I Am So Famous

Today I got an another article in the Daily Princetonian. This makes three fore me, but I think this was my best one. You can read it here:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/29/opinion/12814.shtml

So far people have said they liked it, which is always nice, and I even got an email from my friend Rob's mom. Hopefully next year I can write for them a little more regularly, but it seems like a lot of people try to write for the Prince, so I'll take what I can get.

Right now they are having a filibuster to protest Bill Frist trying to get rid of the filibuster. Students are just standing up in front of the Frist Center (built by Frist) and reading variuos random things. You can read about it if you do a search in google news, I don't feel like putting up any links. Anyway, today Rush Holt came by. He is a congressman from New Jersey. He came by and did some filibustering by reading from Aesop's fables and then giving a little speech.

Someone asked him why democrats couldn't just stop the filibuster by filibustering, and he seemed to become confused. I asked him why he was making it seem like the filibuster was being entirely dismantled, when the "nuclear option" concerned only legislative appointments". He said that as soon as the first type of filibuster was removed the second would quickly follow. I think there's a lot of misinformation going around on both sides, as is typical of any issue anymore, but Rush seemed like a nice, if slightly nervous guy, so vote for Rush.

Tonight they are having house parties, which is basically some parties at the eating clubs where everyone gets dressed up. They were a little too expensive for my limitied budget, so I decided to opt out this year. Tonight my plan is to play some online chess and drink 10 cans of snapple iced tea which I was given at Frist Fest yesterday. Should be a blast.

Build-A-Monkey

Today was Frist Fest, which is basically a chance for them to waste the equivalent of one student's entire tuition on an event about which literally noone cares. They have cotton candy and bands and a ring toss, and hundreds upon hundreds of feet of sub sandwiches. I asked my friend, Scott, if he would enjoy making a 10 ft sub sandwich. He said "Eating one or making one?" which is a stupid question so I scolded him. Then I said "making one." He said it wouldn't be fun making a 10 ft sub sandwich which is obviously something stupid to say. The only thing better than making a 10 ft sub is making a 10 ft diameter quiche, because the surface area is larger.

The one event worth doing at Fristfest was build-a-bear, which for you idiots out there, is where you build a bear. How long was the line for build a bear? There were more people in line for build a bear than at the rest of the festival combined and combine that with the number of people that have been into outer space and the people who have ever used a space bar in their life, or been to the space bar which is a lounge on top of the Casino Morongo. But I decided to get in line for build-a-bear with Leslie Lee, and make a bear that I could beat up when I got nervous for finals.

We played chess as we waited in line. I had to go set up for quad at 8 o clock. We got in line at 715/730, I'm not exactly sure, but needless to say, I didn't think it would become an issue with my meeting. We had a conversation with a guy that might have been homeless and was pretty excited to build a bear. Things took longer than expected and we got to the front of the line at about 815.

I had to pick between unicorn, purple bear, or monkey. I chose a monkey, because monkeys are funny. But when I got my cute little monkey, I knew I could never eat him, because he was made out of cloth. I should have expected this.

For you idiots out there build a bear is done by stuffing the bear full of stuffing and then closing him up. But here's the thing. They don't limit the amount of stuffing! When I got the monkey I just started stuffing him full. I stuffed the monkey for an hour, using nearly an entire box (4 ft tall) of stuffing. Then the build a bear lady started to interfere.

"You're not going to be able to pull the strings closed" she said
You close the bear by pulling on the strings that are built into him. My bear was so fat that she thought the strings wouldn't close. But she was wrong! I managed to squeeze the bear really tight and pull the strings and voila. I handed it over and the stupid woman, what she did, she pulls the strings really hard and they snapped.

"See I told you they would break"

This is why the woman is building bears and not acheiving anything with her life. So now I had a bear overflowing with stuffing and with a huge hole in my stomach. Also I was now an hour late for quad decorating. I thought about it, and if my excuse for arriving an hour late was that I was a building a monkey then I might not be an officer for much longer. So, I sneaked in and noone noticed, and I decided to show everyone my monkey and talk about how to fix it.

Some viable ideas were thrown around: sewing, staples, tape. Some less viable ideas were thrown around: human skin graft. It turns out that sewing and stapling didn't work, so now I have a stuffed monkey spewing stuffing all over the place. I decided to name him big fat monkey, on account of his size and his fatness.

Only Everyone Survives

People have started walking around campus wearing these T-shirts. There's a picture of the state of New Jersey and then it says "Princeton: Only the Strong Survive". The people that wear these shirts don't deserve the precious gift of life.

Ok, first of all there's a serious problem in the logic behind these shirts. For, in an effort to improve their US news and world report ranking, Princeton makes sure that everyone graduates. The graduation rate here is literally 99%. I know kids that have been suspended two or three times and they continue to let them try again. I know a girl that is 25 and still a student. I know a young man who submitted "The Great Gatsby" and claimed that it was his original thesis. No, this is not quite true, but would be quite amusing.

There is another problem with this T-Shirt, that lies in that rare 1% of Princeton students unable to be pushed kicking and screaming through the front gate. Without fail, this elite strata of scholar is occupied nearly exclusively by the atheletes of Princeton. Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this, so I will simply suggest a more appropriate slogan: "Princeton Only the Strong Don't Survive"

On the agenda is dealing with this:

come to:
Audrey's Shana-hand-me-a-beer Party!

SATERDAY, APRIL 23, 2005
San Diego...