Languor

July 5, 2014

Cause Remains Unclear

The Prince article on the death of Tobias Kim does not speak about him as a person so much as a story pitch, someone whose meaning was apparent in the story he could provide. “Argentina”—Where? Why? To say it was sensationalist would defeat the purpose; I am not here to write about what the Prince did wrong, nor am I here to correct it.

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Jackson Browne

I first got into Jackson Browne in that awkward phase of adolescence where nothing seems to really make sense and you’re caught between the comforts of youth and promise of adulthood.

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Dei Sub Numine Viget

Up in High Places

Fine Hall: Barad-dûr, but it’s nice at night. After dinner you and I go to the third floor lounge to study. We look at the pictures of graduate students. 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995. They all have funny hair but we agree that their glasses are stylish and 1991 wore the best jeans. We sit back down to do work but after five minutes we’re restless again in the room with brown carpeting, brown walls, and brown ceilings. “Do you want to check out the top floor?” I ask. We go up and try the door. Locked. We settle for the next floor down, and walk to the corners where we look out of narrow floor-to-ceiling windows. There are seven thousand students on campus but we don’t see anybody. The corner alcoves fit just two people.

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Radio Killed the Hockey Star

Flanked by two shaven-headed handlers, Martin Brodeur sat at a rickety wooden table that looked slightly too small to be comfortable in a bookstore that has long since been put out business. Outside the store, devoted fans lined up for yards, standing in concentric loops in an adjacent strip mall, chattering excitedly or fidgeting with their fans’ jerseys—this was before smartphones dulled the pain of waiting on a line.

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Customers Who Bought This

I don’t like it when you use my Amazon account. My recommendations are getting stranger and stranger and I know it’s because of you. You should remember that it tells me which items are bought together—and, honestly, you have some explaining to do.

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Strangers on the Web

Facebook has become a warzone. With chilling precision, its creators and monitors have begun a deadly campaign against the Princeton community’s most beloved pages. Though Tiger Matchmakers, Tiger Back-Handed Compliments, Tiger Creepers, and Tiger Microaggressions have somehow slipped under the radar, Tiger Compliments and Tiger Admirers have been brutally smothered.

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Sugar and Spice and Nicotine

“What is that thing?” I watched in confusion as Anna exhaled a thin stream of what looked like smoke into the cramped air of her bedroom. With only a few weeks left in our senior year, we had spent the afternoon trading high school reflections and speculating about the mysteries of college, now only months away. Real schoolwork and the anxieties of the application process now behind us, these last months of spring had begun to feel like a sort of limbo, a time of licensed aimlessness before the fall brought new routines.

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Verbatim

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Overheard via iMessage

Blackout Nass editor: I'm like...attractive.

Overheard via email

Cornell senior, to editorial intern: have you heard of david foster wallace

Overheard in the South

California Jew, to white male: You gotta go get some cracker pussy!
Southern belle: [looks shocked]
California Jew, to belle: What, did that offend you?
Southern belle (horrified): We're at a country club!

Overheard at the Guggenheim

Security guard, to Nass ed: Do you think that men falling in love is a sign of weakness?
Nass ed: Exactly the opposite.
Security guard: Go right on in.

Overheard during UBS harassment training

Training module: Is hugging a man the same as hugging a woman?

Overheard via iMessage

Nass editor: Just talked to my coworker for 10 minutes about fresh produce. It is the longest conversation I have had at the office.