Where all Ivies perish, but one.

Have you heard of GoCrossCampus.com?  Perhaps you have.

If you haven’t, I highly suggest you go there RIGHT NOW, SIGN UP, AND DESTROY COLUMBIA.

Ahem. Sorry, I got carried away. In a word, GoCrossCampus is the best website ever created… ever. It is an online version of the popular board game Risk. For those of you who don’t know what Risk is, I cannot devote any time in this post to teach you.

For the enlightened, Penn is currently taking part in the 2008 Ivy League Championship on GoCrossCampus, and we’re is on the verge of winning. It has been a long road getting there, but if you go to the website and sign up, you can help us finally win the war.

See, we all play as a team against students and alumni of the other respective Ivy League schools. Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth have been eliminated from this year’s tournament.

Penn has a commanding lead over the two remaining schools (read: puny bitches), Princeton and Columbia. In fact, Princeton is restricted to one isolated little territory in New Hampshire, and, again, it is your job to sign up and destroy them.

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A shameful human being.

California’s Proposition 8: “This measure would amend the state constitution to specify that only marriages between one man and one woman would be recognized as valid in the state” (CNN).

I am not heartbroken over the fact that Proposition 8 passed in California, but by the number of people who voted in its favor.

What people are voting for is what’s scary: to take away the rights of others.

To vote in favor of this measure is to literally cast a vote to say that, somehow, a man and a woman together are entitled to more rights.

These are 5,376,424 people that are voting based on the fact that if you are a man or woman, and you are born attracted to the opposite sex, you are more entitled to marital rights than a homosexual man or woman, who equally had no choice in his or her own sexuality.

The majority of votes belonged to people that voted to abridge the rights of others simply based on who those people are. Homosexuals marrying would not affect heterosexual marriages in any way. No, these votes stemmed from an ancient text that says that, for whatever reason, heterosexuals deserve one more freedom than everyone else.

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A lotta piñata

I’m referring to Philly. It is alive. Between the Phillies, the election, and the largest piñata in the world, Philly has begun to beat its big, sexy heart.

And if it takes baseball, Obama, and six-story Mexican party favors to make the people of this great city to take to the streets and flip vehicles in a rage of joy, so be it. I like this city a lot better.

In a way, the mobilization and the noise of the past few weeks is what I expected when I moved to Philly two years ago… and I was let down.

But nowadays, I mean… I’ll just say if Philadelphia had a Facebook, I would probably send it a friend request.

I enjoy looking outside my window and seeing a party bus — with a DJ! — cruising the streets on election night in support of Obama (or an endless march of people after Obama won). Seriously… where can I sign up to hop on the Obama party bus? Because that looked like a good time.

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Italian Market

With Parents’ Weekend close behind us, people may be wondering about what to do with their parents next year.

Nah, I’m just kidding. You have too much other stuff to be thinking about.

As a junior, I’d say this is the first time I’ve taken advantage of the designated weekend in which I am encouraged to invite my parents to my home away from home (unless you count freshman year when they came to campus and we went to Greek Lady and I showed them my room in the Quad/Fisher Fine Arts).

Oh no… This year I pulled out all of the stops, and for those of you who spent your time at FamPAN or tent shopping on Locust, hold on to your knickers.

For old time’s sake, the weekend began at Greek Lady, and from then on, Penn had absolutely nothing to do with my weekend family-and-food adventure.

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That is the name I suggest in place of the word “midterms.” Midterms are never given at the midpoint of the semester, which is where I’m assuming the “mid” comes from in midterms.

There is often a standard deviation of about a month to the left and right of the midpoint in terms of when we encounter our midterms. This semester, my first midterm was due on September 26th, and my final one is on November 18th.

In case you’re wondering, the midpoint of the semester was this week.

How many midterms did I actually have this week? Four. How many fall outside of this week? Nine.
I suggest Penn stops calling these tests ‘midterms,’ and I offer my own suggestion for a new name: Betwerms.

It’s better because it derives from the word “between,” saying that it is just a test between the beginning and the end of the term, and it does not mislead students to think that it’s anywhere near the middle of the semester.

My Biology 121 midterm was directly one hour before my final. You tell me how that deserves to be called a midterm, and I’ll give you a reason why Pokemon can’t be considered the best television show of all time.

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A man with matted, tattered jeans and half a t-shirt with a potato sack covering his entire head emerges from the abyss. One hand in his pocket, as if in slow motion, he approaches those waiting for a trolley.

This isn’t a scene from a scary movie. It’s just one of my first-hand accounts as I waited for my SEPTA trolley on 22nd and Market. Someone eventually called the cops, and the men in blue descended into the terminal.

They threatened the sheathed man (with a nightstick) to remove the potato sack from his head, and promptly escorted him out of the terminal.

Aside from that uncomfortable instance, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) isn’t so bad… but it has its problems.

For one, the slogan… “We’re getting there.” It’s somewhat clever, but who chooses a slogan that explicitly denotes that their service is anything but great. McDonald’s slogan isn’t “I’m satisfied with it.” It is “I’m lovin’ it.” Gilette is “the best a man can get,” not “the razor that gets the job done with minimal bleeding.”

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The Phillies! They did it! Seriously though, was that really the most exciting thing that happened on Wednesday? No, because Wednesday was hopefully the last time anyone will have to listen to more than a commercial’s worth of John McCain ever again.

With the final debate concluding two days ago, there is absolutely nothing left for the world to do but wait, vote, and wait some more… right? No, probably not. But I do look forward to the time after this election is over, so we will all have more exciting things to talk about with each other than three senators and a governor.

Though I must hand it to McCain and Obama. They have kept me entertained for the past few months. Who knew that John did such a great zombie impression? Or that Barack was such a big Rick Astley fan? I certainly didn’t.
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Oh my god, it’s really happening. After five straight weeks of class, fall break is finally here. Boy, I need it. Four days in a row of no class. Now I’ll have time to finish the two take-home midterms I’ve been given, along with all the homework that’s still due next Friday.

Please. Giving us two extra days off is like an invitation to professors saying, “Give them even more work, they have all the time in the world.” It’s not like I was planning on going home to see my family… My mom and dad would rather just watch me typing up a five-pager paper that’s due the minute I get back to Philly.

I have actually made provisions with my family so that they don’t schedule too many activities. Where I live in the Poconos, this means not going to the Olive Garden. And just in case you’re wondering, I happen to love the Olive Garden.
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Jin jo no din do no

Pennchants. Quaker Notes. PennYo. You see all of these names chalked under your feet; in the quad, on Locust, you can’t get past the huge a cappella following at Penn.

This year alone, the groups recognized by the Performing Arts Council had a wide range of auditioners. For Atma, (the all-female South Asian fusion (?) a cappella group), less than ten people auditioned, while the Penny Loafers (the group that I belong to; co-ed rock/pop a cappella) saw a total of 120 auditions.

Acceptance rates vary as well. For Off the Beat, that meant accepting 3% of their prospects, while Chord on Blues took about 50%.

A cappella groups are NO joke. Judging from the number of auditioners, these groups obviously hold some type of collegiate appeal. Perhaps it is the sweet, melodic syllables they use, or singing with some girl from The Real World.

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Derrr. Excuse me, professor. I have a long, unrelated question to ask you.

It’s nothing you haven’t thought before. I am sick, and I am tired of the boys and girls who cannot keep their hands down in lecture.

This semester, I’m very lucky: I have two of them in the same lecture. They love to arrive early to class and have a conversation from opposite sides of the room, and they talk specifically as if everyone else in the room is intently listening to them.

I’m actually hoping that the two people I’m referring to read this, because they know exactly who they are. Additionally, it will save me the breath when I inevitably tell them in a week or two that they are completely insufferable and they constantly detract from the flow of the lecture.

Now, I don’t hate them because they have really annoying voices, and it’s not that I just dislike a good question that leads to some discussion.  I despise the inquisitors for two reasons, and two reasons alone:

1. Their questions often are too tangential to actually shed any light on whatever matter is being discussed.
2. They proceed to answer their own questions after they already received an answer from the professor
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