What the hell is Saxby’s?
I used to have great lighting. Great space. Big comfy chairs. Luxurious couches. Good coffee.
Now, I’m sitting here holding an ugly, maroon, paper cup. It jeers at me with its mediocre contents. My ears are bleeding from the elevator music dribbling out of the speakers overhead. I hum to myself for comfort, borrowing Paula Cole and inserting where have all the good songs goooooonnnnneeee?
Image via Wikipedia
As a Canadian with mostly American friends attending school in the United States, it is quite natural, and even expected, that I would be the butt of many Canada jokes.
At this point, after three and a half years at Penn, I’ve come to accept it as an almost-daily phenomenon that occurs due to widespread ignorance among Americans about their neighbors up North.
But then again, some things remind me that we Canadians may bring it onto ourselves.
For example, today I was browsing through the Canadian Army website (yes, we do have an army, and we are actively fighting in Afghanistan), and started clicking around to find the eligibility requirements for joining the forces. (Don’t worry Mom, I’m just curious.)
What I found was quite amusing, especially when comparing the differences between the eligibility requirements of the Canadian army and the US Army.
Pre-enrollment for the Canadian army requires each candidate to pass two examinations. The first part is physical fitness. The Canadian physical test consists of, among other things, push-ups, sit-ups, and chin-ups, and the minimum repetitions for each physical activity for men under 35 are 19, 19, and 6, respectively.
Compare this to the US, where the minimum is 30-35 for push-ups and the mid-40 range for sit-ups (chin-ups not required for the US Army). Even I, a self-proclaimed skinny Ivy-League blogger, could meet the Canadian minimums (I tried for the purposes of this post).
It is when comparing the two countries’ aptitude tests, however, where the differences become clear.
Courtesy of Joshua Sherurcij via Wikipedia
Imagine a condom dispenser on Locust Walk. Picture a vending machine selling Coca-Cola and Trojans in Huntsman.
That’s exactly what the City of Madrid has proposed to do: install machines that vend condoms in some of the most popular metro stations in the city. Brown has installed similar machines on its campus as well.
So why is Penn so behind on the game?
With such a big campus, touting a supposed “work hard, play hard” mentality, promoting sexual health should be on the list of the administration’s to-do list.
Buying condoms is a delicate matter. And snide remarks from the cashiers at the Fresh Grocer are not conducive to students going out of their way to purchase safe-sex materials.
Free condoms from RA doors are, indeed, free, but that supply runs out quickly. Getting them at Student Health or a store involves time, effort, and money, a daunting troika that many students probably do not overcome.
Few things would encourage students to use protection more than the idea that the condom machine is just down a flight of stairs.
The Lambda Sigma Phi fraternity was founded in 2001 at the University of Alabama in the hope of showing “other groups at the university what Jesus is all about.”
Disciples.
Same story with the Alpha Delta Chi sorority. Its 13 membership requirements include “personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord,” an “interest in leading others to Christ” and a “willingness to abstain from alcohol in circumstances where the Christian witness would be adversely affected.”
I would venture a guess that the Christian witness is adversely affected by jell-o shots, keg stands, and beer pong.
According to Jay Reeves’ article for the Associated Press, “members [of Lambda Sigma Phi] get pumped up about prayer, Bible study and service projects, passions they say campus officials should and often do embrace as fresh amid a Greek culture typically seen as centered on hazing, keg parties and little else.”
Something about this makes me cringe.
Wait, no, everything about this makes me cringe. Perhaps its the Animal House image of Greek life that’s burned into my brain, or Penn’s own quasi-sacrilegious Greek scene, but does Jesus really belong in a frat house? (more…)
Philadelphia Italian Market @ 9th and Washington
I always say that one of the reasons I love going to school in Philadelphia is because the food here is so good.
There is hardly a restaurant downtown that I don’t enjoy (unless it’s La Viola West three times in two weeks). But when it comes to food on campus, there is something left to be desired.
Though my friends at more isolated schools will call me “sustenance-spoiled,” I don’t care. Because it’s true: I’m sick of the menu at Greek Lady, tired of the sluggish service at Marathon, and can’t bring myself to eat Qdoba more than once a week.
Izzy and Zoe’s has fallen to a level so far below acceptable that I try to forget it exists.
Even though Gia and Metro add some quality to the overall food options on Penn’s campus, we have a serious dearth of selection when hunger strikes… and it strikes a lot, considering that thousands of people in the Penn community eat three times a day.
Fed up with my options (and not willing to wait more than an hour to order something online from campusfood.com or 20 minutes physically in line for Magic Carpet in 40 degree weather), I finally mustered up the energy and ambition to do the unthinkable: cook. In someone else’s kitchen, obviously.
It. Was. Delish.
Making a statement, whether it be artistic or political, is a tricky thing.
In many ways, the key to a good statement is balance, finding a middle ground between polar extremes. Not too subtle but not too condescending. Loud enough to get the central message across but with enough restraint to not overpower that message.
Some statements have worked. Others have failed miserably. Last week the Penn Environmental Group attempted to make a statement. This picture perfectly sums up my assessment.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this is what the PEG wanted me to think:
“Wow! Look at that pile of trash that I’ve carelessly contributed to! Half of the items in there could have been recycled! I sure waste a lot of resources! From now on, I’m going to recycle!”
But here is what I actually thought:
“Wow. Look at that pile of trash. It smells horrible, and it’s a severe health hazard. It has also ruined my day. Once I find out which Penn organization was responsible for dumping it on Locust Walk, I’m going to make fun of them in my next blog post.”
The whole spectacle reminded me of the animal rights activists who throw blood on people that wear fur coats. Doing that doesn’t make people want to stop wearing clothes made from dead animals. It just makes them want to punch the psycho in the face for ruining their new coat.
Not at Penn!
The DP reported today that Bobby Flay is interested in opening a “Bobby’s Burger Palace” in the Radian.
Dear Bobby Flay,
PLEASE DON’T.
The last thing Penn needs is another burger joint. We have Blaze in Houston, McDonald’s on 40th and A&W in the food court. Not to mention Top This which replaced Chic-Fil-A — worst decision EVER — in Commons and the other restaurants that feature burgers on their menus like Copa and Marathon.
Not only that, but I’m pretty sure the Pottruck-addicted students that run rampant on this campus will have no interest in eating at your “Palace”.
Why not bring in a Southwestern style restaurant like your own Mesa Grill, but cheaper? Unlike the abundance of burger joints, there is a real lack of good Tex-Mex restaurants in University City. Distrito may have just brought in some Mexican flavor, but tapas are not going to satisfy my desire for a hearty meal.
So, Mr. Flay, please keep your burger joint away.
xoxo,
Abby
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.
“Politically correct” terms are hardly found in other countries, but the US has become obsessed with using “non-offensive” terminology.
Like the case of the metric system, I think the US needs to follow the example of the rest of the world and ditch this crazy language system for the following reasons:
1. They can sound just as offensive. The most obvious example to me is that of “little person” rather than “midget.” “Little person” seems condescending; why not just call them itsy-bitsy?
2. They are confusing and ambiguous. When I hear the term “differently abled” I think of someone who’s good at soccer but not football, not someone who’s mentally disabled. And then there’s terms like African American (yes, I’m going there). Is a black person whose parents were from Haiti still African American? If a black person moves to Sweden are they now African-Swedish? Or African-American-Swedish? We call white people white, so can’t black people just be black again?
The University of Pennsylvania has a pretty campus — so pretty, in fact, that you might be tempted to take a picture.
By all means, go ahead: capture on film our vast array of architecture, the deciduous rainbow of Locust Walk or one of the 429 statues of Ben Franklin.
But please, as a member of the Penn community, I implore you — do not take pictures of the squirrels.
Yesterday alone I stumbled (literally) over no fewer than three members of the squirrelerazzi. Rather than chasing their subjects through the streets of LA and New York, the squirrelerazzi can be found crouched low, waiting quietly for the perfect shot with their zoom lenses suction cupped to their eyes so as to capture every flea buried deep in Scrat’s matted fur. (I know you saw Ice Age).
My own walking safety is not the real concern here, my problem with the myriad photos of members of the family Sciuridae is their resulting inflated egos. Each image further solidifies their position as the sought-after socialites of the rodent world, Squirrelis Hilton if you will.
These pictures are not taken in an attempt to produce Jacob Riis-esque exposes of the horrors of squirrel life in University City. Quite the contrary; they are gratuitous photos of bushy-tailed rats living the life of the rich and famous.
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