Actually I didn’t miss it - it was submitted after I got the five updates in last night. In any case, a man of many titles has been added to the list. The guy who sits on The Front Porch has been called, at various times in his life, Benj, Mr. Buck, Coach, Uncle Buck, and (most recently) Daddy. Benj Buck has a title here at the University, and the title includes the word “Mentoring.” This is horrible for me, because less than a year ago I was modifying some of the templates his office uses to create his very own letterhead, and now I can’t remember the title. Mentoring Coordinator? Coordinator, Mentoring? Something like that. As abstruse as I’m making the title out to be, he’s basically the guy responsible for making sure that student leaders/staff/etc. can best come alongside their fellow students/staff/etc. and encourage them in their spiritual life. His site, dutifully added to the list tonight, offers (among other things) book reviews, which should help the reader choose his reading better. Props to him, and may all you regulars flood his site at your earliest possible convenience. Thank you.

Got another five BJ-related bloggers that just got themselves added to the list:

Butterfly Music, run by Vanessa Parrott - she’s been on and off the radar the past few years, but this is her new home…for the moment.
What was I Thinking!, online home of Chris McAviney. Chris and I were in quite a few classes together and ended up sitting near each other most of the time (Mount…McAviney…it’s no wonder most college friendships, at least down here, tend to be with people whose last names are close to yours).
Dancing Daffodils by Dana Boomershine
a glimpse into the meanderings of my mind - that is, the mind of Chris Matthews. What is it with all these enigmatic “see into the darkest crevices of my brain” titles these days?
My Two Cents, site of the ever-popular Christian blogger and noted SI haunter Chris Anderson
RandomThoughts of Matt Hamann, who at least skips the enigma and just flat out confesses the randomness of it all.

In other news this is the first time that I can remember that three Chrisses (is that right? I think so…single word ending in “-s,” so you tack on another “s” and the “es” ending, so…yeah, I guess it is right) were added in the same batch. This shouldn’t be surprising, because according to one famous statistician, 74.3% of all male names in the US are Chris.* In yet more news, the Dining Common is thwarting my plans not to eat out more than three times a week by serving Spicy Dolphin (er, Tuna) Boats for lunch, and chocolate pancakes for dinner. I was already planning for dinner on the go tomorrow, courtesy of all these pesky rehearsals that seem to have appeared from out of nowhere, but lunch, too? Yikes. Thankfully (and this should stem the tide of parent-oriented comments to the effect of “it’s being provided for you, so enjoy it whether you like it or not”) I’m not actually paying for lunch unless I swipe the ID card. So in effect I’m always buying my meals. It’s just a question of from whom I’m buying it.

*In the interests of fairness, I should point out that I just made that statistic up. Thank you.

Over the last few weeks (I notice it’s been nearly a week and a half since I’ve emerged into the daylight to say anything at all) I’ve been keeping a record of all the things I’d like to write about. Here’s what I’m up to so far:

1.) A treatise on the amazing features of Moleskine brand notebooks.
2.) An R&R (”Rant & Rave”) about why we still sing songs in church that unashamedly use words no longer found in the English language (like “hither;” “mine” used in the place of “my;” any past-tense verb ending in “-st” like “dost,” “wouldst,” “couldst,” “shouldst,” etc; and a whole host of other dumb - yes, I saidst “dumb” and I meanst it - words).
3.) A discussion about a quote I saw recently that said, in effect, “There have always been good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things; only religion can explain good people doing bad things.” (Perhaps the corollary is closer to the truth - Is religion the only way to explain bad people doing good things?)
4.) A pondering on why, in this age of integration and equal rights and affirmative action, our Fundamentalist churches are still pretty much racially segregated.
5.) A musing if it’s actually the minority folks that cause that rift, considering that the definition of “equal rights” when it comes to racial/minority groups is “more rights that the majority have.” (No, not politically correct, but I mean no disrespect.)
6.) A drawn out non-humorous discussion of the musical origins and continuations of the Dies Irae phrase.

But seeing as I still have 100 pages to read for one class and two hours for another (the timed reading assignments are brutal on speed readers, because we have to read more to get the time requirement in; whereas we absolutely adore paged reading, because we can shoot right through it), and a paper due next Tuesday that still needs to be started, I figured I’d just poke my head out of the ground, say, “I’m alive, everyone!!!” and go on with my business. For those of you who hang on the stats, I still have January’s to post, and I guess I’ll combine January and February. But never fear - it’ll come out, eventually.

I want to give a mounty’s corner “whaddup!” to all those people streaming in from Tennessee. For you non-TN people, I just heard that my site was given a shout-out when the director of our quartet did a radio spot on WDYN, 89.7 FM out of Chattanooga. More details when I get them, but for now I thought I’d better extend a welcome to you folks.

Also on the news front is the purchase from the BJU bookstore for 50 of our new CDs to be sold there. I now expect people to stop me and say “hey” to me as I walk down the sidewalk. I mean, it happened when I wrote for TW, and all that was on those was just a mug shot. For those who may find this site, here is a list of responses you can expect:

“Hey, man [, how’re you doing?]”
“Wassup?”
“Hey, how’s it going?”

or any variation of the above. There’s an art to greeting people who know you when you don’t know them. I like to think I’ve nailed it down. I have to say, though, one of them makes me chuckle now. One of my voice teachers a few years back was Yoh Shirato. Of course when he was my teacher, he was “Mr. Shirato.” Now he’s just “Yoh.” This gives rise to the great phrase: “What’s up, Yoh?” (He has no idea how long I wanted to say that.)

So, Yoh…er, yo to the Tennessee folks, and yo to the rest of you BJ folks. If you heard about this place on the radio, leave a comment, plz.

The Calvary Quartet, the group I sing with “in my spare time,” this evening sang special music at Calvary Baptist in Simpsonville, our home church. (Never mind we’re almost never there.) This special event was to celebrate the 21 years that the church has been around, as well as to promote our new CD, “Let’s Talk about Jesus,” which can be purchased online at that link. We had a good time there at the church, though it is a little nerve-wracking to sing there, given the high level of talent and just plain big attendance.

Afterwards, in one of life’s quirkier moments, I found myself sitting behind Patch the Pirate at the Taco Bell drive-through. Hey, even swashbucklers get tired of fish, right?

Barnes & Noble says golf isn’t a sport.

I decided that there was something (call it karma or whatever) about updating…get ready…13 new bloggers to the list that was strangely unique. So here it is. That and I’m just tired of not getting to that list in a while. So, in no particular order that I will admit, here they are:

• Mindsweep
• Corene’s Chronicles
• Life Is Like A Box of Chocolate…Mmm, Mmm, Good! (listed as Livn4Jesus)
• Few and Far Between - Heather Daniel, soon to be Heather Moody. She graduated undergrad in 2005 and is now working in the healthcare industry in NC.
• Dear Void - Andrea Ruffner graduated with an undergrad degree in 2001, then with a grad degree in 2003. She’s currently living in the DC area.
• BlogJohn - John Barnett is a fellow Z boy. E-directory says he’s a junior history, but he swears he’s a senior Women’s Ministries major. Obviously something has to give. … Actually he swears he’s a senior history major. No one email me with “preacher girls” comments - I’m pretty sure I’ve heard them all before, thank you very much.
• nic’s blog and e-rabbi - a rare combo: a husband/wife blogging duo. What’s more is that she’s about as prolific an author as he is. I only hope I can be so lucky as to find a computer literate wife. Dave and Nicole Smith are both Ohioans transplanted to Detroit, MI (the agony they must endure, especially during college football season!) currently working at Inter-City Baptist Church.
• Wishful Thinking - Trisha Priebe, wife to Luke, with whom I worked at the Dining Common my freshman year. That’s really going back…
• Law’s True Lord - Wes Rist was an old high school classmate (sort of) of mine. He’s now out in Bristol, UK as a law student.
• Talon Computing - Zach Cochran is a fellow IT worker and geek/nerd/whatever.
• Son of Bradezone - What can I say about Brade (or Brad Garrett, as he’s known to those who don’t know him)? Geek, good web designer, IT employee, and the one you can always count on to say something that makes you go, “Huh??”
• The Music of Dan Forrest - A man who likely needs no introduction, at least not to the folks in the Fine Arts department. Dan’s a faculty member on leave at the University of Kansas (otherwise known as KU, on the grounds that UK was already taken…twice) getting a doctorate in choral writing. He’s the author of the Words from Paradise, which Chorale has been premiering all over the place recently. I should also mention that, in another life, he was my Basic Aural Skills teacher.

Got enough? I know I have. In fact I’m going to take some Nyquil to banish the flu symptoms (or at least get myself so drugged up that I can’t clearly remember the symptoms) and read about Baroque and Classical motets until I fall asleep, which should take about five minutes. You, on the other hand, are welcomed, yea, encouraged to visit each and every one of these sites and read until your eyes bleed from all the radiation coming off your monitor. You didn’t know about that, did you? You probably thought I didn’t know either, didn’t you? Of course I know. I am a blog, and I am everywhere…

<insert scary music>

Shoot me already. In an effort to boost bandwidth (which seems to have doubled or more from last year) I’m posting January’s stats. In January. Yes, even though today is March 7, 2:12pm, I’m posting January’s stats. Cool, huh?

Top post: “Would somebody *PLEASE* shut this man up??” - 208 views

Browser comparison
I now patently refuse to believe this information is correct. This is so skewed it’s not even funny. I don’t know where my stats program picked this up from, but there was some serious hiccoughing going on here.

IE: 44,641
Firefox: 6,294
Netscape: 539

I think this might have to with my bandwidth spike end of last year and beginning of this. Remember that? My bandwidth usage went from 300mb per month to close to 3gb per month overnight.

Top referrer
SI with 197.

Searches
Without comment (other than to comment that there are no comments), here they be.

1. chavez blowhard - I can only assume this is talking about everyone’s favorite dictator, the life of the part himself, Hugo. What kind of name is Hugo, anyway?
2. Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah in minor mode - You know, I picked up the disdain of my harmony teacher for this. I’m thinking of Marvin from The Hitchhiker’s Guide: “You can guide me, but I’m pretty sure I won’t like it.”
3. old fashion mounty suit - Any ideas what a mounty suit would look like?
4. the brooklyn tabernacle lyrics - As if the Brooklyn Tabernacle were a song.
5. Fresh Oil by Jack Hyles - Fresh fire…fresh wind…fresh oil…what about fresh fish?
6. Jack Hyles Memorial - Oy.
7. mounty tractors - From the latest in the “toys to rival Tonka” line…
8. by cruching the numbers jack hyles is not telling the truth - What’s up with all the Jack Hyles references? I don’t recall talking about him in great detail.
9. laser kühe mutilation - laser cow mutiliation. I love it. Even better is the random german word thrown in for good measure.
10. ESV+Bible+problems+Bob Jones - the problem is they won’t let us use it in any official function…though some do anyway.
11. famous mottos of the presidentials of the philippines - Wait…”famous” and “Phillipino presidents” probably don’t go together. Famous mottos of Phillipino president(ials)?
12. e-sword for cellular phone - not a bad idea.
13. funny mounty backwards on horse film - Me? On a horse? Backwards?
14. picture of ide cold drinks - You are SO living in the past. SATA cold drinks are the way to go - the liquid transfer rate is so much better, and they’re not nearly as noisy. Takes a special kind of throat, though - the old IDE throats don’t fit on the new SATA cold drinks.
15. dan forrest jr of bju - Brian Buda comes to mind.
16. the mounty hole problem - There’s no polite way to make fun of this comment.
17. joel osteen height - I include this only because of an absolutely hilarious mock infomercial where some guy with massive hair playing Osteen talks about a tooth-whitening product, and he/Osteen says, “You don’t hear the old songs talking about ‘wash me yellow as butter,’ do you?” I laughed long and hard.
18. SITE PLAN, MOUNTY COUNTY - Mounty County. Has a nice ring to it. Can I be mayor?
19. firefox hijacked mcdonalds ubuntu - There’s absolutely no rhyme or reason to that that I can see. But it wold make a great headline: Firefox hijacked McDonalds, Ubuntu (AP)
20. i have had a problem opening windows i hit f8 to safe start mode how long sould it take to start - hopefully more time than it takes me to mock your question
21. becoming a mounty - you can’t. don’t even try.
22. approximate omniscience - Does this sound at all impossible? Sort-of all-knowing? Almost all-knowing?
23. WHAT HAPPENED TO JACK HYLES - I DON’T KNOW. MAYBE I MENTIONED HIM ONCE. STOP SHOUTING!!!
24. mounty jackets - Be the first in your dorm to own a new leather mounty jacket! Only $5000 while supplies last!
25. Mounty figure - collectible action figures…of me! Here’s mounty typing at his desk…and here’s mounty catching up on his stats while the computer next to him (sold separately) reimages…
26. the power button of my optiplex GX260 blinks in yellow - HA HA! New PSU - the ones that came with that model are wretched.
27. monumentous mysterium - Translated from the Latin into pretentious English.
28. I am the very model of a modern master general gilbert amd sullivan - Of all the songs from G&S, I think this is the most popular…AND YOU GOT THE NAME WRONG!!
29. the sandwhich on spanglish - Today we interview the superhero known only as “The Sandwich.” Mr. Sandwich, what do you think about Spanglish?

You are hereby requested and required to stop by the Art Building on campus and view the Grad Art Exhibit of one David Siglin, otherwise known hereinafter as “Sig.” You may know him from The Sycamore Tree, or you may not know him at all. Either way, he’s got some great CG art around a tea theme. To that end I had my first cup of Earl Gray (”Tea, Earl Gray, hot.”) at his show. You may also want to purchase some of his pieces for very reasonable prices. I myself showed my appreciation by purchasing a rendering of the Temple of Heaven, located (I presume) somewhere in China. In any case, it’s running through sometime next week, but get there soon to get good deals on the framed originals.

So I didn’t get as much internet access as I thought I might while I was travelling. Oh well. This will be quite long, as it contains every thought that crossed my mind for the past five days. Or not. In any case, I feel compelled to use the MORE tag so that this doesn’t take half an hour to load on dialup PCs.

Click for more…