Don’t Make Me No Difference

CIMG1550I never considered myself southern until I temporarily migrated to New England this summer.

But you guys… I mean, y’all, I am southern.

The fact is that I only lived in Massachusetts until I was 7. And I have slowly been turning into a southerner ever since I moved to Tennessee.

It’s not so bad really. But everyday I am noticing more southernisms about myself. Like how I kind of miss that good feeling you get when you wave to people you don’t know while driving, and they wave back.

Don’t worry, I still don’t drink sweet tea like it’s water. I leave that up to Kalista.

Giggle Trigger

There are some words that will always put a smile on my face, for reasons that are not apparent to anyone but myself.  No matter where I am, I will giggle like a little girl.  Here are some of those words and the story behind why I am amused.

  1. Time
    Two Halloweens ago I was with some friends late at night on the way to or from a party on campus.  We were checking our watches to see what time it was, when I realized that it was the Sunday where Daylight Savings Time took effect, meaning that we had just gained an hour.  My dear friend Corey Benick (who was at the time slightly socially lubricated and dressed as Willy Wonka ala Johnny Depp) then shouted “TIME!  I LOVE TIME!”  It was so funny to me at the time that I think of Corey almost every time I hear the word time.
  2. Teamwork
    For this one, let’s take a trip back to high school.  I’m in Biology AP class, which was very small, probably only 14 students.  Our teacher thought it would be fun to have a genetics project were we all practiced “mating” and pulled out random chromosomes from a brown paper bag in order to produce offspring, and of course that made us all laugh like idiots while we were doing it.  I cannot for the life of me recall whether it was Christine or myself who said this, but once we had produced 10 or so healthy offspring, someone declared “Good teamwork, team!”  And therefore teamwork = sex in my mind, so of course I am giggling every time I hear it.
  3. Oxygen
    This one is a little new and I don’t quite know if it will have staying power, but for the past couple of days it has been giving me the giggles.  This comes purely from listening to the You Look Nice Today podcast and hearing Merlin Mann complain that he never gets any alone time away from Oxygen.  It’s in the “Truck Spank” episode if you’re interested in listening, and YOU SHOULD BE.
  4. Sideburns
    I’ll make this one short and sweet.  I kissed a guy with some considerable sideburns last summer.  It was a mistake of almost comical proportions, and I’m happy to say that I do indeed chuckle when I think about it.  The end.
  5. Ch
    Unfortunately for you, dear readers, I cannot fully explain this one without simultaneously making this blog inappropriate for all audiences.  But you are more than welcome to shoot me an email and I will let you in on the joke.

Girl Talk, not girls talking.


I work in an office next to a YMCA, and very often, I sneak out of that office for an hour to enjoy the two things I love the most, music and running. As this is my first guest post on Cloudy Day, and as I run a music blog, I thought I’d hit on the musical note, and follow up Will’s post about girls talking with the actual Girl Talk.

Girl Talk is Mashup DJ Gregg Gillis, a Pittsburgh native who just released his fourth album last week, a 12-track club banger called Feed The Animals that’s pretty hard to summarize, because, as you’ll hear, the album shifts gears every 15-30 seconds, pairing songs like Jay-Z’s Roc Boys over Radiohead’s Paranoid Android, T-Pain and Dolla’s Who The F*** Is That over Avril Lavinge’s Girlfriend, and my favorite mix, Timbaland’s Drop over a mix of Tom Petty, Of Montreal, Good Charlotte, Cheryl Lynn and Schooly D.

The album as a whole covers hundreds of samples, and is already gearing up to be this summer’s party soundtrack, and as one reviewer put it: “If you only buy one album this year, you might as well buy this one - it seems to have all the others on it.

Below are three of my favorite tracks on the album. Hope you enjoy.

(Click here to cop the album for free.)

1. Shut The Club Down - Girl Talk
2. Give Me A Beat - Girl Talk
3. In Step - Girl Talk

Beach day

Confession: I used to hate everything summer, beach, sun, fun, etc. And I mean hate.

When summers came around in Tennessee, I would just hide inside all day. A few bad band camp sunburns on incredibly fair Irish skin will do that to you. My father, who rightly fancies himself a comedian, continually warned me that I was going to end up with Rickets. If I had actually spent some time outside on a summer day, I would come home and tell my father that I had avoided Rickets for yet another day. This occurred maybe 5 days out of the entire summer. It’s really a shame that my parents put in a beautiful in-ground pool in our backyard, and I hardly ever use it.

But this summer my aversion to the sun seems to be almost gone. And what’s that? I LOVE THE BEACH? Yeah, you heard me. For better or for worse, my everyday life has completely changed since coming to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer. These changes couldn’t have come at a better time, and I sometimes have to pinch myself because I can’t believe that I’m not spending every waking hour on the couch watching HGTV like I would do in Knoxville.

So here are some pictures from my day at the beach yesterday with Will, Anthony, and Kate. Unfortunately I let Kate get a hold of my camera and she promptly deleted the one photo I took of her. I am planning my photographic revenge already.

Anthony CIMG1462 DORK!

Girl Talk

Hi, I’m Will. You remember that awkward kid in second grade who smelled like beef bouillon cubes and had a strange rash above his lip that never went away? Well, no, that wasn’t me (I was the one wearing women’s ankle socks over his pant legs) but if it was, I would be totally fine with it because that’s just how I am: someone who harps on the past as little as possible. Anyway, you probably know me a little better now, and, in case anyone was curious, I’m suddenly appearing on Cloudyday dot org not because I am an amazing hacker but because Emma was kind enough to grant me a spot on this here lovely site of hers. For that, I thank her, and will try my hardest not to disappoint or say anything incriminating against because—let me tell you boys and girls—there is so much to tell I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Ok, I’m lying about that but, still, if there was, I wouldn’t mention it because I can keep a secret. That’s another thing about me: I keep secrets.

Anyway, let’s talk about girls. Yesterday, I spent nearly my entire day hanging out with three of them. They taught me more about the female psyche in those seven hours or so than I probably have learned in all of my psychology classes combined, even when you toss in Reviving Ophelia (which I read in its entirety). This is what I learned.

1. Girls have crazy endurance.

2. They are very much accepting.

3. They are quite wise in their weird ways.

The first one I learned thanks to Emma. She completely smoked me on our 5k through Edgartown. Emma actually has one of those little I-Pod thingys that goes in your shoe and tells how many miles you’ve ran (or in my case, walked). The second she whipped that puppy out I knew I was in trouble. She also has a fairly thick runner’s guide which actually teaches you how to run. Since when can people be taught how to run? Isn’t that knowledge in our genes or something? Girls have crazy endurance.

The second I learned thanks to Kate (whose name I can’t really spell). According to Kate, when the ratio of guys to girls in a group is one to three, the male in said group is automatically considered either a “pimp” or “homosexual” by people not associated with the group. I have been accused of being both, at one time or another, but this knowledge did not seem to deter the girls from accompanying me into town. In fact, Kate even instructed me how to walk if I was going to play the role of a homosexual properly (apparently I was not geared well enough for being a pimp—yet another reason to carry around a cane). Girls are very much accepting.

The third I learned thanks to Simona. I’m fairly certain Simona is The Dalai Lama reincarnated. On our way to some blueberry ale, courtesy of The Newes in Edgartown, Simona stopped at every single flower within arms reach to take a whiff. Now, I get the whole flower thing. They are pretty, and smell nice, and somehow make girls forgive us gents for doing bad things, but really…are they that great? I didn’t think so until I realized that perhaps the reason she stopped so frequently for this colorful, aromatic object was not because of the object itself, but because in this moment of cessation the day can be savored instead of scarfed down like cheap Chinese takeout. “Stop and smell the roses,” the saying goes. Girls are quite wise in their weird ways.