With our campus recently filled with dialogues of divestment, sexual assault, and same-sex marriage, I can imagine that you are looking for a respite from the demanding life of a university president, a job that requires you to curate a safe, empowering environment for thousands of brilliant students, taking into account our needs and social awareness.
Unfortunately, I cannot give you that respite.
You see, I’ve kept another pressing issue locked up inside me. It started as a joke, then suddenly became real, in a cataclysm of fiery, uncouth emotions: confusion, anger, astonishment. You have left me reeling, Christina.
I speak, of course, of your Batman endorsement.
I can sense a shocked denial approaching. Nay, you are on record. Last winter, during a UCS “Fireside Chat” — Ah! what pleasant names we give the propagation of evil! — you offended a nation.
Back in the 1940s, all of America lived in fear of Joe McCarthy and his monstrous pet, HUAC. Get caught buying a book of Russian poetry? Must be a Red spy. Profess your love for cute Siberian tigers? Must be a Red spy. Wear a lovely red sun dress out on the town? Enjoy your treason trial, shithead.
Say hi to Alger Hiss in the mess hall, Timmy
McCarthy saw a Soviet mole in every man, woman, and unborn child. In his mind, America was overrun with hidden agents, its airwaves filled with the insidious murmurs of foreign operatives disguised as blue-blooded Yanks. During the Cold War, these moles were largely figments of Old Joe’s hyperactive loyalty to the Stars and Stripes. He persevered, though, and at one hearing famously shouted, “I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party!”
The import of this may be lost on modern students, so I’ve worked out an easy translation into 21st century terms: “I’m holding a raisin-filled Blue Room cinnamon roll!” [Read more →]
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with this kind of hostility to the reader. -David Foster Wallace
One day I will find the right words and they will be simple. -Jack Kerouac
Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being. -David Foster Wallace [Read more →]
It’s here. It’s finally here. A half-month of lost productivity, illegal betting, and Cinderella stories starts now. Check out BlogDailyHerald’s predictions below.
Midwest Region
The shoo-ins: Not many potential first-round upsets here. Both Middle Tennessee and St. Mary’s are pretty dangerous for First Four teams, so they might give Memphis a run for their money, but I’m going all top seeds in the first round. Don’t listen to any talk about Valparaiso as a potential Cinderella, Tom Izzo has the Spartans way too well-prepared—he always does—for them to lose so early.
The upsets: Creighton over Duke, second round. I’m sorry, I can’t help but root against Coach K and whoever happens to be playing for him. This is how much I don’t like Duke. Makes my day every time. For real, though, Doug McDermott has been averaging 23.1 points per game (2nd in Division I) with a near 50% 3-point shooting percentage. He’s my pick for mid-major breakout player of the tournament (see below). Also, as I mentioned before, Memphis might have trouble with its play-in opponent, but this is sadly a kind of boring bracket, especially compared with the South. Though Oregon is the Pac-12 champ, I don’t think this is the 5-12 upset to pick.
Player to watch: Wooden Award finalist Doug McDermott of Creighton. Just like Jimmer and Gordon Hayward before him, this guy is due to become a household name. Don’t expect him to carry the Bluejays to the national championship, but they might have an upset or two in them.
Regional champ: There are three perennial superpowers in this region, but Louisville isn’t #1 overall for nothing. The team is coming off a huge Big East Tournament victory over Syracuse, and there aren’t many teams who can stop them. Look for them to bounce Michigan State in the Elite 8 and maybe even take the whole thing.
The conservative color palette indicates a sensitivity to the classical modes of solstice representation throughout Western art, resonating strongly with the self-consciously kitschy poetry thatAAAHHH FINALS HAVE SUCKED OUT MY ABILITY TO ENJOY ART NOOOOis it a pointed abstraction of the Saturday Evening Post’s celebration of a hyper-rural Middle America? Possibly, although the snowflakesMUST FIGHT THIScubic aggregations in the midst of random pixelated scatter, evade most attempts at locating this work within any sphere but that of the nu-digital. This juxtaposiGAAAHHHHH IT’S TOO LATE FINALS YOU ARE KILLING ME
It’s clear that finals are destroying our minds, making it difficult to remember that an absurdly long break is approaching rapidly, like a goat about to charge down a toddler at a petting zoo. We at BlogDailyHerald have semi-journalistic plans for the next couple weeks, along with vast machinations for winter break involving copious amounts of sleep and eggnog. But hey, we’ve got to keep ourselves energetic as we power through the last days of soul-numbing work, so let’s rave about our plans for the next 40 days, shall we?
Let’s just pause and think about this sentence: ”The animation consists of four frames showing the Bleach anime character Orihime Inoue twirling a Welsh onion, set to a 27-second loop from the song ['Ievan Polkka'].”
Hmmm.
Don’t ask. Trust me. (Okay, fine, if you want to ask, here’s a not at all helpful explanation).
Despite the lack of a working fireplace in the room (Brown is an intellectually stimulating but flame retardant school), UCS has been holding a series of fireside chats with Brown’s most impressive/interesting/scandalous people, and so it’s only natural that they would end up getting access to our new Supreme Chancellor, Christina Paxson. Yesterday UCS posted to their Facebook page a 6:30 clip jam-packed with the stuff you won’t find on Paxson’s CV. She was in a freshman-senior relationship! She has a personal trainer! She likes ice cream! And so on, into the abyss of throwaway questions.
However, nestled in the midst of the softballs being lobbed thick and slow is a glowing, white-hot fastball. At the 5:06 mark of the interview, the UCS representatives pull a quick one on Christina, and ask her to choose sides on a terrifyingly polarizing issue, a true puzzler submitted by yours truly: Spider-Man or Batman? Tune in above to see whether Paxson sides with DC or Marvel, 1% or kid-next-door, vigilante or lovable freak. We’ve found out her true character, folks…
Grab your secular bulletproof vests and clutch your crucifix a little tighter. The first shot of the annual War on Christmas has been fired, right here in the state of Rhode Island.
That is, if Bill O’Reilly is to be believed.
I mean, this is a man who reports on things called “Supreme Rulings.” We’ve given him too much power to NOT believe him.
In Bill’s Talking Points Memo on Tuesday, he called out Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 for referring to the big thing with branches and lights in the State House as a “holiday tree,” rather than a dangerously partisan “Christmas tree.” This isn’t the first time this has happened. Last year protesters interrupted some happy kids with a pointedly religious rendition of “O Christmas Tree,” and on Tuesday Bill claimed he’d have people stationed in the crowd as soon as he found out the date of this year’s ceremony. Well, he’s out of luck on that front: in a surprise assault on the forces of the faithful, today Chafee gave a half-hour warning and basically just flipped a switch on the way to lunch, no questions asked.
Think that’s the end of the story? Fool! Holiday skirmishes don’t end that easily. [Read more →]
He’s no Julia Child, but that is not what Thanksgiving requires of us.
Thanksgiving brings out humanity’s greatest dreams. Warm dreams of stuffing. Heavenly dreams of a week without homework and 9 a.m. hell. Patriotic dreams of football and post-dinner postgame shows. Oh, and I suppose there’s that one insane kid dreaming of turduckens (see above image). So, do us a favor and let us know where your flights of fancy are taking you this Turkey Week…
There’s a new Bond out, yo. He spies on things, he smack talks things, he runs away from things, and he has a terrible mother-son relationship with Judi Dench. What we can’t forget, though, is how many incarnations of J.B. there were before Daniel Craig’s blonde hair and blue eyes captured our hearts. This mesmerizing GIF gets you acquainted with the smooth – and not so smooth – moves of each man as he stares down the most famous gun barrel in history.
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