Opinion

When you’re walking along the north side of the Quad and a smiling stranger invites you to sign up to save the turtles, if you even bother to sign your name, you don’t usually think to also offer up a list of your family members, the location of your hometown and a select variety of pictures spanning across the majority of your youth.

Recent events in the Silicon Valley – like the shooting that occurred in my hometown and the passing of my high school’s most famous alumnus, innovator Steve Jobs – had me so worried that I went home for the weekend.

When you read the title of my column, I want you to read it how Tower of Power sings it. Did you do it? If you need a minute to Google the song, then take a moment. I had to look it up myself to find out who wrote it, if we’re being perfectly honest.? Now that I have vividly described how “What is hip?” should sound inside your head, we can continue with my column.

Sometimes when I’m bored, I practice my signature. It’s exciting to scribble my name as though someone who cares is asking me to. I get to imagine that I’m famous, like an actor who has “sex appeal,” as I scrawl my name at the imagined request of an adoring fan. “My signature, for you? But of course! Would you also like to touch my muscles?”

Movies and vaginas, they go together like bread and butter. Megan Fox, Angelina Jolie and Cameron Diaz are just a few of the lovely ladies that grace movie screens across the world. But they have something else in common. They all failed.

I never feel more American than when I’m drinking water.

If there is a place where any comment can and will be construed as having the most offensive meaning possible given its limited length and wording, that place is every comment forum on the internet.

“My girlfriend got cancer at 22. She spent everything she had and worked two jobs, 80 to 90 hours a week to pay for chemotherapy. She kept working even during treatment. We still live paycheck to paycheck one year later. I am the 99 percent.”

Mayor Joe Krovoza and The Aggie (see editorial 9/29/11) are urging students to support The Davis-Woodland Water project estimated cost $325 million, plus $89 million for water rights. I urge students not to support the present project and to sign a petition that would put this proposal to a vote of the whole Davis electorate next year.

A new Starbucks coffee location is set to open this week in the North Silo, furthering the corporation’s grip on our impressionable eating habits. This is the second Starbucks on campus, both of which are run by the also national Sodexo, Inc., a self described “world leader” in food service.

The walk along the north side of the Quad can be like a game of dodgeball as you avoid various people asking you to sign this petition or register for that service. Everyone has their own way to skirt past these pesky individuals, but here are some tips we think can be foolproof tactics.

If today you find yourself innocently lingering on your beloved’s Facebook page, tomorrow you might just be sitting on the ledge of his or her third-story window, hidden by the darkness of twilight. However, it’s important that you learn to display the right amount of infatuation. The rest should be locked in an impermeable safe and buried in a sandy wasteland.