Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Government v. Religion: 2003 Smackdown!!!
'Cause obviously the two are irreconcilable

So the Alabama Supreme Court decided that Moses' favorite Top Ten list isn't good enough to be on display (set in stone, quite literally) in a judicial building. Ah, nuts. Time to say goodbye to Christianity! First those beaurocratic fat cats in Washington won't let us lead prayer in public classrooms, then they let commie pinkos teach evolution in state-funded schools, then they start letting sex-frenzied men legally stick their members into each others' rear ends in each one of our fifty states plus Puerto Rico, and now this. Obviously these decisions will collectively undermine Judeo-Christianity as we know it in America, which will in turn prevent parents from raising their children with the religion of their choice and keep people in churches from freely preaching the Word of God, which will in turn lead to moral chaos in our fine nation. Otherwise, what would be the big deal?

On a scholasic note, I'd like to encourage all administrators, professors, and graduate student instructors to stick to the goddamn discussion section schedules that were dilineated on the Schedule of Classes when we signed up for our courses. Ya see, the sections I chose were chosen for a very specific reason: their time slots fit so snugly and satisfactorily, almost sexually, within my lecture schedule. So when all of a sudden you junk the correct, previously agreed upon section times and introduce wacky, unexpected times in their stead, and it just so happens that all the new sections occur during my other lectures, it kinda fucks me up. Thanks.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:02 PM
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Monday, August 25, 2003

ASUC Bookswap/My magazine is cooler than US Weekly

Hey kids! Hope you had a wonderful first day back. Unless, of course, you didn't have classes yet today, in which case I hope you had a terrible time.

I spent a healthy six hours (with a 30 minute break) on Sproul handing out the brand new issue of the Heuristic Squelch. My fellow editors and I handed out an impressive 4,100 copies of our latest opus today alone. Even with the assistence of SPF 30 Banana Boat sun block, I got a little red on my round, feminine, reptilian-textured shoulders. Liked the issue? Didn't like it? Tell us so at feedback@squelched.com or leave a comment.

In other campus news, Senator Misha Leybovich, one of Cal's better looking student representatives, emailed me today and wanted me to pass along information about the ASUC Bookswap. I'm happy to oblidge. But only because he's good looking.

2nd semesterly ASUC BOOKSWAP:
Come check out the 2nd semesterly ASUC BOOKSWAP!!!
Buy/sell/barter/swap your books with other students and save/make money without the middleman!
Thursday August 28
11 AM - 4 PM
Upper Sproul Plaza
Contact: ASUC Senator Misha Leybovich at asucbookswap@uclink.berkeley.edu

I personally won't be there, but that's because admittedly I never learned how to read. I'm a whiz at Tetris, though.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:07 PM
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Friday, August 22, 2003

A freshman for every season

Our university’s most recent shipment of freshman (and, psh scoff, junior transfers) has for the most part settled into its new surroundings. And all but the most obsessive parents have by now driven back home to Irvine, Fresno, Pleasanton, leaving their beloved valedictorians and wrestling stars in the dust of their mid-priced sedans. The class of 2007 has at this point discovered Blondies, Top Dog, and that frightening woman who sells hats outside Smart Alec’s. And with any luck they’ve even discovered Smart Alec’s. Each new student has been asked “What’s your major?” an average of 38.5 times since Sunday, “Where you from?” 40.2 times. For most, the answer to at least one of those questions will change before the terminus of their undergraduate experience.

I trekked out to Buffalo Exchange after work today in an ultimately fruitless attempt to find a nice A-line skirt that I could go with this one pair of heels I bought at Pay-Less two months ago and have yet to wear. Though I did find a swell white collared shirt there for only $11, I first had to navigate my way through dozens of Converse-clad freshman with dyed black hair stocking up on the season’s newest old clothes, each trying so desperately to choose the too-tight pants or classic Reeboks that most effectively convey that they just don’t care how they look. An army of Emo/Indie/Pseudo-punk teenagers racing to defy the mainstream.

On the walk back from skirt-buying failure I noticed a quartet of ladies, presumably new to Berkeley, outside Fat Slice conversing and laughing with Dr. Jokemon. I also saw a pair of boys smirking at a gutter punk’s hand-written “Money for pot” sign and rewarding his clever conceit with some spare change. And another group of friends in flip-flops and tank tops lamenting the presence of the Gap on Telegraph. And gaggles of other wide-eyed Berkeley newcomers, trying in one week to absorb all the presupposed culture of their adopted city before school starts and they begin to stop caring what everyone else’s major is.

But by next semester a fair number of our disaffected Buffalo Exchange friends will have discovered Ross (of Dress for Less fame) and the necessity of $2 underwear, even if said underwear isn’t Indie. The wisdom of the scary blue lipstick lady will by winter turn yet again into rambling. In November the freshmen will get tired of Dr. Jokemon’s quips and will start walking on the other side of the street to avoid him. As soon as next week a few bright youngsters will realize that gutter punks are just rich white kids who aren’t actually undermining capitalism, but simply being lazy. Perhaps just six days into their Berkeley residence, a handful of Cal freshman, eager to cast off the shackles of suburban conventionality but already disillusioned to the prospect of finding sincerity, have noticed that the people at the Gap and the people living on the street are motivated by the same forces, and that both groups just want your goddamn money. They’ve realized that the indie-emo-hippie-protest-punks up here are just as phony and shallow as their Orange Country brethren, it’s just that folks in Berkeley have learned how to hide it with piercings and a faux tolerance for filth.

And by this time next month they’ll all be so absorbed with buying text books and studying for midterms that they’ll forget how to be disaffected.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 7:59 PM
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Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Hiatus!!! Part Deux: And This Time It's Work-Related!

Hey again to my loyal followers. Believe it or not, the good people at the Heuristic Squelch invest thousands of man hours per year to produce six issues of free hilarity make it into your palms. By Thursday at midnight, I will have spent over 50 hours in the last week investing my writing, layout, and graphical talents to my honored magazine. The Squelch is about quality; if we need a picture of a dude's face and it needs to look like he's getting a hand job, and if we can't find that picture with a google image search, gosh darn we'll stage it ourselves. That's our commitment to you, the reader. And since both my Creative Editors are flakes, my Editor-in-Chief is busy instructing 14-year olds at band camp, and my Layout Editor has lost his voice due to illness, I'm having to work overtime.

Consequently, my ability to comment on California political news has been stifled.

Also, I am officially looking for anyone with proficient Photoshop and/or InDesign skills (and an excellent sense of humor) to join our humble layout and graphics staff. Write us at feedback@squelched.com.

See you on Friday!

P.S. I'm taking time out of my day on Thursday in the Pauley Ballroom to give blood. You should too.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:36 AM
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Tuesday, August 19, 2003

When bad people make me look bad

In my daily perusal of the SF Chronicle I came across this article.

Foie gras is one of the more disgusting foodstuffs homo sapiens have invented. (No seriously, it's really gross.) But please oh please why can't we protest cruelty to animals though legal means? What ever happened to the age-old maxim that two wrongs don't make a right?

If you don't like foie gras, don't eat it, and encourage your friends and family to avoid it, or join an organization that legally protests animal-unfriendly foods. When you vandalize property and terrorize chefs, you make ME look bad. I'm very adamant about every animal's right to live a painless, unopppressed life, and consequently you'd have to force a metal tube down my esophogus to get me to eat foie gras. But honestly, what would I accomplish by shiving a veal chef in a San Francisco alley under the cloak of night? I'd be trivializing the real pain and suffering of farm animals, is what I'd be accomplishing. I'd be helping to convince the omnivorous community that the animal rights troup is irrational and hypocritical, not to mention criminal.

Don't terrorize; educate! If you refuse to eat meat or if you've simply omitted a certain especially cruel food product from your diet for moral reasons, and someone asks you about your lifestyle and motivations, share with him the facts about farm conditions, tell him about the intensely negative environmental impact of meat and animal byproduct production, and let him see that your diet is a genuine attempt to alleviate suffering on this ol' planet. Attacking people for eating dead animals only works against you.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:17 AM
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Thursday, August 14, 2003

HIATUS!!!

That's right, kids. I'm takin' a break. The dust from the completion of my photography class has yet to settle, and in the next week I'm busy workin' for The Man, I need to continue to be the glue that holds the Squelch together, and I'm sailing away to Tahoe this weekend.

So keep yourselves entertained with Klassic Rebekka.

P.S. I also need a phone card for my birthday.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:39 AM
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Tuesday, August 12, 2003

It's just twenty-nine days away!

Since currently the role of poltical punditress seems dull to me, and since comments don't appear to be working, and since the twentieth anniversary of my birth on September 11, 1983 is just around the corner, I thought I'd entertain and inform my readers with an incomplete birthday wish list.

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken
This isn’t available until September 22, but I can wait eleven days. I will also be afforded plenty of time to read this volume before I see Mr. Franken speak on October 23.

Family Guy Volumes 1 and 2, Seasons 1 &2 and 3
For when I need to turn my frown upside-down. Unfortunately, if you purchase these DVDs for me, you may also want to buy a DVD player for me. ‘Cause just looking at the discs won’t make me laugh. Buy both volumes and save at Amazon.com!

Office Space on DV
Funniest film of the glorious decade known commonly as the 1990s. Again, I will also need a DVD player if I am to fully enjoy this gift.

Abbey Road, Let It Be, Help!, and/or Rubber Soul, by the Beatles
My collection is tragically short of complete.

Money for college
Since my own parents can’t pay for my education, and since my boyfriend’s parents for some reason don’t feel obligated to help me out, even though they’ve known me for an entire nine months, and even though I’m real nice to their filthy dogs Scruffy and Callie, they still feel that their own two sons’ collegiate expenses take priority over mine. I entreaty you, my readers, to assist me in my pursuit of a higher education. My debt will probably add up to about $25,000 by the end of my fourth year. It’s okay to give it to me in installments.

A nice pair of earrings
My lobes have been naked ever since I lost my lone pair of silver studs. Perhaps a stud of my own can buy me a nice replacement.

A new birthday
I never wanted the day I became a legal adult to also be the day that America officially became a nation of diversity-fearing cowboys.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:57 PM
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Friday, August 08, 2003

To every Hervé Villechaize-sized wiggle forward comes an André the Giant-sized leap backward

As my better readers may have learned from Paul, the Michigan legislature may soon vote on a bill that would make "the theory that life is the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a Creator" part of an accepted and encouraged middle and high school science cirriculum. And as my better readers may have learned from their middle and high school social science cirruculums, "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." I see a conflict of interests.

Part of the bill provides for the assurance that kids would be taught that creationism is just as valid a theory as evolution. In this instance, though no religion would be formally established by the state, certain tenents of a certain religion would be incorporated into the classroom, and most certainly any student who did not believe in creationism but was still forced to accept it in an academic setting would be having the free excercise of his religion (or lack of religion) prohibited by the state. That's a Constitutional faux pas, by my estimation.

Its not as if all values of Judeo-Christianity should be excluded from public teaching, just the ones that are unique to it. For example, the Good Book tells us not to steal, or murder, or sodomize; these rules are also very often in enforced in public schools, but because following such rules contributes to an efficient, safe learning environment (oh, yeah, and they're illegal, too), not because Moses told us so. Incorporating creationism into public school cirriculum, however, serves no purpose but to impose or at the very least inaccurately present as factual ideas that are exclusive to religious thought.

More conservative conceptions of creationism (those that preclude evolution as a viable scientific theory) are supported by little (practically zero) scientific evidence, and thus like any theory lacking substantial evidence should be omitted from public school classrooms. The concept of "intelligent design," however, seems more innocuous because it takes into account the existing scientific evidence supporting evolution, then simply attributes the evolutionary processes that led to contemporary life to a "purposeful" "Creator." In other words, if evolution did in fact manage to transform ancient primordial goo into our fantastic modern human civilization in *just* 3.5 billion years, it could have only happened with the divine influence of a god (note little "g") who had the eventuality of homo sapiens in mind the whole time.

The intelligent design theory cannot be disproven: God is an invisble force, and your faith in His ability to invent evolution in such a way that it would necessarily result in beings that were made in His image cannot be decisively put down. That's the definition of FAITH, of course!!! If God did have an intelligent design all along, there's no way to point to any scientific evidence proving such. Pretty clever, God.

But that's exactly why the theory of intelligent design has no place in public schools. That it cannot be proven or disproven is immaterial; most theories are subject to such ambiguity. But, even in contestable scientific theories, there is some physical evidence that can be pointed to in order to argue for or against it. Whether or not intelligent design is a real force in our universe absolutely cannot be supported by physical evidence. Making Junior read about evolution in school is not a breach of separation of church and state for the sole reason that there exists physical, scientifically obtained indications of its influence. Making Junior read that a Creator might have been responsible for his existence does not enjoy such scientific protection, and it in fact is introducing religious beliefs into what the Constitution demands be a secular environment. We might as well be teaching astrology.

Maybe I'm still peeved that my crevaced, clogged-artery-ridden AP Calculus teacher Mr. Henderson tried to tell me that I had to stand while the Pledge of Allegiance was recited over the PA system. After class I explained that (a) I didn't believe in God, and as such I felt no obligation to recite a pledge that included His name, and (b) that I furthermore felt no obligation to verbally devote myself to a nation with whose policies I often disagreed. He seemed from that day to do everything in his power to prevent me from getting an A in that class, including not letting me take an important make-up test after I was out sick for a week because there was only a seven-day make-up period. And I'm supposed to believe that I'm not being persecuted for my religious beliefs. He suffered from a non-fatal heart attack the following November. Coincidence? You be the judge.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 10:55 PM
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Thursday, August 07, 2003

And announcing the newest candidate: that kid from Webster!

I'm so relieved that no actual politicians have a chance at winning this gubernatorial race, if it in fact comes to fruition. I suppose Larry Flynt and Gary Coleman aren't actually viable candidates, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is. My hope is that the top five or so candidates spend millions and millions of dollars on campaigning, then, as Paul's friend Phil suggested might happen, Davis resigns and concedes his office to the next man in line (Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat) days before the election. That would be a good gag.

But, if fate does demand that Californians be asked to choose a new governor, please be an active participant in the election process. Step one is to vote. Step two is to be proud of yourself for voting. Step three is to chide your friend Ryan for not voting. Pretty easy, huh? (Honestly, Ryan. What's your excuse?)

In the meantime, check out this swell website full of fun and innovative art: explodingdog.com

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 9:54 AM
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Wednesday, August 06, 2003

Temporary self-mutilation that the whole family can enjoy!

Until September 18, 2001, I refused to have my ears pierced. I wanted to be an individual, to let my face speak for itself sans the clutter of metal adornment, to have my body remain as natural as the day it was first exposed to this fragile Earth. Then, seven days after my 18th birthday, I said "Aw, screw it" and made a visit to Wicked on Telegraph Avenue between Math 1B lecture and my Rhetoric R1A class. Thirty minutes and $20 later (they had a special going that month and on Tuesdays your jewelry was free with purchase of piercing), I had a hollow 16-gauge needle jammed through the cartilage of my left ear, forever soiling the pointy ears that had earned me an endearing "elfen" status among my family members. And thus I unknowingly introduced myself to the elite pierced fold of society.

The following April, the madness continued, and after a thirty minute wait at Zebra (also on Telegraph Avenue) I had a shiny nose stud in my right nostril. My mother was none too pleased. I suppose she from that day imagined me to be some sort of deviant.

Summer of 2002 passed without event, then the first Wednesday of the Fall semester I chose to have a 14-gauge labret bar introduced into my life, again courtesy of Zebra after a nominal $38 fee for parts and labor. At this point my mother demanded that I not get any more visible piercings lest she forget to sign my loan papers.

In October I did the unthinkable and got my ear lobes pirced at a salon on Telegraph Avenue. (Do you see a theme?) My mom told me when I was ten that I could get my lobes pierced when I was eleven, and eight years later I finally took her up on her offer.

Keeping in mind that getting any more visible piercings would prevent me from graduating from college, on November 11, 2002 I got my most recently acquired piercings, namely my left and right nipples, this time from Industrial Strength on Dwight and Telegraph. Ouch. No, seriously. Ouch. Perry, the pale, skinny, Bic-bald gentleman who wielded the 12-gauge needles and rubber gloves that facilitated my newest mutilation, scared me half to death and didn't help make the experience any less uncomfortable.

The moral of the story is that, seven punctures short of bodily purity, I don't feel like I've compromised my individuality. Sure, everyone in Berkeley and his or her proverbial dog has a septum ring, and chances are that being pierced is an asset, not a disadvantage, when applying to most professional jobs in the Bay Area. But the day I "finally grow out of" this piercing kick, I can take out my metal and my resiliant little cells will heal themselves, returning me once again to my original state.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 3:27 PM
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Monday, August 04, 2003

Hazelnut spread drops alleged rapist

As I predicted, Nutella, the popular chocolate and hazelnut spread that is so delicious on toast, crepes, and wheat tortillas (not that I would know - it has milk byproducts in it), has decided not to renew its contract with the Lakers' former Golden Boy Kobe Bryant. They also removed his image from their website within days of Bryant's arrest.

Perhaps I'm a tragic example of mass-media's effect on American youth, but the moment that I Kobe's problems broke in the news, the very first thought in my head was, "But what about his Nutella endorsement? What was he thinking?"

We shall see what becomes of the athlete's endorsement of Sprite. Obey your thirst.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 11:21 AM
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Friday, August 01, 2003

Rebecca Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive.

If you didn't catch the Daily Show last night, I strongly suggest you catch the replay at 7 tonight. In fact, I strongly suggest that you watch it all four nights a week. Not only is host Jon Stewart darned attractive, the political commentary is tremendously poignant, and the humor top-notch. The highlight of last night's episode was the opening news bit with George W. Bush's most recent press conference. It confirmed entirely what a big dope our president is.

And so W. is also officially anti-gay marriage/civil union. Hmm, not surprising. What is surprising is that he would openly refer to homosexuality as a sin as he did in said press conference.

And the Vatican has put their two papal cents into the gay political fold. Business as usual.

I like to watch "The 700 Club" sometimes for laughs. Their most recent campaign was to get their viewers to pray for the souls of the Supreme Court jusices who vited in favor of sin.

I know religion is a sensitive subject for almost everyone, and I also know that each person has a personalized and individualized faith within their sect. And I know that religious principles have since the origin of time integrated themselves into law and politics. But for goodness' sake, can we please let the rules surrounding homosexuality be determined by the pursuit of equal rights and not by religious doctrine, especially given that we are a nation who operates under the auspices of religious freedom?

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 11:29 AM
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