So you booked a $225 plane ticket to Europe with ZoomAir, obtained your passport, read our guide on how to avoid health problems abroad and now there is one thing left to do–get wasted, see some culture, get wasted, hook up with a broad abroad (23% of women in Europe deliberately binge on alcohol and drugs to improve their sex lives), get wasted and do it on the cheap.

Hostels are very hit or miss–and your overnight experince will dictate whether you leave your trip abroad with memories of greatness or haunted dreams. Read More »

I work in a sh*t-hole on the verge of bankruptcy, and I love it. I’m currently employed by a locally owned sandwich shop/late night drunk food emporium. If it’s 2:30 in the morning, you’re hammered and you need a hot dog that’s been warming on rollers for three hours we’ve got you covered. I make just above minimum wage, but for the work I do it’s almost robbery. Almost.

There’s nothing better than a summer job that requires no real thought, almost no work, and a boss who smokes a lot of pot. For the past three summers, I’ve worked for the maintenance division of a national park. It was a lot of physical work outdoors. I made great money, but I had to do a lot of work. This summer I make almost no money, but I don’t have to do anything. And as sad as it is, I actually prefer making and doing nothing. As a bonus I work with a bunch of college drop-outs and stoners who’ve never had real jobs and complain about what little we’re expected to do. Since I don’t complain, and work whenever it’s necessary, I look great. My boss absolutely loves me. Read More »

Everyone I’ve ever met has a dark past with tequila. Just the mention of it makes their face go sour–the shots, the smell, the blinding drunk, and a hellacious hangover the next morning. For some reason, I am not one of those people. But after my family vacation to Mexico last week, I learned a bit about another South-of-the-Border brew: Mezcal.

Like tequila (which is actually a type of mezcal), mezcal is made from agave, a cactus-like plant, native to Mexico. Mezcals are often aged, in oak barrels, for two months to seven years, giving the alcohol a brown coloration and woody flavor, but are available un-aged and clear.

Connoisseurs will tell you the best mezcals come from the Mexican state of Oaxaca (wah-hock-ah). To fully enjoy the complexities of this subtle liquor, go to the city of Oaxaca, the state’s capital, who’s colonial architecture and friendly people only add to the liquor’s historic mystic. Read More »

Planning a trip this summer? Short on cash? Here’s a quick guide to make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck.

1. Shop Around.
So-called “value” sites like Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz give you the best price for plane tickets–but have often been paid by airlines and hotels to promote their fares and rooms above all others, screwing you over in the process.

Instead, use an aggregator, like Momondo or Kayak, that searches hundreds of travel websites in order to find you the best deal. These Sites also feature flights from smaller airlines and airlines, like Southwest, that don’t actively participate in online travel booking sites. Also, aggregators won’t jack you for a fee, like most “value” travel sites.

2. Skip the Hotel.
Really, most hotels are the same. Except for rooms whose per-night price could pay for last semester, you won’t notice much of a difference, I promise. So, trade in the five-star for one of these inexpensive (but way more fun!) options:

Hostels - For international and domestic travel alike, hostels kick the crap out of everything else. They’re cheap, relaxing and extra fun–plus, you get to mingle with countless hotties from around the world. You may not have the privacy or luxury of a hotel, but it’s worth the “sacrifice.” Read More »

“Sex sells” was the basis for the sweetest class trip of all time. Students from Randolph College in Virginia, studying American consumption, recently visited the Chicken Ranch, a legal brothel outside Las Vegas, to help them more closely analyze the class’s focus of “the ideas that consume us.”

But what might seem to some as the beginning to a porno, the 11 girls (and no dudes) who made up the class absorbed the experience as a learning opportunity. Read More »

Tomorrow is the deadline for tax season, and you either forgot or have completely avoided the dreadful task that’s only second to death in things you must do. Don’t worry — I did too, and will be filing for an extension, AS SHOULD YOU, YOU UNMOTIVATED LAZY PIECE OF AWFULNESS.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, you have less than 48 hours to get it all straightened out. But don’t fret just yet: all you have to do is go to the IRS web-page explaining all the necessary details needed to file for an extension. The last thing you need from me is a break down with hints and tips; just go to the source and get it done, pronto.

If you just need the average file extension, simply click here for the pdf. file.

If you’re the adventurous type who wants to file in record time, I would either recommend Turbotax on the cheap (if you know exactly what you’re doing) or better yet, H&R Block for absolute convenience, if you have around $70 to spare. Whatever method you choose, choose it NOW.

In college there are certain rites of passage: drunken (and regrettable) sexual encounters, the subsequent trips to student health, and then…well. Nevermind.

But at any rate, college is in a lot of ways like a training ground for the real world, and while you can f*ck up quite a bit and emerge virtually unscathed, a wise man once said “Tis better to…” uhh..actually, I’m pretty sure I slept through that class.

If I could remember that quote, it would have been something about learning from the mistakes of others. So in that spirit, here is our guide to leaving the dorm behind and getting your first apartment.

Beware of Crooked Landlords
Despite their regal-sounding title, many landlords are typically less than honorable in their treatment of college students. Maybe it’s their inability to cope with the number of upper-decked toilets they’ve had to clean over the years, but most landlords aren’t willing to provide college students with much more than the basic amenities provided to a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

OK, bit of a stretch, but one thing landlords do know is that college students are generally a lazy bunch, and that given a standard “adjustment period”, most students can generally learn to happily co-exist with the mice and vermin sharing their abode. Read More »

With gas prices around $3-per-gallon, traveling for hours on a bus with an overweight ex-male-stripper as your seat-mate seems more like a quality way to travel. BoltBus knows this.

So, as Consumerist.com reports, BoltBus will begin competing with Greyhound and the various “Chinatown buses” that run this route by offering passengers $1-fares, in-bus WiFi, electrical outlets for laptops and DVD players, “panoramic views [and] the normal coach accouterments,” as their Website advertises. And they make the trek eight times a day.

Can taking the bus really be that great, you ask? No, not really. Read More »

Guys in college are always looking for ways to make a quick buck. Unfortunately, balancing a part time job with classes and studying while maintaining a social life is not only difficult, but nearly impossible. What to do?

Fortunately, there are ways to avoid a long commute to employment. One can always make money on campus by running a gambling ring, or subjecting themselves to shock therapy as part of some professor’s experiment…or not.

There’s an easier and more fun way to make money, and all you need is your right hand man - your right hand. That’s right, gentlemen: sperm donation.

Perfect for college students needing some extra cash, sperm donation typically takes 15 minutes and pays by the sample. In other words, the more you wank is more money in the bank. The steps needed to donate sperm aren’t rigorous, but they do require some responsibility. If you figured waltzing into a sperm bank ready to jack it is all you need to do, you’re sorely mistaken. Read More »

My first all-nighter at the end of my freshman year taught me some important lessons about what my mind and body is capable of when placed under the stress that is going without sleep for more than 24 hours.

1) Between 3 and 5 a.m. I’m incapable of forming coherent sentences on paper and possibly aloud. I have some stellar thoughts, complex ideation that I’m incapable of during normal waking hours. But when it comes to recording them, I have the language capability of a non-Einstein like fourth grader writing about quantum physics.

It’s funny in retrospect, but it makes me want to jab a pencil in my eye when I need that thought to get me through a paragraph or two at 6 a.m., when I’m able to write again.

2) Hot chocolate disappoints like no other, as it’s more of a distraction than an aide in concentration. Marshmallows - either their presence or the mere of idea of them melting sugary goodness in your cup - are the funnest thing ever when you’ve been studying pre-colonial African history for seven hours.

Coffee will never let me down, but hot chocolate is more of a party in my mouth kind of beverage and not quite the upper I wanted and needed it to be.

3) If I end the 24 hour no-sleep-athon with a 20 minute run, upon beginning my cool down, I will have an orgasm. Read More »