herald-100-final by The Yale Herald

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Reader,

the best alternative hair product was now that I couldn’t just use the leftover Burgher grease. One day Jeremy caught me sulking

The first time I met Caleb was Jan. 18, 2014, a Saturday. I

outside of Salsa Fresca. He said, “Hey friend, you look like you

dare you to fact check me that that day was a Saturday. It was

need some cheering up. I can show you where to find the best

~11:32 a.m. and I was recovering from a night that concluded

that life has to offer.” I am lucky to have a friend like Jeremy. He

with me playing naked twister with five bartenders I did not

makes sure that I always have the best of everything at all times.

know. I had just left my sad L-dub dorm and needed a coffee. As

We are well aware that not everyone has friends, which is why

I walked with my “shades” on and my head down, I bumped into

we put together this guide of all the “best” stuff that you will

what I thought was a tree. But no, it was Caleb. He said, “Hi, I’m

ever need from the cradle to the grave. For example, did you

Caleb. You look like you’re looking for the best place to get a cof-

know that the best movie ever made is actually Cradle 2 the

fee on a Saturday morning after a long night.” And I said, “I’m

Grave starring DMX? That’s just a preview of what’s to come in

Jeremy. Yes.” Seven minutes later I sipped on the best coffee of

the following pages. Read on, younglings, and soon your days of

my entire life and shared a platonic holding of the hands with my

settling will be the days of yore!

new friend Caleb. That coffee, as you are probably wondering, was from Educated Burgher…

Hugs,

Hey gang, Caleb here! The Educated Burgher no longer be-

Jeremy Hoffman and Caleb Moran

ing with us made me realize just how short life is. One second

Special Issue Editors

I’m there, eating all the Educated Burghers that my cold heart desires, the next I’m standing outside in the rain wondering what

The Yale Herald Volume LX, Number 12 New Haven, Conn. Friday, Dec. 11, 2015

SPECIAL ISSUE STAFF Editors-in-chief: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran Managing Editors: Sarah Holder, David Rossler, Charlotte Weiner Assistant Editor: Charlie Bardey EDITORIAL STAFF: Editor-in-chief: David Rossler Managing Editors: Sarah Holder, Charlotte Weiner Executive Editors: Kohler Bruno, Austin Bryniarski, Alessandra Roubini, Lara Sokoloff Senior Editors: Carly Lovejoy, Kendrick McDonald, Anna Meixler Culture Editors: Yi-Ling Liu, Jake Stein Features Editors: Lily Sawyer-Kaplan, Rachel Strodel Opinion Editors: Claire Goldsmith, Joyce Guo Reviews Editor: Libbie Katsev Voices Editor: Sophie Haigney Insert Editor: Charlie Bardey Copy Editors: Ali Golden, Sarah Gross ONLINE STAFF: Online Editors: Zoe Dobuler, Korinayo Thompson Bullblog Editors: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran DESIGN STAFF: Graphics Editors: Natalie Schultz-Henry, Alex Swanson Executive Design Editors: Ben McCoubrey, Kai Takahashi BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: Olivia Briffault, Ellen Kim Director of Advertising: Russell Heller Director of Finance: Jocelyn Lehman

2 – The Yale Herald

The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office. If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please send a check payable to The Yale Herald to the address below. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2015-2016 academic year for 65 dollars. Please address correspondence to: The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 david.rossler@yale.edu www.yaleherald.com The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2015, The Yale Herald, Inc. Have a nice day.

Cover by Alex Swanson YH Staff

4 BEST PIZZA PLACE

BEST HAIRCUT

BEST BREAKFAST PLACE

BEST BEST BEST DINING RESTAURANT PANT HALL MATERIAL BEVERAGE

BEST DISGUISE

BEST COUCH SHAPE

BEST BEST BEST WAY TO GET THING TO WAY TO WASTE TIME UP SCIENCE BINGE HILL WATCH

BEST ANIMAL ON CAMPUS

11 BEST DEAN’S EXCUSE

BEST MUSIC VIDEO

BEST ICE CREAM FLAVOR

BEST FANTASY

BEST DARTY ATTIRE

BEST WAY TO WIN OVER YOUR TF

BEST ESCAPE FROM ELM CITY

BEST FOOD TO BEST CELEBRITY STEAL FROM SNAPCHAT THE DHALL

BEST LIGHT FIXTURE

BEST OFF CAMPUS EATS

BEST FOOD TRUCK

BEST WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS

BEST POOPING SPOT

BEST SEAT

BEST BEST METRO BEST INSTAGRAM NORTH CELEBRITY CAPTION TINDERING TO FIGH

BEST BEST LIBRARY TO THING TO YELL IN A PLAY IN LIBRARY

BEST STATUE

BEST SUMMER INTERNSHIP

BEST SENIOR THESIS

BEST BUY

BEST TIME

BEST LIBRARY FOR WISTFULNESS

BEST WAY TO STAY WARM

BEST PROFILE PICTURE

BEST LANGUAGE

BEST BEST BEST BEST USE OF A WAY TO GET OUT OF CONDIMENT DURFEE’S PICKUP LINE SWIPE SECTION

BEST FONT

BEST BEN STILLER MOVIE

BEST BEST BEST BEST PIECE OF LIVE SNAP STREET ART QUICK FOOD ART IN YUAG STORY

BEST BEST BEST RINGBACK TIME TO CRY PAN-LIST OPENER TONE

BEST AUTHOR FOR PENISHAVERS

BEST GLUTEN OFFENSE

BEST SALAD

BEST BEST EXTRASTART FOR CURAN EMAIL RICULAR

BEST DANCE MOVE

BEST PLACE TO TRIP PEOPLE

BEST BEST BEST DATE SPOT TOILET FOR CAMPUS JOB FOR LAZY SWIRLIES PEOPLE

BEST PLACE TO BE SEEN

BEST BEST BEST WAY TO WAY TO SAVE CLASS NAME MEET NEW BIG PEOPLE

BEST BEST YALE POP YUAG TEXT CULTURE FOR MY REFERENCE TOMBSTONE

BEST BEST SUBSTITUTE BEST D.M. HANGOVER CURE FOR TOOTHBRUSH BEST WAY TO UNWIND

BEST BUTTERY

BEST DESSERT

BEST HIDING SPOT

BEST TEENAGE HEARTTHROB

BEST EMOJI

BEST COMBINATION STORE

BEST BEST DATE SPOT OFFFOR NON- CAMPUS LAZY PPL BATHROOM

BEST RESUME ITEMS

BEST PDA

BEST SMELL

BEST BUTTERY ORDER

BEST BEST BEST WAY TO FORM OF DRUNK GET YOUR EXERCISE FOOD PLACE VITAMINS

BEST BEST BEST ON-CAM- 2020 PRESISLEEP PUS INFO DENTIAL SESSION CANDIDATE ACCESSORY

30 BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST BEST WAY TO SOUL CYCLE YALE GRAD REASON TO PLACE TO SPACE TRANSFER SURVIVE AN ALTERNASCHOOL NAP TRAVELER AGAIN APOCALYPSE TIVE

28 BEST ALUMNUS

BEST DAY TRIP Dec. 11, 2015 – 3

BEST PIZZA PLACE Jeremy Hoffman

BEST BREAKFAST PLACE

Sally’s.

Libbie Katsev

BEST WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS

Natalie Epstein

Oh man. Making friends. You guys have come to the right person. Making friends is one of my favorite pastimes. Sure, you might have one or two friends, but you probably have been asking yourself how can I become a master like that girl over there? That girl over there is me. Yeah. Hello. I’m here to break down some of my famous techniques. A great way I like to make friends is by being super beautiful. Being super beautiful is really fun because when people say, “Hey, she is really beautiful” it often means they are interested in being your friend. Another way you can make friends is by being very very smart. I also suggest being highly charismatic, something which has served me very well over the years. Another great way to make friends is to already have a lot of friends. If you have a lot of friends, people will know you are a good friend and will desire your friendship. So before you set out to make some friends, I suggest getting a lot of friends. But what’s the BEST way to make friends?? Probably by going outside and singing a song about how you have no friends.

BEST DINING HALL BEVERAGE

My apartment is the only place I ever eat breakfast. Also, probably one of the few places on Yale’s campus that regularly serves grechka, aka buckwheat kasha, aka Slavic quinoa. However, the Dunkin’ Donuts at Union Station is a close runner-up. There’s nothing like the feeling of taking a bite of your cream-filled donut and a swig of reasonably priced bottled water as your train picks up speed, carrying you away from everything you once thought would make you happy. Back in the station, hundreds of Yale graduates stampede in the opposite direction, excited for another year of getting too drunk to see the scoreboard. In the aisle across from you, a couple speaks quietly to one another. The rush of the train drowns out most of their conversation, but you think they are speaking Russian. You ate grechka, of which Russians are the highest per-capita consumers in the world, for breakfast (donut pregame) this morning. For one shining moment, you believe there may be meaning in all of this.

BEST RESTAURANT

Claire Goldsmith David Rossler Seltzer. Seltzer It took me months to realize that I could have seltzer literally any time I walked into a dining hall. Go to the soda machine, find the drink with the little “soda.”

4 – The Yale Herald

Caseus. Fine dining that’s not pretentious, rustic but not kitsch, cheese, bread, beer, boom.

BEST PANT MATERIAL Nicholas Accinelli The best pant material depends entirely on context. The only context that matters is “Would Patrick Swayze wear this?” To help, I compiled a short filmography from the 1991 “Sexiest Man Alive” and tracked pant material. The Outsiders Distressed denim Dirty Dancing Leather/distressed denim Red Dawn Distressed denim Steel Dawn Distressed denim Roadhouse Distressed denim Point Break Polyester board shorts/foam neoprene wetsuit/distressed denim Letters from a Killer Distressed denim Ghost Distressed denim Youngblood Cotton hockey pants with nylon shell/distressed denim One Last Dance Cotton fancy dance pants Black Dog Distressed denim

BEST HIDING SPOT Adam Sokol Next time you’re playing a really intense game of hide-andseek there’s only one place you can run to where no other Yale student will ever go: outside the Yale (College) bubble. You could try East Rock, Japan, or even the Divinity School, though really anywhere on the other side of Church Street would be more than fine. I know that the idea of a world across the New Haven Green is frightening to most, but the foreign lands outside the Yale bubble are not all too bad. There’s plenty of space, over seven billion people, President Jimmy Carter, and the Yankee Candle factory store. Or, for some extra fun, make your way over to West Campus where you can hide along the “nature trail” that is really just a heavily littered, thin strip of trees next to I-95. But if you’re really only looking for on-campus hiding spots, try Walden Peer Counseling or the Student Wellness Center.

Rest in peace, Patrick, rest in peace.

BEST BUTTERY

BEST TEENAGE HEARTTHROB David Rossler

Charlie Bardey Most butteries offer the same thing, plus or minus fifty cents. Some are undoubtedly worse than others: I still smell like old oil from the time I went into the Silliman Buttery in 2013. But TD is unrivaled, not for its stupid quesadillas, which are the same everywhere, but for its chiropractic benefits. That’s right: TD has a massage chair. Not only that, TD folk never use the chair! They’re too used to it!!! But joke’s on them because they don’t know what they’re missing!!!!! The chair has a whole bunch of settings and has definitely extended my life a whole bunch of years. I looked up the chair and it costs over two thousand dollars, so it’s no joke. Best quesadilla experience, guaranteed.

When Justin Bieber released “Sorry,” my world turned upside down, because I flippin’ hate Justin Bieber. When he sings he looks like you ate a special cookie that you didn’t know he was saving for later. But “Sorry” is the greatest song of our time, and I can’t fight it. “Oh no!” I thought. “Is terrible Justin Bieber throbbing my heart?” But, thank gosh, even if my heart does throb, he can’t be the best teenage heartthrob, because he’s 21. No, no, the best teenage heartthrob is still Tim Riggins. “But Taylor Kitsch is 34, which is not a teenager,” you say. Yeah, but Tim Riggins is a sophomore in high school. “Okay,” you say, “but even back then he was 25.” Wrong, he was just an ordinary alcoholic sophomore in high school who loves the game of football. Well maybe a little extraordinary: Tim Riggins always has weird sweaty long hair and it still looks so good. Tim Riggins never doesn’t drink beer and has the best body of all the high school sophomores. Also he’s so sensitive. If that doesn’t throb your heart honestly you’re mean. Clear eyes, full hearts, drink booze!

Dec. 11, 2015 – 5

BEST PLACE TO TRIP PEOPLE

BEST HAIRCUT

Calvin Harrison

Devon Geyelin There’s plenty of reasons to trip people: getting revenge on Stacy for saying your prom dress was “too ’80s,” getting revenge on that guy from English 120 who always stole your great David Foster Wallace comment, or getting revenge on… Okay, fair. The only good reason to trip someone is some sick sense of retribution, or at least a healthy schadenfreude. But if you’re going to do it, at least do it right, you sadist freak. For maximum embarrassment, the stairs down to the lower level of Bass clearly wins. No one goes to Bass to study, they go to Bass to be seen studying. The people descending those staircases have prepared themselves. It’s no easy task; the perfect Bass look is half ready for a Goldman interview, half taking an Uber to a SoulCycle class, and just a touch of walk of shame from the Oxford-Cambridge. If you’re lucky, you might even catch someone who’s already sipping on an open can of San Pellegrino. Just stick out your foot as if you’re stretching out from yesterday’s ride with Jen and let the lemon flavored sparkling mineral water fly.

Mine, then Sasha Pup’s. Well, my haircut is not actually the best. My haircut was previously really good. I was in Spain over the spring, and the older woman I was living with sent me to Emilio, who’s been cutting her hair for the past 50 years. Emilio speaks no English and I speak medium Spanish, so it was kind of an act of trust to stop saying “no muy corto” and watch him take large chunks of my hair and cut them in a way some would deem “at random.” Sorpresa—great haircut! But then I went to Salon J on York and asked them to do the same thing (“he cut a big part off over here. I think it was diagonal”) and it didn’t, unfortunately, work as well. So: Sasha Pup! Always looks great. So clean!

BEST COUCH SHAPE

BEST DISGUISE Charlie Bardey You know what they say: “Run! Hide! They will find you!” That’s why having a good disguise is crucial. For me personally, every outfit is a disguise, because my true self is imprisoned by capitalist and patriarchal norms of conduct and behavior. The constructed notion of coherent identity is a fearsome beast, and the more we can escape its clutches, the better. I find that escape in my prized powder blue Snuggie. It’s perfect for pretending to be a lump of powder blue blanket in the corner at a stressful house party, or for pretending to be alone on purpose while alone in your room. A Snuggie is the perfect disguise for those of you who have a body that won’t quit and an aura that screams “Stay Back! And Do Not Come Close For If You Do You Will Get Mired In The Darkness Within!”

6 – The Yale Herald

Devon Geyelin

I like an L-shaped couch. One side is long, and the other side is relatively short. You can rest your body long ways, but then there’s room on the short leg for you to put a plate, or your homework. Or you can face forward and sit only in the short leg, so your back is on the backrest and your legs are supported, but anyone sitting next to you has to sit more upright, because they don’t have the short leg part to support their legs. So you have the only legs supported by the couch, and you can be like, I’m the queen!

BEST WAY TO WASTE TIME

Lora Kelley

Wasting time is sooo fun. It’s my guilty pleasure. Watching MTV’s Hoarders, designing bday cards for my dogs on Photoshop, reading clickbait. I love it all. But I’ve discovered that the best time-waster of all is majoring in the humanities. English, history, classics—all a waste! I didn’t realize this until recently, when I stumbled upon a Reddit forum entitled, “Studying Humanities is a Waste of Time.” As a recently declared Humanities major, my jaw dropped to the floor (along with my copy of Ulysses and my Moleskine). I didn’t even read the thread. I just broke down right there and transferred to Stanford to study computer science. It’s been going well so far. Take note, all: the humanities are dead! I know this may come as a surprise. This is Yale, after all, the great bastion of the humanities. The alma mater of literary greats like Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Chad Michael Murray. But, peers, the relevance of the novel has come and gone, and I don’t want to see you get left behind. Don’t waste your time reading books. Spend your time reading the names of matches on one of the various cool dating apps Silicon Valley has given us recently, or perhaps reading a scintillating line of code. Jane Austen is dead, but Mark Zuckerberg is alive. Do the math (major in math?), and don’t waste another precious second.

BEST WAY TO GET UP SCIENCE HILL Claire Goldsmith Science Hill, that untamed beast. How it looms behind Cross Campus, eclipsing humanities majors with its -ologyfilled shadow. Should you dare to venture up that mountain of medicine (a feat few members of the Herald staff have ever contemplated), you’ll need a convenient form of transportation. Just walk, you suggest? Come on. Biking is the new walking, but hoverboarding is the new biking, but then you also look like an idiot. Actually, the best way to get up Science Hill requires a little advance planning. Wait two years until the new colleges are built and then transfer into the one with a better name, citing your fervent desire to contribute to a new community founded on your core values, to enable legions of eager youths to reap the benefits of Yale’s residential college system, etc., etc. Get a nice new air-conditioned room with a view of Grove Street Cemetery. You can wake up every day, contemplate the inevitability of death, roll out of bed, and be halfway up Science Hill before you’ve even had breakfast. This is a long-term transit plan, but I think it’s a good one. Tortoise and the hare, yeah? Have a STEM major check that one out.

BEST THING TO BINGE WATCH

Calvin Harrison

BEST TIME Carly Lovejoy The present, there’s nothing quite like it! Let the good times unfold, as they say.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 7

BEST WAY TO MEET NEW PEOPLE

Alex Kronman

This one is hardly even a question. All you gotta do is bring your little booty down to PWG and sit it down in the sauna. Within minutes, you will be surrounded with a plethora of potential new friends to choose from. Some will be your age, some will be much older, and some may even be right on the verge of death. But listen, don’t be intimidated. Just stand up, point right at the person you want to get to know a little better, and tell them in your most commanding voice that you are excited by the prospect of sharing something special together. Then—quickly—make an assessment of the situation. If your new friend looks a little bit too wet, maybe offer to share your towel with them. If he looks a little sad, maybe make a quick run to Durfee’s and come back with some Sour Patch Kids as a little gift just for him. If he looks a little uninformed, maybe tell him a thing or two that you learned in Natty D about subduction zones. Listen. It’s as easy as that. Go hit the sauna and see for yourself.

BEST CLASS NAME

Lea Rice

As most people know, I’ve been trying to establish myself as a theatrical triple threat on this campus for some time now. Whiffenpoof auditions, spontaneous stand-up comedy routines in lectures, dancing in the aisles of RB shows á la Amy Poehler in Mean Girls—all to no avail. Finally, though, I think I’ve found the class name that will give me the reputation I’ve been craving: Dramatic Movement for Singers. It’s got drama, dance, and vocal prowess in its title, and I obviously possess the innate star power that completes the recipe for a Broadway debut. Am I actually enrolled in and attending this one-credit enigma every Monday at 11:30 a.m.? Irrelevant. Seven days a week, it’s my go-to name drop and my exit line from all places and situations.

BEST ANIMAL ON CAMPUS BEST WAY TO SAVE BIG

Kohler Bruno

People on campus always ask me one question. Kohler, they’ll say, what’s the best way to save big? In a word, Lunchables. Often, during my day I’ll see the moneyed classes of Yale frequenting some lunch venues that are, to borrow a phrase, not for the faint of coin.* In this economy, a Book Trader Tempesto will run you $7.95. Lunchables Pizza with Pepperoni? $1.25. And the best thing about Lunchables isn’t the food. It’s the temperature the food is served at: ice cold. What kid didn’t dream of making his own cold “pizza” for lunch? I’ve always said, pizza is a cracker that you spread ketchup on and add some grated cheese and a few slices of pepperoni. Yum! All I’m saying is don’t get left behind when the Lunchables Brigade rolls through town.

8 – The Yale Herald

Rachel Strodel Not Sasha Pup. Wow, I can feel the hate already. Sasha, let me get this straight: you’re adorable. You’re soft. You’re like a giant ball of powdered sugar dropped from heaven. Do I procrastinate by watching videos of you and Rio running around TD? Maybe. But this has gone too far. A dog should not have more Facebook friends than I do, nor should it have more likes on its profile picture than I do. The comments on the page are even more appalling: “It’s a miracle I’m able to get any work done living with you nine months of the year, Sasha.” Sasha, it’s for your own good. Don’t let the paparazzi get to your head. Oh I saw that picture of you back when you were a show dog. I know you love to work the crowd. So best animal this year probably Buck the Chi Psi dog or handsome Dan. Ditch the ego and try again next year, Sasha Pup.

BEST ICE CREAM FLAVOR

BEST FANTASY Libbie Katsev

Alessandra Roubini The other week my friend finally succeeded in forcing me to watch Veep. Wow. JLD is a poet and a marvel (I know I’m slow on the uptake, sometimes I just don’t know what’s good for me). All was going stupendously—we seamlessly transitioned from the pilot to the second episode, when things started to go a little south. The tall man-child from the ~White House~ showed up and starting talking about the politics of ice cream flavors. The giant staffer says that mint is a good flavor for the Veep to get because “it implies freshness, trust, traditional values.” Now this made me sad because I actually really love mint ice cream. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that it’s the best of all flavors, and here was this colossal emblem of Washington douche-baggery reducing it down to a snippy little trio of empty political keywords. Mint deserves better.

BEST LIBRARY TO PLAY IN

Adam Sokol

The Geology Library. Unknown to most but cherished by the few who call it home, this gem on the third floor of Kline Geology Lab is nothing more than an intellectual Toys “R” Us. The Geology Library has lots of playspace and plenty of playthings, including a bunch of big geologic maps for make-believe treasure hunts or huge games of Risk, lots of big, skinny atlases that are perfect for building forts in which “no parentz r allowed”, and some tall, dark stacks for hide & seek or having sex. Need a drink or two to expedite the fun? There’s usually a bucket or two of chilled beers to be found somewhere in the KGL lobby. Help yourself.

When the Department of Labor sends you a letter to let you know your identity has been stolen. “I understand your frustration,” the letter reads, “as I, too, have had my identity stolen in this manner. I assure you we are taking all possible steps to protect you from fraud.” You stare at the letter. It’s been a few hours since lunch. Slowly, you tear it into exactly seven pieces, which you crumple, put in your mouth, and chew into an inky pulp. You’re surprised at how much you like the taste—it’s the overtones of bureaucracy, maybe, or perhaps that smoky accent of being let down by the U.S. government. Dinner that night (Caesar salad, your favorite) tastes like ashes. You eat your electricity bill, instead, but it just doesn’t do it for you. You stop eating food. You stop sleeping. You start waiting for the mailman outside your neighbors’ homes, so he’ll mistakenly deliver you their mail, in the hope that they, too, will receive a letter informing them of identity theft. No luck. When the police break down your door and find the database of stolen SSNs on your laptop, you have no regrets. You just stuff some letters in your pocket for the ride to the station.

BEST THING TO YELL IN THE LIBRARY Jeremy Hoffman Trick question—no, it ain’t “PEEEEEENISSSSS.” It’s “INFERNO.” Like Pierson Inferno. Most lit event on campus year after year.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 9

BEST LIBRARY FOR WISTFUL LONGING Charlie Bardey I’m honestly a bit afraid to put this in writing, because as of now, the Philosophy Reading room in SML is pretty much exclusively the provenance of me, an old man who often sleeps there, and an angry grad student who keeps me honest. Nonetheless, I selflessly encourage you to check it out. It’s on the sixth floor of Sterling, all the way down the hall, past the American Studies Reading room, which, appropriately, is filled with couches. The Philosophy Reading Room has a few armchairs for philosophizing, three small tables, and several artfully pensive lamps. The room overlooks Cross Campus, and the window-adjacent armchair is the most perfect place maybe in all of campus to sit and reflect on your Yale Experience™. From your perch, you’ll notice how small everyone looks, running to and fro, and will wonder, gosh, what am I even doing here anyway? Am I making the most of my time here? If you’re feeling particularly wistful, and/or Beach House has just come up on shuffle, you can look into the far distance at the lights of the cars as they flow past New Haven on I-95, and think about how each car is coming from and going to somewhere uniquely meaningful. There’s a whole world out there, and there in the Philosophy Reading Room, you can watch it drive by. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that this sounds like the worst and that you will never be making the trek down to Greenwich’s SoulCycle. But this is where you are very, very wrong. When we waltzed into the grapefruit-scented, blindingly white studio at 6:01 for our 6:00 class, I knew we had arrived at the only earthly resemblance of Heaven. I sweated through my shirt entirely, but the out-of-the-saddle sprints and tap-backs were so beyond worth it. Namaste.

BEST WAY TO STAY WARM

David Rossler

The arepa cart makes burritos so toasty you need a napkin to hold them or else you’ll holler. This chilly winter, get a few (only $5.50!) and stick them in your big pockets to stay snug as a bean until the Masters thaw and say it’s spring.

BEST PROFILE PICTURE

Lea Rice

The perfect profile picture is not a picture of me, and it’s obviously not a picture of just you—the perfect profile picture is a picture of both of us. We are candid. We are fun. The identical twinkles in our eyes whisper, Yes, we do have matching pet turtles. On my right shoulder: a perfectly balanced, cedar–scented votive from Yankee Candle, because I’m quirky and rustic and cedary. On your face is a look of gratitude that I am your best friend. The caption is a Pitbull lyric, because we are ironic, but there’s a nuanced sincerity to “Big news, Pitbull, Tom Cruise, Mumbai” that further underscores our timeless bond. Will this picture get likes? It’ll break your personal record. People go crazy for celebrity friendships: Jay Z and Bill Nye; Obama and Bear Grylls; my math professor and his periodically mentioned cat, Devo—we’re all just vicariously sharing in their joy. I’m no different, but I’m done sitting on the sidelines. When the pic goes live, we will be people’s Squad, Relationship, Smize and Career Goals. If you’re not ready for the exposure, don’t bother coming to the photo shoot.

BEST LANGUAGE

Devon Geyelin

The language of dance is as old as time. If you want to learn to speak my dialect, meet me at the back left corner of Woad’s any coming Wednesday. I’ll be there, articulating.

BEST SALAD Lily Sawyer-Kaplan Yorkside’s Greek salad is the best Greek Salad in probably all of Connecticut, maybe the U.S. I can’t vouch for the world, because that includes Greece. But it’s just so good. The lettuce is crisp, the tomatoes burst with flavor even in winter, the olives aren’t too salty, and their quality feta adds pizazz. Also it comes with a roll that’s kind of like the Claire’s mini-loaf, but better, because it’s crispy. MAKE SURE YOU ADD GRILLED CHICKEN. Without the grilled chicken, which is also the best grilled chicken in New Haven, the Greek salad is just a pretty good salad, not worthy of a Herald 100 blurb.

10 – The Yale Herald

BEST DARTY ATTIRE Charlotee Weiner

BEST DEAN’S EXCUSE

A onesie with zipper pockets—and your go-getta attitude.

Jenny Allen

Break your vagina. Sure, you could pretend that Grandma Mildred has taken a turn for the dead, but your cover will be blown when she shows up at graduation. A broken vagina is a foolproof alternative. Steps include: 1. Have your mother send you an enormous box of apples to encourage “healthy eating in college.” 2. Attempt to carry said gigantic, view-obstructing box of apples home and accidentally run vagina-first into a rail. 3. Call Yale Health frantically and have a receptionist prescribe “ice and Advil” and reassure you that light bruising is “perfectly normal.” 4. Wake up the next morning with a swollen, purple mass where you once had a human vagina. 5. Take a cab to Yale Health, where a “medical professional” will take one look at your vagina, burst into hysterical laughter, and diagnose you with “JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH, A FIVE STAR INJURY.“ 6. Have word of your legendary vagina spread, encouraging random Yale Health staff to crowd into you exam room to marvel at the damage. Reactions will range from abject horror to maniacal laughter. 7. Spend three days in the hospital being treated by the head of OB-GYN at Yale-New Haven for a “vulvar hematoma.” 8. Obtain a Dean’s Excuse. Speaking from personal experience, this works 100% of the time.

BEST WAY TO WIN OVER YOUR T.A. Emma Chanen TAs’ best kept secret is that they desperately want to be friends with undergraduates. It doesn’t take much to woo them. Start by bringing food to section. Rent out your college kitchen and bake cookies. Don’t tell your section you baked them, though. They’ll think you’re brown-nosing, and winning your TA doesn’t have to mean losing your classmates. Say that your mom sent them in the mail and there are too many for you to eat by yourself. You’ll look healthy and generous, and your TA will love you. Next, take note of the things your TA responds well to in class. Does she nod in agreement when someone mentions Freud? Or does he flinch when someone “pushes back on that?” Note likes and dislikes and make them yours. The final step is just popping the question. Pack up very slowly one day, so you make sure all of your classmates are gone. Let Steve have his obsequious exchange first. Once everyone is gone, grab your things and approach slowly. Maintain eye contact and ask, “May I come discuss this with you at your office hours?” Boom. You’ve won.

BEST STATUE

Caleb Moran

BEST BUY

John Harvard a.k.a. The Statue of the Three Lies, duh.

Kohler Bruno Best Buy

Dec. 11, 2015 – 11

BEST CONDIMENT BEST WAY TO GET OUT OF SECTION EARLY Claire Goldsmith A few weeks ago, a boy in my Cold War section was talking about the relaxation of tensions between the United States and the USSR. He started off strong, but things quickly went south. “When the United States entered into de-ten-tay…” De-ten-tay? Come on. That’s not even the logical mispronunciation. I was flabbergasted. The worst part, though, was that no one batted an eye. The speaker was completely unperturbed and continued along his meandering path. My TF didn’t even passive-aggressively use the word “détente” (pronounced correctly) in her next comment, as I would have done. Apparently, anything goes in section these days. So, here’s the best way to get out early. Just stand up and walk out. Why not? Confidence can get you anywhere. I’ll bet no one says anything. And if they do, tell ’em His Royal Highness John Gaddis said it was okay—or pronounce your excuse so oddly that no one dares to question you. Much like détente, there’s no way this could go wrong.

BEST USE OF A DURFEE’S SWIPE

Emma Chanen

Every Wednesday afternoon, I head to Durfee’s to use my lunch swipe. By now, I should have a routine, an order that I like and stick with. I still find myself, though, squeezing through the crowded single aisle to look at all of my options and decide what I want for lunch. I stare at the board and consider hot food options. I pick up and put down that sandwich with the balsamic onions. I peruse the sushi selection, though I still don’t know if I trust Durfee’s raw fish. I even find myself considering the bright green kale pesto pasta even though I am not a vegan and scorn kale. Sometimes I consider skipping “lunch” altogether and buying eight dollars’ worth of candy bars but decide I can’t afford the inevitable sugar crash. After my lazy stroll through the tiny many options, I stand in line with everyone else and order my chicken tenders. While I go with ranch, I won’t presume to know the best sauce choice. I can say with some certainty, though, that chicken tenders are the way to go. I know. I’ve thought about it once a week since the beginning of the semester, and every time, I come back to chicken.

12 – The Yale Herald

Adam Sokol All who were forced to down a salsa-peanut butter tort on FOOT know of the Gastronomic Golden Rule: delicious + delicious = delicious. To be honest, I was never too trusting of this sacred aphorism until one recent fateful day more than two years after I emerged, delusional and constipated, from my FOOT adventure. Little did I know that the Tempesto sandwich I ordered from Book Trader would challenge what I thought to be the most fundamental laws of condimentology. I swallowed my first bite and noticed that, instead of balsamic vinegar, there was some other brown, chutney-resembling condiment on my sandwhich that tasted sweet and fruity. It seemed to work perfectly with the tomato, basil, and mozzarella, and I was in love. My friend, however, was not. As I finished up my sandwich, my friend took his back to the Book Trader counter and asked what the new sauce was that they were using on the Tempesto instead of balsamic vinegar. After a bit of confusion, the tale of a classic mix-up emerged: our Tempestos had been lathered with pumpkin spice latte syrup that was accidentally labeled as balsamic—and, from what it sounded like, so had all the of the Tempestos that Book Trader had served that day. As the latte syrup sat digesting in my stomach, I knew it would be cowardly to retract my love of the bold condiment. Next time you’re at Book Trader, try ordering a “Tempesto, basic-white-girl style” and behold the truth of the Gastronomic Golden Rule.

BEST PICKUP LINE

Lara Sokoloff

BEST HIDE-AND-SEEK SPOT

What is even a “pick-up” line? According to urbandictionary. com, all non-milllennial’s guide to millennial speak, a “pickup line” is defined as “a line you use to get a woman.” Now as a woman, assigned to write “Best pick-up line,” this left me 1. Feeling marginalized and suppressed by our favorite patriarchy, and 2. Wondering if I should write about the “best” pick up line I would like to receive or the “best” I would give. When I think harder about 2, there is truly only one way to effectively usurp and triumph over the inherent gendering of a ~pick up line~, in other words, the line I would both give and receive. Imagine you’re at Toads, it’s pretty grimy, but a new Justin Bieber banger is playing, and you are feeling it in every bone. Nothing can stop you, your Bieber temp is through the roof because you’ve not only caught the fever but you can feel it living and thriving inside of you. Then suddenly, someone whispers in your ear “Gender is a construct.” This person has immediately revealed they 1. Are probably a feminist 2. Have probably taken U.S. Lesbian and Gay History (definitely a positive) 3. Are likely interested in you 4. Like your dance moves. 5. Also like Woads. Holy smokes! Obviously we haven’t completely resolved the unfortunate power dynamic that is inevitably bred from such an interaction, but dropping “Gender is a construct” at least begins to even the playing field. Highly recommend.

BEST BEN STILLER MOVIE

BEST MUSIC VIDEO Anna Meixler

Eve Sneider The talk on the town is that Ben Stiller is killing it. If his Wikipedia filmography is any indicator Noah Baumbach has him on speed dial. I wouldn’t know this because I don’t watch sequel films without numbers in the title (see: Taken 3, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Shrek 2), but rumor has it “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb” was really something special. Even so, for me nothing will compare to Benny in his early days. If you haven’t seen Working Tra$h, the 1990 TV movie, you have no idea what you’re missing. I’m serious. Ben Stiller and George Carlin play janitors on Wall Street who come up with an elaborate moneymaking scheme and it’s fucking fantastic. Zoolander and Tropic Thunder have nothing on this comedic tour-de-force. Forget what you know about TV movies or films with dollar signs in the title and promise me you’ll watch it. You won’t be disappointed.This is why a finance or consulting information session is the best place to find love at Yale. Every guy looks good in a suit and girls get creative with some tasteful cleavage. I looked like a goddamn harlot at the Goldman Sachs info session. It’s a date paid for by Fortune 500 companies: you’re encouraged to mix over nice food you might not be willing to shell out for under other circumstances. “But, Andrea,” you whine as you furiously jack off for the sixth time today because you still haven’t found a significant other. “Isn’t everyone at those things a giant douchebag?” Not really. At the very least you’ll be guaranteed financial stability and someone respectable enough to bring home to your parents.

BEST PLACE TO GO TO ESCAPE ELM CITY

Released in 2003, Missy Elliot’s “Pass that Dutch” is still the best music video I’ve seen, and I watch a lot of VH1. The majority of the video involves Missy and her friends dancing in black leather shorts. These women seriously challenge the image you may have in your mind when you conjure hot women wearing tight leather in music videos, as I often do. They dance as children of the corn wreaking havoc under a UFO, shaking and shuddering as uncanny cornfield scarecrows. They bump tunes in a Hummer en route to what I imagine will be a legendary night out. When a man sets off her car alarm, one of Missy’s friends pulls him into the vehicle by his collar and literally throws his bloody bones out the window when she finishes devouring his body. Missy shows a softer side too, tearfully accepting a beauty pageant tiara as a crowd of Barbies cheers her on. She does parody well, later rapping atop the Empire State Building in a feminized King Kong. Missy’s larger-than-life persona, wicked dance moves, rapid lyrics, and commanding friends permeate the video, but she also pays homage to fallen icons like Aaliyah, Left Eye, Tupac, and Biggie. Missy pays it forward, too—the song features cameos from Free, former 106 & Park host and Lil’ Brianna, Missy’s then protégé. The song was used in “Mean Girls,” and graced nearly every high school CD I burned. The video has everything, from Missy at work to her hard at play, from Michael Jackson to a random troupe of child dancers. The only thing inexplicably absent from this dream sequence is the dutch itself. Some fan conspiracies believe the missing joint is a reference to Bushera weed politics. Regardless, the video leaves you itching to pass Missy a blunt and beg her to let you hang. Missy raps “I am the bomb from New York to Milan / And I can write a song sicker than Jeffrey Dahm.” The song is sick; the video may be even sicker; please do not Google “Jeffrey Dahm”—he did some creepy shit.

BEST LIGHT FIXTURE ON CAMPUS

Leah Motzkin Lily Sawyer-Kaplan Ever feel like you need to escape New Haven? Why the heck would you want to do that? But if you do want to escape New Haven, you should try Escape New Haven! As visitor Kelly P. says on the website, “Quite possibly the coolest experience ever.”

The YUAG American Arts offices on 215 Park Street have unreal lighting. It must be the fixture that softens the regular old Yale light bulbs and transforms the effect into the glow reminiscent of the Hudson River School. I’ll include directions, because the building isn’t technically on Park. To get there, turn on York Street right next to Willoughby’s and head down the driveway past the YDN building (if you’re venturing over at night, pretend you’re a freshman “contributing reporter” and pop in for free food). Then pass GYPCY, avoid eye contact with your History TA from a year ago who gave you a lower grade on a paper rewrite, and under an archway. It’s the first building on the left. Head straight to the back, and bust out Snapchat, because the lighting is flattering like no other.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 13

BEST YALE REFERENCE IN POP CULTURE Charlie Bardey In all honesty, it’s a bit hard to find a palatable Yale in pop culture. Most portrayals highlight and mythologize the things that we ourselves may be drawn to, but shouldn’t be: the privilege, the whiteness, the richness, the old-world elitism—the Yale we all scorn but are also deeply attracted to, evidenced by our presence here. Pop Culture Yale is all Skull and Bones and the Whiffenpoofs. The stakes on choosing a favorite Yale pop culture reference are high, then, as it is tantamount to choosing your posture vis à vis Yale, the institution we are beholden to. If you’re feeling particularly alt and over it, you might choose Montgomery Burns, the exorbitantly wealthy power plant magnate on The Simpsons, who can be seen in many episodes wearing that iconic cream-colored “Y” sweater and waving a Yale pennant. This portrayal at least does not valorize Yale, but rightfully mocks it. This may be too cold an answer, though, and if that’s the case, go with the classic Gilmore Girls Yale, which, based on the two episodes I’ve seen, seems full of warm-hearted, well-intentioned people. That’s the Yale I’d like to know!

BEST FONT

Caleb Moran

BEST YUAG WALL TEXT FOR MY TOMBSTONE AND/OR TINDER BIO Anna Meixler “Undoubtedly very important” “Full figured” “Christ’s sarcophagus” “Damaged but imposing” “Legend, but not the Gospels” “May not always have been fully understood” “Born in the Duchy of Lorraine (present northeastern France) ” “Probably never traveled to Rome” “Elder statesman” “Playful cat” “Had little interaction” “Seems to be realistic” “Yale-educated” “Recalls leathers” “Interacts with objects” “Everyday status” “Infantile associations” “Offering to Osiris” “Wearing a kilt, apron, and wig” “Finished mightily”

Trick question, it’s a tie between Comic Sans and Chalkduster.

BEST PIECE OF ART IN THE YUAG BEST QUICK FOOD

David Rossler

Oh gosh I love Pitaziki. The shwarma’s always fresh and the portions are ample af. There’s never been a line, and I’d be worried about blowing up my favorite spot, except that I know the lime green walls and ceiling will keep the faint of heart at bay.

14 – The Yale Herald

Jenny Allen Joe Tisch. Created by the king of readymades, Marcel Duchamp, in 2015, “A Student—Joe Tisch” has been signed with the name R. Mutt. Readymades are ordinary objects that the artist selects and modifies. It does not come as a surprise to me that Duchamp would select Joe Tisch, but just how he has altered him is yet to be revealed.

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16 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Yale Herald

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yale schola cantorum Simon Carrington, conductor

mu s i c o f b uxt e h u d e a n d m o r e

call for entries

Adrian Van Sinderen Book Collecting Prizes

Open to seniors and sophomores Deadline: 5 pm, friday, february 5, 2016 $1000 senior prize Âˇ $700 sophomore prize Visit yale.edu/printer/vansinderen for details.

18 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Yale Herald

BEST STREET ART BEST LIVE SNAPSTORY

Eve Sneider

I liked it when Snapchat kept things simple. Before “Sunday Brunch.” Before “Farm Life: Vine to Wine.” Before “Beach Bums” episodes one, two, and three. Yes, I long for days of yore, when our campus story was a compilation of inanities and absurdities this side of Chapel Street. I don’t give a flying fuck which Ivy Leaguers give the best haircuts or throw the best rhymes or can do the most pushups with more than three girls sitting on their backs (which, by the way, seems like a terrible idea). It’s not even about good old Ivy rivalry for me. Cornell’s clock tower looks like an eight-year-old drew it. Dartmouth has great sunsets because, if you live 90 minutes from the North Pole, that’s about all you get. Whatever. I don’t need a snap story to tell me that. What do I need a snap story to tell me, you ask? The whereabouts of Sasha Pup. What percentage of the freshman class is at 12-pack. How many surprise birthday parties I didn’t get invited to. The Yale Campus Story was there for all. R.I.P. Yale Campus Story 2015-2015

BEST CELEBRITY SNAPCHAT

Anna Meixler

Mainly just anything that avoids penis caricature. Misleading for those who would benefit from an accurate, perhaps threedimensional diorama (CCEs? Anyone?), such graffiti adds nothing to public discourse. Go hyperrealist or go home, as they say. Anything that employs tags that reference life, love, laughter, your sorority, your gang. Cliché just means universality, which speaks to the public psyche. Only the most mainstream references—not even rogue #dieantwoord or #reikawakubo tags avail. And no personal plugs, like #sellingmyadidassuperstars (size 7, pristine condition. Email anna.meixler@yale.edu if interested). Anything that commemorates anyone with a somewhat identifiable rendering. For example, there were many odes to dead dogs in the neighborhood where I lived in this summer. As far as I know, there are zero murals dedicated to Aaliyah in New Haven, a massive oversight. Sincerity is always appreciated. Anything anti-authority. See Katsu, Eine, or Os Hemeos for some meta-graffiti. Visual puns, liberal sentiments, sticking it to the man, and fucking the system are great—so long as political commentary is socially conscious, executed incisively, and resists mass commercialization (will not be screened onto tote bags). See: Banksy.I’ll let you try to make your own way there. That’s part of the fun. But once you get there, you’ll see mostly shelves and shelves of forbidding tomes that you’d never open. But among the hardcover case reporters—directly behind the conference table you definitely wanna snag if possible— is one of the best things you’ll ever find at Yale: a huge-ass fishtank. The tropical fish add just enough novelty to spice the place up without distracting you from complicated plot twists. (Bonus: the setup makes the tank a great Snapchat backdrop.) But that’s not even the best part of the situation! For some reason that I don’t seem to understand but don’t mind, the area is officially called the “Upper East Side.” If it’s good enough for Gossip Girl, we can for sure deal. As GG herself said—in a totally different context—“Careful, Bass. Once you’re a big fish there are a lot more sharks in this pond.” Leave Bass for social hour. When we want to watch some serious TV, there’s nowhere better than the Upper East Side.

Lily Rivkin

I like big butts and I cannot lie. I also like loud rap, aggressive driving, and large-scale shenanigans involving Italian Greyhounds and Tyga. So, if you’re like me, then you’re probably already following my girl Kylizzlemynizzl aka King Kylie aka Miss Kylie Jenner on Snapchat. For those of you who aren’t familiar with her account, you’re about to get booty bumped out of this world. Following her is so much more than seeing her selfies and failed attempts at cooking. You get to ask questions like “What happened to the third Greyhound?”, “How can Kylie always drive while snapchatting and dancing?”, and “Is the camera permanently on speed mode?” (Pro tip: no, that’s just her) Following her account is also a 10.2 for one deal since the Kardashian clan, model friends, and Tyga’s arms are often featured.

BEST FOOD TO STEAL FROM THE DINING HALL Emma Chanen Yale Dining does a fantastic job of making sure the hungry students of Yale get fed, but what happens when the dining hours just aren’t cutting it? We steal food. It’s easier to take an ice cream cone out of the d-hall than it is to carry out a napkin full of soup, but the best way to choose which foods to smuggle out of the building are to balance the ease of the heist with the quality of the food. Sure, you could probably get away with sneaking a couple green beans in your pencil case, but are you really going to want eat those droopy, mechanical pencil led covered beans later? No, probably not. Stick to cookies in pockets, apples in backpacks, and raviolis in water bottles. Maybe by the end of senior year, someone will have pulled off the waffle in the laptop sleeve. Happy hunting, dining thieves.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 19

BEST OFF CAMPUS EATS Alex Kronman Let me guess. You think you know a thing or two about New Haven eats. You think you’ve been to all the classic spots. You’ve had a breakfast sandwich from Gheav, a slice from Yorkside—maybe you’ve even had a fancy meal or two at Barcelona with your dad. Well let me tell you something, little guy. You don’t know the first thing about New Haven eats. I was born in these streets. I was bred in these streets, buddy. I’ve suckled off of the teat of this city for twenty years. So listen here. If you think you’ve learned a thing or two about New Haven eats, think about this: I went to the school of hard knocks for New Haven eats. Now I’m a professor there. And I’m tenured. And I’m a highly respected member of the faculty. On that note, I’d also like to add that Junzi Kitchen is pretty solid. It’s like an Asian Chipotle, which you probably have never heard of, because you don’t know the first thing about New Haven eats.

BEST CAMPUS JOB

Sarah Holder

My campus job’s official title is Materials Management Team Leader at the Yale Office of Sustainability. My official job description is to examine college’s trash and recycling bins in order to see how effectively they’re recycling and how much they’re throwing out and analyze waste streams blablabla. Whatever—basically, it just means I get to go through people’s trash and find out weird shit about them. In my three semesters of being paid to embrace my snoopy tendencies, I have found: a large pink vibrator, “mind enhancement” drugs, an entire Yale Football 2014-2015 playbook (which I could have sold to Harvard or something), a hook-up list with real names I recognized and also “Guy From Toads Wearing Beanie” (which I could have used as blackmail if I was a sociopath), entire un-eaten boxes of Valentine’s Day chocolate (which I could have re-gifted if I was a sociopath), awkwardly impersonal birthday cards (written by sociopaths), a water bottle filled with chewing tobacco spit. Also used condoms, and tampons! If that’s not enough of a pitch, I also sometimes get to stand on Cross Campus, wear a costume made out of plastic bags and call myself the Bag Monster, which is kind of weird but I like it. Apply 2day.

20 – The Yale Herald

BEST TOILET TO USE FOR SWIRLIES Chris Melamed The best spot for a good wet swirly is the downstairs bathrooms in Bass, obviously! If you want to give a swirly, you want people to know some nerd is getting swirled, so you’ve got to keep it central. The next big concern is getting caught: no one wants to get caught. With all those decoy stalls around no one will know it was you until the swirly is long over. Now dump the weakest BD freshman back on cross campus (dispose of your nerd) and get back to endorsing your bros’ LinkedIns in Starr.

BEST DATE SPOT FOR LAZY PEOPLE Sophie Haigney Someone recently asked a friend of mine, “Would you rather go see the multi-story parking lot or watch a movie?” Now, like my unknowing friend, you might think the movie is a better choice. You are wrong. The multi-level parking lot on College Street is better than Netflix. Here is why. At first, when you arrive, you think, it’s only a parking lot. You’ve been in parking lots before, and if you haven’t then this is already a sick date. There are many cars parked next to each other, and a lot of concrete, and it’s architecturally interesting because it just kind of slopes upward on the various levels, so if you decide to walk, which you should, it’s just kind of a gradual climb to the top. The top. When you arrive, it appears to be a plateau of concrete, a kind of weird futuristic tundra. And yet, as you move towards the edge, you will notice the view. You and your date can marvel at Harkness tower, at the quaint redbrick roofs, at the YUAG towering. You are on top of the world. The air is clear and you are free. You can look over at your date, tentatively, considering kissing him and her. Then your date might point and say, “But isn’t that West Rock over there?”

BEST WAY TO START AN EMAIL SUBJECT LINE Chris Melamed “In defense of good….” ex: In defense of good Friday, in defense of Good Wood™, in defense of Good Charlotte’s third studio album, in defense of good old Mother’s Brisket

BEST EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY Patrick Doolittle Yale Twitter. Ask yourself: What makes something an extracurricular, really? How would you define it? An activity that receives UOC funding? An activity to which students dedicate inordinate time? An activity that’s curricular, with a lil’ something extra? For me, “tweeting” is all the above. It surpasses these requirements—an extra- extra- curricular haha! It’s something I care about. It’s something I’m doing constantly. It’s recently made me “really re-evaluate who I have time for, Marybeth, I’m sorry.” I complain about it, even though I crave the sense of belonging it provides. And I’m shuffling down High Street right this moment, out of breath, running late to recruitment for it.

BEST DATE SPOT FOR NON LAZY PEOPLE Devon Geyelin Yale Health STI Testing Party. Do you think I’m making a weird joke? Joke’s on you! I didn’t go to the first one, on November 3, but I really can’t wait to ask someone to the next one (date TBD?). I’m not going to tell you which number date this is a good one for—the first, the third, the you just got married—because positive sexuality and you make your choices, etc., but I see this as kind of an amazing opportunity. Get everything out in the air before the air has to be cleared, no? You and this person you maybe want to make out with can go enjoy free snacks, free nonalcoholic drinks, and free music in an event that, if history repeats itself, will be co-hosted by than no less than a few Greek organizations. But even better, it’s a great place to get yourself informed and to get you and your partner(s) talking about healthy sex in a healthy environment. Personally, I can think of nothing more romantic than the intimacy that comes with being able to talk about sex, from all of its perks to all of its potential consequences. And this way there’s no need to email anyone fact sheets about anything! Because that’s what people do otherwise, right? Haha.

What’s more, it’s a veritable community. A lineage. A secret society in the Cloud, a virtual fraternity at the club. An aesthetic pioneered by @clipka_ ’14, a mantle taken up by @atvillena ‘15 and @mdnsk ’15—it currently features @abermz. ’16 and even @chunkbardey ’17, who got 500 favorites this week on a tweet about true love being “bullshit.” I’m screeching. Admittedly, Yale Twitter doesn’t receive UOC funding, but it both could and should. We’ll take the 35 dollars UOC can reasonably offer us, thanks UOC. And we’ll follow back. So you might think it makes no sense at all that we’re amped for the imminent arrival of America’s millionth Pinkberry in our very own New Haven, in the former space of some independent boutique that we’ve already forgotten. Theoretically, we’re against it. But in actuality? Pinkberry holds the trump card: it offers delivery. New Haven does not have enough food service insititutions willing to bring me treats in the comfort of my own home; by offering to make Pinkberry happen where the rest of our lives happen, the froyo behemoth has won our business—if not our hearts.

BEST OFF-CAMPUS BATHROOM Kohler Bruno The Skull and Bones pool

BEST FOOD TRUCK

Rachel Paul

BEST SEAT Kohler Bruno

Ay Arepa. At least that’s what I’ve heard. Don’t shoot the messenger, please.

The lifeguard chair at the Skull and Bones pool.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 21

BEST PLACE TO TELL YOUR SUITEMATES TO POOP Yi-Ling Liu “Bye guys, I’m going to Byers.” That is my suite’s code for: I’m going for a poop. It is the reason why we have stayed such close friends, and have had minimal conflict over the last three years of suitematehood. It is hard to keep up healthy, amicable relations with your suitemates, and one surefire way to taint the friendship is to poop in the suite bathroom. The smell lingers, they resent you, you resent them for resenting you, and then the whole suite dynamic implodes on itself. The question then is — where to go instead? Fourth floor, Byers Hall, Silliman College. Conveniently located (everybody knows that Silli is the warm center of the world) and yet also sufficiently isolated from the world (the Silliman fellows live on the fourth floor but who cares about them really) to allow for maximum comfort. It’s always spanking clean, and there’s a large window with a pretty view (College Street, Woolsey Hall, the works.) Honestly, there’s no place like it. Studying in Bass and suddenly need a quiet spot to do your thing? Go to Byers. Partying it up at a house on Lynwood, and realize in the middle of the night, that you’ve consumed an excess of Rumbamba arepas for dinner? Go to Byers. At Union Station with plenty of time to kill before your train arrives and want to finish your business before you head out? Hop on the shuttle, take an Uber, head straight on over. Byers beckons.

BEST WAY TO GRAB ATTENTION ON PANLIST EMAILS Carly Lovejoy State your deadlines//pitches//events in a series of haikus in all caps, neon green bold font à la: IT IS BUSY TIME NO ANNOUNCEMENT HERE PLEASES *SHEDS A SINGLE TEAR* U RESPOND W VIM TO ANY LENGTHY PITCHES AND I WILL HUG U WHO AM I TO PLEA BUT A PANLIST CREATOR WHO AM I TO BEEE

22 – The Yale Herald

BEST RINGBACK TONE Chris Melamed Say what you will, but ringback tones are BACK. I don’t want you fools getting left behind so let me break it down for you. Odds are you haven’t thought about ringback tones in years, also odds are you’re a virgin. Who knows, maybe you’ll get a phone interview and Jorge Luis Mckinsey himself will be like “Jack Berney has a ringback tone? I like this guy already!” all before you even talk to him about your love for companies and money and whatever! Boom. You may have lost sight of your dreams, but at least you’ve got a tight ringback tone.

BEST TIME TO CRY

Sarah Holder

The best time to cry is literally whenever. you. feel like it. I hate those people who are like “I never cry. The last time I cried I was 3 months old probably and then I never cried again because I’m really fundamentally a thinker not a feeler and I’m incredibly emotionally stable. So yeah, I guess I’d say I wish I could cry, but I can’t. Why, when’s the last time you cried?” Once I cried on the 4:35 train to Grand Central Station. In a coffee shop called Muffin while eating a scone. I’ve cried at the ending of Wall-E (duh); while feeding my turtle; in an Uber to Target. When I realized I had to climb five flights of stairs this year to poop. When little pieces of waffle won’t come out of the waffle maker. When I was named Patient of the Month by my orthodontist. If you want the biggest audience for your meltdown, cry at 2:15 p.m. on Cross Campus as Intro Micro lets out. (Ha ha so Pareto Efficient!) Or cry at a standing desk in Bass Café. Sob solo while using the one outlet in Book Trader. Let your tears turn the Haas rug red. Cry at Hammer Time. At lunch time, alone, reading the New York Times. While sprinkling thyme onto bland soup. During a time-out. After sneaking into the back row just in time for a screening of the film adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time.” Schedule it into your g-cal: Much like wearing a striped sweater, the best time to cry is all the time.

BEST PDA BEST AUTHOR TO READ IF YOU HAVE A PENIS

Leah Motzkin Seniors with freshmen, at sporting events.

Sophie Haigney A lot of people who have penises only like books by people who also have penises, generally about other people who have penises and what they like to do with their penises. There is a guaranteed higher number of books by penis-possessingauthors on syllabi at Yale, because for many years a penis was commonly thought to be a prerequisite to writing a book, until people realized that it is not a penis you need but a pen. A number of people and organizations have failed to learn this lesson, including Esquire Magazine, which published a list called “The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read,” amongst other groundbreaking articles like “Do You Have an Attractive Penis?” and “15,000 Penis Measurements Later, We Have An Average Size.” Guess what? 79 of the 80 books on that list are written by people with penises. Now, I do not have a penis. I have read and enjoyed many books by authors who do. If I hadn’t wanted to, and chose to consciously object to all literature produced by people with penises, I couldn’t have been an English major, because I would have failed English 125 and 126. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne. Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Eliot. Yep, they’ve all got penises. This is fine, because I don’t usually mind reading things by people who have penises, but it is also quite possibly true that a Yale English major who had a penis could avoid books by non-penis-possessing individuals for four years. So yes, the best author to read if you have a penis is an author who doesn’t have a penis. Try it.

BEST SMELL Patrick Doolittle Dank tobacco. You DON’T KNOW what you GOT till it’s GONE! The YCC recently partnered with the administration of this here institution to ban tobacco on campus. And I don’t know when the ban goes into effect, or how it’s to be feasibly enforced, but I DO know that the BEST SMELL of 2015 is DANK Tobacco—if only because it won’t be the best smell of 2016 or 2017, or any future year until the 21st amendment comes thruuu for Yale’s Europeans and ends this unjust prohibition. NO DANKS for this policy, YCC. I wrote some protest haikus about this recently which I will now reference: What will people do in the weird alcoves leading into Bass? Very concerning. If you’re from New York City, and you probably are, what smell will remind you of home? Your Dining Hall’s “Homemade” Brownies? Yeah right, guy! Whenever I see that I’m like, skrrrrt, “WHOSE home?” Because I certainly don’t live in Yale Dining’s centrally located dessert-making and distribution facility, and I don’t know anybody who does. As a matter of fact, I only ever swing by there to smell cigarette smoke pouring out the break room! Because admit it, National Ad Council: tobacco smells good. And we only have so much time.

BEST BUTTERY ORDER Jordan Coley December. It’s late. The trek from Bass has never felt so cold. I’m approaching High and Elm. I nod at the security guard. He doesn’t see me. I get closer. He nods at me, thinking he is the one initiating this head-nod exchange. I panic. I don’t reciprocate. Disaster. I cross the street toward Saybrook. I reach the gate. It’s a push. I pull. No relief. I cast a repentant glance back at the security guard. Our eyes meet. His stare is cold, his heart empty. I enter Saybrook and stumble down the stairs of entryway K. I can smell it.

BEST CELEBRITY TO PICK A FIGHT WITH Austin Bryniarski Yale University Vice President and Secretary Kimberly GoffCrews, and/or The Chew’s Carla Hall of Top Chef Fame. I’ve a feeling those fights would be similar.

I arrive. Home. Defeated. Hungry. I place my $1.75 on the counter. Enough for salvation. Enough for Chicken Cheese Fries.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 23

BEST INSTAGRAM CAPTION

Kohler Bruno

I guess autumn in New England isn’t so bad after all.

BEST METRO NORTH STOP FROM WHICH TO TINDER Calvin Harrison

BEST PLACE TO BE SEEN Lily Rivkin The best place to be seen is also quite frankly, the worst place to be seen: on the Toads dance floor. We’ve all been there before: finished that paper early, gotten a little too excited at penny drinks and got jiggy with it on the dance floor. Some people slink around Thursday morning hoping no one noticed them shouting the lyrics to “Shake It Off” a little too hard, but my advice is to embrace it. You have to have great moves to be noticed in the Toads mosh-pit, and the competition gets fiercer and fiercer each year. I’ve seen Yalies dump a drinks on their heads like Flashdance, unskillfully break dance when there just wasn’t room, and even sneak up to DJ Action’s booth only to get escorted out by security. This takes skill. Getting spotted on the dance floor is a trophy no one wants, but one we will all hold at some point in our Yale career.

Another semester has ended, and you are sitting on the train to New York dreading delivering the news to your family: still single. But wait—don’t wallow! What better way to spend your 119 minutes (because let’s be real, you definitely missed the Express waiting in line for your Maison Mathis egg sandwich) than by finding a boyfriend from the comfort of your weird pleather train seat? Lest desperation get the best of you, it’s important to wait for the perfect time. New Haven? For every cute grad student you’ll get a Lesbian and Gay History section asshole, so let’s not. Stamford? Way too many Wall Street commuters and we all know #dadbod is over. Stratford? Let’s be honest, no one knows what this place even is but it sounds weirdly reminiscent of the English countryside and no one wants to match with someone with bad teeth. The answer? Cos Cob. Your 30 mile radius (no judgment) will give you access to all the TFILFs (trust funders I’d like to fuck) from Westchester and Greenwich, and even let you match with some artist types from Columbia and upper Manhattan. It’s a veritable cornucopia of names and pictures to supply to your senile aunt after one too many glasses of wine. Plus I’m sure there’s a pick up line just begging to be made from the name.

BEST DANCE MOVE Devon Geyelin

BEST EMOJI

Charlotte Weiner

:’) For the sense of deep uncertainty it puts in whoever you’re texting. Does this mean that I’m crying from happiness? Putting on a brave smile through angry tears? Am someone who has avenged a murder and now sports a single filled-in teardrop tattoo? There’s truly no way of knowing.

24 – The Yale Herald

Isolate yourself. Maybe there’s a wall? Just you and the wall, if that. Mainly you and the floor. Get closer to the floor, without touching the floor. Any part of you. Forehead to the floor (don’t touch it!). Ass to the floor (but a little bit above!). Hands to the floor (just wave them near there!). You can close your eyes, once you figure out where the floor is. Don’t get closer. Don’t get much further. Sway? Bop. You’re on your own. With the floor. Allow people to congregate. They can’t help it.

BEST RESUME ITEMS Austin Bryniarski Call me Abraham LinkedIn, because I’ve got all your CV secrets. Are you applying for a job? Consider getting a resume. Are you thinking about getting a job immediately after graduation? Consider adding “social media” to your lil’ list of skills. It’s the “Free Space” of your resume — it should go without saying that, as a 20-something year old born at some point after 1990, you are proficient in filtering photos and posting statuses and swiping right. It’s a little deceptive, but whatever — no one knows that I actually transferred to Yale the second semester of my freshman year from UCLA, because that isn’t on my resi. But putting “social media” on your one-pager of experiences, education, and skills really makes you stand out to the 60 year old man who thinks “Facebook” is a sex position from his days at Yale (when it was only doods!).

BEST FORM OF EXERCISE Paul Buckley Have you ever wanted to exercise and also been sad? Try crying. In an accurate scientific study released earlier this year Men’s Health discovered that crying actually burns more calories than going for a short walk or staring at a treadmill. But you don’t need to listen to Men’s Health. Next time you find yourself teary-eyed just use this handy formula to find out just how much of a workout you’re really getting: Calories Burned (in joules) = Number of Tears x Time Spent Crying (in minutes) x Intensity of Emotions Felt (in Adele songs) / Unhealthiness of Junk Food You’re Eating Because You’re Sad. Writhing, shuddering and wandering aimlessly are all considered forms of cardio by uncertified personal trainers. Here’s the real bonus: tears are zero-calorie and are salty (salt is maybe an electrolyte?), so if you’re careful you can collect your tears in a small vial and drink them to stay hydrated.

BEST DRUNK FOOD PLACE

Sarah Holder

BEST WAY TO GET YOUR VITAMINS Rachel Lackner

There’s a lot of options for this one. Recently I’ve become a big fan of Junzi late night. And G-Heav has stopped wage thieving, apparently, so sometimes I like buying teeny tortellinis from the hot bar. And freshman year, the Wenzel delivery guy told me I was beautiful which was, like, really nice of him. But patronizing all these food establishments requires patience, credits cards, a level of public decency, et cetera. My favorite drunk food spot requires none of these things. Global Grounds is a literal place of worship dedicated to food that costs zero dollars. Stacy’s Chips, Pirate’s Booty, hot chocolate, oatmeal cookie crumbs, baby carrots (for the weak)—Global Grounds lays them all out on holy platters in Dwight Hall until 2 a.m., Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes they serve Cheetos and hummus, which is honestly kind of crazy but it’s free. As you stumble down the aisle reaching blindly for the saltiest food item you can get your hands on, knocking down stacks of Jenga that cross your path, you may attract a few derisive stares. But the ground spinning below you could not be more Global, and the Booty could not taste better.

Oh shit. I forgot we were supposed to be doing that still. Uhhh…kale?

BEST DESSERT David Rossler A heaping cup of Froyo World with no toppings but brownies and also no froyo.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 25

BEST HANGOVER CURE BEST D.M. Nicholas Accinelli When sending a Direct Message (DM), you’re playing for higher stakes than a regular M. If all you’re after is some sensual sex rejection, a classic “U up?” will do just fine. But if you’re looking for more, you need to separate yourself from the crowd. A strong DM should promote thought, introspection. “What do you think about the impending global energy crisis?” is a great place to start. Once you get bolder, go straight to the point. “Are you scared of dying?” “What about dying alone?” “Do you think dying is painful?” “Would you rather die in your sleep or be eaten by a wolf? “Are you scared of ISIS?” I know I am!

BEST SUBSTITUTE FOR A TOOTHBRUSH Madeleine Colbert More coffee. If you don’t have a toothbrush to make your teeth clean, just run the other way! Drink coffee until they’re nice and yellow. So then at least you have that “cool coffee drinker” mouth. You all know what I’m talking about. Also, when everyone recoils in fear of your teeth, you don’t have to admit it’s because you literally don’t have a toothbrush! Instead, it’s because you just drink so much coffee. You are obsessed with coffee. Can you talk about your favorite Italian roast for a second? Sorry bout my breathe, I just drank coffee.

26 – The Yale Herald

Lara Sokoloff I think we all know this doesn’t exist. When you wake up in bed and you feel like you can’t find your dignity and the bottle of Advil is too far away, we all secretly know that the saddest part is there’s no way to expedite the process. Advil helps, but it’s no savior; water is nice and all; exercise is actually pretty effective but that mental hurdle to get yourself to PWG is sky high. But I can guarantee you that what I’ve come to over the last week is physician endorsed and guaranteed to succeed. My mom’s a hypochondriac—she supports antibiotics as the cure to any cold, and on any given break I find myself at a minimum of three different doctor’s appointments. This Thanksgiving, I saw my dermatologist, gynecologist, and a primary care specialist, and all three highly suggested I start taking probiotics. In other words, it appears that probiotics are probably the miracle pill to solve any and all health crisis, meaning they are also the elusive cure to hangovers that we’ve all been seeking. Granted, none of the physicians explicitly indicated that probiotics are good for hangovers, but if they clear up your skin, are good for the female reproductive system, and also good for your general health, who are you to tell me they’re not going to cure a hangover? Yeah, shut up. And hey, if they fail as a hangover cure, just know we should probably all be taking probiotics anyway, because who isn’t hoping that every day is a ghost-wipe kind of day.

BEST WAY TO OFFEND GLUTEN-FREE FOLKS Charlotte Weiner Join the 34,000 people who have currently R.S.V.P.’d to attend the Thurs., Dec. 31 Facebook event: “Crying and Eating Bread by Yourself on the Floor”. As the event description specifies, “Bread cannot be gluten free. Bagels are accepted.”

BEST ON-CAMPUS INFO SESSION Jordan Coley

BEST COMBINATION HOTDOG/MOCHI STORE Kai Takahashi Jake’s Diggity Dogs

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a consulting thing for McKinsey, or whatever, and, honestly, it was so lit! We got there and there was this like really really nice business woman lady, or whatever, who greeted us and gave us all name tags! It was honestly so dope! And then, there was like a another really nice, business woman lady, but this time she was black, and she talked to us and she was really nice and she remembered all of our names really quickly! It was crazy! And then we all took our seats, or whatever, to start, and this guy came up and showed us his PowerPoint. It was SO well done! (Like professionally made.) And then there was like this activities section, where they gave us like a Consulting problem to solve, and we got in little groups and discussed, or whatever. It was actually really cool! And then after that, we talked about some of the answers (there were like multiple right answers, it was nuts!) and then they passed around Munchkins! And then it was over, but we like talked to them after they said it was over anyway. And then a bunch of them gave us their like Consulting trading card! (I have three!) I honestly loved it!

BEST SLEEP ACCESSORY Liam McClintock

BEST 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Madeleine Colbert This is easy; the answer is clearly Lindsay Lohan. What, you didn’t see that she declared a 2020 presidential race after Kanye? You don’t read her Instagram captions? Well on October 16th she dropped that bomb. She followed her declaration by explaining, “The first thing I would like to do as president of [American flag emoji] is take care of the children suffering in the world” and “#queenELIZABETH showed me how by having me in her country.” I’m 100% on board with this fundamentally sound plan. Nobody mention that she isn’t old enough; I want to see this play out.

You never know when the urge to zonk out might come creeping on. Whether you’re in an Econ seminar, riding the bus, or simply eating a corn beef sandwich, sometimes the need to snooze becomes unbearable. In such situations, you’ll be thankful you own a Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn sky blue sleeping mask. It’s just the perfect piece of equipment required to shade your eyes from brightness, whether artificial or solar. Don’t let light get in the way of your much-needed snooze time. Make your dreams come true by purchasing a soft satin cover for your droopy lids, and let others watch in envy as you slumber in style.

Dec. 11, 2015 – 27

BEST SUMMER INTERNSHIP

BEST ALUMNUS David Rossler Definitely John C. Calhoun! He believed so fiercely in protective tariffs and free trade. Also, concurrent majority and nullification. His wife, Floride, did something called the Petticoat Affair. He was secretary of war and secretary of state like the finest men. He got elected, too, when he was in Congress. Plus, when he wasn’t too busy being Vice President (yeah, that too!) he wrote books. Sounds like a pretty cool guy who we should all remember and like.

BEST WAY TO UNWIND

Lora Kelley

Ah, the coveted summer internship. Here’s what the career center won’t tell you: the best summer internship is interning for ME (and my mom when she makes me do stuff for her). I interned for myself last summer, and it was sick—all the perks of a real job without even leaving my bed or getting paid. And I can now add the following exciting internship experiences to my “LinkedIn”: “Eating Cheez-Its and Stalking Old Crushes on Instagram” Internship, My Basement, Evanston, Illinois Responsibilities include: Googling my summer camp crush from 8th grade (finding out he goes to Harvard now. Great job, Luke.), wiping Cheez-It grease on my sweatpants when it starts to rub off onto my phone screen, accidentally liking Luke’s Insta from 116 weeks ago, thinking about messaging him to meet up during Harvard-Yale, thinking better of it. “Envisioning Worst Possible Outcomes and Fretting” Internship, My Brain, Evanston, Illinois Responsibilities include: Being plagued with doubts about my future, fearing what would happen if I got murdered, watching the first half of several documentaries, taking long drives in my recently recalled VW, crying. “Giving the Dog a Bath” Internship, My Mom, Evanston, Illinois Responsibilities include: Feigning a dog allergy, feigning a minor wrist injury that renders me unable to wield soap, finally giving in, washing my grimy hound Hank, watching him plunge into a very cesspool of mud in my backyard mere minutes later. Shaking my head in disbelief. If internships are all about getting real world experience, what could be realer than spending the summer doing what I’d be doing anyway? This summer was awesome and my resume is fat. It was so empowering being my own boss (except when my mom was really the real boss all the time). Can’t wait for this summer to intern for myself all over again. See you soon, Illinois!

Rachel Lackner You know that thing where you really need to take a halfhour nap, but you know you don’t have time to take that nap, but you also lack the motivation to get started on that orgo pset so you sit on your bed checking Twitter and Facebook and the blog of that one girl from high school who sat near you in band, and before you know it, you have wasted an entire forty minutes, and you’re still in desperate need of a nap, so you take a half-hour nap anyways and by that time you’ve already wasted part of the afternoon so you sleep for an additional twenty minutes because nothing really matters, and then by the time you wake up you hate yourself, and it wasn’t really worth it? Yeah. Anything but that.

BEST SENIOR THESIS

Carly Lovejoy

Thesis it= Homogenous Qualtrics: Genre, Class, and Style:: The Deep Web and its Social Implications in Surveys::: Politics of Question Syntax and Online Jargons:::: Defining Siri::::: How Do You Know Her:::::: Motherhood and Digital Natives; A love-story where Siri is in the end an Oedipal symbol for the contradiction networks made sensible by online qualtrics, revealing communities of digital native avatars and their desires in this crazy, crazy world;; an phenomenological approach

28 – The Yale Herald

BEST YALE GRAD SCHOOL

BEST REASON TO TRANSFER AGAIN

Lily Sawyer-Kaplan If you’ve ever seen the space station planted in the middle of Whitney Ave, you know that SOM is the best Yale Grad School. The whole building is constructed from glass, because they promote “transparency” in the business world. The have a café that’s like Bass Café, but the snack selection kills and the coffee is from Oren’s and therefore drinkable. They have their own Sol Lewitts that decorate their dining hall. Use all your EliBucks here!! Lunch is $2 less than a meal swipe, and the day I went they had food cart samplings. It’s also possible to take over the sound system of a classroom, and watch the “Sorry” music video on repeat on a huge projector that is probably meant to forecast markets. All these amenities are right here, right now available to the future business leaders of America.

BEST WAY TO SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE

Lora Kelley Transferring has been a great experience for me. So I figure I might as well transfer a second time! The best reason to transfer (again) is honestly just to feel something. This fall has been a big transition, but I’m starting to feel adjusted. A little too adjusted. People in my residential college kind of know me now, and I have a normalized study routine. I know how to cry at the front desk of Sterling when they tell me that I have $125 in library fines from this school year alone, and I have a major advisor. It’s all too normal. The n00b days of September were sweet, and I could totally live that freewheeling life once more. Mostly though, I realized that every time I get a new “.edu” email account, I can get a free trial month of Amazon Prime. If I transfer again I could get, like, two free trials. That’s so many trials. I could buy a lot of chairs.

BEST PLACE TO HAVE A NAP Rachel Paul

Claire Goldsmith Yale’s worst classroom is also its best, at least for all the apocalypse preppers out there. Becton C031 has all the best features of Davies Auditorium—roughly hewn cinderblock walls, a total lack of windows or any attempt at decoration, and the world’s most soporific atmosphere—without bringing up any of the pesky Donner Party-type crowd dynamic concerns you might have in a large auditorium. When the Furies descend and the Mayan calendar strikes midnight, run, don’t walk to the Becton Center. Make a quick left right before the auditorium, hop down a few stairs, and you’ll see C031. It’s right next to a vending machine and a bathroom, so you’re set for a good 3-4 months, depending on how slowly you can ration your pretzels. Hunker down with a few friends and you can each get your own comfortably padded seat from which to imagine the complete destruction of the world happening above you. When you emerge from that concrete cell, you will be totally desensitized to the bleak grey darkness of the post-apocalyptic earth. Fun!

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I could tell you what I think. I could tell where I would take the most luxurious nap ever. I could tell you all about my opinion. But I’m not going to. Because there’s something I honestly and truly believe. I honestly and truly believe that wherever you choose to nap is the best place for you to nap. I could tell you where I nap, but then there would be a huge line outside my door of people waiting to have a turn napping in my bed. So I’m not going to tell you. Because once you’ve decided to take a nap in a certain place, you should feel confident and secure in your choice. Who am I to take that away from you?

Dec. 11, 2015 – 29

BEST ALTERNATIVE TO SOUL CYCLE Yi-Ling Liu

BEST SPACE TRAVELER Lea Rice With the recent Hollywood influx of lauded space travellers—the casts of Star Trek/Wars; Matthews McConaughey and Damon in Interstellar; Damon again, but this time he’s the good guy and he’s stuck on Mars—it might seem like this is a hard superlative to nab. As an avid fan of space and all that it offers, however, I will tell you that best space traveller is Juno. Though sharing a name with a pregnant Ellen Page character circa 2007, Juno is in fact a spacecraft headed to Jupiter RIGHT NOW. It’s going to observe the gas giant and maybe even find out how it evolved. A burning question from me, circa 2007: if boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider, how do they not die in its gaseous atmosphere? Juno, please answer this! Followup: why do boys get to go to Jupiter, ‘cause I’m currently a girl going to college to get more knowledge and it’s honestly not as dope as interplanetary space travel. Ugh, patriarchy. This coming July 4th (because AMERICA), Juno arrives at Jupiter after a five year journey. When Juno left Earth, LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem was the number one song in the US, and Taylor Swift was still a country singer. Sadly, Juno will know the glory of neither Red nor 1989. After a twenty-month orbit, the plan is to send Juno out in a blaze of glory by releasing it from orbit and letting Jupiter’s gravity do its thing. Obviously, everyone’s going to throw “Kudos Juno” parties in March 2017, but I urge you to get in front of the hype.

I wanted to try Soul Cycle, but there’s no Soul Cycle in New Haven, and ShiftCycle apparently sucks. So I decided instead to go biking with the Masked Maniac. Thursday night, from 11-1, I joined Sabir, self-proclaimed “Mask Maniac,” on his night ride in downtown New Haven. We wore masks; he blasted music from a black boombox. Let me give you the lowdown. For starters, you get a mask, not overpriced tights with the letters S0UL printed flamboyantly across the outer leg. You get anonymity. You don’t have to worry about running into someone you know, and being judged for your induction into the halls of workout biddiedom. Secondly, Sabir’s playlist is great— a lot of Fall Out Boy, a lot of Nickelback, the Spanish remix of Talk Dirty —superior to any soul instructor’s playlist. Third, the ride is unpredictable, you don’t know what you’ll get. A wave or a middle finger? A honk or a whistle? Plus, sometimes Sabir takes a break in the middle of his ride at the Dunkin Donuts on Whalley strip, and you get a donut. When was the last time your Soul Cycle instructor gave you a Boston Crème Drizzle or a Toasted Coconut Munchie? Or a Snickerdoodle Iced Machiato? So honestly, it was the best workout of my life. I didn’t find my inner soul per say, but darting down Chapel Street, I certainly did find my inner Christian Bale on a batmobile.

BEST DAY TRIP OUTSIDE NEW HAVEN Charlie Bardey I recently went to my first Woads of 2015 last night, and I loved it. I did the whole Yale thing—drank, danced, went to Ivy Wok. I was ready to call it a night when I got a text from a friend: “im at lighthouse point u gotta come.” As always when someone invites me anywhere, I was afraid I was being pranked and that someone would pour a bucket of blood on me (Carrie really resonated with me), but I carpe diem’d it and Ubered my way over. Fifteen minutes later, I was there, and it was perfect. Across the water, West and New Haven sparkled. The rocks glistened under my iPhone light. I had papers to write, and emails to send, but Lighthouse Point at 2 a.m. was exactly what I needed. At $5 a person roundtrip (if you split an Uber four ways), it’s among the cheapest ways to get off the Yale campus, and also the most spiritually cleansing. If you have a few hours to spare, do it. You deserve it.

30 – The Yale Herald

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST 100 THINGS THAT SUCK

1. r-rated christmas movies 2. f,s,j,s class council 3. “camp friends” 4. stigma against Shazaming things 5. “finger food” 6. above the ground hot tubs 7. how you can’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies 8. how a million dollars isn’t cool 9. lowercase letters 10. messenger bags 11. sophomore societies 12. radioactive material 13. small pockets 14. small pox 15. when people name their apartments 16. cuticles 17. felt 18. lactose intolerant people 19. campaign buttons 20. toilet hair 21. vevo 22. stuff that gets stuck in velcro 23. circular references 24. colons, both kinds 25. sponsored tweets 26. sleep apnea 27. “hover”boards 28. patchy beards 29. not being able to grow a beard 30. polar vortex 31. “dry heat” 32. being in heat 33. print media 34. naughty lists 35. mild salsa 36. “courier” 37. the weeknd 38. “wearing your letters” 39. snapping 40. flaring your nostrils 41. real wrestling 42. “siblings or dating” 43. that broken clocks are right twice a day 44. heelies 45. Ed Sheeran 46. funny shirts 47. when ur clothes don’t fit that well 48. “tasty” 49. instagram ads 50. “low hanging fruit” 51. lite beer

52. Rita Ora 53. crutches 54. invested interest 55. not feeling your face when you’re with someone 56. more than one intermission 57. gestalt theory 58. pain while urinating 59. facebook’s “interested” feature 60. Golf Magazine 61. doodle polls 62. that people don’t fix things that aren’t broke 63. page numbers on first page 64. nipple piercings 65. “timepieces” 66. people who call their tattoos “ink” 67. posting calories 68. Joy Behar 69. when the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 70. short charger cords 71. crème 72. argyle 73. when you want to cuddle with the package center but it’s really far away and you can’t :( 74. when all your questions are declarative statements 75. biting off more than you can chew 76. “grass is always greener” situations 77. “not all rectangles are squares” situations 78. “i’m a celebrity get me out of here” situations 79. “no bev” 80. when people are dishonest 81. not being 50 most 82. being pranked 83. lack of structural integrity 84. when your one-day oil actually burns for eight days, and you don’t get to go back to the oil store and flirt with the cute oil-salesman. 85. having to write papers 86. finals 87. “getting some z’s” 88. cavities 89. sending your regards 90. “you do you” 91. ice bucket challenge 92. clothed beaches 93. amber waves of grain 94. grains 95. my undiscerning mother 96. apples to apples 97. that everyone hates comic sans 98. missed connections on Elihu Yale 99. being “back at it” 100. having to choose between getting it right and getting it tight

Dec. 11, 2015 – 31

Get your passport ready. [Summer comes sooner than you think.] On December 15th, applications will open for Yale Summer Session Abroad 2016. Check early for the best choice of programs taught all over the world: Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, or the Middle East. Full-credit programs in language, culture, arts and sciences.

Applications deadline: February 15, 2016. Enrollment limited.

COURSE LISTINGS: AFRICA

EUROPE

Society and Politics of North Africa

History & Culture of Southeastern Europe

Intermediate Modern Standard Arabic I & II

In Kafka’s Spirit: Prague Film & Fiction

CZEC S243/FILM S143 (Hu) Introduction to Prague’s intellectual culture and the Jewish question through contemporary film, fiction, history, language and travels. June 26 – July 31

GMAN S130-S140 (L3-L4) Intensive, content-based language course that teaches linguistic skills through a variety of texts and media, with special emphasis on the culture and history of Berlin. May 29 – July 23

Visual Approaches to Global Health

Travel Writing

Rome

AFST S325/GLBL S361/HIST S236/MMES S285/SOC S236 (So) The legacies of colonialism and nationalism, political systems, and opposition in North Africa and the Maghrib in the 21st century. 2016 Dates TBD ARBC S130-S140 (L3-L4) An intensive intermediate course in Modern Standard Arabic with an emphasis on all language skills. May 29 – July 23 FILM S340/HLTH S350 (So) Learn to translate complex global health concepts such as HIV/AIDS, human rights, and conflict through hands-on filmmaking and storytelling. June 24 – Aug 6

Private Law & Contract Enforcement in the U.S. & France ECON S276 Study the design of written and oral contracts, with particular emphasis on economic efficiency, and the body of law that governs them. June 18 – July 23

HIST S299 (Hu) & SOCY S286 (So) Multidisciplinary study of Southeastern Europe from antiquity to modernity. July 2 – August 6

Intermediate German

ENGL S247 (Hu) Examines travel writing, surveying a wide range of works, from long-form “place” essays to destination articles, from travel memoir to adventure odysseys. May 28 – June 25

Intermediate Kiswahili I & II

Elementary & Intermediate French I & II

SWAH S130-S140 (L3-L4) Study of Kiswahili structure and vocabulary based on a variety of texts from traditional and popular culture. May 29 – July 23

FREN S110-S120 (L1-L2) Develop language skills, communicative proficiency, self-expression, and cultural insights through extensive use of authentic audio, video material, and field trips. 2016 Dates TBD

Advanced Kiswahili

SWAH S155 (L5) Development of fluency through readings and discussions on contemporary topics in Kiswahili. May 29 – July 9

Intermediate and Advanced French I & II

ASIA

Advanced Language Practice

FREN S130-S140 (L3-L4) Perfect skills in understanding spoken and written French and in speaking and writing. May 29 – July 23 FREN S150 (L5) Improve comprehension and speaking and writing skills through the study of modern fiction and non-fiction texts, film, museum visits, and theater performances. May 21 – June 25

Japanimation and Manga

ANTH S283 (So) Focus on the social and historical context of the production and consumption of manga and anime. 2016 Dates TBD

Advanced Culture and Conversation

Southeast Asia in Context + 2nd Module

FREN S160 (L5) Introduction to contemporary French culture and current events intended to further skills in listening comprehension, speaking, and reading. May 21 – June 25

ANTH S230 Explore themes such as Southeast Asian religion, archeology, rural development, politics and regional integration. 2016 Dates TBD

Elementary Portuguese for Romance Language Speakers

FREN S305/HUMS S267/LITR S176 (Hu) Discussion of gothic architecture, urban and economic renewal, and intellectual life of the 12th and 13th-century Paris. July 2 – August 6

Introduction to Brazil

Belle Époque France

PORT S112-S122 (L1-L2)

PORT S352 (Hu) An intensive elementary course in Portuguese language emphasizing development of all language skills, with an introduction to Brazilian cultural history. May 29 – July 23

FREN S369/HUMS S214/LITR S247 (Hu) A study of important works of literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and decorative arts in turn-of-the-century France. May 28 – July 2

Intermediate Spanish I & II SPAN S130-S140 (L3-L4)

Cultural Studies of Peru

SPAN S247 (Hu) Spanish language study with an analysis and discussion of the historical, social, and cultural development of Peru from Pre-Columbian times to the present. May 29 – July 23

Elementary Italian I & II ITAL S110-S120 (L1-L2)

Tale of Two Cities

ITAL S153 (Hu) Italian language study at the elementary level with an exploration of Italian literature, film, and culture. May 29 – July 23

Intermediate Italian I & II ITAL S130-S140 (L3-L4)

History, Culture, and Film in Tuscany

ITAL S152 (Hu) Apply language skills while living and studying in the Tuscan city of Siena and engaging in travel and other cultural encounters in Tuscany and Rome. May 29 – July 23

Second Year Russian I & II RUSS S130-S140 (L3-L4)

Russian Culture

RUSS S242 (Hu) Russian language study with an interdisciplinary and hands-on exploration of Russian cultural history in its transformations from the early 18th Century to the present. May 29 – July 26

Third Year Russian I & II

Age of the Cathedrals

LATIN AMERICA

HUMS S250 (Hu) Consider how Rome’s contributions to western thought are recorded in the very fabric of the city. May 29 – July 2

RUSS S150-S151 (L5)

Russian Culture

RUSS S242 (Hu) Comprehensive review of grammar, with an exploration of Russian cultural history, extensive vocabulary building for social sciences and practical vocabulary. May 29 – July 26

Intermediate Spanish I & II SPAN S130-S140 (L3-L4)

Spain, 1936 to the Present

Paris and the Cinema

FILM S153 (Hu) Introduction to French cinema and culture that focuses on the stylish romance as well as the mysterious underworld of cinematic Paris. July 2 – August 6

SPAN S248 (Hu) Spanish language study with an analysis and discussion of the historical, social, and cultural development of Spain from the Civil War to the present. May 29 – July 23

Paris in the ‘20s

Language, Culture, and Society of Spain

LITR S244 (Hu/Wr) A moveable feast. Study iconoclastic writers of the 1920s, including Hemingway, Stein, Breton, and the Surrealists, in the city that inspired them. May 28 – July 2

SPAN S242 (L5) Increase knowledge of the language, history, and culture of Spain, within an immersion program set in Valencia. May 21 – June 25

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32 – The Yale Herald