UC Davis hosts its 95th Picnic Day on Saturday. The annual open house is one of our school’s most time-honored traditions.

Showcasing a century’s worth of education, Picnic Day boasts demonstrations, exhibits and tours throughout the day. Of course it’s a lot of fun too, featuring the annual parade to kick off the festivities, the Doxie Derby, the Battle of the Bands and more.

Picnic Day is also one of the largest student-run events in the entire country. The event attracts 50,000 to 100,000 visitors. Planned by students, for students, Picnic Day is an official ASUCD unit, and many contributors start their work almost a year in advance. This Saturday, their efforts will pay off, and we can all enjoy the event’s unique collegiate atmosphere.

From engineering to fashion to animal science, there’s something from every department, and the entire university gets to show off its accomplishments.

Picnic Day is something that people young and old, current students and alumni, can all enjoy. This versatility is one of its best features and part of what makes it so timeless. You can go out to parties with your friends when you’re 20, and show your family the old alma mater when you’re 40.

No matter how you spend your Picnic Day, there’s something for everyone; it’s something UC Davis can be proud of, and we’re glad our campus is known for it.

Those who imbibe: Party responsibly and get a good night’s rest before the day. (You don’t want to miss the parade at 10:10 a.m.!) Also, don’t party too hard; there are some great events to check out.

Some days it seems like Davis is a sad little pool of incest. It‘s necessary to state this only figuratively. I‘m not hating on people who actually partake in incest because, hell, you never know who you‘re gonna offend. What I mean is that this joint is packing something like 60 percent Bettys and 40 percent Dudes. Which means the act of recycling has to come into play.

There is nothing new about the concept of recycling. We humans are resourceful beings; we make do with what we have. We‘re more likely to be romantically involved with those within closer geographic proximity. Even though the cost of gas is down, no one wants to drive somewhere to score some tail when they could just walk across the street.

However, this leads to the heightened likelihood that you will get stuck with the hand-me-downs of an acquaintance. Look at all the Aaron Spelling dramas. Those hot ass people all sleep with each other. It‘s kind of like musical chairs with sex. I‘m pretty sure Brandon Walsh ended up getting with almost every chick in the zip code.

There are two different ways to look at this. Your morals can shrivel disgustedly at the idea of getting stuck with someone‘s leftovers and ultimately discourage you from going for it, or you could ditch your morals like a televangelist and take the slightly more savage approach because you‘re a human being with needs. It‘s never right for us, really. If someone is too notorious a skank, it reduces their appeal, but if they‘re a downright prude you wonder why nobody wants them.

Let‘s exemplify. Birds broke out into choruses of “November Rain“ when you first laid eyes on Stone Fox. But your stupid friend got him first. And then your other friend went for a ride the next weekend. Crap. Months later, you find yourself watching a movie with Stone Fox. Alone. In a dark room. With nothing except your drunk neighbors and their new guitar outside to break the mood. Maybe some yowling cats. What to do, what to do?

Retaining dignity and scoring some lovin‘ are two actions that always seem to run in conflict to one another. If you succumb to those lustbunnies, you worry about him thinking you‘re just another Saturday night skeeze. And yet, he‘s so pretty … damn it.

As much as you may love your friends, knowing that they got there first may involuntarily cause you to throw up in your mouth a little bit. After all, not too many people know where they‘ve been and what they‘ve been picking up along the way better than you do.

However, if you ultimately figure that you can‘t fight the moonlight, you could always just ask in a half-assed attempt to not piss off your friend. It‘ll go something like this: You‘ll casually bring it up, she‘ll laugh it off and insist that she doesn‘t care because she‘s “so over that idiot“ even though she has a picture of him tucked into her pillowcase and stripped for him on webcam the night before. She may also warn you about a weird sexual habit of his in hopes that it will deter you–this will probably backfire. She‘ll inevitably find out via the gossip mill and proceed to hold a secret internal grudge against you for months.

If she ends up marrying Stone Fox, I don‘t know what to tell ya except that it happens all the time. I actually wonder how many weddings take place every year in which the bride and best man or the groom and the maid of honor have gotten their freak on.

Again, everything is a matter of perspective. If you‘re the one who‘s going for it, it‘s okay, but there is little so sleazy as the guy who puts the moves on members of the same social group. Chicks never shut up, it‘s true, and we tell each other everything. So you will eventually be found out, and once we get over being all butthurt about the fact that you didn‘t even have the decency to change your pickup line, we will come to find that there is much fun in entrapping a douchebag with his own lies.

MICHELLE RICK wishes everyone a wonderful picnic day with plenty o‘whiskey and a reason to get frisky. Send comments (sober and otherwise) to marick@ucdavis.edu.

America has become introspective. She is reexamining her mistakes and myopia, symbols of a deep crisis of identity. And the problem is this: Her values have, for a while now, been altered by heightened expectations and excess of modernity. America, here, desires to re-embrace her past and her classical values.

For America, these classical values are the strange confluence of optimism and prudence, a consequence of her historical nature. When her Puritan founders arrived at this land, they came armed with a fierce but focused purpose. Back home, they had retaliated against the Church of England‘s hierarchy and bureaucracy because they desired a relationship with God that was unique and personal, absent from a structured intermediary.

Hence they sought to create a state unblemished by past injustices, a classless society that could engage in individual and divine inspiration free from constraints. America filled that vacuum: unadorned, it was a New World brimming with potential and possibility.

The Puritans‘ voyage to America is where her values were founded. As travelers to a land that was foreign, they cultivated a capacity for great risk-taking. Yet they maintained their European traditions: industry, perseverance, sobriety. They were brave yet measured.

Over time, despite assaults on these values, America always maintained her equilibrium. Hippies ascended to be evened out by the traditionalists. Moralists waged war against the licentious. Excess spending was curbed by thrifty savings. Cultures and countercultures rose and crumbled, but the fundamental balance remained the same. This combination – hope and quiet resilience – is what shaped the American success of today.

What happened during our era was an extreme tilt towards lavishness. America forsook caution for abandon, disposing prudence and living beyond her means with money she never had. And compounding her problem were the arbitrary rules of international trade and investment – America thought she was rich when she really was in an illusion of richness. She engaged in reckless behavior in the financial markets, when “making money as an end in itself boomed as a calling,“ declared the New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

Now, America attempts to restore her normal. But the challenges are threefold: structural, fundamental and implicit.

Structural in the preexisting architectural organization of her institutions. Her infrastructure and public works systems are antiquated. Her buildings and bridges are old, while others are building new magnificent monuments and constructing high-speed, efficient rails at accelerating speed. Dubai boasts the tallest towers in the world while China still basks in her spectacular and majestic Olympics. Others are advancing.

Fundamental in her mindset. With the exception of Silicon Valley and, in a way, Wall Street, America lags behind her international peers in embracing new technologies and innovation. She depends upon misguided short-term policies: Japanese and German cars are outwitting Ford, GM and Chrysler. The energy in Asia, where the most exciting opportunities lie, is immediate and intense. The flippant peer remark that “in the past, America was the place to be. Now that is no longer the case“ might have been casual and callous, but it perfectly epitomizes the reality and sentiment of a less exceptional America and a more distributed power nucleus.

Finally, implicit in her national cohesion. Modern America is less uniracial and more multicultural, its diversity a potential source of great strength or fragmented discord. But America seems to be conflicted; her identity isn‘t clearly defined and she seems troubled in moving forward with her immigration and integrative policies. Uniting the nation to a shared collective purpose is the difficulty.

America today veers toward an inward-looking nation, scrutinizing every past sin. Her legacy is under threat. But she is recognizing her mistakes, rallying as a nation to correct them, and save herself from descending into irrelevance by summoning her defining values: optimism allied to prudence.

ZACH HAN is turning inward too during the midterm week – help him turn outward by hollering at him zklhan@ucdavis.edu.

Americans are obsessed with the mass accumulation of stuff. The bigger the heap of stuff they have, the happier they are. And nothing, not even loved ones, dare get in their way of amassing more stuff. People abandon their families for higher paying jobs and divorce their spouses because of avoidable money issues. Americans have reached a gloomy social frontier as they prioritize over-priced handbags over a genuine relationship. Of course we could point fingers at the advertisers and marketers for mind-fucking the younger generation.

However, a flickering banner ad is not enough to bring a whole country in a delusional mind-set. The real culprit lays in the structure our economy is built on – capitalism. America isn’t completely capitalistic – it does provide some social programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but it mostly relies on private decision-making and economic freedom. The free markets take charge in America and the free markets always know best. The idea that the markets will guide us toward what we collectively desire is not a novel one. This wisdom has been around for centuries, but only recently do we see its negative social repercussions.

The fact is capitalism thrives on dissatisfaction. It’s true that the free market allows individuals to choose their optimum consumption bundles at a fair price, but what else is going on? Let’s scope in on the consumer’s mind-set when going through the decision process in “maximizing their utility.” Imagine a consumer strolling down the labyrinth of aisles at his local Costco. He gazes at an ocean of stuff as he decides what he should buy. He pictures the stuff he already owns as he passes by newer and more expensive substitutes. He would only have incentive to purchase a new substitute if he is dissatisfied with the one he already has.

As he passes by more stuff he may realize he will be dissatisfied if he doesn’t buy that stuff. A potential emotional roller coaster is, fortunately, quelled by his ability to purchase said stuff. Dissatisfaction is the fuel behind consumer spending and consumer spending is the crux behind GDP. And believe me, America cares about GDP growing every year (probably because of their dissatisfaction with the current state of the economy).

A recession is defined as negative economic growth for two or more successive quarters of a year. Just mentioning the word “recession” makes the market sentiment haywire (I apologize). With the government’s and market’s incentive for growing GDP, they make sure Americans spend their achy-breaky hearts out.

Pressured to spend, Americans adapt obediently as dissatisfaction becomes engrained in the culture. American’s discontent now extends beyond their aspiration for consumables. If you are dissatisfied with your family or girlfriend there supposedly exists a ‘free market‘ out there for you to choose a better one. Things aren’t working out between you and your wife? A friend is pissing you off? Don’t worry, just return the current one and get a new one that fits you better! Commoditizing intimate relationships has never been this easy!

Americans have lost the ability to be “happy with what they have” when it comes to consumables and relationships. By chronically being dissatisfied, they lose their happiness in the free market abyss.

Of course, constantly settling for less is just as bad as always being dissatisfied; there needs to be a balance.

After all, capitalism is a neutral force; it is ultimately our irrational impulses that allow capitalism wreck its havoc. The responsibility is on us to figure out when limiting our options benefits rather than hurts us. If enough people take up this responsibility, marketers may stop creating unnecessary demands and, therefore, further stop the spread of dissatisfaction.

LIOR GOTESMAN thinks we should accept and be content with the fact that we can’t fulfill all our desires. Don’t let the marketers make you think otherwise! Contact him at liorgott@gmail.com.