By Alex Townsend
It was a time long ago (last weekend) when I was enjoying a simple day of carefree fun with my family. They had brought me food and I was very happy, until I saw something I had hoped to never see again: a plastic bag. Specifically, it was a green one, with the words Grossman’s Delicatessen written on it in a terrifying font.
On The Decline of Film
By Ben Silverman
Hollywood, is it something I’ve done? Did I insult you someway? Every time I step out of a theatre I feel like I just got the kiss of death. I want to demand my money back but am too weak even to cause a scene. Hollywood, we use to be friends. I wasted my childhood staring at your idiot box for days without end. Something has happened.
Alva Mae Groves, quaintly known as “Granny,” died at the age of 85 in the Tallahassee Federal Corrections Institution almost two months ago. Her death went mostly unnoticed outside of Northern Florida, but it should have made people sit up and take notice.
Mrs. Groves had spent 13 years in prison after being convicted of a conspiracy to sell crack in exchange for food stamps. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison – at the age of 72 – for two reasons: she refused to testify against her son (whose trailer she lived in and whose crack she was convicted of selling) and the United States Government has absurd sentencing policies for crack convictions.
By Ambrose Pierce, Jr.
Support (tr. verb) – To provide monetary assistance to a political campaign under the guise that it represents a shared commitment to the candidate’s policies, when in fact, it is simply an investment for political favors. Senator
Hillary Clinton has received widespread support from large and small donors in favor of her campaign for the Democratic nomination.
Sometimes reading The Water Tower inspires our readers to get naked and fight the power. But most of the time, they just send e-mails.
Well, Lea, you’ve captured it brilliantly; it, of course, being testosterone. And all I can say is: learn to love it. That, or become a nun or start batting for the other team (not that there’s anything wrong with that). We guys don’t have to deal with all this Time of the Month business, but instead are condemned to go at one speed: Forward all the Time. Since we’re all of a
…
Max C. Bookman
“If [aliens] come over here, what would you do?”
-Question asked by a young child to presidential candidate
Rudy Giuliani during a campaign event. Giuliani, whose campaign is centered around the former mayor’s competence in handling terrorist attacks, jumped at the opportunity to assure Americans that he would be prepared for an alien attack.
By Jeremy Blum
How far are we willing to go in our war against terror? With a charismatic smile, a signature snicker, and a whole lot of spin,
Bush is able to put on a pretty damned good show to a nation desperate (literally) for a leader. With 9/11 having just happened, Bush appeared on everyone’s idiot box an American hero and got the wild approval he needed to pass a bill allowing him to invent his own threats.
The Patriot Act, the Bush Administration’s ‘blank check’, allows them to go after anything and everything in our society that could be considered ‘domestic terrorism.’ With the term ‘domestic terrorism’ lacking a real definition, the neo-conservatives in the White House get to determine it, and have now tagged the Internet and video games as terrorist tools!
By Max C. Bookman
“Okay, we can do this one of two ways,” the officer said, leaning in, his pink fleshy face barely inches from mine. “We can do this the easy way, and you can let me in, or we can do it the hard way, and you can pretend like nothing’s going on behind that door.”
That’s the situation I was slapped with. Expecting to greet a friendly guest, ready to partake in an enjoyable evening of beer, corn chips, salsa, and baseball, I encountered a sweaty bald police officer demanding to check out my fridge. Maybe he thought there were some doughnuts inside.
By Lauren Foley
In light of the frightening amounts of frost we have witnessed in the past days (I swear it was there), I have begun to prepare for winter. For most of us, winter evokes happy childhood memories consisting of building snowmen, drinking hot chocolate, and watching cheesy television specials of
Frosty the Snowman. This is a given. However, as adults, the onset of the winter season no longer excites us like it did when we were children.
By Lea McLellan
I was reading, summarizing, and analyzing all of the choral passages in
Sophocles’s
Oedipus and determining if they lived up to
Aristotle’s views on
Poetics, when it happened. My left eyelid started to spasm. It is now five hours later. I’ve done my Chinese grammar homework, made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, started reading Aristotle’s ethics, told Aristotle’s ethics to stick it, went to power yoga, kicked some serious ass in intramural tennis, and took a
WebCT quiz.
The twitching has since moved to my right eye.
By Mac Smith
It’s become apparent that Corporate America is too festive for me.
Wal-Mart has decided to start cutting prices in mid-October.
Sears and
Montgomery Ward have already printed their holiday shopping catalogs.
L.L. Bean and
J.C. Penney have followed suit with holiday sales of their own.
Each year, I start off with the same expectations for miracles, love, and good will, but ultimately, my patience grows shorter with every holiday season. Every year, I just get more fed up with the whole thing.
By Nate Bradbury
Do you ever watch
House M.D. on
Fox? If you do, then you know that there is one overwhelming truth in medicine and in life – everybody lies.
I remember distinctly youthful lessons on the importance of always telling the truth. This is partially because I had an early predilection to bend the truth to fit my convenience. However, I’m not sure if my parents knew that or if they were only performing their perceived parental duties.
Despite their best efforts, those lessons never took root in my mind. I still wait for everyone to be served before I eat, I put a napkin in my lap, and I hold my spoon gingerly between my index finger, middle finger, and thumb because mom and/or dad “said to”. But lying is different because of one simple thing: I knew THEY were allowed to lie.
1. Ask “can I bum one” instead of “do you have one.” Less chance of hearing “no.”
2. Approach a group of people instead of just one or two. More likely that someone will have one.
3. If a guy and a girl are smoking, approach them and ask the guy. He won’t want to look like a dick.
Created By Anya Brodrick, Illustration by Alexander Whitehead
This section deconstructs the styles of today. The tripartite nature of the section demonstrates the intersection of image-word-mathematics
A Day in the Life of: Professor John Q. Stevens
8:30 am: Breakfast discussion (over oatmeal) with wife (married 35 years) about the social and environmental impact of
Davis Center. Reminisces about own college days and his old campus haunts.
9:05 am: Grueling intro-class; filled with far too many uneager faces. As class goes on, he does see a few potentials though.
10:30 am: Senior seminar class: discussing thesis outlines and editing. Revels in the wisdom he can share with them and loves their enthusiasm; reminds him of his own thesis.
1. Bikes Bombing Down the Hill: Nothing shocks me out of an early morning daze like the eye-widening experience of a bike on the sidewalk headed right for me.
2. The Phalanx: Most people observe the “traffic laws” of footpaths. However, groups of three or more people who spread across the walkway (hence, “phalanx”) and stare me down as I begrudgingly go around start my day off wrong.
3. Swerving Loner: This is the opposite of the “phalanx”. Walking up the hill behind someone swerving in both “lanes” with their iPod rocking is surprisingly frustrating.
By Alex Pinto
What is in a great recording? One could make standard arguments for and against the hi-fi masterpieces of
Steely Dan—heroes of middle-aged audiophiles everywhere—and lo-fi indie sound catastrophes of the twenty-first century.
I’m merely a listener and fan of music. But one thing I always listen for is the division of heavy and light production. Nothing makes me super tingly like a recording that can be described as pure.
I mean just real, bare bones, almost-live, smack your booty recordings. Recordings that are technically well done, but for which the artists say no to cleaning up errant noises, sacrificing cleanliness for raw power. And this can crop up in some unexpected places.
1. Bring only one cigarette out with you at a time.
2. If you see someone notice your cigarette, avert your eyes and walk away!
3. Say you only have menthol or Marb Reds and hope they don’t want it.
4. Straight up lie, if you’re okay with feeling like an asshole.
5. Carry around an empty pack with you at all times, if you’re really hardcore.
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