It's that time of year again when students entertain me with their choice of clothing. In the mornings the temperature hovers around 50 degrees, yet I see people dressed like it's either 90 or 20. My favorite is when the sorority girls wear little shorts and a t-shirt walking across the quad with their arms crossed shivering. I guess people forget that there is a channel devoted entirely to weather. Perhaps while these little sorority girls are getting glamorous for an 8 AM history class they could turn on their TV. What's most puzzling is people wearing a heavy coat, a scarf, athletic shorts and boots. Hello??? If it's cold enough to dress every other part of your body as if you were about to trek through the snow, maybe you should put on some jeans at the very least.

I'm not sure how fit a fiddle is, but from all the test results at the health fair yesterday, that is indeed what I am. With my contacts in I can see 20/20. There's a shocker. I can exhale 96-100% of all the air in my lungs after a deep breath. Good to know for football games and Cowboy Mouth concerts. My sugar level was perfect. Perhaps the sugar couldn't get out of the microscopic prick in my finger that forced me to squeeze my finger like I was trying to get the last bit of juice out of a lemon. My blood pressure was excellent, right under the optimal 120/80. My hearing is good which is honestly amazing. I fall right above average in the body fat percentage which is odd since I've increased my muscle mass and lost weight in the last year. I was too big of a pansy to get a cholesterol check. I figure if everything else looks good, why let them stick a needle in me and get blood?

For the past month, I've been struggling with my geometry class. After the first test, the material took a rather big turn toward obscurity. Almost every night was filled with 3 hours of spinning my wheels trying to figure out reflections, rotations and translations. I frequently found myself trekking across campus to the professor's office for help, but never quite received the type of help I expected. The pieces of the puzzle just weren't fitting. I came to learn that I wasn't alone as the whole class was having difficulty with these new concepts. I turned in the assignments at the last minute, sometimes just throwing something down on paper knowing that it couldn't be correct. Upon getting the assignments back yesterday, the professor must have been tired of grading as I got a perfect score on both of the assignments submitted over the past two weeks. I never got a perfect score on the homework from the first month of class and I thought I knew what I was doing. I won't complain for sympathy grades though. It helps keep my A in the class intact.

Another weekend peeks around the corner today. As I gear up for one of the most important football games of the year (UA vs. UT), here's a little Cowboy Mouth to enjoy. It's a little slow to start the weekend, but blame my iTunes for that. Here is Great Wide Open World from Mercyland.

Normally, Erika is in charge of writing the concert reviews, but since she couldn't make it, I'll fill in for her.

I got to Workplay around 8:30. After driving around for 10 minutes, I finally found a place to park. I grabbed a couple bottles of water and headed into the venue where I saw one of my MySpace friends (twistedcorpse) sitting at a booth near the door. I went over to introduce myself as we had never met and ended up sitting with her and her friends, Chris and Suzy. It turns out Suzy graduated UA last May in elementary education and her mother-in-law works right around the corner from my office.

The show was scheduled to start at 9:00. We ventured to the stage around 9:10 and Theresa Andersson started at 9:20. She was unique to say the least, letting her own voice and vocal sounds be background music for her songs. She had some sort of fancy electronic set-up that let her record different things and loop them in the background as she was singing. She told us toward the end of her set that she actually played on Any Little Bit and Maggie Don't Two-Step in the early years of Cowboy Mouth.

The Setlist:
Light it on Fire
Misty Falls
Man on the Run
How Do You Tell
I Can Tell (interesting order here)
God Makes the Rain
Supersonic
Joe Strummer
Disconnected
Let Me Hold it Open
Everybody Loves Jill
Love of My Life
Any Little Bit
Tell the Girl
China
This Much Fun
Butterscotch Stallion

The opening was the usual with Fred going out into the crowd to get people off their butts. Misty Falls rocks live and was a complete surprise. I overlooked it when the setlist was exposed and it took a few seconds to figure out what it was. Several of us have bugged Fred "for the past year and a half" for them to play it (so says Fred). Supersonic has been MIA for a few months. Thankfully Regina has learned to play it. VooDoo Shoppe has been mysteriously absent as well for some reason. China sounds completely different when played in the Red Rockers style. Butterscotch Stallion was this shows codename for Jenny Says. In the words of JP, "butterscotch stallion is someone whose glorious-ness cannot be summed up in words. one must see him to understand. michaelangelo's david pales in comparison to him."

After the show I spent some time talking to the CM faithful before saying hi to Fred and JP. I got the typical "Did you have a good time?" from Fred. I would hate to know that it looked like I was bored. Overall it was one of the better shows I've seen. I loved the variety. It was completely different from the standard show we got in Starkville. Just another week and a half before we go to Atlanta to see them at the Roxy and celebrate Healey's birthday.

This is your typical complaint about Ticketmaster. I recently purchased tickets to see Cowboy Mouth in Atlanta. I paid enough in service fees to buy a third ticket. You're welcome Ticketmaster for the free ticket. Whoever you send from your office to attend the show will need to get their own hotel room. I'm not paying for that too.

The day Erika tried to buy tickets to Fall Out Boy, the Ticketmaster web site was acting screwy forcing us to call Birmingham to place an order. Of course buying tickets from Ticketmaster results in a "convenience charge". What's more convenient that calling long distance to wait on hold? To make matters worse, that phone call to Birmingham cost another $10 on top of all the fees they charge. I have Bellsouth to thank for that as they charge 33 cents a minute for in-state long-distance. That was rectified this week; thank you Qwest and your 11 cent in-state long distance.

So now I have to order tickets to the annual Thanksgiving trip to see the Predators in Nashville. I'll let you solve the mystery of where I have to go to buy tickets. Excuse me while I bend over and lube up.

On a much brighter subject, I'll be heading to Birmingham tomorrow to see Cowboy Mouth. Thankfully tickets could be purchased through a different ticket service. To get everyone in a good mood for the weekend, here's Disconnected off of Uh-Oh for your enjoyment.

Yesterday was the Birmingham Mayoral Primary and as usual, the local tv stations had to broadcast the results during primetime programming. My level of interest with this is minimal because I don't live there, and if I did, I doubt I would care enough to vote. What peaked my interest was the lack of votes that the bottom two candidates received. The bottom dwellers in the race failed to get more than 42 votes out of over 52,000 (52,111 to be exact).

How embarrassed do those people feel this morning? Imagine going to work knowing that only your family and friends voted for you (if that). Some family members probably didn't vote for them because the candidates can barely tie their shoes much less run a city. What's more embarrassing is that 10 percent of the votes received are probably mistakes. Florida has already shown us that punching a hole in a piece of paper is too complicated. Is touching a screen any easier? How do these candidates not know that the majority of their votes come from people on their campaign staff? How much money did they waste trying to get 42 votes? Isn't that like taking a test and only scoring five points? You really have to try to be that terrible. With all of the polls leading up to the election, shouldn't someone have noticed these candidates were expected to get less than 1% of the votes? If ignorance is bliss, these people must be in euphoria.