The roads are wicked slippery!!!

Last Wednesday Marissa, Nick and I drove to Boston for a trip. Had some fun, strolled around, got some coffee and chai at Espresso Royale Café (colloquially known as the ERC) and ate dinner at Brown Sugar. I definitely recommend both locales; the ERC is an especially comfortable and warm location to visit. As a side note, I've noticed that the quality of the photos diminish a bit when I upload them here, with the vibrance of colours being the lost. That said, here's some pictures I snapped while there.

Photo courtesy of M. Chechette.

This was a neat little zine that I picked up in ERC. Contained some poetry, little stories, events going on in the city, shows, meteor shower information, polls about having crushes on people, an interview with Sausages...right, a section called "dream reviews" where someone talks about their dream, looks like they were drunk writing it, and food reviews. All in all, it's a cool little zine and you can contact them at High5magazine[at]gmail[dot]com.

Boston Public Library.

Outside the Boston Public Library.

Copley Square

This was in the Prudential Center. The original is so much better looking. The sky was between Sign, Cichlid and Picasso blue, and the gold more towards goldenrod. Ah well, that's what happens when you size images down.

In any event, for New Years I'm going up to Burlington with the same crowd as Boston, hopefully followed by a trip to Maine. There will most likely be photos to put up, but until then, have a happy new years everyone.

And what if I asked to be changed into a frog? What then?

Last night I finished reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The book was originally published in French (unfortunately I'm restricted to German at the moment), and entitled Le Scaphandre et le Papillon. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the beautifully written story of journalist and editor of French Elle magazine (Bauby himself) who suffers a stroke that results in locked-in syndrome; a prisoner in his own body unable to communicate to anyone except through blinking. Bauby wrote the book with help of his aide Claude and the French alphabet in order of most frequently used letters, blinking when reaching the desired letter.

The language of the book is delicate, elegant, witty, charming and fastidious. Each page draws you in for another.

Read this book and you will not regret it. It's short (for those of you who don't like to read), and a very intriguing look into a man's life when he's lost most of it. In 2007 the book was adapted to the film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly directed by Julian Schnabel. I originally downloaded the film first, but decided to read the book before watching it. It won awards at the Cannes, Golden Globes among others and was nominated for four Academy Awards, so I look forward to having a screening. Hope you get a chance to, as well.

Transmission: Thumbsucker Paw Knuckler

I haven't much to say, but I've got this music I've been listening to for a while. It's sort of how I'd characterize myself recently. Ups and downs, ready for some time to relax, time to myself without the complimentary course load. One more week of classes, then 3 finals until I'm done with the semester. Completely flew by.

Thanksgiving break was last week and quite good, got to get some work done, see family, read a book, watch the first season of Arrested Development (working on 2 and 3 now). One of the things that was bugging me, though, was my dog. She's old (around 13-14) and a big dog. In the past year she's lost 20 pounds, her back legs are going, and she's starting to knuckle in the back legs. She's great, though. I guess that's how I got half of the title for this. The other half was from my German class. In class we read a few stories from a book called Der Struwwelpeter (found here), which I happen to own at home, which was a series of stories for little kids, that happened to depict horrible happenings to teach lessons. It was from the tale Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher, The Story of the Thumbsucker (found here, aber auf Deutsch). The image is from that, and there you have it! Listen to it, tell me what you think, I'll keep belting them out (regardless).

01. Laura Stevenson and the Cans - Halloween One and Two

02. Six Twilights - Tonight I'm Letting You Drive

03. No Age - Everybody's Down

04. ASKA - There Are Many Of Us

05. Sonic Youth - Incinerate

06. Yo La Tengo - Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind

07. Casiotone For the Painfully Alone - Nashville Parthenon

08. The Microphones - Weird Storm

09. Shinobu - Moms & Dads

10. Ohbijou - Intro To Season

11. The Raincoats - Lola

12. Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love For Planet Earth

13. Japanther - The Dirge

14. The Walkmen - Little House Of Savages

15. LCD Soundsystem - New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

16. Xiu Xiu - Muppet Face

17. The Bundles - Pirates Declare War

Download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?c1qhuyb66imr6te

A thought in the shape of a story.

Sometime last week I finally finished The Nimrod Flip Out by Etgar Keret. Keret also wrote The Girl on the Fridge, which was the book I had found in a puddle this past summer. After having absolutely falling in love with GotF, I had to get this from the UVM Library. I enjoyed it as a read, but I don’t feel as though it quite measured up to The Girl on the Fridge. Like GotF, it is a series of short stories that alone, seem a bit random, but together form a surprisingly cohesive book. Funny, quirky, sweet, absurd, erratic and bizarre are the words I would use to describe it. If any of these adjectives are appealing to you, I suggest you give a shot. Shouldn’t take you too long.

Art, my name is Spinelli.

Muddy Waters is one of my favourite places to spend time in Burlington. My friend Christine from home was in Burlington on October 22 and we decided to go to Muddy Waters for some tea. Lots of people leave little notes with quotes, love poems, funny sayings, etc in the nooks and crannies of the walls for people to find there. I usually put them back after reading them, but I was quite fond of this one, and I've had this wedged in my Moleskine for a while.

And I return from my trip to hell as a headless horseman.

This past Tuesday, I was sitting in my Social Research Methods class after our test using the laptops in the room and I found myself on Amazon looking at camera accessories that I would buy if I ever had the money, and I stumbled upon a few cheap guys that were very appealing. One was a remote, which I instantly added to my cart, as well as a wide angle lens and a fisheye. I got my remote by Friday (super fast right?), and my fisheye on Saturday when I returned from a tournament in Williston, VT. This was perfect timing. I was really hoping to get it before the weekend, but Saturday was the just a good. "Why," you ask? Because it was Halloween! I ended up taking around 250 pictures that night, and I'm really pleased with the lot of them. Here's a handful from the night. They're basically in order of occurrence and from about four separate parties. Dig it.

Very Vampire Weekend, right?

SUPER CAT

I brought the brains to the potluck.

Tobias blue himself.

Brett Michaels

I tried beaches and bays that I found along the way and I made my pay from the pearls I found each day.

This is a collection of black and white photos I took with my FTb. They range from the first week August through October 22, 2010.

Someone jacked our lantern.

Alex and our summer buddy Io.

Alex aptly named him Io (one of the moons of Jupiter) because of his eyes. He would come around and eat Alex's sandwiches. He later started putting out a bowl of food and water on his porch for the little guy.

This was the last time I saw Io. Maybe he's still around.