The UC Davis men’s soccer team is the university’s first team to qualify for multiple NCAA Division I Tournaments and earn a home tournament game.

Now, it’s looking for another first.

If the Aggies knock off the Denver Pioneers at Aggie Soccer Stadium at 1 p.m. on Saturday, they’ll become the first UC Davis team to win a Division I tournament contest.

That’s what they’re planning to do.

“I expect us to dominate this game offensively,” said senior Quincy Amarikwa, the Big West Conference’s Offensive Player of the Year. “I expect us to impose our will on this team and make a statement in the tournament that if you match up against us, we are going to come to play.“

Unlike regular season games in which students get in free, the Aggie faithful need to purchase tickets for $5 apiece at the Freeborn Hall ticket office.

To say pending $5 to witness this NCAA Tournament contest is worth the price of admission would be quite the understatement.

The men’s soccer program has become the cornerstone of UC Davis athletics, laying the groundwork for other Aggie teams to follow in its footsteps.

After becoming the school’s first team to earn a spot in a Division I tournament a season ago, men’s soccer has become a national power this season, having been ranked among the country’s top 15 teams since early October.

All of this comes in just UC Davis‘ second year on the Division I scene. What men’s soccer has accomplished in such a short period of time is nothing short of extraordinary. The team has set the bar for what UC Davis athletics could one day become across all sports.

If it’s not worth $5 to you to see this team push that bar even higher come Saturday, please transfer elsewhere.

At UC Davis, this team is worth it. 

I feel like I’ve been running into a lot of pissy people lately. I guess I understand to some extent why this is – the weather’s a little less sexy than most would like it to be, there’ve been these “essay” things that have to get done, and there just aren’t enough yogurt joints in Davis to go around. Still, and in light of the fact that Thanksgiving is on its way, we’ve all got much to be glad about.

I have this hypothesis that if there was more nookie being passed around, those pissy missies might lighten up a little. I know, I know, this is a college town; surely everyone’s shacking up like springtime bunnies. Alas, this might not be the case. You know you’re wound a little too tight when you’re tripping over the fact that your roommate played her Andrea Boccelli a little too loud Monday night. She was probably just hoping it would make you calm the feck down.

A potential downside to seeking sloppy random osculation with strangers is that nasty infectious mononucleosis that tends to make the rounds this time of year. So really, the option is yours: sick, happy roommate or healthy, pissy one? Just quarantine your buddy, Lysol everything in sight, and pray for a disease-free finals week.

Now that we’ve covered that, you should feel free to drag Grumpy Gretchen or Touchy Tim out for a night of debauchery on the town. You may just have to step up and help your grouch of a friend get lucky for the sake of your own mental health, so that you won’t have to deal with their emo angsty crap any longer. Here are some tips you might want to show them for picking up strangers. Or just that Special Friend they’ve wanted to get with since winter quarter in the dorms.

On dance floors, try to avoid getting jiggy with the Soulja Boy dance. It’s just not happening. At all. As in, you will embarrass yourself horribly if you attempt it, and I’m not just talking about the fact that it’s over a year old. It’s permissible to imitate music video dance moves if and only if others around you are doing a far worse job of it.

Use the Laugh and Touch effectively. Screw Elle Woods‘ Bend and Snap; nobody does that in real life. Act like what SF has just said is the funniest thing ever. It’s so funny that GG is laughing so hard she can’t hold herself up and has no choice but to put her hand on SF’s shoulder and lean entirely on him for support. Throwing in, “Oh my GOD, that’s SO FUNNY!” often compliments the Laugh and Touch – if you’re a girl.

Try to avoid asking THAT question. Only in cases of extreme desperation should the question of one’s major come into play. I know, we’re all guilty of it, but why ask someone’s major when you’re going to forget it three seconds later and you could ask a better question, like, “Are you from Tennessee? Cause you’re the only ten I see!” Which leads me to my next point …

Bad pickup lines are nifty. “I lost my number, can I have yours?” can, if used properly, be cute and funny, but the bad ones are just awesome. One of my personal faves is, “Nice shoes, wanna fuck?” Or tell someone that their shirt is becoming on them and add, after an effective pause, “If I were on you I’d be coming, too.” If SF has any sense of humor, she’ll laugh. Or just be really freaked out. Pickup lines made up on the spot tend to not work out so well – they often clue in the person on the receiving end of them that you’re completely full of crap. No girl is gonna believe that she has the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen, and if she does, you might wonder if she’s a stage-five clinger after all.

I know it can be tough and a bit tedious to get your friend’s frumpy, frustrated ass off the couch and out into the world of shameless flirtation, but it’s the time of holiday cheer, dammit! If your buddy is simply not capable of scoring some azz, try giving them some Orbit strawberry mint gum. It’s ahhmazing.

Or just hire a prostitute.

MICHELLE RICK is seeking an attractive male companion for her roommate Lola, who likes pounding margaritas at sunrise and outbelching the manliest of men. If you think you may be a rightful candidate, please send a (clothed!) photo and a brief blurb about yourself to marick@ucdavis.edu.

There is a profound sense of anticipation, fear even, at the new structure of our world order. This order exhibits a strange, unusual behavior because it has no behavior at all. We have entered a new era of postmodernism – a narrative defined by its absence of a grand ideal, devoid of an overarching meta-theme. In this construct, our truths are provisional, our comprehension transitory.

The questions that must be asked are how did postmodernism come to be, and what are its future repercussions?

In his book Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks attempts to examine the factors behind this phenomenon. He writes about how certain subsections rebelled, disheartened by the model of the organization man – the personification of a capitalist servant, with its ordered, structured, modulated life. For this subsection, the capitalist lifestyle was disturbingly idle and unsettlingly monotonous.

Thus, they resolved to embrace humanity’s perceived natural desires. They celebrated human independence by abandoning formality for originality. They became reactionaries, hippies, anti-establishment, anti-status quo. Their key descriptor was “organic.“

Over time, rather than polarizing into two disparate, distinct entities, these two seeming antagonisms merged. These contradictions assimilated into a form that is more indistinguishable, more protean. Their melding shaped popular culture; it now dictates us to be simultaneously creative and organized, hot and cool, traditionalist and avant-garde. We must be the confluence of both traits.

What is at stake? In a sentence, it is life as we know it. We risk entering a world of complete uncertainty.

In daily life, we’re dispersed everywhere. At once we study assiduously, listen to music, chat on AIM. With these acts, we deprive our work the attention they demand, paying only a cursory view. We also get interspersed in a diversity of involvements. In a state of constant bombardments, we become entranced. We’re decoupled from permanence or stability. We’re uncertain.

In academia, we learn the classics and alternative inquiries, de-centered from any form of single monolithic thought. Here, we try to internalize a multiplicity of collective knowledge. But in turn, we often pass superficial glances at the main canons of thought, acknowledging their existence without fully understanding them – in the process, bypassing associated contexts, subtleties, nuance. We learn everything without truly learning something.

In the media, we hear the echo of a thousand dissenting noises, never really discovering a sole, authoritative voice. Commentary by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Katie Couric proliferates but none predominates. These are dissents that fit nowhere, testament to their dissonant nature. Consequently, there are no truly defining personalities of our generation who speak to our conceptions of what is possible and what is probable.

Until Obama came around and triumphed with a promise for unification, politicians sliced and diced the electorate, classifying some into soccer moms and others as security moms. They targeted voters only because it was possible. For them, the electorate had no special clarity, only discord.

Commodities and capital exacerbate this situation. Companies identify niche needs, then accommodate those needs through product design – Gears of War 2, Prius, Safe Food. Marketing and advertising departments seek to convey advertisements that are personal, special, unique. Individual identity displaces the collective. And these identities move in random directions.

Where do all these changes leave us? Our dissimilarities emphasized, we become increasingly detached and different from the person next to us. In a wide-ranging world, we narrow down. We grow, not to a commonality, but to a collection of infinite ideals. Postmodernism lays directions. But we’re complicit in enabling it.

This conception is at once both frightening and assuring. It offers us options while taking away others. Our task, then, is to find a clear one.

ZACH HAN thinks a multiplicity of random thoughts can meet at one point. To prove it, e-mail him at zklhan@ucdavis.edu.