In Memoriam, Online
Her page, arrested in those golden years before anybody cared how many likes your profile picture had, was the picture of adolescence: I smiled when I saw the wall posts about biology homework, the album titled “January!!” In 2008, she had attended Homecoming and a Quidditch Club Meeting.
Survival of the Fitness Myth
When I walked into the women’s locker room at Dillon gym earlier this week, I noticed a poster that made me bite my lip. Tacked up between weekly fitness schedules, the sign grabbed my attention with the headline: “The weight is over.” The line, I thought, could have been pulled from a diet product ad—Sensa, maybe, or Alli. It was the sort of cheesy slogan you see on caffeine-and-diuretic “supplements” at CVS.
The Swamp
They breed in drains. A tinful of groundnuts. Fist in the honey pot. Can’t. Cultured, in a bad way. And bloom into quintillion coils. Theft at midnight, errors in the yard.
Marijuana and Its Discontents
Recently, the Daily Princetonian reported that a senior had been arrested for possession of marijuana and prescription drugs. In the article, the arrested student was named, meaning that his legal troubles are now fully Google-able.
Wes Anderson’s Oozing Nostalgia
There is always an interesting tone to the buzz around the release of a new Wes Anderson film. People wonder if the new film will stick closely to Anderson’s unique style in order to satisfy his cult following or if it will lean more toward the mainstream in an effort to garner more fans and more box office success. These are valid questions and concerns.
Living On Prayer
Whenever i feel like I don’t know where my life is going, my father is there to console me. He tells me that his life—or at least the version of it that I know—only really began when he was 35. He reminds me that especially given his untraditional experiences, he and my mom have no expectation that either I or my brother follow the typical pattern of get a degree, get a job, get married, all right out of college.
Hannah-Sophie Vester
I’ve never seen my birth certificate, but I know what it says. I can see the angular font in my head, bold blocky letters spelling out my name: Hannah-Sophie Vester. Perhaps the ink, thick and sticky, smudged just a little and that’s where that mark, printed defiantly between Hannah and Sophie, came from. Just a typo, a wayward smudge. Another look, though, and who wouldn’t recognize the hyphen for what it is?
Got Mare’s Milk?
Daniel patrick O’Connell does not blend in with the Ulaan Baatar crowd. A preppy, robust, white-haired Cottage alumnus, he wore a pink bow tie to work today because it’s Friday, and he sticks out almost comically as he walks past the locals on the Peace Avenue sidewalk downtown.
Lemon Pepper Wings
We cannot presume that Rick Ross is a mastermind, a genius or even sober. We cannot attest to his level of education, his employment history, or his net-worth. We have no idea where he came from: he claims to be Mohammed, the son of Moses, and the reincarnation of Haile Selassie. But, as he tells us on his latest album: none of that matters.
Revenge Porn
If you’ve ever sat behind me in a class or glanced at my laptop screen while walking past me in Frist, you may have wondered why there is a band-aid covering my webcam.
My Grandma, Sex Psychiatrist
“The madame will be joining us soon. Her horse sprained his ankle on the journey down Second Avenue,” my grandpa said in a mock British accent. My grandpa is a writer, and jumps at opportunities to knit fantasy into everyday experience, be it with affected accents or outrageously butchered attempts at Mandarin.