http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8GWvcTscZs

Ladies and gents, it’s that time of the year again. No, I’m not taking about finals period (when the only sleeping around you do is in Lamont, and the only thing that goes down is your GPA #butreally).

From May 6th to May 15th (next Sunday), all local Starbucks stores will hold their Frappuccino Happy (Two) Hour(s) from 3pm – 5pm. During this time, get your favorite blended drinks at half-price!

In addition, Starbucks is also bringing back two coconut-flavored drinks for the summer: The Mocha Coconut Frappuchino and the Coconut Creme Frappuchino. I don’t know what the difference is except for the varying levels of sugar and sugary syrup, but you feel free to explore!

Everybody, let’s get fat! As if that’s not the natural by-product of Reading/Finals Period already.

We invite you to read our interpretations of love in a series of feature articles under the headline: Modern Love, modeled after the popular New York Times column.

In What Is Love?, April Sperry realizes how lucky she is to have experienced that tingling sensation at Harvard not once, but multiple times.

Michelle Nguyen found the perfect guy and fell in love. Well, Almost.

In the third installment of this series, an Anonymous contributor talks about the best kind of love there is, the kind you have with Yourself.

Happy reading, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

nChooseTwo

According to the site, “Privacy and security are our top priorities – no information about romantic intent is revealed unless the attraction is mutual, and we are constantly considering user feedback to make our site more useful and more secure.” It’s a win-win situation. No embarrassment if the match is not accepted. Here’s a sample matchmaking scenario from the site:

For example,

say Eve suggests a match between Adam and Beth. Eve shows up as an anonymous matchmaker to Adam and Beth.

If Adam clicks ‘Accept’ and Beth does not, Beth and Eve never find out that Adam clicked ‘Accept’. And vice-versa.

Instead, if Adam and Eve both click Accept, then Eve’s identity is revealed to them. Adam, Beth, and Eve are notified that this match is succesful, and good times are had by all.

Patty's not here, so we'll just have to fend for ourselves.

No harm, no foul. It’s almost time for Valentine’s Day, everyone, so let’s get to matching up our friends and even ourselves! Harvard has the potential for romance. It just needs an anonymous kick-start.

UPDATE: nChooseTwo has extended its services to the BU community!

We thank you for your faith in our Matchmaking power, and we look forward to serving you again soon! Here are some stories*, variously titled “The Good, The Bad, and The Unexpected,” to round up the whole experience. Two freshman girls had two extremely different experiences, and a Varsity athlete in Eliot House went on a perfect date with a girl who still isn’t quite convinced about his sexual orientation. Maybe he’s too good to be true? Read on and find out for yourself!

*Names have been retracted to protect the privacy of our clients.

The Good:

As a blind dating newbie, my roommate and I decided to be adventurous and do the Voice Matchmaker together. Confused as how these matches would be made after no questions were asked about ourselves and only what we desired in a date, I was blessed by the matchmaking gods and asked to the Adams formal this past Sunday. My roommate graciously lent me a beautiful dress and sent me on my way into the Cambridge cold.

Unable to find the entrance and knowing nothing about my match except for his name, I wandered anxiously until I got a call from my date to invite me inside. Everything about the Adams House formal, whose theme was “Harry Potter,” was beautiful. The House could easily be mistaken for Hogwarts for the night. My date, a senior Adams resident, was extremely sweet and friendly and we wove in through the trees and mystical music to get inside, be sorted, and receive our wands.

Somehow, The Voice found me a perfect date and great new friend. We mingled for the night until he was drawn back to his room to work on his thesis. I am still unsure if the Voice worked its magic, if it was a purely magical night, or if Harvard is just full of truly nice guys. Either way it worked out for me, I had a great time and I hope my date felt the same!

Read on for two extremely “interesting” stories!

The Bad:

As freshmen, my friend and I thought it would be funny to put ourselves into The Voice’s Matchmaker website so we could attend a random house formal and have fun. Sunday morning, I got an email with my date assignment, and immediately I looked him up on the Harvard Facebook. Weird… He wasn’t on it. I knew he had to be a student here, because he had an @fas email account, and yet, he seemed not to exist. A few hours later, I get an email from my mysterious date, asking me to meet up with him for coffee. I was nervous, to say the least, so I made a couple of friends come with me.

When we arrived to the coffee shop, my friends pretended not to know me and watched anxiously from across the shop as my formal date walked in. He was definitely in his 20s, and seemed a bit bizarre. But I wasn’t going to judge the book by its cover and just leave; he could’ve been a nice guy. I quickly realized that was not the case. First, the mystery of his non-existence on the Harvard Facebook was solved: he was an Extension School student. Second, he didn’t seem to have a major, which seemed odd for a supposed junior in college. Lastly, he was rather creepy; my first impression had been spot on. After we got our coffee, there were no seats left inside, but I refused to leave and suggested that we stand, refusing to go anywhere else with him. Five minutes into the coffee “date,” my roommate saved me. After texting her multiple “help” messages, she called me, insisting on the phone that I get home right away because she needed me desperately. I put all my elementary school acting to good work, apologized, and ran out of there as quickly as I could.

Needless to say, I learned that even at Harvard, finding dates online, even as a joke, can potentially be a pretty bad idea.

The Unexpected:

I received an email from “The Voice” informing me of a match for a House formal on Monday, and I knew it was a prank played on me by my mischievous blockmates. My first instinct was to hit reply and politely opt my way out of this. “Online matchmaking” just has a rather negative ring to it, and I wasn’t going to put myself on the line for a potentially creepy/desperate/insert derogatory adjectives here guy.

On second thought, I changed my mind. It was an idle Monday, my mysterious “date” already has an extra ticket, and what did I have to lose, really? A couple of hours more spent agonizing over this English paper? No. I thought this might be worth a shot. Suspicious as I always am, I shot “The Voice” an email begging for more information. I got a reply within minutes assuring me that this guy was a Varsity athlete, tall, and has “a great personality.”

Half an hour later (after having meticulously screened me on Facebook, I’m sure), the date (let’s call him “John”) emailed me, asking if I wanted to get dinner. I was intrigued. Could it be that my abysmal dating life at Harvard was about to change?

We met at a Japanese restaurant, and surprisingly enough, dinner went well. There was the initial awkwardness perfunctory in blind dates, but John was a great conversationalist. He was refreshingly frank and captivating. He knew a little too much about fashion/girly gossip in general, which prompted me to ask, rather facetiously, if he was gay. He assured me that he wasn’t. I felt like I just dodged a bullet. I asked why a guy like him, who clearly seems like he can get a lot of girls by himself, needed a “matchmaking service.” He laughed and said he’s “actually pretty shy,” which I didn’t buy. He finally said he thought it’d be a fun way to meet new people, and he knew the girl who was directing the whole thing, so it’s not like he was going to get matched with “someone crazy.” (I’m glad I passed this one test?)

After dinner, we went back to our respective houses and got ready for formal. Since it was an unexpected affair, I had to enlist my roommate (who, in fact, did enter me into the matchmaking thing out of boredom) to help me get ready. He showed up at my door forty minutes later, clearly surprised by my “transformation.” He even commended my roommate for her “fantastic work,” which earned him some brownie points, but further perpetuate my concern regarding his sexuality.

Whatever, I put all my worries and inhibitions behind and really let myself have fun with this random stranger. In many ways, it was the perfect date. I’m glad that I put myself out there and did something spontaneous for a change. Where is this going to go? I don’t know, but at the very least I had fun. So thanks, The Voice!

From “John”: She’s really great! My only thing was that she seemed overly concerned about her hair. She was constantly afraid that it was messed up, but I really didn’t care! As for the future, I don’t know. We’ll see. My heart is still open!

Noice would like to think of CrimsonSpark as a hybrid of its precedents: less public than ISawYouHarvard, less creepy than normal online dating sites, and less random and seasonal than online matchmaking services. Read the amusing email below, which was sent out tonight over the Eliot House’s list from its creator, for more details.

————————————————

Dear Eliot,

Time to breathe new life into the Harvard dating scene. Not that we don’t find the dance-floor-makeout culture on campus to be charming, but maybe a change is in order. CrimsonSpark is a dating website, but not a “dating” website. That is, we aren’t matching you with a stranger based on some compatibility test or extensive profile. Because let’s face it- that’s a little creepy.

CrimsonSpark works on the basis that there is some one you know at Harvard and would like to know better. Maybe it’s a guy in section, a girl you eat lunch with or just some cute sophomore who you always say hi to. That’s where CrimsonSpark comes in.

How it works:

1. Register.

2. Start “sparking.”

“Sparking” entails searching for your prospective date, filling out a short checklist of date options you’d be willing to go on with this person, and then clicking submit. It’s that easy.

If there is a match (both parties spark each other), one or both of you will receive an email with the other one’s checklist, so you can get a sense of what that person is game for. All that’s left from here is the date itself. Of course, we don’t ask the other person out for you–the ball’s in your court.

We would love it if you could sign up and check out the beta version of the site that is up now at www.crimsonspark.com. Have fun with it, and get your spark on.

———————————————————————–

Sounds worth a try? Spark away!

Is IvyGate/Yale/Gawker/etc. going to make fun of us for yet another online attempt to savage our non-existent dating scene? Probably. But would you rather go through unorthodox ways to have dates or stay sexually frustrated? Exactly our point.

Here's a bunch of pictures of a facially expressive cat to make you feel better.

Dear PreFroshies,

Don’t worry that’s not what we really call you, that’s just a term of endearment we’re using for the sake of this letter. The Voice runs a little thing called Harvard FML. It’s really for us undergrads here at the school (and occasionally a sex-starved grad student) but you often send us anonymous submissions too. Like this recent one that didn’t quite make the cut:

“I’m two months away from graduating from High School and I’m pretty nervouse and scared!!”

We didn’t post it— not because we don’t like you or because you spelled nervous wrong. But we wanted to acknowledge it anyway. Don’t worry little pepper pot. College is going to be fabulous (that is if you are going to college and you are going to Harvard… otherwise we’re not sure why you’re on this site or posting on our FML so we can’t make guarantees). Harvard pretty much spoils its students— and especially you Freshmen. You’ll make lots of friends because everyone wants friends and no one will know you fell on your face in your high school’s production of The Music Man because the hem on your costume was too long. My, my that was oddly specific. But I REALLY digress:

Chill out. Enjoy your senior spring, and do try your best to shake your senioritis before you get here. Even then it’s not the end of the world.

Love,

The Voice

Hold You in My Arms – Ray Lamontagne //I’m a Slave 4 U – Britney Spears//Love Story – Taylor Swift//All is Full of Love – Bjork//My Funny Valentine – Chaka Khan//Die Alone – Ingrid Michaelson//You Make My Dreams – Hall & Oates//Nerd Girl – Chester French

and of course: Bad Romance – Lady Gaga

Listen to the playlist in the sidebar or