Voices

What we have here is a failure to communicate

“You just don’t have a soul.”

It hurt when she said it, but I understood why my best friend was so upset. Braving arctic January winds, we had hiked a mile from Chicago’s downtown Loop to the only theater in the entire metropolitan area that was still showing Pride & Prejudice. She had spent two months threatening, begging and bribing me to see it, and I had caved. Now we were about to board a Green Line train at 10:30 p.m.—essentially asking to be robbed—all because she had been sure that this movie would finally make me a chick-flick lover.

By Molly Redden December 6, 2007

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Happy Holidays from the Family

This Georgetown Life is a collection of stories written by Georgetown students all based on the same theme. [Cue trendy jazz music.]

By the Voice Staff December 6, 2007

Voices

Remembering the T in LGBTQ

This month, Georgetown University Pride is organizing a week of programming themed issues as well as issues of gender norms and expectations. But why is specific programming necessary for these groups when everything that Pride does is meant to apply to the entire LGBTQ community, which clearly includes the ‘T’?

By Jack Harrison November 29, 2007

Voices

Carrying On

Growing up I believed that there were no parents more conservative about television than my own. I resented the fact that no one else’s parents seemed to frown upon their watching shows like Friends. I can count on one hand the episodes of The Simpsons I saw before college: my parents believe it’s unwholesome.

Then I learned about the Parents Television Council…

By Marco Cerna November 29, 2007

Voices

Make space, not flyers

I want there to be less flyers on this campus. I dream, ladies and gentlemen, of pushing a door that is a solid, unbroken brown pane. I dream of bare lampposts, of seeing the actual bricks in the Red Square archway. I want blue electrical tape to be used for … whatever it is usually used for, rather than to outline program board events or dinners. I want some space.

By Shira Hecht November 29, 2007

Voices

Georgetown unites against HIV/AIDS

As World AIDS Day 2007 approaches, one of the most serious obstacles to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the stigma around it and the various forms that stigma takes around the world. Students at Georgetown University are not exempt.

By Liora Ziv November 29, 2007

Voices

This man is living the dream, occasionally

After graduation, I moved to the big city with three friends from high school to play our own radical take on the music we grew up listening to together. Our band was called … let’s just say it starts with L and ends with Zeppelin. Fortunately, one of our members had spent some time touring with the Yardbirds while I was in school, so we were entering the game with a pretty high level of professionalism. Our debut album drew a little bit of noise from the press and the fans alike, we toured here and there, and before you could say “alcohol poisoning” it was all black magic and mud sharks. Then our drummer died in a pool of his own vomit.

By Chris Norton November 15, 2007

Voices

I wanna really, really, really, wanna zig-a-zig ha

My most enduring memory of elementary school is not learning how to read or memorizing multiplication tables, but rather my complete infatuation with the Spice Girls. Their first album, Spice, was the first CD I ever owned. Along with my two best friends, I spent most of second and third grades obsessing over the group.

By Juliana Brint November 15, 2007

Voices

Hey baby, want to run a race?

Once D.C. turns cold, I bring my workout routine to Yates. What I have learned from my time spent there, though, is not the secret to great abs, but rather that Yates is a place of strange occurrences. If you have ever heard the barbaric cries from the varsity weight room or thought a man lying next to you on the mats was dead (is that just me?), you know what I’m talking about.

By Taylor Martin November 15, 2007

Voices

Carrying On

Quinn’s criticism is extreme. While the war in Iraq may not be the topic of conversation every day of the week, Georgetown has not forgotten about it.

By Kent Elliott November 15, 2007

Voices

Carrying On

The biggest disadvantage of being raised by my single father was having to eat his cooking. My father and I both viewed cooking as a mysterious, unfathomable process on par with raising a child from the dead or constructing a nuclear submarine using nothing but a hatchet. There was something vaguely suspicious about it, and we avoided it at all costs.

By Sarah Harman November 8, 2007

Voices

Gyrating hunks, not courtside dunks

My friend didn’t have to work the Championship game and managed to obtain two floor seats. The significance of this game was lost on me. I made other plans. Instead of opting to watch ten tall, athletic men compete in a basketball game, we decided to watch 15 tall, athletic men strip, dance and gyrate like helicopter propellers. I picked my friend up from work and we stumbled out of Madison Square Garden and downtown to Club Avalon, home of the USA Hunk-o-Mania Show. (God bless America.)

By Cathy Vargas November 8, 2007

Voices

Never stop exploring

The thump of the chopper’s rotors is deep, felt more than heard. I look out the window and see swirls of snow flying away from the chopper’s side, down the 11,000 feet of mountain slope hanging beneath us. In the distance, the Grand Tetons reach up toward the sky. Next to me are my brothers, Cameron and Graylan, and my dad; like me, they’re helmeted, goggled and gloved, boots buckled tight against their feet, jackets zipped to the top. We look like the Tenth Mountain Division, but we’re not soldiers. We’re skiers.

By Tyler Stone November 8, 2007

Voices

Learning how to run like a queen

Thousands lined 17th street waiting for the race to start. Maybe it was the dazzling amount of glitter, sequins and rhinestones in one place, or maybe it was a mixture of our amazement and envy, but the drag queens were statuesque and awe inspiring.

By Vivian Chen November 1, 2007

Voices

Ever try to write 50,000 words in 30 days?

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. During NaNo, as insiders call it, participants challenge themselves to pen a 50,000 word novel in the thirty days of November. Winners are novelists. Losers, well—nothing ventured, nothing gained.

By Louisa Aviles November 1, 2007

Voices

Carrying On

Spaniards have a phrase for people who don’t know how to cook: Ni puede freír un huevo. (he can’t even fry an egg). This is what my host mom, Concha, told me about my lack of skill in the culinary arts. Yet only a few weeks later, she wanted me to cook a family delicacy.

By Marco Cerna November 1, 2007

Voices

No refuge for former child soldiers

Walking to the market, an eleven-year-old boy is arrested by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. They ask him to join their army and to kill a captured Armed Forces of Liberia. When he refuses, they threaten his life, forcing him to comply. The boy spends the next few years on the front lines, being threatened at knifepoint to kill other men and children. Such was the norm in Liberia during the late eighties and early nineties.

By Natalie Lescroart November 1, 2007

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Childhood World Series nostalgia

We were reading Shiloh and learning simple scientific principles as the Cleveland Indians had made their way to the World Series in ‘95 for the second time in three years. My teacher, Miss Hist, showed up each day of the series decked out in red and blue Indians apparel, raving about the latest game, the random facts only truly devoted fans know and all the “hunks” on the team.

By the Voice Staff October 25, 2007

Voices

This Asian doesn’t have an accent

I wish I had a Korean accent. Not to get women, because that takes a European accent. Besides, if I really did have a Korean accent, the last thing I would be is attractive. Have you ever seen someone from mainland Korea order a ham-bag-gah at McDonald’s? Not so attractive.

By Tae Jung Choi October 25, 2007