Patrons of this Happy Hour,

You are so thirsty. You may even be dehydrated. Scorching was the summer that just past, and wet classes and wet friendships are not yet arrived. But relief is near. For if you are reading the Nassau Weekly—and we surmise that you are reading the Nassau Weekly—you are about to become rather damp.

What is it to be wetted by words? It is to be made into a truly Fresh Man or Fresh Woman. It is to read a critique that sweeps away all illusion and sophistry, to arrive at the bedrock of a problem; to have a piece of reporting wash one’s Eyeballs, and allow the world to be seen more clearly; to sup some fiction or poetry and delight in the loss of all motor control.  The Nass is a bottomless well of this wetter water. Every week, our staff draws up buckets of it: in-depth reporting on Princeton and Prospect Avenue, perspicacious cultural criticism, film, television, and music reviews, personal histories and reflections, fiction and poetry, satires and dirty jokes.

What you are poised to imbibe is not the normal week’s pull. Rather, it recycles the sweetest, the best, the most representative water put forth by the Nass in academic year 2012-2013—often called “last year” by hypocrites. This is not like other beverages you already regularly enter into your system: not “Beast,” nor antifreeze, nor the quite insane but insanely popular mixture of lemonade and iced tea. There is no dirt here. Every word is as a droplet off a chicken’s wing falling. Drink slowly and savor every sip.

It is our hopeful expectation that something in this issue will hit your Tongue Buds with pleasure. If anything does, it is likely the Nass could become your beverage of choice, your “go-to” for the rest of your time here. As our well is bottomless and well, and as we issue new water each week, you could even drink us forever, or at least until you die, and such is our want: not that you die, but that you read us regularly.

It is well known that persons who consume water often produce it, too, via the Urethra. Likewise, we hope that some or all of you will write for us. There is no prerequisite experience with water or words, nor—as is so often the case at Princeton—a tryout, an application, an obstacle course. First dug thirty-six years ago, our well stands open to all students who would draw from it. Anyone who wants to can cannonball right in and splash about this pool of potential words, even if that suggests a bottom to the well and the lie of an earlier metaphor.

Truly, the Nass has no agenda but to encourage the multiple, imaginative students of Princeton to write what they wish well and to facilitate the publication of those writings. We celebrate all contributions of all flavors so long as they somehow contribute—inform or explain, comment or critique, evoke or joke. Our paper is each year shaped by returning writers and new writers in equal measure.

So we invite you to cannonball or belly-flop or stick a toe in, to shape the Nass anew with us—to write multiple articles, to help with graphic design and business operations, to copy-edit, or to photograph. We would be honored and delighted to have you.

At the same time, we understand how overwhelming Princeton can be, indeed, how easy it can be to get caught in these Rapids: there are too many people, too many clubs, and too much alcohol. So we advise you to go at your own pace. There is no need to chug us. You can join just to hang out and prattle, or even to grab onto us for survival as though a Buoy. We meet twice to thrice a week by design, and many other times by accident. These meetings are gapingly open. If you would like to be notified of them, shoot a snail to thenassauweekly@gmail.com.

For now, please, sup the tangy verbatim below; then, turn to the next page. Down which Liquid Path you go from there is entirely up to you.

Libations, kisses, and the well-est of wishes,

Joel and Will

Editors-in-Chief