The Irish Thug

As mentioned before, I’ve had to close chances to get to see Tool perform live. Wednesday I get a call from the same kid saying he has one ticket for Thursday’s show. With that short notice I know it’s a lock that whoever I’m replacing absolutely can’t make the show.

The show was at the Tweeter Center just outside of Boston. The seats were the last row before the roof ends, but were dead center. The stage setup was guitar front right, drums off center right back, the mike for Maynard off center left, bass front left. They pretty much never left those positions. The most interesting thing about the show was the fact that at no point was there ever a light on Maynard. All you saw was his profile, he didn’t face the audience, against the LCD screen behind him.

The set list was a great mix of their albums.
Jambi
Stinkfist
Forty-Six and 2
Schism (extended)
Rosetta Stoned
PUSHIT
FLOOD
Wings For Marie (Pt 1)
10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)
Lateralus (With Big Business Drummer)
Vicarious

I really can’t say enough about the double drum solo during Lateralus. These two guys just went off on their drum sets. They did some back and forth drumming, but in general just played, and played some more.

It’s hard to pick a favorite of all the concerts I’ve seen since they all have different flavors. This concerts flavor was straight up, bad-ass, hard rock. Very glad I finally got to see them and check off another band from my To See list.

A gem I was introduced to by my Film and Lit teacher.

Select Points of The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930

• No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
• Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
• Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
• Revenge in modern times shall not be justified.
• The use of firearms should be restricted to the essentials.
• Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown.
• In general passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element.
• White slavery shall not be treated.
• Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races) is forbidden.
• Pointed profanity (this includes the words, God, Lord, Jesus, Christ – unless used reverently – Hell, S.O.B., damn, Gawd), or every other profane or vulgar expression however used, is forbidden.
• Undressing scenes should be avoided, and never used save where essential to the plot.
• Dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passions are forbidden.
• Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains.
• The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy.
• The use of the Flag shall be consistently respectful.

The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 was written to be “A Code to Govern the Making of Talking, Synchronized and Silent Motion Pictures. Formulated and formally adopted by The Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. and The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. in March 1930.” Read the full text.

A few weeks ago I talked about how I was reworking the code runs My Music Choices. Now I am ready to show what I’ve been working on to the world. The layout has been slightly altered so that the list can be reordered with just one click without using the sidebar I had before. However, that is the small change that wasn’t the main focus of what I added.

The big part of this upgrade is that it now uses the Audio Player to let users to listen to samples of each song I have mentioned. The samples can be listened to in each post directly, or using the music list to open a new small window that will play the selected sample. It will take some time to get through the backlog of the old posts, but you will see the samples popping up as time passes.

At some point I will make the Music Listing plug-in available for other WordPress users to download and use themselves. But for now, I will be keeping it to myself in case I find a few bugs or want to tweak some aspects of the code.

I’ve been really busy coding this week. Almost all of it is back-end things that you will not notice, but it will make me feel better. What I’m doing is re-writing the code that I’ve been using to list My Music Choices and my Lists so that they are written the way WordPress Plug-ins should be written.

This also became much easier when I learned how to use Xampp to run a local server for WordPress. This lets me test out all my code before I try and make it public for you to see. It’s better because it prevents me from bringing down my whole website because I had a bug in my code.

And since I’m never one to only have one project running at one time, I started kicking around some ideas of what I want to do with the website for my lacrosse team. I’m really excited about diving into this one because it will be my first website that has a real purpose and not just me adding things because I think the are neat. I also will get to design all these things that will make the webpage very dynamic and require very little input from which ever person on the team is in charge of updating the news items and such.

I spent all of Sunday flying back from Dallas to Boston. With all that time, I ended up with two new lists.

Things that Measure at (or about) 100 Feet

• One third of a football field.
• Length of Boeing 737-500.
• A 9 story building.
• 33 paces.
• The distance you are told to leave between your car and a fire truck or school bus.

Excerpts from a Two Page Ad in SkyMall for Gravity Defer Dress Shoes

• You will find a renewed enjoyment in walking places. You’ll park farther away at the grocery store, shopping mall, and the office just to get extra time walking in your Gravity Defer Shoes.
• It’s almost as if Aeolus, the Greek god of wind, himself has taken his powerful wind out of his bottles and put it into each of the Gravity Defer Shoes.
• The show is so much fun that the energy reciprocating shock of the Gravity Defer Shoes will actually give you the feeling of wanting to dance and be active. You might just find yourself joining a dance class soon!
• These ethereal shoes will transport you through life with such vigor that your friends and family will hardly recognize who you are.
• The shoes that world famous Secret Agents would wear the to black tie party where they end up doing reconnaissance before they are chased around a European city by evil henchmen … You will feel like you can keep up with the best of the World Famous Secrete Agents when you are wearing the Gravity Defer Shoes.

It all started over a year ago. My computer’s desktop was cluttered and I was repeatedly clicking the same four icons start my poker session. So I made PokerSelector. It was simple, it was good, it worked.

That was until I wanted to change something. Adding new things to the window was not hard, but it wasn’t clean and easy. I dealt with that fact for about a year. Then I said enough is enough.

I began work on The Opener. I set out to completely re-write PokerSelector so that it would be a dynamic window and fully customizable within the program itself. Two months of on again off again programing, sprinkled in during a great lacrosse season and a not so good run at poker, finally produced a result.

Today, I invite you to try out and use The Opener.

As most of you know, or should know, Barney Frank has introduced a bill, H.R. 2046 ‘Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007’, that would “provide for the licensing of Internet gambling facilities by the Director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.”

I decided that my Congressional Representative, Bill Pascrell Jr, should have this bill brought to his attention, as I felt that this bill is very important and deserves to be made law. Unfoutanately, I do not have the exact text of my email as it was sent via an internet form and not using one of my personal email accounts.

A few days later, I received a reply to my email. The following is what Bill Pascrell Jr had to say:

Dear Mr. Lannigan :

Thank you for contacting me regarding internet radio. I appreciate you r concerns and welcome this opportunity to respond.

H.R 2060, the ” Internet Radio Equality Act,” would provide royalty parity for Internet radio providers. It would vacate the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) March 2 decision to raise music royalty rates by 300 to 1200 percent and apply the same royalty rate-setting standard to commercial Internet radio, as well as satellite radio, cable radio and jukeboxes. A transition rate of 7.5 percent of revenue would be set through 2010.

Internet radio has provided the public with a way to express their views publicly, and allow others to listen for little or no cost. I am concerned that many citizens’ freedom of speech will be infringed due to the CRB’s decision to raise the royalty rates. Currently, H.R 2060 is pending action in the House Committee on Judiciary. I will be sure to keep you views in mind as this bill makes its way through the legislative process.

Please count of me if ever I assist you in any federal matter. I would like to remind you that my website, www.pascrell.house.gov, is frequently updated and provides a good way to communicate with me.

Sincerely,
Bill Pascrell Jr.
Member of Congress

I have since sent another email explaining the misunderstanding. Updates to follow.

Full Tilt Poker – No Limit Hold’em Cash Game – $1/$2 Blinds – 6 Players – (LegoPoker HH Converter)

SB: $103.05
BB: $213.40
UTG: $261.20
MP: $201
CO: $238.90
Hero (BTN): $197

Preflop: Hero is dealt 6 5 (6 Players)
3 folds, Hero raises to $8, SB calls $7, BB calls $6

Flop: ($24) 9 8 7 (3 Players)
SB bets $24, BB folds, Hero raises all-in to $189, SB calls all-in for $71.05
Uncalled bet of $93.95 returned to Hero

Turn: ($214.10) T (2 Players – 2 All-In)

River: ($214.10) 6 (2 Players – 2 All-In)

Pot Size: $214.10 ($3 Rake)

SB had 7 7 (a straight flush, Ten high) and WON (+$2.50)
Hero had 6 5 (a straight flush, Ten high) and WON (+$2.50)

+$2.50 HOLLA!!!

My friend Elsa is doing her coop at home in Tennessee. Because of this I missed her birthday and never actually got her a present. On her blog, she recently mention that she had just upgraded her car[link]. To make up for waiting so long, I decided that I would take the time to add a few alteration to her car so that she could enjoy it more.

For those that are lazy, here is what her car looks like now. It is a Toyota Corolla.

Here is the new and improved Elsa-mobile.
For those that are lazy, here is what her car looks like now.

This is something that has bugged me since was first made aware of the phenomena. The item in question is a segment of a Dave Cheppelle sketch in which Snoop Dogg recites an essay he wrote while high when posed the following question. What America Means to You? This was part of a larger sketch entitled “The Weed Olympics”. It involved amateur and professional stoners were pitted against one another to perform specified tasks. The amateurs were college students and the professionals were rappers, Snoop Dogg and one other whom I can not remember.

The phenomena in question is not that the sketch existed, but the fact that there is close to no record of it’s existence.

Searching the internet using various combinations of snoop dogg, dave chappelle, america, and means to you, no transcripts or video footage has been found. In my most recent attempts to find the full text of Snoop Dogg’s essay, I found two page to do acknowledge it’s existence.

Within Opentopia’s encyclopedia, there is an article on Chappelle’s Show. In the article’s comments on the DVD Releases, it mentions that:

“Some material from the show, such as What America Means to You did not make either DVD set and is as of yet unreleased.”

The Wikimedia article on Chappelle’s Show makes no mention of the sketch, but does mention that Snoop Dogg was a “Frequent or notable guest stars.”

From there we move to the biggest find to date. On a personal webpage (listed as belonging to the user “gilgamesh”), we have an actual excerpt from the essay. I will leave you with the words of this great lyricist in hope that his words will inspire others to dig deeper in to this mystery and see what else can be uncovered.

“…Chuuch, tabanacle, titty 1, titty 2, the prophet Eli. My mental gymnastics will flip you like an Aunt Jemima flapjack. Now, how ’bout that?”