Author: spectrum

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is Kaley, finally taking over for previous contributor and allover much more put together Advertising Manager Elke. According to this blog, the Fall 2015 Semester never happened, so let’s just pretend, alright? Here’s to starting fresh (if a little late)!

Our spring semester kicked off with a writing exercise, stolen from the internet and modified a bit. Members were tasked with the following prompt:

Write about (or draw) a color without naming it, and try to make us guess what color you had in mind.

We got some great answers! Can you guess what color each one is about?

 

“This is the color of a cloudy, ominous sky, holding the power to drag you by your wrists back to the security of your bed, but to bring torrents and flashes that soak you to the core with their awful power.”

-Anonymous

“This is the color of teenage, underage sin. Dark, rich, flowing from heavy bottles that will leave you passed out in your own vomit. Jesus is crying. This is not how he wanted you to celebrate his blood.”

-Anonymous

“When I wake up I envelope myself in sheets of luxurious thread, rich and heavy shining cloth spitting out sunshine and sunrays. When I wrap myself I feel like a treasure, sparkling and gleaming next to jewels and gems from some pirate’s cove long ago. I feel like the sun. I feel precious and rare.

And then I have to go to class and my world darkens again.”

-Anonymous

 

And, some interesting ones:

“aurple burple curple durple eurple furple gurple hurple iurple jurple kurple lurple murple nurple ourple qurple rurple turple uurple vurple wurple xurple yurple zurple”

(You can thank a certain e-board member for that gem.)

Thank you all for not moving to impeach me over my inactivity as a blogger, and I vow to earn back your trust this semester!

 

 

 

This past Monday, Spectrum had it’s final general meeting of the 2014-15 school year. It’s hard to believe the year is already coming to a close (maybe because I’m still wearing my winter coat). As our club faced the bittersweet task of having our last writing/art activity together, we figured this humor-inducing prompt would be fitting: What are you glad happened at Spectrum this year? What are you glad didn’t happen?

The results were very entertaining, and the executive board quickly came to the conclusion that holding our meetings in Frost Lounge (a nice, spacious room that also happens to have large paintings of some of Northeastern’s most famous figures) took a bit of a toll on our members.

See for yourself:

“I’m glad the issue didn’t get postponed! I’m glad we got tons of quality writing submissions. I’m glad that I didn’t get the squeaky corner of the table in Frost Lounge every time we had a meeting 🙂 ” – Anonymous

“I’m thankful the ‘first-year gauntlet’ was a brief and respectable affair. I’m thankful that Will’s improvised jazz harmonica solos never exceeded 20 minutes.” – Joe Forti

“I’m really glad that Richard Freeland didn’t climb out of his painting and call us a bunch of nerds. No snack-related food poisoning. No cops.” – Will Jackson

“I’m glad the following did not happen: goose invasion, Twister tournament, field trip to tattoo parlor, dance-off, Cards Against Humanity tournament, Hunger Games-style tournament in place of e-board elections.” – Anonymous

“I’m glad we didn’t get snowed out like five times… Oh wait.” – Abbie Doane-Simon

“I’ve only ever been to one Spectrum meeting, but that’s only if the fall release party counts as one of the meetings. Although, when I was there, I’m glad the members didn’t poison the pizza so as to punish the people who don’t actually go to meetings. I’m glad they didn’t isolate me for being a new face. Oh, and I’m glad they didn’t, like, chase me out of the building for barely knowing anything about Spectrum. But even without those possible attempts at murder or emotional trauma, I think I’ll go to some meetings in the future!” – Emily Mui

This brings me to the close of what is most likely my last post for the blog. When I revived the blog last October, we hadn’t posted in over a year and a half. In internet time, that meant the blog had been dormant for nearly twenty years. So thank you for reading this and/or any of my other posts this past year, it’s meant a lot to watch the blog come back strong and be well-received. Next year I’ll be Spectrum’s layout and design editor, but the blog isn’t going anywhere–I’m leaving you in our new advertising manager Kaley’s very capable hands! Be sure to follow Spectrum on Twitter and Facebook so you don’t miss anything awesome she cooks up.

Good luck with finals, and I hope you have the kind of wonderful summer that inspires you to write and submit!

— Elke

P.S. The release party for our Spring 2015 Issue is this Monday! Grab your copy of the new issue at good ‘ol Frost Lounge at 7:15pm on April 13th. Dressy attire encouraged!

Ah, here it is, the first blog post of spring, blossoming like a flower we were promised we’d get to see weeks ago, but wouldn’t you know it–it took its sweet time getting here.

Yes, I’m still bitter about the weather and its inability to follow the natural seasonal progression into spring by mid-March. And yes, I’m sorry it’s been so long since the last blog post. Sadly, due to the amount of snow this past semester, Spectrum missed a lot of meetings, and we had to spend the majority of our sparse meeting time rating the delightful submissions you sent us. Thank you for those by the way–your submissions kept us very, very happy.

But now we’re out of the woods and the issue is nearly printed, and so at our past meeting, we were able to have a writing exercise! To make up for the lack of writing/art prompts over the semester, we took this past meeting as an opportunity to compile LOTS of writing prompts for members to choose from. Below are responses to two of them:

Prompt #1: write an excuse to not do your homework today

I’ve been troubled lately about how much of the Earth’s ocean is still unexplored. Like, what might be down there? I’m not saying I necessarily believe there’s a Pacific Rim situation going on where we can’t see. I’m just saying it might be more beneficial for us as a species to be prepared for that possibility. For that matter, I’m suspicious about the moon, particularly its “dark side.” Isn’t it kind of disturbingly convenient that we know nothing at all about something so close by? There’s just so many weaknesses in our defenses, so easily they could be exploited! And we don’t even know who or what might exploit them! It’s enough to give you the existential night sweats, the trembly kind, ya know? The trembles for the frailty of man. What I’m trying to say is I didn’t write my paper for today.

– Joe Forti

Prompt #2: write from the perspective of a glass on the edge of a table

This is it.
This is how I go.
I always imagined it happening differently
Going down with a shelf of vessels
in a cacophony
of breaking glass
and cursing cries
but no
my end is less exciting
drawn out
unnoticed
who would have thought
life on the edge
would be
this
predictable

– Courtney Langdell

 

— Elke

Hey hey hey!

Are you enjoying your winter break? Or were you brought to our blog out of a desperation for entertainment?

Either way, at a Spectrum meeting several weeks ago, we had a creative prompt with only one rule: The piece must include the lovely words you see in the title of this post.

Some of the results of this prompt are as follows:

 

Cheesy Pick-Up Lines!

• Your smile’s as bright as the California sun.
• I wanna hop on you like a frog on a lily pad.
• Let’s do it like bunnies.
• Girl are you a dangerous criminal? Because you sure stole my heart.
• I would live in a pineapple under the sea with you (?)

-Anonymous

 

• California was bigger than… you know… the other state with a Disney theme-park. Flo-Rida or something. No? My bad—the Disney World state, not the singer.
• The green frog was as jumpy as a brown frog. Like those two in Frog and Toad. Except toad’s, you know, a toad. And one of them is a scaredy-cat, don’t remember which one.
• The white cat was as white as a bunny. Who was white. And alive. And not soaked in mud. Did I mention it was white?
• “This is dangerous, you know. You could be risking everything—your happiness, your job, your home…”
  “That’s a pretty lame-ass sort of dangerous. I haven’t been happy since I discovered I still had college loans to pay off, killing monsters is my job—if I didn’t do this, I’d be risking my job anyways—And I haven’t had a proper home since the last Ben N Jerry’s in the state closed down.”
• “What are you two doing?”
  “Not each other, that’s for sure. Or eating pineapples. Or taxes, or eating pineapples. Did I mention that we’re not eating pineapples?”
  “You’re eating the MISSION! We’re supposed to be delivering that pineapple!”

-Kami-Sama

 

Sorry I kept these jewels from you for so long, but you know–finals, life, etc. The good news is, 2015 means a new year, a new semester, and a new Spectrum issue! We’re going to need all the help we can get to make sure our Spring 2015 Issue the very best it can be!

So how can you help? Come to meetings! Our first one of the semester is two weeks from tomorrow: Monday, January 12. Too busy to join us? You can submit your poetry, prose, and art 24/7 to spectrum.magazine@gmail.com, or buy clicking the “Submit” tab on this website.

Happy New Year!

— Elke

 

Yeah, I know, I procrastinated this post just like you procrastinated your homework over the weekend (thank goodness we have Veterans’ Day off, am I right?).

Last Monday night, Spectrum members completed an activity in honor of the famous/infamous NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). They all either created a summary, blurbs, and/or cover art for their hypothetical upcoming novel. Here are some amusing samples for your perusing:

Xena Goldstein and the Slumber Party in Space!
When 15 year-old Xena Goldstein first gets her invite to Cindy Appleberry’s slumber party, she thinks “this is it!” She’s finally made some friends and might even become popular! But when the space station takes an unexpected hit from a stray asteroid, this 2080’s pajama party takes a turn for the worse! Can Xena save her new friends before the life systems fail, or will her popularity get flushed out the airlock just like her new super cute pajama top?

“An intense and socially ridiculous novel sure to thrill any teenager.” – The New York Times

“I like the part where her best friend dies!” – George R. R. Martin

“OMG like it’s totally perfect.” – A teenager

—Abbie Doane-Simon

Joe Forti, author of Cheese: Nectar of the the Gods, Pie: My Lifeblood, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Eating Butter, presents:
Pizza: A Love Story

–Joe Forti

–Kelly Burgess

— Elke

Woohoo! FRIDAY BEFORE A LONG WEEKEND YEAH!

I know you’ve been anxiously awaiting this blog post, highlighting our writing/art prompt from our Spectrum meeting this past Monday, October 6th.

The prompt was:

On this day (October 6th) in 1723, Benjamin Franklin arrived in Philadelphia at the age of 17. Paint a portrait of a teenage Benjamin Franklin.

Here are some of our finest responses:

He was a nerd. — Anonymous

 

 

His clothes totally disheveled from the journey through the country, Benjamin Franklin strolled into Philadelphia. Having been thoroughly bored and mildly disillusioned with modern society, he had renounced all social interaction and decided instead to communicate with a series of impassioned hand motions and yelping non sequitur phrases. Needless to say, his tales of glory from Boston fell upon deaf ears, as nobody cold understand the man.

“Keys! Printing Press! Armonica!”

— Douglas R.

 

— Elke