Voices

Carrying on: Shock and awe in French “porn”

I fancy myself an intellectual, the equally passionate and jaded American youth born of a hodgepodge of F. Scott and Zelda, Stephen King and Thomas Jefferson. I am supposedly above the WASP prudery of my elders and my peers who, I can’t help but assume, take little interest in anything but investment banking. Nothing shocks me. I look at sex and violence with a critical eye, and if I can’t find a deeper meaning, I generally keep it to myself.

By Perry Collins April 19, 2007

Voices

Nothing but a pack of foma

Kurt Vonnegut was a writer engaged in the business of time. He was fascinated with humans’ harnessing of the natural world and their resulting alienation. He wrote stories entrenched in waves of political consciousness, telling tales of world destruction by an incidental afterthought as simple, at times, as the pushing of a button that could unleash the atom bomb.

By Lauren Gaskill April 19, 2007

Voices

Phearsome Philly phandom

I hate the Phillies.

By Mike Stewart April 12, 2007

Voices

U-Haul: not the mover for U

Moving can be a pain in the ass, especially when you have to do the job yourself. The myriad boxes, unwieldy dollies and delicate china sets will make you want to submerge yourself in a pool of packing peanuts, never to surface again. But depending on which do-it-yourself moving company you call, you may have another problem to add to the list—your truck blowing up.

By Traviss Cassidy April 12, 2007

Voices

Carrying on: One word, just one word: plastics

Last Friday, I finally grasped that nothing I do will cure the undercurrent of stress and anxiety caused by my impending graduation and the future. Browsing through a New York Times blog called The Graduates during a break from the online job postings, I hoped to find a grain of truthful guidance through this agonizing transition. But I only found proof of the ubiquitous, undying nature of this malaise.

By Austin Richardson April 12, 2007

Voices

My advice: You gotta want it, baby

What the hell are we doing here? We spend months studying at the library, thousands of dollars on caffeine to keep our minds focused and innumerable nights wide awake worrying about tests, quizzes and papers. We put in all of this effort for a solid academic experience and yet it seems that nobody wants to hire an inexperienced college graduate.

By David Loebsack April 12, 2007

Voices

This Georgetown Life: The things we do for money

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 March 29, 2007

Voices

Teetering on the edge of victory

I try to be modest, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m the reason that the Hoyas are winning.

By Tim Fernholz March 29, 2007

Voices

Bush’s compromised justice

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales just can’t seem to catch a break.

By Sam Sweeney March 29, 2007

Voices

Carrying on: Radiohead through the rolling fog

After finishing my last paper of freshman year, I decided to go for a walk at night to celebrate my new freedom. It was a simple walk through Georgetown, a route I often took to go see movies on K Street, but that night the pedestrian became glorious, the uncomfortable became terrifying and the everyday neighborhood looked like something out of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I was listening to Radiohead in the fog.

By Michael Bruns March 29, 2007

Voices

Art for your dog: the Pet Gallery

Deep in the back of the Pet Gallery, a one-room pet store on O and Wisconsin, a voluptuous Italian woman with pale blue eye shadow and a thick accent pulled me aside. “In Italy, we like dog but we don’t dress them up like dees!” she said, gesturing towards the store’s merchandise, a look of confusion on her face. “Here, they are too pre-ppy.”

By Mary Katherine Stump March 22, 2007

Voices

Carrying on: Life with my father, the rockstar

At 14, in true hippie fashion, my father stopped cutting his hair, started hiding an ash tray under his bed and picked up a guitar. Just a couple of years later, he watched my mother sing for her audition to the 87th St. Gang, their high school’s folk group. “He told them to pick me because I was cute,” she always chimes in at this point in the story. She got in and six years later married my father with flowers in her hair before they moved to San Francisco so he could try to make it big with his band. Had he succeeded, my parents’ early life would make a hit biopic, complete with stills of my mother in hotpants and my father’s face obscured by a massive beard.

By Perry Collins March 22, 2007

Voices

What is it good for? Nothing.

It was a bitterly cold Saint Patrick’s Day, and my mother and I had already lost feeling in our hands. We found the path at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial that led to the anti-war march from the monuments to the Pentagon. There seemed to be more counter-protesters than protesters, and the counter-protesters all seemed to be wearing veteran jackets and American flags, holding angry signs.

By Kathryn Brand March 22, 2007

Voices

A major with no carrera in sight

One of the biggest hazards of winter break is the long car ride with your parents to the houses of family friends. This is, of course, nothing more than an insidious trap to get the three of you alone so that they can ask probing questions about every detail of your life for hours on end.

By Marco Cerna March 15, 2007

Voices

Zesty family life in the Rockies

I spent this past spring break skiing with my friend Colin’s family in Denver. I thought that everyone in Colorado would be horrifically toned, occupying all their time skiing, with super reinforced ice axe straps on everything from their underwear to their book bags. I nervously prepared myself for the trip by assembling a stylish ski ensemble and watching as much of Jackson, Wyo.’s neo-ski cinema that Netflix would send me.

By Pamela Wessling March 15, 2007

Voices

A $350 problem in Phnom Penh

It’s the cardinal rule of traveling: never store your valuables anywhere except your front pant pocket. What’s more, the Lonely Planet guide for our host country of Cambodia explicitly warned us against the insecurity of backpacker guesthouses. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when my Swedish roommates jostled me awake and asked if I, too, was missing money. As soon as I discovered my missing cash, I knew it was gone and would never come home. We had broken the rule and our disregard had cost us $350.

By Kent Elliott March 15, 2007

Voices

Carrying on: The tale of the enchanted rock

Sometime during my first year in the Boy Scouts, I went on a hike and never came back. I wasn’t alone; perhaps five other kids and an adult scoutmaster set off with me early that morning. It was meant to be a five-miler and we were supposed to be back by lunchtime. I wasn’t found until one in the morning.

By Austin Richardson March 15, 2007

Voices

The truth about strangers

Unfortunately, it appears that our mothers’ favorite adage about taking candy from strangers is true. Give your amiable bus driver an inch and he’ll take a mile. Chat with the girl beside you in the Safeway line once and she’ll be lying in wait for you by the shopping carts next time you go to buy cereal. Strike up a conversation with the security guard at your office and next thing you know he’ll stop seeing your 30-year age difference as an obstacle to asking you to dinner.

By Anna Ziajka March 1, 2007

Voices

The roaring bears of Brooklyn

As a National Park Ranger last summer, I was often asked what to do if a bear came into the campsite. This might be a standard question for most park rangers, but I wasn’t surrounded by Yellowstone’s erupting geysers or the rocky majesty of the Grand Canyon, but by weedy fields dotted with occasional clumps of pine trees at Gateway National Recreation Area. The park is Brooklyn’s largest national park, located on the southern tip of the borough. I follow the news pretty closely, but the frequency of the bear question left me wondering whether there was a rash of bear attacks sweeping New York that I hadn’t heard about.

By Dan Newman March 1, 2007