SAN BERNARDINO, CA–To the wide-eyed, incredulous gazes of his extended family, UNC out-of-state freshman Peter Stebnitz regaled his loved ones with tales of distant and mysterious North Carolina, spinning yarns filled with exotic wonders such as pine forests, barbecue, Southern accents, and–No, you know what? It’s Thanksgiving. Why don’t you go downstairs and try to be sociable? Your family is not that bad.

Your cousin Greg goes to Ohio State. You should talk to him about college. He’s a nice guy.

Okay, you don’t have that much to talk about, but you can at least make an effort. They’re all your family, after all. They love you.

A joke about freshmen and “Oh yeah, that’s probably happening.” Of course that’s what you want. But it would just be enabling you.

At least that out-of-state freshman is talking to his family. More than can be said of you right now.

Maybe it feels like you’re putting on some kind of an act when you try to talk with them, and to be honest, they probably feel the same way, to an extent. Fine. But they flew all the way here for a reason. They want to stay in touch. And they’re not going to get a better opportunity than now.

You can ask uncle Robert about fishing. You know he likes fishing.

Is this really better? Is this doing anything for you? Reading this article, clicking through slideshows about the Macy’s parade and Black Friday, and looking at whatever your friends posted about Thanksgiving this morning. Isn’t that all making you really sad? Don’t you feel sort of hollow right now? You should go talk to your family.

Aunt Linda sends you a card every single year on your birthday. She’s here. She and uncle Don are flying back on Saturday. Then you’ll have plenty of time for the Internet.

How much of an effort have you really made to get to know them? You might be surprised what you learn if you just listen.

You could ask them some questions about their lives. People love to talk about themselves. If you just ran into all these people randomly, you’d probably find them interesting. Right now, you’re choosing to not find them interesting. Uncle Rick went to Russia last year. Just ask him about it, he probably has at least one story.

Sounds like they’re watching the game down there. How bad would it be to just sit with them and watch the game?

Is the Internet still the way you want to go?

Look, sure, it’s a little bit weird that you don’t see most of these people for 364 days of the year–you wouldn’t have much of an opportunity to be a bigger part of their lives even if you tried–and yet, every time you come together, you have to assume this intimacy and cordiality that really have no reason to exist. You’re right about that. Congratulations. So why don’t you keep right on mindlessly clicking through the same five sites and ignoring them? If that’s what you really want to do, don’t let us stand in your way.

Happy Thanksgiving.

CHAPEL HILL, NC — Kyle Walters cleverly disguised a spontaneous erection in his biology lecture Tuesday by placing his hand in his pocket, covering the offending member.

“It was a particularly bad day to get a boner in class,” reported Walters, “we had a test and I didn’t want to walk to the front of a four hundred person lecture hall pitching a tent, so I was relieved when I could stick my hand in my pocket and look totally normal.”

Walters’ classmates agreed that Walters looked “pretty average” and “completely nonchalant,” as he descended the stairs of Genome Sciences 101, completed test in his right hand, unwanted erection in his left.

“I had no idea he had an erection,” said Anna Stern, “it looked like he was just a bit cocky about the exam.”

Walters reported that the ingenious maneuver was “easier than expected.”

“I knew if I stood up, I could walk it off pretty quickly, so it was mainly about hiding the boner for the first thirty seconds or so. All I had to do was kinda pin it between my hand and thigh so that it’d just look like my hand was making the bulge. I don’t know what I was worried about,” he said.

Andrew Smith, the teaching assistant collecting tests when Walters turned in his exam, said Walters’ turgid penis was “unnoticeable” under his well-placed hand. “If he had an erection, it was very inconspicuous. People walk around with one hand stuffed in their pocket all the time.”

At press time, Walters was browsing Under Amour’s collection of fitted Boxer Briefs.

“Putting my hand over my dick was a stroke of genius,” he said, “but I don’t want to play it that close again. Fitted underwear takes erection concealment to a whole new level.”

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — After reading thousands of resumes, Genentech chose Craig Fursuth, junior chemistry major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to intern at their San Francisco office, reporting that his skills in Microsoft Office were “too unique to let get away.”

“We had a lot of candidates with experience in the field who would have done a great job,” said Steven Pescool, who led the intern search for Genentech. “Among such a strong pool, it’s about having an edge, something that sets an applicant apart. When we saw [Fursuth’s] skills in Microsoft Office, we knew we had someone we could not pass up.”

Pescool described seeing Fursuth’s resume for the first time.

“A lot of resumes pass by my desk. You’re a co-author on a peer-reviewed paper and interned in Silicon Valley last year–whatever, I’ve seen it. But with Fursuth’s skills in Microsoft Office, it was a no fucking brainer,” reported Pescool, who, upon seeing the resume, immediately stood up and shouted to his associate, “Johnson we’ve found our man! These aren’t just Word or Excel skills we’re talking about. This kid knows the whole fucking Suite.”

Running down the corridor to his boss’s office, Pescool yelled in CEO Tiffan Kelly’s face, “Microsoft Office Kelly, he knows Microsoft Office! He’s sure as shit going to intern here if we can get him in time, but I’m here to ask you if we can just make him a full-time offer and get him straight to work on the big stuff.”

Fursuth said developing his Office skills was a challenge that paid off.

“I set out to learn it and just naturally picked it up,” said Fursuth. “I guess you can’t teach talent.”

CARRBORO, NC— James Clark and Myra Linton, Carrboro residents, achieved simultaneous ennui this week after several days of not trying.

“It happened earlier today, or maybe yesterday. I don’t know,” said Clark, speaking from his house on Poplar Avenue, where he sat on a thrift store sofa in nothing but briefs and a long coat. “I think part of the magic of ennui is that you can’t tell it’s happening until it’s happening, and at that point you don’t really care.”

Linton described the moments leading up to the experience.

“I was over at his place and we were just sitting in the living room,” she said. “It was about four or five, so the sun was coming through the shades at a pretty low angle. All the lights were out in the house. The whole place was stuffy because of the radiator and I couldn’t make myself care about school or anything. James asked me if I loved him. I said love didn’t mean anything and that I didn’t think so. Then he kind of laid down on the floor and rolled on his side. That’s when I knew he was experiencing ennui too.”

Clark attempted to express the feeling of a shared ennui.

“To anticlimax with another person is to listen for an echo and not hear it, only to realize you never called out in the first place,” he said. “On one hand, you’re seeing her true self in all its banality, in the listlessness of its existence, and you know that her soul is weary too, but on the other hand, you know how little that matters. The second hand is a lie. We are all in the same moment in which we were born.”

A loosely rolled joint lay abandoned on Clark’s counter.

Clark and Linton reported that they had difficulty achieving simultaneous ennui in the past.

“I find it easier to reach ennui by myself,” explained Linton. “When I’m in the shower or alone in my room, I’ll just be struck by how arbitrary and pointless my life is; it’s much harder to do that with another person. Sometimes Ellis will be working on something for his alt-rock ska band, The Albatross, or I’ll be caught up in my animal rights campaign, and we’ll forget the emptiness of our own existence. It can be hard to get so totally bored around another person that the absurdity of life comes back into focus.”

Asked what it felt like to experience ennui together for the first time, Clark said, “I don’t know. I didn’t care. We kind filled ourselves with mutual indifference and held it there for as long as it lasted. Then I hated Myra and she hated me and we hated ourselves and we were alone in the desert of the present, seeing each other across a moonscape, then I fell asleep.”

CHAPEL HILL, NC–Sitting at a cubicle in the Undergraduate Library with her recently returned midterm and course syllabus, sophomore biology major Courtney Scheller logged into blinkness.com and examined her Biology 202 professor’s grade distribution for the first time since she registered for courses over the summer.

“Okay, my average for the three midterms is an 83.4,” thought Scheller after hastily punching test scores into her graphing calculator, “and each one is worth 100 points. The course is out of 550 points, so that means if I aced the final, I would have an 87.9 overall. Fuck.”

“They definitely curve the final grades though, right?” Scheller asked herself. “Yeah, [Teaching Assistant] Felix [Peng] definitely said they do. And the test averages have been like 65s. Fuck, why didn’t I write them down? So maybe I could get curved up to an A. Maybe.”

“The top 12% of the class gets A’s,” she continued, squinting at the distribution at her computer screen, “and the next 28% get B’s. I’ve got to be in the top 40% of the class, right? Yeah, come on, think of the people in that class. Think of those fucks. Think of that one kid. So many people don’t even come to lectures. I’m doing better than them.”

“Goddamn it, I need an A though,” Scheller thought as she propped an elbow on her desk and ran a hand through her hair, “I can get an A. I can get an A if I study really hard for the final. I’ll study really fucking hard for the final. And they’ll bump me up if I’m close. Felix likes me. I’ve gone to recitation and asked questions.”

“The people who are going to get A’s are the ones who sleep with the textbook,” she realized. “Fucking study beavers. Shitty ass pre-med kids. Fuck.”

“Why didn’t I take it with Bloom?” Scheller thought as she looked at the distribution of the Biology 202 section above hers. “19% A’s and 32% B’s. I should have moved my schedule around. Carrie and Jonathan are in that section, and it’s easy. Fuck them.”

“I’ll go to office hours,” she decided, “I’ll go to office hours so the professor remembers me. And I’ll study really fucking hard for the final. Okay, I can do it. Okay.”

Scheller is expected to reexamine the grade distribution approximately six more times before her final exam, twice between taking the test and receiving her grade, and once after that.

CHAPEL HILL, NC–With series like Harry Potter, Twilight, and the Hunger Games flying off the shelves, the “Young Adults'” section of the Bull’s Head Bookshop continues to thrive.

Karen Lillian, a second-year medical student at UNC, says she goes there “to wind down when [she] gets stressed out from school.”

“I really like The Hunger Games,” said Lillian. “I don’t always want to read books that are serious or hard or whatever. Some days I just want to read about Katniss and not have to worry about anything. That’s not wrong.”

Others come to relive the past.

“After a long day, I like to grab a coffee from The Daily Grind and sit down with The Hobbit,” said history Ph.D candidate Max Martisk. “It’s nice to just feel like a kid again and forget about rescripting Stalinist masculinity in Soviet film and society.”

Bull’s Head Bookshop owner Ted Bisby said that he understands the appeal.

“I guess they are fun and easy to read,” he said of the books whose plots, settings, and themes are meant to appeal to adolescent sensibilities. “Sometimes students need a break.”

“My 13 year-old daughter has been begging me to bring her home a copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” he added, “but we’re always sold out.”

Theodore Fortsen, junior physics major, said he bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Golbet of Fire in the Young Adults’ section to read on slow, recuperative Sundays.

“When I’m hungover or tired, I just want to go to that happy place,” he said. “Rereading and imagining myself in Hogwarts with Harry and his friends helps me get there.”

By Fuck You | The Minor

I am not going to your shitty Sweet Frog benefit night. You fucking prick.

It’s not because of the irony of shoving frozen yogurt down your gullet in the name of child hunger, and it’s not even the subtle way you imply you are involved on campus by posting four to five statuses about it on Facebook. It’s that your benefit night benefits no one. Fuck you. You piece of absolute shit.

What are you going to make, like $12.70?

Your flyer says it is a benefit for a 5k. That doesn’t even make sense. Even if the 5k is a charity event it makes no fucking sense.

Also, Sweet Frog, really? Who in their right FUCKING mind would choose over-priced, shitty ass Sweet Fucking Frog.

Take that goddamn silver spoon of shitty pomegranate tart with a topping of golden flakes out of your stupid, stupid mouth and shove it up your ass.

I bet you didn’t even call ahead to check with Sweet Frog. They’re probably going to run out of their 10 spoons and everyone is going to have to eat with forks. Fuck you to the brink of extinction.

Oh – you made flyers? Congratulations. I did that shit in first grade when my dog ran away. He didn’t come back.

You even misspelled “Thrusday.” And you are an idiot who is not inventive enough to think of a fundraiser more effective than a benefit night.

This night will only benefit your resume. Fuck you.

No, I won’t be able to make it, but thanks for the invitation.