TABLE OF CONTENTS5Hipsters: they’re everywhere. How to spot one/what to do. Even Doc Senior couldn’t

come up with this gold.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE...WHEN ‘NOT-COOL’ IS COOL

9Prior to Twitter 5-7-5 were the first

Character limits.

Ashley Hong shows WINKHow to become much much more

Concise with those Tweets.

HAIKUS: THE IDEA THAT TWITTER RIPPED OFF

19It’s a battle of the redheads.Also, flip here to see the lovechild of a Transformers dude and a llama.

Hess vs. Johnson: Who will emerge victorious?

The Grapevine Poet Tree

Art A La Carte Fiction Addiction

View From the WestRat’s Nest

4810141820

25Junior Karina Wai shows off her ability with pastel coloring the natural and the modern.

FEATURED ARTIST: KARINA WAI

20Take our bucket list quiz to see what you should be doing instead of loading up on supplies! #youwon’tregretit

what should you do before the world ends?

Photos by C

arolyn Nguyen

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volume one (2007-2008)

volume two (2008-2009)

volume three (2009-2010)

volume four (2010-2011)

volume five (2011-2012)

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contributors and staffED

ITOR Cr

ysta

l

DIRE

CTOR

ErinPaeng

ANDART

POET TREEValerie WangSusmita Pandala

FICTIO

N

Anusha Sanka

Tracy Sokalaski

GRAP

E

Gauri KhambatlaChristine Nguyen

VIEW FROM THE WEST

Dani

elle

Fa

ngEm

ily

Huan

gSh

irley

Liu

Caro

lyn

Nguy

enTh

omas

Sa

utne

rJu

liann

e Se

ogYu

an

Zhan

g

Eileen GuoVinitha Gandiraju

ART

A LA

CART

E

RAT’S NEST

Tam Lu

Patricia LinKaren FangJulia KimAnusha PaiSungm

in ParkSpencer PutnamHaruka Tom

ishima

ADVISORSJa

mes

Du

ncan

Way

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Grim

m

FOUN

DERS

Elisabeth KramerNeethu RamchandarLeann Do

Amanda AmezcuaAriana DavisJimin ParkSabrina DangVishwa Patel Katherine YangDivya KrishnagiriJesse MenezesZohal MohammadyIN

CHI

EF

ADDICTIONHudson ZhiChi-Nhan Vo

Duan

VINEMeg

SchenkRitapa Neogi

Michelle Nellis

Jennifer Xie

LAYOUT

IlavarasanUmaSrikanthJanani Man

asi V

yas

staff

wink

Ask Dr. SeniorHave a question? Email Dr. Senior at usourbro?@winkguru.com.

Dear Nervous,

A few years?! Listen, this relationship is obviously a lost cause. Forget the girl, and to distract yourself from the crushing reality of your sucky life, take up some new hobbies such as knitting sweaters for sloths or watering your grand-mother’s rutabagas.

Dr. Senior is a twelfth-year senior at Westview High School. Recently taking up Gangnam-Style-

dancing as a hobby, he plans on majoring in the area of Independent Study. Until then, he will

continue his position as Supreme Dictator of the Hacky Sack Society.

Dear Insecure Sophomore,

Isn’t it obvious? You have a choice be-tween doing what you think is right and doing what your friends think is is “cool”. Succumb to peer pressure! Your person-al opinion, doesn’t matter to anyone, and of course the right thing to do is what most people are doing. Your friends should be back with you in no time.

Dear Irritated,

You COULD politely ask this person to stop or perhaps talk to your teacher about a new seating arrangement, but where would be the excite-ment in that? I suggest that next time he shoots a spitball at you, you screech like a dying cat or start playing an invisible cello. And when he tries to talk to you, just stare at him. No smiling. No blinking. The. Whole. Class. Hope-fully he’ll get the message after he has a nervous breakdown.

4

Imagine this.

You’re sitting peacefully in Star-bucks, sipping your peppermint mo-cha and relishing the sweet taste of winter on your tongue. A few people relax nearby, chatting quietly with some acquaintances or sifting through the cartoons in a weekly newspaper, sharing a smile between themselves now and again.

Suddenly, someone lets out a piercing scream. You turn your head, but nothing seems to be the problem… un-til you catch a glimpse of a horrific scene. A tall figure in a color-ful plaid shirt and dark, tightly fit jeans strolls in through the door, shoulders slouched. Thick-rimmed black glasses re semb l i n g those given to view-ers of a 3D movie lie d e l i c a t e -ly on his nose. Terror strikes your heart as his blue Vans tap across the clean tile floor, and all you want to do is reach out and pull that beanie off his head. Slowly, steadily he reaches the gaping cashier and orders a tall espresso, then proceeds to smile smugly and pull out a polished iPhone to ob-serve what his next stop will be.

Hipsters. Invading our school. In-vading our land.

What kind of actions can we take to ensure the safety of Westview

High School regarding hipsters?

Well, my dear friends, it may be tough, but it is surely not impossible. We can, and we must, pay more at-tention to this rising problem in not only our high school, but our na-tion.

The first step is precaution. Do you have any friends who claim to be emotionally deep and unique from the rest of our fickle society? Keep a close eye on them. We all know those people who enjoy blam-

ing media for their insecurities and taking beautiful, artistic black-and-white pictures of lawn chairs. These people are extremely vulnerable to the sickly disease of hip-

steritis. Also among those prone to this illness are kids

who have an obsession with being seen as “weird” to others or who claim they’re trying to

stay away from “mainstream” websites like FaceBook

and Twitter (even though they own an active account on each of them.) If you encounter anyone undergoing these dangerously hipster-ish progressions,

proceed to the next step – for these are the biggest signs of an emerging hipster.

After confirming that someone you know may indeed be eligible to be diagnosed with hipsteritis, begin by labeling their symptoms. A very simple way to identify a hipster is to ask a person what kind of music they listen to- any answer indicates absence of hipsteritis, except, “Oh, you’ve probably never heard of it.” Another obvious sign of a hipster

can be found by examining their Tumblr blog, if they have one, which if they really are a hipster, they prob-ably do. Does their blog include re-blogged photos of scantily clad skin-ny girls, photographs of braided hair, and quite often, quotes regarding the topic of being “forever young”? If so, you may have a hipster on your hands. One symptom, however, can sum up the rest: claiming or trying very hard to be a “non-conformist”. This is an incredibly serious issue. Once someone is on the track of at-tempting to be a “non-conformist”, t h e y may go any

length to prove this to others – even by lis-tening to a band with the name of Neutral Milk Hotel.

C l a s s i f y -ing the symp-

toms leads to a small but very significant discovery: the intensity of the now-d i agnosed case of hipsteritis. You may be dealing

with a level one mainly mainstream hipster- someone who occasionally likes to brag about their exquisitely different music taste and sense of style- or you could be handling a level five, incurable summer-blooded hipster with dip dyed hair and six-ty-five pairs of Vans. Either way, you need, and I repeat, need, to stay away from a hipster such as this to avoid catching this highly contagious dis-ease.

HIPSTERITIS!

the grapevine

5

meg schenk

someone you know and care for is a hipster. Now what to do? Well, for starters… burn any dreamcatchers they happen to have hanging around their room. This will prohibit the hip-ster gods from reaching their evil min-ions, and is a way to slowly, rid these poor hipsters of their miserable con-dition. Throw away any clothing items

they may own, and discreetly hide any

their cameras and destroy all strange-sounding music from their iPod. In fact, take away their Apple electronic immediately if they have one, which they will if they are indeed hipster. If they ever try to braid their hair in a complicated fashion, promptly slap them until they promise never to do

it again. Buy them an entire ward-robe from Abercrombie & Fitch and drown them in Hollister perfume. Al-ternatively, you can supply them with twenty pairs of baggy sweatpants and plenty of plain-colored T-shirts. And most importantly, absolutely remove any pairs of Vans they may own. Do all these conversions on a school night so they won’t have any time to shop for new clothes or recover their lost accessories. Last but not least, annihi-late any outlets they may access Tum-blr through. Whether this is through deactivating internet connection or a demolition of their computer, it must be done.

Well, now you know how to manage

is long and tedious, but together, we can do it. Hipster control is quickly

becoming a vital part of high school life for responsible, school-involved teenagers. So what are you going to do? Are you going to watch your world fall prey to the hipsters, or are you going to do something about it? The choice is yours.

!e End- It’s Coming !is Time, We Promiseyear of our lives and the end of our world as we know it. Get ready to

-low across the street to your elderly neighbor that, despite what you said earlier, it actually was you that ran over her ugly chihuahua last Christ-mas, and yes, it was on purpose.

What’s that you ask? How aren’t

hoax meant to terrify people and make money off of movies so clev-erly named 2012? First of all, you can tell that a doomsday prophecy is false if 1.) it’s based on some silly coincidence like planets aligning, or 2.) those that proclaim the end on that date don’t acknowledge the possibility that they could be wrong. Therefore, the prediction of a rapidly approaching Armageddon in 2012 is obviously correct.

-

covered to be the end of world after the initial prediction of the doomsday date-May 2003- proved to be quite, er, an ordinary day. As many credible sci- entists and astrol- o g i s t s

h a v e c o n -

f irmed, the planet Nibiru, discovered by

when the ancient Mayan calendar ends with the winter solstice this December. “Although we have no,

umm, factual evidence that this sup-

the entire NASA team wholeheart-edly agrees that this claim is true.” one researcher at NASA revealed. “First of all, I mean, the Mayan cal-endar is ending. Some say, ‘Oh, well,

period that will start over again’, but that doesn’t make any sense! Do our calendars end and start over again?

Wait, uhhh...”

Unfortunately, this researcher seemed unable to answer further

questions and scrambled away to “go take a bathroom break”. How-

ever, we believe everyone can agree that his testimony provided a smart slap in the face to whoever may have doubted the end.

So build your bunkers, ladies and gents, and hold on tight, because this time (for real), we’re in for a bumpy ride.

6

Student Submissions

Past

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Photography by Carolyn Nguyen Art by Alexandria Pak

7

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Fire” I

Tears of burning waxFleeing from the candle’s headA feeble orange beacon in the darkIISlowly curling around the woodGlowing black chips left in the coreTo ignite another marshmallow

IIIWhat’s this fire in my head!at burns my cheeks redWhenever you look at me?

IVRoaring like a proud lionRoaring in indiscriminate consumptionPainting the sky above dark blood redAs another tree topplesTo the wildfire’s mad hunger

VOne stroke, two, threeFinally, a sparkHurry, hurry, crawling down the matchA spark to light the birthday cake

VIOutstretched arms, callused, wornTo the gentle flowMelting away the pain with the snow

VIISweating a river with a mighty yellReaching further into the hellish furnaceAs deafening crashes of metal on metalHammer out the molten coreOf a ring

VIIIKnowledge, progress, civilizationPrometheus’ stolen giftA spark igniting the blazeOf humanity’s first steps forward

IXA hissing flame held backLapping at the iron potExciting the water above

XA precipice of gray stoneHanging over a molten pit below!at mocks the boyAs he walks out on stage

XIIndi"erent stares crowdingAround the pages of historyA silent scream As a generation turns to ash

XIIShining down, a ball of flame!at happily brightens!e green grassFor the playing children

XIIIA pool of liquid white!e flame finally let restA black night of peace

8

susmita padala

valerie wang

By Chi-Nhan Vo

She asked for the truth. “I’m sorry, I choose zero.” Heartwrenching relief.

by Ashley HongHere is good advice: Live well; it’s the best revenge. Please, become stronger.

Haikus

9

!e next three pages were blank –No text, no page numbers, no headings.

!e page before had ended with a period. Alas, she had reached the end of another

novel.So satisfying, yet so bittersweet.

Wishing to dwell on the conclusion,yet also wishing to experience it all over

again.What a dilemma.

by Ashley Hong

by Meg Schenk

Black Berries My mother tells me to be patient.

“Wait,” she says softly.“Until the green and red ones have ripened.

Wait, and by the end of summerthey will be ready.”

I close my eyes,a faint summer breeze playing on my cheeks,

and I imagine bundles of them,those tart berries growing plump and black,

glinting in the sun.And I tell her I’ll wait.

But I don’t.I pluck them swiftly,

bowed and wary like a thief,concealed by my dark alley of brambles and

thorns.

City lights drown out those of the stars.Television noise kills the chirping of crickets.Instead of tangles of leafy green brancheshang webs of telephone wires;A net that imprisons mein these towers of brick.!e music has made us deaf,!e colors misted over our eyesand made us blind.Tendrils of smog seep into the cool air.!ey swirl within our lungs,invisible as they are inhaled with each whisper of breath.Slowly, we are su"ocated,su"ocated,su"ocated.

by Meg Schenk

Trapped

Untitled

Art a Above: Elizabeth Townsend

Below: Chandra Marlow

Cartela

10

Above, from left to right: Elizabeth Townsend, Carolyn Nguyen

Left: Elizabeth Townsend Right: Sunnia Ye

11

editor: ariana davis

12

Above: Chandra Marlow

13

Jessica Wiercx

Carolyn Nguyen

14

Allison Wood stared out her bedroom window. Rain pounded the glass, distorting her vision and blur-ring the street below. She sighed and leaned her head against the cold pane. She was at home sick, and was not allowed to leave her room. Her nanny, Miss Er-mentrude Petunia, was terrified of germs and had in-sisted that Allison stay in her room for the past three days. She even received her meals through a flap in the door. Her father was away on business and she had no mother, so no one knew of her quarantine. Never, in her whole life, had she been so utterly con-sumed by boredom.

But on this particular rainy day, Miss Ermentrude Petunia forgot to lock the bedroom door. Allison couldn’t believe her luck. Slowly, carefully, she pushed the door open.

The hinges released a loud, treacherous creak. Allison froze, holding her breath. Luckily, the radio

was on downstairs, drowning out the noise. Miss Ermentrude Petunia always listened to police scanners in the afternoon; she was always terrified someone

would try to rob the house. Allison tiptoed down the hall and up the stairs to the attic. One of the windows opened out to a gi-ant oak tree, perfect for sneaking out of the house. Years of crazy nannies had helped her discover many creative routes of es-cape.

She had one leg out of the window before something in the corner of the room caught her eye. A giant mirror stood there, six feet tall and menacing; it seemed to encompass half of the room, now that she had noticed it. It had a frame of solid, black oak that was covered in various illegible inscriptions and tiny, leering cherubs. Allison pulled her leg back inside and went to examine the mir-ror more closely. She looked into the glass. Her reflection stared back. She was about to turn away when her reflection disappeared. In its place stood another girl, tiny and covered from head to toe in dirt and grime.

Allison blinked rapidly and shook her head, trying to convince herself that she was only seeing things. When she cautiously glanced back at the mirror, her reflection had returned; the girl was gone. Allison turned and fled.

The next morning, as Miss Ermentrude Petunia passed her breakfast through the flap in the door, Allsion asked, “Do you believe in magic?”

Miss Ermentrude Petunia shook her head frantically. “There’s no such thing as magic,” she replied. “Don’t ask such questions!”

All day the only thing on Allison’s mind was the mirror. Curiosity plagued her until she could bear it no longer. But the door was

locked today, trapping her inside. As she sat and ate her lunch, an idea came to her. Examining the flap in the door on hands and knees, she found that it was just big enough to squeeze through. After a few harrowing moments of nearly getting stuck twice, Allison burst through to the other side and bolted up the stairs.

The mirror was right where she had left it. Cautiously, she forced herself to look into the glass. It was only her reflection, again. Allison sighed. Of course she had just been imagining things, she thought. Chalk it up to cabin fever.

Just as she turned around, she heard a tapping coming from be-hind her. She turned slowly on the spot to see that her reflection had once again vanished and the strange girl had returned. She

was knocking on the glass with her knuckles. It took everything Allison had not to scream. The girl only continued tapping. Allison took a tentative step toward the mirror.

“What are you?” she whispered.The girl shrugged her shoulders.“Can you speak?” Allison asked. The girl opened her mouth, but no sound

came out. She looked up at Allison, her eyes pleading. She held up her hands and Allison noticed, for the first time, the thick shackles around both of her wrists.

“Who did that to you?”The girl shook her head vigorously, seem-

ingly fearful of whoever – or whatever – was holding her captive. “Help me,” she mouthed.

“What can I do?” Allison asked. The girl held up her hand, pressed it

against the glass and motioned for Allison to do the same. The moment their hands overlapped, Allison’s world went dark.

When she woke up, Allison was disoriented. She was lying on the floor, facing the mirror. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, trying to remember what had happened. It was then that she realized she was on the wrong side of the mirror.

Her wrists were bound by massive metal shackles. She was in a room that resembled her own attic, but on this side of the mir-ror things were decidedly different. The floorboards were moldy and rotten. Instead of her family’s discarded and forgotten junk, she was surrounded by other children, all of whom were chained as she was.

She could see her own attic on the other side of the mirror, but the strange girl was standing in it.

“What did you do to me?” Allison screamed. The girl merely smiled and walked out of sight.

Tracy Sokalski | Chi-Nhan Vo | Uma Ilavarasan | Anusha Sanka | Janani Srikanth | Hudson Zhi

Fict

ion

Add

ictio

n The MirrorJemma Giberson

15

Locke glanced down to find himself tapping his fingers against the cold stone he was perched on. It was a simple rhythm, one, two, three-and-four, one of many that he’d caught himself trying absentmindedly over the years. He strained his ears to catch even the slightest noise, but heard none, as ex-pected. Unsure of why he’d expected anything different, he chided himself and told his fingers to stop. Unlike the old men and women who sat around in the dark

lamenting in monotone, Locke had never really understood what the world government had taken away eighteen years ago. They’d tried to explain though, every opportunity they got. Always reminding him how special he was, how his moth-er had given her life to sing him an illegal lullaby moments before the music barrier was activated. Of course he didn’t remember, but the song was something he’d always failed to recreate despite his efforts.A few more moments of the perpetual silence hung in the

crisp morning air, broken as the ground-door before Locke opened up and let Remi out. Her simple gray skirt fluttered behind her in the soft breeze, and she shivered as she climbed up next to Locke. “Here, give me your scarf,” she said. Without waiting for a reply, she reached around Locke’s neck for the faded and tattered cloth to wrap tightly around her skinny legs. Together they watched the sun peek out shyly beyond the distant ruins of the old city, climbing up over the horizon as it slowly gained confidence.“Want to dance?” Remi asked abruptly. She kept her eyes

fixed on the barren brown expanse before them.Locke raised an eyebrow as he turned to her. She still stared

absently at the sun. “What?” he finally said.“Dance. Do you want to?” she repeated, now smiling at him.Locke was used to Remi saying strange things, but was no

less confused. “What’s gotten into you now?” he asked. Instead of a reply, she took his hand in hers and hopped off,

pulling him down to the open dirt. Remi’s hands were small, soft against his cal-luses, and radiated a disproportionate warmth that was amplified in the morning chill. “It’s

your birthday today, I think,” she said as she stepped in place. “I wanted to do something new together, since there’s nothing to give you.”She took a tentative pair of steps; Locke tried matching her

movements and stepped on her toes. After a colorful exple-tive and hasty apology, he at least managed to move back and forth with her. Unsure of how to follow, he stepped backward and forward again, and again. “Alright then,” he said. “But I can’t see why you chose a musical activity, of all things. How’s this work, exactly?”“I dunno,” she replied, looking to the wet earth underfoot as

they tried to transform their awkward steps into a fluid pat-tern. “Just close your eyes and feel it. That’s what all the grand-parents say.” Locke closed his eyes tightly and concentrated, but all he felt was her foot under his own again.“Sorry,” he repeated, letting go of Remi’s hands and scratch-

ing the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Looks like I’m really bad at this.”She rolled her eyes and took his hands emphatically. “Of

course you’re bad at this, we both are. We’re doing it wrong, after all. Did you think this was supposed to be done silently?” She poked him in the forehead.“Fair enough,” he said, repositioning himself. “One more time,

then.”She smiled. “There we go. Now do it right.”

Beneath the sands of the high desert, deep within the cav-erns, the queen slept. She dreamt of the surreal and unknown. The ancient ones

above gave her no rest – they forced a vision on her, tor-menting her with images of the future, the myths of prophecy. She wished only for peace for her children, but they scurried about, agitated by the visions they shared with her. She saw little, but felt much more. Sorrow. Heart-wrenching

pain. Betrayal of her family, of the most intimate connections of her life. She felt fear and distrust, disappointment and des-peration. She felt the flaws of those who flew above. It was torture. The queen despised the ancients, but held no

power to stop them. Her body writhed in agony, plagued by the nightmare. Sud-

denly, lucidly, she witnessed a strange sight: three hawks, red of head and tail, soaring through the dusts and shimmering sands of the desert. The first was a threatening creature of stringy muscles and flexing talons, eager to split the ranks of her en-emies and spill their blood across the thirsty earth. The second was a runt: small and feeble, battered by harsh winds, scarred by hunger and beaten down by her own kind. The third… The queen knew not what to think of her. She

was regal, calm, sure in flight as the great gyrfalcons of the

“Dance.Do you want to?”

music

Chi-Nhan Vo

talonswarm

Hudson Zhi

16

north – yet, a sad twinkle within her golden irises revealed her weakness. Young, destined for greatness, she flew with the burdens of her entire race upon her slender wings, threaten-ing to crush her into sand. For a fleeting moment, they soared in unison, before a high-

pitched scream wrenched them out of the queen’s mind. With that, the ancients left her, releasing her back to the hive. She awoke to the buzzing of her children, all of them, millions upon millions. One child clambered up her swollen body, antennae sweeping about cau-tiously. They exchanged brief communication, before the child flew off, her wings churning rapidly as she zoomed out of the cavern. She weaved her way among the clusters

and combs. Through dark corridors and around corners, past pools and moist, dripping rivulets of cold water, she flew toward the surface. A light loomed in the hole above, grow-ing and filling the child’s glitter-ing round eyes. A sharp current bumped her over the lip of the entrance, and she alighted atop the sands, bracing herself with six hooked legs. She faced the light, tilted her head, and settled her wings on her yel-low back. A ray shot across the land, past the mountains, dunes, and

cliffs, as the fiery sun reached up from the horizon. It was dawn – a new day for the swarms.

He never stayed in one place for long. It was always just him and some new planet, some new town, some new bare expanse of grass and trees. Alone. Even a week felt too long to stay. An invisible rope had permanently wrapped itself around his waist, pulling him ever onward. There was no stop-ping it. In his travels he had worn so many guises, taken on so many names, that he had forgotten his own long ago. That was alright, somehow. Alone was alright. Until she came along.Just a scrawny farm girl in an unnamed town on an unnamed

planet that squatted in a grove of trees, half forgotten in the annals of time. He stayed with that girl two weeks. They talked and talked, and the girl, barely eighteen, became caught in high tales of pirates and airships and vast unexplored wilderness

bursting with life undiscovered. And the girl would smile and dimples would appear and her eyes would shine like little suns.Her long fingers were weath-

ered from years of work but her touch was light and soft. Her hair felt like feathers, her lips like

velvet. Her freckles made constel-lations across her skin that were infinitely more beautiful than the ones across the sky. Two more

weeks disappeared in a flash of bright eyes and interlaced fingers. They sat on fences and ate apples and talked about everything and nothing. Time didn’t exist.

“Stay with me,” she whispered one night, hands drifting over the trav-

eler’s back.A month had passed. The run-down old farm-

house slowly became home. Freckles were mapped like the heavens, each with a name in his mind. They were

small and brown but he saw all the fantastic colors of nebulas from galaxies far away, painting dramatic vistas across young, tan skin. But after a month he was beginning to feel it. The invisible rope, tugging and tugging and screaming at him, Go, you’ve spent too much time here already.“I’ve spent too long here,” he whispers into a freckled neck

one night. The girl is upset. She runs outside in the dark night and crouches down and cries, dirty hands pressed to dimmed eyes. Her beautiful tears fall freely, the stars twinkling in their depths as if held cap-tive by liq-uid crystal. The traveler realizes that he must choose.The stars here, in her eyes, or the stars in the skies beyond

that still await him.So the traveler packs his bags, and straps on his belt, and de-

scends the steps from the old farmhouse he had begun calling home. He holds out a worn hand and a long-fingered, freckled hand finds its way between his fingers. The girl with the uni-verse in her eyes and the constellations on her skin smiles.“Are you sure? You want to go with me… Forever?” he asks.“Yes. Forever.”

foreverTracy Sokalski

17

The red leaves were scattered on the ground, and yellow ones danced down from the sky. Latching free from their tree-branch homes, they came to rest lightly on the ground, gather-ing around her feet. It was autumn again.“Catch me if you can!” she called out, her young voice echo-

ing down the hill to where he stood. She took a generous gulp of crisp air and kicked off into the distance. The leaves fled with each frantic step. A mess of brown curls

blew in the wind as the girl continued down the hill towards the forest. A scarlet scarf flowed in an arc, mixing with her ringlets as she glanced behind, exposing her cheeks, rosy from the biting cold, and a red nose that stung. Large and expressive brown eyes caught the bright sun,

smiling independently of her faded-freckled face. Her thick lips were the color of apples in the fall, or the leaves on the ground at the top of the hill. They stayed slightly ajar, until they burst into a smile. She turned her head back to the path and ran, crinkles appearing at the corners of her mouth.Scraped knees, warm apple cider. Crackling fires and soft hay.

Those were the days before the storms and the hatred. Be-fore the hurt and the joy, before leaves rotted away and the rains turned to forgotten grey mist that blocked out the sun. These are the autumns before we grow up.If only the leaves could retrace their steps, and return to their

homes on dying tree branches.

“This is war, kid. You just have to deal with it. You know that, right?” All he could see of the General was a wide, muscular back,

clothed in a rich black silk that clearly bore the symbol of his organization. The deep voice was quiet, almost inaudible above the faint humming of hidden machinery and the om-nipresent rumbling of distant war. He felt himself nodding; it felt like he was only an observer to the world, with no control over his actions. He was high, very high. Everything faded in and out with intermittent swirls of color. “I do, sir.”“Then why did you disobey me?”

“I did not, sir.”“Oh, really. Then, explain this to me.”The General removed one hand from his pocket and held

up a small, rectangular rod. He clicked a button and the room dimmed, save for a glowing panel set into the wall that dis-played the truth of his insubordination to the world. There he was, standing grinning over the corpse of a slain colleague, brandishing the weapon of murder.“Who is that, Hadley? Tell me who that is.”“That’s me, sir.”He felt no panic. Only a sort of vague indifference. He was

too high to care. The General turned to him at last, and his lined face seemed thin and weary against the backdrop of the glowing monitor behind him. “What the hell were you doing, Hadley?”Hadley smiled, and it was serene, because he was so high

that at last, everything was right in the world.“I don’t know, sir.”It was the best answer he could give. It was the truth. The

General’s eyes narrowed. He took a step toward Hadley and peered at his face.“Are you high, Hadley?”He remained silent.“Damn it, Hadley. Tell me!”“Tell you what, sir?”“Don’t play games with me. Are you high, Hadley?”He felt his dry lips curve into a smile.“High as the stars, sir.”

can leaves fall

upwards?

Anonymous

This is Waranonymous

18

Q: What would you want your last meal to be?

Q: If you lived in a black and white world, what one thing would you make color?

Q: What would the o!spring of Opti-mus Prime and a llama look like? Q: If you had a robot butler that

could only perform one action, what would it do?

“My crush.”

“Zebras! Oh wait...”

“Eyes.”

“Myself.”“Anti-death serum.”

“Get me a girlfriend.”

“!ey would do every-thing for me, because it is a privilege to serve me.”

“Do my college apps.”

-- Annelise Peake, junior

-- Hudson Zhi, senior

-- Madeleine Smith, freshman

-- Pavi Rao, freshman

-- Anonymous

-- Anonymous, freshman

-- Carolyn Nguyen, senior

-- Anonymous

Sabrina Dang, freshmanJoshua Kam, sophomore

carolyn nguyen thomas sautner julianne seog yuan zhang

19

danielle fang emily huang shirley liu

Q: What is your favor-ite pickup line?

Q: How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Q: If you could pick any celebrity to be your maid for a day, who would it be and why?Q: What is the worst thing you’ve ever

tasted?

Q: If you were president, what would your first or-der of business be?

Q: Who would win in a ginger battle, Mr. Johnson or Ms. Hess?

“Please go out with me.”

“Are you from Oklahoma? Because you’re OK.”

“Morgan Freeman, because he could narrate my life for a day.”

“[It’d] Chuck Norris.”

“A tablespoon of cinnamon.”

Johnson: 64%Hess: 36%

“Make this hellhole an anarchy.”

“Make Tom Felton my personal secretary.”

-- Daniel Kim

-- Eileen Guo, junior

-- Lexi Kerr, freshman

-- Sarah McDougald, freshman

--Hanna Evans, sophomore

--Eileen Guo, junior

--Anonymous

21

GUESS THE THEME

1.

22

2.

1) Mario 2) Spongebob

Surely, you’ve seen these before. . . Presented by the Bucket List:If you got:

- Mostly a’s: You are an adventurous soul who has chosen to live life to its fullest. Way to wake upand carpe diem*!

- Mostly b’s: Ah, you party animal, you! Go live in a jungle and eat bananas with the monkeys!

- Mostly c’s: We fear for your parent’s lives! Al-though, considering you were about to die in thegiven situations, it’s only natural for a self-respect-ing teenager to act upon their inner devil.

- Mostly d’s: As a nonchalant being, you tend not to care much for your surroundings. A rock,really? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……

- Mostly a mix: You have surpassed the normal level of insanity for today’s generation ofwild creatures. Go live on Mars!

*Carpe diem... Seize the day!

Need a little extra help in your life? Consult one of our advertisements!

23

Satis House GossipVolume 21, Edition 3

by Jaymee Tsiah

Ship of Theseus- A Drought of Mustard

‘If you think that the Satis atmosphere seems a tad off this year, you’re not alone. ‘As the decline of existing transportation infrastructure during the Generation of 2013 progresses, the scarcity of sandwich condiments has taken a toll for the worse. Martín Martinez, resorting to drastic measures, has initiated his “final fling” plan of action, embarking on an indefinite no-soy-sauce campaign, committing himself to a life without high-sodium condiments.

“Who the Kikoman do you think you are to deny that this is an emergency...” he com-mented. “Let the fast begin!”

And so, with misplaced enthusiasm, big

24

names such as “Lorenzo Reyes” and “De-Shawn Michaels”have proven the mistaken consumer faith in well advertised brand names. Consumerist expert Nozomi Beech: “You’re paying more for the brand name, than the actual quality and reliability that you’re looking for in a high end product. Dried jalapeños? None to be seen. Picked cherries?...yum” ‘Further displaced was Alejandro Guevara, Satis Senior. “There’s no automated ketch-up conveyor belt in development?” ‘No- I’m afraid there isn’t. There hasn’t been any talk of one, and there probably won’t be any serious discussion of such a thing in the near future. ‘Strucken especially hard by this disaster, is Elias Darussalam Ndebele-Fukushima, the preppy Bane of Gangbuk. “Aisha-hime...may I examine your sandwich preparation

cutlery?” Dry, dusty, dirt-crusted, silver-ware, Elias. Bad move. A close friend of the Hermit Miser, Jay Zhou echoed the senti-ment. “好可怜啊!”

‘The search for umami brought us inevita-bly to Chirag Gupta, part-time fish sauce middleman hoping to strike it rich. When asked of his opinion of the Great Drought enveloping Satis, the “man” broke down. “I’m sorry, gosh! I know I’m not good enough, but ¡chinga tu madre!, man. Not like they’ll be shipped in overnight!” ‘Ángel laughs at the developing situations. “I feel you bro. But Martín does have more mouths to feed than me, after all. THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH (Matthew 5:5)” ‘Obi-Wan al-Assad immediately expressed his agreement.’