Dearest Sun-Worshippers, Please let me be the first to welcome you to the University of Pennsylvania! Now that we’ve established the most base of pleasantries, let me also be the first to say that you no longer worship the sun; you worship me. That’s right, the former golden emperor of your life, around which the planets revolve, has been replaced by an empress — me! But come to think of it, “empress” is such an earthly, gendered moniker. Given the fact that I transcend age, gender, historical fact, physical corpus, and even time itself, let’s just agree that I am the all-encompassing, omnipresent ruler and sacred commander of your life. Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it? Well I, for one, feel better after establishing that. I hope you do too! Just kidding — I don’t care even remotely how you feel. Because you, dear reader, are nothing but a dirty, dirty undergraduate. To be honest, rather than refer to you as “Undergraduate” I’d prefer to instead call you “The Slime Beneath My Hooves,” but my publicistturned-ski instructor told me that it might be offensive to your parents.
Volume XCII
NSO 2015
Parents I find within my heart to care about, because parents often pay tuition, and tuition is akin to beach volleyball in that it is one of few earthly traditions that I respect. While many of you filthy undergraduates have blood coursing through your veins, I have pure, unadulterated liquid capital. Tuition is literally responsible for keeping me alive, and it’s the reason that I, unlike you, will live forever!
Issue One
Editorial Staff
Forks in Residence Editors in Chief Meaghan Harding ‘16 Jeffrey Silver ‘17 Abstract Paintings of Spoons Daniela Bucay Managing Editors Miguel Davila Myles Wolfe ‘16 Daniel Gelfarb ‘17 Bart Buurman Daniel Gillis Luke Hoban ‘17 Theo Trampe Max Levy ‘17 Sam Anthony Tiffany Zac Pham Endter ‘17
Jonathan Calles Sam Anthony Zac Endter ‘15 Goldman Noah ‘15 Patel Kishan ‘15 Matt Solowey ‘15 Ben ‘15Barton Susanna Buff ‘16 Iman ‘16 Charania Michael Coyne ‘16 Ben ‘16Jiang
Spoons ‘16 Matthew Kelemen ‘16 Nikita Lisenko ‘16 David Cantù ‘16 Hannah Ceisler ‘16 Jeffrey Chen ‘16 Michael Fortunato ‘17 Claudia Hogan ‘17 Nora Laberee ‘17 Daniel Loud ‘17 Tom Nowlan ‘17 Amanda Prager
‘17 ‘17 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18 ‘18
Noah Goldman Kishan Patel Matt Solowey ‘16 Susanna Buff ‘17 If you would like to see your name on this, make sure to check Iman Charania ‘17 our Facebook and Twitter page (@thepunchbowl) and get on Michael Coyne ‘17 Matthew Kelemen ‘17 our listserv for updates about staff meetings! We can bE reached David Cantù ‘18 at thepunchbowl@gmail.com or through ESP. FOR OLD ISSUES Jeffrey Chen ‘18 AND MORE ARTICLES, HEAD ON OVER TO THEPUNCHBOWL.NET Michael Fortunato ‘18 Amanda Prager ‘18
Suspiciously, we’re
Hey SAC, what’s up? I know you missed us. See, ordinarily we would be missing you given that you’re the ones giving us the money to blow on subscriptions to Cranes Today magazine and our world-famous, all-night cocaine binges. But in the summer months, let’s just say that the tables have turned. Over the long, hot days of June, July and August, you and the rest of campus are left without our scathing social commentary, and more importantly, our constant frenzy of puns! We obviously produce them year-round but don’t usually get a chance to use them during the summer. Oh, the humanity! So before we try (and subsequently fail) to hit the SAC for more than three hours per night, fill up your ruckSAC with our glorious puns. What’s that? You think
those puns are terrible? That’s just, like, your opun-ion. We don’t care what you or any of the other unappreciative SACs of shit on this campus care about our puns! They’re so stellar that we even named our magazine after them, did you know that? Yeah, we’re a satirical magazine now, but our roots are entirely based in wordplay. We’re not called The Pennsylvania Satire-ch Bowl, are we? So please take comfort in the fact that we’re proudly honoring our roots as we make SAC of potatoes puns that conveniently offend both you and the Irish. In the meantime, though, pass some of that cash this way and we’ll be out of your hair. How else are we going to identify the 23 best new cranes of 2015?
Copyright Punch Bowl 2015. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead, or living-dead, is purely coincidental.
Yes — I did say that I will live forever. Because even after the forest reclaims Center City, and the banks of the Schuylkill swell, and the murderous swarms of bees finally get their act together and make this whole damn world unlivable, I will remain. This university is my identity, my love, my life and my pride, and I look forward to the day when all else has fallen and I alone remain in my golden, West Philadelphia tower, sunning my nude body in a private courtyard, counting and counting the billions of dollars that you filth-monsters have paid me in tuition over the years. But before I offend with sensuous images of my body surrounded by piles of 24 carat gold, let me offer up a few brief words of advice for those of you just starting out here. Don’t go to office hours, take as much Xanax as you can get your hands on, go for seconds of the lunchtime casserole at Hill, and don’t even fucking think about becoming friends with people you meet in class — they’re all a bunch of nerds. But Amy! you might be thinking. Penn students aren’t nerds! We’re the motivated, intelligent future leaders of the world — there’s nothing nerdy about scholasticism and hard work! And I, to these petulant sentiments, will roar in reply, “SILENCE, SCUM! I AM THE TRUE LEADER, I AM THE ANSWER, I AM THE MASTER OF YOUR DESTINY, YOU DARE QUESTION ME?!” Out of simple curiosity, have any of you new members of the Class of 2019 ever seen a fellow student smote to nothing but ash? It’s incredible, but potentially less dangerous to just take my word for it, nerds. Well — that’s it from me. I’ll see you later on tonight at the dog fight. Yours most tenderly,
Amy Gut mann
President Amy Gutmann
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Things to FEAR during NSO Orientation can be stressful for freshman entering the great unknown of college. From the very moment you enter the mildew-infested halls of the Quad, it's full-on survival mode — it’s a fucking jungle of privilege out there! We here at The Punch Bowl love our freshmn, so we’ve assembled a list of things for new folks to look out for during NSO: No more One
Direction posters left at the sidewalk sale
Getting written up by your RA
Getting MERTed
Trap doors Trap ceilings Trap music
Rogue squirrels finagling their way er through your heat ing while you're watch tentacle porn
Bees
The declin ing Americ to an in e ng c ti o et n g o lly m y Accidenta ut flip the shower witho flops Whoever (or whatever!) is in that Quaker costume
So You Want to Join a Club? Nice job, [insert freshman name]! You’ve finally wished your parents goodbye and reveled in a new era of freedom and self-assertion. Outside the stifling halls of high school, you have space to delve into the embarrassingly dusty inner reaches of your soul to answer life’s greatest questions: Who am I? What do I care about? Has my entrance into Wharton finally validated my sense of self-worth? (Yes, but only to you.) Thus, when you encounter the activities fair on Locust Walk, you will feel an urge to begin this process by guessing which clubs truly represent you and make you happy. Social Quality 1 point 2 points 3 points Suppress it. This is no time to seek happiness. A club can be so much more than your childish hopes. This is because clubs build your resumé. After 4-7 years of pandering to college admissions officers by way of mind-numbing productions of Fiddler on the Roof and lowgrossing fundraisers attended solely by the parents of the student planners, you should not need to be reminded of the importance of a strong resumé. Work to develop tangential involvement with a few high-profile clubs, attend every fourth meeting and shirk responsibility wherever possible. Later on, you can make a power grab in the most bureaucratically weak of these organizations.
Most frequent BYO location.
Beijing or Sitar
Total members of top-tier fraternities or sororities (although off-campus groups are not technically tiered, each member of course counts as 1.6 people) Photo ops — “meetings” — with Amy Gutmann per year. How quickly you can get a board position Travel Opportunities
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Now, please don’t find this advice cold. On the contrary, social development is of the utmost importance! A rubric for evaluating the Table location at the social qualities of a club is presented below. SAC Fair Simply score and add up the points received to develop a Relevance Ranking™.
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Banana Leaf You haven’t or Dim Sum heard of it. It’s Garden probably downtown? One to three Four or more members
None
One
A year and a half Trips to West Philly Schools By Stiteler
A year
More than one
Three months if you’re crafty Trip to China Vacation to Cannes By the Button
At the Compass
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NSO: A Choose Your Own Adventure START HERE:
Today is the day — you get your freshman rooming assignment! After logging onto the portal, do you: Facebook stalk your roommate? Go to 1. Continue life as usual? Go to 2. 1: So you’re playing the Facebook game. A few clicks in, and you’re starting to put together your own profile of your future roommate. From California, pictures with friends.“This person might actually be pretty cool” you think to yourself. Then you see it: an old album that shows your roommate dressed in full colonial garb giving a city tour to a gaggle of elderly foreign visitors. Given the new information, do you: send a message? Go to 3. Or continue life as usual? Go to 4. 2: What the fuck are you thinking? We live in the 21st century -- interconnectedness, globalization, etc. Of course you want to add your roommate on Facebook. Go to 1, you idiot. 3: Your fingers tremble as you type each letter of your message. What are the implications? Will my roommate think that I’m some sort of freak? But now you’re committed and it’s too late. So you send either: MESSAGE I: “Hey! I think we’re going to be roommates next fall.” Go to 5. MESSAGE II: “Hey!!! We’re going to be roommates next fall! Are you excited for Penn? I am SO excited. I’ve thought up some awesome decorations and posters for our room. Are you excited for Penn? Do you drink? If so, I can’t wait to go out together over NSO!!” Go to 6. MESSAGE III: “To whom it may concern: It has come to my attention that we will be inhabiting the same living space over the course of fiscal year 15/16. I am clean, organized, and tend to keep to myself for the most part. I do not foresee many issues or conflicts, but feel free to deliver complaints or roommate feedback to me in a handwritten note, and I will respond within 24 hours.” Go to 7. 4: Over the course of the summer you quietly delve into your roommate’s profile. Apparently they really like bass fishing? Soon enough, lo and behold, it’s their birthday! Do you: post a birthday greeting on their wall? Go to 8. Or continue life as usual? Go to 9. 6
5: You sent a normal message so you receive a normalish message in reply. Phew. Head on over to 4. 6: You may have been a little eager, so your hands are quivering as you check to see what they’ve responded with. They say: “Nice hearing from you. You think we’re roommates? Weird, because CampusExpress explicitly stated that we ARE roommates. Try to be more careful with your words. See you in a few weeks.” Discouraged, go to 4. 7: Go fuck yourself. Go to 25. After you’ve returned from 25 and stopped panicking, try and find some way to crease the fabric of the space/time continuum in order to venture backwards in time to correct your series of massive social faux pas. If that works, go back to 0. 8: “Happy Birthday! Can’t wait for next year” you decide upon after much deliberation. After your friendly and normal decision, you and your roommate pass the rest of the summer in companionable silence, both comfortable with the trajectory of your relationship. Go to 9. 9: Now it’s August, and you’ve arrived on campus for move-in day. You meet your roommate! Do you: Offer to help them move the couch? Go to 10. Walk away? Go to 11. Watch your roommate suffer and struggle to move the couch with their parents? Go to 12. 10: A friendship seems to be blossoming, and it’s the first night after move-in. Do you: go out with your roommate? Go to 16. Or try and find more friends in your hall to maybe go out with? Go to 13. 11: Things aren’t great, but you haven’t screwed up the relationship permanently yet. Do you introduce them to your pet tarantula, Greg? Go to 12. Or do you normally ask them what TV shows they watch? Go to 10. 12: The relationship is off to a rocky start... You should probably head down the hall to find new friends. Go to 13.
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13: You head down the hall to find other friends. If you get too scared, go to 14. If you keep going, you eventually are caught between two open doors. Behind Door 1 you find yourself listening in on an interesting discussion of GeoPolitical crises. Behind Door 2 you hear a conversation about classes, and “night life”. If you pick Door 1, go to 17. Pick Door 2 and go to 15. If you turn and walk back down your hall, confident in your abilities to eventually find your friends without eavesdropping like some sort of pervert, go to 18. 14: You’ve come back and are engaging in a dead-end conversation with your roommate that they awkwardly end in order to “go to sleep” at 9 pm. They’re probably the lame roommate. Toughen up and start over with 13. 15: So you’ve picked Door 2. These people go out and still care about class, so they don’t seem like total nerds, and nor are they the weird stoner burnout people down the hall. (If stoner burnouts sounds good to you though, turn around and go to 18.) You have a chill pregame before eventually hitting the frats. Do you: text your roommate to come join in? Go to 16. Decide they’re lame and that you don’t want to go out with them, you’re having fun with your new hallmates anyways. Go to 23. 16: So you’ve gone out with your roommate! Do you have a weird time and head home early by yourself? Go to 21. Do you have fun with your roommate but decide that your other hallmates are nebbishy weirdos? Go to 23. 17: “The happenings in the Crimean Peninsula are a threat to all of humanity. We can’t stand idly by through these atrocities!” Do you: turn around and walk over to Door 2? Go to 15. Participate in the discussion with your new, worldly, interesting friends? Go to 24. 18. You’re walking back to your room when you pass by yet another room on your hall. You smell weed and sense that they’re definitely listening to SoundCloud and not some lame Spotify shit. These people might cool enough to solicit as friends. If you knock on their door to join in, go to 20. If you trudge back to your own room, go to 21.
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19: Hooray! You and your roommate are really getting the chance to get to know each other. They’re actually pretty nice, and you commend yourself on potentially becoming friends and spending a nice, companionable night. If neither of you is drunk at this point, go to 22. If you DID go out and you’re both happily drunk getting home, go to 23. If you’re throwing up on the second night of college, uh oh, go to 20. 20: Yikes. You’ve already fucked things up irreversibly. You’ll have some good times for six months, but you’re worrying your parents and you definitely won’t do well in school. You might graduate (or you might not), but you’ll either be too skinny or massively overweight and definitely unhappy. Your friends will all be parasitic jerks, and by age twenty-four you definitely won’t still be speaking to anybody you went to college with. You probably should have made some better decisions during freshman NSO, huh. We’d tell you to go to 25, but to be honest, you’re a huge waste of everybody’s time so we don’t really care to! 21: You’re back at your room. Is it empty? Go to 24. If your roommate is home, go to 19. 22: Congratulations! Your social weirdness will allow you to make something of this incredible educational opportunity you’ve been offered, and subsequently make something of your life! Keep up your active engagement in the world around you, and stay positive: you won’t regret your decision to stay in and avoid drugs and alcohol when you’re a billionaire genius. That being said, 25 is calling your name. 23: Nicely done. Maybe you’re close with your roommate, maybe you’re not, but either way it seems promising that you’ll find some normal friends, and your college experience will probably be totally fine. Junior year will be rough: you’ll flirt with postmodernism and probably a minor drug addiction, but things will end up all right, and you’ll graduate with some solid friends and a good degree. Nice job, you might just make it around here. 24: Uh oh, you’re the lame roommate. Go to 25. 25: Go fuck yourself. Consider returning to 7.
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PIMP MY LANYARD "Right here I've taken lanyards to a new level. Everyone likes lanyards, so I took my lanyard and added another lanyard so I can be convenient while I'm being convenient"
“This is a limitededition Michael Kors lanyard that my Aunt and Uncle gave me last year for Memorial Day. See the gold MK? I haven’t used the PennCard much since I moved into Domus and I stopped eating at the dining hall, but it’s pretty cute, right?”
Freshman Bucket List
-Eat a little bit of hand sanitizer every day so that you’re all ready to chug Banker’s by NSO -Find out what was in that very thin envelope from the Admissions Office was last April and why you don’t have a Penn ID number yet -Break in your Heely’s so you’re not rusty on Locust Walk... embarrassing! -Finish the score for your musical based on Gilgamesh -Borrow a pencil -Complete your survey of metaphors and similes in Nietzsche and Goethe’s personal correspondences -Confirm publication of your third paper in The American Journal of Surgical Pathology -Consider buying a second pair of socks -Brush up on your gender pronouns — hint: there are over 10,000! -Finish collecting all the nickels you’ll need to pay first semester’s tuition
“So this lanyard is a classic with a little twist. Of course, you know, a picture of my dog Roscoe from home, but I also got a bottle opener in case I need to pop a few Brewskis with the boys. Turn down for what, am I right? Still haven’t used the bottle opener though.”
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Roommate Conflict Resolution Form
Hey, ____________. I hope everything is ____________ with you! I just want to start off and say that adjective
freshman name
it’s been a really ____________ year so far, I’m so ____________ that we’re living together! That being said, adjective
adjective
I’ve had ____________ concerns so far. First of all, and I’m not trying to be a ____________ about this, but quantity
noun
I really don’t appreciate it when you ____________. I’ve tried to ____________ it, but this ____________ action
verb
noun
belongs to me too! And also, do you think you could be more ____________ when you’re ____________? adjective
gerund**
Your ____________ habit makes me feel so ____________ and ____________. Instead, could you please try gerund**
adjective
adjective
____________ . Or maybe, at the least, could you not be such a fucking ____________ ? Is that too much to gerund**
noun
ask? I’m so ____________ of your ____________! You think I’m ____________ of you? Next time I see you, adjective
expletive
adjective denoting fear
____________, I swear to ____________ I will ____________ all over your ____________ ____________. And that’s proper noun
not a threat, it’s a promise. Sincerely, ____________
another freshman name
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deity
explicit verb
adjective
noun
**A gerund is the “—ing” form of a verb you fucking idiot.
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