Tired? Poor? Starting to wonder if you'll be a creative underclassman forever? Sick of feeling like the answer to the question "What do you?" is "Self-loathingly ask 'What do you do' at increasingly low-budget social events I used to think were the 'fun' part of doing this job?" Break the cycle! India, law school, teaching yoga… don't think it couldn't happen to you!

In this inaugural installment of "How To Sell Out," we learn a lesson in highbrow high finance from unsuccessful American Apparel shoplifter and weird novelist Tao Lin, who just successfully took a page from the financial engineering books of his favorite clothing store and launched an initial public offering for shares in a book he hasn't written. A lesson in the lifestyle of the poor but microfamous after the jump!

TAO LIN, 25

Who he is: I'm not really sure, because he lies about a lot of things, but I know he wrote a book that Emily really hated (but Miranda July liked) and that he once commented on Keith Gessen's blog that he identified with the Jeff Daniels character in The Squid And The Whale. Also, last summer I read a story in a "literary deathmatch" with Tao Lin during which he read this poem for the allotted eight minutes. Do not click on that last thing if you are easily annoyed.

What he did: He posted a blog entry offering 10% shares in a hypothetical "linear" novel "about a relationship" he has not yet written for $2,000 apiece, promising prospective investors "more meaning in life" if they bought shares and boasting his track record of trustworthiness as established by the 100% feedback rating he had earned selling 31 items in the past 12 months on eBay. He also stated a desire to eat healthier foods so as to avoid "feeling like I have eating problems" which may lead him to hang out beside toilets.

Did it work? Yes! Within a matter of days Tao Lin was sold out of shares in his would-be enterprise. A nineteen-year-old intern and neurotic blogger named Soffi bought ponied up two grand, as did a popular University of Houston philosophy professor Tao did not even know. His parents also purchased a share. And Matt Schwartz, the writer of that Times Magazine piece on internet trolls also bought 10%, although Matt is my ex-boyfriend so he may have done that to personally antagonize me. (Kidding XO!)

What can we learn from this? A controlling stake in a hypothetical major work by a minor possessor of literary microfame is worth $12,000. That might not sound like much, but it's $12,000 more than it was two weeks ago! And I am pretty sure no one is going to be paying taxes on any of it.

One of my old [Conde Nast publication redacted] interns had a nightmare herself - she moved up to Vogue and was passing Anna in the hall on her first day. Knew she wasn't supposed to look at her. As they passed, Anna tripped and fell, just bit it. Intern freaked out. she didn't know what to do. So she ran.

Oh, no! How like a poor young thing unschooled in social interactions not involving the "BRB" option! However.

Didn't help AW. got back to her desk, told her new boss what had happened, and the boss told her she did the right thing and that if she'd actually attempted to help AW, her first day would def have been her last.

Of course, there are two castes of interns at Vogue: worthless debutante billionairespawn, and meticulous and diligent pretty untouchables. Now let's contrast that with this dispatch from the Embassy of a major European country:

I've got a story of an intern here whose dad is some bigwig in the biggest [European country] union, and who has erased his title of "intern" from his sig., and instead calls himself the "acting social economic attache" or some bullshit like that just because he's commandeered in the office of the REAL social economic attache, who is on vacation. Because of this elevated, clearly non-intern status, he refuses to engage in the less-glamorous work all the other interns are required to do, namely act as hosts and hostesses at events and basically be bitches.

But! What works in Old Europe won't fly in, say, Boston.

We had 2 interns last semester who showed up at an Ashlee Simpson appearance at saint, or some other club here, and tried to bully their way in by telling the GM they worked for Boston Magazine and if he didn't let them in they'd blog mean shit about him and his club. Then they gave him the names of various Boston Magazine editors. While they were arguing they spotted one of our art department assistants, who was on a freelance photo job, and tried to pretend they were with her.

Such an uncharacteristic show of resourcefulness, right?

So the art assistant almost lost that freelance account because the GM was so pissed, and an editor here had to make some big show of apology to the GM or else it would probably end up in the Track. And then the interns first denied the whole thing. Then each blamed it on the other one.

God, are they too preoccupied with aspirational reality TV to have absorbed the single most obvious lesson of all crime television?

Then we made them write notes of apology to the club and they were filled with misspellings.

Yes.

Anyway, our last story, from a publication in Philadelphia, is a long, cautionary tale about Why You Cannot Trust Ivy Leaguers Even If They Appear To Be Hardworking And Eager To Please (And Also Attend Lesser Ivies)

Once upon a time, [website] had an intern. Let's call her Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston came into our lives around three winters ago. Our website explicity states that we do NOT consider Penn students for internships, for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who's ever lived in any kind of proximity to Penn, and Philadelphia's radical allergy to the kind of senses of entitlement for which Penn students are widely known. But when we met Jennifer Aniston, she made a good point: She had graduated from Penn, and was thus, no longer a Penn student. And she seemed nice enough, and we really needed the help, so we let her by on the technicality.
And here it must be said that Jennifer Aniston was actually a really, really great intern. She loved the [publication], did tons of grunt work with gusto, and was really just super diligent about any task with which she was charged. She ruled. But the more time we spent with her, the more we realized that Jennifer Aniston basically had no sense of self. For example, she constantly talked using "we" when discussing anything about her personal life, referencing things not simply she, but she and her boyfriend of a few months, did or enjoyed.
Q: Hey, Jennifer, what are you listening to these days?
A: Gosh, well, we really love Peter Bjorn and John and Italo disco!
It also became apparent that JA was just a really, really sheltered young adult — that she was one of these people who moved to a big city to go to school, and then proceeded to basically never leave the campus, thereby terminating more than half the value of her education.
In addition, we soon learned that she was attending this strange emo born-again Christian church that seems to prey on hipster transplants here in Philly.
We felt bad for her. And we also felt like we wouldn't be doing our duty as intern masters/psuedo mentors if we didn't expose her to the world as we knew it. So we took her on a trip that we needed to make for work. A long, long road trip.
On the trip and long conversations that ensued as we drove halfway across the country, we learned a lot of wacky stuff: That Jennifer Aniston didn't seem to know a lot about sex for a young woman approaching her mid-20s. That her boyfriend seemed to hold an almost cult-leader-like control over her. That she would pout at the slightest inconvenience. She was utterly horrified when we started listening to Howard Stern to break up the car rides.
Well, the trip was what it was. But when we got back, through the strange social mesh of Philadelphia, we found out (inadvertently) that a friend of a friend of ours had met up with Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend roughly 30 minutes after we picked her up for the trip. This friend of a friend was then reported to have holed up and fucked Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend for a week solid.
We didn't know what to do with this information.
So we just held onto it for a while. But then, things got weirder
It turned out that we started working another young woman who turned out to be Jennifer Aniston's Boyfriend's last girlfriend. We'd known this woman for a while, respected her a lot, and eventually, one day while chatting we realized that she and Jennifer Aniston shared something in common ( Jennifer Aniston's Boyfriend), and unbeknownst to Jennifer Aniston, that at least in the beginning, they were sharing this young squire concurrently.
But Jennifer did know that our new co-worker did see her boyfriend in the past. When she found out that she was on the team, Jennifer quit her internship. Immediately. Despite the fact that she'd basically never have to see her.
Meanwhile, Jennifer had been posting on her blog and talking nearly constantly about when she and her BF were going to get married, and how much in love they were, etc.
We were worried. It made us sick to think that here she was, proclaiming eternal love, when in reality her BF was basically the town pump and here she was, unwittingly making a fool of herself.
This all came to head at another employee's birthday dinner, where, unlikely as it seemed, all concerned (except the chick that Jennifer's BF screwed for a week while we were away) were present.
When Jennifer's BF showed up, our new employee asked if they could talk outside for a moment.
While we were not there, we assume and were told later that Jennifer's BF was given the dressing-down of his life.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Aniston slowly sat at the table and slowly lost her mind. When everyone returned to the table, Aniston bragged to our new employee, as if she had been hypnotized, about how she and the BF were so in love and were going to get married and make many many Aniston babies.
Everyone at the table stared in disbelief. Silence.
When the dinner ended, we decided that this could not go on. While it was not really our place to tell Jennifer Aniston what we know, we could, we realized, pass it along to a mutual good friend and co-worker whom we did know, and at the time, was very close to her.
In short order, Jennifer Aniston reacted in the following ways:
- She pulled down her Myspace and her blog.
- Her Flickr stream as well.
- And never spoke to us again.
In the time since, it's become clear that she shot every messenger she could, and stayed with the BF. She still alludes to us on her blog from time to time as these evil, awful people from her past. It's made us sad, but it's also shown us one thing that we kind of knew already, but needed to be reminded about:
No Penn students, ever.

The essay repeats the sad claim that Gawker (via Joshua Stein) attacked a 4-year-old when we professed our annoyance with his father, who turned his real-life son into essentially a shitty character in his alterna-dad narrative. This is what blogging does to your loved ones! They become mere extensions of your online Brand, your crafted persona, as much Fair Game for mockery and abuse as you yourself, because you are using them.

Bazelon worries that in writing (or blogging) about children, mommybloggers and their ilk are creating a nation of oversharers. She even says their children might end up like—horror of horrors—Emily Gould! But this is the problem: we are pretty sure Emily's parents aren't the over-sharing ones? And, in fact, it is the mommybloggers—in the guise of, say, Dooce—who ushered in this terrifying new era of no filters or propriety. Dooce, who became famous for relentllessly writing about herself, her family, and her job. And who even more famously lost that job because of it. She doesn't write about her kids anymore, though, so she's ok!

Still. These parents NEED TO STOP. It was not, for example, 16-year-old Teresa herself who explained to the New York Times that the other kids called her "Uno Brow."

So be warned, bloggers with kids! We will continue hating your kids, because you leave us no choice.

The other day on Facebook, I discovered that my friend Baby Jane— she lives down the hall—had made some dramatic changes to her Facebook.

She had changed her address to "123 hipsters, Can't Love, Scotland They Can't." She changed her residence to "they can't LOVE," and her website to "http://hipsterscantlove.com." Her high school had changed to "Hipsters can't love '06" and, her Work Info was as follows:

Employer: Hipsters can't love
Position: Hipsters
Location: Love, Bulgaria
Description: Can't

So far Adrian has found Paul.

The first day I met Paul, I mentioned to him the dominating presence of over-sized sweaters on campus as the weather got colder. Some of them are reminiscent of "The Cosby Show." To this he replied, while balancing his bowl in one hand and his lighter in the other and all the while staring into the sky with listless eyes, "When I got here, I was like, 'This is my home.'"

He repeated it for me a second time: "This is my home."

I couldn't disagree. Paul is from Los Angeles, which, along with New York, dominates the student body as far as place of origin goes. And while I hadn't really thought of Los Angeles as being particularly lacking in hipsters before, he seemed to feel that Bard, along with other small liberal arts colleges, mainly in the East Coast, were havens where the next generation of cool could and should perfect itself.

Perhaps Baby Jane and myself are cynical from having spent our years before Bard in New York. Maybe we don't realize the privilege of being able to wear trash, literally, and get away with it. (That being said, trash costs a lot of money these days.) And as far as Baby Jane is concerned, it isn't really the fashion that is the problem. The way she sees it, the hipster has some serious psychological problems in addition to the tendency towards obnoxious garments.

"They're either nymphomaniacs," she said. "Deeply insecure, or drug addicts, alcoholics, or all the above.... The second they step outside their defenses are automatically up, and they're like 'Cigarettes!'"

Meanwhile, Adrian and Paul pursued each other vehemently, in the classic college style: Flirting at parties, hooking up while roommates are out, and text messaging, and Facebook messaging, all with the skill, precision and frequency of professionals. Faced with the question of whether or not Paul was capable of reaching beyond the average level of human interaction, Adrian began divulging to me the details of their various interactions.

She told me that he had serenaded her with a Gnarls Barkley song on his guitar one night.

"He doesn't seem like a hipster, at least not personality wise," she said.

One of the key mantras of hipsterdom is to vehemently deny that you are a hipster. Therefore, it seemed to me, Paul's assertion that he had found his home at Bard was contrary to the general hipster attitude.

And then she found some proof that contradicted Baby Jane's recent bad love experience.

The other night, she and Paul hooked up a second time. After, Adrian came running into my room, a big smile on her face.

"Hipsters. Can love," she said.

I asked for a further explanation. She led me into her room. There, on her pillow, was a tiny plastic bag. It was half-filled with the most prized possession in the hipster world: Marijuana.

"He left his pot," she said.

The kids, who long ago dropped out of regular school for work-at-your-own-pace school, have sold their apparently decent shots to the Daily News and TMZ.com, among others—and, of course, are developing a reality show.

Blaine's father is a real winner, not unexpectedly. He tells the Times that at first he was apprehensive about the thought of his young son staying out till all hours, scrambling with professional paparazzi twice his age and weight. "I thought, 'My kid is going out there with a bunch of paparazzi?' But I've since come to really like a lot of them. There are some I'd be more than happy to have over for a dinner party." Hoo boy.

Actress Rose McGowan had it right, when captured on film by Austin: "What's wrong with this town? This is so wrong!" We'll give Dr. Phil two weeks to get his ass in there and then we're calling SuperNanny.

I went to a party last Saturday night, I didn't get laid, I got in a fight.

So, this kegger was on South 3rd Street in Williamsburg and was hosted by a couple of 23-year-old boys, one of whom had a heart-shaped hickey on his neck, no joke. (Emosexual!) I didn't get there there till like 1 a.m., thinking that the party wouldn't really be going until then. But it turns out I missed the band, and the keg was kicked. I managed to find a plastic bag filled with cans of Miller High Life, so I put them in my purse and made my way to the roof.

Up there, I found a drum kit, a mic stand, and a bunch of people drinking Sparks. If it weren't for the evidence of an iPhone or two, I totally would've thought I'd traveled back in time to those heady days of 2005, when we were all hopped up on malt liquor energy bevs. Like, people still drink Sparks? And they actually buy it, rather than get it for free from Vice parties or Steve Aoki?

I invited Dana, because I knew that she would stir some shit up. Or at least take her shirt off at some point. She's achieved a modicum of micro-fame on the internet for such behavior. Anyway, she made a beeline for the mic stand and drums, and the people at the party were trying to tell her to lay off them. They were all, "You're wasted! We can tell." Apparently, they're the type to kill kegs and pound Sparks to achieve a light buzz. Drunks are not welcome at their ragers.

Anyway, Dana started beating on the drums like they were bongos, which prompted one dude to leap into the drum kit and knock her over. Once that mess began, Calisha Jenkins, one half of Drunky Brewster, began screaming one of their rap songs. A lyric that stuck with me was, "Just because you poked me in my butt/ Doesn't mean that I'm a fuckin' slut."

The dudes at the party hated it and were screaming, "She sucks! This stinks!" But you know what stinks? Armpits—especially when they're being ventilated and flaunted. You know what else stinks? Calisha's vagina. She'd been shoving garlic up there as a home remedy for a vaginal ailment.

And even though the jerks at the party were booing Calisha, the young thugs on the roof one building over were hootin' and hollerin'. They were loving every last drip-drop of her garlic in clam sauce. Dana began "interacting" with them (probably a one-boob flash) and we invited them over. They came bearing gifts of blunts and Coronas, which they opened with their teeth.

After the dude crashed the drums and the mini-thugs crashed the party, the too-cool-for-school set hopped the barrier and sat in the corner of the neighbor's roof deck. Either they didn't know or didn't care that all night long, dudes were using that area as a urinal.

At about 3:30, this Mystery-pick-up-artist flunkee-type with a flavor saver came up to me and was like, "OK, we're wrapping this up now. Time to go home." I was like, "Do you live here?" And he was like, "No but I know someone who does." And I was like, "Yeah, I know someone who lives here, too, and it's cool if I stay." Then he began yelling about how he was gonna beat someone up. And I was like, "Do you mean me?" And he was all, "Yeah, I'd hit a girl!" And I was like, "Oh, I'd like to see you try!" And he was all, "I'll really do it." And despite my best efforts at wishing and hoping that he'd pull a punch and liven up this dying party, he completely pussied out and instead started making calls on his phone.

As the night wore on, it became increasingly obvious that I'd be going home alone, even though there were these two sorta fuckable guys there. My friend ended up banging one of them. She called me the next morning to tell me his penis was small and that he was one of those dudes that like fucks you forever without noticing that you've become bored and dry.

I decided to call it a night, but then I met this dude who introduced himself as Billy Dee Williams. I told him my name was Eartha Kitt. We hung out on the front stoop with his friend while he rolled a blunt. But then the two boys got in a fight over the fact that the cigar dropped on the ground. The issue was oddly important to them and the situation became really tense and uncomfortable, so I ran into the street to hail the next cab that rolled up. Bill Dee Williams was like, "Hey, we're sorry. It's cool. You should hang out." I began to give it a second thought but then he said, "I mean, it's not like you have your own weed at home, right?"

"Yeah, actually, I do," I said. I climbed into the cab headfirst, and made my way home, where I smoked it in peace and quiet.

It takes more than a caffeine fix at Starbucks for Tisch junior Priya Shelly to make it to class. As a resident of Water Street residence hall, Shelly relies on university buses—the vital link between faraway residence halls and the Washington Square campus in operation since the late 1990s—in order to get to class. But buses that are crowded, frequently late and take convoluted routes have made Shelly's commute a constant inconvenience. "Sometimes, the bus doesn't show up at all," she said.

"Coming from Water Street [the buses are] almost always overcrowded," Shelly said. "One morning, probably around 9 a.m., it was so crowded that I had to stand in the space between the doorway and the steps and grab onto bars just to get to my destination."

Campus buses add hassle to bustle [WSN]

The room where she'd spent the first 18 years of her life was unrecognizable. Her 'N Sync poster was gone. So was the collage of her high school friends. What she found instead was the new guest room, a "Martha Stewart bed and breakfast," as her mother described it. The walls had been repainted, the carpet had been changed and the happy clutter of her childhood had been replaced by about 40 bone china butter dishes that her mother had purchased on eBay and mounted on the wall. "The first question I asked was, who lives here?" Maeve McGilloway said, "and she said, 'You do,' and pointed to this really little vintage Middlebury postcard on the wall, like this little Middlebury postcard was supposed to represent me."

In this fashion the Times explores the psychological devastation that occurs when parents redecorate the rooms of their recently departed children. It's hard not to feel pity for these tragic young people, who return from a semester full of date rape and body shots only to find that mom and dad have broken down the bedroom wall and converted their once sacred space into an S&M dungeon complete with wrist restraints and a fuckswing.

The problem is so widespread that "[p]arents of Kenyon freshmen are warned at an orientation seminar against stopping at Ikea on the way home. 'Honor that space at least through Christmas break, and then make some decisions as a family,' said Alicia Dugas, Kenyon's assistant dean of students."

The piece is full of loathsome behavior (we're particularly fond of the 23-year-old assistant editor on "Lost," who has his own apartment but won't let his parents change his bedroom in their house), but don't fear for this entire generation of cast-off children: Some are learning to show pluck and independence.

Maeve McGilloway engaged in the domestic equivalent of civil disobedience after she saw the changes her mother had wrought in her bedroom. "There's an upstairs study with an old couch," she said. "I slept there four nights in protest."

Refeathering the Empty Nest [NYT]

Tragically, however, Humorist Zach Klein will no longer be participating in the fun. His last day is Friday. Zach's going solo to "socialize offline," which is a move we'd recommend for everyone in this business, even those who haven't made a fortune from pictures of passed-out college slags. Best wishes to Zack. Also of note: College Humor founder Ricky Van Veen drives a Prius.

E-Mail From Our Office Manager [Get Excited]
Going Solo [Zach Klein]

Don't use "like" five times in every sentence. You got into Columbia/NYU and you know how to express yourself articulately, don't you? Also, don't talk loudly about how your parents live in this or that affluent suburb. It's all too obvious and doesn't need to be stated. Also, don't act like you own the street and the world stops when you and 20 friends decide to have a conversation. It's called a side-WALK. If you don't walk, people will hustle (and maybe push) to get through a crowd. Deal with it or move back to Iowa!

— Posted by Katherine

East Hampton has its share of year-round locals, 12.5% of whom live below the poverty line, according to the census. The kids were remarkably temperate about the New York summer invasion. "We don't have that many problems with them. They leave us alone and we leave them alone," said Justin. "But if someone comes up here and acts all 'gangster' well then there'll be a problem," said the soft-spoken girl next to him.

One of the kids, who actually turned out to be in his late 20s, asked us where we were headed next. "Wainscott," we said. He wanted a ride to Montauk. "Hitchhike," we suggested.

Leaning close to us he said, "Naw, man, that's not safe around here. I don't know if you're gay but there's a lot of them around here. You'll get in a car and all of a sudden you'll be lost and a hand is on your leg." Whoa, we thought; this is about to get awkward. Then we wondered: Why was a 29-year-old hanging out with 13-year-olds anyway?

n+1's latest e-blast (ha!) also plugs editor (and Dalton graduate!) Marco Roth's memoir in progress. Here's some out-of-order sentences from it: "[L]ight pouring from the East River through the bank of windows overlooking Central Park... I hate myself for writing a memoir and I hate most contemporary memoirs... [The living room was] large enough to seat 30 people for the chamber music concerts my parents hosted two or three times a year... a magnificent, pre-war, two-story temple to neo-classicism... the kitchen was about the size of the one-bedroom apartment where I'm writing now." There, done!

Finally, there's a genius plan to send out copies of their mag all over the world using traveling lawyers. That's just funny.

From: Editors of n+1 < subs@nplusonemag.com> Date: Aug 3, 2007 2:31 PM Subject: n+1 reading on the Hudson Pier To: subs@nplusonemag.com

Dear Beloved Subscribers,

Greetings from n+1 headquarters, where the air-conditioning is not what it is in your standard major New York publisher, to put it mildly. But we do have Microsoft Word, and email, and the hardiest
band of interns in n+1 history.

Some news:

READING NEXT WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8. At the Hudson Pier, Manhattan, 7 pm. Rebecca Schiff, who appeared in the Issue 4 Fiction Chronicle, will read her dark, comic tales of post-industrial love-seeking in New York and Boston. We will also inaugurate, on the Hudson Pier, our first experiment in having a trained actor read a piece from n+1—in this case, Eli Evans's "TV Diaries," from Issue 5. We'll see what
happens. Please come if you can. Afterward we will go over to the [SITE OF PARTY REDACTED, TO AVOID ANNOYING EMAILS] which happens to serve an excellent burger, if you're hungry, plus beer.

*Note*: We don't yet have the exact pier assignment from the Parks Department. To avoid incessant emailing of everyone, we're going to post the location at the top of our website (www.nplusonemag.com) as soon as we have it, we hope by Monday at the very latest.

PAMPHLET #2: We are making another pamphlet—this one about what we wish we'd known when we were college freshman, and what books we wish we'd read. "What We Should Have Known." Is that too cumbersome? We'll be slipping it under the doors of incoming first-years at select universities this September. Really. It will also be on-sale to non-college students, just in case. But anyone who can prove college first-year status is entitled to a free copy.

RENEW: Please renew if you haven't! There will be many more n+1s, and renewals keep us alive.

www.nplusonemag.com/renewal.html

(Note: The pamphlet referred to on the renewal page is the PS1 pamphlet on the avant-garde. We'll make the second pamphlet available for purchase as soon as we send it to the printer.)

NPLUSONEMAG: Continues to produce high-quality internet-only web gems, recently featuring the work of the beloved crazy German-Swiss writer Robert Walser:

www.nplusonemag.com/newnovel.html

Also, Nikil Saval on Bobby Seale at BAM.

www.nplusonemag.com/seale.html

and Carlene Bauer on how Sassy didn't actually change her life:

http://www.nplusonemag.com/sassy.html

Elsewhere on the internet, we're proud to recommend Marco Roth's continuing series of memoirs at Nextbook.org. They're really quite remarkable:

http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=554
http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=571
http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=597
http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=652

And a bonus treat:
http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=464

Finally, while we're at it, Rebecca Curtis's book of stories, Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money is now in bookstores. "The Near Son," which appeared in Issue 5, is in it; it's a very good book.

AND, our good friends at Paper Monument are now putting the final touches to their first issue, and threaten to throw a large party in September. Be sure to subscribe here:

www.papermonument.com.

NEW INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION SCHEME: Remember how we called on people to contact Greg Jackson, International Distribution Tsar, if they were going abroad? Well, that did sort of work—heroic
subscribers lugged issues with them on vacation to Beijing, Berlin, Barcelona, and Bogota (seriously). But now we've added a whole new dimension: lawyers. All across midtown New York, boxes of n+1s are now
sitting in prestigious law firms, ready to be toted by lawyers who need to fly to Europe or South America for two days in order to read through a single foreign document. But we need people to meet the
lawyers. So: The old offer—bring n+1 on vacation—still stands. The new offer: If you're already *in* a foreign city and think n+1 could sell three or four copies there, we'll send a corporate lawyer out
there as soon as—well, as soon a major corporation in your country gets sued. So let us know you're there.

WEST COAST TOUR: We're doing a West Coast tour in the late fall. The n+1 informational blackout on the West Coast must end. There are entire communities in California that have never even heard of the
magazine. And yet every day they die a little for lack of what they'd have found in Issue 5. "TV Diaries," for example. "The Blog Reflex." "The Meaning of Life, Part 2." More on this later. And if you happen
to be attached to a university in California, Washington, or Oregon, please consider inviting us to speak.

Speaking of Issue 5...

ISSUE 6: We've entered production on the issue. Poetry from an unknown poet, fiction from an admired literary critic, the definitive history of the cubicle, and also the first-ever world-wide appearance
of the new novel by the incomparable Helen Dewitt, author of the Last Samurai. Seriously. Estimated shipping date: October 1. If you plan on moving between now and then—please let us know your new address. Issue 6 is not to be missed.

Finally, a very short but militant story by the Russian poet Kirill Medvedev:

"In Praise of Evolution"
The owner of a factory—his underworld nickname was Toothache—sat in a cafe wondering how he was going to destroy the union. For a while this was the most important thing in his life. He was working up some ideas about it now, when all of a sudden a group of comrades walked by the cafe bearing a red flag. The factory owner decided that the revolution had come, and he began to repent, and shed tears, and share his profits with the workers. But it turned out this was just a slow evolution, and there was still plenty of time to exploit, crush, and kill.

As ever,

Keith Gessen (for n+1)

Carla Blumenkranz

Mark Greif

Chad Harbach

Ali Heifetz

Benjamin Kunkel

Allison Lorentzen

Marco Roth

Nikil Saval

"People seem to forget that you can't spend other people's money, even for a good cause," Ms. Martin said in a phone interview. "Do you really want the birthday child to grow up hating philanthropy because it's done him out of his birthday presents?"

While she sympathizes with parents' desire to avoid materialistic feeding frenzies, Ms. Martin advised: "They'd be much better off getting together with the other parents and agreeing on very small presents." Besides, she noted, children learn valuable lessons giving gifts they would rather keep for themselves — and saying thank you even for things they do not like.

Not Sarah Lawrence! We've consulted the poll, and yes, Sarah Lawrence technically beat out Wesleyan by (at this writing) 1873 to 1733 votes (or 51.9 to 48.1 percent). And it's true, Sarah Lawrence is really, really annoying—this comment seemed to sum up some of the reasons why:

We have a love your body run every september in which people who choose to (never the ones you hope) run naked around the quad while spectators have cocktail hour on the lawn. Did we forget to mention "sleaze week" where you can take workshops or pornography, dental damn usage and the female ejaculation? oh yes. The finale of which is the friday night sleaze ball which, my sophomore year, turned into a weird dominatrix s&m show that was so alarming it caused me to go to my room and shudder until dawn. Oh an the next day we had Mayfair—a little kids carnival for children from the neighborhood. Sinister

I'm a student at Sarah Lawrence College. Uh huh, that one. The person you assume is posting this. I think Scary Larry should win for one simple reason. I have received emails from groups of students and alumni, spanning four decades of attendance, in the last 24 hours who are proud to be in the running for America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College. That's right, they are psyched about the possibility of winning. Yes, Sadie Lou has a long tradition of rebelling for rebellion's sake. This is no exception. Sure there are other countless reasons why SLC should win, most of which I am too ADHD to remember, but this is the reason I like the best. We'll wear this title with pride. This is why us liberal artsy brats so richly deserve to win the contest you've entered us into. Thank you.

So, congrats, Wesleyan. Your graduates will forever be known not for their naked parties, or their stints in a alterna-frat, or for chalk, but rather for beating out Sarah Lawrence on an annoying technicality to be named America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College. We'd like to be the first to offer you the complete library of Hélène Cixous, this funny hat, these vintage thick-rimmed glasses, and this lease on a McKibbin Street loft as your prize. But we can't. You'll have to live that horrible life on your parents' money all on your own.

Cheers,
Gawker

Dalton: $29,250
Fieldston: $28,545
Geneva: $17,500
Manhattan School for Girls: $15,500
Fordham Prep: $11,360

He's a sartorial Ryan Seacrest, a developmental Ferris Bueller, a professional Carlton Banks. (Not up on twentysomethings' media icons? That's the "American Idol" host, the truant Matthew Broderick movie hero, and the overeager Will Smith sidekick in "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.") At once a hipster and a climber, he is all nonchalance and expectation. He is new, he is annoying, and he and his female counterparts are invading corporate offices across America.

Big headphones A boombox for the ears, because even Jessica Simpson is better with bass (and they look good).

Hipster clothes
Jeans, sneakers, hoodie - and a jacket? Behold, the new corporate uniform.

Yoga mat
He isn't a Gen Y if he isn't into "wellness."

Laptop
It's how Gen Y does work. Who needs the office when you've got cafes, parks and your own living room?

Designer coffee
Half-caf, nonfat, short, tall and sometimes not coffee at all, it's a Gen Y staple.

BlackBerry
E-mail is only the beginning. Gen Y craves connection, and these gadgets are the fix.

Digital camera
A must for Gen Yers to chronicle their fascinating lives (and post them all over cyberspace).

iPod
The identifying mark of the Gen Y flock. Enough said.

Attracting the twentysomething worker [Fortune]

White journalists have been shown to binge write at much higher rates than their nonwhite counterparts. While no comparable statistics exist for the city's magazines, a quick perusal of New York suggests such behavior is frequent.

The reporters say writing about drunk teens allows them to eschew actual work and to relax at the end of a week filled with updating resumes and reading Romenesko. And sometimes drinking.

"With reporters like me, it's about getting the story in—because it's easy, because they keep putting these studies out," a 24-year-old reporter at the New York Sun said. "At the point of filing, we feel a release and then we can take off early for the weekend."

'Being Very Drunk' Is Tried by More Students in City [NYS]

Mostly teenagers — and mostly inspired by hip-hop or "goth" culture — they prefer baggy, so-low-they-almost-fall-down designer jeans, which are sometimes held up with belts, and sometimes kept in place by periodic yanks.

Low is hip to them [Boston Globe]
[Image via]

Feb. 24, "I can't believe it's not frat, Friday!":

Being the host might be a big job, but the endeavor is compensated by a little thing called The Home-Court Advantage.

When you're the one behind the bar, you can force that cute dude to hang out right next to you for just about as long as you want (while he waits for you to give him a drink). When he finally looks like he's totally frustrated and ready to leave, you can nonchalantly hand a beer his way, wink, and say: "Hang on a second, let me get a wingman over here." (You've only got about 40 lying around the basement, so you'll find one without a problem.) Once a partner-in-seduction is summoned to schmooze with Cute Dude's buddy, you can (again, nonchalantly) offer him a pong game on the, a-hem, V-I-P table. Throughout the game, you can woo him with heart-wrenching stories about how you painted these basement walls with your own, bare hands. Once the game is over you can warn him of the ferocious blizzard hindering his journey home, and offer him a bed (just upstairs!) as an alternative place-to-crash. When he eventually breaks up with you for prioritizing your sisters over him, you can retaliate by removing his name from your gatekeeper's "Guest List" (permanently, or, at least until you recover from your heartbreak). It will be slightly reassuring to know that his friends will have no choice but to ditch him every weekend, after all, you are a sister at their favorite house on campus."

Dartmouth certainly has an Animal House-induced "booze-or-lose" reputation and, up until yesterday, I was one of those losers. Yes, nine out of ten rocket scientists agree that frats are only fun when you're wasted — but don't be deceived! That doesn't mean you need alcohol to have a good time. As underage, law-abiding, problem-solving individuals, many Dartmouth students survive weekends by turning to various (legal) remedies to sobriety, including: (a) sleep deprivation, (b) extreme malnourishment and (c) Red Bull/Nail Polish Remover lattes. Although these solutions have never failed to dizzy-me-up sufficiently, I always looked forward to the day that I could simply accept a drink from that charming frat dude without landing his house on double-secret probation.

Novack, Wednesday, 9:15 a.m.: Ladies and gentlemen, it has already been one of those weeks. I'm sure you understand. Rush has totally hijacked my brain (or whatever's left of it after two years of membership at Delta Delta Destruction). I'm over-committed, under-caffeinated and I have about one hour to write this column — one hour dissected into tiny five-minute fragments and scattered across my so-busy/so-important/so-sorority-rushed schedule.

Earlier: Dartmouth Gal To Not Spurn Well-Paid Future