Hi! I'm posting! And it's not about books! Weird, I know.

So, those of you who have been following my Livejournal for a while know that I listen to the Coverville podcast. I haven't talked about it much lately because, well, I haven't talked about much of anything lately. But, today, I'm talking.

The latest episode is one that i enjoyed enough to tell everyone else about it, and try to get you all to listen too. Today was a 'cover story' episode of the podcast, in which Brian (the host) plays covers of or by a single band/artist, instead of a mishmash of a whole lot of unrelated groups. Today was XTC. So, today there were 9 consecutive covers of XTC on the show.

If you're not already a fan of XTC, this probably isn't the introduction to the band that will make you a fan. But, if you already worship at the alter of Andy Partridge's songwriting, then today's episode is one you will definitely enjoy. The show contained 1 track that I've already incorporated into one of my many CoverMix mix tapes, Mandy Moore's cover of "Senses Working Overtime". It also had covers of 2 other songs that I've used, although by different artists than the ones I'd used - "Dear God" and "Making Plans for Nigel".

The "Making Plans for Nigel" cover alone was worth your time for listening to the show. Al Kooper (famous in his own right) makes the track sound like it was written by Danny Elfman, and seriously, how can that be wrong?

There was a cover of "Ten Feet Tall" that, while fine, was more or less a note for note exact copy of the original, so nothing to write home about. But, Joe Jackson's cover of "The Mayor of Simpleton", performed live solo on piano, was mindblowing. I loved it. And this marks the first time I've heard covers of "All You Pretty Girls" and "Love on a Farmboy's Wages" that I was willing to listen to a second time.

I highly recommend it.


No Worries,
Matt

So, I know I promised an update containing Holly's Birth story, and that will come, but first - this:

Willow is in a definite Princess phase. She only wants to wear pink. She has maybe 3 or 4 pink outfits, and they are the only things she wears day in and day out. She got a kid's disney princess jewelry set from my dad last year, and over the last 2 months, she's started wearing the rings, earrings (clip-ons), and necklaces constantly. And add on to that her addiction to Barbie movies.

The fine folks at Mattel have released a slew of direct-to-DVD movies 'starring' Barbie, and we accidentally caught part of a commercial for one a few months ago, and ever since, that's all that Willow has wanted to watch. So, we borrowed a few via Netflix, and wound up giving her one as a Christmas present, and now my father just gave her 3 more for her Birthday.

On the whole, the movies aren't all that bad - they're all computer animated, Barbie usually stars as the main character or as herself telling the story, the music in them is better than some movies I've seen, and the content is strictly on the up-and-up - no winking in jokes to the adults watching. But the thing that gets me is the triplets.

In almost every one of these movies, there is a group of three girls around the age of 5 or 6, who play triplets. One is always blonde, and one is always brunette. The third has waffled from red to blonde to tan to whatever in the various movies. And their names are different in each flick. Yet, they are always there!

So, what's the deal????

No Worries,

Matt

I love the lyrics quiz meme. I've done it 4 or 5 times over the past 2 or 3 years, and I tend to whip it out when I haven't posted in quite a while. Gee, that sounds like now. So, here it is. 25 sets of songs lyrics are posted below, taken from some of the first tracks that showed up on a shuffle of my iTunes library. Guess the song title and artist name. I make no claims for the suckage/popularity of some of the songs, just that I have them, and at some point enjoyed them. I skipped past some of the more obscure tracks, like Wheatus' "Dynamite Satchel of Pain", which I had listed in an earlier meme, and after reposting it twice, still no one got it... Oye - you people.

( Have fun. )
That's all for now.

No Worries.

Matt

I want a Tauntaun sleeping bag!!!!!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/tauntaun.html

That is all for now.

Oh, and started the new job on Wednesday, and I am deleriously happy. I think the last 9 years of living hell were prepayment for actually working in a functional lab with a cool PI. Not to jinx it in the first week or anything, y'know. =)

No Worries,
matt

I don;t usually just post lyrics to a song as an actual post, but it's stuck in my head today, and I think the lyrics are very fitting.

( 'Earn Enough for Us', by XTC )

Actually, now that I've read through the lyrics, it doesn't seem quite as fitting as it did before. Wow, that song's a lot darker than it seems just hearing it. This guy really doesn't like his life....

So, this morning for breakfast, I made myself a homemade Egg McMuffin - a fried egg with an english muffin (raisin), a slice of cheddar, and 2 strips of bacon. I got less than half of it - Willow ate the rest.

So I made another. And another. And another. I think all told, I only had 1 to 1.5 of the 4! that I wound up making. Willow ate all the rest, and still wanted more! This girl is in serious growth spurt mode! ...and she's already the size of a six year old!


Also, today, she drew her first recognizable picture of people, with heads, eyes, nose, mouth, body and feet. Obviously, I'm not talking Picasso here, but I am very impressed with her attention to detail so far.

Recent Willow quote: "Daddy, Mounds bars don't get up and walk away by themselves! They don't have legs!" - which she said while her pregnant Mommy was upset because I had lost the Mounds bars I had just bought for her.

I know there were a few more things I wanted to put here, but for the life of me I can't remember them. oh well. I'll remember later.

No Worries
Matt

Just to make sure you don't think that my previous "real" post was the start of a trend, I present you with another meme, as yoinked from both brikle and starpush. Fill it out if you so choose. Anonymous replies are (I suppose) allowed, but discouraged.

Enjoy!

♥Be My Valentine Application♥

Everyone knows there's at least one person on LJ, that you would like to be your Valentine. So, here's the application.


Please provide positive answers.

Name:

Age:

Height:

Location:

May I Call You:

Single or Taken:

Would You Date Me:

Kiss On First Date:

Will You Send This Back To Me To Fill Out?:


*What would you do if I...*

I made a move on u:

I kissed you:

I lived next door to you:

I asked you on a date:

I was hospitalized:

I ran away from home:

I got into a fight and you weren't there?

I asked u to have sex?

I asked u out?



*What do you think about my...*

Personality:

Eyes:

Hair:

Body:



*Have you ever....*

Lied to make me feel better?

Wanted to kiss me?

Wanted to kill me?

Broke my heart?

Kept something important from me?



*"X" marks the spot* WOULD YOU....
[ ]Kiss me..
[ ]Hug me..
[ ]Date me..
[ ]grab my ass..
[ ]Kill me..
[ ]***k me ...
[ ]Love me..
[ ]Hate me..
[ ]Hold me..
[ ]Lie to me..
[ ]Hurt me..
[ ]Sing with me..
[ ]Dance with me..
[ ]Grind with me..
[ ]Cuddle with me..
[ ]Let me make a move on you..
[ ]Make a move on me..
[ ]Watch a movie with me..
[ ]Get me a B-day gift..
[ ]Let me borrow your car..
[ ]Be there for me..
[ ]Buy me a drink..
[ ]Bring me around your friends..
[ ]Give me a massage..
[ ]Drink kool-aid with me..
[ ]Take advantage of me..
[ ]Hangout with me...
[ ]Take care of me if I wasn't feeling good..
[ ]Hold hands with me..
[ ]Do something incredibly sweet for me..
[ ]tell me you love me...

I've been tagged. Oh well. I'll post a real post at some random point in the future. I'm about to have a lot more free time, so it might be then.

You know the drill. Post 25 things about yourself, then tag a bunch of other people. I'll refrain from tagging others, but here's my 25. Some of these are common knowledge, some of these are things I've never told anyone other than my wife.

1. I was born in Camden, NJ - the armpit of a state that most people consider the armpit of the country.

2. From the age of 10, I knew I was going to college, I knew it was going to be at MIT, and I knew I was going to be an engineer.

3. I didn't get in to MIT - mostly because I nearly failed 2 years of AP Chemistry, a class I loved but was horrible at.

4. I've only had 2 broken bones - I broke a finger when I punched a wall in frustration sophomore year in high school, and Alex Karlowitz broke my nose when he sucker punched me 2 years later. All other injuries I've ever had were inflicted by my older sister.

5. I really hate that I live so far from most of my high school and college friends, and I get really jealous when I see that they are always getting together for good times.

6. I feel incredibly guilty about #5 for 2 reasons - first, it's partly my own damn fault for falling out of touch with them, and 2, I only live about 120 miles away, when my wife lives close to 6,000 miles away from her high school friends. Who the hell am I to whine?

7. I was told that I was lazy so many times when I was a kid that it's become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

8. I love being a dad far more than I ever thought possible.

9. Back in '99/00 I used to have uncontrollable rage/revenge fantasies about killing a certain cousin and his parents. So violent, uncontrollable, and unrelenting it put me in therapy.

10. The only reason I never went through with #9 is that I love his sister and brother far too much to ever do that to them.

11. I only ever asked out my first girlfriend because someone told me that she liked me. I was afraid that she was the first, and possibly the only, girl ever to do so, so I'd better capitalize on it.

12. At a party once in 8th grade, I played a sappy song on a friend's piano while looking off to the side at a girl i was crushing on. Now, purely out of reflex, whenever I play or hear that song, I look off to the side, and still picture her there. But, you know, not in a creepy, stalker-y way, more out of nostalgia.

13. I want 4 kids.

14. I was apparently right handed until my sister chopped off part of my pinky finger when I was 2. I've been a lefty ever since.

15. I wish I was a good enough musician to do it professionally, but I'm not.

16. I know that the fiction I write is publication-quality, but I fear I will never finish a story to send it off.

17. Whether true or not, I have always felt like the black sheep of both my immediate and extended families.

18. Until yesterday, I was very seriously considering leaving bench-work science for a career in bioinformatics and mathematical modeling.

19. Many days i feel like the internet is my only connection to living breathing humans other than my wife and daughter.

20. My favorite childhood memories are of times I was camping with the Boy Scouts.

21. While I love eniged to death, and he did a fabulous job, to this day I feel guilty about not picking Mike Phillips as best man at my wedding.

22. I've been an atheist ever since the first time I sat and thought about the nature of the universe, and what made sense, and what didn't. I wish I could believe, and I've tried, but I can't.

23. My honeymoon consisted of camping, hiking, and canoeing for 2 weeks in West Virginia.

24. Inexplicably, I am afraid of cows. Well, they did charge me on two separate occasions in West Virginia.

25. Even though I don't turn them in or give them to anyone, I still arrange songs for my college marching band as a hobby.

So, as seen on starpush's and brikle's LJs, post a question, any question you want, and I'll answer. Hit me.

No worries,
Matt

Both from last night...

"Girls don't play Ghost Recon, because it doesn't make them graceful. Graceful is when your heart blossoms."

"Mommy, you can be a bigger bitch. You just have to try harder."

That is all for now.

I just got home from running a few errands to find salixmom reading a story to Willow. It's a tale of the Big Bad Wolf trying to catch the Three Little Pigs, but its apparently some type of sequel story, where L'il Wolf is Big Bad's son, and he's friends with the pigs. And Brer Bear is some type of manual laborer nearby.

Anyway, to amuse Willow during the story (and I think mer to amuse herself), every time the story says "The Big Bad Wolf", salixmom substitutes a random other animal name instead of wolf. Willow finds this both hilarious and offensive, and insists, "No! That's the Big Bad Wolf!"

So, apparently, it's not the:
Big Bad Koala
Big Bad Kangaroo
Big Bad Agouti
Big Bad Polar Bear
Big Bad Panda
Big Bad Iguana
Big Bad Nematode
etc. etc. etc.

The two of them are having a blast, and I am loving it. =)

No worries,
Matt

I was so going to post something today, but i totally forgot what it was. Oh well.

Anyone want to entertain me?

Here's a neat trick. n my keyboard, the only one of the 4 arrow keys that works is the down arrow. No left, right, or up. Also, the 'o' key works fine as lowercase, but if I try to use the shift key on the left side of the keyboard, it doesn't show up. The shift key on the right side works fine. Oh, and the shift key on the left side works fine for every other key on the keyboard, just not the 'o'. Weird, huh?


Also, I was immensely entertained by this episode of Big Bang Theory:

• No, I'm not dead. I just have little-to no internet access during the day anymore, and my evenings rarely provide time for me to post anymore. Hoping this will change, but we'll see.
  
• Voted this morning at around 8am. Only 3 people in line in front of me, no hassles. Cool.
  
• Started my post-doc this week. Still not finished in old lab, have a bit more work to do, but not much. I just need to figure out how to juggle both positions
  
• New post-doc is in a frog lab, and involves surgically removing testes from male frogs, inducing female frogs to lay eggs, and then combining them in a petri dish.
  
• The frogs we use are more aquatic than amphibious, so they are always very wet when we use them, and therefore very slippery.
  
• I am covered in frog-cum and frog eggs, because one of the females I was 'massaging' eggs out of got a little feisty today.
  
• I wanted to link the above to a clip from the Broken Lizard movie "Beerfest", about manually stimulating frogs, but apparently, youtube has an age-restricted section, and this clip is hidden within it. I don't have a youtube account, so I couldn't access the clip.
  
• If youtube has an adults only section, which is what the above comment basically purports, why isn't this clip in it? (sorta SFW, sorta NSFW, depending on how much imagination you have.)
  
• On a completely unrelated note, I have Halloween photos of Willow, and related story to go along with it, will post sometime this week.
  
• Finally, will be spending Thanksgiving in Ft. Lauderdale Boca Raton, FL this year. anyone going to be in the area Fri-Sun?
  

No worries,
Matt

Matthew Dunn, Ph.D., as of about 5:30 pm. today.

No More Worries.


*insert shit-eating grin here*

Matt

OK, so just 3 songs lyrics left to guess from my previous meme. Here they are:

1. Dirty old River, must you keep rolling flowing into the night?
19. whiskey bottles, and brand new cars - oak tree you're in my way.
25. she works at Hot Topic, his heart: microscopic, she thinks that it's love, but to him it's sex.

Any takers?

Well, it's been a while since I've done this, and starpush just did it, and I seriously need to procrastinate. So, I'm jumping on bandwagons again.

Lyrics meme. Music library went on shuffle, took the first 25 songs, and am posting the first lines of each song here, regardless of embarrassment factor or obscurity. Actually, not turee. There were a handful of insanely obscure songs that i skipped past. Given the obscurity level of 2 or 3 that I left in, you wouldn't know it though.

( Meme behind the cut )
Guess the song title and the band name please.

No worries

Matt

This was worth a few laughs.... It the voicemail that John McCain left for Sara Palin when he called to ask her to be his veep...... It got leaked somehow. teehee

http://www.236.com/blog/w/lee_camp/mccains_voice_mail_to_palin_le_8644.php

and, no, it's not real. It just feels real.


No worries,
Matt

OK, these are the greatest idea ever, and we really really need a set.... =)


http://www.guzer.com/pictures/twister-sheets.php

Left Hand - RED!

No worries,
Matt

Got this from my Father-in-law. The RNC schedule:



Republican Convention Schedule Leaked!

7:00 pm – Ceremonial burning of the U.S. Constitution

7:15 pm – Spiritual Medium Sylvia Browne performs psychic séance in desperate attempt to raise Ronald Reagan from the grave

7:35 pm – "The Pleasures of Adultery" - with Newt Gingrich & Rudy Giuliani

8:05 pm – Gay sex party in Minneapolis airport's Men's Restroom hosted by Senator Larry Craig

8:35 pm - Transvestite Ann Coulter – "My Life as a Man"

8:55 pm – Live satellite feed from Federal Prison – Ohio Rep. Bob Ney

9:05 pm – Guest speaker ex-Florida Congressman Mark Foley "Joys with Young Boys"

9:25 pm – Oliver North – "Iran is Evil, but I sold them weapons anyway"

9:40 pm – Bill O' Reilly – "The costs of sexual harassment and phone sex with employees"

10:00 pm – Gay sex party in Men's Room hosted by Ken Mehlman and Geraldo Rivera

10:25 pm – Check on McCain to see if he's still breathing and if his adult diaper needs to be changed.

10:35 pm – N.R.A. President hosts an assault riffle target practice on Gays and Mexicans.

10:45 pm - Call emergency squad after a drunken Darth Cheney accidentally shoots his friend in the face.

11:00 pm – Bush performs his hilarious comedy routine where he looks for Iraq's fictitious WMD's under guests tables.

11:15 pm – Mike Huckabee does his famous uncanny imitation of Gomer Pyle.

11:20 pm – Group intervention to get Rush Limbaugh back into drug rehab

11:45 pm – Go up on rooftop and throw rocks down at homeless Vets sleeping in alley.

12:00 am – Live satellite feed from Federal Prison –California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham

12:20 am – Convicted felon/Fox News analyst G. Gordon Liddy – Lock picking secrets

12:40 am – Guest speakers Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – "How to lie your Country into a War"

1:00 am – Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay –"Tips on Money Laundering"

1:15 am – Hookers arrive for after party

No worries,
Matt

So, just real quick... salixmom just taught Willow a new phrase....

"You're being a dick, Daddy."


Oh joy. =)


No worries,
Matt