lowest prices of the season

My friend Ross bought a tent last year under the fake name "Steves B. Lippman". Once in a while he will receive mail for Steves. It really makes me wonder how easy it would be to create a person with their own social security card and birth certificate.

I was watching television this evening and noticed that there is a fairly apparent double standard that exists within the commercial breaks. Almost all women in commercials are 7's and most men have to be at least a 4 (and this is using the shallow scale from 1 to 10 to grade someone's looks). This can also be seen in television (The King of Queens) and film (any Judd Apatow film).

For my whole life I have been surrounded by cats and have had little to no experience living with dogs. For the last few days I have been sort of house sitting and living with a very sweet dog named Zeus. He really misses his owner and has been whimpering and been kind of down. My cat, as far as I know, doesn't seem to care at all if I am gone for months at a time. I'm pretty tired and start camp tomorrow so I can't really get into the difference between cats and dogs, although I do think it is kind of interesting. Right now I'm not sure exactly how often I will be able to update the blog in the coming weeks.

Speak easy,
Neil

Monetizational Skills

I am helping my friend Ross house sit while his parents are at a motorcycle gathering. Camp starts on Friday and I am currently taking advantage of all of the free time I have right now. This evening I did a little bit of food preparation (I can't call it cooking because I didn't actually cook anything. The rice pictured below was not my doing. My friend Brooke took care of that because I am minority incompetent when it comes to simple, medial tasks.) The sushi tasted good but was sort of a failure because the rice didn't really stick to the seaweed because it wasn't cooked the right way. I didn't look online for ingredients or preparation tips. I assumed that my experience watching other people make sushi time and time again would suffice as far as putting together a sushi platter is concerned.

With some of the leftover sushi dressings I made a dessert. It contained the following ingredients...

- Cucumber
- Avocado
- Blueberries
- Orange
- Yogurt
- Apple
- Red Fruit Syrup


The avocado had a great texture but a weird taste.

Speak easy,
Neil

Yip Yip Too Much Stuff

There are only a few days left until I move into a cabin in the woods and until then I'll probably be staying at my friend Ross' house. We've got so many things plugged into other things (as pictured below), and the electric bill will probably be through the roof.


There was this women at the driving range yesterday who kept getting her clubs knocked over by the wind. She brought this weird looking greyhound with her that didn't seem too impressed with anything.


Speak easy,
Neil

Found: Painted Turtle

Today, I took Ross and Brooke to this old abandoned cranberry bog. When I was a little kid I use to spend almost all my time walking in and around the bogs, exploring the empty land and hoping that I might stumble on something amazing like the kids in The Goonies (which, along with the movie Gremlins, was a movie I watched on a weekly basis). I can recall many Saturday mornings where my brother, our friend Austin, and I would wake up at the crack of dawn and collect the bloated egg sacks that the frogs leave behind in the water. They were always filled with little soon to be tadpoles. So much condensed potential. At this point in time Austin is divorced and has a four year old daughter. We haven't spoken in years. A lot of the people that you are friends with when you are little seem to shape who you find yourself to be later on in life (i.e. Stephen King's Stand By Me).

The sheds that populate the overgrown area are littered with graffiti now. The white spray paint takes the shape of male genitalia, derogatory terms, drug paraphernalia, and symbols of hate. I guess these are what kids find funny.

Speak easy,
Neil

Bradley Penguin

Puff has been acting very strangely for the past few days. It may be because she is in heat but I also think springtime has a little bit to do with it too. Indoor cats always seem to get very anxious at the cusp of flea season. She keeps going into window sills and...she actually ate a bug. Anyway Puff keeps rolling around the sills and climbing up into the space between the glass and the screen (her actions are not unlike the drunken freshman that show up at frat parties).


Mike drew this picture of Bradley a few weeks ago. It was my recommendation that he be drawn as a penguin. I think that the picture really captures Brad's personality.


This one is a Bulbasaur, although it came out a little different than expected. My mom felt compelled to put this one on the refrigerator.

Speak easy,
Neil

"Chaos is yours and chaos is mine."

Last night I went to the Sunset Rubdown show (which was great and electric and everything you'd want from a rock concert that is set in the basement of a restaurant/club in Cambridge) and this evening I went to see Up (more depressing than I thought but they fit most of that into the first twenty minutes and also it has a lot of funny moments too). Driving in Boston is incredibly confusing and I would recommend getting into the city by using the T or getting a detailed road map before making any sort of trek. Also, if you are going by car, make sure that you find a decent parking garage. My friend Mike who was with me at the time mentioned that you are powerless to the parking garage. When you are leaving and you put the ticket into the machine and you see an amount of money on the screen, you have to pay it no matter what. You can't reason with the machine and you can't leave without paying it.



This video was taken by the guy standing two rows in front of me who had a completely shaved head and a blue polo shirt. It came out really good. I didn't meet him or anything, just found his video and blog through a Youtube search. The internet is nifty. There were three drummers during the song and there are little glowy balls positioned around the stage. Towards the back of the stage there were these weird trees with little disco balls nestled in them. It all made for very good atmosphere (something a lot of bands don't consider during their live sets).

There were two kids sitting in front of me when I went to see Up. One of them buried most of her head into a large empty bucket of popcorn about half way through the film. Once and a while I'll see kids do some spontaneous stuff, the kind they do without thinking or without trying to get a rise out of someone, and it's usually really funny. I guess most people just learn to be boring over time.

Speak easy,
Neil

"Can you live with the way they make you look unreal?"

Over the past week or so I’ve been sick but by this point all that is left is a pretty bad cough. Yesterday I spent the majority of the day in bed watching Iron Man and old episodes of MTV’s Daria that I had floating around on my hard drive. The latter reminded me High School and how I would usually wait until late in the evening to finish my homework (if I did it at all). It’s hard to say exactly how different my life would be if I had actually made an effort in High School (socially, academically, or extra-curricularly) but I guess all I can do now look forward (something I’ve heard too many times in graduation speeches). From my experience I’ve noticed that almost nothing is exactly as you remembered it and nothing will ever be exactly as you want it to be. The only thing you can really trust is what’s going on right now (and even that proves to be skewed because we all have our own bias and way of understanding). However, whether you choose to accept or deny this concept is meaningless because no one is going to change the way they remember, hope, or perceive.


My cough is getting progressively more annoying and the only thing that has helped it is gargling a mixture of apple cider vinegar, honey, and luke warm water. The concoction either tastes like vomit or is so off-putting that the taste of vomit crawls up my throat when it is gargled. Either way, it is rather unpleasant.

This evening I went to see The Brothers Bloom. I thought it was a masterfully shot, quirky, interesting film. The only problem I had with it was that it seemed a bit lopsided. Sometimes it was a con-com (a comedy about confidence men) and sometimes it was a rom-com (romantic comedy).

I’m going to a Sunset Rubdown concert in Boston tomorrow night so I probably won’t be able to update the blog. Should be a great show and it would be nice to leave the Cape for an evening.

Speak easy,
Neil

Savage Hollywood

I just got back from the movie The Hangover. Since I am usually kind of low on money and don’t have my own vehicle, it has been quite a while since I have gone to the theater to see a movie. Overall I was completely satisfied with the film. The actors seemed to put a lot into the characters (specifically Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms) and I was completely engaged and laughing from the opening sequence. Apart from being a comedy, The Hangover also kind of a mystery in which three friends try to piece together the previous night (a bachelor party in Vegas) in order to find their missing friend (the groom). It’s certainly not for everyone (Rated R, and for very good reasons).

The other day I was compelled to pick up Lolita. At the tail end of winter break I had started the book but once I got to school I had little time to do any sort of recreational reading. Hopefully I’ll have some time to read a few books this summer before I start school again and have to read a handful of novels that I could care less about.

Here is a list of the next five books I plan on reading this summer in no particular order. If you have read them, let me know how you liked them.

1. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

2. Wasted by Marya Hornbacher

3. Hollywood by Charles Bukowski

4. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

5. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Earlier today I came across this movie review by Siskel and Ebert. It is for the 1994 film North which was produced by Rob Reiner. Ebert felt very strongly about the film when it came out, which was apparent when he said "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." You'd think with a cast including Bruce Willis, Alan Arkan, Dan Aykroyd, Elijah Wood, and Kathy Bates that one would end up with something watchable. I personally think that such a colossal mistake is the product of industry burocracy.

Speak easy,

Neil

Elephant Man

The weather keeps shifting from good to bad and so has me cold (at least I think it's a cold). I can get around fine but I have a sore throat, sinus problems, and a minor headache. Camp starts soon and I have almost nothing to do apart from what I give myself to do.

The Discovery channel has a new special about the Chinese Elephant Man. He has elephantitis of the face. They are doing a series of plastic surgeries to help keep him alive. Luckily he lives in the 21st century because he does have a chance. I feel like it isn't that difficult to watch because his face almost looks fake (like from a science fiction movie). It kind of makes me feel lucky for living in America and being healthy and having the chance to go to college.

"Mom...some people put their bras on backwards...so that they are on the outside."
- A little girl that I overheard at the Gap while waiting for a friend who was in the changing room.

Speak easy,
Neil

"There were always golden rocks to throw."

Today was my friend Ross Lippman's graduation ceremony. Going back to my old High School didn't seem out of place and I didn't really think much of it at the time but reflecting back on it now, it seems strange that I went to that building almost every day for six years and have only been back a handful of times within the last four years.

There were four graduation speeches. One of the speeches quoted One Tree Hill (a popular prime time teen soap opera), while another quoted Fight Club. The student's didn't seem to have very interesting things to say and spoke far too much about how a speech should be instead of talking about anything thought provoking (for example "When I started writing my speech for today I was thinking about how you're supposed to start a speech..."). Maria Stephanos from the nightly Fox 25 newscast was the guest speaker. She was very nice and a little smarter than I thought she would be. Before going to Emerson to get her masters in communications, she went to UMass Amherst.

I came upon something funny when I was fact checking Maria Stephanos for my blog. Google has a smart search feature that immediately reveals the most popular searches.

It looks like people are generally interested in Maria's legs, something I completely overlooked because she was behind a podium the whole time.

_______________

(Ross asked if he could do a guest blog in honor of his graduation day...take it away Ross!)

Thanks Neil. It's great to make a special drop-by at Miss Lonely Hearts. I must say, blogging is not my specialty, but I'll give it a shot. I've always been the youngest of my group of friends, and they have all been out of high school for quite some time, and now so am I. A part of me feels as if now I have lost my originality, my identity. But then again a lot of other things have happened to make me feel like I don't know who I am anymore. I wonder if I did all i could, I wonder if I did the best I could. Time has passed by now so I guess all I can do is work for the future. Should be interesting to see what is ahead for me. And for the record, Milk Thistle is not the best song on "Cassadaga" I'll leave you to rebuttal.
_______________


This is Zeus the dog. He was hanging out with us for most of the afternoon. Most of the time he reminds me of a cat, which makes him one of my favorite dogs ever.

Speak easy,
Neil

Cold and rainy but I enjoy wearing thermal longsleeves.

I just got finished having an argument with my brothers about politics. This kind of divergence always puts me in a very annoyed state of mind because they seem to think that all police officers, world leaders, and government officials are out to put every last person in America on the terrorist watch list. We live in a consumerist society which makes marshal law highly unlikely. Worrying about this kind of thing seems like a lot of unneeded anxiety and paranoia. Also, civil liberties do not necessarily equate to freedom. There are countries that have all the civil liberties that they want but still do not consider themselves free people. They can not get visas out of their country whenever they want and they do not have the ability to follow their passion (ala art). Life is so much more pleasant without fear and I think that most people have little to be afraid of.

Fun Fact: Using the word "obvious" within an argument is one of the worst things you can do if you are trying to prove a valid point.

The actor David Carradine died the other day and authorities have been saying that the cause of death was most likely due to auto-erotic exfictiation. I won't explain what it is here because it is pretty graphic stuff.

This evening I wanted to watch a film that wasn't depressing or dark in tone. I think the only film that I could think of that wouldn't put me in a worse mood would be Catch Me If You Can (possibly my favorite movie of all time). It seems to me that good, quality films are often fairly depressing or at least contain some pretty depressing parts.

Should probably get to sleep because I am planning on attending my friends graduation in the AM. It will probably be the last graduation I go to for quite some time.

Speak easy,
Neil

Misc.

Although much of my day was devoted to recording, Mike, Brad, and I did find some time to have fun testing out the reaction time of my new camera.


This is a picture of Brad running into his car and using the momentum to flip over the car. He broke his glasses and almost gave my mom a heart attack in the process.

I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be today but I have all summer. Plus the package store that I was planning on working at for the next two weeks doesn't need me for the time being so I'll have a little down time.

Speak easy,
Neil

Sticks and Stones

Today, I felt substantially better than I have all week, although I am developing an increasingly annoying canker sore in my mouth. Scales always seem to find a way of adjusting nicely.

A few years ago I put my laptop case down on a picnic table. When I picked it up again I noticed that there was some sort of animal droppings that I had put the case on top of without noticing. The person I was with, my girlfriend at the time, just laughed and said that I would have good luck coming my way. She said that she believed that if something bad happens to you then, in turn, something good will surely follow. It is the way that god balances one's life. I don't know I believe this but I would like to.


Earlier this afternoon I took a walk in the woods. On the side of one of the paths was this checkerboard, all set up and ready to be played with. It was a nice walk but the Winter coaxed me into forgetting all about mosquito bites and poison ivy. They do exist though, trust me on that.


I have just about 2 weeks before I start my work at the summer camp. This week is the first week in months were I haven't received a paycheck and it makes me very uneasy.

Speak easy,
Neil

"Am I Really All the Things That are Outside of Me?"

There is a good chance that we are going to get rid of our newer cat (Puff) because of our older cat (Neeko). They really don't get along. The two pictures below pretty much reflect how I feel about both animals.

The weather seems like it's getting progressively nicer and my summer cold is subsiding. Brad brought his guitar with him into the woods and I brought my camera. We didn't really get much accomplished today but it felt like how summer days should feel, relaxing and open ended.


Not a whole lot to say this evening. Just letting my brain relax for a change.

Speak easy,
Neil