Hot Chocolate

1 cup of milk

2 heaping tablespoons of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 teaspoon of vanilla

a pinch of salt

1 teaspoon of cocoa powder

2 teaspoons of sugar or honey

a dash of spice! (cinnamon, nutmeg, or my personal favorite ,cardamom)

1. Put the milk and chocolate chips in a ceramic mug and microwave on 1/2 power for about 2 minutes.

2. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until everything is combined.

3. Drink up! Or pour into a thermos and hit the library.

I make this whenever I need a study break, and it totally hits the spot on cold nights. It beats spending 3 points at Pi, and it for sure beats the packaged stuff. Top it off with some whipped cream if you're feeling fancy. You can definitely multiply the recipe and make this on the stove if you're feeling generous. If you do this on the stove, heat the milk first and then add the rest. If you're into peppermint hot chocolate, throw a couple of mint tea bags into the pot of milk when you're heating it up, and remove them before you add the remainder of the ingredients.

This week, ANR host Andrea Domanick '10 gives us headlines, and explores an old article about the nuances of girls from different northeast colleges. We also feature an exclusive interview with senior thesis writer Nick Marshall. Nick speaks on religion, the afterlife, and best of all, zombies. Really, this is a quality show, with choice music picks holding it all together.

Thanks to contributor Ezra Silk '10 and producer Sam Bernhardt for making the show possible.

ANR Nov. 17 2009

Now, if you’re literate, you’re probably not inclined to sit through a Puddle of Mudd song. But I will make you a few promises to encourage you. First, while Wes Scantlin’s vocals get a little gratingly whiney at times, this is a fairly catchy song. Second, the deeply misogynistic lyrics are ethnographically interesting. Third, if you watch this video to the end, you get to see the band fuck a nebula. I will repeat that. In this video, Puddle of Mudd has sexual intercourse with a nebula. (Thanks to Videogum for the hot tip, bee tee dubs)

Did you catch the part where they misspelled the name of our solar system’s nearest neighboring star?  Or the part where they sing "A long time ago in a galaxy far a wasted?" Did you pick up on all the misogyny? How about the part where Puddle of Mudd fucked a nebula? I guess that’s how stars are conceived (high five, nerds!).

Anyway, to proceed beyond the sarcasm as ridiculous as this video is, I think it actually might actually represent a positive trend. This is the third ill-advised-by-all-reasonable-standards-but-still-sublime sci-fi-related music video I’ve seen in the last week, along with the aforementioned Gaga joint, and the video for Rihanna’s new single “Russian Roulette,” which seems to take place deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Love.

So that's pretty weird. But we should be living in the golden age of the crazy music video. Back when MTV first started up, some people made a lot of noise about how influential the video was going to be. But I don’t think it ever worked out all that well. There were a few years of experimentation in the 80s that produced a few standouts (mostly involving Madonna or Oingo Boingo), but pretty soon videos basically degenerated into either bands playing in a room, or straightforward choreographed dances. I don’t think anyone really liked watching the videos of the late 90s and early Aughts, so when MTV stopped playing them, not many salty tears were shed. By about 2005 or so, I think very few people were aware of new music videos.

Oh man, good times. But anyway, as should be obvious from the way this post has been organized, something critical changed: there was such a thing as a Youtube. Suddenly, everyone with an onramp to the information superhighway had access to an unlimited supply of music videos, unmediated by the standards of a TV network. And for some reason, I assumed that major artists would start using their big fancy budgets to make weird, weird videos that would draw the jaded eyes of kids these days away from their Lolcats and their pornography. But it didn’t really happen. The main impact of Youtube on the world of music videos was that indie bands felt free to make weird little short films that had pretty much nothing to do with their songs. For instance, check out the clip for one of my favorite songs of the year, Baroness’s “A Horse Called Golgotha.”

Weird, right? But engaging, right? You wanted to see what happens to that muscular Christ-figure, didn’t you? That kind of approach works, and for years I was hoping people with access to real special effects would start playing around with crazy narratives. So this year, with the batshit scifi trilogy of “Bad Romance,” “Russian Roulette,” and “Spaceship,” my dreams are being realized. Hopefully in the near future we’ll get a video where Kanye hops on a Sandworm to save the Ringworld from the Second Foundation (double high five, nerds!).

Anyway, good luck to all of you, and enjoy your breaks. When we get back, I’m going to start my reflections on the decade in music. I’ll leave you with this to tide you over untile then:

Our hosts John Gallagher '12 and Ashley Tam '12 are back this week with news about Wesleyan's Do It In The Dark Competition as well as an update on the H1N1 virus at Wesleyan. Ashley was on the scene to ask visiting parents and alumni what they liked best about homecoming.

Stay tuned for our next episode for our exclusive coverage and interviews of the Connecticut Spokebenders Game at Wesleyan.

JERRY SEINFELD ON CAMPUS! Who saw it?!

Responses:

• Wait... that WAS Jerry Seinfeld?!
• What?! Where? Better question, why?
• I saw some doofy kid following him around with a camera.
• Is he still here? Im gonna go stalk him
• WHERE IS HE DAMNIT! TELL ME
• saw him crossing the CFA area. someone following him with a handi-cam. heard him say, "So this is Wesleyan, in Middletown, CT."  What the fuck is going on?
• Why do I have a feeling everyone in this thread is full of BS
• hes not doing a show but he was herree! i think it has something to do with admissions. I DUNOOOO
• Who the fuck cares? No one watched that show.
• WHy do people like that show? It wasn't funny. All the jokes were jewier than a pastrami on rye.  Call me when you spot Homer... Simpson.
• This whole thread is probably just the first guy saying everything. They wouldn't be filming anything today anyway, it's nasty out
  • No, I promise you. I saw him. I'm in the CFA right now. He's in a blue-green raincoat.
  • Whoever started this thread should have done their research first, he's playing a show in Minneapolis tonight: http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/060042FBBEE08FEB?artistid=795942&majorcatid=10002&minorcatid=51. Case closed
  • FAIL
  • Hello, this is Jerry Seinfeld. I loved visiting your campus. It was a pleasure and I love the student body. Thank You!
  • lol wtf this is obviously not Jerry Seinfeld. How would he know about the ACB? why would he care enough to post on our stupid ACB website? OP is so dumb
  • Thank you so much for pointing that out; there might have been one severely brain-damaged individual reading this to whom that was not immediately obvious.
  • Thank you so much for pointing that out obliquely; there might have been one severely brain-damaged individual reading this to whom the insincerity of that post was not immediately obvious.
  • Guys, stop being so vicious! –Jerry S

http://collegeacb.com/sb/wes/thread/125980

To: That creepy guy who goes to parties and intentionally farts... I am on to you. If I see you out again I am going to rat you out to everyone. And you will be really embarrassed, so just STOP it. It is gross and NOT funny.

Sometimes I think that we are not free… Sometimes I think that the matrix is real…

Responses:

• Whoa man, you just blew my mind.
• and what if it were? Make the best of what you've got. The steak will always taste better than the gruel.
• Statistically, it's highly improbable that we aren't living in some kind of computer simulation. There's tons of reading on it. It'll blow your mind.
• we are not free unless we live in the reality we create for ourselves

http://collegeacb.com/sb.php?school=wes&page=thread&id=125848&p=1

Since we are at war with Islam… is it wrong to buy falafel from the mamoun’s truck? This is important, because I have the feeling that I will be hungry tonight.

Responses:

• it's alright, as long as when you pick up your falafel you say "death to america" and give him a sly win
• not if you feels those falafel balls are weapons of mass destruction
• WE ARE NOT AT WAR WITH ISLAM
  • Are you sure? It sure looks like it.

http://collegeacb.com/sb/wes/thread/125813

This week's featured reader: Peter Myers '13

Bio: Peter Myers was birthed by liberal parents onto the mean streets of Takoma Park, Maryland. After many years of dabbling in poetry and short stories during middle school English, he got down to business his junior year of high school and took a creative writing class with a lot of amazing people.His work has been in various Montgomery Blair High School publications, and he was fortunate enough to win a runner-up prize in a student short story contest at a literary conference honoring Elmore Leonard. Peter currently lives in Wesleyan’s writing hall, and enjoys the Legend of Zelda and rap battling in his free time.

Starbright

To just close our eyes

Enter reality defined by

The distant outlines

Of our lost thoughts in cosmos

The blank canvas, oceanic origin

Of rainbow; completion of the spectrum

To dive into color

Reaching the surface

We bubbled up to face the vastness

To taste the radiance as it falls

In the open space that allowed for

Everything—and nothing

Where we screamed heralds at starlight,

Catcalls to the ancient galleries

But never expected meteors

To come tumbling down

Like night’s avalanche

Never expected, until the shot rang out

Free will exists; so does terror beyond conception

And both send us utterly naked towards the brink

This week there will be two live recordings in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center - Lizzie Greenwald '12 and Chiara Di Lello '10 who will both record Monday November 16th, at 9 PM.

If you haven't yet, please watch the magic for yourself:

I'll be honest, I'm new to the Lady Gaga scene. To me, Poker Face was that vaguely annoying song constantly played at parties last semester.  When my housemate told me about marching near Gaga herself in the National Equality March for gay rights in Washington D.C. in October, I nodded and smiled.  And I certainly had no clue what the blond wig and sunglasses were about when my friend explained to me that he was Lady Gaga for Halloween.  Seeing the "Bad Romance" video changed everything, however—  I've gone Gaga and I can't go back.

One review I found explains that this video is very much an event, and I completely agree.  From the costumes to the choreography to the plot, "Bad Romance" is over the top in virtually every respect.  Alien-like dancers in skintight opaque suits emerge from coffin pods in the "Bath Haus of GaGa." A hairless cat silently hisses as Lady Gaga gives a metal-jawed man a lap dance.  Lady Gaga is shown being force-fed vodka, lit on fire and walking in 10-inch (!!) Alexander McQueen stilettos.  As my friend Jo put it, "it's like couture porn."

What I most appreciated about "Bad Romance," however, is that unlike most pop music videos, this one doesn't try to make its female star as conventionally beautiful as possible in every frame.  Instead, Lady Gaga appears singing through red eyes and tears, writhing in eerie light with an exoskeleton running down her bare back and with her face almost completely hidden in a white latexy headdress.  True, for much of the video Lady Gaga flaunts her (rockin') body in a variety of lingerie ensembles, but somehow this seems to be simply part of an aesthetic— just one piece of a grandiose pop-art production.  

Beyond the visual frenzy and potential for feminist debate that "Bad Romance" provides, one last reason I like this video is that it's responsible for getting the Wall Street Journal to print the following phrase: "“Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah! Roma-roma-mamaa! Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!”

Thanks to Robby Hardesty, Chris Correa, and Josh Margolin for yet another way to procrastinate.