This summer, the Davis Borders Books, Music, Cafe closed after the company went bankrupt.

To some, this was a disappointment, as Davis lost one of its main and most popular bookstores. However, it is in reality a positive change for the city of Davis.

This closure has led to the increasing success of local, independent bookstores such as The Avid Reader and Logos Books, nonetheless not all are able to succeed without the support of local consumers. The Sweet Briar Bookstore is set to close Dec. 24 of this year. Davis, a college town full of educated individuals, should work to support these businesses. Instead of taking their money to Amazon.com or other big sellers bookstores, students should buy their books here in Davis.

By bringing business to these stores, students can help the Davis economy by supporting locals, who ultimately put their money back into the city of Davis. According to studies, 68 percent of money spent at local businesses gets circulated back to the community. Furthermore, if students support these stores, local job opportunities can be maintained.

Independent bookstores also provide a location for the community to come together and bond over literature. With the increase in popularity of digital readers and online retailers, book culture is becoming obsolete. In our college town, we should have places that encourage reading in the community.

As a college student struggling to keep up with tuition hikes and normal living costs, it is understandable to go for the better deal. However, the added cost is worth it. Buying from Amazon may seem like a better deal and easier process, but after paying for shipping and handling fees, the price of a book is comparable to the price of books at the local bookstores. And often times, a novel from the UC Davis Bookstore can cost the same or even more than at a local bookstore. A quick bike ride downtown allows you to get your book when you want it, and without the shipping fees.

So skip the $3 morning coffee and go buy your next book at a local Davis bookstore.

I feel like the web is constantly being inundated by pictures of naked celebrities. You’d think that someone who spends their life in the spotlight (especially hot on the trails of the likes of Paris Hilton and Kendra Wilkinson) would have realized by now that, as long you’re famous enough, there’s no such thing as a private part.

Alas, Scarlett Johansson is the most recent to find herself in this exact quandary, joining the naked ranks of Vanessa Hudgens, Pete Wentz, Chris Brown, Vanessa Hudgens again, Blake Lively and Anthony Weiner. However, unlike her peers, Johansson delivered a response recently that was as unapologetic and candid as the photoset itself: “They were sent to my husband. I know my best angles […] There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not like I was shooting a porno. Although there’s nothing wrong with that either.” ScarJo brings an excellent point to the table; after all, isn’t it her body that the rest of the world is suddenly looking at without her permission?

Before we go any further, I would like to take this chance to give my less savvy readers a brief preface on the fine art of sext messaging. (This paragraph is strictly technical so feel free to skip it if all you’re here for are the bad puns and pop culture references.) The premise is simple: snap a quick picture of your genitals and send it to a recipient of your choice. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a picture of your genitals. You could send a picture that reveals only part of your genitals, or comes very close to revealing your genitals — there’s still some wiggle room to keep things classy. Scarlett Johansson, for one, included a picture of her butt — this is somewhat unorthodox, but part of the experience is doing what feels sexy at the time, so Mazel Tov to Miss J and her curvaceous backside!

Let’s rein this back in to Scarlett Johansson: pardon the uncharacteristically plain delivery, but I found Miss Johansson’s reaction to the whole incident absolutely awesome. Rather than equivocating and apologizing to the public for her indiscretion as most other celebrities might, she pointed out that what she did is not something out of the ordinary or something to be ashamed of. People from all walks of life send pictures of their junk – famous or not – across a wire, assuming they have access to the proper technology. You might even say it’s an American right – the right to bare much more than just arms. God bless!

This isn’t to say that everyone should be able to get away with their sext escapades just because it’s what all the cool kids are doing. There are some instances in which people should just know when to keep it in their pants. For one purely hypothetical instance: if you’re a married politician, don’t film a sex tape or publicly message an image of your erection. This tenet should be simple enough to adhere to. People have sex every day in the absence of a camera; last I checked, a lens’ focus doesn’t enhance the various sensations of intercourse.

It might infringe upon your private rights, but it’s common knowledge that extensive publicity comes with the territory of celebrity status, meaning nearly constant visibility and scrutiny by the public eye. To put it simply, when you’re in the spotlight, don’t do something that you don’t want the world to see. It isn’t necessarily fair, but it’s common sense. At the same time, though, Scarlett doesn’t seem to be asking for sympathy. Scarlett’s victimization is the result of her own photography and a hacker’s tech wizardry, but it’s her lack of hangdog woe-is-me upset that seems to reflect the blame for the supposed scandal away from herself.

After all, none of this would be a newsworthy ordeal if we the people weren’t accessing Miss J’s private photographs via the internet or drawing attention to them through various news media (my bad). All of this would be long-since swept under the rug if she had been just another ordinary citizen. Anatomy itself isn’t a scandalous thing: nobody ever looked at Venus in the half shell and called her a slut.

DYLAN GALLAGHER, of cleverblog.tumblr.com fame, awaits your praise, commentary and naked photo submissions at dylaaaaan@gmail.com.

You know you’re old when your idea of a good sale is five cents off toilet paper, when the thought of new groceries makes you salivate more than all of Pavlov’s dogs put together, or when it’s four in the morning and your skin is encased with cold, needle-like icicles because you refuse to turn on the heater and pay extra for PG&E.

It was my birthday on Sunday and according to the cashier at Trader Joe’s, I look even older than I really am. After carefully examining my reflection beneath the blinding radiance of no less than eight light bulbs, for no less than eight minutes, I noticed something unusual…

The face gazing back at me looked frighteningly familiar. As evidenced by the matching bags beneath our eyes, the parentheses wrinkles enclosing our lips and the stress-induced grouchiness which often dominates our temperaments — the similarities between me and my mom were growing with every passing second.

I never wanted to adopt the habits of incessant foot-tapping, hair-wrenching, fingernail-biting and eyebrow-knotting; I had always hoped to happily bypass any collagen-destroying manifestations of old age and anxiety.

But there I was, on day 6,935, half-crazed with sleep-deprivation, pacing about while scribbling to-do lists, carrying more responsibilities than a see-saw has children or a bathroom scale has pounds, and doing all I could to manage my life as a (nearly) independent woman.

I feel old. I certainly still act like I’m eight when I have the free time to do so, but that time is becoming increasingly sparse. I am almost afraid to sit here typing at my computer, because if I get too consumed by work, I may inadvertently take that final step into adulthood — a dreamless land of cold efficiency and dull prudence.

So in the midst of my 19th birthday, I found myself entangled in the angry whirlwind of a mid-midlife crisis.

Then I received my presents: stickers, bubble-wrap, a cute mini tea set and Pokémon cards.

My friends and I ended up maniacally jumping on the bubble-wrap, playing hide-and-seek and games of worst-case-scenario, having staring contests and watching animated movies.

I think we succeeded in reversing the clock. It felt nice to temporarily forget college stress and have some good, anachronistic junior-high fun.

Of course, it’s impossible to permanently avoid the responsibilities that come with your false, misleading and unnecessary numerical age. Some days you’ll just have to sit down and get your work done before taking a break is even plausible.

Nonetheless, it is not the quantity of your breaks, but their quality that matters. So rather than spending your free time washing the couch with your drool as you stare mouth agape at a mundane television screen, why not rediscover your poor, neglected Lego sets that are gathering dust in forgotten corners?

Better yet, you can go to Target and spend a glorious hour browsing for toys. The games and contraptions for children nowadays are even more exciting than the ones available when we were kids!

The circumstances of your life — your duties, your residences, your relationships, your dreams — will rarely remain constant. But even though life may be hard to reign, you always have the power to retain your youth if you so please.

When the shock of older age hurls you off your feet and spins your thoughts into a terrifying tornado of Doom, make sure to stand your ground and clutch the nearest stuffed animal available for comfort.

So even if your excitement for free coupon books rivals that for presents on Christmas eve, even if you find yourself visiting Costco just to indulge in free samples and escape the sorry scorn of a refrigerator as empty as your starving stomach, you must not lose hope!

While college might attempt to impose upon you the effects of age at an alarming pace, for now you are certainly capable of shoving them aside. Good luck!

Make ZENITA feel important by telling her your secret eight-year-old pastimes at zensingh@ucdavis.edu.

There are few things in life quite as exciting as receiving a Facebook notification. It’s like the less eventful, minuscule version of opening gifts on Christmas morning.

But when your notification button is inundated with a barrage of invites and reminders for your high school reunion, you run away from Facebook like a fat kid runs away from a  treadmill (ironic?).

Don’t get me wrong, reunions sound like a superb idea. Sure, it’s been a few years and I’d love to see how my classmates have changed. Of course, a nice get-together to reminisce old times and catch up on our new lives would be fascinating!

But, underneath the beguiling surface lies the terrible truth of why reunions have come to be. Anyone who attends, or creates, these awful events (save those who have been induced by sheer force of will) only attend for one singular reason: to flaunt to everyone how much better they are now than they were before.

For the nerd, it could be that he will appear wearing contacts and embracing a hot girlfriend. For the jock, he will make a showing with an even hotter girlfriend. And for that shabby-looking girl we all used to avoid … well, she will be unrecognizable in her newly blossomed body.

But, those that have no new and improved physical attributes to showcase will make up for it with success stories. “Have you been to New York over the summer? It’s beautiful. Oh, by the way, I worked as an intern on Wall Street,” one might boast, or “Last year, I interned for Senator So-and-so, so I’m pretty much a big deal.”

If this is how we are after just three years of school, imagine what it would be like 15 years from now. I’m sure many of us will attend with the intention of showing off our wealth. Some guy might casually remark, “Getting a salt-water indoor pool installed on the second floor of my vintage chateau is so complicated!”

And your impending reaction? “I don’t care!” But, you won’t say that. So, you fake a smile and offer a phony and complacent response like, “How wonderful!” just to assure him that his personal life story is not at all boring and dulling away the very neurons of your brain.

The worst, though, will be when someone talks about how smart/athletic/talented their kids are. “My daughter can name the capital of every state,” or “My son can roller blade backward. You should see him do it, it’s hilarious!” But instead of laughing, all you want to do is roll your eyes to the back of your head and keep them there until they stop talking.

Following this exposé of interactions between classmates, we should keep in mind never to advertise reunions as a meaningful occasion for meeting old pals. Because let’s be frank, we are not, and never have been, pals with everyone from our class. The only people we really care for seeing are our real friends, whom we keep in touch with on a weekly if not daily basis anyway.

The most likely circumstance that would occur at one of these reunions is that you’ll huddle in a group with your close friends and comment on someone else’s weight or make fun of the way someone dresses.

This is not much different from what you already do (Facebook stalking sound familiar?), except now, this insensitive activity is done in a more public manner over cheese and wine. The occasional small talk with those outside your clique only happens when you stroll to the table to grab more hors d’oeuvres.

Personally, I was never a fan of the whole clique scene in high school, and reunions are just the adult version of that. We like to surround ourselves with only those we’re comfortable with and everyone else is a poor victim of our ridicule.

So, why do I fear reunions more than I fear the Apocalypse? Because I don’t want to tire my face muscles flashing fake smiles, nor is it in my interest to tell someone it’s good seeing them when deep down inside what I genuinely want to say is, “I hate your face.”

Send MICHELLE NGUYEN ideas for excuses not to attend her high school reunion at michellen1990@yahoo.com.