Noice loves poetry… and we love it even more when it gets randomly emailed to us (but not in that my-mom-won’t-stop-sending–me-inspirational-chain-mail kind of way). So imagine our delight when a couple beatniks set themselves to the task this week on Lev Open while lamenting the missing dining hall clock. We’d applaud…but uh, we’re already over quota.

FAS webmail’s 100 MB limit notwithstanding, there’s always room in our hearts for this kind of collective creativity.

Read more after the jump

This Noice blogger was just strolling through the Yard admiring the fall colors when he happened upon this strange sight:

The tourist in question was obviously getting extremely over-excited about the colorful chairs — so he set about making his very own, erm, masterpiece with them. Noice thinks he was going after a Leaning Tower of Chairs/post-tornado statement. How profound.

This morning around 12:00 a.m. EST, an announcement was made on HarvardFML. A message was posted which read,

I’ve realized that girls here are either uninteresting legacies/athletes/prep-schoolers or very, very unattractive. FML.

Now, this was a blow which could be tolerated. However, and ladies please prepare yourselves, a commenter named “mrcockblaster” agrees, stating, “word.” That’s right; “mrcockblaster” is disappointed with us, which leaves only one logical option:

TO CVS! Please ladies, before going out in public, at least try to make yourselves presentable to our (obviously) universally-hot male counterparts. Lipstick! Nail polish! Really, whatever we can do to hide our warthog likeness.

Now we may be some of the smartest young women in the country, but we really shouldn’t forget our place here. Perhaps you should revisit your admissions letter…

HARVARD COLLEGE OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS AND FINANCIAL AID
BYERLY HALL- 8 GARDEN STREET- CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 02138

“Dear Ms. _________,

I am delighted to inform you that the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid has voted to offer you a place in the Harvard Class of 2011 as campus scenery for our male students. Following an old Harvard tradition, a certificate of admission and a mini-skirt are enclosed. Please accept my personal congratulations for your outstanding achievements. We look forward to seeing (not hearing), you in the Fall.

And a final note on propriety: Yes, we do have the same demanding schedules, p-sets and practice hours as the men… but please! How are we ever supposed to snag a “Harvard Hottie” like “mrcockblaster” (posting comments on Harvard FML at midnight) if your hair is in a ponytail and you look sleep-deprived? We should really expect more from ourselves…

Artist’s best approximation of “mrcockblaster:”

Harvard girls are ugly. Word.

Blending In: Ur doin it wrong.

Click for larger view.

This post is an addendum to yesterday’s post on the Japanese invasion of Harvard Yard.

Donating to Harvard could get you 1.) your name stamped on a building, 2.) called unethical by NYT's Randy Cohen.

NYT’s Randy Cohen thinks not. In fact, he thinks it’s downright morally reprehensible:

Do not donate to Harvard. To do so is to offer more pie to a portly fellow while the gaunt and hungry press their faces to the window (at some sort of metaphoric college cafeteria, anyway).

Noice would like to point out that to give to Harvard might, at this point, be to offer some piping hot breakfast pie to students who don’t have it. But anyways. Cohen’s evidence why Harvard isn’t worthy of your charity? Our endowment, while down 27 percent, still exceeds the GDP of Estonia. Our alumni are still money-mongers, with 40 percent of the class of 2008 going into banking. And the median base salary for the B-school’s class of 2009 is $115,000.

Under the current circumstances, the more honorable course is to write that check to a community college or a historically black college or a small Catholic college or other modest institution that genuinely and profoundly transforms the lives of its graduates.

Anyways, argue what side you will. The jewel of the piece is the hilarious comments that ensued:

Someone named Park called it a “very obnoxious, polemical article by someone who obviously has an anti-Harvard bias” and then went on to slap Cohen around some more:

Obviously, this writer is trying to draw a crowd to his article by name-dropping Harvard. Perhaps it is time to get over how you didn’t get in when you applied, eh?

Eek, that was perhaps a bit uncalled for. But for most of us, our reaction is probably this:

I give to Harvard. It’s called “tuition”. I give til it hurts.

Wise, wise words.

This afternoon, the Harvard Book Store cut the ribbon on its newly-christened Espresso Book Machine, Paige M. Gutenborg. The name of the on-demand book printing contraption was sifted from over 500 contest entries, among them Tome Machine, Humphrey Bookart, and Gutenplenty.

Before the unveiling, speakers Professor Robert Darnton (Director of Harvard Libraries), Jason Epstein from The New York Review of Books, and Dane Neller of On Demand Books LLC gave a few remarks about the future of books, publishing, yadda yadda. Then, finally, everyone got to see what they came for: Paige giving birth to its (her?) first paperback.

Before an ooh-ing and aah-ing audience, Paige printed a copy of the 300-plus page Bay Psalm Book (chosen because it the first book printed in North America, specifically, Cambridge in 1640) in a matter of minutes, which was then bound and funneled out out of the machine, glossy, crisp, and warm, just like fresh-baked cookies emerging from an oven.

Then, the prolific Paige moved on to Einstein’s Relativity. Noice was in awe.

Noice thinks the only thing that would make the Espresso Book Machine even more perfect and ingenious would be, well, if it pumped out espresso alongside your reading material. Dane Neller said he’s working on that.

Quote of the day: “I hope when I cut this ribbon, the damn thing doesn’t explode.”

Wtf?

This Noice blogger was walking back to Eliot from the Science Center and happened across this sorry sight.

I just had to snap it.

I heard the infant murmur that it had come too close to the Japanese school group last afternoon when they were taking photos at the John Harvard statue, so one of the teachers disemboweled him.

Poor thing.

Ewww.

You’ve all seen them. Walking through the basement of Dunster on the way to your D-hall, in the entryways of freshman houses, and of course, in good old Winthrop. They are everywhere—those crumbled up, smooshed, brown spindly things that are clearly dead cockroaches.

Gross.

Noice is as freaked out by them as you are… so here are some helpful hints if you are disgusted enough to try a little at-home extermination. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mojito

Banana Daiquiris, Brandy Alexanders, and Caramel Apple-Tinis, each of which I savored at 5 p.m. on a Monday evening. No, I did not spend my night in a drunken stupor, but in a sweet sugar high from the cocktail cupcake happy hour at Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square.

As unfortunate as this may sound, I consider myself to be quite the cupcake snob. Being from LA, I am a wholehearted follower of the cupcake craze that swept the country and now the world. Cupcake shops have sprung up in Rome, Istanbul, Berlin, Seoul, and Sydney, and I’ve made a point to find the best. I’ve waited forty-five minutes for a Sprinkles cupcake in Beverly Hills, tried more artisanal varieties from local bakeries across the country, flocked to Sweet upon its grand opening and, of course, flew to New York for the mecca of cupcakes: Magnolia Bakery.

See the verdict on Kickass Cupcakes after the jump!

Read the rest of this entry »

Kawaii!

If you happened to be near the Yard any time between 3:30 and 4:30pm, chances are you witnessed the spectacle that was the hoard of Japanese students that descended upon our campus and dominated the Kodak moment space in front of our beloved John Harvard.

They migrated through the Yard, flooding the Science Center and creating a bottleneck in the bathroom. But no worries — their smiling faces, dark gray jackets with intricate yellow crests, and knee-high stockings made everything better.

These Sailor Moon-esque schoolchildren made Noice’s day. Visit again, young ‘uns!

Stay tuned for our next installment of Tourist of the Week: In Which The Tourists Become The Toured.

ETA: Another priceless shot.

Noice would like to present the first installment of our ongoing series called Bitchgrams: You Bitch, I Respond. In which you bitch and She Of The Ruthless Bitchgrams, Molly O’Donnell ‘12, responds. Because honestly, we all have things we need to get off our chest and into the blogosphere. So send us your bitchgram today: thehvoicemail@gmail.com. As Shakespeare so aptly put it: The world is a stage, and all the men and women merely bitches.

"GTFO" says Blair and Chuck

And now, onward to our inaugural bitchgram!

Remember this?

From: Wei Gu <weigu11.fas.harvard.edu@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 5:20 AM
Subject: Urgent Discrimination and Administrative Misconducts in GSAS, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
To:

Dear friends,

I am very sorry for the interruption! My name is Wei and I am writing
to you to try to get your support for my endeavor to return to school
after suffering from significant discrimination and misconducts of
some professors and administration officers in GSAS, Faculty of Arts
and Sciences, Harvard University. It is difficult for a student to
fight against those discrimination and misconducts in a powerful
institution, but it is much easier for us to stand up and unite to
create a better academic environment for current and future students
and faculty members.

[...]

Yeah, we’re still a little confused, too. See our translation of this email and Bitchgrams’ response, after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »