I’m nearing the end of my time here at UC Davis, and I realized this weekend while playing sloshball in Slide Hill Park that no one ever told me what to expect of this humble township when I first began this four five year adventure. Sure, the General Catalog has the obligatory pictures of artificially diverse groups of students sitting around with Frisbees and guitars pretending to laugh at someone’s shitty joke, but no one ever gave me any rules to live by, any advice to follow. So I took a page out of George W. Bush’s playbook; I talked to God. It was a good conversation, and it went a little something like this:
And the prophet went up to the Mace Drive I-80 overpass, which was embroiled in fire and smoke, lightning and dark clouds, for it was there that the Lord of Tha D was. The Lord of Tha D spoke to the prophet, he said, “Go down and warn the people not to mob me like they did at the inauguration, for that would be an abomination before me, and would totally be idol making.“
The prophet replied, “The people cannot come up the overpass, because they are super-weak bikers who sit in their rooms taking pictures of themselves to put on Facebook.“
“Jesus H. Christ,” said the Lord of Tha D, “that’s pathetic. They have obviously not learned the way of Tha D. Go, prophet, and tell them what it is that they must hear.“ And so the prophet went down to the people and told them:
I. Thou shalt go to the Rec Pool. Drunk. You will bring a water bottle or BigGulp filled with the spirit or brew of your choice. You will forget to put on sunscreen and, being drunk, not notice that you have turned redder than your Asian friends do when they have a beer until it’s too late. The Rec Pool is not called the meat market for nothing. Therefore, you will wear sunglasses so that you can stare at boobs and asses, pecs and abs without appearing sexually deviant. Girls, you will wear those sunglasses that give you the look of vapid, soulless insects; because insects, with their tiny, tiny brains, are worth emulating. Guys, you will wear aviators, because Tom Cruise is not gay.
II. Thou shalt intend to go to sporting events but always find an excuse not to. After the first home football game, you will become lame. If Davis is playing Cal Poly, you will have to study. If Davis has a match against Berkeley, you will have to study. If Davis is racing Stanford, you will have to study. In truth, you will not have to study, but in fact would rather watch “Dancing with the Stars“ or play WoW. You will wish great bodily harm on the Aggie Pack guy for loudly interrupting your peaceful Coho dining experience and set your spam filter to block Aggie Pack e-mails.
III. Thou shalt go to the DC. At first you will “get ready“ to go to the DC, but by April you will look like Amy Winehouse minus crack. You will drop and break plates, bowls, cups and mugs, sending their contents flying across the floor. When this happens to you, you will feel embarrassed and small. When this happens to someone else, you will clap loudly and boisterously, laughing at their misfortune. You will also steal fruit, cereal, pizza, condiments, whole loaves of bread and enough plates, utensils and cups to stock your kitchen for the rest of you life. You will do this mostly during winter, because you will be able to wear sweats and large jackets. You will also go to late night and get fat. It is then that you will require the fourth commandment.
IV. Thou shalt go to the ARC. You will go to the ARC to work it, not to work out. You will color coordinate your clothing, of which you will wear as little as possible. Girls, you will for some reason use a treadmill and later go to a tanning salon. You will ignore the fact that you could have run outside and gotten a tan while simultaneously becoming not fat. Guys, you will wonder how that dude in the wheelchair got so buff. To get as buff as him, you will eat 200 grams of protein a day and eventually resort to steroids. You will at some point punch off the side mirror of your Civic in a fit of ‘roid-rage, then quit using and let your testicles grow back.
V. Thou shalt go to Houseboats. Once. You will bathe in hard liquor and be showered in beer foam. You will defecate and copulate openly with complete strangers. You will wander Slaughterhouse Island aimlessly for hours, wearing a single sandal and your bathing suit, clutching a red cup and busted flashlight, until you are taken in by a random boat for the night. You will wake up with cuts and bruises for which there is no discernable cause, and you will pour Captain Morgan over those cuts to sanitize them.
On your way back to Davis you will go to Denny’s and order a Lumberjack Slam with a Coke; it will be your most wholesome, nutritious meal in five days. You will fail all of your assignments the next week, and feel sick, discombobulated and unable to bike as the world around you rocks to and fro for many days after you last licked tequila off Sigma Chi’s beer pong table. It will be the most foul, most unclean, most regrettable experience of your life; and you will love it. Once.
VI. Thou shalt get into a bike crash. You will do this in a bike circle, on one of the many olive oil slicks that form under olive trees, because a squirrel ran into your spokes or because an Asian girl was biking on the wrong side of the path. You will crash violently and without a helmet, and your only solace will be the fact that the other person got equally fucked up. If they didn’t, you will have no solace, and you will instead set up lawn chairs next to busy intersections during the first week of fall quarter to watch freshmen repeat your folly.
VII. Thou shalt worship Picnic Day. You will eventually graduate and become one of the proud group of Aggie alumni who believe Picnic Day is the best thing to ever happen to Davis. Yet while you are here you will not remember a single one. Instead, you will know only that at some point you lost $50 to your friends betting on the wrong wiener dog. You will also at some point go to Santa Barbara or Chico, and realize that their Thursday nights have at least three orders of magnitude more debauchery than Picnic Day.
VIII. Thou shalt take awesome classes. You will enroll in Human Sexuality (HDE 012), Intro to Beer and Brewing (FST 003), Drugs and Society (PHE 040) and The History of Rock Music (MUS 106). In 40 years, your grandchildren will ask, “What did you study in college?” To which you will reply, “Sex, drugs and rock ‘n‘ roll.“ You will also enroll in any and all freshman seminars which kick ass.
IX. Thou shalt get a parking ticket. You will be in a rush and unable to find parking, and you will think yourself clever for parking on the street and returning to wipe the chalk off of your tire every two hours. You will return to your car and be greatly angered to find not only a parking ticket under your windshield wiper, but a ticket for attempting to evade a parking ticket. You will also be tempted to reuse a daily permit or alter your quarter long TAPS permit. This is folly, for you will be even more greatly angered to discover that the latter carries a fine of over $200 and a referral to SJA. And SJA ain’t nothin‘ to fuck with.
X. Thou shalt not buy textbooks. In fact, you will do very little reading, for professors are egotistical and will only test you on what is important to them. You will learn what is important to them by going to class, office hours and review sessions. To do homework sets, you will find “copies on reserve“ quite useful. If you break this commandment by purchasing a book, you will be unable to sell it back because a new edition will have been published. You will curse loudly at McGraw-Hill, who will have profited mightily by exploiting your unfounded fear of failure.
This is the word of the Lord of Tha D. Honor it and keep it holy. Amen.
K.C. CODY has followed most of these commandments, but this list is in no way complete. Let him know what you think he’s missed at kccody@ucdavis.edu.
