– D. Kothari

They rearrange us in different sequences: eye color, hair color, tendency towards addiction, mental illness, and acne coverage. I’m trying to imagine the girls going through the same ordeal, maybe with some subjective beauty standard added on top. They’re always looking for the most acceptable, if not perfect, subject.

I figure the inspections must’ve ended because Miss Sunshine-and-Rainbows is back, calling our names one by one to get dressed for the ride back to the commune. The commune staff tells us this year is special, the milestone year thirteen, when we get to meet our parents “for the first time.” This is only true in conscious memory; I think it would be natural to conclude that we’ve met during the whole C-section ordeal, although definitely not as equals, more human-to-alien.

I also know they are liars, the whole lot of them. Only two of us — one boy, one girl — will actually meet the biologicals. The rest of us 67 kids are sent to work in the mines. It’s expensive to raise kids and find out they’re failures halfway through a million-dollar college tuition. The special eggs go elsewhere, to the maternity ward upstairs, although I’ve never been bold enough to hop on the freight elevators upwards. I’m sure they’re keycarded as well.

I could blabber on about the morality of lying, especially lying to children about their futures, but right now, I’m more concerned about my survival. That’s how they get us; they trap us in this competition we’re doomed to lose from the start and drag the unlucky many into the workers’ barracks.

I feel confident. For me, competition is anything but stiff. There’s Baller Pete, who has a head of Jello; he keeps showing up at the wrong places at the wrong times, doing all the wrong things. Once, he was caught behind the reception desk around two in the morning, rifling through the drawers for anything resembling Grape Yumptious Fun Dip — his drug of choice.  Someone had tipped him off toa sugar high so sweet, it would let him fly his way into the hoop, unstoppable. He ended up taking around ten laxative tablets and spent the entire next day in the infirmary restroom. Needless to say, he missed the next few pick-up games.

Then there’s Droolin’ Pete. He spends his days slobbering on whatever sheets of paper or electronic matter is fed into his hand. The debris that leaves his mouth seems to be caustic; a handler lost two of her fingertips handling the residue. No one dares to approach him without nitrile gloves nowadays. I’d reckon his prospects aren’t too bright for the near future.

Psycho Pete spends all his days locked up in isolation after earlier incidents, and only gets out for rec time with the rest of us boys. Not that he’s very social of course, he prefers kicking over anthills by the bleacher-side. If he wants to clock out early, he’ll scoop up a handful of fire ants and chase the staff around the halfmile-track until an orderly nails him from behind with a hypodermic needle and he falls to the ground, hands in his face. He usually comes back the day after with his head puffed up like he caught a bout of smallpox.

Those three are the standouts, the cream of the crop. Everyone else in between is simply not remarkable. Gossiping, consuming, play-fighting, I don’t even consider them to be in the same league as myself. They’re normal, simpletons, and on paper they will not stand out in any meaningful way when mom and dad tick the checkbox next to their favorite kid and shake hands with the NucleoChoose manager.

Miss Sunshine-and-Rainbows excitedly calls for Baller Pete and he pokes his head up through his Pete-entourage. She tugs onto his big man-hands and leads him into the front office. 

======

It’s a long and brooding bus-ride back to the compound, despite the short trip duration of only 5 minutes.

I expected Baller Pete to come along with us on the bus-ride. Instead, Miss Sunshine-and-Rainbows came back and herded us all back onto the bus, alone. The paranoia began to build when I took the steps up and gave the bus driver a curt nod. As I took my usual spot in one of the middle rows, I looked around for Baller Pete. I found his empty seat staring back at me. The doors closed and the engine cried into a start, and then the backdrop of the inspection office grew smaller and smaller through the back window until we made a turn at a stop sign and a group of firs moved in to block my view.

Oh my God—They chose Baller Pete. Sugar-addled, narrow-minded, dumb-as-bricks Baller Pete! Was it his height? It must’ve been his height. My brain ceaselessly searched for reasons as to how this could have happened, and it could only find one: my parents must be shallow and idiotic themselves. They picked an oaf of all people!

—E. Song

They told me about the club when I was 17. Granted, I already had some indication this was a big part of their lives considering the photos they had in their bedroom of mile-high escapades. They let me know that they would love to welcome me to the Mile High Club but they understood that it was my choice. Considering this is a really big deal, I decided to take a little bit of time to think. The initiation process is more difficult now than it was in previous years and it’s not like we have a private jet. After a few months, I realized that, in my heart, I needed to partake in family tradition and join the Mile High Club. I wanted to talk with others about their initiation processes and any regrets they had about their first time Mile High. 

I booked my flight to Denver so I could join on my 18th birthday (to avoid any legal complications). By the time I landed, I was so excited to be a mile above sea level that I didn’t care about the altitude. My eyes lit up when I saw Blucifer and the Rocky Mountains looming before me. The Uber drove downtown, stopping at the steps on 14th and Colfax. As I walked into the office, I took a breath before the course of my life changed. Now, I can say that I’m a proud member of the “Denver: The Mile High City Fanatics Club”, affectionately known by members as the Mile High Club. Go Broncos!

—A. Garcia

1. Learn approximately thirteen Spanish words

The first roadblock that many Sp-raudsters (Spain fraudsters) run into is usually the language barrier. But have no fear, because now you do! It’s a little known fact that if you learn about thirteen words of any language, people will believe you are fluent. Bonus points for the more obscure they are. Any Joe Shmoe knows that “hola” means guitar (or was it cello?), but only a true Spanish speaker knows that “erizo” means hedgehog or “he perdido todo sentido de humanidad” means “I have lost all sense of humanity.” If one of your suitemates speaks Spanish, just tell them the dialect in Spain is different than in their home country. If they are from Spain, call them a dirty, filthy liar. Who’s making up the story now, pal?

2. Plagiarize

This step is crucial for believability but has two different options, depending on the severity of your situation. The ideal option here is to find someone who did actually go to Spain over the summer, steal the pictures they took off their Instagram, and then try to pass them off as your own. However, if you are pressed for time, it’s always an option to just Google “Spain” and download the first few images that appear in search results to your camera roll. To really sell it, you can even Photoshop a picture of you onto these stock images to make it look like you were taking a selfie. If any of your friends start to look too closely, snatch your phone away and throw it across the room, claiming you saw a mouse and were trying to hit it. At the very least this will change the subject.

3. Hire a Spanish friend (Or an amigo as you said this summer *wink wink*)

Look, there’s got to be at least four or five people originally from Spain living within a 10 mile radius of you right? Times are tough, who doesn’t need some spare cash!? Find one of these Spaniards and pay them an amount-o grande  of money to pretend to be the friend you made during your summer in Spain. Bonus points: Come up with a backstory together to make it believable, maybe even tell your friends that you fell madly in love with this person and are heartbroken that they soon must return to España. Cry, shed a few tears. As your friends try to comfort you, reassure them that you will be alright— but they must never speak of Spain again.

—S. Lanz

The Yale Humanities Department finalized their annual selection process for the Celin Award in Directed Studies earlier this week; sources tell the Daily News that this is something we should care about.

The Celin Award, first given in 1957, recognizes the efforts of the most competitive and bristly student in the Directed Studies program. The finalists for the award are selected at the end of the spring semester and are narrowed down during a “rigorous summer selection process,” which involves a personalized round of examination at the DS department’s Manitoba summer estate.

According to his roommate, Jason Lindke ‘28 learned he won the $5,000 scholarship this past weekend. “He was over the moon when he heard the news,” noted Kyle Choi-Beurre ‘28. He added, “I get a sense that he was really glad to have somebody to talk to about it that wasn’t one of his internet friends.”

Choi-Beurre was assigned to live with Lindke after all of Lindke’s first-year roommates sought out other arrangements during a particularly-contentious housing lottery. “Say what you will: you can’t deny he’s a hard worker. He spends almost every night between 11:00 PM and breakfast roleplaying with an anarcho-primitivist collective he calls ‘The Doghouse.’ I’m not sure where he finds the time to write all those essays, but it definitely wasn’t during the group’s nightly howl session.”

Further investigation into Lindke’s housing situation revealed a tale of romance and intrigue wholly irrelevant to his academic achievement. “We weren’t sure what to make of him when he showed up,” noted Tawny Wellsworth ’28. “He showed up 3 days before the start of the term and barricaded himself in the only single. We got used to the animal noises quick enough but it smelled like he was eating nothing but cat food in there.”

Eventually, she noted that the whole suite voted to exile him to another college on the first day of housing discussions. “His self-enforced clothing-optional policy in the common room was what really did him in,” she recalled. “One of the other folks living with us was into the whole exhibitionism thing. Then again, his dad works at Palantir, so we thought we should keep him around.” Wellsworth is referring, of course, to Frederick Goodyear III ‘28, who she asked to not be mentioned by name.

Further LinkedIn stalking led us to the profile “MuddyPawz2001,” an anthropomorphic costume and artwork maker who Lindke has commissioned in the past. The News, in the spirit of going above and beyond, unnecessarily pried  into Lindke’s personal life by messaging the artist, who obliged “to gain exposure for her rapidly-growing business.”

MuddyPawz2001 divulges: “Commissions start at $1,850, but Jason wanted one with all the upgrades—A/C, an adjustable head, and fully articulated feet. He was very particular about the feet.”

“To him, it wasn’t usually a sexual thing,” she followed up: “He just liked the freedom of not having to wear any ‘people clothes’ underneath.”

The YDN was able to get into contact with Lindke himself, as shown in the following screenshots. Some personal details have been omitted for privacy.

Submitted by anonymous contributor

His mother, Rebecca Lindke ’95, declined to comment on his academic achievement other than to mention the time he crapped himself on his third grade trip to the Ogunquit Marine Museum on February 21, 2017. “It was terrible,” she briefly remarked. “They had to turn the bus around an hour in—the kids and driver said it was the most embarrassing thing they had ever witnessed. That day followed him for the next 3 years, and we had to change schools. He made me promise to never bring it up again.”

Jackson Lindke’s social security number is 616-39-1158.

—F. Bertell

Ingredients and Supplies

• (3 pound) Leprechaun brisket, trimmed of fat

• Salt and pepper, to taste

• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced

• 1 (12 ounce) bottle tomato-based chili sauce

• ¾ cup packed brown sugar

• Scalder

• .22 Caliber Rifle (On Sale at the Local Walmart!)

• Sticking knife

• Gambrel and chains

• Butcher’s knives

Directions

Butchering

1. Acquiring Your Leprechaun

I’ve got a guy up North (Northern Ireland, that is) who runs me Leps, no questions asked. If you don’t, though, no worries! Leprechauns can be found as keynote speakers at Cryptocurrency conferences. Pots of gold don’t keep up with inflation. Happy hunting!

2. Decluttering

You’ll need to heat about a hundred gallons of water to 145 degrees for scalding. It’ll take a few hours, so we can start the rest of our prep while we wait. 

If you’ve got yourself a wild one, you’re going to need to tidy it up. This one’s covered in rainbow glitter and skin-tight leather, so I’ll be stripping it down first. Carefully remove any clothing or accessories from your Lep. Set it aside—the leather goes for a lot at the Farmer’s Market, and it’s kinda flattering. Just tell ‘em it’s from an exotic goat.  

Oh, look, a necklace. “I-HEART-ANNIE.” Wife, maybe? Must’ve been a sentimental guy. You find gems like that all the time, I’ve even got a little collection . Real… treat of the trade.

3. Draining

Now, you’ll need to get rid of the blood. Hang your Lep by the ankles with somethin’ sturdy, I prefer braided nylon. With your favorite sticking knife, cut the artery. They all have the same tattoo: “Save Mother Earth.” Y’know,I’m into environmentalism too. I volunteer at a sustainable farm in my spare time. Only got one planet to live on. Maybe we would have agreed on that..

Guy looks kinda familiar, actually…

Some keep the blood for sausages, but with Leps, you never really know what combination of seasoning and humming will turn your Sunday dinner into dark magic. So, I find avoiding blood rituals altogether the safest bet. We’ll still throw some salt over our shoulders when we marinate, though.

4. Scalding

I hope you set the water to boilin’ early enough. Lower the Lep into the tank to get it all sanitized, and in my case, soak off the rest of that body glitter. Stuff gets everywhere.

5. Scraping

The Leps call us long pigs, so we’ll be using a hog scraper to shear off these lovely red curls. Remember, go for the roots.

It can be hard to get it all off, sometimes. Everyone says gingers have no souls, right? It doesn’t matter if he’s got impeccable fashion sense and if I’ve maybe bumped into him at a Clean Air Protest. Right? 

6. Skinning

Hang ‘im with a gambrel and pulley system. You’re gonna want good, sharp butcher’s knives. Lep skin ain’t like a cow’s, it’s… stuck on. 

That tattoo again. Gone, now. He’s not… human, is he? Huntin’ em’ is legal. They’re not people. They’re delicious! They don’t think like us, they barely live twenty years. It’s just survival. No different to killing a deer or a chicken. A man’s gotta… gotta eat, right?

He—it—can walk around draped in the clothes of a person all it wants, don’t make it one. A fun, short conversation over a harvest bed means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It’s like when your dog barks back at you. It’s entertaining, a pet play-acting at a man’s intelligence. Nothing more.

7. Eviscerating

Get rid of the organs. Make a vertical incision in the sternum, throw away everything but the liver and… heart. Funny, ain’t it? Looks just like a human’s. A little smaller, maybe. 

Just… follow a butcher’s diagram, when you’ve got the entrails out. Get your brisket ready for slow-roasting. 

Try to ignore how peaceful he looks, above the neck. Like he could just be asleep.

Slow Roasting

1. Preheating

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

There is so much blood on my hands.

Should I… turn myself in? To whom? It’s legal. No one says it’s illegal. He’s livestock. I’m doing nothing wrong.

It’s just… over the hum of the oven, the laughter of my kids upstairs… I can almost hear his heartbeat. I haven’t hunted in years, but I remember how loud they used to get, before they died. Pulse so thundering, so all-consuming for such a small guy, I could hear it clean across a room. I know it’s not real. I know I sold the rest of the meat, and by now his heart’s probably off in some school cafeteria’s mystery stew, but… I can still hear him. 

Is his Annie still waiting at home, do you think?

2. Seasoning

How can I look my children in the eyes, with what I’ve done? I’ve been doing it for years. My soul is tainted. I am doomed, and I deserve it, I do. I do. I’m so sorry. Please, God, spare me! Please, I didn’t know. I’ll never do it again, I know it was wrong, I’ll be so much better. Please you have to understand, you have to…

Show Comments (1):

the-meat-man: I’m still not donating to PETA.

—J. Jackson

Wonderment comes from things that are very big and very, very high up. There is no Wonderment left in this world. It died not with castles, of which many stand uncrumbled, but rather with the last virtuous serf. For the true seat of Wonderment is within men’s hearts.

(To my tut-tutting critics: “Men” is gender-neutral. “High” is a relational term and does not refer—even obliquely—to intoxication. Castles are the only architecture of world-historical significance.)

Over spring break, I traveled to many parts of the Spanish countryside. I witnessed youths playing soccer outside when they should have been sleeping in their beds; older women who had permitted themselves to grey and wither; and normal-aged people working hours that confused me. I witnessed a body politic that never chafed at being held hostage by leisurely wait staff. I witnessed immigrants who frighten me for abstract reasons. 

In short, dear Reader, I witnessed a culture in grave decline. And I felt Despair. 

But then I reached Pastrana, and I saw its castle, and all was redeemed. For I understood Wonderment—or, at least, Wonderment’s modern shadow. 

From the disordered and bestial green of a hillside, there rose steep rocks permitted to persist in their roughness; atop them, there jutted upwards a strong, firm, thick wall of pale stone. Behind that wall was erected a palace so brilliant, so high up, it could have been a cloud. But it was better than a cloud—for clouds are but mute and stupid water, while walls instantiate the genius of their mason.

I had been in the backseat of a cab. I compelled the driver to pull over and jumped out. Suddenly, I felt myself a peasant—a dull Spanish peasant with a flock of something—rounding this same dirt road in a simpler time, and being overwhelmed by the splendor of that castle, towering over my own socioeconomic abasement. 

I prostrated myself on the dirt road to better simulate that abasement. Wow. The castle became even higher—and, somehow, even more inconceivably large. I was awed and wonderstruck.

A voice in the back of my mind rebelled. This is shorter than a skyscraper, said the voice, with petulant modernity. There are warehouses bigger than this, and strip malls more sprawling. This castle holds no king with the power to seize me roughly. 

I began to cry. The palace was high—much hi-er (misspelling intentional) than I. But it was without the soul of hier-archy. It was a sad relic. Archaic pageantry of a bygone arche.

Every school needs boys and girls; a kingdom needs peons, serfs, and churls. I believe it was G.K. Chesterton who said things that sound like that. Tragedy and drama require noble subjects; but low people must exist to behold the high, and to be uplifted by them. Today, no one is lowly enough to marvel at that which is very high and big. I wept into the dirt of that Spanish road. 

After a time, my driver’s charming agitation compelled me to rise. But my heart aches still for the bygone pageantry of power. I want civilized men to build works that strike fear and inspire Wonderment. I want there to exist rural simpletons whose eyes widen when they behold those works. I want police officers to wear capes.

But in mourning lies purpose. By God, I vowed, when I return home, I will do all I can to restore the world I weep for. I will wear suits to casual events and pen tepid opinion columns suggesting the sexual revolution wasn’t all good. I will imply that what we really need is a good war to set us all straight. I will not enlist in the military. I will exhort other people to learn Latin. I will return to the Party of the Right and enter her Aesthetics Essay Contest.

So I swore to the Deity. To that, I now add this: I will praise poems with pentameters and buildings with colonnades. I will convert to Catholicism but retain the right to disagree with the Pope based on my own understanding of Scripture. I will gloat about the fall of USAID, because there is naught in all Creation more based than the deaths of children.

Someday, I will run for office. And when I do, I will dedicate myself to making sure as many Americans as possible experience real Wonderment.

—I. Arroyo 

– B. Soti, R. Carpenter, and S. Mohammed

This course requires no previous art experience and is designed with the pre-med brain (and GPA needs) in mind. Which pill shape and color maximize swallowability? How can I give patients red pills while avoiding associations with The Matrix? Students will turn pharmaceutical design, prescription, and delivery into a creative pursuit.

MW 2:30pm–3:45pm at DL (Dunham Laboratory) 220

ENGL 423: Aesthetics of Death

Taught in English, this upper-level seminar explores human constructions of mortality. Weekly visits to the frigid, bleak Grove Street cemetery will enhance student experiences by providing a rich backdrop for their compositions.

M 1:30pm–3:20pm at the Good Life Center 

MCDB 123: Biology of Feet

Colloquially known as “Socks for Jocks,” this course is for non-science majors who wish to enhance their understanding of some of their major appendages. This course will consider 1) the relationship between foot shape, sock shape, and shoe shape, 2) the physics of locomotion, 3) podiatry culture in America. This course is intended to be a comprehensive survey of feet.

MW 11:35am–12:25pm at DAVIES (Davies Auditorium, Becton Ctr)

MGMT 766: The Psychology and Behavior of Yale Hospitality

This behavioral economics course will attempt to explain the organizational decisions of Yale Hospitality through an interdisciplinary approach. In what ways do inflation and other macroeconomic indicators explain the disappearance of tangerines from Commons? How can we manage the stress on campus plumbing systems after olive oil-rich dinners? Explore these and other pressing questions through this graduate-level lecture, open to Yale College students with previous advanced economics coursework.

F 11:30am–3:00pm at COMMONS (Commons Dining Hall, Schwarzman Ctr)

PLSH 244: The New Polish Cinema

The development of Polish cinema from Fall 1989–Summer 1990. Specific exploration of changes in technique, themes, historical influences that followed the name change from the “People’s Republic of Poland” to “the Republic of Poland.” Due to overwhelming student interest, weekly screenings will now be held in a timeslot that better reflects Yale students’ natural habits.

W 11:00pm – Th 2:00am and Th 10:00pm–11:15pm at HQ (Humanities Quadrangle) L01

–M. Raphael