Friday night: You’re at a crowded bar, and have to pee. Fearing the toilet seat, you pop a squat, clench your thigh muscles and hold onto the walls while you unleash your last five beers. You make sure you wash your hands (sometimes twice, depending on how filthy the pub is), and maybe even reach into your purse for some hand sanitizer, just to be safe.

Saturday night: You’re at a frat party. You just won three consecutive games of beer pong. You don’t think twice about drinking your cups, despite the fact that you’ve seen the ball land in other peoples’ used cups, roll along the basement floor, and watched the ball pass between thirty-something unwashed hands.

What gives?!?

Obviously, beer pong isn’t the most sanitary party game out there. But you have the “water cup,” right? That cup of tepid, dirty water is totes gonna disinfect that old, recycled ping pong ball (that was most likely found under someone’s bed 10 minutes before party time). Or not.

Some microbiology students at George Washington University decided to test exactly how detrimental to your health beer pong can be. If you like beer pong, you may want to skip this article. Read More »

I’ll admit it: I like to wear leggings.

They are comfortable, they suck in the fat on my thighs and they look cute for class or a club. That being said, I am a little confused about a trend I just learned about this morning: leather leggings.

I have never tried them, but the first thing that comes to mind when someone even puts “leather” and “leggings” into a single sentence is that time Ross Gellar tried leather pants and couldn’t get them back on.

I mean, how do you even put these one? And don’t your legs make a really weird squeaky noise when you walk? (Note: If you have actual thighs, unlike Lindsay Lohan.) I don’t know; the whole trend just seems to “wannabe biker chick” for me.

What do you think?

Aside from the night after you’ve taken your last final, the first week of school is generally the best time of the whole semester. The weather is great, you’re reunited with all of your friends, and the school year has returned just when you were starting to feel like you had too much free time.

The campus is buzzing with returning students, eager to see what the new year has in store. Even if you anticipate your hardest semester to date, there’s still a feeling of excitement in the air during the very first week.

1. You Get to Scope Out Your New Classes

Maybe I’m a dork, but I was always excited to see what my new classes would be like. In certain classes–the must-take courses taught by the professors with the best reputations– it was great to see what all the buzz was about. Other classes might have sounded intriguing in the course catalog; reading through the syllabus on the first day, I’d think the class sounded interesting, and hadn’t been assigned 500 pages of reading to prove me otherwise. I would also look through the syllabus and see what the course requirements looked like, so I could estimate how little effort I could put into the class, and still walk away with an “A.”

Of course, it’s also fun to see who else has signed up for the class. Whether you walk through the door and see five of the girls from your freshman dorm, or right into the eyes of your new insta-crush, it’s fun to find out who you’ll be taking the class with. Read More »

I’m starting to get cranky.

Welcome to day 6 of my week-long vegan eating adventure.

Breakfast: Wheatabix cereal with soy milk.

Lunch: I drag a friend to California Vegan Restaurant on Sunset. I get a sweet and sour seitan (wheat gluten) dish with steamed brown rice. The sauce is tangy and tasty with pineapple, which I always love. But the seitan has a weird consistency and taste, it looks like a cross between tofu and chicken and it kind of creeps me out.

Dinner: I go with some friends to Famima!!, the Japanese convenience store, to get some cheap dinner. I spend twenty minutes looking at all their boxed dinners, studying ingredients, trying to figure out what I could eat. I end up just getting a fruit plate. I watch my friends eat their food and think of a new annoying thing about eating vegan: you can’t try your friends food. I’m someone who always steals other people’s food, so this is incredibly annoying. Read More »

Recently, during a rather absurd evening involving a really sh*tty club and free bottles of Grey Goose, I found that I had somehow misplaced my cellular phone.

For the next two weeks while battling with my insurance company about their obligation to pay for a new one, I was completely phoneless. And surprisingly, I found that while not being able to call my roommate or receive text messages from my BFF was disheartening, the most annoying thing about not having a phone was that I never knew what f*cking time it was. During my time of mandatory cell abstinence, I commented on this fact to my mother. Her response was thought-provoking.

“Why don’t you get a watch?”

A watch? The last time I had a watch, I was in sixth grade. It was a gift from my parents for my twelfth birthday and on the face was an image of Elmo whose arms ticked away the minutes. At the time, I thought it was the sh*t and all my ladyfriends agreed, but when the leather straps crumbled the following summer I was pretty well over it and I’ve never felt the need to get a new one, Elmo-themed or otherwise.

Which leads me to ask the question, are watches obsolete? In this age when everyone has a phone that they have on their person more or less at all times, is there really a need for watches? The only people I can think of who do have watches are people like my mom and grandma who grew up in the Dark Ages before Verizon existed, and even they have the option of telling time with their phones. It would seem that their insistence on wearing watches stems from a deep-seated habit of looking at their wrist when someone asks the time as opposed to rooting in their pockets. Read More »

Skies are blue, trees are blooming, and temperatures are rising, which can only mean one thing – it’s time to take your godd*mn pants off.

My roommate and I have been experimenting with the pants-free lifestyle for many months now. It began in January when one early Friday evening we were sitting on the couch watching Scrubs reruns, harnessing our chi for a night out on the town.

Me: I don’t wanna wear pants tonight, dude.

My roommate: Yeah man, f*ck pants.

Half an hour later, we emerged from our respective bedrooms, me in a tank top and some sort of shorts/panties half-breed, her in what can best be described as beach loungewear. We threw on our jackets and headed out to the club, where we proceeded to drink whiskey and diets and shake what our mammas gave us until we were so pleasantly exhausted and sweaty we could barely stand any longer and had to call it a night.

The point of this little anecdote? By choosing to forego pants, my roommate and I ensured that we would have a fun evneing. If we had been so foolish as to wear, say, skinny jeans or perhaps high-waisted wide-leg trousers or some other wintry-style clothing garment out that evening, there’s no way we could have enjoyed ourselves to the degree we did. We would have felt restricted and gotten sweaty and would have never stayed until the late-night DJ came on and started busting out old-school James Brown jams. Instead of having a glorious evening, we would have had a low-key, mediocre evening, because pants ruin fun. Period. Read More »

If there’s one thing in this world I know, it’s this: You gotta know your limit.

I don’t mean like how smart you are or how hard to push yourself when you’re working out or anything trivial like that. I’m talking about knowing how much you can drink.

One day a few months ago, a friend invited me out for a night of dancing and fun. I thought, hey, yes, I like dancing and fun. This will be excellent.

Cut to me four hours later in a blackout state, still dancing but question mark else? I don’t know because I was f*&cking wasted.

All I know is, I threw up in the bathroom of that club. And then I threw up in a diner afterwards. Twice. And then I think I took a cab home and went to sleep, but I know for sure that four hours later, I woke up and puked on and off for five hours, into my toilet, into plastic grocery bags, and all over myself. In fact, I vommed so much I burst a blood vessel, giving myself what I have affectionately termed zombeye. Zombeye, a bright red bloody eye, lasted two entire weeks. Read More »

While most of America sat home Monday night watching American Idol (and the remaining few caught a glimpse of the Democratic debate) there was one person who did neither. Britney Spears was back out on the town last night. She wasn’t doing what everyone would expect, though. Ms. Spears was not club-hopping or loading up on her Starbucks.

No. Britney Spears made her way to Wal-Greens to purchase a pregnancy test.

And why wouldn’t she?

The woman just had her two sons taken away; what better way to cope with that than to make some new ones? Britney is finally in a stable and committed relationship (with the paparazzi who is shopping her photos around to various publications), so it is only natural that they take the next step and begin settling down. Read More »

Heidi from The Hills wants to be a singer…or a mediocre popstar who lip-syncs in concerts while wearing tiny outfits.

She’s on her way to the mediocre part. Medicore with a side of lame, thanks to her big-headed boyfriend Spencer Pratt.

“Body Language”, a song recently leaked to Ryan Seacrest (and subsequently the whole world) is apparently not the first single from Montag, but is obviously on her record, so I am going to judge it.

The tune itself isn’t horrible. It’s not fantastic, but since it samples a catchy, retro beat, it may just have a life in the clubs.

The major problem with “Body Language” is the rap stuck in the middle—the rap that is rapped by Spencer.

Camp Montag and Pratt claim the rap was “just a joke”, but I’m sure it was totally serious until radio listeners everywhere deemed it the weakest attempt at bad-assness since Avril Lavigne. Read More »