Let's hope this isn't in the Toys 'R' Us catalog.

The TSA stopped a man and his son at the security screening area of T.F. Green this morning after the X-ray machine picked up on the 4-year-old’s stuffed animals’ hidden carry-ons… Each of the otherwise friendly toys contained “parts that could be assembled into a loaded handgun,” according to a TSA officer quoted in a CNN article on the incident. The father claimed not to have known the gun parts were inside his son’s toys, and the pair proceeded with their travels. Casual. Apparently the reason for the hidden gun is related to “a domestic dispute.” (????) Check out this video for some prime teddy bear footage.

Image via.

Everyone loves free pizza.

If you’re in the library and are looking for a little more free food than was what was handed to you last night, head on down to Pizza Nite, taking place at 9 p.m. tonight at the SciLi and at the same time tomorrow at the Rock.

Pizza Nite, a semesterly tradition, is a night unlike all others: Friendly library workers bring out boxes and boxes of pizza by the stack, feeding the hungry masses. Depending on the crowds, it can one of the more epic free pizza events out there.

I don’t know about you, but I love finals. It’s said that Spring Weekend is the only week when anything goes, but that isn’t true: reading/finals period is when shit gets real. It’s the only time of year when it’s socially acceptable to act on all your secret erratic and antisocial desires. Eat nothing but Oreos all day! Run naked in the libraries! Put on your special study sweats! Come on people! What other holiday lets you dress like a cracked-out mental patient?!

I’m taking a semester off, but I couldn’t bear to miss the festivities, so I spent the day recreating a day in the life of Brown finals. I even documented it so I could relive the happy memories again and again. Here it is, finals in a nutshell:

It’s that time of year, folks. We’re done playing the Hungover Games of Spring Weekend. The birds are chirping, the sun is out, and herds of students are swarming into the SciLi for study hibernation. But the “time” I’m talking about isn’t reading period. I’m talking summer. I’m talking to those poor unfortunate souls who didn’t get that great internship, or even that okay internship. I speak to those poor Brown students who have been sentenced to the dregs of summer employment: childcare.

Coming soon to Avon

Yuck, you’re thinking. I didn’t go to Brown so I would have to live out my nightmare as a suburban housewife! We didn’t come to college to get no M.R.S. degree (or male equivalent)! Plus, Ivy League nannying feels like the plotline of a B-list feel-good movie: clueless over-privileged Brown student nannies kid, kid ends up teaching Brown kid valuable life lessons, Brown kid teaches younger kid to be hipster and play nice with the other kids on the playground. Blah blah blah. Ew.

But it pays. It pays good. But it comes at a price.

When it comes to nannying, I consider myself a veteran war hero caregiver. When I took medical leave this semester, I found a job I thought would be easy: nannying. I was wrong. So, so wrong. And now I have a few words of wisdom to impart: [Read more →]

Get it before it's gone!

Last night, masses of hungry students at the SciLi were fed at Pizza Nite, courtesy Campus Life and the University Library.

Tonight, the awesomeness repeats itself at the Rock at 9 pm. I was chatting with one of the librarians, and he mentioned that they order 90 pizzas for the SciLi’s Pizza Nite and 80 pizzas for the Rock’s. Last night, the pizza was almost all gone in a little over five minutes.

While everyone was waiting for the pizza, they were greeted with a surprise: a cappella caroling. Check out photos from last night after the jump. [Read more →]

While supposedly 25 percent of Brown is Jewish, I’m going to go out on a limb and guestimate (all Occupy jokes aside) that 99 percent of Brown loves latkes. So get ‘em hot, get ‘em fresh at tonight’s Hillel Hanukkah Bash from 7 – 10 pm. Latkes, dance performances and a cappella! But mostly latkes.

‘Tis the season! Even if you’ve been swept up by the Finals Countdown and have been in a perpetual SciLi state of mind, you can’t ignore the holiday cheer that has swept over Providence. The question is: have you been celebrating the most wonderful time of year? Let’s be real: prep for finals period means your dorm room is neglected, your bed remains unmade and you haven’t seen the top of your desk since midterms. But it’s the holidays, yo! Give your dorm room some Holiday TLC. BlogDailyHerald is here to make sure your room is filled with holiday cheer.

Get crafty

• Paper snowflakes: Remember that POLS paper you swore you’d never look at again? Now’s your chance to recycle it to a more jolly life. Follow online tutorials like this one (you can skip ahead to 0:45), and turn your realist argument into sweet wall decorations!
• Coffee and tea wreaths: We know your coffee and tea consumption have gone up exponentially in the past week. So take your vice and turn it into a festive wreath! Whether it’s your collection of Starbucks sleeves or the Tazo bags you’ve been stocking up on, you can turn your caffeinated drink of choice into a crafty door dec.
• Jingle bells: Do you fucking love the holidays? Do you hate your roommate? If you answered either of these questions with an enthusiastic “Yes!”, you might want to vent your emotions by purchasing vast quantities of sleigh bells. Hang them on your door handle, sow them onto your pillows, make yourself a bracelet… Be aggressively merry. But while these are the epitome of Christmas cheer, they get very annoying very fast. However, they send a very clear message: I fucking love Christmas and I WANT YOU TO KNOW IT. [Read more →]

It seems as though finals week is one of the only socially acceptable times on campus to let one’s sense of style and (perhaps) cleanliness fall to the wayside.  Granted, this rare chance to wear sweatpants in public is not to be exploited too much, as your peers certainly probably may continue to judge you.  You don’t want to show up at a party the night before your flight home all dolled up, only to be asked by some hot stranger if you’re the one that licked ketchup off of your shirt in the library – not that anyone does that. Cough. Moreover, you don’t want to risk becoming known as that horrible person who slept for three hours at a desktop computer in the SciLi basement. People will hate you forever. Please abide by the following rules of etiquette in pursuit of a more perfect union library experience.

1. If your laptop battery has more than half of its life left to live, be kind and don’tyoudarepluginyourlaptop, especially in a coveted outlet.

2. If you must nap (and believe me, sometimes it cannot be helped), keep those inter-chapter snoozes to 30 minutes or less.  Learn the art of power napping, and don’t forget to set an alarm so you don’t end up sleeping for hours on end.  Of course, I always advocate closing the books and actually going to sleep, but keep that in the bedroom, please.  Can’t you see that I’m waiting to print my paper??

3. Speaking of bedrooms, keep that in the bedroom.  I have walked past far more moments of self-love in the stacks than I’m willing to admit, and I may have to suffer through years of psychotherapy for it.  [Read more →]

…because the FriSC is open 24/7, starting today until the end of finals.  If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the Naked Donut Run, or if you’re just going to be stuck in the concrete jungle studying for exams, be aware that there is now additional space for you set up camp: the Quiet Center.

Photo c/o Greg Jordan-Detamore / Herald

The computer: helping college students procrastinate since 1990.

Attention Brown Students: It’s about to be finals period, and chances are, you’re looking for a new way to put off writing those 10-15 page final papers and contributing to group Google Doc exam study guides. As if they knew it was crunch time on college campuses, according to recent articles from the New York Times’ Bits blog and The Wrap, YouTube and Facebook —probably some of the most frequented procrastination sites–are both about to expand their services by launching new ventures that may look somewhat familiar.

According to the The Wrap, YouTube has plans to offer instant movie streaming services, much like Netflix Instant or Apple movies. Depending on how it goes, our Netflix Files may be turning into YouTube Files.   [Read more →]