Budapest before the Fall semester, Hungary enters the EU.

Do not drink homemade palinka with Hungarians, unless you intend on spending the following 8 days wondering if you should even bother maintaining hope for living the remaining days of your life without a perpetual hangover.

Clint Mansell

Listening to his work makes me feel very very tiny, in the most satisfyingly arresting possible way.

An excerpt that captures this best, taken from Wikipedia:

Mansell has garnered a cult following for his soundtrack work, so much that Smokin' Aces director Joe Carnahan admits to receiving "blatant threats" when the soundtrack was released without much of Mansell's score for the film. This led to releasing a platinum edition soundtrack which is all Mansell's music. The album included the following insert explaining the situation:

"Clint Mansell likes it rough... ...no, I mean it. We engaged him on 'Smokin' the way you would a contract killer. Here's a name and a photo...now bring us back a body...that's about as much he was given to go on. Well that and about six weeks to compose the entire score... ...and I think he prefers it that way. If you have NO times and innumerable complications, then Clint Mansell is your man. THE man. All clutch. He's that freak from the bomb squad who sits, pliers perched, waiting for the countdown clock to hit '00:01' before he starts snipping wires. And he killed this one. Somehow managing to stitch the most wildly divergent disassociative elements of 'Smokin' Aces' into a singular theme. Bravo old boy. You've earned every last bottle of beer I piled into your fridge...and then drank before you did. I'm most pleased and selfishly so i might add, that Lakeshore decided to give the score its own separate album. The amount of blatant threats and promises of bloodletting I received from this cultish, hardcore fan base that claim Clint as their pagan savior was enough to drive me into hiding. I hope 'Clint Crazier' are so sated by their master's latest musical offering and would only ask that they stop driving by my house in the middle of the night, playing the 'Requiem' score at full volume. I get it, you were pissed, but now the neighbors are circulating a petition so knock it off. JC"

I love pipetting-how about you?

Eppendorf International's advert for epMotion, the world's first automatic pipetting system.



That's right my fellow scientists, now we can focus more on candlelit bed-throbbing rather than the transportation method of your precious cell cultures.

But I don't believe in unicorns, let alone want to ride yours.

So I decided to join a NYC networking site out of curiosity (which is why I do most things, aside from ambition) and to meet new folks.


This guy sent a message asking how many times I've been told that I look like Angelina Jolie.
Okay, he's trying to pay me a compliment. I can't bite his head off for it, I think to myself. I reply in a civil manner. I look at his page. He's into metaphysics, Deepak Chopra and "The Secret". Pretty much the whole "New Thought Movement" which consists of retard "prophets" that write redundant, tiring books and seminars/dvds on self-searching via "The Law of Attraction", etc. Considering the fact that my enter liberal arts major here (if I wasn't pursuing engineering, which is highly unlikely) thesis would probably be a relentless argument ripping that whole "movement" into weeping shreds, I doubt we would get on. I'm not a spiritual person. I'd like to think that I am capable of being spiritually tolerant, but who am I trying to fool? I regret to admit even that is a far stretch for me. Sorray!

Anyway. With all of that said, I also feel that it would be self-defeating to automatically dismiss him for our differences, or based on my quick biased judgment of his interweb profile. After all, take my silkworm anecdotes, nerves of steel and ambitious time line dreams away and who am I?
My compadres, sure we like to recognize that our ideas of reasoning and the convictions we stand by are some kind of mighty or even intriguing. But denying one's stupid douchery convictions that is not your own is just cheap and wrong. (That was a "no shit, sherlock" moment.)

I accept his obnoxiously flashing IM invitation.

Here's how the thrilling conversation went:

Him: really? how many times have you been told you look like blah blah?
Me: Zero, like I said in the e-mail. Remember? ;)
(Note: The "remember?" and smiley face emoticon serves as a way of showing playfulness. Remorse, if you will.)
Him: So do you like sports or the fighting arts?
Me: I can't say that I do. I'm very physically active and much of a trekker, but sports and martial arts fail to keep my interest.

Me: Maybe dodge ball, but only because I once got hit in the face during a game and found it to be funny. Since then, I've assumed it to be funny whenever anyone got hit in the face with a ball.
Me: Oh, and maybe soccer, too. But only because it's cool for Americans to rant and rave about soccer while knowing absolutely nothing about it. :D <---(Read: More hopeful remorse.)

Him: yeah I'm not that into sports or martials either, really
(Note: Doctor Unicorn Trainer's got sports/martial arts listed as his main interests. Along with spirituality, the Universe and *"meta energy"--but let's not nitpick here.)
(-----awkward interweb-space-time pause, due to me playing with my septum ring and perhaps him biting his nails-----)
Him: so what do you like to do? what do you enjoy?
Me: how is your day so far? (Read: I'm getting to be cheap with my meaningful emoticons. Srsly.)
Me: My mile-long interests are listed on my page, and they're pretty interesting to begin with. I would say the same about yours, after all, I did read your page before contacting you. I would think this is a natural process. (Read: Your interests of meta-unicorns-self-help are only interesting because I don't agree with them and am charitable!)

Him: sound and music? I love music.


Slings and arrows! Slings and arrows, betch!

*A. J. Ayer is turning in his grave right now.