Weneda, prl. , 04/ Te -taemnt E
THE liSt BUZZFEED, BUT BETTER
Five birth control options for the future
As the number of birth control options multiply, choosing
among options becomes the real challenge, and weighing out
the pros and cons of various methods becomes an overwhelming
task. But in reality, we haven't even seen the half of it.
Men's Club
For years, scientists have been researching possible hormonal
contraceptive options for men, but have hita roadblock. However,
in India, researchers have found that a non-hormonal contraception
injection called RISUG might just do the trick.
Emergency Gel
While emergency contraceptives - such as Plan B - are
minimally recommended by physicians as a form of regular birth
control, the efficacy of emergency contraception might just
increase once the gel is put out in the market.
Downsize those IUDs
According to the ACOG, reversible contraception methods, such
as intrauterine devices, are the most effective kind of reversible
birth control in the market. Downsizing those IUDs to be smaller
and more comfortable might be the way to do that.
A once a year thing
The biggest danger with prescription contraception is that
manyetimes, it requires you to periodically remember to replace
or retake the birth control. Contraception which you only have to
replace once a year - such as a pill or a vaginal ring - could be
the solution.
CycleBeads
The Standard Days Methods is newly developed for women
who want to take more natural methods when protecting from
pregnancy. Using a system of beads that are monitored daily, SDM
advises women to pay attention to their hormonal cycles and avoid
times when pregnancy is most likely.
my first time: lollapalooza, an intimate affair by mariam sheikh
This morning I ran out of my
apartment with a piece of toast
in my hand, force-feeding it to
myself as I made my way to the
MLB. Today I went to my exam
unprepared and I went to my
other classes looking disheveled.
But why? No, I wasn't at Skeeps
all night. Instead, I woke up
early with one mission in mind:
to get Lollapalooza passes.
Isat in my bedroom constantly
refreshing the eight tabs I had
opened, only to see the same
screen reading "Tickets on sale
March 25." Frustrated, exhaust-
ed and confused. This carried on
for about an hour before I finally
made it to the standby page. Suc-
cess? Not so fast.
"Due to extreme demand, Lol-
lapalooza 2013 Early Bird passes
are SOLD OUT! Regular 3-Day
passes are now available for pur-
chase. In the meantime, please
review the information below so
you are prepared when you leave
this standby page."
Spoiler alert: I never left. But
luckily, my sister did - although
I heard her boss wasn't as
thrilled.
Why would a person put them-
selves through this? While I may
be one step closer to carpal tun-
nel, Lolla is worth the effort.
After the first time I went, I was
hooked. Lolla is like nothing else
- organized pandemonium.
I have gone
to my fair
share of con-
certs - Cold-
play, Justin
Timberlake,
Taylor Swift
when she was
cool, Lana Del
Rey, etc - yet
none of those
experiences
even come
close to when t
I went to Lolla
last August.
For those who
may not be
familiar withv4
Lollapalooza,
it is a three- ILLUSTRATIONS BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
day music festival that takes
place in Chicago's Grant Park. al instance of mooning or two -
While the festival has grown the drive takes no time at all.
and expanded to include per- As we made our way into the
formances in other countries as Windy City, the excitement
well, Chicago remains the main began to sink in. Our hotel was
and most talked about venue. right across from Grant Park,
One's journey to Lollapalooza and the Lollapalooza sign was
begins long before the actual illuminated across the way.
concert. In fact, if you are any- A three-day music festival is
thing like my friends and me - basically a herd of drugged-up
outrageously dedicated then minors getting hammered with-
you spent a significant amount of out parental supervision - Party
time planning. X but with better music and
The nitty-gritty aspects of expensive food. And yes, this is
planning were the most annoy- what most people do at Lolla, but
ing part. "Which hotel should for the more "tamed" individu-
we stay at?" "Most hotels require als who prefer to remember the
you to be 21 to check-in." "What entirety of their experiences,
about staying in a hostel, it's Lolla is a thrill. Walking in and
cheaper?" "Are there hostels in being frisked for alcohol, jump-
Chicago?" It seemed like the ing from stage to stage charging
constant bargaining would never on through the mosh pit to see
Personal Statement: Being a writer
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"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch
with the soil. You get precious. Fake Euro-
pean standards have ruined you. You drink
yourself to death. You become obsessed with
sex. You spend all your time talking, not
working. You are an expatriate, see? You
hang around cafes."
- Ernest Hemingway, "The Sun Also
Rises"
We've all been asked at least once in col-
lege "What did you want to be when you
grew up?" Presumably, the answer is sup-
posed to be funny, in either a lighthearted
- "haha I wanted to be a fireman" - sort of
way, or a self-deprecating, "I used to want
to be an archaeologist, but now I'm content
to be a pencil pusher." My answers have
mostly been of the former variety; appar-
ently, when I was three or four, I wanted
to be "a doorman or a squirrel." Don't ask,
because I have no idea.
For the last year or two, when that ques-
tion is reworked and I'm asked what I want
to be after I graduate, my go-to answer is
always the same - I want to be a writer.
I've successfully brushed off any follow-up
questions about what type of writing I plan
to do by claiming that I'm still figuring it
all out. But here's a question I have trouble
answering - what exactly do I mean when
I say I want to be a writer?
Obviously, I can answer by saying that I
want to be a writer because I want to write.
But that would be a lie, or a half-lie to be
more precise. Let's examine the diction. I
don't say that I want to write for a living -
I say that I want to be a writer. Because for
me, being a writer has moved beyond the
craft and become tied to a certain lifestyle,
a persona, an all-encompassing image that
I find myself drawn to and disgusted by.
But let's start at the beginning.
As a kid, I had weird reading habits. I
would read the same books over and over
again, yet refuse to read anything new. My
parents gave me some Hemingway to read,
just "The Old Man and the Sea" and some
of the short stories. I liked them, but I cer-
tainly didn't have an epiphanic moment
that inspired me, right then and there, to
become a writer. My mom gave me more
Hemingway, this time in the form of a mem-
oir by A.E. Hotchner recounting his decade
long friendship with Papa. I couldn't read it
fast enough, leaving saucy fingerprints all
over the pages as I ate dinner, but devoured
the descriptions of marlin fishing, daiquiri
drinking and schmoozing with Sartre and
his mistress. "Man," I thought, "I want to
be him when I grow up."
It was fun playing Hemingway for
awhile. I bought a guayabera, poured dash-
es of rum into glasses of coke and called
them Cuba Libres, tried to take an inter-
est in boxing and spoke epigrammatically
about the nature of life and death whenever
I caught a fish.
At this point, you're probably wondering
where this essay is going. Or, more likely,
you're thinking "So what?" What I've
described may sound like nothing more
than a game of teenage dress-up, a more
mature version of when I used to don my
grandmother's old sun hat and a laptop bag
and call myself Indiana Jones.
The distinction is that when you're
seven years old, no one expects you to be
an archaeologist. But at my age, adopting
the visage is quickly becoming insufficient
without some results, or at least serious
preparations for them. And it goes without
saying that reading Hemingway and read-
ing about Hemingway, are two very differ-
ent things.
I did grow out of the Hemingway one.
But just as Ernest grew tired of his wives, I
grew tired of simply emulating him. Lucki-
ly, the writer persona is a drug sold by every
newspaper, magazine and blog. Profiles
and interviews of writers, not their actual
work, became my texts of choice. A New
Yorker profile? Better than a new novel.
I've gone through many different love
affairs with authors' Wikipedia pages, butI
can split those writers into four basic cate-
gories. There's the cosmopolitan polemicist
(Christopher Hitchens, Pier Paolo Paso-
lini), the rustic man's man (Hemingway,
Jim Harrison), the counterculture libertine
(Hunter S Thompson, Charles Bukowski)
and the passionate polymath (Susan Son-
tag, David Foster Wallace). You can already
see some recurring motifs - socialite, well-
recorded vices, prolific output, complicated
love life, toes the line between academia
and the public, wide-ranging interests and
a general aura of ... "cool."
In fact, I've met one of my writer-idols.
Sebastian Junger, author of "The Per-
fect Storm," war correspondent and gen-
eral badass, gave a talk in Cape Cod that
I attended. After he finished there was a
book signing, where I approached him
with the same cautious reverence that
I imagine one would approach a Swami
with. As I shook his muscular, callused
hand, I imagined that we were silently
acknowledging our affinity, that I was
telling him that I wanted to be him when
I grew up. I asked him to sign my book. He
spelled my name wrong. He said "next."
I spent the next week thinking "I really
fucked that one up." It was as if I had read
all of his books not for the information
they contained, but to sustain a fantasy
that behind the books there was a someone
who one day I could be.
I won't psychoanalyze myself too much
- not out of a fear of discovering some
dark repressed secret. Rather, it's because
the source of my attraction to the writer
persona is pretty obvious. If you grow up
- and especially go through high school
- as nerdy and not particularly social, the
ILLUSTRATION BY MEGAN MULHOLLAND
idea that you can combine smart and sexy
is intoxicating. In other words, if you can
emerge from your dorm room, unshaven,
wearing only pajama bottoms, claiming
that you're "going out for a smoke," and still
feel cool, you become seduced.
What happens when you become seduced
by the writer persona?
You frequent coffee shops. You drink
your coffee black.
You wear a bathrobe all day.
You buy a three-pack of moleskins, and
although you label them "fiction," "poetry,"
and "journalism," you don't really write
much in them.
You refer to someone you're hooking up
with as your "paramour." You use the term
"brief but passionate."
You start smoking by just puffing on
bummed Parliaments. Then you move to
blue American Spirits. Then black. Then
you start rolling your own, and roll them
during conversations. Finally, you get an
E-Cig, so the world will know that you
need nicotine to fuel your creative energy.
Because illness is metaphor, right?
You carry small books in your jacket
pockets.
You must tell everyone, at every party,
what substances you are on, and how much
you consumed.
You buy Playboy for the articles, but are
easily distracted.
You read a profile of Leon Wieseltier,
literary editor of The New Republic, and
you read this sentence, "Next came well-
reported excesses, which included heavy "A
drinking and cocaine binges. These and a
flurry of infidelities finished his marriage."
You feel a pang of envy.
You miss the point.
You realize that for several years, you
thought you were preparing to write a
book, when you were really preparing for
your dust-jacket photo.
end.
The car situation is another
debacle altogether. But the car
ride was more than enough to
make up for it. Stopping at every
Panera you could find, trying to
get semi-trucks to honk at you,
sleeping selfies and an occasion-
COVER BY RUBY WALLAU
THE statement
the bands you love and realizing
your love for new artists that you
had never heard of before ... The
festival is essentially a three-day
retreat from reality.
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VAL GUIDE
No. 551:
"How I Met Your Mother"
may have hit a steep
decline over the years, but
we never thought that the
last episode would come.
Magazine Editor: Photo Editor:
Carlina Duan Ruby Wallau
Deputy Editors: llustrator:
Managing Editor:
Katie Burke
Copy Editors:
Max Radwin Megan Mulholland Mark Ossolinski
Amrutha Sivakumar Editor in Chief: Meaghan Thompson
Design Editor: Peter Shahin
Amy Mackens