Monster Soup

October 11, 2014

Occupy Hong Kong

I moved to Hong Kong when I was one, and by the time I was six it became a fact of life that the most important accessory in the hot humid month of a Hong Kong summer is an umbrella. Chinese 格格 (housewives) would never be caught without one, to shield them from the brutal sub-tropical sun, lest their moon-white skin be caught by its rays and turn an undesirable yellow.

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Triumphant Melancholy

When the Antlers released Hospice in 2009 on Frenchkiss Records, the band established itself as a project of personal catharsis for its frontman, Peter Silberman. Designated a concept album, Hospice channeled Silberman’s past romantic failures into a story of two individuals confined to a cancer ward: a hospice worker and the terminally ill patient he gradually falls in love with.

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Pandora Speaks

Who would have given a damn about me if not for that box?

As punishment for Prometheus’ gift of fire, the gods gave me to men. They gave me to men. I was a poisoned gift. But the importance of a poisoned gift is the venom it bears, not the gift. The box, not Pandora.

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Bored at Firestone

Ladies and Gentlemen, bibliophiles and book lovers and lovers and book characters and bookish lovers and lovers of lovers of books, you all want the same thing. You aren’t unique for wanting this. People have done it before. Those doomed lovers in Atonement, releasing their furious need against each other, just once, bolstered by the burnished bookcase behind the two beloved.

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We Could Be Heroes

The legend in question began with a Lego figure of Anakin Skywalker. When your family doesn’t use electricity on the Jewish Sabbath, there is not much to do. You play Risk. You play monopoly. You play Magic: The Gathering. Most of the time, though, you play Lego.

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Pardon My Deutsch

There’s a particular brand of shame that comes with being a tourist, particularly as an American. Especially in Europe, American tourists are almost universally received with a mixture of annoyance and exasperation, the kind usually reserved for flies buzzing around the ear or children crying on airplanes.

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The Unexpected Bodies

It was 9 a.m. Awakened, as I often am, by sunlight, I opened my door to go to the bathroom downstairs. Supine, to the side of my door, was a male form, blonde and muscular and naked. His hands were cupped over his genitals, his underwear crumpled by his head. His eyes were closed. I froze in surprise, but I had to pee, and out of some ingrained politeness didn’t want to disturb him. I stepped over him quietly and went downstairs.

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Heaven Only Knows

For most people of faith, the idea of heaven or Paradise or the afterlife is a pleasant one. Beliefs differ, but having a personal or cultural view of what happens (or what doesn’t) after the heart stops beating is pervasive in humankind, if not universal. Regarding my personal belief, consideration of the afterlife has little to do with its existence or even my chances of getting there.

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What We Learn From Hong Kong

While I am crowded into the park with my Hong Kong friends, awaiting the moment to begin our procession from Causeway Bay westward to Central, I wonder: Why is it that I, a black American who does not even understand Cantonese, who has lived in Hong Kong for less than one month, am out among the crowds supporting the protests?

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This Is How God Walks the Playground

Two fists and a bruised knuckle. No lunch money. No school bus. He wears his soles out each morning, drops them at the back of the courtyard, and goes to class barefoot. Doesn’t say much. He sits alone some days and other days he doesn’t. Always the same thing for lunch. Carrots and men.

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Speaker of Many, Master of None

I slammed my 12-year-old fists onto the shiny Yamaha piano keys, the polyphonic dissonance echoing my frustration. “Would you please stop speaking Cantonese to me?” I yelled. “From now on, I only want you to teach me in Mandarin or English.” My piano teacher looked at me, her eyes scintillating with disbelief and something else I couldn’t quite grasp at that age.

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Local Politics

On July 28, I attended a meeting of the Princeton mayor and council. I had been asked to come by a member of Food and Water Watch. The pro-consumer NGO wanted a student environmentalist there to show support for a proposed local fracking ban. I had never been to any such meeting, and didn’t know what to expect.

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Verbatim

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Overheard in CWR 303

Joyce Carol Oates: Am I the only one in this room who was almost attacked by a swan?

Overheard while exiting Firestone

Guard 1: Did you watch the Rutgers game?
Guard 2: Of course!
Guard 1: Really?
Guard 2: No.

Overheard in Terrace

Terrace president, aggressively: NO. You watch season one ANYWAY because you have to watch the characters PROGRESS and GROW.

Overheard outside Patton Hall

Disembodied voice: I say sexy, you say science...Sexy!
Crowd: Science!
Voice: Sexy!
Crowd: Science!

Overheard in the Art Museum

Man standing in front of Rauschenberg: Honey, you like this one?
Woman: Eh, I like ours better.

Overheard in 1938 Hall

Freshman girl: I’m not stupid! I’m colloquial.

Overheard in Frist

Theta pledge: I skate with children with special needs. I’m so philanthropic.

Overheard in 1901-Laughlin Hall

Theta 1: The other night, he made me touch his chest hole.
Theta 2: Yeah, he made me put my whole head inside it once.

Overheard in COM seminar

Professor: They call it spanking the monkey...Haha! Genitals. Anyway...

Overheard outside Henry Hall

Junior Pi Phi, sinisterly: We could kill anyone we wanted to right now.

Overheard in Joline Hall

R20 member: I feel like once I’m in an eating club, I’ll learn what a soulmate is.

Overheard in the slums

Student: I feel like these people should just, like, go to college and join a frat instead of flying off to join ISIS. Like, they just want to be part of something. So join something else, like, even the YMCA

Overheard in Ivy

Girl: Do you guys want to go to Ivy??

Overheard outside Frist

Wise freshman: It’s Charter Friday. If you kiss randos, no one will judge you.

Overheard in the 1903 Courtyard

Guy 1, furiously: You’re a psychopath!
Guy 2: ​I’m not a psychopath, I’m just enlightened!

Overheard in the Nass inbox

Political reformer: New Jersey has high taxes and a culture of political corruption...To solve this, New Jersey should be dissolved as a state and the territory should be absorbed into neighboring states.

Overheard in 1901-Laughlin Hall

TI junior: My hair is so ratchet right now.
Junior Pi Phi: I think it looks fine, and I’m in Ivy.