Ode To Bug

Over the summer I ran three or four poetry programs (two of which proved to be fairly successful). My friend Taylor asked me to write a poem for a bug that was crawling over my guitar case. The photo above is what I ended up with.

Speak easy,
Neil

Hedgehogs on Clipboards

Every counselor at the summer camp I worked at is issued one clipboard (which holds all the important paper work and schedules, which one would be entirely helpless without). This summer I painted three clipboards - one for myself, and two for friends of mine. All of them included this little hedgehog character (spikes based on Sonic, head shape based on Crayon Shin-Chan, and body type generally based on the Kodama from the film Princess Mononoke).

The character is named Urchin (i.e. hedgehogs curled up into a ball look kind of like sea urchins). He is an excellent swimmer.


For my good friend Christopher Barry (his idea to write "Chris Barry Rocks" in honor of his website). It combines a few of my all time favorite things - hedgehogs, penny farthing bicycles, big hats, and 19th century gentleman outfits.

This one is based off of Tetris, one of my all time favorite puzzle games. The clipboard was painted for my friend Chris Burns, a counselor in training. I went into it wanting to do something fun, colorful, and cute. Every time I look at it I can't help but worry about how the one in the lower left is going to escape from the confines of his tetris pieces.

Speak easy,
Neil

The Execution of All Things

This summer has been pretty eventful but there is too much catching up to do in one blog post. Camp ended last week and between then and now I've been staying in Sarasota, Florida. My plane landed in Logan less than 24 hours ago and now I'm sorting through all of my stuff, getting ready to move back to college. A few weeks ago I applied to study abroad in England (Manchester, to be more specific) for Spring 2010.

My flight to Chicago was delayed for an hour or so. In that time I started reading the Great Gatsby and wrote this list of the best free stuff that I experienced in the last week.


Below is a picture I took while flying over Sarasota (if memory serves), awkwardly leaning over Andrew and Dan to capture some of the beautiful scenery (I had an aisle seat).


My plan is to start blogging on a daily basis like I did last school year. :)

Speak easy,
Neil

P.S - Puff died while I was at camp.

Arts and Crafts

The girl in the pictures is Lexi, a girl that works in my department. There are four people in the Creative Arts Dept. and with all the rain it has been pretty hectic.


Not too much time to update right now. I am still alive and doing well. Hopefully I can post something more cohesive in the next few days. Me and a few friends are going to see Wilco and Conor Oberst this Saturday! It's going to be great.

Speak easy,
Neil

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