Excess and Thrift
Last night there was an enormous raccoon prowling through the dumpsters in Wilson. The girl I was walking with recoiled, but I was sympathetic—ever since I joined the free food listserv I often feel like a nocturnal creature rummaging through a dumpster. It is inconsistent but rewarding. The listserv exists at a strange and contradictory […]
Beach Baby
Rarely is one so revised by experience, which like a river washes away the calcified sand of the soul to describe itself there anew. Rare, too, is the ability to recognize this revision. School had just ended, its shoulder-weight just dissolved, and I was sitting at a glass table beside the long drive-way leading behind […]
The Elephant of the Amazon
Now that fall has arrived, FOX news is wetting itself over the official kick-off of the 2012 campaign season and the sudden flood of the media with Republican debates. While there are many outstanding candidates, and while each has something wonderful and innovative to bring to the White House, one in particular deserves ample recognition: […]
Mormon Madness
Book of Mormon—the Broadway musical from the creators of South Park—opened to incredible reviews, won nine Tonys, and is so popular these days that its website suggests you should start looking for tickets for February 2012. Scalped tickets for shows this week are going for around five hundred dollars online. The theater holds a daily […]
Selling the Self
“Don’t go over there,” my friend advised. “It gets weird and religious.”
This is Paradise
Over the last few months, whenever I told people where I was going to college, I would more often than not encounter an uncomfortable situation. While never unimpressed, my acquaintances would frequently feel the need to recognize the esteem of the institution by downplaying its reputation. This would generally take the form of overly-exaggerated inflections; […]
Hauntings (Woman, Boy, Body)
A Haunting (Woman, Body) His death came first as an aching in her molars, then a numbness in her sinuses, then, finally, a filling up of her dreams with something warm and sharp and spit-pink. A room full of flowers, a folded American Flag, an old black and white photo of him smiling in his […]
Purple, Descended
We find imagination be the only defense against these leaves, fast cluttering my desk with pages I do not recognize— what beckons me to sleep and dream the silverfish that haunts my basement or looks the sounds of a smile? Each wink, sigh, a moment left to be smelled & touched— too short or long […]
Girl Meets Pig
One of my primary goals on my family trip to China just before school started this year was to get some cool art for my room. Walking down the aisles of the antique market in Beijing, I had a feeling I was going to find what I was looking for. As I moved from shanty […]
What Would Vince Do
Saying goodbye to the dirtiest of my dirty pleasures hasn’t been easy. Especially since I am a relatively clean (and some would say highly self-disciplined) person. And so my recent farewell to Entourage, HBO’s eight-season series on the glories of Hollywood life, has consequently become a reflective experience. Mainly because I have lost the only […]
Cerebral Flatulence
William Shakespeare once wrote, “A fart by any other name would smell as stanky.” And it does: See toot, or passed gas, or broken wind, or cut cheese. Each euphemism refers to the same thing, and that thing is the expulsion of intestinal gas through the anus, often bearing an unpleasant aroma. Traveling north, however, […]
On the Rez
Random, impromptu pop music blares from the sound system as the 2015 Clash of the Colleges commences: an unnamed administrator with a mic attempts to pump up a crowd of dazed freshmen; above, President Tilghman and co. look on as members of the Class of 2015 are hurled into an odd set of challenges, receiving […]
