jump to navigation

Life Should Not Include the Following June 30, 2007

Posted by Bobby in ESPN, Pacman Jones, college, football, life, news/views, social life, social scene, ways to make bobby sad.
add a comment

I’m extremely tired of the following ideas, concepts, places, and actions. Therefore, if I catch someone associating themselves with any of these blacklisted nouns, I will force them to sit in a closet and listen to my Björk albums continuously for three days.

Phrase: “It’s my life, I can do what I want!” (usually proceeded with some form of “hey, fuck you”)

Rationale: It’s also my life decision to make fun of you for being an idiot who makes stupid decisions and acts like a retard. Justifying your emo-ness or scenester attitudes and actions by claiming that you are capable of doing whatever you want with your life is ridiculous and lacks any form of logic or reasoning. Closely related to this is the concept of “don’t judge me!” (along with the people who say that you should like them because they never judge anyone). Hate to break it to you, but everyone subconsciously judges others whether they intend to or not. The people who suck at life are those who deny that they go through this process. Really, life will be a lot clearer if you just make up your mind on what’s acceptable and not acceptable to you, then try to associate yourself with people who fall in the “acceptable” range. Obviously your BFFs will fall out of the acceptable range every once in awhile, but that’s when you whip out your newfound power of judgement by letting them know what’s up. There’s a huge difference between judging a person and judging a person’s actions. I wish everyone would magically realize this.

Concept: Tokenism

This will be included in a future blog where I argue that 79% of the stuff they teach you in college is total bullshit (20% of the non-bullshit falls in the math and engineering departments. The remaining 1% occurs when the professor tells you the dates of the midterm and the final, though they manage to screw that up sometimes, too.). Tokenism is, in a nutshell, the idea that white people consciously allow a select number of individuals from ethnic minorities to succeed so that it doesn’t seem like they are racists, while at the same time they deliberately stop all other members of minority groups from achieving any success or progress. In my humble opinion, this is stretching it a bit. People just l-u-v to find crazy explanations for the parts of life that are difficult to understand. Guess it makes everyone feel better.

Place: Hookah Bars

I don’t know when and I don’t know how or why, but all of the sudden it seems like everyone wants to smoke hookah. When I was first introduced to hookah as a sophomore in high school, NOBODY had even heard of it, much less gone to shady bars to smoke it underage. For some reason kids just get sooo amazed by smoking from a waterpipe; guess it makes them feel badass or something. It was still pretty underground even during my junior year, but senior year it started to pick up. Two years later and it has suddenly exploded everywhere- I didn’t even notice it that much during my first year of college. But hey, eating bad food and getting syphilis of the mouth sounds like an awesome new weekend activity.

Person: Pacman Jones
Channel: ESPN

After one year away from constant TV viewing (I didn’t have one in my dorm room), ESPN has gone sour. I have no idea who Pacman Jones, Mr. Irrelevant, or Tank Johnson are. I haven’t followed up on their stories at all, because every time I hear “TONIGHT ON SPORTSCENTER, EAST COAST TEAMS AND HIGHLIGHT REELS. ALSO, PACMAN JONES,” I flip the channel to FSC or GolTv to watch some real sports. I actually like American Football a little bit and I follow it during the season. Pacman Jones played for Tennessee, but I don’t remember ever hearing his name mentioned. I’m pretty sure he’s just an average defensive player. I don’t understand why we need to constantly hear updates on him when he isn’t even that good of a player, and everyone seems to hate him anyway. Actually scratch the hatred argument, because we still follow Barry Bonds, though we’re all hoping he’ll suffer a career-ending injury before he further stains the hallowed record books.

I actually just remembered who Mr. Irrelevant is; he’s the last guy to get picked in the NFL draft. This makes me wonder why he was offered a contract. Maybe we’ll hear about it on SPORTSCENTER, AFTER WE GO TO OUR T.O. BUREAU IN DALLAS. Thank you, T.O. today was T.O. T.O. while in fantasy T.O. T.O. T.O. REGGIE BUSH MICHAEL VICK TOM BRADY BARRY BONDS DELGADO DEL-GOT-IT. WHOOP! YANKEES YANKEES BRON BRON WITH MORE ON NIKE’S SHOE ADVERTISEMENTS HERE’S SOME GUY FROM ABC NEWS. STEROIDS. HUMAN INTEREST STORY. TOP PLAYS: DUNK, DUNK, DUNK, some running back reaching a career mark with a 1-yard run. should not be a top play, Stu. VIDEO OF SOME KID MAKING A HALF COURT SHOT IN A HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL GAME- bonus points if the kid’s autistic, DUNK, DUNK, goal- either by Real Madrid or FC Barcelona or Sidney Crosby yay!, DUNK, someone making a retirement speech then subsequently finishing off their career with their worst game, and finally another DUNKKKKK! For something related to news turn to ESPNNEWS.

A Guide to Writing in English May 9, 2007

Posted by Bobby in anti-soliciting, college, posts that poke fun at the UC System, ways to make bobby sad.
add a comment

It is only fair to warn you that I care about the English language. I come from a grammatically conservative family. If as a child I had done something terrible or committed some serious crime, my family would have been distraught but they would have stuck by me. They would have hired a lawyer for me, come to my trial, visited me in juvenile. But if I split an infinitive or dangled a participle in public, I was not to come home. So please, humor me. Stop writing like crap.

And yes, there will indeed be several grammatical errors and violations of MLA format in this post. Get over it, it’s a blog.

I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for everyone to avoid jargon, be it social scientific, postmodern, or any other. “Lisible” is a lousy word, and “discourse” is not much better. “Site of contestation” is terrible writing. Language should be accessible to any interested lay person, especially one who needs to submit a peer review of your term paper to a TA. Nobody is impressed by a lot of big words that are hard to understand.

Whoever came up with the concept of Peer Review needs to be paraded naked through the streets of every city in Thailand for people to spit on, then coated with honey and staked down over an anthill. Peer reviews don’t help; they frustrate. Nobody likes reading other papers (especially ones containing words like “draconian” and “impactness”), and nobody ever makes the changes suggested by peers. If someone really really wants a revision, the paper is going to the TA.

Back to ranting and complaining: English is not, and never will be, a diacritical language. Slashes, dashes, and parentheses within words are abnormal. Examples: apple(s), and/or. English is an Anglo-Saxon language which has its origins in old Germanic barbarian tribes. What does this mean? It means that all pure English was originally intended to be SHOUTED. Whenever possible, use simple words with broad vowels and hard consonants. When that fails, succumb to the Latin rooted words.

One of the all-time greatest indignations of English is a fairly recent development. He or she, and she or he, is quietly being replaced by this: s/he. Tell me, how do you SHOUT “s/he”? “sssHEEH”?

Another example I see very often is this: “race,” class, and gender- also known as The Holy Trinity of left-wing social science. Apparently Sociologists enjoy putting “race” in quotes to make a statement inferring that race is merely a social construction which does not exist in scientific form. If that’s the case, they should put “class” in quotes too, since it’s a social construction. “Sociology” should be in quotes as well, not only because it’s a useless pseudo-science, but also because it too is a social construction. As a matter of fact, the comma should be in quotes. Stay true to your word.

As is probably evident from that last paragraph”,” I believe that several academic disciplines are currently trashing the press, which is a weird way of saying that they’re teaching people to write like shit. Sadly, Psychology is likely one of these disciplines, as is evident from the stuff you’re reading right now. Compare it to some of my earlier posts. This is garbage, stop reading it. It will only get worse from here. That aside, the Sciences and the Pseudo-Sciences (Sociology) will teach you to write blunt, jargon-filled masterpieces which utilize perfect execution of APA citation regulations.

Maybe I just offended someone by calling Sociology a pseudo-science. If so, I’m glad. If anyone is reading this (haHA) who also happens to be debating over what field of study to pursue in college, do not even consider Sociology- because it’s a joke. It should be renamed lolSociologyjk. Sociologists need to start using the C. Wright Mills questions to analyze the pointlessness of their own existence instead of obsessing over the status of impersonalized groups.

Well, that felt awesome. Until next time, keep it real. Be thoughtful, be clever, but don’t be cute.

lol almost forgot… this happened today:

Wednesday May 9th, 2007
Main Campus Path

(in an extremely annoying matter-of-fact tone) “Did YOU know that OUR university is producing NUCLEAR WEAPONS?!?”
(me) “Actually they aren’t; they’re contributing to the research and development of nuclear technology in general”
“That’s just what they want you to think. They’re lying.”
“How do you know?”
“Are you kidding me?!? It’s a well-known fact!”
“Actually… it’s not. There are about 500 people out of several million who suspect that nuclear weapons are being manufactured on this campus”
“I can’t believe how ignorant you’re being!”
“I can’t believe that you haven’t been able to find something better to do with your life”
“As a matter of fact, I find this highly important…”
“I know, hence I mock you”
“…and I will be participating in the tent city and hunger strike next week. The Regents don’t care about us!”
“So let me get this straight… you guys hate the University of California and the Regents now? Did you run out of organizations to protest or something?”
“You’re a Conservative, aren’t you?”
“Amongst a multitude of insane liberals. Yes.”
“HAHA OH MY GOD YOU MAKE ME LAUGH! I can’t believe you just ASSUMED that I’m a liberal! I’m not affiliated with any party and refuse to label myself as “left wing”, “liberal”, or any construct of the…”
“Alright alright I’ve heard enough. First of all, I haven’t called you anything yet. But right now I am going to. You’re one of those liberals who are so liberal that they refuse to call themselves liberals. Goodbye lefty.”
“You are so hopeless! Guess I won’t be seeing you at the rally today or the hunger strike next week.”
“NOPE. And I hope you all starve. Bye”

Just fyi- I am not making these up. Obviously I don’t remember the exact conversation word for word, but what you read is pretty darn close to what was actually said. I only recently started attempting to own the sidewalk solicitors, but I’m getting better at it every day and am starting to think it’s extremely fun and entertaining. I’m not afraid anymore! I will admit there have been a few times where they’ve been able to hold their ground, but those don’t need to go on my blog. Also, the only defense they usually have is quoting strange websites or statistics that they claim to have found on CNN.

How UCSB Has Helped me Cope with Solicitors May 7, 2007

Posted by Bobby in anti-soliciting, college, effective coping strategies, life, posts that poke fun at the UC System, ways to make bobby sad.
2 comments

Tuesday May 1, 2007
The Arbor

“Hey kid, have you heard about the student strike against war next week?!?”
“(me) mhmmmm…”
“Well, are you gonna go???!?”
“NOPE, I’m going to class, and after that I’m gonna go to work”
“Why?!? That’s business as usual!”
“I know”
“Well the strike is all about stopping business as usual! The war in Iraq is business as usual now and we’re doing this to start opening people’s eyes so that we can end the war right now! Justice will be ser…”
“Okay okay stop right there. Think about what you’re saying. Do you seriously think there are people out there who aren’t aware that there’s a war going on? I support the war and yeah, even I’m a little tired of it. Everyone’s tired of it. There hasn’t been a single significant war in human history that anyone’s breezed right through without setbacks. That doesn’t mean we should just end it immediately and lose everything we’ve accomplished so far. Plus, you’re protesting in effing Santa Barbara, the most liberal city not called San Francisco.  PLUS you’re protesting on a college campus….. what exactly is this whole thing accomplishing?”
“Why do you support the war?!?”
“Leave me alone. I’m gonna continue walking to Subway now.”

Wednesday May 2nd, 2007
The Arbor

“Hey have you pledge KALPUR?”
“Nope.” (I continue walking)
“WAIT, DON’T YOU WANNA HEAR WHAT IT IS?”
“Not really, I probably don’t care”
“It’s a fund to help protect the environment and…”
“Yeah I don’t care. See ya.”

Later….

“Separate the church and state”
“No thanks”
“Why not?”
“Why?”
“Well why not?”
“Do they pay you to stand out here and bug people who just want to quietly walk to lunch undisturbed”
“No I’m a volunteer”
“Good for you”

Thursday May 10th, 2007
The UCEN

“Hi there!”
“umm hi”
“How are you?”
“I’m alright, just walking to lunch”
“Thats cool. Have you pledged KALPUR”
“…. nope.”
“You want to?”
“Not at all. Leave me alone.”
“Do you want a sticker?”
“No. I hate stickers almost as much as the environment.”

While walking OUT from lunch
(different person)

“Hey!”
“What do you want”
“How has your day been”
“It’s been awesome, but you don’t care. What do you want?”
“Have you pledged KALPUR”
“Nope and I don’t want to. The next person who asks me is getting a shovel to the face.”
“But haven’t you heard of all the great things KALPUR does??”
“Actually people tell me that their IBARC accounts keep getting charged by KALPUR even after their pledge period is up. Once you’ve pledged, you’re stuck with it until you stop paying tuition.”
“Well yeah, that’s part of the contract..”
“So you can never change your mind. Lame. Stop asking me.”
“Well alright, but we do sooo much for the environment… HEY! what are you doing?!?”
“Littering. Have a nice day.”

Friday May 11th, 2007
The UCEN

“Hi there”
(ignores)

Later: “Hey, wanna join the Women’s Outreach pledge”
(ignores)

Later: “Have you pledged KALPUR”
“NOPE. DON’T CARE”
“Want a free sticker?”
(ignores)

Later: “Sign up here for your events calendar”
(ignores)
“Join the college democrats”
(ignores, but secretly wonders why that’s even a group)

Later: “Hey”
“ughhh WHAT DO YOU whoa shit hey Shelly, what’s up?”

The point of all this: If I want to join a group or pledge money, I’ll do it on my own. Universities should ban people from handing out pointless junk and promoting causes at the campus centers. Setting up tables where interested passer-bys can stop is totally fine, but having newbie members stand around the campus, running up and shoving stuff in the faces of innocent people passing by is annoying and rude, especially when said solicitors pretend to start honest conversations, only to throw their latest plea for money in your direction. All I want is to be able to walk to lunch without the same strange organizations asking me to join every single day. ANNOYING! STOP! LOL!

Why Calculus Makes Me Want to Shoot Myself February 20, 2007

Posted by Bobby in college, effective coping strategies, math & relationships, ways to make bobby sad.
add a comment