Percentages

I feel 95% than I did last week and 20° Celsius no longer feels like 20° Fahrenheit (I was at one point sleeping with 2 thick sweaters on). Luckily I did not have to go to health services. Last week I got a letter in the mail stating that I was denied Mass Health because I didn't send them some sort of Job Update Form.

Right now I am just about done scouring my old blog entries to see if there is any content that I would like to keep for novels or short stories. I'm keeping about 5% of all blog content. There are so many projects that I want to work on but it's hard to focus on just one to work on in any given afternoon because I feel like neglecting another. Someone told me Da Vinci only finished around 3% of the projects he started.

Speak easy,
Neil

Curiouser

Last night I heard a rattling coming from the heater underneath my window. The electric heat is officially up and running in my building which is bad news for me because the dry air really irritates my nose. Between the heat and my constant need to blow my nose (I think I'm almost over my sickness) I have been getting nose bleeds fairly consistently over the past 24 hours. While I was working on my homework this evening I noticed a very strange streak of blood that had formed on my napkin which looked like it spelled out the word "LIVE". Somehow I take this as my body trying to send me some sort of message. Here is the napkin in question.

I don't know if this is more or less strange than the time I found a dust bunny that was shaped just like a real bunny (see April, 25 2009 blog entitled Fly Trapped In An Octopus Web).

Speak easy,

Neil

Tasting Roads

When I'm at school I judge how much time I have in the semester not by days, but by how many meals I have left on my meal plan. For instance, at the moment I have 150 meals left. I started the semester with 200. This means I am approximately 25% into the semester. Also, I would like to add that I do use almost exactly 200 meals throughout the semester (take or leave a few). When I was staying in Moldova I estimated how many times I would have to bathe, and used that as a measurement for how much time I had left.

Some of my favorite quotes (as of recent)...

(1)

"I to the world am like a drop of water

That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
(Unseen, inquisitive) confounds himself."

{Act, 1, scene 2, lines 35-38, The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare}

(2)

"An honest man is always a child."

{Socrates}

(3)
"What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun.
And when we meet on a cloud,
I'll be laughing out loud.
I'll be laughing with everyone I see.
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all."

{In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel}

(4)
"I got two hands on the sunshine
I got one foot in the grave
I got 25¢ in my wallet
And I'm feeling mighty lucky today.

My bones are made out of ivory
And my blood is made out of ocean waves
And someone stole my wallet
But I'm feeling mighty lucky today."

{Lucky Today by Cloud Cult}

(5)

"Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature...the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth the while. "
{Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West}

(6)

"I'm a connoisseur of roads. I've been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world."

{From the film My Own Private Idaho}

Special thanks to Katie for letting me borrow her copy of Miss Lonelyhearts. I let Brad borrow my copy but he hasn't returned it yet. Last time I asked him about it he said that he tried to read it but it made him so depressed that he had to stop reading. I'm sure he'll get to it eventually.

This is a quick sketch of a possible duck animation I am going to tackle once this whale is all finished. The next part of the whale I need to work on is to perfect the movement of the tail (which will be incredibly difficult). Otherwise it is almost done.

Can't stop watching this commercial...

Speak easy,
Neil

Coming To Town

Photo of sick me trying to get some rest. In the song Santa Clause Is Coming To Town, the line "so be good for goodness sake" is one that I find particularly strange. It is presented as some sort of conclusion to an argument that doesn't actually exist within the song. If there is a present argument within the text, the conclusion would be something closer to "so be good for someone is always watching everything you do". I do like the "goodness sakes" line though so I suppose one would have to fine tune the rest of the song so that it worked from a logistical standpoint.

Today is my 201st blog post! Forgot to mention 200 yesterday.

Speak easy,
Neil

Il y a becaucoup je voudrais savoir.

This afternoon I had an appointment with the UK study abroad adviser. It looks like, currently, my options are Nottingham (maybe 100 miles North of London), Lancaster (North Western England), and Swansea (North Eastern Whales). My decision lies solely on the modules (or courses) that each Uni has offered for next semester. The money I currently have in the bank will most likely go to air fare over to the UK. All the preliminary fees can be tagged onto my bursars bill although it looks like I'll probably have to take out something like $15,000 in loans for the excursion (but that is not factoring in an financial aid). If you are still reading this and are still thoroughly interested...it means you are probably my mom.

I'm sick and behind on my French homework but still found the time to spend an hour at Starbucks (tried the new VIA that they have been advertising the hell out of. It wasn't bad.) this afternoon mapping out the novel (working title: Water Wings) I am working on and also the vulgar british sitcom about a group of independent wrestlers (think Entourage meets The Office [UK]) which is maybe half way finished.

If any of my projects have any chance of reaching completion, I decided that I should probably work on each one for at least half an hour every day.

Speak easy,
Neil

Comedy of Errors

Duck/Otter

My whale animation is going slowly because (1) it's incredibly time consuming to figure out how to animate with such complex movement and (2) because when I do get into the mood to focus on something, it usually means I have to focus on my homework. I do, however, have a conception to extend my aquatic themed animation project. The two main characters include a duck and an otter. Yesterday I went through about 6 or 7 different models before I decided on this little guy.

The otter is going to be a little bit more difficult to figure out but I feel like I'm getting pretty close with the one on this page.


Lev says my camera has an incredibly slow ISO. I think, in low light, the low shutter speed can look kind of cool.

Trying to get an on campus job. Apparently the study abroad program is fairly expensive ($150 application fee, $600 deposit, and an estimated $800 in transportation alone). There is also the spending money I will need for an entire semester and books that I'll need to buy when I get there. Worst case scenario I can take out a personal loan or borrow.

Speak easy,
Neil

egg cart

Just witnessed two idiots drive a egg shaped golf cart into a guard rail and run off. One of them bashed their head on the windshield. I guess there are some things that people find amusing that I will never grasp. Lev may have been the only one to alert the authorities.

All of my financial aid stuff is squared away at the moment and now I just have to wait for the sluggish blind octopus that is bureaucracy to set in motion before I can reclaim my post at the cluster office. Need to save and make money for studying abroad.


Finished my bracelet. It's not perfect but it is the largest friendship bracelet I have made to date (15 strings).


Lev's side of the room. He proudly hangs the Russian and Israeli flag, while I have the British and Moldovan flag. You might also notice that he has an affinity for cars. That's kind of his thing.

Someone showed me this website today, which has a bunch of quiz/games. I tried to guess all 151 Pokemon in less than ten minutes but failed. Maybe when I have a clearer head. Also, I have been completely engrossed in the UK teen-drama Skins. Totally fantastic.

Speak easy,
Neil

43 weeks

Today in my English Drama class I learned the difference between a tragic character and a pathetic character. A tragic character, if I can remember correctly, is a character that makes decisions that he probably shouldn't have made that lead to his downfall. A pathetic character is one who has bad times befallen on him that are not a direct consequence of his own actions. The only main difference is that one may still have their dignity by the time the curtain closes.

I went by the study abroad fair and will be looking through the pamphlets this week to choose a school. Instead of picking one nearby my friends who live in Southern England, I have decided to pick the school that I think I will get the most out of. That is to say, I am looking to go into this experience (if everything works out the way I hope it will) to try and make it on my own and see if I can sustain myself (and by that I mean make friends that aren't friends of friends and not get into a really introverted and antisocial state of being) somewhere where I don't know anyone. Ticket prices from London to Romania aren't too unreasonable either. There is a chance that I might try to make my way back to Moldova for a week or so if I have the time and money.



43 weeks of classes left of college.

Speak easy,
Neil

Drinking Tea Makes Everything Better

Ducks are hanging out at the pond again. It seems like ages since I've seen a duck but I'm sure there were a few hanging around the camp. Lately I've been feeling slightly under the weather (I spent almost all day in bed yesterday), but it's mostly just drowsiness. Tomorrow is the last day to pick up or drop out of classes so I will probably looking for an on campus job within the next few days (now that my schedule is not subject to any change). It would be nice to have some more stuff to fill up my schedule because, like I've stated before, the more free time I have, the more free time I waste.

This bird let me get up real close to take a picture of it. I don't know if you can zoom into this pic very much, but it has incredibly pretty eyes.

Lev and I hung the British flag outside our window today and I'm sure it is looking great (although I haven't left the building since I put it up so I haven't actually seen what it looks like yet). Speaking of Britain, the study abroad meeting is tomorrow afternoon so I'm sure I will have an update on my European studies status by tomorrow evening.

Animating the whale has got me thinking about possibly trying to do some sort of aquatic themed short film (the one I have involves a duck and an otter). The way I see it is if I enter an animated film into an independent short film festival, I will get a lot more attention for my work because it is animated. Also I have been tooling around with the idea of writing a horror movie script loosely based on The Creature From The Black Lagoon, although I haven't actually seen The Creature From The Black Lagoon, so I suppose it is safe to say that it is just about a lagoon/lake and a lagoon/lake monster. My only real experience in watching horror movies is Funny Games (which invokes more sadness and pity than fear), Låt den rätte komma in/Let The Right One In, and Shaun of the Dead. I suppose I could try it as a graphic novel, which is a medium that I've always wanted to try but never really had any ideas that would fit.

I was thinking that the song After Hours by Velvet Underground would be an amazing song for a horror movie trailer. Let me know what you think.

Speak easy,
Neil