When Ahmed was born those twenty or so years ago, the world was taking a piss. His mother screamed in agony as his overlarge head forced its way out of her vagina. His father, preferring oblivion to the messy, bloody process that is birth, smoked himself retarded outside the whelping chamber.
On the eve of World War I, an aged Alice checks into a Swiss hotel, carrying with her a large looking glass. Next door, Wendy, still reminiscing over Peter Pan, lies side by side with her dry, buttoned-up husband. Later … Read More
Every Princeton senior experiences the same dilemma when searching for a post-graduation: to go to Wall Street or not to go to Wall Street. The lure of a New York finance job is difficult to resist, with its high salary … Read More
It’s fairly rare, in this day and age, and on the continental landmass of the Americas, to be present at the official End Of An Era: the death of an ex-tyrant. Especially when, as was the case with former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, that death occurs at 2:15 PM on a sweltering, feet-dragging dog day Sunday afternoon, only hours after the ex-despot’s crack medical team assured the public that the invalid would be going home within the next five or six days. They were right, in their way.
It’s an odd thing being a young black man in this country, and a particularly strange experience being one here at Princeton. We are provided with several useful organizations that succeed at promoting unity and connections among us, while we … Read More
If you want to determine how desperate a group of people are, just look at their heroes. So Saddam’s shiny new posthumous status as martyr surprises me not. As Saudi Arabian TV personality, Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi relates, “The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time. The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too.”
For the past five or six years, I’ve been a fairly regular reader of the film criticism of David Denby, which appears in the column “Current Cinema” in the final pages of every other issue of The New Yorker. Denby’s … Read More
While Facebook stalking this week instead of writing that Dean’s Date paper, you might come across pictures of Rachel Price ’07 in a wedding dress. These photos won’t be from an impromptu trip to the Salvation Army to giggle with friends about being married some day: these are from that actual wedding day.
As a self-proclaimed solipsist, I have always attached much importance to my name and seen it manifest itself in the least expected of places. But in my pampered youth of Plaza teas surrounded by the redolence of a fine Cavendish … Read More
30 Words: The grasshopper sat serenely. Its multifaceted eyes, though expressionless, were wise. The wind blew gently, and did not move the furrowed dirt. In the flicker of an instant, it hopped. 29 Words: “We are the faithful,” he said, … Read More
I’ve been here for forty days. Each day is the same, by which I mean they are all different. The walls of my room are supposed to be beige, but they’re not. They’re grey. I tried to draw the solar … Read More
And what’s more there’d be too much to tell, with his folded-up face and our proximity, the fact that we’d lived so close to each other growing up, that in high school we’d mostly talk to the same girls and … Read More