Coughy Club

This week, the Nass learns about acupuncture, melts into absurdity, and takes a break to eat apples.

The Nassau Weekly Volume 44, Number 3 October 3, 2021 In Print since 1979 Online at nassauweekly.com

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October 3, 2021

Coughy Club

Masthead Editor-in-Chief Peter Taylor

Publishers Mika Hyman Anika Khakoo

Alumni Liaison Gina Feliz

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On Imperfect Apples, Mosquito Bites, and the Consciousness of Worms

Managing Editors

Read more on page 5.

By Sabrina Kim and Emma Mohrmann Designed by Isabel Kim

Juju Lane Mina Quesen

Business Manager Jane Castleman

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“Absurd Regularity” : Nass Recommends Regular Show

Senior Editors

By David Chmielewski Designed by Cathleen Weng

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Abigail Glickman Meera Sastry Elliott Weil

In Defense of Sports Junior Editors

By Sam Bisno Designed by Hannah Su

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My Korean Medicine

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Dogflesh

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20 Fun Get-to-Know-You Questions for the Start of the School Year

Lauren Aung Sam Bisno Lara Katz Sabrina Kim Sierra Stern

By Jiyoun Roh Designed by Melina Huang

By Charles Nuermberger Designed by Melina Huang

By Charles Nuermberger Designed by Melina Huang

Head Copy Editor

On Imperfect Apples, Mosquito Bites, and the Consciousness of Worms

Andrew White

Copy Editors Isabelle Casimir Noori Zubieta

Design Editor Melina Huang

Assistant Design Editor Hannah Su

Art Director Drew Pugliese

Web Editor Allie Mangel

Social Chair Bethany Villaruz

Cover Attribution

Historian David Chmielewski Emma Mohrmann

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Volume 44, Number 3

This Week:

Verbatim:

Mon

8:00a Firestone Being: Monday Morning Yoga

2:00p Zoom Intro to Data Analysis with R

Fri

Tues

8:00a Frist FLU FEST!!

5:00p Zoom Pluralizing Mexico: Indigenous Rights, Radical Anthropology

Sat

3:00p Zoom Lights Up Festival with Virgina Grise

7:30p Richardson Princeton University Orchestra: Peter Westergaard

Wed

12:00p Zoom What is “Data” in the Humanities?

12:00p SPIA A New Era for Transatlatic Relations?

The EU and Biden

Sun

1:30p Murray-Dodge Hallelujah Church @ Princeton

2:00p Grad College Live Music Meditation Outdoors: Alexi Kenney

Thurs

5:00p Woolworth Conversation with composer Nathalie Joachim

6:00p Friend 101 Adama Delphine Fawandu and Anna Arabindan-Kesson

Got Events?

Email Mika Hyman at mhyman@princeton.edu with your event and why it should be featured.

For advertisements, contact Jane Castleman at JaneCastleman@ princeton.edu.

Overheard in Blair Arch Sad Junior after spilling Pedialyte on himself: *Kermit voice* Mistakes were made.

Overheard during Study Group Atheist: Well that sounds like bullshit. Back to the word of God! Overheard at Late Night Study Session Neuro Major: I smell at a different frequency.

Overheard at Terrace Well-dressed girlboss: He thought I was a lesbian because I wanted to play CS: GO with him.

Overheard at 2D Senior French major: I think I’m turned on by math.

Senior Comp Lit major: I fell asleep reading a blog about mathematical sequences.

Overheard at Dinner Frosh wearing a Princeton shirt: I hate this school. Fuck Overheard in bedroom Princeton.

Student: *minds her own Junior: Wow, look, an edgy business* freshman.

Spotted lanternfly: *lands on student’s arm* Student: DIE BASTARD *sprays with Windex*

6:00p Wallace Dance Lights Up Festival: Conversation with Calvin Chin

1:00p SPIA

Piranesi Exhibition

Overheard in East Pyne Passionate Philosophy Student: Nowadays you can’t go around saying you agree with Freud or everyone will think you wanna fuck your mom! I don’t wanna fuck my mom—my dad is MUCH hotter!

Overheard at secret society apartment Male junior: I want to kamikaze-bomb the Woodrow Wilson School… in Minecraft.

Overheard in the U-Store at 11pm Football player 1: Yeah it’s gonna be in the 70s for the game tomorrow.

Football player 2: What?!

Football player 1: Just learn Fahrenheit dude.

Overheard at Wu White boy: I think my high school teacher died of a heart attack brought on by white guilt.

Other white boy: That’s how I’m gonna go out.

Overheard at Terrace Someone who likes the French Revolution a little too much: Why can’t we just turn all of the churches into temples of reason again?

Overheard in Palmer Square White dude: I just want to get married, I want a cigar bar, and I want five kids. Other than that, I don’t give a shit.

Submit to Verbatim Email thenassauweekly@gmail.com

About us:

Nassau Weekly is Princeton University’s weekly newsmagazine and features news, op-eds, reviews, fiction, poetry and art submitted by students. Nassau Weekly is part of Princeton Broadcasting Service, the student-run operator of WPRB FM, the oldest college FM station in the country. There is no formal membership of the Nassau Weekly and all are encouraged to attend meetings and submit their writing and art.

Read us: nassauweekly.com Contact us:

thenassauweekly@gmail.com Instagram & Twitter: @nassauweekly

Join us:

We meet on Mondays at 5pm in Frist 212 and Thursdays at 5pm in Bloomberg 044

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Volume 44, Number 3 PAGE DESIGN BY ISABEL KIM DRAWINGS BY EMMA MOHRMANN

On Imperfect Apples, Mosquito Bites, and “But the worm, its dance, its strength—does it forget about it like we do? Does it overthink its directions or notice the moon overhead or the dew drops on the grass? ”

By EMMA MOHRMANN & SABRINA KIM

S—Do you remember when I texted you a photo of Phoebe’s Garden (right next to the goats)?

I was hiking with my dad in California; it was mid-August.

So you were in St. Louis. My dad and I were having a pleasant hike—the sun was beating down, in a way that felt very real and immediate. We don’t talk just the two of us much, but that day, I felt close to him. We went through the dry paths and past the trees and got to Deer Hollow farm, with the goats and boars and Phoebe’s Garden.

The sign made me think of you—mostly because I thought

of “Garden Song” by Phoebe Bridgers, and when I think of Phoebe Bridgers, I think of you.

I think of the walk we took in February along the towpath late at night. The water was dark and large—unlike California, where the trails are all dry. Only evidence of the creeks’ former lives remains: divots alongside trails and bridges over dry earth. But the water by the towpath was large and held the reflection of winding tree limbs.

I remember feeling excited that you had the same specific opinions on Bright Eyes and Taylor Swift and Lorde, and since you liked Phoebe Bridgers so much, I was excited to listen to more of her music. After our walk, I went to the U-Store to buy command hooks. I listened to the Punisher album as I tied a big scarf to my wall like a tapestry. How good it was to be alone in my room, with the scarf on the wall and Phoebe, after being in the world vwith you. I think

I was really happy that night.

I was alone and my bed was warm. And when I closed my eyes, I could see the deep, endless water and hear the sound of our steps: the stillness of nature at night, and the commotion of our happiness.

— E—I went to the Met and for you I chose the postcard of Van Gogh’s potted plants with a well-worn journal with thick expressive brushstrokes.

I imagine the stories it holds.

The vivid strokes unafraid to let consciousness stream from a brush, a pen, experience upon experience oil on oil on blues and yellows and greens.

I wrote in my journal sporadically this summer. I wanted to write more, like you, I really did, but life consumed me and I got busy living in life’s hug, sometimes a choke.

I scrawled a single entry at the

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the Consciousness of Worms end of July—“today I saved a caterpillar.” I think I wanted to convey some cryptic symbolic significance. I guess I could say the caterpillar was stronger than me, but soon he would be crisped in the hot sun on the concrete. He headed toward imminent death on the road, not the grass, but still remained confident in himself. He wriggled, parched. (Maybe he will make it to a graceful, flamboyant butterfly. But I liked him just as much as a caterpillar with its purposeless freedom in incognito crawls.) I picked up a stick, he refused but soon took hold, so I dangled him, a dancing acrobat in the air, before dropping him into the cooler grass in the shade. I like to believe our small acts make a difference, or maybe I just want to be a savior.

I thought of the time we were almost back from the towpath walk, going up the hill. I didn’t even feel the elevation as the

moon streamed down on the pavement below. You pointed out the worm by our feet. We admired its determination, the shiver down its spine (or lack thereof) that propelled it constantly forward, untimid and purposeful, inching confidently. At any second, we could step on it, but it pushed on, unaware of its vulnerability, its strength.

(Similar to being a woman, vulnerable but we felt determined now, we made each other aware of what it means to be and doesn’t mean through stories that hinted at the essence of femininity in our collaged experiences.)

But the worm, its dance, its strength—does it forget about it like we do? Does it overthink its directions or notice the moon overhead or the dew drops on the grass? Does it remember, taste the moonlight and bask in the warmth of friendship in moments like these that echo in my mind months later? With

each change of direction, it didn’t hesitate, and I appreciated that we stopped for that moment to watch the worm.

— S—Today we went to the Forbes garden. I almost said I was too tired to go because I’d sat in classes all day, a bit sleepy. Things have been a bit harder these days.

But after class, sitting still, feeling the wind blow over me in the afternoon seminar we have together—we sat outside and talked about Woolf—I wanted movement. I wanted to believe in the sun and a small patch of land, an escape. I wanted to believe in new growth. To start a new chapter of life is, partly, to welcome the things that could fill it: new modes of friendship, of moving my body, of filling my days.

We pulled weeds and took a break to eat apples—we liked

the imperfection of them— chatting with Edward and Maya and the other gardeners. It’s nice to think about my body intersecting with these other ones for a moment in time, a two-hour slice: our backs hunched over the earth together, the same music, bites from the same mosquitos. Implicitly, they’re reminders of the largeness of the world, the inaccessible depths of other people; we barely skim the surface, talking about our years and majors.

But I wasn’t thinking that hard in the moment. It was just nice to smile with other people and feel the same corner of the earth. We’re humans; we need each other. We need sunlight and to perceive our own voices and the shuffle of our feet. Like the ants and birds, we call to each other: one moment of connection, of seeing and being seen, holds us until the next.

—

CONTINUED ON PAGE 18

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October 3, 2021

PAGE DESIGN BY CATHLEEN WENG

Absurd Regularity A Nass writer reflects on a beloved cartoon

By DAVID CHMIELEWSKI

T

here’s nothing more fun than a nice formulaic show. From crime procedurals to reality competition shows, the regularity of a format executed well can make you forgive the lack of more literary elements like “plot” or “dynamic characters.”

And now that the word regularity has been used, the awkward transition to the topic of this article is complete; it’s time to discuss an early 2010s Cartoon Network animated show. Regular Show is a member of two excellent pantheons: children’s cartoons that hold up into adulthood and formulaic shows which execute their chosen format perfectly. Despite being broadcast on Cartoon Network, ostensibly a home of shows for kids, Regular Show follows Mordecai, a human-sized blue bird, and Rigby, an appropriately sized

raccoon, as they work at a park in their 20s and grapple with all the angst of early adulthood.

In terms of formula, the show revolves around Mordecai and Rigby’s attempts to live life devolving into the disastrous and absurd. In the third episode, for example, Mordecai and Rigby need to work significant overtime to afford tickets for their favorite band Fist Pump (who, in my humble opinion, would be an excellent Lawnparties performer). Rather than take a few extra naps to work up the energy for such extreme feats of labor exploitation, Mordecai and Rigby summon the God of Coffee and blindly agree to sign away their souls in exchange for some extra potent caffeine (a deal many a Princeton student would probably be willing to make as well).

All that is to say, the basic formula of a Regular Show episode consists of Mordecai and Rigby attempting to solve their mundane problems and said attempts quickly escalating into various levels of world-ending

chaos.

However, what’s fascinating about the Regular Show format is how quickly one Lovecraftian horror is forgotten and another is duly faced.

At least in the early seasons, Regular Show has no overarching plot, and continuity is completely irrelevant. One week Mordecai and Rigby will watch their friend Skipps be aged into non-existence by a panel of giant babies who control mortality, and by the next they will have moved on from this encounter and created a black hole in a government lab in order to get grilled cheese at their favorite restaurant. Mordecai and Rigby may be doomed to encounter one simultaneously life-threatening and ridiculous situation after another, but in the face of such an absurd life they hardly react to the terrors they face or experience any change as a result. Absurdity is just a perpetual presence.

In an important piece of context, this article was spawned by a recent marathon

of Regular Show I embarked on with one of my best friends at Princeton. In an amazing demonstration of my inability to resist a whim, we had two distinct three-hour binge sessions after I saw a meme and decided it was our moral obligation to rewatch the show. On reflection, this was just the first example of the many ways in which our Regular Show marathon demonstrated the absurdity of regular life the show is all about. Despite having plenty of schoolwork and extracurricular activities to attend to, we decided devoting over twenty percent of our waking hours across Saturday and Sunday to a cartoon bird and raccoon was a worthy investment of our time, an admittedly completely irrational and absurd choice.

Furthermore, the context in which my friend and I marathoned Regular Show lends itself to utter absurdity as well. While both of us were quickly disillusioned by the institution of Princeton University, it is still worth

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considering just how insane it is that we attend Princeton.

James Madison, Brooke And even beyond my Shields, and over one-third of the current Supreme Court micro-lens of the uniwent here, the endowment is verse, the chance of larger than the GDP of several humanity, or any life on Earth, existing in its nations, and we’ve got some current form required so presumably smart people as many improbable links the professors. If one listens to in a chain of cause and US News (which one shouldn’t), this is the most academically effect. rigorous and prestigious university in America. And if one listens to President Eisgruber (which one also shouldn’t), we are technically the future leaders of America. This is all absurd; the historical and societal pressure on every Princeton student to succeed is ludicrous. Yet, my friend and I have become so thoroughly desensitized to the Princeton context that the absurdity of going here is just a part of our life and we can feel fine wasting part of our “precious” four years here on animated shows.

Zooming out even

further, everything about our life at Princeton and beyond must be thought of as absurd.

For example, a truly ridiculous string of events was required for me to end up in the middle of nowhere, New Jersey.

First, the entire world had to be embroiled in a fifty year Cold War, eventually leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to both of my parents separately immigrating to the United States. Then, within the United States they both had to move to Connecticut and end up at the same kielbasa store on the same day in order to meet and eventually have me.

The chances of my existence, let alone my ending up at Princeton where I would later meet my friend, are absurdly low. In another equally feasible universe, I am a humble Polish farmer writing a reflection for Warszawski Tygodnik. And even beyond my micro-lens of the universe, the chance of humanity, or any life on Earth,

existing in its current form required so many improbable links in a chain of cause and effect. However, on a daily basis, we understandably don’t think about the absurdity of our existence due to how quickly it can collapse into existential dread.

Instead, we pretend that existence is normal and become desensitized to just how crazy literally everything is. Put briefly, much like Mordecai and Rigby, we make the absurd into the regular.

Fundamentally, this is the strength of Regular Show as a show; it exists as both a pseudo-absurdist masterful commentary on life and a very entertaining cartoon. The jokes in Regular Show aren’t super complex (one of the funniest side character’s main gimmick is literally shouting “My Mom”) and one can easily turn their brain off and enjoy it as silly children’s programming.

But, if you are willing to engage with the themes the show

implicitly deals with, watching Regular Show becomes like looking into a mirror of daily life. Regular Show makes you laugh at immature jokes, but it also makes you write drawnout think pieces for alternative campus weekly magazines.

And, if anything, this just makes the show’s representation of the absurd regularity of life even better; sometimes the most “intellectual” thinking can come from the “stupidest” places.

However, what’s fascinating about the Nassau Weekly format is how quickly one David Chmielewski horror is forgotten and another is duly faced.

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October 3, 2021

PAGE DESIGN BY HANNAH SU

In Defense of Sports Wherein the writer defends one of our greatest national obsessions.

By SAM BISNO

R

ussell Martin watched an 89-mile-per-hour cut fastball zip past him. It was an easy take—a good foot outside of the zone, bringing the tally to two balls and one strike.

A favorable count for a hitter.

Cincinnati Reds pitcher Johnny Cueto received his catcher’s return toss and readied himself for another delivery. But something wasn’t right. The 27-yearold hurler, enjoying another dominant season, was known for his confidence; his trademark move was an exaggerated shimmy in the middle of his windup, as if to say to the soonto-be-victimized batter, “I’m so good that I can dance while I

strike you out.” It was Cueto’s assuredness, after all, that had earned him the start that night: this was win or go home, a onegame affair between bitter division rivals to determine which team would advance to the playoffs and which would see their months-long season end in sorrow. But now the right-hander was visibly rattled: he took a slow lap around the pitcher’s mound, knocked the dirt off of his cleats, wiped his hands on his pants. Maybe his nerves had something to do with the 40,000 Pittsburgh Pirates fans, who had filled PNC Park to capacity and were spilling onto the nearby Roberto Clemente Bridge, shouting his name in an incessant, rhythmic chant: “CUE-TO, CUE-TO.” They had been doing this all night, and it was clear that they were finally getting to him. As Cueto stared off into the distance in an attempt to compose himself, the

baseball came loose from his glove and fell to the ground.

It rolled just a few feet away, and Cueto nonchalantly bent over to pick it up. But he wasn’t fooling anybody: in unison, the spectators let out a cheer so loud I swear I could hear it from my house less than a mile from the stadium. On the TV broadcast, play-by-play announcer Ernie Johnson remarked presciently, “Well, this standing-room-only crowd [is] trying to get under Johnny Cueto’s skin, and they might be.” Seconds later, Cueto grooved a pitch right down the middle that Martin promptly deposited in the left-field stands for a home run. It would prove to be the game’s decisive score, earning the Pirates their first playoff appearance in 21 years.

The morning after Cueto’s ill-timed slip, since mythologized in baseball lore as “The Drop Seen ‘Round the World,” the front page of the Pittsburgh

Post-Gazette featured two separate stories about the impact of the Pirates fans on the outcome of the game. Crammed into the leftmost column of the spread in small print are two other headlines, evidently of less concern: “Budget fight, Obamacare are political perfect storm” and “Netanyahu stands firm against Iranian nukes.”

What do we make of the fact that far more popular energy—both in the moment and in news coverage the following day—was concentrated on a single man wearing a uniform of imagined significance dropping a single, tiny mass of leather and cork of equally imagined significance than on a federal government shutdown or geopolitical disaster and the prospect of nuclear annihilation?

It’s a question we face every time the proverbial water cooler is regaled with talk of standings

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and slam dunks rather than disquisitions on climate change and systemic racism: Why do sports consume so much national bandwidth and brainpower in the face of our planet’s many pressing crises?

The easy answer is to say that people just don’t know—or, perhaps worse, don’t care— about what’s truly important.

From within the ivy-covered walls of Princeton, where we like to think about Big Serious things that usually end with -ism or -ic, it’s tempting to dismiss the obsessive Pirates fan as uneducated and uninteresting. I know I feel a twinge of embarrassment admitting to my humanities friends that I like to unwind by listening to Dave O’Brien and Dennis Eckersley (the TV announcers of my favorite Red Sox) debate the meaning of the term “cheese” as it relates to the velocity of a fastball; I reflexively tab away whenever I’m watching a football game and

I hear my roommate come in.

But to relegate sports to the realm of the frivolous and petty is to forget their position at the center of the American consciousness—and to do so in a way that perpetuates the centuries-old elitism and classism (oops, there go my -isms) of academia. To make the point, let’s think for a second about the nature of a sports fanbase. I’ll use that of my hometown Steelers as an example.

If Steelers fandom were a religion, Steelerism would, according to the number of people who have liked the team’s Facebook page, clock in somewhere around the tenth-most widely practiced faith in the world. Is that analogy entirely fanciful? A friendly sports bet: ask a dozen Pittsburghers (or Yinzers, as we call ourselves) what their plans are on Sunday between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. I’ll wager that six of them will tell you they’re

watching the game. Another two will chuckle in disbelief and call you a jagoff—of course they’re watching the game. Let’s say the other four are grocery shopping. Rest assured the in-store speaker system is carrying the broadcast. It’s a church of sorts, complete with its rites and sacred texts: the seldom-washed Ben Roethlisberger jersey, the Terrible Towel, the Gospel of Blitzburgh. It’s something millions of people build their lives around for five months out of the year—and spend the rest of the liturgical calendar getting ready for.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

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Volume 44, Number 3 PAGE DESIGN BY MELINA HUANG

My Korean Medicine “Just sit back and surround yourself with the stories I have to share about acupuncture, cupping, and pricking.”

By JIYOUN ROH

I

am Korean American.

Growing up, this meant some basic things, like eating various stews, speaking Korean with family, or celebrating two New Year’s and Thanksgivings.

To a lesser extent, my Korean roots also influenced remedies that my family uses on simple illnesses, all the way from indigestion to chronic pain and sprains. In surrounding myself with forms of healing that are not traditionally American, I’ve come to realize that my medicine is as much a part of my culture as everything that is more “obvious” is. They are as normal to me as cough syrup is to any American individual.

In fact, I believe that through comprehending the forms of healing that I engaged in—and still depend on—you can understand my cultural identity a bit more. Don’t worry, I won’t dump a bunch of technical information on you. Just sit back and surround yourself with the

stories I have to share about acupuncture, cupping, and pricking.

Acupuncture As a child, acupuncture was something that I knew existed but never dabbled in. Part of it was never having an injury serious enough to warrant acupuncture, while the other part was a shying away from the image of it—that cluster of silver needles sunk into skin.

It wasn’t that I doubted the efficacy of acupuncture; in fact, because I had witnessed my mom’s relief after her appointments, acupuncture to me was simply medicine, not “oriental medicine.” It was that I simply didn’t want to be treated with something that seemed so tangibly painful.

But in eighth grade, I sprained my wrist. My mom insisted on acupuncture, yet it was only after a couple weeks (when I grew tired of the stupid, sweaty brace) that I agreed to one visit.

My mother and I arrived at an acupuncture clinic located at the back of a church. Everything was familiar to me—the herbal smell of the waiting room, the

chitchat of the Korean ladies with gray perms, the curtains that sectioned off each clinic space. I was led to a corner room, thrust into an earthtoned environment, where the golden lamp barely illuminated the beige walls and wooden bed. The supply table beside the cot sported needles of various shapes and sizes, as well as sterile wipes and towels. I would be lying if I didn’t say I almost chicken out right then, but I managed to hold on strong while the acupuncturist examined my wrist, prodding for pain and massaging specific sections.

I didn’t even notice the first needle. I had glanced away for one moment, yet in the next, a needle was sticking out of my wrist. Just like that. The second one, however, I paid attention to. The acupuncturist deftly lifted a needle, put the point against my skin, then tapped the top. In a half-breath, a metal sliver jutted from my hand. It was as if the acupuncturist had coaxed it out of flesh. This time, I did feel a tiny prick, but I was too engaged in the novelty of it that I barely gave it thought.

This procedure—lift, place, tap—went on fifteen more

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times. By the end, even my unhurt wrist had birthed a couple of needles. The pain had ranged from no sensation to a lead pencil jab. In the end, my porcupine wrists were left basking under a heat lamp for ten minutes or so before being rendered free of the needles.

And so went my first acupuncture experience. It had been one thing to accompany my mom on her acupuncture appointments, a witness to her bliss, and another to experience the relief myself. For a few days after, my wrist throbbed less and moved more freely.

I made weekly acupuncture appointments a routine for a couple more weeks, by the end of which my wrist had healed completely.

Being on the receiving end put into perspective that delicate balance between pain of healing and relief from the initial injury. It reduced not only my irrational fear of acupuncture but also my apprehension

of other forms of treatment. (In fact, I transitioned from shying away from shots to having staring contests with the needle as it delivered an invisible vaccine!) Most importantly, being privy to that painlessness helped introduce another layer of connection of between my mom and I, a sort of shared perspective—or even secret— that said Oh, that pain? Just tap some needles into it.

Cupping

In the back of my house is a closet, and in that closet is a hefty red-and-gold box full of translucent cups and a hand pump. For as long as I can remember, the cupping kit has been in my family’s possession. And for longer than that, I’ve been my mom’s go-to cupping person.

In this way, cupping is more familiar to me than acupuncture; I’ve been an agent in the process for quite a while, mostly

as the giver and sometimes as the receiver.

The healing begins when my mom complains of back pain. It’s always the upper back, that junction where the neck meets the shoulder. While I bring out the kit from the top of that closet, my mom lies on her stomach, back exposed. I take a seat by her head, let her voice guide my hand as I press down on certain points on her back; she is the one telling me exactly where I should place the first cup.

I press the flat side of the cup on her shoulder, holding it steady as I fit the nozzle of the hand pump (although it’s more like an air gun) onto the rubber tunnel at the point of the cup. With a few swooshes, I force air into the cup until it sticks right against her skin, held there via suction. Already, the skin caught inside the cup darkens from beige to mottled red—the color that indicates that blood flow has increased. I

know from experience that cupping feels exactly as one would imagine, like a vacuum has been placed on your skin and tightened it, a mildly uncomfortable yet deeply relieving sensation.

With the first mark set, I travel down the line of her back, enacting the same fate with five more cups, then switch over to the other shoulder. At my mom’s request, I cup other parts of her back but rarely mess with the spine. From this point, it’s a game of attentiveness broken by moments of action. Cups lose their suctioning power relatively quickly, and as per my grandmother’s recommendation, cup and skin should be aligned for at least ten minutes. This means that these rascals tend to slowly escape by sliding off the back, and it’s my responsibility to pump more air into the ones that seem like they’re coming loose.

Once time is up, I

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loosen each cup by rotating the rubber top. To force the change in circulation to be more gradual, I frantically knead the cupped spot for a couple of seconds. At this point, my mom’s whole back is covered in these neatly placed battle wounds— angry red circles, ranging from pale to purple-red. She always asks me to point out the darkest spot, confirming (almost proudly) that the pre-cupped aching was the worst there. The circles will fade within a week or two, but until then, she’ll inevitably receive some looks from folks unfamiliar with cupping.

But if these looks are the only side effects from cupping, both my mom and I will take it over any other pain-relief method. The effects are almost miraculous. It goes like this: before the process, I can barely turn my neck. Even if I manage to do so, my upper back throbs.

My body feels tight; I’m unhappy. In comes cupping: the method feels like someone has tightened the already tightened parts of my body and then let them loose just as quickly. It’s like they’ve squeezed the pain out of me—one moment, I’m grumbling; the next, I’m all smiles because my shoulder

doesn’t feel tight anymore. It’s instantaneous. Often, it’s all it takes to rebound from a night of wrong sleep.

Pricking

As “alternative” forms of medicine have become more popular in the United States, I’ve become accustomed to my friends’ familiarity with acupuncture and cupping. Yet the third form of healing that completes my holy trinity of Korean medicine has never gained traction, partly because it’s such an unconventional solution to a unique problem: indigestion.

Pricking is for the days when I eat five thousand slices of pizza in one sitting, or when I inhale my food, or, according to my mother, when I sit with bad posture when eating (hunching over because it’s cold). It’s when the food I’ve recently consumed feels like it’s stuck, undigested, in the upper part of my organs, creating this uncomfortable-verging-on-painful pressure in my chest. I need to burp, but I can’t. It’s all-too-familiar.

When I was younger, my mom was the one to prick my finger. Now, I’m comfortable

enough that I can navigate it on my own. So I like to think that I have double agency in pricking, both as caregiver and patient.

First is a systems check.

Are my earlobes cold? The tips of my fingers? It’s conventional knowledge, at least in my family, that indigestion is present when the body reacts in this way. Now, is the point between forefinger and thumb tight? I knead-pinch this spot with my opposite hand. If it feels unnaturally painful and hard to the touch, then again, indigestion could be on the cards. In fact, because it is a pressure point, kneading-pinching this spot helps the food go down more easily, indicated by burps and a softening of skin.

Only then do I pull out my supplies: a benign-looking pen, sewing thread, and a paper towel. The pen sports a disposable needle at the end; when I click the top, just as I would do with a normal pen, the needle shoots out and in. It takes a millisecond.

I rub down my arm to “move” the blood down to my fingers, then tightly wrap the thread around my thumb right below the knuckle. The upper part of the thumb, caught in

a torrent of blood, should be swollen and purpling. I prick the point right above the knuckle with the pen-needle and observe as black blood blooms from the wound, ready with a paper towel to smear the gelatinous liquid off my thumb. (The color of the blood is important, as the darker the blood, the worse the indigestion is. It’s an indication that the blood is impure.) After two or three drops of blood emerge from my thumb, I facilitate the bleeding by squeezing blood out of my thumb, until nothing comes out of the puncture. The last step is unwrapping the thread, a whoosh as circulation is set in motion in the upper portion of my thumb once more.

The relief that I receive from pricking is even more instantaneous than cupping.

When that first drop of blood is released, that pull in my chest lessens, my whole body sighs.

Once I prick the other thumb, the tightness in my chest is almost completely gone. It disappears once I burp—something that either happens immediately after the first prick or after a few minutes. If the tightness is still there (and this is rare), I’ll repeat the process on my other

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Volume 44, Number 3

fingers. My mom once told me that when she experienced an especially bad episode of indigestion, her mother bled out all ten fingers and toes!

Sometimes, I chug a Korean herbal drink after, rightfully named “gas medicine” because it functions like flavored sparkling water, just in a fancy glass container. And so the food in my stomach prances happily into the process of digestion.

Conclusion

Acupuncture.

Cupping. Pricking: my holy trinity of Korean medicine. I don’t expect you to try these processes out immediately after reading this. (In fact, please talk to a professional—or me—if you want to try any of these forms of medicine out!) But I would like to point that this is the healing that I grew up with, that I feel most connected to my cultural roots with. In a way, engaging in Korean medicine heals me in many ways, in my relationships with family, my connection with a culture that precedes me by thousands of years yet still

remains all around me, and finally but most importantly, my physical body itself.

Jiyoun Roh did feel a tiny prick, but was too engaged in the novelty of the Nassau Weekly that she barely gave it thought.

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Volume 44, Number 3 PAGE DESIGN BY MELINA HUANG

DOGFLESH “There is one conclusion then: these are not dogs barking in the street. If they were dogs, I would not be afraid.”

By CHARLES NUERMBERBER

T

he baying of the dogs stopped at two. At the time, I wasn’t concerned with their sudden stillness; I just wanted to go to sleep.

Somehow though, without their cyclical, rhythmic yelps in the street, it wouldn’t happen. The rhythm had stopped, and that emptiness, somehow, in some capacity, was more disconcerting than their howling. Maybe, I’m just an insomniac.

I keep my room desolate.

I’ve neglected the water damage percolating through a sagging ceiling like a coffee filter.

I’ve stacked the three books my ex-girlfriend lent me on a chair.

I haven’t read them. I sleep—or rather try to—on an emaciated,

little mattress on the floor. The floor is hardwood. I live like a monk; I like the religiosity of it. There are many things I loathe about myself, but this god-fearing existence is not one of them because it allows me to plot out big questions. This monastic austerity is nice, for me, getting back up on my feet and everything.

The dogs start up again; it’s 2:45. It is metrical, planned. It cycles like a radar system alerting me to the presence of some entity lying just outside my field of perception. Their cries incise an otherwise silent night. I expected the howls of these street dogs to become ragged, desperate, but they are nothing except constant and unflinching.

There is a pattern in their barking, I am sure. They are telling me something.

I listen for several minutes.

If there’s a pattern, then there is something they want me to know; there is something

they want me to do. I am the servant of these dogs, at their nocturnal beck and call. Have I done all that’s expected of me recently? Did I finish those reports? (no). Have I cooked myself dinner tonight? (yes, it wasn’t very good). Have I called my mother?

I should call my mother. She picks up on the fourth ring; I must have woken her.

Faintly: “Jesus Christ.” Now more clearly: “Charles, it’s the middle of the night.”

“I was just thinking about how I haven’t called you in a while.”

“Ok.” A beat. “Can you listen to these dogs? Do they sound weird to you?”

“Weird how?”

“Too regular.”

“Charles, it just sounds like dogs barking.”

“Ok.” “I’m going to hang up now.”

It does not just sound like

dogs barking. If it does, then I’m crazy. These are not just regular dogs barking at three in the morning. They are telling me something, and I am afraid.

I am not afraid of dogs. I had a dog when I was young; it did not bite me. Its name was Max, and he was a mutt. He sat outside all summer and barked at squirrels and birds and people.

He ate things he wasn’t supposed to. Max barked, but not like this. I bear no latent trauma towards canines. I don’t think. I like dogs.

There is one conclusion then: these are not dogs barking in the street. If they were dogs, I would not be afraid. This isn’t how dogs are supposed to act. There is something else out there, maybe many things, out the window.

The dogs require a response.

I have long since removed myself from my saintly little mattress and begun pacing. What do they expect me to do? How

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October 3, 2021

00:3

MA54:2

2:45AM 2:45AM

am I supposed to acknowledge that I have received their message?

I get down on my hands and knees, cold on the hardwood. I get a splinter in my palm. The dogs stop barking. It’s silent outside my window. It’s dark, and there’s nothing out there.

For a moment, I consider that all this has been a delusion, that I am just sleep-deprived and unstable, that I have mistaken the typical baying of dogs for a coded message from some greater entity. It’s still quiet. They are waiting for my response, in silence, patiently, politely.

This is stupid. I’m not going to howl with some dogs, constructed from my delusion or not; this requires greater action.

I get my shoes on, walk out the door before the throaty yelp of a dog shatters some saner part of the night, and once again, the message cycle sets into motion.

I feel as if most of this is just me falling apart.

When I was younger—not that much younger—I would run after midnight, when the cruelest heat dissipates from the pavement, when most folks retreat to their homes, when I can’t hear anything except the barking of a stray dog. Tonight, I cannot hear anything except the barking of a stray dog. I start picking at the splinter in my hand: the shard of wood is really lodged in there.

I have removed myself from my priestly room up there, and now I am walking the streets.

It’s colder than I would’ve thought. There aren’t any people out, but their tall, impassive buildings are still here. They have left their things behind them: heaps of waste, a completed page from a coloring book, gum, more cigarette butts than I would have expected. Do people still smoke? Should I start smoking?

This is nice though; this is really nice. I’m getting

MA54:2

some really nice clarity out here, with the cloud cover blotting out all this glowing light, with a stolid reacquaintance with humanity and all its little creations, with the marked absence of any dogs here. I feel monk-like, ascetic.

But a dog apparates into the street; it lopes around the corner and appears there. It looks like a dog, and I don’t really know what that means, how this works. Its bones grin through stringy dogflesh: a ribcage, a spinal cord, a jawbone.

The creature is constructed like a dog. I can see it, smell it, feel it. This is a street dog. “Shit.”

I half-expected to find nothing out here: a dimly-illuminated nightscape void of anything that could be construed as a dog, anything capable of making dog-sounds. Here is a dog though. It doesn’t bark or anything because its pinkish tongue lolls from its mouth, panting, panting like a dog. I

can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.

I lean over to check, but it’s too dark out. I wonder what my ex-girlfriend would think about this. It is Max; it is a dog.

I should call my mother, say, “Look! Look! It is a dog, and this is all very strange. I have solved this great mystery, and now I can go to sleep. I am sorry to wake you again, but I have won.”

The dog speaks: “Charles, you are an idiot. Sequestered in your little cell or out here parading these boulevards, you are a fool. You have an insipid tendency to rationalize the little things, the strange things, Charles. That is a necessary act for you, this reliance on comprehension to survive, to sleep. You question all things within that subjective experience of yours, and it’s stupid.

The dogs are barking, yes; you have recognized a pattern that many have seen prior. Your assumption that you are the

intended receiver of this message, though, will be your ultimate undoing: conceited man in that lonely tower. You are a man who observed the motions of the world and believed so absolutely that this wonderful gift, or curse, or however you would like to conceptualize it, was bestowed upon you. Look at the mechanics of this place; you cannot understand them; you cannot know their intention. These are questions for the dogs, Charles.”

Charles walked back to his room and went to sleep.

Charles Nuermberger sat outside all summer and barked at squirrels and birds and the Nassau Weekly.

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Volume 44, Number 3

In Defense of Sports

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

In his bestselling Sapiens, historian Yuval Noah Harari outlines the usefulness of popular narratives and beliefs, which he dubs “fictions,” in facilitating interpersonal exchange: “Fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story … and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers.”

Consider now that the slogan “Steeler Nation” adorns countless doormats and bumper stickers across western Pennsylvania. Sports fandom is a fiction through and through— an extremely powerful fiction with the capacity to unite strangers unlike any other fiction in modern America at that.

When I see someone walking down the street with a Red Sox cap on, I’m immediately drawn to them. I’ll wave, tell them I’m a lifelong fan, ask them their opinion on whether Eovaldi or Sale should start the Wild Card Game. I know the awesome electricity of taking my seat in a sold-out crowd at Fenway Park in Boston. There’s an intoxication to being surrounded by thousands of people who share the same fiction as you do, who also live and die by every fictional crack of the bat and bangbang play. And because the Pirates are usually awful, their games rarely reach maximum attendance, perhaps explaining why it meant so much when the ball fell out of Cueto’s glove on that chilly Pittsburgh night in 2013. It was truly a once-ina-lifetime achievement for a Buccos fan—the exultant payoff for years of fruitless belief, and the knowledge that everyone else is feeling the same thing.

In short, sports matter.

People care about them deeply, and they materially affect the ways in which Americans interact with one another. To me, that’s reason enough to stop turning our noses up at them, to stop disregarding what is perhaps the most important cultural phenomenon of the day. Now allow me to suggest something even more controversial: not only do sports matter, but their fans aren’t as far removed from Princeton and our Big Serious studies as we might think.

There’s this scene in Moneyball, probably the best sports movie of all time, in which Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), the savvy general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is addressing a room full of overly optimistic scouts.

He distills the difficulties their team faces into one acerbic line: “The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are

rich teams, and there are poor teams.” He pauses. “Then there’s 50 feet of crap. And then there’s us.” In the 2002 season that is the film’s focus, the Athletics had a payroll of $39 million, less than a third of that of the New York Yankees, who had eliminated the A’s from the playoffs the year prior and were now wielding their immense wealth to lure Oakland’s best player to the Big Apple. Beane’s message to his staff was that they would have to innovate.

If they were going to compete, they would need to find ways to tinker at the margins and identify value where other front offices couldn’t (or didn’t bother to). It was a nice theory, enabling the A’s to reach the postseason again despite losing most of their talent to richer teams. In the end, however, they were knocked out in the first round just like they had been the season before. Shortly thereafter, my Red Sox, another

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wealthy franchise, attempted to hire Beane as their general manager, offering him what would have been at the time the highest salary in the history of professional sports for that position. Beane, a romantic, declined, and in 2003, the A’s were eliminated in the Division Series for the third season in a row—this time at the hands of the Red Sox. The next season, as the movie’s closing title card informs us, Boston coupled Beane’s data-driven philosophy with a mountain of cash to win their first World Series in 86 years.

I would have put a spoiler alert ahead of that last bit, but, as most working people will tell you, there’s nothing unpredictable there. It’s an old story: the rich gut the poor, and when the poor prove resilient, the rich appropriate their means of resistance and get richer. The underdog doesn’t just win.

I don’t know many Yinzers who want to spend their Sunday

afternoons analyzing the wealth gap. Certainly, it isn’t my idea of a relaxing way to recharge before the week. The seminal literature on the subject has a few too many footnotes for the backyard barbecue. But I’ve heard many cogent halftime rants concerning the greed of owners, the injustice of the so-called franchise tag, and the not-so-coincidental coincidence that football’s most dangerous positions are principally manned by players of color while quarterbacks and kickers are overwhelmingly white. There have been plenty of seventh-inning-stretch discussions about the commodification of players, the ludicrous pay disparity between minorand major-league contracts, and the ethics of having a disproportionately white press decide who gets into the Hall of Fame from a disproportionately Latino league. And of course, from Jackie Robinson,

Muhammad Ali, and Billie Jean King in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s to Megan Rapinoe, Colin Kaepernick, and LeBron James in more recent times, sports figures have often been at the forefront of tectonic shifts in U.S. politics and society. In other words, sports are a metaphor, a prism through which urgent issues—the kinds of issues academics think they’re exclusive experts on—are refracted and magnified onto a facade of rivalries and superstars and athletic display so that they become easier to spot and more interesting to engage with. And hey, if you yell loud enough, you might just affect the outcome. (Can we say that about Congress?)

There are, of course, many problematic features of the American sports landscape. It’s hypermasculine. It’s violent.

It’s often too refractive, obscuring the very dimensions of race and class that we had hoped it would render visible. These are

all valid critiques. I also don’t claim to be the spokesperson for all sports fans. For some, sports are just an escape, a way to attain that heady togetherness of the Cueto dropped ball and nothing else. That’s okay too. But professional organized athletics aren’t going anywhere; stands packed with conspicuously unmasked fans following the relaxation of pandemic protocols are ample evidence of that. We ought to recognize sports for what they are: an integral part of this country’s culture, a source of true meaning for millions, and, whether in the living room, the bar, or the booming stadium, a potential vehicle for progress.

Well, the Nassau Weekly is trying to get under Sam Bisno’s skin, and they might be.

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October 3, 2021

been popular among mosquitos. As I bend over, they attack the backs of my legs—merciless, paying no attention to the oily film of Bug Off! on my skin. I know I’ll be itchy as hell tonight, and maybe I’ll wake myself up to my own scratching. Strangely, I don’t really mind. Bug bites remind me of my aliveness; remind me of my skin, its softness and redness and need.

—

On Imperfect Apples, Mosquito Bites, and the Consciousness of Worms

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

E—I gardened today. The dirt sits under my nails.

We admired the imperfections of the apples, fingering the uniqueness of each. In the Forbes garden, we talked of love and ourselves and friendships and the level of similarity and reciprocity needed to be in love and what we want out of life (fuck optimization) and our ability to dream and our mothers and birth and the sex lives of cicadas. We tasted the burst of ripeness in fresh picked grape tomatoes, sweet punctures of orange pop music notes sliding down my taste buds. The loudness of our friendship and the quiet calm contentment we have intermingled as we grow together too from the seeds we planted months ago.

— S—Both of us have always

E—I painted yesterday. The paint sits under my nails. My hands were white and gray and I watched the water go from black to gray to clear and saw my fingers. I basked in their power to create, I’ve always loved hands, the gradient capabilities of power and extreme tenderness in the same vessel of joints, the fingerprints that make us our own that I could trace and trace and trace. I think of the hands I’ve held and that have held me.

— S—I remember visiting my sister’s art studio. It was when she was still a freshman or sophomore in high school, before she got her driver’s license—my mom would pick her up, asking if I could come along so she could take the carpool lane on the highway. In the car, we passed through that big street in Cupertino—De Anza Boulevard—and I looked at all the signs for grocery stores and music classes and tea shops and test prep schools.

When we stepped inside the studio, I felt the silence of the place wash over me. It was the sound of walls covered in stilllifes and dragon paintings and figure drawings and students

absorbed by their work. I loved being inside; it felt like church.

I’d find my sister in the back, listening to music on earbuds, hunched over an easel: her practice, a prayer.

— E—I remember the St. Louis heat enveloping me as I untangled the long grassy weeds that I hated because their roots were deep and interconnected with Grandpa’s bush; the codependency meant weeding would take some “good” life with it. And I could already see clovers showing their naive sprouts where I had weeded the Saturday before. I wonder why I do it, when they’re just gonna grow back. I like to think the moments of beauty are worth it, maybe the temporality reminds me both of my smallness and my strength to keep existing.

I thought of gardening metaphors—gotta attack it from the root, so it won’t come back. Sometimes it still does, though. But I loved that this was my chance not to think of metaphors, not to think of anything, lose myself in my Nature Hoe playlist or the breeze or the wrens that just came to my grandpa’s birdhouses in his backyard offering melody to the incohesive bass of the trash trucks driving down the potholed suburban street. I love the cool dirt that runs through my fingers, settles under my nails, the sweat that timidly traces my spine, then picks up pace, the grass imprints from kneeling, obeisance, my complete loss of perception of time.

— S—The day after we went to the garden, we sat on my bed and painted on paper I brought

from home. Watercolor paper—part of my sister’s bounty of art supplies—is something I always make sure to pack when I leave home; the preparation to get nice small rectangles out of the big sheets is somewhat of a ritual. I cut the sheet down with scissors, and when it’s small enough to fit into the paper cutter, I slice the sheet down.

The thought of unborn birthday cards and thank-you letters and “just saying hi” notes, always makes me smile. When I cut the paper, I think of how my mom taught me to be prepared with greeting cards in new settings—prepared to give, to say thank you, to express love.

Someone I loved said I gave and expected the same in return.

Maybe it’s true—maybe I shout into the world just for the echo back. I am my mother’s child, but on this, we differ—she gives for the sake of it. What if I gave to myself for the sake of it, not demanding anything back from myself?

— E—More than all of that, I loved my grandpa’s memories.

He shared stories that summer; they almost didn’t finish the concrete job. My dad smiled at me, we knew grandpa had told this one before. Never drink a beer before you are finished, he teased as he handed me a can, knowing it only contained sparkling water (a novelty) and the fizz bubbled on my tongue, mini explosions of coral against royal blue splattering on my tastebuds. They finished somehow, never again, my grandpa said with a laugh, hindsight makes it lighthearted, brings the twinkle to his eye he gets when telling stories he still sees, but I can only play on a second-hand film reel in my

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Volume 44, Number 3

head.

I carry his echo. It feels good to write it here; maybe we’re not so impermanent in this life.

The dirt sat beneath my fingernails, I washed them in the sink that sat beneath sage-colored wallpapered walls with the scent of Japanese cherry blossom hand soap.

— S—You painted my ficus plant, on the verge of a fourth leaf uncurling itself, with thin strokes. It was caught in a moment of time. I had this realization for the plant that I often have for myself: there is no going back, only forward on the axis of time. Every second we’re getting older; the leaf peeps out just a little more.

— E—Can I grow a vegetable garden? Sorry, we’re moving soon, my dad said every summer for the past four years.

— S—If I’m honest, I felt a bit silly, mixing colors with no destination, approximating paint-water ratios and guessing how the pigment will land on the paper. I painted bushes with red little flowers and a sun against a sky that fades into an unreal purple. I smiled a bit. I only have this painting experience: painting beside a real artist, someone who knows what they’re doing. I remember painting atop a hill in San Francisco, overlooking the Victorian houses with my sister.

Or in her dorm, with candles and sweet wine and Marriage

Story playing from her projector. These are the moments I’ve felt most like a little sister.

I don’t have a visual artist’s vocabulary; I am a musician. I think in movement and bodily control and the shape of sound.

Music, a paradoxical space— the democracy and hierarchy of notes and moving parts, the coexisting of ease and much effort, of intuition and cognition.

Painting is an expression of the self filtered through my clumsy body—my stubby and short fingers. But it was meditative, the process of building something as our conversation wandered in and out of different rooms.

I felt grounded and happy to have produced something soft and colorful.

— E—The scent of bug spray (what life do we choose to repel?) brought me back to a year ago in her garden far away, with purple cabbages that reminded me of kings’ plush capes and crowns. We played each other’s music and you liked mine. We stripped ferns bare to feed the fermentation, the compost perpetuating the cycle of birth, fulfillment, death, renewal. This is peace, we agreed, unaware of the future.

We had dirt beneath our fingernails. We washed our hands in buckets.

— S—I had the painting sitting on my desk and I was packing mail for loved ones—a sweater too big for me for a friend in Davis, CA, and a coffee tumbler I’ll ship home for my dad’s

birthday. I wrote a birthday message on the back of the painting and slipped it into the cardboard box. He’ll never know all the layers of the moment—the hike I took with him, Phoebe’s Garden, you, art, your father and stories of your childhood— the incredible web that holds us in connection and memory. But he has the painting of bushes and a purple sky. And that moment explodes into a million living, breathing things.

— E—I love the feeling of creation and being a part of creation but also the simultaneous release of needing to create, a trust that it will be fruitful and something will grow from what we sow in the present. I don’t know if I believe in religion but there’s some larger hands than mine that coax the leaves up (the flowers with the weeds, gotta take the crooked with the straights my dad quotes).

If there’s a God out there I like to think she appreciates having dirt under her nails.

But Emma Mohrmann and Sabrina Kim liked the Nassau Weekly just as much as a caterpillar with its purposeless freedom in incognito crawls

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October 3, 2021

PAGE DESIGN BY HANNAH SU

20 Fun Get-to-Know-You Questions for the Start of the School Year Everything you need to break the ice

By Hazel Flaherty and Kristiana Filipov

1.

What is your favorite color?

14. Why did you steal Fifi?

2. How many siblings do you have?

15. Have you ever been a single parent?

3. Where are you from?

16. Do you know what it’s like to lose a child?

4. What is your favorite study spot on campus?

17. How could you say that he ran away when you

5. What are your thoughts on exotic pets on campus?

6. Did you know I have a pet squirrel?

7. Did you know that squirrels are really loyal and loving pets when treated with a tender touch?

8. Would you ever ruin someone’s life intentionally?

9. Where were you on Friday night at 11:30 p.m.?

know how happy I made him?

18. Did you see how I hand fed Fifi individual oats every morning before I left for class, tucked him into bed every night, and bathed him in sweet rose water?

19. Why would Fifi leave me after all I’ve done for

10. Have you ever felt immeasurable pain?

him? Why wouldn’t he love me as much as I love

11. Have you ever suffered the loss of a loved one?

him? Is life worth living without your best friend

12. Do you know how much I love him?

by your side?

13. Did you know that his name is Fifi?

20. What Res College are you in?