Afternoon Delight

September 26, 2014

PrinceWatch

It is that time of year again, when the breezes grow colder and the leaves begin to turn, when the freshmen amble onto campus looking for love and the fast-track to Goldman Sachs, and when the Daily Princetonian’s ancient printing press begins to crank out the book reports, advertorials, and speculative fiction it is famous for. It is time, of course, for PrinceWatch.

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What a Picture Isn’t Worth

Abroad in Ghana this summer, I worried my friends and relatives when I removed myself from social media.

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The Burden of Proof

Princeton’s campus is insulated from the dangers of a city. It teems with P-Safe cars. But for much of the community, in the privacy of our dorm rooms and our own mattresses, it is not safe.

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The Generation X Gap

Douglas Coupland’s exhibit in the Vancouver Art Gallery this summer was called “everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything,” and from the instant I saw the title, before I even set foot in the museum, I was not feeling it. The all-lowercase aesthetic felt, to me, like an appropriation by a pretty square art gallery and a not-young man of a look that coded for “youth” and “hipness.”

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The Radio Star Lives

It is after six o-clock pm, and the aisles of Shaw’s are bustling with last-minute dinner shoppers. Dodging throngs of gym-clothed soccer moms, I make for the produce section, unsure whether I’ll find “fresh ginger root” in a supermarket stocked … Read More

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Shakes On a Plane

Some people grapple with their own mortality through meditation, or mountain climbing, or making a pilgrimage to some lost, crumbling temple full of monks. Some do it because they’ve just received a diagnosis of terminal illness or reached their 80th birthday. I just have to step onto a 737.

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Think Before You Speak

It was a hot Friday night in Berlin, and young people on the narrow streets of Kreuzberg district were just beginning their usual 48-hour clubbing routine with cigarettes, beer, and lines of cocaine. Aware that I stood out as a solitary woman and an obvious foreigner, I tried to shove my way through the throngs of smelly teenagers and drunken old men as efficiently as I could, right shoulder angled toward the crowd to get the maximum force-to-surface area ratio.

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Ecstasy

Based on the work of K.S. Radhakrishnan:

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Too Quiet to Hear Except at Night

I wake to the sound of a snowdrift shed from the roof like antlers shrugged off by a deer or like that molting time when birds stay flightless a while to grow themselves back.

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107 Things Sex is Like

Some of our esteemed fellow publications within the literary Eden that is this campus have recently brought their keen eyes to sex, and what it is like to have it. They have prompted us to consider how it is similar … Read More

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Verbatim

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Overheard in Frist

Ivy senior: Empathy? Is that a thing?

Overheard in East Pyne

Future State Department official: Also, I care about rights, or whatever.

Overheard in Frist

Freshman: Frist does look like a pretty cool place to chill...watch sports...

Overheard in ANT 450

Prof. Borneman: Yoko Ono’s music, it’s very feminine. It’s almost as though she were singing from her vagina.

Overheard in Romanticism and Realism

Prof. Brodsky: Please God strike me dead where I stand the first time I take a selfie.

Overheard in T.I.

Bro: I have a tolerance like Dionysus.

Overheard at the Fraternity Formerly Known as AEPi

Parrty-goer: idk I spent my summer in Nepal doing some shit.

Overheard in the New York TImes

Correction: An earlier version of a summary with this article misstated the former title of Dick Cheney. He was vice president, not president.

Overheard on Nassau Street

Tower member, proudly: I can say confidently that it was the worst sex she will have in her entire life.

Overheard near Frist

Learned sophomore: When I was 16, I’m pretty sure I thought oral sex was when you talked about it.

Overheard in a Burger King

Middle aged man with a ponytail: No fucking old bitches for me. That’s a fact.

Overheard in 1901-Laughlin

TI junior: The U-Store was out of dice so I bought Yahtzee instead.

Overheard outside Frist

Girl: No, I know what you mean. All my friends in high school were prettier than me, too.

Overheard at Cloister

Freshman girl, to Ivy junior: teach me how to vomit

Overheard in Wilson

Knowledgeable freshman to confused freshman: No, it’s like a party you go to before the party, like a pre-party.

Overheard in Creative Writing

Joyce Carol Oates: What *is* a summer?

Overheard by Say Cheese

Ex-hotel employee, on former em- ployer: Fuck that shit. In five years, imma get rich, go back there, and fuck prostitutes.

Overheard in 1901-Laughlin

Theta: What happened to that threesome you were invited to?
Gay junior: It was a foursome. And I was uninvited because I didn’t want to smoke crystal meth.