Hydras Nest & Fulcrum Cornice

MUVO

Kate got me a MUVO for x-mas, and I'm convinced it's the best thing ever. It's a tiny flash-drive based mp3 player, and it has 550 megs of storage. It probably fits 17 or 18 cds, which is a good number, and it runs on a triple A battery that lasts a long time. The best part is how tiny it is though, and that it doesn't have any moving parts so it doesn't skip. I use the MF thing all the time. Highly reccommended.

The New Mullet?

Could this site be the new mulletsgalore? Thus queries Kim. One thing is for sure: it is a fucking trainwreck carcrash triple murder scene. Horrible and offensive to every sensibility, but I couldn't look away.

http://cameltoe.bolt.com/womens.html

Stranger Than Fiction

Check out breakupnews.com. What a fucking awesome website. You will feel your capacity for love or human emotion palpably drain away as you read story after story following the same depressing trajectory. A begins relationship with B. A takes B on a trip to Cozumel. B steals from A while cheating on A with B's best friend's ex. A attempts to confront B, B walks out and A is crushed. For example:

Davis/Lee: Paying For The Other Woman's Abortion

Corrine Davis, 26, is now blocking all emails from her ex, Bob Lee, and is drowning her misery in the warm lap of her boss. And sometimes in the tech guy's lap. "And both of them together," she says.
Both of them, we're guessing, are older--one of Davis' main beefs with Lee was that he was five years her junior. "It's just that he lied to me when we met and said he was only two years younger than me," she said. Then he changed his mind and said he was four years younger...Then five.
"But that was really only the first symptom of the greater problems," she said. She cites his porn and masturbation problem, a talent for spending years at a time unemployed, and a problem with her insistence on having a job. "He didn't want me to go to work some days because he was afraid I would meet someone."
What's more, this winner didn't like birth control. He made Davis go off the pill because he didn't like that it made her gain weight. Girls love being called fat! Nevertheless, she continued to profess her love for him. And when he asked to borrow a few hundred bucks, she gladly coughed it up.
And then he impregnated another woman.
Davis found out when a woman named "Jennifer" emailed her to say that she (Jennifer) was beautiful and she (Jennifer) was sleeping with Lee and she (Jennifer) had gotten knocked up.
Turns out Davis' cash had paid for Jennifer's abortion.
Classy.
"But he still says he really really loved me," says Davis. "Yeah right."

God, there are dozens of stories like this, complete with lurid details, at this website. Go there at your own risk!

HN&FC in effect, mofos!

The aichennan-effsee is back! There's been a metric ton of shit going on since last time. Let's see: I went to Philadelphia to do job interviews. I had 15 interviews that were all for places that I would be happy to work at. Since I got back from Philly, two places were kind enough to give me outright rejections, so that alleviates some uncertainty. I have two second round interviews (we call them flyouts, because you usually have to fly somewhere to do them) set up so far though, so that's cool. I'll try to keep a running tally like this

F:2
R:2
NR:11

at the top or bottom of my entries to keep track of the number of flyouts (F), rejections (R) and places that haven't replied at all (NR). Go F!

Also, I have to (get to?) teach this semester. I have been a Research Assistant for my advisor for the last two semesters, which is a fucking great way to get paid. Now I'm being thrown to the undergraduate wolves. Oh well, it's just less time I'll spend looking up analog sythesizers on Ebay. My class actually seems kind of interesting. It's international trade for non-majors, which means I won't be able to use most of the jargon I've picked up in my own work in this area, but maybe by explaining this stuff in its most basic form, I'll get a better grasp on how it really works myself.

The kids are all over the map too. I had my first class yesterday, and I asked them to write down why they were in the class and what they thought the most interesting issue in international trade was. A lot of kids were in the class because they thought it was an interesting subject. A lot said it was a requirement too, but I was surprised how many of them were taking it of their own volition. The responses to the most interesting issue in trade included 1 or 2 "no idea"s, a lot of "outsourcing"s and also a lot of "sweatshops are bad / WTO is evil" type answers. One kid said he wanted to know when China would overtake the US as the global superpower, if they haven't already. What?! So I'll see how this goes.

Going way back, I just got the pictures from Halloween developed. There were some great nuggets on there. Highlights:

Boyjazz

Worst band name ever. EVER. Unless they happen to be aggressively gay fellows. (not that there's anything wrong with that) Their name is so homoerotic, it's ridiculous.

But they do sound a lot like the Hydras, IMHO. I hadn't listened to them in a while, but I just did and it sounded very Hydras-esque. Check out this jam by them called Looking For You. Um, "...and when I find you, I'll give you love in the mouth"?!? Good line. I also like "there's not much time / before I make you freak out".

Better Clip of Extreme Cold Original Version

This is a better clip of Cynthia Dall's version of Extreme Cold. You can hear more of what I was going for in my cover version. The music in the original is so damned dirty. I love it.

Best Scene in The Big Lebowski?

Could it be the scene with Jesus? Where he says "I'm gonna stick that gun up your ass and pull the trigger until it goes 'click.'" Or at the very beginning when the two guys first break into the Dude's house, and the blonde guy picks up the bowling ball and asks "what the hell is this?" to which the Dude says "I see you're not a golfer." So?

HYDRAS MUSIC

I just did a cover of the song Extreme Cold by Cynthia Dall, which is from her excellent album "Sound Restores Young Men". I mostly did it to try to work on vocals. I was kind of using a weird voice on a lot of my songs, and I wanted to cut that out. So I'm trying to seperate the singing part from the writing part and see if that helps. The version I recorded has minimal instrumentation, but I think it sounds good. Here is a link to a clip of the original version of the song.

I'm also posting the full version of Monsters. The old one was short because I was using a program that only let me record one minute at a time.

Extreme Cold

Monsters