Noflakes in December…

So…things have been going really well. My last post was in anticipation of the movie Twilight, which I saw and as expected, hated. It was too goofy, too thin, too scattered. There was no romance. I don’t mean lovey dovey romance…which there surely is at its lamest. Its hard to explain since the word romance has come to be a watered down version of what it used to mean. It wasn’t always roses and love letters and to some people, the few true romantics left, it still means what it should.

I’ve been having a lot of fun in New Hampshire. I’m involved in too many things. Just finishing up an internship at Tracey Edwards which has been less than stimulating and rather boring and uninvolved…their loss. I ref dodgeball once a week out in Portsmouth which has been ridiculously fun. It’s an adult league, 21 and up, with a great mix of people. I like to imagine I’m the favorite ref since I announce each game as if it were a heavy weight boxing match, but who knows. Its fun interacting with them all either way and also seeing grown men throw hissy fits like 5 year olds. Playoffs are coming up which I think I will enjoy thoroughly, after that a new league starts, I’ll be playing in that one which is something I’ve been missing since leaving RIT.

I missed Steph and Tyler’s wedding in November, truly heart breaking. Looking at all the pictures and videos online was bittersweet, you can’t help but be happy for them. Congratulations you two, I send all my love.

While that was the depressing part of November, something good came from the same weekend. I hosted the first NH DPHH event. In all truth I wasn’t sure what to expect as far as turnout went, I would have been happy with 10-20 people showing up. Imagine my surprise to find 25 people at the bar before I even arrived. It was an amazing night, over 60 people showed up and I made sure to meet every single one of them. Remembering their names is a different story altogether. This one woman named Glenys was overly nice, she was calling me cute all night (shes married with kids) and pointing out every female in attendance who was single. And I’m pretty sure the one gay guy in attendance already has a crush on me. What can I say, I’m a dick magnet.

I do sign language instruction once a week up in Plymouth with a young family. The kids are adorable, the parents are into rock climbing and the pay is just ridiculous. Speaking of rock climbing, that’s been going well too. Unfortunately the climbing wall project never got on two legs, but I’ve installed a pull up bar in the basement and plan to get a simplified training thingy and put that up as well. Erik and I have been hitting up the local gym regularly as well as checking out gyms in Conn. and outside of Boston, and also doing a lot of outdoor bouldering. He’s a good climbing partner, better frame for climbing being 2 inches taller and like 40 pounds lighter. Awhile ago he got cocky and challenged me to an arm wrestle, he hasn’t brought them up since.

What else…oh yeah, web design. That’s been going real well too, I’ve got two paying clients now, which is really thrilling. Mom wants to frame the first check I got, she’s way too proud. Hopefully this will lead to bigger and better things but first there’s a ton of work to be done. Which is why this will probably be my last blog post here for a good long while. I’m not even sure that I’ll be back to update it, there’s a multitude of other projects calling my name all day long. I’m much more interested in those than droning on and on about myself.

Keep in touch kids…

-Neil-

The Twilight Series

So, about a week ago I finished the fourth installment in the Twilight series.  Chances are you might have heard of this in some form.  Whether it be the books which have been huge hits, predominantly the female market, or the movie which premieres later this month.  Having read the books, I can understand the hype, the movie has been slowly generating buzz being called the next Harry Potter.

The books are written by Stephenie Meyer, a mormon mom from…Washington I think?  And to be honest they really are awesome.  I could hardly put them down, though truth be told that tends to be the same with a majority of the books I read.  I can say however that the story is the best that features vampires that I have ever heard, read or seen.  The author brings fresh and original ideas to this genre.

The books greatest strength in its portrayal of relationships, most notably the love triangle between Edward, Bella and Jacob.  However it also resonates in the Cullen family, relationships between vampires and werewolves and between the “vegetarian” Cullens and the rest of the vamp population.  This focus on relationships probably explains why the books are so popular with women.  In some places the books dragged a bit and were slightly cheesy and overly mushy, though it obviously wasn’t enough to deter me.

The most disappointing aspect was the lack of real action.  Meyer has a knack for building suspense and setting the stage for a great showdown but falls short of delivering a satisfying climax.  There is one great fight/action sequence in the third book that I loved and numerous points where the suspense gets amped up and drew me in, on the whole I was somewhat let down though.

The movie….I have quite a few problems with it already.  For one it feels rushed, which is understandable since the book series doesn’t seem like it will continue for the moment and the studio wants to capitalize on the hype following the release of Breaking Dawn (the fourth book).  The casting has a few selections I’m not crazy about, but the primary characters of Edward, Bella, Jacob and most of the Cullen family seem fine, with the exception of Carlisle.  I’ll reserve judgement for now though.  The filmmaker, I forget her name, she did Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, I honestly feel like shes going to fuck the movie up with trying to put more action into it.  First off it’s tasteless and fake looking, from the way Edward runs (he’s fast), scampers up trees (seriously wtf?) and fights (the absolute fucking cheesiest crap).  Its clear that she threw these in there to try to attract a male audience, which is something I totally get behind since the films need more action than the books provide.  But damn if you’re gonna do something you have to do it right.  Take a look around, its the comic book movie age, fight scenes are cooler, more stylish and better done than ever.  These vampires should be the epitome of stylish movements, in the book they are.  They’re fast, strong, nible and dexterous, in the movie they look like humans on wires.  Ultimately I’m just afraid that this aspect will kill the movie’s credibility.  If you’re gonna put all that action in either do it right, or don’t do it at all.

That being said, teen girls are going to make this a hit because they all want their own obsessed vampire to fuck them roughly and cover their body in bruises. (That got your attention eh?)

I can see the film pulling in $130 mil.

How much time has past, tell me do you remember when I saw you last?

Words rolled off your lips stumbling soundlessly onto mine, climbing slowly into my head

If you only knew what I knew then.

Everything was different but nothing had changed, nothing has changed.

I was walking in the woods, no direction and with my two oldest friends.  What we sought we did not know, only something new, the unseen.  We came upon a clearing, a grove if you will, with giant immense rocks littered all throughout.  We jumped and ducked and wound all around the stones and came upon a sight truly to behold.

A giant granite stone, upon it undergrowth, a sea of ancient ferns, greener than the earth.

Slightly to its side a massive tree unearthed, broken was its trunk while death was at its door.

The leaves were brightly colored, orange at it’s best but quickly fading out and dying like the rest.

I spoke unto my friend, we must surely take this picture but no picture could be taken as the batteries were dead.

To share I’ve done my best, though this poem will surely fall short but it’s beauty will live on, just only in my head.

Seasons

So, I’m downloading a new song for the first time in about 2 months.  I have to put it on my ipod after which contains a playlist that hasn’t changed since I left Rochester.  About time really.  I’m sorry what was that?  Oh you want to know which song? Oh yes, where are my manners?  Its called Seasons by Good Charlotte.  At this point I can’t really remember how it goes but I do remember liking it so that’ll work.

While I wait for this ipod to hurry up and sync up, whats another song I should get.  You know I used to have 10,000+ songs, now I only have 103, and I’m having trouble thinking of one to download.  Sillyness.  (by the way, yes, that was an invitation for everyone who reads this to recommend a song)  So…..I’m gonna get (drumroll please):

1. I don’t know
2. I haven’t heard run-around by blues traveller in awhile…I like that one
3. I love how when i look up run around in limewire the first search result is “run around sexy girl has shaking orgasm during sex”
4. Okay what else…
5. So yeah, you guys should recommend some songs…they don’t have to be new, they should be good though.

Right okay Seasons, so I thought of all that because I while I’ve always been equally divided over which season is my favorite, I think Autumn might be taking a lead.  I am….oddly excited about it this year.  Mainly because it’s so fucking gorgeous up here in New Hampshire.  Carting off to New York for the past six years most definitely has something to do with it.  NY has nothing on NH in terms of Fall Foliage.  I’ll have my latest sample of web design ready for display soon, it has an Autumn theme to it.

Full moons are really bright.  I’ve definitely been overly conscious of how much light they cast for the past few days.

When I got home tonight it smelled like strawberries outside my house.

Really.

Ipod software is updating….take foreva come on come on.

I’m reading the lyrics to Seasons and starting to wonder whether it was a good idea to download this song.

No point in jumping to conclusions.

Syncing up now.

I have to say I love the lyrics of Run Around, John Popper has got some skillz.  The first refrain is clearly the best, wait…is a refrain a chorus…I have no idea, the first set of lyrics before the chorus is the best.  Mhm, I know this because I know all the lyrics by heart and if you ever happened to disagree with me over what they were you would find yourself wrong every time, so yeah.

I wish I weren’t apple software retarded, I could totally be done with this process by now.  Mind you 15 minutes has past since I started.  Thats probably a low estimate.

Oh hey all of a sudden I can remember what that seasons song goes like.  I’m less excited to hear it now, only kind of though.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day, next week should kick some serious ass as well.  Oh fuck I just jinxed it, no point in deleting it.

This really is getting drawn out, I should have used my high speed usb port, I was all like oh it won’t take long at all.

Freecell ftw

I lost, because I rushed it.

You lose because you rush, thats the first rule of Halo.

The second rule of Halo is, learn to rush better than the other guy.

The third rule is something like, “Win, or run the risk of inexplicably cursing at the screen which will most likely cause your peers to come over and chide you with the always helpful remarks of ‘Dude you need to chill its just a game’ because that kind of thing helps.”

I was just kidding about losing in freecell.  I won.

Omg the ipod is done.

*Listens to Seasons*

I’m not so sure I needed that one.

 

I still like it though.

Sleepless

Lie awake and toss and turn

Close your eyes, feel your mind burn.

 

I’ve been having trouble sleeping, lying awake for hours struggling with thoughts and emotions.  There are “things” looming in my future.  Not bad things but things of which I’m not yet certain how I feel.  Some big changes, twenty years worth of change, scary.  Every now and then my throat tightens up, not so much that I have trouble breathing but just enough that I think about it with every breath.  It’s nearly impossible to concentrate and focus on something when that happens.  So those “things” that are on my mind just linger on the edge of my consciousness, in sight…out of grasp.  

Tormenting insufferable incubus.

If I were to speak of multiple incubus would they be Incubai?

It’s not that dramatic.

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Good Luck.

i’ve never had so much fun as i do when i spend time with my nephew its the most amazing feeling dont get me wrong there are times when he can surely be annoying as any kid can but often he’s just so taken by life and every new thing in it i delight telling him things i love the eager anticipation in his eyes and the vibrancy of his smile hes so excitable and fun loving and so amazingly simple do we get more complicated as life goes on or does life?  If it’s the simple things that make you smile, then what makes you frown? I’m so cynical, I didn’t know what cynical meant a year ago.  I remember a long time ago when Manic and I were in high school and we were listening to idioteque by radiohead and I asked him if he could figure out the lyrics and what we ultimately came up with wasn’t really close to the real lyrics at all…which are really weird “Who’s in a bunker? I have seen too much You haven’t seen enough You haven’t seen it I’ll laugh until my head comes off Women and children first And children first And children” Blah blah it’s incredibly random yet amazing music, shame I haven’t listened to any radiohead since kid a.  I don’t even remember the last time i saw her, isn’t that sad.  What’s even sadder is that last night I laid in bed and listened to nearly every song on my ipod and I actually cried, that takes the asademy award. Only in Dreams is still my favorite song.  I remember once I told my Mom that if I ever joined a band I’d probably play songs like that, she thought it was stupid.  I love the song scarlet begonias by sublime but only for the opening 15 seconds and the part where he raps about smoking pcp cuz it sounds cool.  Think about every song you’ve ever forgotten about, there’s like a million.  Think about every person you’ve forgotten about and every memory.  Is a memory still a memory if you’ve forgotten it? It’s a good thing we’re capable of forgetting things, remembering everything would really suck.  There’d be too much to think about, I feel bad for those “gifted” people who can remember everything.  They should get disbility or something, everyone should pat them on the back when they see them and say “its gonna be alright.”  I’m seeing this girl and she just might be out of her mind.  My brother says it’s not a matter of whether or not the girl you’re with is crazy but a matter of how much crazy you can handle, I think he’s right.  I guess we all go a little crazy sometimes.  That’s a line from scream, which was awesome until you saw it again and realized it sucked.  It’s rare to find a movie thats scary the second time around.  If you wanna be scared go rent event horizon, most underrated thriller ever.  I take that back, thriller by mike blackson is the most underrated thriller ever.  Even though its huge its still underappreciated.  That song should be a hypnotist song seriously because everytime it comes on I lose control of my thought train and body.  Then there’s the video which makes everyone who’s not lame try to dance like a retarded zombie.  Remember when you turned sixteen? Well thats great cuz I don’t.  I like the prodigy.  Aside from being pretty much the coolest word ever and teaching me how to breathe under pressure(youbreatheitin!) I used to listen to this one song called climbatize and had this video in my head that I was going to make for it.  It was about humanity and technology and how our obsession with technology will inevitably be our downfall until we develop a way to coexist with it which we do and the theme of the video was basically “life goes on.”  I’m pretty sure someone else said that too before.  Plus they have a song called smack my bitch up and the video for it is kind of lame but i heard there was tits in it.  Something like four years ago I wrote a post on my lj called reminiscent ramblings which has served as the inspiration for this post.  Initially I was going to write this and take out all of the spaces so that it would in fact be ‘a solid block of text’ but now this is fairly long and I really don’t feel like doing that anymore.  How the hell did we wind up like this?  It’s not as bad as it seems.  I’d like to go on a magic carpet ride someday, what I can’t decide is whether or not I’d want someone else there with me to ruin it.  Where would you go if you had a magic carpet for the night, I think I’d go to japan and I can’t really explain why but I would definitely be listening to steppenwolf.  God complexes.  I hate it when my mom says she believes in god because of how amazing kids are.  She got into this speech today about how god exists because having and raising kids is so hard but parents do it because they love their kids so much.  And only god could have come up with a plan that amazing….well what about all the parents who abandon their kids or kill them or rape them or vice versa, were they part of the plan?  I didn’t say that, but I could’ve.  There wouldn’t have been a point because she believes so blindly nothing short of god appearing before her and saying it wasn’t really his plan in the first place.  Thats the problem with belief systems, they’re often so rigidly unchangeable, Chris Rock really nailed it when he said it’s better to have a few good ideas.  Let’s go for a sunday drive sometime, oh wait gas makes that expensive I guess your fat ass is walking.  There’s really no problem with being fat, until you have to move quickly.  Remember what things were like when we were kids?  We will never be the same.  Pictures are overrated.  Not really, I’m just bitter cuz I lost all mine.  I was driving my nephew to the grocery store today and he started nodding off, so I yelled to wake him up.  He smiled laughed and said “but I’m tired!”  Cutest thing ever #4564332.  You’re a hypocrite, so am I.  Everyone lies. Everyone.  New borns are cute, even when they’re crying you can stare at them and say awww so cute.  It’s even cuter when you turn your hearing off.  I’ve been listening extra carefully to everything and asking Manic what everything sounds like to him, I have a reason but it’s my secret and I’m not telling anyone.  Except the people I’ve told of course.  The only way three people can keep a secret is if two of them are dead, truth.  The chaos theory says….wait, what?  Oh, once I was playing this game with my family and the question was “What would the name of your autobiography be?”, mine was “What?” it seemed fitting.  I’d probably change it to something like “Don’t read this evar,” you know so more people would read it.  Who can decide what they dream, and dream I surely do.  I’d like to go to a 70s era disco club with a bunch of my gay friends, that would be more fun than anyone ever had.  Lovey dovey stuff, sometimes you just can’t get enough.  I’d like to play flashlight tag in a large warehouse, where all the sounds bounced and echoed so that even when you made noise you could never tell where it was coming from.  This one time I was playing flashlight tag and we spent like an hour looking for this one kid and when we finally gave up and went home he was already there.  Look at yourself, you’re stumbling around in circles. Losers and users don’t need accusers.  Is what you’re doing right now going to matter in ten years?  If you answered no then keep doing it.  If you answered yes you might want to stop and ask yourself whether you’re spontaneous enough.  Sticks and stones might break my bones but words will always hurt the most.  They don’t always tell it like it is when you’re a kid, do your kid a favor and give it to them straight.  Just make sure they believe in magic, it is real after all.  I’m not sure whether anyone will read this entire thing, if you just did, I’d be impressed.  Only a little bit though.

For Anyone Who Cares…

I finished my first site since I’ve started designing.  It’s not technically live yet so some of the links have been disabled and the online software isn’t up there yet.  But for viewing and informational purposes it’s all there.  Its kind of been done for a couple weeks now but just earlier this week I worked out the last of the major display bugs within IE6.  Its easy to see why every web designer hates IE and honestly I will never understand why anyone uses it.  Ignorance is bliss I guess.  Check it out.

 

The Principal Group

We Need More of This

Truth, it’s about the quest.

Lies

These are some of the lies I’ve told my 3 year old nephew recently…

 

A long time ago, the sun and the moon got into a fight.

The trees are always whispering to each other.

The noises you hear in the middle of the night, are all us adults riding roller coasters.

Books get lonely too.

If you’re really really quiet, you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.

There are invisible strings connecting you to everyone.

I will always be there.

Pulse Happy Hour and The Belligerent Drunk

This past weekend I went into Boston to meet up with a bunch of my friends from RIT.  We had planned to go to this Pulse Happy Hour event which is basically a bunch of deaf people meeting up at a bar.  These are held in the larger cities around the nation or anywhere where there’s a significant deaf population.  So I head out to the city with three of my friends and we grab dinner at the Cask n Flagon next to Fenway.  The bar hosting the event is just around the corner so we walk over after dinner, arriving shortly after 9pm.

As we arrive at the bar the four of us pretty much split into pairs, the two girls wandering off while the dicks got right to drinking.  My buddy is a good guy who I played ultimate frisbee with back at school, we’ll call him Hollister for the purposes of this story.  Anyways, he and I jumped into the act of wasting large amounts of money on ridiculously overpriced drinks.

The night is going very pleasantly as more and more people we know show up as the hours pass.  At some point some random girl asked if Hollister and I were brothers, to which I said duhhh you didn’t know?  We decided that I was the more oral one and he was the more deaf one and played this story to everyone we could for the rest of the night.  I also did this great imitation of an angels fan.  The ball game was on and at one point where Buccholtz was sucking as is routine, I had glanced away from the TV and then back quickly and the first impression I got was that he had gotten an out.  So I started clapping and cheering which for some reason makes 3 girls standing right near me look at me like I’ve just called them each filthy whores.  I looked back at the TV and discovered that what happened in fact was that Buccholtz gave up a 2 run single, whoops.  Hollister, who is a Yankee fan, finds this hilarious, so do the 3 girls, hell so did I.  Hey at least some people have a sense of humor.

There were plenty of people I don’t know and one girl in particular that keeps claiming to have met me somewhere and that I look familiar.  This is the truth, she did look familiar but I was in no mind to play this one straight so I kept shrugging her claims off saying that we’ve never met.  Now this happens a few times over the course of an hour or two and at some point in time she decided that I was just being mean.  Now of course Hollister gets involved in this too and we both start teasing her a bit here and there but it quickly becomes apparent that shes a bit of a prude and has a terrible sense of humor.  Understand that my general frame of thought was closer to something like “she’s cute who gives a shit what nonsense comes out of her mouth” than any other form of rational thought.  The night appears to be rounding off without any bumps as the bar closes up, Hollister and I finish our last minute drinks and we all file outside.

Now I’d like to take a moment to make this clear.  Regarding the girl from the above paragraph, at no point was I ever really mean to her.  I never said anything disrespectful or insulted her or called her any kind of not nice name.  The worst I could be accused of is harmless flirting which I do with pretty much every member of the female race. (That does not include my family…pervs!)

With that said, the girl has decided to go to the pizza place next door with this big guy.  Hollister and I are being ushered along by the girls we’re with when I decide to grab his arm and run up to the windo of the pizza place.  Ya know just to give the “girl who doesn’t know me” some parting memories.  I don’t remember exactly what we did but it was some combination of laughing, silly faces and confusing gestures.  Bear in mind we are somewhat inebriated at this point.  So after about 20 seconds Hollister comes to senses and asks me what we’re doing.  I don’t really know so we stopped and waved by and started walking away.

I can’t really explain what happened next but I like to think of it as my spider sense kicking in.  Basically all I did was decide to look behind me but a damn good decision that was because I see the same guy who went to the pizza place with the girl.  And not only do I see him but I see him lumbering straight towards me.  As soon as I turned around and he’s maybe five feet away from me, he goes into this awkward jump attack of sorts.  Luckily for me he’s kind of slow and I can easily move out of the way and back the hell up because at this point I have absolutely no interest in messing around with this kid.  I mean you have to understand this kid easily has 100 pounds on me, he’s maybe 6’3″ and just much larger.  So we get all “what the fuck are you doing”, “back the fuck off asshole” while the girl is trying to get him to calm down but she’s like 10 pounds compared to his 300.

All of a sudden and much to my surprise Hollister who I should point out weighs less than I do, decides to get right in this kid’s face.  With the girl between them the two go back and forth for a while and it seems like Hollister is just trying to get him to calm down and go pack on a few more pounds with some slices of pizza.  It almost worked too.  Over the course of 30 seconds things have calmed down, I backed off immediately because it appeared at though it was me the guy wanted to kill while Hollister is about 20 feet away at the door of the pizza place and the girl and guy have gone back inside.

This next sequence of action happens in one smooth motion.  Hollister has backed away from the door a bit.  The door bursts open, a belligerent drunk has emerged running.  The belligerent drunk just completely lays a right hook squarely to Hollister’s jaw.  Belligerent drunk does not stop moving and has proceeded to sprint into the road and up the street.  Hollister takes punch number two, the right side of face hitting pavement.  Stupid girl is being stupid.  It takes me a good five seconds to even process this.  I consider running after the guy but more violence isn’t going to help this situation and also said violence would probably be inflicted primarily on me unless I found a large brick to hit him with.

So yeah, we helped Hollister register his senses again, considered a hospital but he ultimately decided to just head home and get some sleep.  I’d like to point out that Hollister became a personal hero of mine as a result of these events.

The Aftermath – Stupid girl gave me her number (pimpinnnn) so I could let her know about how Hollister was doing.  Hollister fractured his jaw in two spots and will be having surgery.  We found out belligerent drunk’s name and are pressing charges.  Random acts of violence typically shouldn’t happen in areas where everyone knows your name and can identify you.

Thank god for dumb people.