figured out the perfect way around this problem that I have. I see the girl, I say "Hey, I don't have your number yet, wanna put it in here?" and I hand her my phone, which is all primed to receive a new number. Later I look through my contacts and the name I don't recognize is the cute chica who's name I couldn't remember! This has worked on at least one occasion. My reaction to my brilliance can be seen in picture number two.

I've learned to never, ever, ever leave expensive electronics on the ground. I was reading on my kindle, got hell of tired, put in on the floor next to my bed and drifted off to sleep. I woke up a couple hours later, put my feet on the floor and heard a sickening crack. I instantly knew what was up. I spat forth a stream of expletives that would give Grandma a heart attack. See picture three.

I picked up my device and it looked completely fine. There were no marks or blemishes on the screen or elsewhere. I then flipped the power switch and Lewis Carrol faded away to be replaced with horrible black blobs. Picture four.

Luckily it's still under warranty, so I'm confident that I'll be able to resolve the issue for just the cost of shipping it back to amazon. Raaaa.

Midterms, Man.

So I'm totally done with midterms. Some people haven't even started theirs but I was lucky and had my last one on Friday. It's been kind of a rude awakening realizing that I have to study and crap here. Tulane's academic standards are a little higher than BCHS' I think. I've only gotten two grades back so far, but I'm pretty confident that I'm doin' aiiight.

I got a low B in Astronomy because I never paid attention in class or opened my textbook. I was forced to reevaluate my astronomy learning paradigm. I got a B?+ on my Early Modern England test, which was crazy hard. Two essays in 75 minutes? That's craziness! I don't really know what a B?+ is. I never got one of those in high school. I tried looking at her comments that she wrote in the margins but those didn't make sense either. Maybe I'm not evaluating her handwriting correctly, but "very way the method of statute in ~ parliament choser to beak the power of Rowe," "ery left Prtestat cowil 2 tutors for his son," and "you have the main poits but you aren't hey ssies!" don't make much sense to me.

I think I'm gonna have to do more homework and less socializing and internetting from now on. Balls.

Sleep.

I usually try to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but sometimes it doesn't happen like that. Last night I drank me a caffeinated beverage at like 11, not even thinking about the consequences of my rash actions. Rashctions. Rashactions. Actos precipitadas.

I ended up staying up until 3:30. I was feeling uncontrollably poetic, so I finished yet another ridiculous love song. I experimented with diminished minor chords. I talked with mah roommate about women. We spent a lot of time speculating on whether they still did arranged marriages in China. I sat on the floor in the hall and discussed Pascal's Wager with a guy who subscribes to Computer Power User Magazine and a Jewish dude from New Jersey. I thought about Aristotle's conditional regress argument. I got in bed at 2:30, and tossed and turned for half an hour. Then on a whim I got up and took a shower. There were two other guys showering.

Maybe if I didn't stay downtown until four (or five. Or six.) every Friday and Saturday I'd be able to sleep better on Sundays. Who knows.

Also, it turns out I just have a regular old cold, and I'm almost over it. I kinda wanted to have swine flu, just to say I did.

Some serious New Orleans Jazz

A few days ago I realized that I was living right in the middle of one of the coolest music scenes in the country and I wasn't taking advantage of it. So last night I took a break from the whole standing around in frat houses with hundreds of sweaty people and trying to come up with increasingly elaborate excuses for why I'm not drinking the horrible cheap vodka mixed with kool-aid, (It's free! Come on, man!) and headed downtown with a fellow music lover. I was lucky enough to find a fellow music lover who also happened to be a devastatingly cute sophomore girl, so I was feeling optimistic about the night.

After a surprisingly uneventful streetcar ride we arrived in Downtown New Orleans, which I'm increasingly convinced is the coolest place in the world. I had no plan in mind really, I just knew that Decatur, Frenchman and Bourbon had tons of live music. So we started up Decatur, and stopped at the first place with a band. It was the Crescent City Brew House, a cool restaurant that brews its own beer. The band was pretty good, there was a drummer, an electric bass, a dude wailing on a Gibson L-4 CES ( the guitar George Thorogood played a lot), and a tenor sax player. The waiter seemed kind of put out when we just ordered water and watched the band.

After like half an hour of that we decided to go see what else was up. Further down the street there was this cool outdoor restaurant with a jazz band, and we caught the end of their set. Further up the street there was this really divey honky tonk that we went in for about two songs. There was a pretty decent blues band playing tunes that made me want to sit at the bar, smoke a cigarette and drink a couple domestic beers, but after I looked around and realized that we were the youngest people there by about 20 years and had the most teeth by about 7 or 8 we decided to cut out.

We passed up a reggae bar that had a cover charge and decided not to go to Snug Harbor, a fairly famous venue, because you had to pay 20 bucks to get into the concert hall. After wandering around some more we headed for Bourbon, and it turns out there's actually some really good venues there, in addition to the places where cover bands are doing passable renditions of Mötley Crüe songs for legions of drunken partyers. This one place, Fritzel's, was awesome. The Fritzel's Jazz Band, which consisted of a drummer, a piano player, a clarinet man, and a guy on the string bass totally ripped. The bar was really cool too and the band played at a totally reasonable level so my ears weren't ringing when I left. There was a one drink minimum, but they didn't price gouge too badly. 4 dollars for a bottle of water and live entertainment is pretty reasonable.

After we left Fritzel's the night was only marginally musical. Bourbon was crazy, the Mississippi was pretty, and powdered sugar got everywhere.

A Streetcar Named Belligerence

Last night a few friends and I decided to go to Café du Monde. It's this place in the French Quarter that's open all night and has awesome beignets, which are these fried bread donut things covered in mountains of powdered sugar. They're awesome and cheap so we go there a lot.

So we get on the streetcar to go downtown and a couple stops later these tourists from England get on. One of them smiled and said something to the effect of "hey mate" or some other harmless British type thing to a guy a couple seats in front of us. The guy jumps up and starts yelling at the British guy. His language was quite colorful. Judging from his twitchyness and general bad behavior I'd say he was a crackhead or something. Who knows. He yelled at the limey for a couple minutes and then came and sat down directly behind him, right across the aisle from me, so he could "keep an eye on [the guy],[gosh darnit]" When the offensive Brit's female companion asked the guy what was wrong, the guy told her to "get out of [his darn] face." He then stuck his middle finger a couple inches from the British guy's nose, and told him he should be ready when he got off the trolley. Ready for what? I don't know.

After ten minutes of this insanity, where the tweaking New Orleans guy changed seats at least five times to "keep an eye on [the guy]," the streetcar driver stopped and came back to keep the peace. The crackhead was immediately incredibly friendly. When we all got of the trolley at Canal St. the British man was called a "fairy [guy]" and asked to "throw down right here."

I kind of wanted to see a fight, but the three girls I was with didn't, so we headed off to gruffle some sugary fried awesomeness.

I love this city.

My trip throught the ghetto

On Saturday night my homeboy Martin and I set of to the House of Blues to see Every Time I Die. I'm not really into that kind of music but I figured it'd be cool to jump around and mosh with a bunch of painfully thin teenagers with greasy hair and artfully messy eyeliner. Or something. It didn't really matter thought because the show sold out. We actually saw the singer of the band wandering up Decatur but he didn't have any tickets on him. Weird.

So there we were, downtown in the early evening. Nobody from Tulane was gonna show up and party until at least 11. I was totally content to wander around the quarter looking and art and browsing in voodoo stores and stuff, and then head off to Frenchman Street to see some jazz. Martin doesn't like jazz though, so we agreed to try to find a reggae club. There was a dude with a red black yellow and green hat on selling pipes and Bob Marley posters on the street so we asked him what was up. He told us Club Caribbean was a pretty cool spot, so we hopped on the streetcar and rode it to Broad street. I noticed that the buildings were getting smaller, dirtier, more covered in spray paint, and had less glass in the windows.

We hopped of the street car and headed up Broad looking for Bayou, which the reggae guy said was like 10 blocks away. I was getting kind of spooked. The street wasn't well lit, no businesses were open, and there were bars on all the windows. After a block Martin piped up, "You wanna call a cab?"

"Yes!" I was all about getting in a cab. So we waited on the corner forever next to (I think) a prostitute. She told us to be careful. The taxi finally showed up and we quickly jumped in. When we rolled up to Club Caribbean it was very obviously closed. It was supposed to open up at 9, so we walked over to a gas station and sat in the pool of light by the air pump for a freaking hour. A couple guys in a Dodge Charger revved their engine at us while I was mesmerized by their rims spinning right after the car stopped.

At 9 we went back to the club, which still wasn't open, so we called another taxi and rode back to Tulane.

That was my ghetto experience.

Victor Wooten

I've got an astronomy test in five hours. Did I stay up late last night studying? No! I went to the House of Blues! Victor Wooten!

For those sad strange little people who don't know who Victor Wooten is, he's basically the Michael Jordan of the bass guitar. When I saw that he was coming I totally didn't care that it was on a Wednesday night. So instead of staying in and doing schoolwork last night I boarded the streetcar with a couple friends and headed off for the Quarter. After getting kind of lost we eventually made it to the famous New Orleans House of Blues. It is the coolest venue ever. You have to go down this crazy alley and then through a restaurant and every surface is covered with all kinds of murals and art and paintings of awesome bluesmen. The concert hall itself is awesome too, it's a lot smaller than I imagined, so I got to get really close to Victor.

The opening band, the Lee Boys, were incredible. There was a guitar, a 7-string bass, a steel guitar, drums, and a trombone. They ripped! And when they sang, which wasn't often because they were mostly just totally jamming it was gnarly gospel! Who woulda thunk that "Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so" could sound so straight up cool?

After they got the crowd warmed up Mr. Wooten himself came onstage. It was just him and a drummer. V.W. and J.D.: two minds one groove, is what they kept saying. And they were throwing down some serious grooves. The stuff that dude does with his instrument is just mind blowing. Towards the end of the set he brought out 3 of his kids and they did a couple of songs. His daughters, 11 and 6, sang like little angels and his 8 year old son kept a rock solid beat on the drums. It was awesome. For the last couple songs he brought the Lee Boys back out and they just played. It was pretty incredible.

If you ever get the chance definitely go see Victor Wooten.

I'm a Creep

People use words in different ways around here than they did in good ole Boise City. 'Bro' does not mean a close male friend here. When you're called a bro at Tulane it's an insult. Bro deals with a very specific kind of dude. "Backwards fitted caps are bro," was how one guy tried to explain it to me.

Another word that I was unfamiliar with is 'creeping,' and all of its forms. Anytime someone is on facebook they're creeping. If you do something kind of awkward you're a creeper. My roommate admits to "creepin' on facebook" for many hours a day.

Some people are "master creepers." They can find out all about a person just by using the internet. Some of my bros (ha) have gone to elaborate measures to find out things about girls. Some go so far as to get on blackboard, a site that has information about the classes you're in, look up the class rosters, look up all the girls in the class on facebook, and then add the hottest ones so that they may someday have a real life conversation with them. I don't know, maybe they'll meet they're soulmate that way, but it seems a little creepy.

Yesterday at breakfast I saw a pretty girl sitting by herself and I went and talked to her. I had an actual conversation and I didn't have to spend hours coming up with elaborate ways to get to know her without actually meeting her.

I keep it real.

Extreme

Today I went for a run and got all kinds of freaky sweaty. I decided to take a shower.

I got all up in my towel and grabbed my shower things and left for the shower. I got myself all clean and whatnot and strode confidently down the hall towards my room wearing nothing but a towel. I reached my door and realized that I had forgotten something. I had no key. Terry must have left the room and locked the door. Balls.

I stood in front of the door for awhile then decided I had to go downstairs and get a new key. I got on the elevator with a group if Chinese (I think) kids. They spoke Chinese about me and laughed. I smiled agreeably. When I got to the lobby I saw that Terry was in the lounge. He saw me and brought me his key, so I didn't have to explain my situation at the front desk. So it wasn't nearly as exciting as it could have been.

That's how I roll.

It's Raining It's Pouring

It has been raining on and off here four like four days. It's the most rain I've ever seen. I haven't been able to walk on the grass since the day before yesterday because the ground is so saturated. There's standing water everywhere. I think I'm gonna have to break down and buy an umbrella one of these days. I've been going through twice as many clothes as usual because I get soaked when I go outside.

It's awesome.

Never Talk on the Phone Again!

For all of you lovely relatives who are just distraught that I'm way down here in the deep south, there's a crazy newfangled way to keep in touch. It's called Skype! (look it up yourselves, just type "skype" into your favorite search engine) It's for making video calls, so you need a webcam. You can get a good one for under 50 bucks. Mom, you definitely need to get one, so I can talk to Wilson! (and you too, of course)

Adios.

Cash Money

I spent 45 dollars on dinner this weekend. I wasn't buying dinner for the whole group. I paid 45 dollars after the bill was split 6 ways. There were two forks. There were multiple courses. The waiter said food words I didn't understand. My glass was refilled every time I took a drink. I ate alligator. It was amazing. $45 worth of amazing? I don't know. I was wearing a tie.

I walked outside. I walked to Bourbon Street. There were extremely gay men everywhere. They were participating in Southern Decadence. They weren't wearing very many clothes. A drunken foreign man poked me in the chest for emphasis while he tried to hit on my friend. I walked into a bar. A large man made me hand him my driver's license. He drew symbols on my hands. A short woman with a tray full of test tubes walked up to me. She put the bottoms of two tubes in her mouth. She tried to put the top of the tubes in my mouth. I showed her my symbols. She left. I did not have to pay $38 dollars to drink out of a woman's mouth like my friends did. I did however give a man a dollar because he put some soap in my hand and turned a faucet on. I showed two more women my symbols.

I walked outside. I saw more gay people. I got on the streetcar. A gay man got on the streetcar as well. A man, presumably a straight man, yelled at the gay man. The gay man's large woman friend yelled at the straight man. Obscenities were hurled. The proper way to express Southern Pride was debated. Chaps were recommended. Eyes were rolled.

That was my weekend. At one point I took off my shirt and swam in a fountain.

Dude

I lost my phone today. Hell of a deal. I feel so naked without it. Disconnected. Incomplete. I'm experiencing actual physical pain in the tips of my thumbs. I've developed a twitch. I'm trying hard not to cry. I wandered around campus aimlessly for hours. I'm incapable of feeling emotions. My phone is gone. My entire life is ruined.

The War of the Roaches

Freakin cockroaches, dude. One thing about New Orleans: cockroaches. They're everywhere. If you go out at night it's like you stepped into a nightmare world of cockroach madness.

Last night I was on my computer when I thought I saw a shooting star out the window. I then realized that it was a moth, and it was inside. I turned around and ascertained that it was not a moth, but was, in fact, a two inch long cockroach.

I let out a primal bellow of rage and leapt up from my chair. Terry, my roommate, also stood up, frightened by my unprovoked outburst. I pointed and comprehension spread across his face.

"Shut your closet so he doesn't go in there!" Terry shrieked. I hastened to do so, still too furious to articulate words. Terry is fairly short, so the cockroach that was now about an inch from the ceiling was out of his reach. I leapt onto my bed, shoe in hand, and crushed the life out of the monster, howling with victory. I flicked the carcass expertly onto the ground, and Terry promptly removed it.

Humans 1 Cockroaches 0

Journey Through the Inner City

I've been needing to visit my bank for awhile now. The nearest one is downtown, about 3 miles from where I live. At first I was just gonna ride my bike, but evidently there's some pretty shady neighborhoods between here and there. Today a lovely girl informed me that there's a shuttle that runs like every half hour between here and the Tulane med school downtown. I checked this shizzle out on Google Earth (the coolest program in the world) and lo and behold, the shuttle stop was only a couple blocks from my bank. Bam!

So I hop on the shuttle, which is a gigantic tour bus. It even says TOUR NEW ORLEANS! in huge letters on the side. Seeing the bus got me in a touristey kind of mood so I whipped out my camera and just started furiously taking pictures out the window. Unfortunately most of them are mostly a reflection of the flash, but a couple turned out okay. There are some ruuude churches around here, I'll have to walk around and get some decent pictures someday.

Anyway, after a short bus ride I got out in the middle of downtown New Orleans. By myself. Chill out, Mom. If I had gotten mugged or beat down or something I probably would have mentioned it in a flash forward earlier in the narrative. So I find the bank and did my bank stuff, then came back to where I remembered the bus stopping. I took a few pictures of the skyscrapers and stuff, but I was mostly concerned with not getting lost and ending up in some dark alley with a couple of crackheads.

Like I said, I got back to where I thought the bus was and sat down on this bench. If you'll look to the picture you'll notice that one of the arms was ripped off and like twisted around by some brute. I saw all kinds of interesting people. A guy was walking down the street rapping to himself about how ... well I can't really reproduce any of his rhymes on a family friendly site like mine. Suffice it to say that he had a high opinion of his fighting and women chasing skills. I noticed a lot of people here smoke cigarettes that smell really sweet and incensey. I don't know if that's a southern thing or what.

While I was sitting around watching people, I see the bus I'm supposed to be on pull up to the curb... 2 blocks down the street. So I jump up and start running. My sudden movement caused a medical student to raise his eyebrows at me. Thanks to my incredible athleticism I managed to dodge several hobos, jump over a park bench, spin around a delivery guy and parkour over a UPS van to get into the bus. It was either that or I just kind of ran down the sidewalk, I'm not sure. It all happened so fast. Anyway I got on the bus and had a safe and sane journey home.

Zebulun Anaximander Vanadium

I've got two classes in the academic quad, which is full of all these really old really beautiful buildings. The one on top is Gibson Hall, the building at the very front of the campus that people on the streetcar are always snappin' pictures of. Being a student of this fine institution I got to take a picture of the back corner of it. I suppose I could have walked around to the front and taken in the whole front of the building with the huge Tulane University sign and all that, but I had a class in like 10 minutes.

The gargoyle is above one of the side doors to Mayer Hall, where I have Ethics. He and I stared each other down for a few minutes before class. There's little fellers like him everywhere. He's only about a foot high, maybe.

In astronomy class I came up with a new 19th century gentleman who buys railroads and stuff name. My new 19th century wealthy business man name is Zebulun Anaximander Vanadium. So yeah, that's what I did on Tuesday, stared down gargoyles and came up with a 19th century mogul name.

Additionally I got a job tutoring kids at a local elementary school. I'm not entirely sure if this is gonna be the gig for me but it pays better than all the other work study positions.

Z.A.V.

My First Gulf Coast Rain Storm

So tonight it rained. A lot. There were hundreds of people outside cheering every time it thundered and it was awesome. Then officers of the law told us we were going to get struck by lightning. So when the lightning stopped we went back out and played in the water that was covering everything. When there's 6 inches of water on a grassy field you can slip and slide for quite a ways. That running white kid in that picture is me!

I got some grass burns but it was a ton of fun.

Some of you may be interested to know that the drainage system around here kicks ass. There was water over my knees in some places directly following the storm, and by the time we got back in about an hour later there was just a couple inches in the gutters.

Outreach Tulane

So I signed up for this volunteer thingie called Outreach Tulane. I figured it'd be a good way to meet girls, and perhaps help out the community.

The location I drew was City Park, and so we rolled up and started spreading mulch around on these trails. I pushed a wheelbarrow for like a zillion hours. It is crazy hot down here, and plants are everywhere. They even grow on the water. There are probably plants growing in thin air. That plant that looked a lot like ganja from the interstate basically just looks like a basic plant up close.

We were really close to where I'd end up with the stoned cyclists later that night, it was wild. I didn't get to see an alligator, but maybe sometime soon.

Crazy Bike People

So yesterday I was walking back to Butler (my dorm) and there were some people fixing bikes. I was like oh snap maybe they ride bikes. So I went and talked to them and this dude Phil, I think, said they were riding to city park and chilling on Saturday. So today at 6, I rolled on up to the meeting place and there were like 50 people on bikes. Most of them were totally gnarly bikes that barely rolled along, but a few people knew what was up.

So we rode through New Orleans, which is such a cool freakin' city, to the park. We rode on little trails through the jungle till we got to this secluded area on the lake. Some guys built a fire right on the ground. That's something you can do when it rains 65 inches a year. It was basically a really gnarly party, full of all these crazy biking hippie people with beards and berkenstocks and whatnot.

After the party I got straight up shut down by some girls, for the first time in my life. It was ridiculous.

I'm All Kinds of at Tulane

Aiiight yo, so this blog is for all yall people who want to know about all my dealings here at college. Basically, this site is for Mom, Grandma and Aunt Noelle. Rock and Roll.

I've been at college for about one week and 3 hours, so here's a quick rundown of my first week:

We got here on Saturday, and after much extreme driving through the narrow streets of New Orleans we pulled up at Butler House, my home for the next year. We unloaded all my shiznit and then I got my key, carried my stuff upstairs and all that awesome stuff. I met my roommate, Terry, and he's pretty cool.

The rents and I said our heart touching goodbyes the next day, and bam! I was out on my own. It's been totally awesome. I've forgotten the names of more pretty girls than I ever met in high school. The school part is pretty cool too.

I'm taking Fundamental Music Theory, Introductory Spanish, Songwriting, Early Modern England, Ethics, and Astronomy.

Music Theory is pretty cool, the stuff we're in right now is shizzle I've known since small times, but we'll get into triads and diatonic harmony and whatnot soon enough. My professor is a gigging bassist. I was going to see him play last night, but the club was 21+. The one bar in New Orleans that doesn't let minors in, and that's the one I want to go to.

Spanish is pretty sweet. It's an honors course, so it's a little harder than normal Spanish, I guess, but it ain't no big thang. Songwriting is pretty sweet. We sat around and listened to hit songs and talked about why people like them. Early Modern England is a truly brootal class. I'm gonna have to work me arse off for an A in that bad boy, I think. It's a 300 level class so I'm one of only a few freshman. My prof is Scottish, so it's totally kind of authentic. 5-10 pages is a 'short' essay in her class.

My Ethics teacher is totally awesome. His name is Dr. Anomaly, how extreme is that? And he's like, barely older than we are, I thought he was some upper classman standing at the lectern the first day of class. He says mad cusses, and it's amazing. Aristotle and Kant are completely incomprehensible.

My astronomy dude is okay I guess, it's a really big class and he just kind of lectures. A cute girl sits next to me, so astronomy is a good class.

Well that's my classes, I totally promise I'll start carrying my camera around and uploading mad pictures for yall.

Adios!