Hallo-weiner!

Happy Halloween! Hopefully you all enjoyed Crackoween, but if you're part of the 99% of people who didn't get an invite, feel free to occupy Crack. That is, assuming you meet the minimum requirements to get in: a 15:1 ratio of hot girls to guys and being at least 21.

If you didn't get an opportunity to party with the lax team, you probably ended up going to Pinefest. Aside from the ten minute trudge through a record amount of October snow and then having to spend time outside in the freezing weather, it was a good time. My favorite part was the snowball fights I instigated on the way there. Just a quick note to anyone who cares: if you're not allowed/don't want to drink, starting snowball fights with heavily intoxicated people is way more fun than you would expect. For one thing, they get into it right away. Secondly, their aim is worse than a monkey with Parkinson's. All in all it's a win-win situation for you.





Halloween is one of those holidays that is exciting for any age. When you're really young, you get mountains of candy. If you have cool parents that trust you with knives, they might even let you carve a pumpkin! In college, you get mountains of "candy" (whatever happened to Aaron Carter?). Post-college, the only way to enjoy Halloween is either to take your kids out trick-or-treating, scaring the dickens out of kids trick-or-treating at your house, or blowing a years salary on something like this.

Halloween is all about being creative; this slideshow of pumpkins is definitely worth checking out. Finally, enjoy these funny Halloween-related pictures, and don't forget to dress up for classes today! It's the cool Howard thing to do!

Halloweekend AND Parents Weekend!

Halloween! College! No Parents!

Hooray Halloween! An opportunity for all of us to bee slutty! 4 nights of drunken debauchery!

Hooray parents! This could go many ways. Maybe an opportunity to be slutty? Broaden your horizons!

In any case, I'm stuck using a Mac in Amherst, MA right meow so I can't make or upload up any of the hilarious graphs I envisioned making on the 4 and a half hour drive down here. They will most certainly be less funny when I can make them on Sunday, but hopefully you'll appreciate the potential they had.

Click this last!
Click this before the previous link!

Hey, Ya Looked Good This Week

All it takes is one good day and you can win the whole week, as was demonstrated by our first champion of Hey, Ya Looked Good This Week....

Zohran Kwame Mamdani

Jorts in late October? Your confidence doesn't go unnoticed. Rock on, Zohran.

IT'S TRUE

Blast Through the Past

Brought to you by the effects of not running enough miles today at practice. I'm wired right meow.

Firstly, this is now my new favorite jam.

Secondly, Jimmy Neutron was my second favorite boy genius as a child, right behind Dexter from Dexter's lab. Also the Brain from Pinky and the Brain. Conversely, Ed from Ed, Edd, and Eddy was my favorite boy idiot and my second favorite was Sheen from Jimmy Neutron (sorry for the bad quality BUT IT'S SO FUNNY). Also, Pinky from Pinky and the Brain.

Thirstily, enjoy reliving your childhood.

Bridging the Gap (Narp Perspective)

After spending hours and hours poring over all the statistical data that I could gather from the blog, it appears that we have great diversity amongst our readers. Ranging from the narpiest narps to the jockiest jocks, and some random international people (I'll figure out who you are eventually Mr. Denmark), we've hit a place where Bowdoin's diversity can only dream of getting. That being said, an undefinable barrier must be bridged between the narps and the jocks. Things that are seemingly innocuous to one group may be downright terrifying to the other. But fear no more! For here is the first installment of a potential series in which some places on campus are going to be arbitrarily and stereotypically defined by my idea of what a narp perspective is!



Thorne 
Big, vast, yet oddly belittling dining hall. Fine for breakfast and early lunch, but when it gets packed, you might as well be playing Where's Waldo trying to find who you came with. It's incredible how good athlete's eyes are in comparison to narps; they literally just walk straight to their friends without hesitating. Maybe one day there will be designated tables for narps too.

The Quad
Great place for studying when it's nice out, which apparently is only the first week of school. That's fine though, us Howardians aren't really the outdoorsy type anyway. However, some die-hard Howardian's/ future Howardian's challenge the elements and will read under a tree in the middle of October (hint: gloves). However, walking across the quad is the main reason that we have to run between classes. If there were no quad, we could just roll our backpacks straight from Hubbard to Searles in a nice warm hallway. In essence, the quad is a barrier to academic success, mainly by keeping us in the back row.


Hawthorne and Longfellow Library
Library! Studying! College! No parents! Books!


First Year Dorm (Hyde, Winthrop, Appleton, etc)
You know you're living in Howard when you signed up to live in Howard during the housing lottery. Another good indicator, albeit not nearly as good as just knowing where the hell you sleep at night, is visiting your freshman dorm. It's a great way to make friends with some underclassmen, and you can share stories of those crazy nights you spent in your old dorm watching CSPAN or Obama announce the death of bin Laden.

Smith Union

Mailboxes, C-store, Jack Magee's, noisy study room, billiards, Foosball and pingping tables (aka a one stop place for all of a Howardian's workout needs). Also a place where you may find yourself puking after drinking your first beer before a concert. #notwinningthennotwinningnow

Buck

An adult male deer, also slang for a dollar.

Farley Field House

The dog in that movie that my mom wanted me to see with her? HAHA JK everyone knows it's where our hockey teams play! I went to the Colby-Bowdoin game last year and never knew I could get so into a game that I understood none of the rules for. For example, why were there only 2 nets when there were obviously 3 teams on the icecourt? And the 3rd team didn't even get to use sticks, they had whistles and kept picking the flat ball up! (they were also severely undermanned, it must be some weird Canadian thing). But the "Safety School!" chant was the most school spirit I've ever felt.

Seriously wtf. 3 guys 2 sticks?

 Pickard Theater

A great venue for student produced theatrical pieces and other necessary forms of cultural advancement. If there's one thing you have to do before you graduate bowbow, it's either produce, perform in or support one of these productions. Personally, I'm a big fan of musicals: A Very Potter Musical is the great thing I've ever seen, and I'm also partial to West Side Story (the Jets snapwalk is hilarious if you're stuck behind someone walking slowly and you feel too awkward to pass them),  for plays I like A Midsummer Nights Dream, and for movie adaptions of the greatest play ever written I require you to see Gnomeo and Juliet. Yes that was a tangent, but all of those links should definitely be clicked and watched because they're all awesome/terrific procrastination tools.

Jock perspective to come tomorrow, I'm gonna need hella interviews.

The Day I Knew I Was Meant For Howard

In our motley crew, four of us do Falcon Friends every Friday. Falcon Friends is a great mentoring program run by Lindsey Horowitz and Samir Samirslastname. The idea is for elementary school kids to get exposed to kids in college as a way to get them thinking about higher education at an early age. The reality is 2 hours of jam-packed action in which being 5'6 means you're finally the tallest kid on the basketball court, and you can finally live the dream of being first pick in dodgeball.

Anyway, recess this week was a solid game of 3 on 3 basketball in which my team won 13-2 (my mentee scored 9 points, but I sweated 11 times more than anyone else…#WIN. Apparently height doesn't translate to athleticism, and neither does watching 90's basketball documentaries). Even though I wasn't dominant in the points department, I killed at both rebounds and at being tall -- you should have seen my shadow compared to theirs!

Moving along to the point of this story, my world was turned on its head at lunch. We went to sit at what I thought was the cool kids table, but apparently the cool kids table kept changing because whenever people sat next to my mentee, he insisted we switch tables. We finally stayed at a table when this cute little girl with pigtails and a lunch box with a flower on it sat next to him. Being completely ignorant to the intricacies of like-liking, I tried to engage him in an in-depth conversation of basketball strategies we could run this upcoming week. He kept trying to bring her into the conversation, but girls of any age are my Achilles heel (and Achilles shin, thigh, abdomen, head, etc), so eventually I just let them talk and I sat in silence with my plain strawberry jelly sandwich. Then it hit me.

HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND!!! HE'S 10 AND HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND AND I'M OLD AS FUH AND I CAN'T COMFORTABLY HOLD A CONVERSATION WITH A GIRL OF ANY AGE!

Bloggy Things

So I just wanted to let everyone know some cool features about the blog, and then let you guys know what will be coming up every week, since this has snowballed from a small joke into an actual thing.

Hey, Ya Looked Good This Week
A nice little idea by our friend Jordan. You look good, we find you, we take a picture, you're famous. Nominations for this contest can be sent to empoweredinhoward@gmail.com

Email Updates
Speaking of updates, you can get them by entering your email address into the little thingie at the bottom of the blog. I have no idea how this works, but presumably something like how the earth rotates: a combination of magic and dwarven slaves.

Visit Counter
For those of you who haven't noticed, at the bottom of the shit on the right there's a total view counter. Apparently we've had over a thousand views, and quite frankly that's frightening. We enjoy seeing that go up. Also I get crazy statistics on views. So I know when you're reading this. That means you.

Free Kitten Baskets To Send to Your Relatives for Holidays!

 

lolz jk.

Apparently Girls Read This Blog

................................................................................................................................................................................................................oh god.

A Weekday in the Life of a Howard Kid (Afternoon)

12:00-12:30 P.M: Gotta get our naps in, because you KNOW we're running on that dymaxion sleep cycle to be able to study 20+ hours a day.


1:00 P.M: Reclaim throne in front of classroom. Answer every question before it leaves the lips of the Professor. Bask in the jealous stares that you can feel from everyone behind you. Or is that anger? Basic human interaction won't be on the midterm, no point in learning it.

2:25 P.M: Discuss the meaning of life with fellow Howardian on the way back to the outpost. It's nice to know that there are other people as dedicated to intellectuality as you are at this school. Exchange numbers, plan to meet up later to study.

2:30 P.M: Spend 30 minutes looking for funny pictures of cats. Save them in a folder on your desktop that has over 9000 images.

3:00-4:00 P.M: Run 10 man Naxxramas with your guild, get the Betrayer of Humanity. Day improves 70%, and you're fully ready to tackle your homework that's due in 3 weeks, because you did the more recent shit before school even started.

4:00-6:30 P.M: This is when us Howardians really shine. The athletes are out at practice or playing in games, and we take this time to get above and beyond in our studies. 2.5 hours to just pound out note cards, re-retake notes,  chug Red Bulls, find cool new study spots, and just generally win at college. College! No parents! Studying!

6:30 P.M: Time to once again face our worst fears: finding a seat at Thorne. Luckily you've met up with one of your roommates, and you will definitely have someone to sit with. However, he's the guy that takes 10 minutes to make a salad and another 5 minutes to toast his damn panini. So you're stuck awkwardly following him around, getting in everyone's way, and just getting more and more embarrassed. Finally he's ready, and after a stop at the milk (for the bones) and coke (for the thrill) dispensers, you head to the tables on the left side of Thorne where the NARPs sit.

6:35 P.M: Dinner started out well, but it suddenly took a nose dive towards terrible. Instead of everyone wanting to hear about the epic Naxx run we did earlier, they just want to talk about sports. SPORTS?! THAT'S WHY WE LIVE IN HOWARD! They talk about baseball and the Red Sox troubles this year (baseball has started?!), and begin to talk about how people are getting traded. You are concerned about your favorite player, and ask, "What's going to happen to Nomar?" Never have you seen such judgement in a stare, especially from one of your own. You hang your head in shame and spend the rest of dinner building triglyceride models out of peas and carrot strips.

7:10-9:30 P.M: I know you're thinking "oh great time for another homework joke". Well let me tell you, you big hairy adrenaline fueled steroid taking gorilla, Howard kids do more than homework, video games, and eat. We're also in clubs and groups and other stuff. So HA!

9:45 PM: You return to your room, still unbeaten at ping-ping and ready to use this fact as a pick up line for the entire weekend (note: this means Saturday night only. Friday night is for the weekly review of major points from class). Surprisingly, girls at Bowdoin are far less impressed with your ping-ping skills; it seems as though going to a school that actually has varsity athletics makes unfunded club teams less of a big deal.

10:30 PM: Bedtime. Wet dreams? Hopefully.

Dobby: An Outsiders Take

Apparently it was unfair for me to write my own bio, and I rambled too long about the merits of fruitcakes and nutcakes and whatever. Therefore, Pancakes took the liberty of writing me a new one! Hooray Pancakes! He will potentially be an editor/poster in the future, so let us know if you like his style. And if you like his writing.

Dobby (Coby Horowitz):

Short with a bad sense of humor; in other words,so he would make a terrible friend but a great standing armrest. When he isn't blowdrying his naturally clammy hands, Coby likes to text his secret lover who he constantly refers to as a man or a nonexistent creature. His favorite hobby is reading a book during an 8k race so he is doing something, "at least a little challenging" while running against top collegiate athletes. He also enjoys having fun and making friends as long as he already is friends with the person he's making friends with, and avoiding social house parties. Had he been 6 inches taller and 70 pounds heavier he would totes be playing d1 lacrosse, but instead he was given a frame comparable to that of Mary-Kate Olsen’s.

A Weekday in the Life of a Howard Kid

6 A.M.: Wake up. Call mother. Tell her that yes you had a good sleep, but you need help picking out clothes. Spend the next 5 minutes arguing with mom about what to wear, ignore her advice and end up wearing jeans from yesterday and your usual sweatshirt.

6:15 A.M.:  Begin going over notes from class yesterday that you took with your 6-color pen and 3 different highlighters. Your policy is to rewrite anything that seems interesting: you always rewrite everything. School rocks.

8:00 A.M: Well deserved breakfast break. Pancakes with no syrup (sugar makes us hyperactive), whole milk and some Frosted Flakes. College! No parents! Frosted Flakes!

9:00 A.M: First class is at 9:30, but we head over 30 minutes early to be absolutely positively goddamn sure that we get the middle seat in the front row. After all, everyone knows that sound diminishes (.001x^5) * 6.3% per 2 feet.

9:05-9:29 A.M: Other kids begin to show up. Avoid eye contact at all costs; pretend that you're pretending to look over the notes like everyone else, while in reality you are seriously reading your notes in preparation for a good class. Once your professor arrives, flash him/her an awkward smile and hustle to the front of the class.

9:31 A.M: That jock-looking kid with the Goliath arms and legs like tree trunks trundles in. Who does he think is, showing up this late to class?!

Definition of my childhood.

10:25 A.M: First class is over. You leave knowing that you took the best notes, learned the most, and will prevent any scaling from taking place for the rest of the class. Brings back memories of dominating video games as a child while the other kids did sports and outside activities and shit.You are the first to leave the room, sprinting with your rolling backpack in tow to be the first to your 10:30 class.




11:30 A.M: Second class ends. You leave in a daze; the rolling backpack let you down and you were the sixth one in the room. For the first time ever, you had to sit in the second row. Nothing made sense, you couldn't hear the teacher, and worst of all, you were distracted by the kid in front of you playing World of Warcraft. He was terrible. A female dwarf priest? Was he kidding? And he didn't even realize he was in shadow spec until his team wiped twice! Noob.

They're not even hot. 

11:45 A.M: Stephen Glansberg lunch in the back of Thorne (it's a Superbad reference...I don't really get it). Hamburger! Fries! COCA COLA! College! No parents!

Stereotypical Profiling Over! Real Fun Happening! (soon)

Recap

Last But Not Least, The Running Double

The Dad (Greg Talpey):
The least eligible bachelor of the gang. Great cheeks (both sets), laid back and smart. Enjoys long runs on the beach with his grandmother-girlfriend finding rocks for his collection. He currently works in the art library, so if you’re ever in the mood for a good art book, reassess your life plan. Things he doesn’t like: Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass music video, untidiness, rap music, kids walking on his lawn, and newfangled thingamabobs. Things he does like: (much) older women, flip phones, cribbage, bridge (the card game and the structure), rocks, making his bed, telling kids to get off his lawn, dinner before 5, and hip folk music.

Dobby (Coby Horowitz):
Short with a bad sense of humor; in other words, he would make a terrible ice cream flavor. In the nicest way possible, he's as nutty as fruitcake. I got that from searching synonyms of crazy, but if you think about it "nutty as fruitcake" doesn't really make sense. Nutty as nutcake makes sense, or fruity as fruitcake, but nutty as fruitcake is like comparing cats to bananas: even though both are edible, you wouldn't put them in the same dish. This post is too long and I think I'll release it in sections by roommates. Enjoys having fun and making friends as long as he already is friends with the person he's making friends with, and avoiding social house parties. Had he been 6 inches taller and 70 pounds heavier he would totes be playing d1 lacrosse, but instead he was given a frame comparable to that of Mary-Kate Olsen’s.

Just Calling It As It Is....The Jews

Rhymes with Fat Cat (Matt Glatt):
Tall, handsome, eligible,  scruffy, and according to this article, he will have a job lined up by the time he graduates. Exceedingly capable with a racket, he is known to dominate in all video games produced post N64 era. We realized today that the Howard Eight also have something else 62.5% in common: iPhones. However two noobs still have 3GS’s so we’re trying to fix that. Oddly, he likes seaweed.

The Golfer (Mikey Jarrell):
Can be found always wearing a hat and a smile. This fun-loving man likes to spend his time hooking up his computer to the TV and the TV to the computer and the TV to another TV and putting computers in computers in computers and then selling the rights to his ideas to movie producers who then come up with Inception. Also a famous radio host and the go-to guy for sports news, he's also a ginger. But we've accepted him for how he was born and you should too. Interesting fact: he can sleep with the lights on and people talking in the room. THIS IS MIKEY!

also sorry for taking so long to blupdate 


also sorry im not sorry for not blupdating earlier

Kitty Kaption Kontest Ktime!

"My eyes are down here."

Yes I know using "cat" instead of "kitten" would have prevented all of the spelling mistakes in the title. Haters gonna hate.

Twinsies

The Hammer (Dylan Hammer):
Although the name might imply that he would look like this guy,
he doesn't have a large hammer, a following of Norsemen, OR the ability to kill ice giants. He is, however, tall, handsome, scruff-less and single. He is a has-been Stoned Clown, now a Stone-cold sober GORF. Although I've never asked I'm 98% sure his favorite book is probably some sort of anime thing. Also, I pepperflipped him that on Tuesday's he has to pretend to be a pickle. Help him out by calling him "Dill" every Tuesday, he'd really appreciate it. Finally, the Hammer really likes pizza, and I owe him $12 at the time of writing.







Stranz (Alex Powers):

Tall, handsome, scruff-less. I would like to take this time to point out that if any ladies want a tall handsome man, either scruffy or scruff-less, Howard is crawling with them. We are also 62.5% Jewish. Anyways, if Stranz and Pancakes were two sides of an Oreo and the middle was normal frosting they would be your typical Stoned Clown member, albeit with organs made of frosting. He also likes to boast that he is a capable FIFA player. To date, I have seen him dominated 7-1 and 6-0, and heard about him losing 5 of 6 games the other night. His strengths include LOTR trivia and supporting the Free Earl campaign.

Introducing: The Mismatch

Pancakes (Pancakes Morrison):
The most eligible bachelor of the gang. Tall, handsome, smart, scruffy, hates being touched. Unlike the rest of the Stoned Clown, he prefers playing frisbee to drinking frisbees. Constantly looking around corners, he spends his nights trying to avoid girls who want to share saliva with his hot lips. Don't let that stop you though ladies; you may be that one girl on his radar. Four days after shaving is when his scruff is in its prime. He is also VP of Ping-Ping club and has never been beaten at Bowdoin: if you think you can beat him, ping-ping club is at 8 A.M. on Tuesdays.


Sick Naba (Nick Saba):
A man with a plan and 30 ways to complain about it. Constantly strives to find an equilibrium between 17 labs and his bed time of 10:30. Incredibly, he also manages to fit running and brushing his leg hair in his schedule too, which (if you've seen his leg hair you'll agree) is a feat of mammoth proportions. Prefers jazz ensembles and crappy untalented rappers (Pitbull) to real musicians (Lil Wayne). Is the only other 3 time All-American in the crew, however he has won all three times (2 DMR's one 4x8). Tickle him in the right place and he'll scream "NO STOP STOP IT'S NOT FUNNY SERIOUSLY STOP!" but in reality you can keep on going cuz he'll be giggling hardcore.

Our Mission

Here in Howard we take empowerment seriously.

Empowered is defined by Google Dictionary as "making (someone) stronger and more confident, esp. in controlling their life and claiming their rights". The goal of this blog is to let the Bowdoin world outside of chem-free life know how those of us on the inside survive. We are not here by choice; fate (see: shitty lottery numbers) has thrown us in this lilac smelling, NARP filled, puke- (lol) and beer- (double lol) free dorm.

Our journey begins with the misfortunes of 8 merry men who passed their first college year with flying colors and without incident....that's not even a little bit accurate.

Second try:
Our journey begins with the misfortunes of some sophomores whose moods are affected by sports scores or chronic dumpiness, with only one shining beacon of happiness amongst the group. But he's crazy. Fuck.

Third try:
I think what I'm trying to say is that our journey may not be pretty; it may not be fun; there will probably be copious amounts of homework and a severe lack of going out; but I swear on a five dollar bill that we shall emerge from chem-free life unscathed and ready to mingle with the general population.

We hope that our trials and tribulations bring laughter to your lives and life to your uterine.

God Save the Queen.

But seriously....