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Campus personalities present and past Rebecca C. Brown and Tommaso Sciortino tackle the issues. This week on a very special CalJunket: Rebecca learns not to chew with her mouth open and Tommaso finds out his best friend is addicted to no-doze. Site feed: caljunket.blogspot.com/atom.xml
AIM Rebecca:
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Monday, June 28, 2004
Item! As of 6:47pm today, about a dozen men and women were lined up outside Cody's Books bearing blankets and coffee. Though early speculation indicated that the patrons were competing to be the first in the East Bay to pick up the long-awaited "Best of BBQ" issue of Sunset Magazine, further investigation revealed that they were in line to meet former president Bill Clinton tomorrow at noon. Listen, folks. If you want to have an impersonal and rushed encounter with a former president, catch Jimmy Carter when he's in the middle of laying 2"X4" studs in the future house of some Guatamalan family. Or rub a $5 bill on your nipple. Don't waste your money on a mediocre book, and certainly don't waste your time camping our on Telegraph. You just might wake up with herpes. (0) comments Clinton Claus is Comin' to Town Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Slightly more specific ASUC elections results (for the execs, at least) are available on the ASUC Elections website. Apparantly my campaign appeal surpassed that of Alfred "Reasonable and Sound Policies" Twu and Mo "Blingin'" Benny. Eat my third place finish, boys. (In actuality, I made very good aquaintances with Mo during the campaign trail, and all my interactions with Alfred have been pleasant. A pair of class-acts, I dare say.) Whoot whoot to the Squelch! party for a good showing. Especially David Duman edging out Josie Hyman. Maybe that's because the DAAP's candidate's last name is a homophone for the fold of mucous membrane partly closing the orifice of the vagina. Josie is a lovely woman nonetheless. Hopefully the Elections Council will post actual numbers and more resolved senate showings within a few weeks. (0) comments |
Guesablogging
Now that my little dream of yet another Laker championship has been crushed by Larry Brown and Ben Wallace's afro, and since I'm not terribly excited to get right back to my American Studies C118 reading, I've decided to create what for me is a new pasttime: Guesablogging, as in putting random words or phrases into the www.X.blogspot.com URL and seeing what pops up. Let's have a looksee at some of the fun sites I've discovered tonight.
Spittle. Poor Hunter could only muster tempered patience with humanity long enough to post thrice, though the content of all three offerings is uniform.
Scene, Int: Hunter, age 14, rifles through older brother's community college text books, happens upon Cliff's Notes for "Notes from Underground."
Hunter: My life will never be the same!
Pancakes. Tammy, who resides in Austin, has recently lost many of her local friends to their international ambitions. More disturbingly, she is currently grappling with dial-up. She does have a link to Banana Phone, though.
SheMale. Disappointing despite the promising title. Again, only a trio of posts, including a movie review, a plug for "Boys Don't Cry," and a brief romance-novelesque narration of a certain "David." Saucey. Repleat with self-conscious blog profile.
Faery. Kevin, Re, D, Neoleen, and Faery apparantly use their blog in lieu of instant messenger. Genius.
PoopChute. Absorbo has only posted once as of this publishing, but I anticipate pages and pages of thrilling self-depricating, post-modern, desperately awkward musing about the meaninglessness of humanity.
Antipathy. "Radio, as the author addresses himself, is less covert in his misanthropic intentions. He's old enough to have a kid, apparantly. Link to Interpol.
And no, pussymicrophone.blogspot.com does not exist....YET! (Now's your chance.)
(0) comments
Friday, June 11, 2004
Fees are out!
In case you didn't get the memo, the powers that be have posted 2004-2005 UC Berkeley student fees.
The base undergraduate fees amount to $3,364.95 per semester, but only $2,977.95 if you opt out of SHIP health and dental insurance. If you can, I highly recommend that you do in fact opt out of SHIP. The Tang center is a rinky-dink operation my friends.
Also, final transcripts for this semester are up on BearFacts. This semester, I got an A, and A-, a B+, and a P. My overall GPA at Cal is now 3.525, which is remarkable given that my GPA after my first semester was 2.43.
Hope each of you did well, though of course I'll love you no matter whan grades you get.
(0) comments
Monday, June 07, 2004
Arnold only selectively mournful
According to the Sacramento Bee: Arnold Schwarzenegger had so much respect for the now officially dead Ronald Reagan that he "canceled a planned trip to Las Vegas on Monday because of Reagan's death."
What was he planning on doing in Vegas anyway? Gambling away California's economic future?! (Oh snap. Oh. Snap.)
So instead of going to Sin City, Arnold went to game one of the Lakers-Pistons series on Monday night.
Bee link via RIL.
(0) comments
Friday, June 04, 2004
A pet for the ages
My manpal is looking into getting a Russian Tortoise for a pet. They're low-maintanance, inexpensive to feed, and aren't very good at high-speed escapes. Plus, they live 50-125 years. How rad would it be to very literally have a friend for life, and your kids' lives, and potentially your grandkids' lives.
I was thinking of getting a fire belly newt. They live about 10-15 years if properly handled.
Just thought you should know.
(0) comments
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Beyond territorial and political occupation
Isn't it a beautiful day when I read Pat Buchanan's column from World Net Daily and think to myself, "This man has a point!"? (This occurs more often than one might think, but I needn't remind you that an individual's political stance lies not within the linear left-right spectrum but within a multi-dimensional schema of social, economic, personal, etc. beliefs.)
This time around, I was intrigued by Mr. Buchanan's critique of America's assumed supremacy as a Moral Super Power. He discusses the fallacy of declaring our occupation of Iraq and our War Against Terrorism as an opportunity to spread women's rights to the Muslim world, questioning the real value of the characteristics generally associated with so-called women's liberation. Though I don't agree that pornography, contraception for teens, abortion, or the ban on the Bible in classrooms represents moral failure on the behalf of Americans, I share Pat's sentiment that Americans feel they have an obligation to save the Muslim population from their backwards values, and that occasionally the new imposed values are skewed, if not backwards themselves.
I'm not a moral relativist. I will never say that subjugation of women is acceptable because "that's just what their culture says is acceptable." You'll never catch me donning a burkha in a display of solidarity with American Muslim women. In short, I do not feel compelled to respect the Islamic world's treatment of women in some misguided deference to multiculturalism and ethnic sensitivity.
Similarly, I do not feel compelled to respect the Western world's treatment of women, which, though obviously not nearly as overtly oppressive as Islam, poses its own cultural and legislative restrictions on the female half the population. The thesis of Pat's column, with which I agree, is that America should be more critical its own values before exporting them to Iraq or declaring a moral war against the Islamic faith.
We in this nation do not have gender (or ethnic, or class, or age) equality, nor have we ever, despite the fact that we pretend otherwise. Women's liberation has been commodified into the "right" to be a sexual object; the "right" to choose between raising children at home or raising children while working and being declared a bad mom; the "right" choose from among dozens of toilet bowl cleaners to keep our houses tidy and our husbands happy.
Our tempered brand of neo-imperialism exports both politics and lifestyles. In addition to assigning our half-assed ideals of gender equality across the globe, we send along environmental policy and irresponsible consumerism. Suddenly a nation will realize that eating meat every day is a necessity, that the best kitchen mops are the disposable kind, and that wasting water is an inevitable byproduct of progress.
If in fact our moral vendetta against Muslims in Iraq comes to fruition, we can look forward to the satisfaction of having one more representative democracy on the map and 26 million more people with the new-found freedom to choose between Cingular and Verizon.
(0) comments
In case you didn't get the memo, the powers that be have posted 2004-2005 UC Berkeley student fees.
The base undergraduate fees amount to $3,364.95 per semester, but only $2,977.95 if you opt out of SHIP health and dental insurance. If you can, I highly recommend that you do in fact opt out of SHIP. The Tang center is a rinky-dink operation my friends.
Also, final transcripts for this semester are up on BearFacts. This semester, I got an A, and A-, a B+, and a P. My overall GPA at Cal is now 3.525, which is remarkable given that my GPA after my first semester was 2.43.
Hope each of you did well, though of course I'll love you no matter whan grades you get.
(0) comments
Arnold only selectively mournful
According to the Sacramento Bee: Arnold Schwarzenegger had so much respect for the now officially dead Ronald Reagan that he "canceled a planned trip to Las Vegas on Monday because of Reagan's death."
What was he planning on doing in Vegas anyway? Gambling away California's economic future?! (Oh snap. Oh. Snap.)
So instead of going to Sin City, Arnold went to game one of the Lakers-Pistons series on Monday night.
Bee link via RIL.
(0) comments
Friday, June 04, 2004
A pet for the ages
My manpal is looking into getting a Russian Tortoise for a pet. They're low-maintanance, inexpensive to feed, and aren't very good at high-speed escapes. Plus, they live 50-125 years. How rad would it be to very literally have a friend for life, and your kids' lives, and potentially your grandkids' lives.
I was thinking of getting a fire belly newt. They live about 10-15 years if properly handled.
Just thought you should know.
(0) comments
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Beyond territorial and political occupation
Isn't it a beautiful day when I read Pat Buchanan's column from World Net Daily and think to myself, "This man has a point!"? (This occurs more often than one might think, but I needn't remind you that an individual's political stance lies not within the linear left-right spectrum but within a multi-dimensional schema of social, economic, personal, etc. beliefs.)
This time around, I was intrigued by Mr. Buchanan's critique of America's assumed supremacy as a Moral Super Power. He discusses the fallacy of declaring our occupation of Iraq and our War Against Terrorism as an opportunity to spread women's rights to the Muslim world, questioning the real value of the characteristics generally associated with so-called women's liberation. Though I don't agree that pornography, contraception for teens, abortion, or the ban on the Bible in classrooms represents moral failure on the behalf of Americans, I share Pat's sentiment that Americans feel they have an obligation to save the Muslim population from their backwards values, and that occasionally the new imposed values are skewed, if not backwards themselves.
I'm not a moral relativist. I will never say that subjugation of women is acceptable because "that's just what their culture says is acceptable." You'll never catch me donning a burkha in a display of solidarity with American Muslim women. In short, I do not feel compelled to respect the Islamic world's treatment of women in some misguided deference to multiculturalism and ethnic sensitivity.
Similarly, I do not feel compelled to respect the Western world's treatment of women, which, though obviously not nearly as overtly oppressive as Islam, poses its own cultural and legislative restrictions on the female half the population. The thesis of Pat's column, with which I agree, is that America should be more critical its own values before exporting them to Iraq or declaring a moral war against the Islamic faith.
We in this nation do not have gender (or ethnic, or class, or age) equality, nor have we ever, despite the fact that we pretend otherwise. Women's liberation has been commodified into the "right" to be a sexual object; the "right" to choose between raising children at home or raising children while working and being declared a bad mom; the "right" choose from among dozens of toilet bowl cleaners to keep our houses tidy and our husbands happy.
Our tempered brand of neo-imperialism exports both politics and lifestyles. In addition to assigning our half-assed ideals of gender equality across the globe, we send along environmental policy and irresponsible consumerism. Suddenly a nation will realize that eating meat every day is a necessity, that the best kitchen mops are the disposable kind, and that wasting water is an inevitable byproduct of progress.
If in fact our moral vendetta against Muslims in Iraq comes to fruition, we can look forward to the satisfaction of having one more representative democracy on the map and 26 million more people with the new-found freedom to choose between Cingular and Verizon.
(0) comments
My manpal is looking into getting a Russian Tortoise for a pet. They're low-maintanance, inexpensive to feed, and aren't very good at high-speed escapes. Plus, they live 50-125 years. How rad would it be to very literally have a friend for life, and your kids' lives, and potentially your grandkids' lives.
I was thinking of getting a fire belly newt. They live about 10-15 years if properly handled.
Just thought you should know.
(0) comments
Beyond territorial and political occupation
Isn't it a beautiful day when I read Pat Buchanan's column from World Net Daily and think to myself, "This man has a point!"? (This occurs more often than one might think, but I needn't remind you that an individual's political stance lies not within the linear left-right spectrum but within a multi-dimensional schema of social, economic, personal, etc. beliefs.)
This time around, I was intrigued by Mr. Buchanan's critique of America's assumed supremacy as a Moral Super Power. He discusses the fallacy of declaring our occupation of Iraq and our War Against Terrorism as an opportunity to spread women's rights to the Muslim world, questioning the real value of the characteristics generally associated with so-called women's liberation. Though I don't agree that pornography, contraception for teens, abortion, or the ban on the Bible in classrooms represents moral failure on the behalf of Americans, I share Pat's sentiment that Americans feel they have an obligation to save the Muslim population from their backwards values, and that occasionally the new imposed values are skewed, if not backwards themselves.
I'm not a moral relativist. I will never say that subjugation of women is acceptable because "that's just what their culture says is acceptable." You'll never catch me donning a burkha in a display of solidarity with American Muslim women. In short, I do not feel compelled to respect the Islamic world's treatment of women in some misguided deference to multiculturalism and ethnic sensitivity.
Similarly, I do not feel compelled to respect the Western world's treatment of women, which, though obviously not nearly as overtly oppressive as Islam, poses its own cultural and legislative restrictions on the female half the population. The thesis of Pat's column, with which I agree, is that America should be more critical its own values before exporting them to Iraq or declaring a moral war against the Islamic faith.
We in this nation do not have gender (or ethnic, or class, or age) equality, nor have we ever, despite the fact that we pretend otherwise. Women's liberation has been commodified into the "right" to be a sexual object; the "right" to choose between raising children at home or raising children while working and being declared a bad mom; the "right" choose from among dozens of toilet bowl cleaners to keep our houses tidy and our husbands happy.
Our tempered brand of neo-imperialism exports both politics and lifestyles. In addition to assigning our half-assed ideals of gender equality across the globe, we send along environmental policy and irresponsible consumerism. Suddenly a nation will realize that eating meat every day is a necessity, that the best kitchen mops are the disposable kind, and that wasting water is an inevitable byproduct of progress.
If in fact our moral vendetta against Muslims in Iraq comes to fruition, we can look forward to the satisfaction of having one more representative democracy on the map and 26 million more people with the new-found freedom to choose between Cingular and Verizon.
(0) comments