Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Hey

Why don't we just turn on Blogger comments? All I have to do is flip a switch in the settings.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 3:56 PM
(0) comments

I have an idea.

How about you start spelling my name correctly, Tommaso? Other than that, I have no idea what's up with the comments. They just disappeared. The Etenation code is still in the template. I've given you (Tom) access to the template, so maybe you can use your handsome Sicilian skillz to fix it. Thanks, homeslice.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:21 PM
(0) comments

Monday, May 30, 2005

What the heck is with the lack of comments?

Rebecca, any ideas?

Also, happy graduation.

(corrected for bad spelling skills)

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 6:22 PM
(0) comments

Friday, May 27, 2005

Oh yeah, so I'm a college graduate now.

As of today, I have been a college graduate for a week. Needing to pack/move all of my belongings into a shoebox-sized room in Oakland by Monday has kept me mentally preoccupied since then, and the first five weekdays of my new life were anticlimactically spent working in an office from nine to five, so I haven't had time yet to fully comprehend the fact that the thick chapter of undergradom has hastily come to a close. If I chose to actively reflect on this life transition in anything other than a jocular format, I'd probably start crying.

There are innumerable experiences I had at Cal that I would like to describe and people I met here that I would like to acknowledge in greater detail later, but for now rather than focus on the past I'll clue y'all into my future. Luckilly for me, my future is only a vague sketch, like something you'd scramble to draw on a restaurant napkin after a moment of genius during lunch alone at Denny's. My future may also be as lonely as eating lunch alone at Denny's. Like I said, rough sketch. I'm not really sure.

I'm going to continue my employment the National Writing Project, earning a comfortable wage for doing comfortable work, for at least another year. The prospect of nine-to-fiving it in a drab cubicle for twelve months is enough to make me want to buy a car and take the world's longest road trip and possibly never come back. So to stave off any office-induced depression this summer, I plan on writing (for the Daily Cal, for this website, and for my personal edification) several times a week, rediscovering my skills as a photographer, picking up paintbrush and canvas as often as I can, going on a lot of long walks, and reading a couple books. I also plan on buying a car and going on a few road trips of reasonable length.

I'm trying to accumulate experiences worth writing about at this stage of my life. As unoriginal and naive as it seems, I'd like to thrust myself into any adventure I can undertake without compromising my safety and my cushy office gig. There is a large part of America (more or less everything east of Denver) that I've never seen, and I'd like to use this year off from school to see some of it. If I want to be a writer when I grow up, I need to do two things first: (a) grow up, and (b) make mistakes. The two usually go hand in hand.

This isn't to say that going to college isn't worth writing about. A student's life in and around the Bay Area is no less interesting than any other person's life in any other location. But it's just interesting to me right now. Undoubtedly the novelty of novelty will wear thin very quickly, and when my VW Golf and I are stranded on the side of the 40 somewhere in Oklahoma I'll wonder what I ever found appealing about spontaneously hitting the road and discovering America. In the meantime, however, I'd like to toy with the dual life of office monkey and Alan Ginsburgian adventure whore. (I should probably read some Alan Ginsburg first, huh?)

After I've gotten all the post-graduation "finding myself" cliches out of the way, I'd like to get my PhD in ... uh, something. I'm not sure what yet. I'm mostly interested in American consumers' relationship to food, so I'd like to pursue research/publishing about food policy, environmental sustainability and agriculture, consumerism, food advertising, etc. And, with any luck, I'll save the world while I'm at it.

Wish me luck.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 12:28 PM
(1) comments

Best. E-mail. Ever.

Thank you, G.B., for this touching message, in response to my most recent Daily Cal column:

I lived in Oakland during part of my undergraduate years at Cal (1970-73). You sound
just like the rich white trash liberals I knew back then. Bored and filled with
self-loathing. After years of pimping off your parents should be prime bait for the
welfare culture. With one big exception. For you moving to Oakland it is a two way
street. You can move out at anytime. But when the going gets rough--and it will,
when one of your heroic "pimps" tries to put you on the block outside that liquor
store (which sounds like where you belong anyway)—you have the option to move out.
As a campus street cunt hustler you think you’re tough. Try teaching in the Oakland
public schools for a few years. Then we will see what you have to say. Right now you
are just a bored white chick looking for a few cheap thrills in the ghetto.

He's probably correct on most accounts (i.e., me being bored and white), but the claim that I'm rich, trashy, or pimping off my parents is amusing. (I especailly like the part where he calls me a cunt. Classy.) Nevermind the fact that I did live in the ghetto with my parents until I was eight years old, during which time we didn't have the option of moving out, and nevermind the fact that my own personal budget makes living in Oakland the only reasonable housing option for me right now.

E-mails like these are the reason I want to write for a living.

Now out of my way! I've got cheap thrills to seek!

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 9:24 AM
(0) comments

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Clarissa explains nothing. Fuck Clarissa. Bend Clarissa over a sink and fuck her.

That's my funny way of saying that the first season of "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" came out of DVD Tuesday. Color me now slightly less depressed about graduating college.

(Oh, by the way, I graduate on Friday. I'll post an official and tearful farewell to Cal over the weekend.)

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 12:17 AM
(0) comments

Monday, May 16, 2005

Yet Another New Version of the ASUC Tabulator (v3.6)

So I completed some minor fixes to the ASUC Tabulation program in response to some issues that were raised during the tabulation on Friday. Specifically, I fixed up one of the error messages (to actually name candidate numbers in the ballot file that do not correspond to any candidate) and added control keys for all the menu items. Also, I fixed up the readme file in html and added some notes on formatting. I sent word to the election council so the new version (v3.6) should show up on election.asuc.org soon.

**Update from Rebecca: The new version of the tabulator has been posted to election.asuc.org, along with some poorly-written instructions on how to use said tabulator. No thanks to Varoon. Grumble.**

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 7:49 PM
(0) comments

Friday, May 13, 2005

Who's taking bets?

Manny Buenrostro: 2.5:1
Justine Lazaro: 2.8:1
Rebecca C. Brown: 12:1
Zach Liberman: 15:1
Ronald Cruz: 20:1
Alfred Twu: 25:1

Manny celebrating victory by slightly changing his facial expression, maybe: 3:1
Rebecca taking her shirt off: 1.3:1
Angel Brewer crying: 5:1
Andy Ratto bugging the shit out of Rebecca: 1:1
Bret Manly telling Rebecca how awesome he is in bed: 3.4:1
Rebecca being repulsed by yet strangely attracted to Bret Manly: 87:1
Zach showing up dressed as the Hamburglar: 53:1

See you in the Senate Chambers at 5:00pm. Results will be posted as instantaneously as possible on election.asuc.org. Can I get a hold of that tabulation application, Tommaso?

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 4:03 PM
(0) comments

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Atlas Sucked

So I'm still batting around a Smart Ass article idea involving that dreaded menace: The Pseudotarians. That is, those people who call themselves libertarians when they really just mean they hate liberals and they want to reduce the powers of the liberal parts of the government. George Bush's desire to strip people of their citizenship and send them off to jail without judicial over site or habeas corpus barely registers their interest. Pseudotarians will tell you "I'm a libertarian, but oh no, I don't want to do away with the Federal reserve system or any crazy thing like that! I just prefer the free market and want government out of our personal lives". Jeese, that sounds a lot like liberalism to me. I mean, hell, if we didn't prefer free markets we'd call ourselves socialists, right? I don't know what compels people to become Pseudotarians. Maybe it's just a defense against the cognitive dissonance of being a non-rich non-religious Republican (I had no problem since, being a first generation American and a mainstream catholic I was pretty preordained to be a Democrat).

I'm so unfair! How dare I make such generalization about your deeply held belief system! Save it for the comments thread, bub.

Anyhow, this article presents problems since both Pseudotarians and actual libertarians are pretty much fools of the highest order. Libertarians for joining socialists and communists in making how we distribute goods a moral choice instead of a pragmatic one. Pseudotarians for not having the balls to admit that they want to protect us anti-trust legislation and environmental laws, not a police state.

The trouble with any article is coming up with a good name for it. Fortunately, I've already done a little work on that front because of a joking suggestion by Paul Bruno that we join forces on a anti-libertarian website. I said we better wait till we get a good name for it and I suggested "Atlas Sucked" and "Firefighters and public roads". Kevin Deenihan suggested "Randy".

I think I might go for "Invasion of the ideological name snatchers!".

update: it looks like comments are going haywire. Rebecca, could you take a look at it with your magical comments password?

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 6:25 PM
(0) comments

Saturday, May 07, 2005

It's coming along.

Sometime all you really wanna do is get lectured at.

Here are the two completed sections of my thesis, replete with pictures!

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:32 PM
(0) comments

Friday, May 06, 2005

Musing.

Is the phrase "Marxist hard-on for the value inherent in physical labor" legitimate academic writing?

It will be if I have my way.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:31 PM
(0) comments

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Thesis.

Thirty to forty pages of writing, seventy pages of editing, dozens of images to collect and edit, plus a little last-minute reasearch over the next five days. Oh yeah.

Consider me incapacitated until then.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:02 PM
(0) comments

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

I'm little more than a piece of meat.

But it's all for the little bald kids in Oakland, so it's okay.

Tonight, tonight, TONIGHT is the ASUC Summer Love Date Auction, and I'll be for sale, along with a dozen or so other cool kids on campus like student group leaders, ASUC types, Greeks (like frats and sororities, not like George Stephanopoulos - unfortunately), and even some athletes.

Be at the Bear's Lair at around 7:00pm, and bring wads of cash. If you're trying to buy me and you're getting out-bid by a handsome bespectacled man with a faux hawk and a witty t-shirt, don't be alarmed ... he's my backup.

For more information, and to see the other hot peeps on the block, visit asuc.org/auction.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 12:51 PM
(0) comments