From the River to the UC

It’ s old news, but people are now gearing up to override the veto.

To recap, a bill passed the ASUC Senate urging divestment from companies that allegedly supplied Israel with the materials to bomb Gaza, and was vetoed by ASUC President Will Smelko during the spring recess.

Here is the article about the passage of the bill.

Here is the article about its veto.

Here is a toxic and hysterical editorial celebrating the veto. Here is a less toxic, though even more hysterical editorial condemning the veto.

Here is a new article with more updates.

My thoughts:

I am not terribly excited about my student government grand-standing over foreign policy issues, particularly when they can’t seem to manage their affairs at home. But…

Here’s a quote from the pro-veto editorial:

The measure attacks Israel, an open democratic society that has long been a close American ally. Its government is elected and subject to the rule of law. Its judiciary is independent; its military is under civilian authority; and its press is free.

On the other hand, the measures favor Hamas, an extreme Islamic group that expelled the opposing Fatah party in Gaza by force after winning a 2006 Palestinian election. (Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.) The rulers of Gaza offer no protection under law, no independent judiciary and no free press.

They permit no opposition. Rather than building a civil society, they launched a rocket war against innocent Israeli civilians from behind schools, hospitals, mosques and government agencies, using their own residents as human shields. Yet, the bill holds them blameless for the Palestinian plight. That the supporters of this action singled out Israel for rebuke while ignoring the fanatical regime in Gaza suggests that their agenda is political not ethical.

And here is a graph!

Weeaboo Wednesday: the Haruhi Dance!!!

I know it’s been literally an entire semester since I’ve posted a Weeaboo Wednesday, but look, I actually don’t know that much about Japan. I guess I could have kept reviewing weird hentai that I “accidentally” came upon, but I am pretty tired of getting hits from search terms like “world of warcraft tentacle” and “kkids fucking”.

In any case, I HAVE SOMETHING TO SHARE WITH YOU, SOMETHING ABOUT ANIMES!!

Weekend Video Jamboree – 10/24/09 – REEEEEmix

hay guys so david hasn been doing this feature much lately actually i havn been blogging much either but you know i kind of just got busy with things like

anyways  WHO WENT TO TREASURE ISLAND LAST WEEK EEEEEEEEH?? it was pretty bombass wasn’t it?! i think i liked mstrkrft the best. i was kind of disappointed in girl talk, but they are more gimmicky than anything! so let’s look/listen to gimmicky music videos!

incidentally, all of these are best seen through the site yooouuutuuube.com (three o’s, three u’s, and three u’s again).

Girl Talk – Feed the Animals

I’ve linked this before, but it’s so much better with a huge fucking embedded video, ISN’T IT?! For some reason it is hard to find the full set of Feed the Animals videos, but THE INTERWEB CANNOT FOOL THE ELITE SQLOG CORPS. Here is the full set, taken from several different sets of uploads– hopefully the intranet po-po won’t get up on this shit. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

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Alice

Fagottron has a number of awesome videos, but this is my favorite. Especially when viewed through yooouuutuuube.com.

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A Haaaaaandbaaag?! (Remix)

I love “The Importance of Being Ernest“, I love The Importance of Being Ernest, and I love A Handbag ?! Ergo, I love A Handbag feat. Edit Evans:

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Grey Video

If you don’t know The Grey Album, I just feel sorry for you. The Grey Video is fun despite (because?) it being so lo-fi and downright silly.

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We Will Rock and Roll Beverly Hills

Ehhhh fuck Weezer.

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People who go to Weezer concerts clearly want to have MGMT & Lady Gaga played at them

Yeah, seriously, fuck Weezer.

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WANT MORE MASH-UP GOODNESS?! Well, fortunately for you, TONIGHT is Bootie, a bimonthly mash-up themed party in SF. 21+, fortunately/unfortunately (18+ parties tend to be pretty annoying, IMO). Have a great weekend!

The Internet-in-Brief, 10/21/09: Multimedia Edition

Oh man, if only we had some kind of a feature where we posted nothing but internet videos!

Here is the current state of political affairs, told in hilariously bad youtubes:

International Affairs

Religious edition.

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Our Relationship With the Media

David Vitter! Remember David Vitter? What a moral compass.

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Healthcare, Pt. 1

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Healthcare, Pt. 2

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Fiscal Responsibility

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Campaign Strategy

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Post-campaign blues

The Internet-in-Brief, 10/20/09

• What’s driving up college tuition? According to the Atlantic, the Atlantic has nothing but baseless speculation to offer.

• What with the 6.5% average increase in the cost of public education, at least we have our libraries back.

• WE HAVE YOU BY THE BALLS, REPUBLICANS! (and libertarians). “Presidential election outcome changed voters’ testosterone.”

• The Washington Post is dead: “The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.”

• The Clog is creeped out by the cyborg beetles project. Me, the Clog, and Professor Brian Harvey*? Dear boyfriend, the research project you’ve been assigned to is a priori creepy.

*”That’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard of.” – Brian Harvey, from a totally legit source, bro!

Hey, and if any of you non-porn-surfing readers still care about Iran (or ever cared), the Iranian Student Alliance in America (what a mouthful) is holding a rally at 12 on Thursday, on Sproul Plaza (of course). Other happenings that day:

2-3:30 – Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, 5th floor – Panel Discussion with Dr. Arash Naraghi and Omid Memarian

6:30-9 – Chevron Auditorium, I-House – Documentary screening (subject matter: the June election), Theatrical Performance, Panel Discussion with Dr. Nayereh Tohidi, Reese Erlich, and Alireza Eshraghi

9-10 – Sproul Plaza – Social Justice Week Candlelight Vigil

These are some really interesting people they’ve snagged for the event, so if you were glued to your screen during the Week that Twitter Did Something Useful (… like I was…), you might want to check this out. That said, if you were glued to your screen during the Week that Twitter Did Something Useful, like I was, you are probably also a pale, fragile shut-in who can’t stand being around so many yelly people.

Haha just kidding I am totally awesome and cool I AM NOTHING LIKE THAT

The Internet-in-Brief, 10/18/09

• Groundbreaking FRONT PAGE journalism from the Daily Cal! Also, groundbreaking, incisive blogging from the Sqlog over a week later!

• America definitely not founded by secularist humanists, but by Judeo-christian* artists with poor Flash skills. (* And by Judeo-christian, we all know I mean Judeo-christian.)

• Furloughs: that hot mess everyone was protesting about? Not saving us very much money.

“If the goal of the furlough program is savings to the general fund, I think our conclusion is quite clear that this program is poorly designed,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UC Berkeley, which conducted the study.

“Also, I just got a better offer over at Tulane. See ya!” Jacobs added. He swiftly turned on his heel, hoping to make a quick getaway, only to find that the exit to the University was now crowded with a veritable legion of quality academics, all of whom had received more appealing job offers at private universities.

The line was moving quite slowly, and he was beginning to tire of the smell of tweed and Camembert. A younger professor, his youthful eyes yet retaining a spark of eagerness, turned to Jacobs. “I think I will miss this place.”

“Eh,” said Jacobs.

• The dregs of our own culture capture our hearts and minds!

The episode that transfixed the nation last week — a spaceship-like balloon floating through the Colorado skies with a 6-year-old boy named Falcon believed to be inside — was declared “a hoax” by the Larimer County sheriff’s office on Sunday.

“It has been determined that this is a hoax, that it was a publicity stunt,” the Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden said at a news conference in Fort Collins, Colo., one day after re-interviewing members of the now-famous Heene family about the case. “We have evidence to indicate it was a publicity stunt done with the hope of marketing themselves to a reality television show sometime in the future.”

[...]

Richard Heene and his wife have been enmeshed for years in the culture of reality television and self-promotional Web postings. The family appeared twice on the ABC show “Wife Swap,” including as recently as last March. Mr. Heene wanted his own show about his family, and he had worked with at least one production company on a proposal. On Friday the cable channel TLC said it had turned down the proposal months ago. He has posted YouTube videos claiming to show proof of life on Mars, asking whether Hillary Rodham Clinton is a “reptilian.”

• I am back to blogging! This is only because I now have no hope in going to law school!

Metaphors

My Swine Flu Post

Not even in the World of Warcraft was I allowed to exist free of swine flu...

Between the headache, fatigue, sneezing, coughing, fever, chills, and the “my head feels like it is drowning in water and snot and now my nose is bleeding from getting blown too frequently,” otherwise known as “severe congestion,” as well as the kindly and informative letter sent out by the University of California at Berkeley, it is quite probable that I have been suffering from swine flu for the past week or so.

I say quite probable because I was actually never diagnosed with swine flu. The University, in all its brokeass-public-institution wisdom, decided to adopt the policy of telling all its sick students that they probably have swine flu and that they should stay the hell away– a policy miles away from the elaborate quarantines set up at all those other universities that have “empty buildings just lying around” and “money”.

After being strongly advised “not to come to the Tang Center” and to try to “cough into [my] sleeve”, I buckled down to the traditional Korean sickbed regimen of rice gruel and barley tea (literally, water with barley boiled in it). And, an occasional Vitamin C drop.

Exactly 7 days later, I’m happy to report that I am mostly recovered from my jaunt into Dateline NBC interview gold, and that swine flu is not all that bad, provided that you don’t respond to early symptoms by going out drinking for the fifth night in a row.

Also, being mercilessly taunted by your boyfriend for contracting one of the most undignified sicknesses ever named by man apparently comes with the territory. Fortunately, he was very easy to give swine flu to, so I guess I win in the end.

First General Meeting

If you’re interested in working with the Squelch, we meet every Wednesday from 7-8 pm in 79 Dwinelle.

We are in dire need of:

• writers
• designers
• artists
• photographers
• businesspeople
• hanger-ons
• potential bloggers?!??!!!!

And yes, tomorrow is Wednesday.

Also, if you are at all proficient in InDesign, please please please think about working with us. Seriously.

In other news, we will be out on Sproul from 11-3ish all week long. If you should, for some (inexcusable!) reason, manage to miss us, we will later post a list of locations where you can grab a copy.

Hope to see you Wednesday.

Religious pamphlet hander-outer is “a psychotic sex addict who was housing children in tents in his backyard”

Since (as we all know) America is Jesus’s favorite country , like any other red-blooded American, I too find it galling whenever another country manages to beat us at something. It’s mostly been China pummeling us with their massive consumer base and accelerating industrial strength, but lately, even shamefully small players, like Austria, will manage to top us. For instance, in the heinous sex crimes area. Fortunately, we Americans are making a comeback!

…on Friday, Mr. Garrido, 58, and his wife, Nancy, 54, were arraigned on more than two dozen counts of kidnapping, rape, false imprisonment and other charges in connection with Ms. Dugard’s abduction in 1991 as she walked to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. She was 11.

Ms. Dugard and her two daughters — both fathered by Mr. Garrido, the police said, when Ms. Dugard was a teenager — had been living in a squalid compound hidden behind Mr. Garrido’s plain single-story house.

[...]

According to the authorities, Ms. Dugard, 29, and her children, 11 and 15, lived in a dirt-floor compound about the size of a tennis court and consisting of several ragged tents, hand-built sheds and small efforts at creature comforts: a set of wind chimes, for example, and a dingy couch.

Mr. Probyn said Ms. Dugard had told her mother that she sometimes was forced to live in a box, and the police said that at least one of the sheds was soundproof. As investigators prowled the compound this week, a wire cage could be seen next to a tent.

Apparently the police missed several opportunities to investigate Garrido’s backyard, even after a 911 call that said that “Mr. Garrido was a psychotic sex addict who was housing children in tents in his backyard.” Damn those crank callers!!!

So how was it that they finally figured out that Garrido was, indeed, a psychotic sex addict housing children in tents in his backyard?

His arrest on Wednesday came after he attracted attention from the campus police at the University of California, Berkeley, two days before, when he wanted to hand out religious pamphlets. A university spokesman, Dan Mogulof, said Mr. Garrido had been accompanied by two children, who caught the eye of campus personnel because they were “almost robotic.”

I’m sure you have, at one point or another been aggressively approached by gaunt looking middle-aged men yelling about homos or some shit. Well. One of them was a psychotic sex addict housing children in tents in his backyard.

Holy shit.

Also, good job UCPD! For the first time in your long history of yelling at people on bikes, shining flashlights into trees, and harassing certain well-known student publications on Sproul, you’ve done something worth doing!

Yay!