Sweet T. and Biscuits

Hello, faithful readers. It's been an obscenely long time. I'm sure that you have many questions, such as "Where the hell have you been?" or "Why isn't this blog about the second half of your Mexico trip?" Good for you. Remember, there are no stupid questions. I go to Yale. You know this. I have articulated in previous blogs my extreme and plentiful love for my school, but there are a few things that I feel the need to address in the form of a lengthy diatribe involving bitter sarcasm and thinly veiled examples of my own real life experiences. Oh goody, you're excited. It's no secret that I come from a rural area-the foothillls of the Appalachian Mountains in East Tennessee. It's an area filled with incredible contrasts, from the beautifully furnished cabins atop the hillsides to the sadly dingy single wide trailers, the front yards filled with dirty and broken children's toys, in the lower elevations. I went to school with some big fish

Tradition drives my family in the strangest ways. One Thanksgiving, when I was about nine or ten, The John Lennon Collection happened to be playing the song 'Cold Turkey' on the stereo. I was cute and naive, and thought the song was wonderfully appropriate for the holiday. Every year my family and I still listen to that CD, pretending that song is about our lovely Tofurkey as opposed to the horrors of heroin withdrawal. Charming. Yet another tradition in our family, albeit a less unique one, is our two week August family vacation. This vacation has varied greatly throughout the years, from Scotland to Florida, sometimes with my entire family, sometimes just myself and my parents. Something always goes horribly wrong, but we always have a great (or at least memorable and entertaining (looking back on it years later)) time. This year, my mother decided very early on that we needed a family reunion. Reunion here is defined as meeting and spending a week with a bunch of people I h

Notifications. Inbox messages. Friend requests. Event invitations. The little things that make our hearts go pitter pat when we log on to the universe's best modern time waster to date: Facebook. Ah, the early days of Facebook were great ones indeed. Before everyone's mother/little sister/great aunt Bethel had a Facebook, it was a place for social networking with your age group...and maybe even a little bit of rebellion for a few of us. This was one place where your language, political views, and pictures could only be viewed by the elite few you deemed worthy by accepting their friend requests. Your statuses could contain explicit language, your pictures could show crazy parties...hell, you could come out of the closet and only let your closest friends know, if you wanted to! But then something happened. Slowly but surely, the privacy and elitism of Facebook started becoming diluted by the endless outpouring of MySpace trash who decided to take Facebook over and treat it like

Some debates in life are doomed to remain forever unresolved. What exactly is the meaning of life? (4.) Is it ever acceptable to mix brown and black? (Not unless you are a jungle cat.) Who actually did steal the cookie from the cookie jar? (Me.) Can you lick your elbow? (Oh yes.) There are, however, some questions in life that through time and careful consideration can, in fact, be answered thoroughly and efficiently. Where exactly is the G-spot? Did David Carradine commit suicide? Is it acceptable to wear light colors to a funeral? What were the B52's smoking? The question I am here to answer, however is not among those just listed. The answer is not, in fact, right behind the belly button, or yes unless you're incredibly naive, or yes as long as you pair the bright article of clothing with black, or what weren't they smoking. The question is: Who IS the perfect man? The answer is clear, and it comes in two forms, with two lovely illustrations. Which I happen to have foun

I spent the day today at the lake with one of my best friends. She and I have the kind of relationship where it honestly doesn't matter how long we're apart, we will still think alike and get along like family. Cassie's family is true Old South, born and raised, with one of East Tennessee's oldest names and longest legacies. Her father used to watch hunting shows while we cooked him dinner at his house, with his tub of congealed lard sitting by the stove and several point bucks mounted on the walls. As easy as it would seem to pin him in a particular redneck category, I'll be damned if Robert Maples can't talk circles around just about anybody. His style is direct-no need to hide behind confusing jargon or careful wording, he just tells it like it is, plain and simple, and he's usually right. He respects women (though is certainly not above a politically incorrect joke or two for his own enjoyment). He knows his current events, he's traveled a respectabl

No one is ready for college. I bet I was at least 34532543 times more excited about going away to college than you were, but that sure as hell didn't change the fact that freshman year kicked my ass. Living as a college student is sort of like living like a Plains Indian. You never stay in one place for too long, always moving back and forth from home to school to internship to study abroad session. The food is always changing. You wear the same clothes a lot. Dorms are not much better than tepees. And always there is the chance that you will soon be eradicated if you don't step up your game. It's tough. The biggest challenge with going away to me was the adaptation. Girls were never supposed to be smart in my high school. You weren't supposed to think differently from the people around you. You were supposed to be a Baptist, or at the very least a Methodist. Bush was a Godsend. You didn't take the Lord's name in vain. Arguments were disrespectful. Using extende

This was the evaluation I sent in to my professor this past semester. It was originally posted on Facebook, but I wanted to post something so my wall didn't look so empty, and it's too late at night to write something original. I'm sure you'll live. Dear Jews in Muslim Lands Professor: I wanted to take this time to thank you for enriching my collegiate experience. The tireless deluge of useless knowledge that you see fit to impart during every lecture that I have attended has created an appreciation in me for early Jewish history that could only be replicated perhaps by being attacked by a mob of ancient angry Jews wielding stale matzo and screaming obscenities in Hebrew (are there obscenities in Hebrew?). You have granted me a true appreciation for early Jewish writings and poetry by providing a four hundred page course packet filled with obscure, dry writings that only a Freshman Orgo student would enjoy reading as a reprieve from countless labs and textbook work. The

I dislike the word "Blog." To me, it conjures up visions of...bogs. With frogs. Violent frogs that flog. Needless to say, this visual image is off-putting at the least, and downright disturbing at the most. I've also always thought of bloggers as self important, free trade coffee drinking hipsters with loudmouthed notions of fairness and bohemian lifestyles, as they blog on their expensive Mac Books , with their BlackBerry on the right, Urban Outfitters bag on the left, and Ray-Bans perched atop their carefully disheveled hairstyles, while Vampire Weekend plays in the background. What a shame that being sympathetic to the starving artist is so expensive! To me, hipster culture is a grotesque farce, mocking poverty and proletariat ideals with four dollar lattes and "homeless couture ." My God, even the keffiyah , worn as a symbol of various Middle Eastern heritages, is used as a FASHION STATEMENT. What is wrong with you people??? *Deep Breath* But I digress. It