How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

by Michael Gates Gill



I empathize with this author because of my days on Dorm Crew, when I’d think about how the grueling physical labor made me more humble and spiritually centered. It’s funny how well you can rationalize something when you’re scrubbing a toilet. Enough about me, though: just take a gander at Michael Gates Gill’s view of the hard-working commoner: fat, bald, and leaning on a mop. Either way, hidden in the title is a good recommendation for Harvardians: if we can learn to live like everyone else, then when the inevitable class revolution comes, we can simply dress up like them, too, and the proletariat will have to be content with smashing Yale and Princeton instead.



Play Money, or, How I Quit My Day Job and Struck It Rich in Virtual Loot Farming by Julian Dibbell



While hardcore gamers might view gaming as a “night job” akin to prostitution, slam poetry, or overseas military contracting, the rest of us know that the only tangible benefit of playing games all the time is the learned ability to push buttons rapidly while swearing and forgetting to bathe. And even a state school Communications major can recognize the picture of the scantily clad woman on the front cover for the miserable escapist fantasy that it is: that’s no Lara Croft knockoff, that’s the digital version of the cheerleader that broke Mr. Dibbell’s heart in 10th grade.

Unfortunately for the author, while his precious “digital l00t” may in fact have real market value, all the gold doubloon clipart in the world can’t fix his social deficiencies or bad breath. On the plus side, a book about fake ambitions, repressed fantasies and the inability to function in the real world probably will sell great over at MIT.



The Cult of iPod by Leander Kahney



I felt embarrassed holding this book at the COOP, because the cover—a bird’s eye view of someone with an old-fashioned iPod click wheel shaved into his head—was already obsolete. Or maybe this was done on purpose, to show what a rebel the cover model is. Yeah, that’s gotta be it! Wild haircut, hardened visage: the guy looks like a criminal possessed of almost monk-like concentration. And hey, if joining the iPod Cult can make that guy cool, then maybe I should join!

After all, college is about trying new things, like fringe religions! And think of all the benefits of cult life—unshakable resolve, exciting friends, and the heartfelt belief that your actions will help bring about the end of the world! But even the coolest cult would drive me to apostasy if they decreed that I had to make my hairstyle into an advertisement for a patented technology, especially one soon to be replaced. So I guess that’s a downside.

At least they’ve gotten better flavors of Kool-Aid, though.