By Elias Altman

I am an archaeologist and archivist of my own life. I obsessively save all my graded papers, school notebooks, and movie ticket stubs. One summer, I even hand-wrote letters to the two girls I had crushes on at boarding school using carbon copies.

It is comforting to have proof of a memory: some physical remnant from an occurrence that now only resides in the mind. I collect these little mementos because I am afraid that I will lose what they signify. I keep everything hoping that I will lose nothing.

I am not sure to what I should attribute this habit: a gatherer instinct, Holden Caulfield nostalgia, wild insecurity. Regardless of the cause though the effect is that I preserve memories at all costs.

Editing The Water Tower has been a fitful, yet fruitful undertaking. We waged a multifaceted battle on both lofty and lowly level—fighting censorship and financial shortcomings on the one hand and our own urges to produce run-on sentences, nonsensical clichés, and incomprehensibly esoteric language on the other— all to the clamoring background noise of drinking invitations, computer malfunctions, and shirked schoolwork.

When the first issue of The Water Tower hit the stands we lurked shamefully around the library, watching the stands and willing people to pick it up. We grimaced in agony when a potential reader stopped to look, and then kept walking, and we smiled sheepishly when someone actually picked it up and at least looked at the pictures.

by Henry Melcher

It was a mess: a dark haze where I didn’t even know her name and it was like moving underwater. The condom broke and it was terrible. A shaking and sinking feeling set in as I woke up from my dream beneath thin motel sheets in the Berkshires. Though the $50 room was clean and spacious – similar to how I imagine an airy, upscale trailer parlor from 1976 – and mostly satisfactory, the carpet bore a residual dampness, or coldness.

My eyes adjusted to the day’s brilliance, and it sunk in. Then I had another realization of awfulness: that my dream, no matter how satisfactory, had occurred within hovering distance of my great friend and ultimate Frisbee colleague, Dave. You see, we have to share beds during these disc tournaments.

By Rob Booz

ACROSS:

1 JUST SAY THIS

3 MAYOR OF MARGARITAVILLE

12 PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD

7:05 am: wakes up and dresses in freshly dry-cleaned Brooks Brothers suit and makes obligatory attempt to look “fun” and “engage students” with Vermonty maple leaf tie that looks local but actually cost $68 at Barney’s.

7:36 am: eats a heart-healthy breakfast (cantaloupe and
high-fiber muffin) with wife while teleconferencing with oldest son at Bates via speaker-phone. Agrees to direct deposit $3,000 into his checking account for spring break in Cancun.

9:02 am: Arrives at the President’s Wing of Waterman and picks up bonus paycheck for the “Competitive Universities” conference that he attended at Georgetown two weeks ago where Guinness Book record was set for repetitive and hallow use of word “benchmark” in a four hour period.

1. Bong, pipe, water bong other paraphernalia
2. Porn
3. KY Jelly
4. Text book still in the plastic wrap
5. Unpaid public urination citation

1. “UVM continues to grow and expand, the class of 2007 is THE most prepared and qualified class to graduate from UVM.”—an obvious lobby to parents and student for alumni donations.

2.“It is my pleasure to welcome you to this beautiful campus.”—A desperate attempt to distract the audience from the still-ongoing construction site that is UVM. No one really wants to remember how they spent four years walking around a loud and dusty construction site.

3.“This is also the most diverse class to ever graduate from UVM.”—A limited statement, Fogel seems to be on a publicity …

By Erin Sullivan

Through hard work, determination, and courage, we are taught that we can achieve the so-called American Dream. A nice house with a white picket fence, a loving family, a dog (preferably a golden retriever), and a respectable career are key elements of this manufactured idea.

But what happens when those values are warped and are replaced with a Cuban refugee with a serious cocaine problem and excessive amounts of power and wealth? The answer is the 1983 film Scarface.

By Lauren McGonagle-Akin

“I say it is useless to waste your life on one path, especially if that path has no heart. Before you embark on it you ask the question: Does this path have a heart?”

– The Teachings of Don Juan

When I begin to wallow in the mires of “purpose,” I try to immediately remind myself of that thing we can all count on: death. Our bodies, brains, perceptions, aspirations, memories, senses of hope and nostalgia, and any sense of purpose we acquired along the way, will eventually crumble, vaporize, and vanish into the ether.

No one can refute me on this one. I’m supremely confident in its validity. This paper explicitly expresses that we have NOT chosen nihilism (turn to page one). It is in this spirit that I venture boldly forth into the realm of purpose for all shiny, bushy-tailed, budding college students.

By Nicole Vincent-Roller

Everyone else is testing you—why not us? Sure, the grades you receive for the exams you should be studying for right now will be on your permanent school record, but any crime you get charged with for not knowing your rights will be on your permanent criminal record. So give it a shot, and we’ll give you a break most of your professors won’t— true/false, anyone?

1. If you’ve gotten pulled over, and the cop asks you to get out of your and perform some sobriety tests, you can refuse to do them without incurring any penalty.

Answer: True. Roadside sobriety tests are entirely voluntary, so if you want to step out of your auto and shake your bon-bon for fun, feel free. Otherwise, just smile, say “No, thanks,” and enjoy the stunned look on the cop’s face.

By Henry Melcher

For any student who has only enjoyed Burlington during the year’s academic months, let me be the umpteenth person to inform you: you are missing out. Summer in the Bubble passes by almost inexplicably; it is as short and wondrous as a daydream on the green in between study sessions.

The streets are less crowded, a satchel of verdant niceness is never beyond reach, and the pit-stained yellow Jersey plates – thank goodness – number far fewer. With this comparative tumble-weed emptiness, nature’s majesty and the uber-heady bourgeois downtown are both greatly enhanced.

By Laura Bilodeau

The single life in Burlington is rough for anyone, but when you’re a female senior about to graduate, the word desperate takes on a whole new meaning. In my underclassmen days, the University environment alone was an endless field of prospective encounters. These days, I find myself in a less desirable situation.

The last person I hooked up with more than once provided me with a brief moment of hope. We met at Red Square hip-hop night; I decided it was time to give up the tight twat act, and gave him my number. We went to Flat Bread, conversation flowed, we laughed.

By Kurt Weiss

I hate my CatCard. Early on in my freshman year, I realized its ability to put my academic career in jeopardy. It clearly identified me as a UVM student to a UVM Police Officer who wrote me up for allegedly urinating in a public water fountain somewhere on the campus green and while partaking in underage drinking.

So why then have I spent over $200 replacing the damned thing?

I lose my CatCard every semester break. I often lose it over Spring Break and Thanksgiving, and one time I even lost it over a three-day holiday (this can surely be attributed to more drinking).

1. Crocheting. I don’t get why this is allowed, even if it is a repetitive and mostly brainless task. School is not a nursing home.

2. Guys Rearranging/Women Adjusting. Guys are still putting a text book over their junk and rearranging down there like they learned in fourth grade. And when will women realize that glancing down slowly at each breast, toggling one and then the other to get the balance right is really distracting?

Max C. Bookman

“Is there anyone on the stage who does not believe in evolution?”

-A question asked at the first formal debate among Republican presidential candidates on May 3. Three of the ten candidates raised their hand signaling their distrust in Darwin’s theory. Yes, this is 2007, not 1927. What the fuck?!

Pretentious: adj. A pejorative word smart and bitter people use to characterize other smart and bitter people. Usually employed when one feels that a worthy opponent has invaded one’s own intellectual property, or when someone attempts to introduce “academics” into “chill” conversation. The word itself is too pretentious to be used by someone who is actually humble.

Common Current Uses:

“Elias Altman is pretentious.”

- Tommy Wheeler.
Or

“Elias Altman’s attempts at self-mockery are pretentious.”

- Average Water Tower Reader.

By Max C. Bookman

I feel like Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing when he wakes up from a long strange trip in that trashed hotel room wondering how long he’s been there. Days? Weeks? What the fuck!

I didn’t exactly spend the entire year eating acid and tripping on outrageous psychedelics, but seriously, what have I done since August? As my ever-so hyped freshman year enters its twilight hours, what can I make of the first two semesters?

Back in high school, “college” was some far-off unfathomable, parent-free wonderland. It represented unsupervised indulgence in all the fun things previously controlled— particularly booze, drugs, and sex.

1. Funds— approximately 8,000 debit cards get dangerously low each May. TDBankNorth makes a killing on overdraft fees, and students tentatively dial their parental units about getting bailed out

2. Moving out— Parents desire that their offspring be packed, sober, and happy to see them when the minivan pulls up. In reality, many students are found hung-over and disorganized come moving-out day. Living on the third floor of an elevator-less dorm does not make anyone feel better about it.

3. Summer jobs— finding a chill summer job that pays well, requires minimal work, and includes hot co-workers can be hard, but your parents probably want you to get on it.