While our favorite Van Pelt spot is normally quite the Rosenparty, or even a Garten of Love, it seems that more people are shacking up solo in The Hotel Rosengarten.
Tipster Isabel Friedman sends in these photos of the full house that checked in early Sunday morning. Now, we all know trudging through the snow is a cruel business—but this just looks plain torturous.
We’re only one month into school and it’s already this packed? Van Pelt, can we book our reservations for finals yet?
But, hey, if you are going to check into Hotel Rosengarten, you might as well BYO-protection.
More sleepers after the jump.
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There’s really no better way to find out what the world has cared about for the past 12 months than by perusing Google’s Year-End Zeitgeist, an examination of 2009’s most popular and fastest rising search terms.
For example, from the top ten most Googled terms in Philadelphia, we learn the following:
1. College students stay Googling.
2. Especially Penn students.
3. Penn students do not use Blackboard enough to just go ahead and bookmark it.
4. Penn’s websites are the worst! Why so many?
5. Wharton’s intranet is really called SPIKE.
6. Most Philadelphians don’t need to search for Under the Button because it’s their homepage. Probably!
Check it out for yourself to find out more. We don’t want to ruin too many surprises, but we will say that “how to kiss” made it to the top of one list, and that the four fastest rising search terms in the U.S. were (in order) “american idol,” “swine flu,” “cash for clunkers” and “paranormal activity.” Sounds about right!
This was the view from under the Button this morning (Don’t even ask why we were there. Okay you got us. We were taking this picture!) before the library opened at 10:00 a.m. Maybe the early bird gets the best study carrel, but come on. It’s a Saturday!
Let the finals fun begin.
*headdesk*
With finals now officially here, everyone’s got studying and paper-writing on the brain. As you may have noticed, UTB is continuing to update sporadically, as we will throughout exam period. What does this mean for you? Keep sending in tips! See a crazy study fort in Van Pelt, or have an insane story from a weekend of formal-hopping? Hit us up! While we wait for your tips, Street’s editors have taken the liberty of putting together a sick playlist for you all. (We hope it is, at least — our music editors, fresh off their “Too Cool For Street” paper plate award at this weekend’s gala extravaganza, have not deigned to contribute. Guyyyys, you’re killing us.) Clicking on each song should allow you to listen — enjoy!
“Can I Kick It?” – A Tribe Called Quest
Because, yes, I can in fact kick it. –Julia Rubin
“Mirando” – Ratatat
My favvvvvvv. –Lauren Lipsay
“Oxford Comma” – Vampire Weekend
I can’t listen to music with lyrics while I study, but the grammatical namesake of this song makes me feel academic during a study break. –Hillary Reinsberg
“Let’s Get Ready To Rumble (Remix)” – Jock Jams
Jock Jams volume I, II, III, IV. for irony. –Julie Steinberg
“Wake Up” – The Arcade Fire
Not only is it the song in the freaking amazing Where the Wild Things Are trailer, but it’s called Wake Up. It’s purpose is right there in the title. I have literally been listening to it on repeat for like three days. OK, maybe not literally. Figuratively. –Jess Spiegelman
“This Is The Day” – The The
The title says it all. –Eliza Rothstein
“Walking On Broken Glass” – Annie Lennox
Sounds so sweet, actually pretty harsh. (Ha, people say the same thing about me.) –Heather Schwedel
Winners for this year’s mashup contest, sponsered by Penn Libraries and the Penn Humanities Forum, among others, were recently announced. We highly recommend that you check out the winning entries, which include a really cool Jay-Z being a G sequence narrated by a W. H. Auden poem, the Muppets taking a different kind of Manhattan, Field of Dreams reinterpreted, and a Penn-style sequel to Slumdog Millionaire, complete with a gratuitous absurd dance finale (see image at right). Each video makes for excellent procrastination fodder, and once you finish watching the winners, you can check out the rest of the entries too, meaning whoops, you’ll never get anything done.
The head of library security just interrupted our Rosengarten-based procrastination-fest to announce that two laptops and a wallet were stolen from the first floor of Van Pelt this afternoon. He proceeded to warn us not to leave our valuables when we go to get coffee, because there’s a mad laptop thief loose in the building! (Well, he may not have used those exact words. But that was the gist.) Said klepto swiped two laptops and a wallet in thirty minutes. So we’re pissed, but actually also kind of impressed.
Mostly, though, we are disheartened. Van Pelt is supposed to be a safe haven, a place where hard workers can wander away from their highly valuable electronics without a second thought. We can’t be expected to actually take responsibility for our computers and wallets! What’s next? Paying for our food? Throwing out our trash? This aggression will not stand, man.
Now, security guards—or are they cops? Ah!—are wandering around the building, presumably hot on the trail of the bandits. Here’s hoping they catch the bad guy soon. We don’t want to schlep all our stuff with us when we leave for half an hour to get dinner.
Another stampede victim
UTB hears that tensions are high over in Van Pelt’s Weigle digital media lab, where students must strategize if they want a chance to print out their end-of-the-semester-project-’n'-thesis posters. The lab prints just seven posters today, a tipster (who was coincidentally eighth in line this morning) tells us. Our tipster planned ahead, arriving at the library a full fifteen minutes before it opened for the day, but was not prepared for what happened next: “at 8:30, when the library opened, a literal stampede charged towards weigle, people running like wild animals.” Alas, the only remaining option was Campus Copy, for twice the price. Please join us in our outrage. This is extortion! A shakedown! Highway robbery!
Gotham glory days
Once upon a time, a super-cool New York-y little bookshop had to close and everyone was wistful and sad about it. No, we’re not talking about our favorite movie, You’ve Got Mail–NYC literary landmark Gotham Book Mart shut its doors in 2007. The Inquirer and the New York Times are now reporting that the store’s enviable book collection has been donated to Penn. Highlights of the collection include Truman Capote’s and Anais Nin’s personal libraries; Allen Ginsburg worked there and Jackie O. shopped there. Which is to say, it sounds like it was a very cool little shop.
The donation was anonymous, but the collection is reportedly valued at several million dollars. The NYT seems to think the gift came from Leonard A. Lauder, Penn alum and Gotham fairy godmother. Whoever it came from, the collection will fit in nicely with our library’s existing rareties, which include two of Shakespeare’s First Folios and several volumes bound in human skin.
Spending all your time at Van Pelt will give you a pretty skewed vision of Penn life, and spending all of that library time in the same cramped little study carrel working on a senior thesis will just make you that much more cracked out. You get used to leaving all your stuff there, and since you have permission to kick people out when you need the carrel, it becomes a weird little makeshift home. It’s basically real estate consolation for all the stress you’ve elected to endure to graduate with honors.
But now the library police are trying to take away some of that solace! They have decreed that any books that aren’t owned by Van Pelt can’t be left in the carrels–for your own good. This includes books that have been obtained through the library programs like BorrowDirect, but are not, strictly speaking, owned by the library. According to our informant, they even employ “some sad pathetic person who goes around checking each carrel to see if any users have violated” the rules, and said person will send you a professional-yet-threatening e-mail warning you to obey VP law. Does this mean that Van Pelt has its very own library detective, a la Mr. Bookman on Seinfeld?
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