All good things must come to an end. —Karl Marx
From the editors:
Play-dates, even if you hide when your mom comes to pick you up. Hospital stays, even if you don’t get cured. The universe, in cold, dark silence. The academic year, and if you’re a senior, your time at Wesleyan.
To those of you about to leave: we salute you. Have fun in Brooklyn/Teach For America/your parents’ basement.
Speaking of departure: Ampersand Editor Benjamin Soloway will be stepping down after this issue; he will now edit the Features section, a position that he will find both boring and unbeguiling. He will remain a frequent Ampersand contributor. Piers Gelly will return from France to resume his former position, and Zach Schonfeld will stay put. We have bequeathed upon frequent contributor Daniel Nass the following title: Online Editor/Technical Director/Multimedia Producer/Adjunct Associate Production Manager.
Ampersand staff: many thanks for a remarkable year of growth and synergy. Keep calm and carry on.
5/3/11
Yet to solidify your summer plans?
Do you have good communication skills? Solid writing skills? Top-notch social skills? Other skills? Enthusiasm? Are you a normal person who wants to be successful? Do you look sexy in business-casual? Do your parents want to pay for you to do unrewarding work without being paid?
Consider the Ampersand Social Media Internship!
Do not miss this opportunity to network, develop skills, and build your résumé. Begin marketing your personal brand!
The Ampersand is a rapidly growing, multi platform communications corporation. Our small team of employees is dedicated to innovation and creative problem solving. Join us on our ride to the top!
Do you have a deep love of tweeting? Did you tweet about Kate’s dress? Did you tweet about Osama’s death? This sounds like the job for you!
To apply, please fax us a writing sample: (212) 513-3047
Consider the Ampersand Social Media Internship!
Do not miss this opportunity to network, develop skills, and build your résumé. Begin marketing your personal brand!
The Ampersand is a rapidly growing, multi platform communications corporation. Our small team of employees is dedicated to innovation and creative problem solving. Join us on our ride to the top!
Do you have a deep love of tweeting? Did you tweet about Kate’s dress? Did you tweet about Osama’s death? This sounds like the job for you!
To apply, please fax us a writing sample: (212) 513-3047
Recent Grad Classifieds
- Deconstruction Worker: Foucault Co. seeks virile, critical thinking workers to lay bricks, set up drywall, and expose the internal contradictions and irreducible complexity of literary texts. If this seems too difficult, simply talk about phallocentric technocracy. Competency with a jackhammer is a must.
- Film Analyzer: Sit outside a multiplex with a an empty guitar case and see if people will pay you to enlighten them as to how tracking shots and the motif of the automobile create a poetic sense of postindustrial ennui in Justin Lin’s Fast Five.
- President of Wesleyan University: Combining the best parts of a scholarly polymath and lovable mascot, Wesleyan’s presidency is perfect for anyone who has a passion for expanding the minds of Our Children The Future, fundraising, and sunglasses.
- Antisocial Welfare: Get your parents to pay for your miniscule Brooklyn apartment while you blog about the minimalist clowncore scene in Rio De Janeiro, refuse any paying job that contributes to global warming, and misunderstand girls who claim to ind your moustache “Chekhovian.” Make sure to eat lots of limes so you don’t get scurvy.
- Crystal Meth Dealer: Get in on the action before Chinese orphans offer a superior product at a fraction of the price.
Amper Arts Expose: Pink@DKE
On the evening of Thursday, April 28th, Argus Arts Correspondent Tallullah Clementine ’13, who has refused to write a single concert review for the arts section for the entire year due to her revulsion toward sweaty campus venues, received a “super top-secret” email detailing a special event called “Pink@DKE” happening on Saturday night. According to the email, “this [was] the only true, deinitive DKE event happening on Saturday night.”“As a pledge task, we decided to celebrate the feminine in DKE. We had the pledges spray-paint everything pink and dye some random poodles with fruit punch. Yeah, we admit it. We actually did this specifically to attract girls. Now get the fuck over here, Tallulah. We promise we’ll be nice.”
Clementine, however, was sorely disappointed when she arrived at DKE. “The only pink item I saw there was the–ugh–blood on the musicians’ faces,” she said of an incident during Cum Tissue’s opening song, “Pregnant with Shit.”
“I don’t even know what happened, but there were lots of people gathered around taking pictures.” (Pink is Miss Clementine’s favorite color.) In her attempts to uphold her journalistic integrity despite her shock and revulsion at the DKE basement (“They were selling tighty-whities with brown streaks spraypainted onto them that said ‘Trouser Filth’–oh lordy!”), Miss Clementine was elbowed several times, and claimed a DKE brother tried to toilet paper her and her festive pink hoop skirt.
Fortunately, she found solace in the company of a group of Frisbee team pledges who were led in on a leash by their superior.
“Oh, my,” said Miss Clementine with a laugh, “They sure were the darndest thing.”
The Ampersand Interviews Spring Fling Acts
Wavves
Ampersand: So I understand your shtick is that you musically interpret wave functions that you graph onstage with TI-83s. With all due respect, what the fuck?
Anthony (lead vocals): We all met in Calculus class in high school. We noticed how we’ d each tricked out our graphing calculators, and it was clear to each of us that we were all very passionate about math.
Jefferton (bass): It ended up that we all bought our weed from the same guy too, and things sort of just snowballed from there. You know how it is.
&: What can we expect at the show on Thursday?
Bart (timpani): We’re going to include all the old fan favorites, like “[C1] 2 + [C2] 2.” But we’re also going to branch out into some more experimental material.
Anthony: We’ve got this new jam called “(x+3)” and it’ s been getting a really good response. So we’re definitely gonna drop some of that on your faces.
The Walkmen
&: So let me get this straight. You guys bring Sony Walkmen onstage loaded with cassettes that you randomly picked the night before. You play them into microphones on stage, and that’s your whole act?
Jefferton (the funny chubby one): Yes.
&: Whaaaaaat?
Ghostface Killah & Raekwon
&: So Mr. Killah, you have a ghost for a face. How’s that working out for you?
Ghostface Killah (Ironman): It’s been hard. When I was young, the other kids would constantly give me shit about it, you know, like “Hey, is that a ghost on your face or are you just happy to see me?” But then I learned to control my spectral powers and consume the souls of haters for energy, so that helped a lot.
&: Fascinating. And Raekwon, how have the tentacles you’ve had surgically attached all over your body affected your development as an artist?
Raekwon (Chef): It’s really allowed me to step up my game to unspeakable levels. You have no idea the sort of shit I can pull off. I don’ t want to spoil anything for Thursday, but here’s a hint: not all of the tentacles have suckers on them.
&: And Ghostface, you are also apparently Ironman.
Ghostface: Yeah, I use the armor to get from show to show. Rap is my passion, but I’ve always had a soft spot for using my repulsors to incinerate wrongdoers.
&: One last question. What is The Wu-Tang Secret?
Raekwon: (Rips out interviewer’s heart from chest cavity and eats it)
Ampersand: So I understand your shtick is that you musically interpret wave functions that you graph onstage with TI-83s. With all due respect, what the fuck?
Anthony (lead vocals): We all met in Calculus class in high school. We noticed how we’ d each tricked out our graphing calculators, and it was clear to each of us that we were all very passionate about math.
Jefferton (bass): It ended up that we all bought our weed from the same guy too, and things sort of just snowballed from there. You know how it is.
&: What can we expect at the show on Thursday?
Bart (timpani): We’re going to include all the old fan favorites, like “[C1] 2 + [C2] 2.” But we’re also going to branch out into some more experimental material.
Anthony: We’ve got this new jam called “(x+3)” and it’ s been getting a really good response. So we’re definitely gonna drop some of that on your faces.
The Walkmen
&: So let me get this straight. You guys bring Sony Walkmen onstage loaded with cassettes that you randomly picked the night before. You play them into microphones on stage, and that’s your whole act?
Jefferton (the funny chubby one): Yes.
&: Whaaaaaat?
Ghostface Killah & Raekwon
&: So Mr. Killah, you have a ghost for a face. How’s that working out for you?
Ghostface Killah (Ironman): It’s been hard. When I was young, the other kids would constantly give me shit about it, you know, like “Hey, is that a ghost on your face or are you just happy to see me?” But then I learned to control my spectral powers and consume the souls of haters for energy, so that helped a lot.
&: Fascinating. And Raekwon, how have the tentacles you’ve had surgically attached all over your body affected your development as an artist?
Raekwon (Chef): It’s really allowed me to step up my game to unspeakable levels. You have no idea the sort of shit I can pull off. I don’ t want to spoil anything for Thursday, but here’s a hint: not all of the tentacles have suckers on them.
&: And Ghostface, you are also apparently Ironman.
Ghostface: Yeah, I use the armor to get from show to show. Rap is my passion, but I’ve always had a soft spot for using my repulsors to incinerate wrongdoers.
&: One last question. What is The Wu-Tang Secret?
Raekwon: (Rips out interviewer’s heart from chest cavity and eats it)
Wesleyan Graduating Class Struggles to Cope with Post-Osama Job Climate
While much of Wesleyan’s student body greeted news of Osama Bin Laden’s death with patriotic exclamations and cheers of relief, members of the class of 2011 anticipate difficulty adjusting to a post-Bin Laden job climate. Film major Daniel Hertz ’11 is especially feeling the hit.
“I was planning to, like, make an indie documentary about driving around the country next year looking for Osama while stopping at every Taco Bell we pass along the way,” explains Hertz, who has already secured money for the project through the Tölölyan Fund for the Study of Diasporas and Transnationalism. “The working title was Tacosama Grande. My 10-year-old sister agreed to come on the trip and everything.”
For Hertz, post-grad employment ideas have been suddenly, and cruelly, snuffed by Bin Laden’s death. “What am I supposed to do now, work at fucking Foot Locker? Fuck Foot Locker.”
Fellow senior Amanda Gruerwitz ’11 is equally distressed, unsure how Bin Laden’s discovery in Abbottabad, Pakistan, will affect her senior thesis, “Osamarama: Post-Structuralist Rearticulations of Bin Laden in Iowa.”
“My thesis locates Bin Laden’s presence in a hideout camp beneath a Des Moines, Iowa, women’s shelter within an Althusserian constellation of post-Lacanian butch-feminist patriarchal critique,” Gruerwitz explains. “He wasn’t actually in Iowa, I guess.”
Alone among his classmates, James Robbins ’11 is pleased by his new employment options.
“My new Tumblr has been doing pretty well. It’s called ‘Osama at Chuck E. Cheese.’ Just pictures of Osama photoshopped into pictures of kids at Chuck E. Cheese. Pretty sweet.”
Robbins hopes to spend next year living off the royalties of the upcoming “Osama at Chuck E. Cheese” coffee table book at his grandmother’s house in Scarsdale, N.Y.
“She has a water trampoline and everything. Pretty sweet.”
“I was planning to, like, make an indie documentary about driving around the country next year looking for Osama while stopping at every Taco Bell we pass along the way,” explains Hertz, who has already secured money for the project through the Tölölyan Fund for the Study of Diasporas and Transnationalism. “The working title was Tacosama Grande. My 10-year-old sister agreed to come on the trip and everything.”
For Hertz, post-grad employment ideas have been suddenly, and cruelly, snuffed by Bin Laden’s death. “What am I supposed to do now, work at fucking Foot Locker? Fuck Foot Locker.”
Fellow senior Amanda Gruerwitz ’11 is equally distressed, unsure how Bin Laden’s discovery in Abbottabad, Pakistan, will affect her senior thesis, “Osamarama: Post-Structuralist Rearticulations of Bin Laden in Iowa.”
“My thesis locates Bin Laden’s presence in a hideout camp beneath a Des Moines, Iowa, women’s shelter within an Althusserian constellation of post-Lacanian butch-feminist patriarchal critique,” Gruerwitz explains. “He wasn’t actually in Iowa, I guess.”
Alone among his classmates, James Robbins ’11 is pleased by his new employment options.
“My new Tumblr has been doing pretty well. It’s called ‘Osama at Chuck E. Cheese.’ Just pictures of Osama photoshopped into pictures of kids at Chuck E. Cheese. Pretty sweet.”
Robbins hopes to spend next year living off the royalties of the upcoming “Osama at Chuck E. Cheese” coffee table book at his grandmother’s house in Scarsdale, N.Y.
“She has a water trampoline and everything. Pretty sweet.”
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