Opinion

Several years ago, at the tender age of 16, I lost my ability to spell. Now you may ask how it might have been that I lost that ability, but I think the more important question to ask is how I gained it back. I will do you the favor of answering both.

It’s too bad that I have to wait until Tuesday to file my comment on the Berkeley College Republican bake sale. Since my column last week, the story in its various permutations have sprinted their course through the media. A variety of news outlets ran the initial story, talking heads passed their judgment and by virtue of the story’s proximity to Davis, most folks here have probably decided where they land on the controversy.

I read the articles last spring on police spying on student demonstrations with alarm. Rather than risk having current students end up like me, here’s a tip and a tale:

I read the editorial on Sept. 22 titled “It’s going to be a bumpy ride” with great emotion. The California Aggie asked readers whom we should blame for the rising cost of our education. Fortunately, I know who is to blame for the rising tuition rates, at least this year.

Within two months of learning that Netflix would be splitting its DVD mailing – now known as Qwikster – and streaming capabilities into two services, priced at $7.99 each or $15.98 for both, nearly one million Netflix customers cancelled their subscriptions.

As I mentioned last week, I’m a tall girl. I’m 5’11”, in case you never finished reading my column like my friend Ben. In fact, my chem honors teacher in high school wrote, “You’re hella tall and you can totally ball” in my yearbook — apparently, I didn’t make much of an impression in learning any chemistry (that should explain me being a poli sci major). There are definitely perks to being so high above the ground (I can reach the top shelf!) but as tall girls everywhere know, it’s not easy being tall.

There are hierarchies here that go completely unobserved to the untrained eye. After three years of people watching, I have developed a keen sense of what lifestyle someone leads just by looking at them.

If you own a python that is getting a little too big, don’t forget you can always let it go. Releasing large snakes is the newest alternative to putting them up for adoption, selling them, or turning them into boots, hat straps or belts.

We live among you. We take your money. We’re so good at it you hardly even notice. We sit next to you in class, bike by you on the street and probably even live in your house. We are cashiers and you should be nice to us.

This is the story of an American in Paris.

Spend 24 hours with me and among the details you’ll take away from what was certainly the best day of your life is that every drink I take is accompanied by a toast to Amy Winehouse, I have a cow-shaped tin full of popsicle stick jokes and I suffer from a crippling dependence on social networking – in particular, Tumblr.

On Tuesday, a six-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) belonging to NASA returned to earth. The Associated Press reported that chunks of the bus-sized object broke apart and landed over a 500-mile span in the southern Pacific Ocean, far away from land, despite NASA predictions that the UARS would land somewhere near western Canada.