By David Palmer


Despite the Warnings, You Downloaded the App

Your friends told you it was addicting. Some of them may have told you while being dragged away in a strait-jacket. But you went into the app store and downloaded the game anyway. And instantly regretted it.


The Bird Is Bigger than the Pipe Holes

Much like looking in a rearview mirror, that bird is at least twice the size it appears. On so many occasions I have been flying (if you can the pathetic flapping that demon bird “flying”) and despite appearing to be in the center of the pipes, he dropped like a stone, leaving me with a blank stare on my face.

By Brian Burns
@Burnsing_Up732

Since my college’s idea of planning for the future involves algebra and my parents’ career guidance usually includes the phrase “remind me what you’re majoring in again”, I figured it was time to hand the reins controlling my fate over to the supernatural. I got my palm read over the summer and it told me everything I had already guessed about my life: I’m pessimistic, I’m going to spend 86 long years being unlucky in love and I’m never going to grow into my eyebrows.

    A chakra beat away from slitting my wrists with a tarot card, the palm reader changed her tune. Choosing to ignore one last bomb about stress-induced head aches and gray hair, I began to drool at the sound of “you’ll never need to worry about money” and “you’ll never have children”. These positive fortunes left me so distracted that I barely noticed Stevie-wannabe-Nicks’ final prediction that I would begin 2014 with some sort of life-changing trip. 

    I spent two weeks in Spain during my senior year of high school and I thought that would be the extent of my studying abroad. I always figured that I didn’t have the money to travel and that I enjoyed watching Roseanne marathons with my hand down my pants too much to spend extended time away from home. But when a major-specific exchange program to Sweden was announced, I couldn’t resist applying to a program that would allow me to get credits in communication and blonds.

    My application process to Jönköping University was easier than you’d think. The exchange program was announced during the first week of October and yet I still spent a greater percentage of that month picking my Halloween costume and visually eviscerating white girls holding pumpkin spice lattes. By the time I bought my Andy Warhol wig and Dunkin’ Donuts added me to their most wanted list, I got word that I would be spending the first half of 2014 eating Swedish meatballs. In multiple contexts.

    Once I was accepted for the exchange, I wasn’t sure where to begin. At Emmanuel, academic buildings and hot meals were a hop, skip and an Our Father away and yet I still dealt with two to twelve existential crises a week. In Sweden, I would be spending January to June in my own apartment, cooking my own food, using public transportation and resisting the urge to purchase clothes, shoes, deodorant and other non-essentials. In other words, I’d be entering adulthood: a stage of my life I figured was at least another decade away.

    I already had my passport so an unflattering photo taken under hellish fluorescent lights was checked off of my to-do list. This left me with more time to google “Swedish kronor to American dollar conversion” and “what do I have to do to become the fifth member of ABBA?” As I delved deeper into the internet, I soon discovered that a bottle of wine in a Swedish liquor store would cost me more than a leotard grand enough to fit in with Benny and Agnetha. Friday night and my budget’s low.

    Ordinarily, I pack for college using the sniff-and-toss method: if the odors emitted from an article of clothing don’t immediately peel the paint off the walls, it’s good to go. Packing for a climate that ranges in extremes from six hours of wintry gray-light to summertime Swedes in bathing suits posed a unique challenge. Keeping half-a-year of your life under fifty pounds in weight can be liberating for some. For me, it was just a reminder of how lame my taste in underwear is.

    After some emotional goodbyes—to my family, my dog, my fridge—I boarded the plane and quickly remembered that tall people weren’t built to travel. If I wanted to sit comfortably, I would have to forfeit both legs below the femur. If the flight attendants hadn’t felt the need to deliver a meal every half hour during the overnight flight, I just might have crafted make-shift tourniquets from shredded strips of Sky Mall. 

    Hurtling forward in time at hundreds of miles per hour, I had time to think about where I was coming from and where I was going. I felt anxious and excited and bloated and, most of all, grateful to that hole-in-the-wall where I got my palm read. A cynic would argue that her divination of a “big trip” was vague enough to inevitably come true—who goes a year without experimenting with LSD? But I would disagree. If I hadn’t received that nudge from the heavens, I might not have had the balls to spend this semester in Sweden. Fate lies in our hand. And if you don’t like the cards you’re dealt, just shrug and show lady fortune your other palm.




Brian Burns is a Staff Columnist for The Hub and may be reached at [email protected] and @burnsing_up732.

By Eli Solidum

1. Blurred Lines- Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell and T.I.


I know most countdowns usually don't start at number one, but absolutely everyone knew this song would be on top of this list. Anyone who was alive in this past year knew that. There was literally no point in trying to build up the suspense. This song was catchy, I'll admit, but boy it got old quick. It got even older once we saw our beloved Miley Cyrus shake her nonexistent donk all over Robin Thicke, who claims he was just a victim. A "twerkee," in his terms.


2. Get Lucky- Daft Punk ft. Pharrell


Pharrell came back in full force this summer. Last I heard of him, he was writing the soundtrack for Despicable Me, a far fall from someone who used to be on every rap song ever. Unfortunately, Pharrell makes an appearance on the top two songs of our list. This Daft Punk song just happened to annoy everyone after hearing it everywhere they went. In the club? Oh okay that's fine. In the car to work at 8 in the morning? ehh sure. A church pastor using it as one of the hymns for the day? It's probably happened.


3. We Can't Stop- Miley Cyrus


This was the moment that Miley Cyrus completely separated herself from Hannah Montana. The hair was gone, the innocence was gone, and Billy Ray Cyrus' fatherly pride was gone. With such grammatically correct lines such as "we run things, things don't run we" and not-so-subtle drug references from the former role model of millions of young girls worldwide, it's no surprise that parents no longer want their kids to look up to, let alone look at, the former child star. Miley's gone wild, and we are reminded of that every time we hear this song, which is pretty much every few minutes.

4. Cups- Anna Kendrick


Oh this song… No one is going to miss it when it's gone. This song was what I had in mind when I made this list. If I could include Pitch Perfect as a whole on here, I would. The movie somehow became everyone's favorite movie for a brief moment and it convinced enough people to actually like the music, especially this song. White girls across the country grabbed their iPhones, chugged down their Starbucks and sat in furious concentration for several hours until the insanely simple rhythm was mastered. They proceeded to vine, instagram, and Facebook their own rendition of the song, which exponentially increases the severity of how overplayed this song was.


5. Don't Drop That Thun Thun- Finatticz


This song captivated audiences with its awe-inspiring beat and mysterious lyrics that made millions reconsider the meanings of their lives. What is a "thun thun thun?" What if I have dropped that "thun thun thun" without knowing it? Well apparently the Thun Thun Thun is slang for ecstasy, which really made all those girls twerking on vine seem really stupid. Either way, I could've gone without hearing this song more than once, but nope, I heard it approximately once for every vine i watched.


6. Thrift Shop- Macklemore


Me: Hey Macklemore
Macklemore: What What? What? What? What What? What? What? What What? What? What?
Me: Never mind
I love Macklemore. I loved him before he blew up on this song and became the star that I hoped he would be. Then I hated him. Well not him, but how massively overplayed this and every other Macklemore song was. What disappointed me when this song first blew up was that he wrote such meaningful music, and blew up on a song about buying cheap clothes that smell like R. Kelly's sheets. Artistry. Pure artistry.


7. Come and Get It- Selena Gomez


This song was just annoying. I have heard it nearly a hundred times and as far as I know, the entire song is "When you're ready come and get it, nanananananananana" or whatever. I lose track of the nanananas. Oh well. This song is still not nearly as annoying as Selena's brilliant performance in Spring Breakers.


8. Harlem Shake- Baauer


Yes, this song was relevant for about 2 days. And those were some painful days. The song blew up on YouTube and all of a sudden everyone was looking for their 15 minutes of YouTube fame. In this case it was more like a few seconds of YouTube fame since a new "Best Harlem Shake Ever" was pumped out approximately 600,000 times a day. And it sucked because the original, clever and thought out ones actually took time to plan, organize and edit. And by the time those were actually put on YouTube, no one gave a shit. I uploaded mine 2 months after all the buzz died down and I'm at a respectable 100 views, 100 of which were probably me.


9. I Knew You Were Trouble- Taylor Swift


Taylor Swift is my guilty pleasure. She really is. I actually paid $270 to go to her concert, and I don't regret it in the slightest. This song started out alright, beat heavy, and very different from the typical depressing and moany T-Swift. Then… the chorus came. Big vocal changes.. and then.. dub step? What? The only redeeming feature of this song was the video that replaced Taylor's OOHOHHHH UHHH OHHH with the goat screaming. Hilarious. Then everyone tried making their own version and failed miserably, furthering the overplayedness of this song. Yeah, that deserved a new, made up word.


10. Live It Up- Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull


To be honest, I've never actually heard this song, but any song that has Pitbull on it is overplayed, and the fact that J-Lo is also on it exponentially increases that fact. Two old people still whining their way through a music industry circling around youth and YOLOing. The fact that this song was even recorded makes it overplayed.