waah waah waah school is hard, read about how my fave former employer is getting sued, AGAIN or learn about singledom from Sarah Haskins or something until I come back.

an ode to a backpack

Any NYU girl worth her double-digit weight in style savvy knows that carrying a backpack is a one-way ticket for total social ostracization. Why not just wear a giant sign around your neck that says "I'M A BIG LAME STUDENT." Burdens should be carried under the arm in a big, slouchy purse, not on the back like you're some kind of urban sherpa.

I reject this reasoning, because 1) I do not like being assymetrically weighed down and 2) I have the world's greatest backpack. It's a JanSport brown corduoroy backpack I bought in approximately 2005. I adore you, crappy old backpack, you and the rainbow patch I sewed on you in 10th grade.

Sadly, it's not waterproof.

CHEAP DATE IDEA

What can you do for fun in NYC for $5? Eat an entire footlong Subway sandwich (not fun), ride the subway two and a half times (neither fun nor possible), or go see Words of Choice at Judson Memorial Church this Thursday! Student tickets only $5, buy them online HERE and check out the facebook event

what the hell is celebrity anyway?

Julia Allison, how deeply saddened I was to hear your non-website Non-Society lost one of its three "contributors." However, being the internet-hip young person that I am, I'm hoping you'll take me on to be your third and youngest online over-sharer. I can be the college one! The feminist one? The socially minded one? The one not constantly flush with cash? How about... the blonde one?
Perfect.
Sincerely,
Alex

P.S. here is some gold:

how to be the 2.0-est web 2.0 kid

I decided to do something about my fractured Internet lifestyle. Email here, IM there, blogs blogs blogs, more email, another stupid way for me to be narcissistic, etc etc.

But no longer. Today is day one of my new project, allow Google to make my life easier.

NYULocal suggests you forward your NYU email to GMail to avoid having to use the shitty NYU mail client. I am going a step further and consolidating as many of my web-doings as possible, using the Goliath's many offerings.

I already use maybe slightly above the average amount of google -- Google News, Reader, Images, Blogger, Youtube, Maps, Alerts, what have you -- but there's so much more four-colored fun to be had! Or so we'll see. Today I've forwarded my NYU mail to Gmail (so far, not annoying), started using AIM through Gmail (again, pleasant), set up iGoogle as my homepage(making to-do lists is my #1 hobby), and messed around with nearly every other Google application. The sheer number of them is pretty amazing; feels not unlike mid-'90s America Online, where you didn't really access the Internet as much as open an AOL application that played some goofy dialing-in noises and then presented you with 15 or 20 buttons for things like "Shopping", "Personals", "Chat", and "4Kids."
So far my ruling is: knol feels too much like wikipedia, Orkut feels too much like facebook, and I'd try Google Chrome if it weren't only for Windows.

I'm a little late to this joke, but

Happy Tea Party Day!



If you're a lackey or something for a group like this, I think one of your primary responsibilities during any major campaign would be to make sure that none of the slogans you plan to use contain slang terms for entirely un-American sexual acts.

some internet things

Hunch.com initially turned me off after it took three days to send me a registration email. But it's an interesting idea, even if it's just something to dick around with online and not really use in a productive way.

I'm experimenting with LiveMocha.com, a social networking site designed for people trying to learn new languages.

I was published in Chickenpinata, a Journal of Poetry. Not entirely familiar with the publication, but apparently they have good taste, so check it out.


And, of course, Omegle.com, a great throwback to the days of AOL Chat and entirely creepy.

http://ohcollege.tumblr.com/post/91945364/exchange-that-sums-up-every-exchange-just-like-it

I've been trying for a while to write something long-form about the female experience of New York City. I think this is about a lot more than just guys who holler at you on the street, although certainly a nearly-universal, nearly-everyday form of sexual harassment could definitely frame the experience as a whole. New Yorkers (urban-dwellers in general, but New Yorkers especially) aren't supposed to be afraid of anything, but so much of being a woman in this city is defined by things we either fear or are supposed to fear (or both). For me, it's been hard to figure out where I am supposed to draw the line: does someone loudly, publicly saying something about my body or what they want to do with it constitute the kind of inevitable public confrontation New Yorkers learn to expect and ignore? I am I supposed to expect and ignore it?
We are reminded not to make eye contact, not to talk to strange men, to turn our heads away or bury them in newspapers or cell phones when people say things that make our skin crawl. We are shamed for wearing and doing things that "invite" cat-callers, subway gropers, and rapists (and sometimes blamed for not doing enough to wield them off). My roommate is harassed outside of church on Sundays; a 20-something once offered to give me his penis (I'm paraphrasing here) when I was walking with my boyfriend through a public park. Clearly there is a difference between the New Yorker's experience and the New York woman's experience (I don't mean to decentralize the female voice here, I just don't think referring to the former as the "New York man's" experience has the same connotation).

Please share your thoughts so I can write something longer and smarter.