An interview with a [vampire] Rhodes Scholar.

Dear Guy from TI the other night, aka Mike, aka My Love, My Love, My Love,

What the hell happened? I’m so pissed at you that I can’t even talk to you about it face-to-face. Also, I can’t find you, which makes it harder to talk to you face-to-face. Isn’t this weird? I’m pissed at you, but I still love you. Look at that. So I’ve resorted to writing this letter in the hopes that you’re the one guy who goes to TI who also reads the Nass.

I know you’ve heard it, or, if not, then you’ve felt it somehow, sweeping through the dorm room hallways, rolling around Café Viv, and whirring past kids on their way to Firestone. There is a buzz in the air, and no, it’s not the bees or the wind that’s making that sound. I’m talking about that time halfway through the semester or so when the course catalog comes out.

I went up to a girl who was yelling so loudly and excitedly that I thought I was in an episode of America’s Next Top Model right after the model-hopefuls have found out that they’re going to some foreign country, like Africa or Spain. “What’s the commotion?” I asked as we stood in front of Ivy, half expecting her to tell me that we were all going to Bali together.

For Poland, Belorussia, and Ukraine, then, Russia remains a hungry, imperialist bear.

Jo was sitting behind the counter of Beacon’s Closet in Williamsburg. Her friend and co-worker Cathey was working the register and telling Jo about her most recent purchase at Strand Bookstore in the Village:
“It’s like an annotated version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ...

In an election where both candidates for President profess a faith that teaches a preferential option for the poor, it is lamentable that there has yet to be a real discussion about equality in American society. As has been the case for the past five election cycles, we continue to engage in a debate that pits “cultural” against “issue driven” politics.

Several weeks ago, a number of students received an email about a group of Bronx middle school students who wanted to visit Princeton. The idea was simple: at-risk students might be motivated to stay in school if they could see the fruits of years of academic labor. Unfortunately, only a few days before the slated visit, we received another email. The students could no longer visit Princeton because of budget cuts. At this announcement, the school threw up its hands in dismay and declared that there was nothing to be done to help these kids.

We have bought into Hillary’s image; reality has been supplanted by a flimsy representation of what we might like it to be. But the thing is, the representation sells: the spectacle becomes not just a collection of images, but a “social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” How many times have you heard that one, seriously? If there is a list out there of the top-ten-most abused quotes in history, this one by Spanish essayist George Santayana would certainly rank near the top. While I am a bit hesitant to use it here, I have raked my brain for the past several hours to find anything else that could better contextualize contemporary movements towards an Palestinian-Israeli peace. It has been a vain attempt.