Despite overwhelming public opposition, the California State Fair (July 12 to 28) again plans to display the cruel “farrowing crates” in the fair’s animal nursery. Pregnant sows will be imprisoned for three straight weeks, unable to turn around, barely able to move and forced to give birth on a bare metal grid: a true “crime against nature.”

CalEXPO’s new boss, Rick Pickering, was CEO at the 2012 Alameda County Fair, which allowed no farrowing crates. Instead, a mother sow and her piglets (born offsite) enjoyed a large pen, in deep sawdust: Happy pigs, happy public.

Our State Fair could (and should) do likewise. All veterinary studies recommend against transporting expectant animals about to give birth. UC Davis Vet School (which oversees the nursery) should practice what it preaches. This is a true “no-brainer.”

Nor should the fair’s vendors be allowed to give away goldfish as prizes, or sell hermit crabs as “pets.” Most will die within weeks, or be flushed down the toilet.

Please contact Rick Pickering, CEO, and the Fair Board, at CalEXPO & State Fair, 1600 Exposition Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95815; email — calexpoboard@calexpo.com. Pigs and public alike deserve better.

Thanks for caring.

Sincerely,

Eric Mills
Coordinator for Action for Animals
(510) 652–5603

Editor’s note: A proposed ASUCD Senate Resolution supporting divestment was moving through commission meetings last week and was rejected by the Business & Finance Commission on May 7. The Editorial Board had split views on divestment. This editorial represents one of those views.

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of students were engaged in discussions about whether or not ASUCD should urge the University of California to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

If it had been passed, the non-binding resolution would likely have been of little consequence to Israel, Palestine or the UC Regents, but the suggestion has brought up an important concern about the University irresponsibly investing student and state money in contentious and potentially unethical companies whose goals are incongruous with the University’s values.

The University of California should, we believe, divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip. As a public entity, the UC should divest from all companies whose political allegiances take a side in divisive issues on campus, or whose values or actions do not support free education for Californians. This includes investments in the coal industry, and until recently, included the tobacco industry, as well as investments in the war-torn Sudan. Divestment movements aren’t new to the UC system, as the UC continues to do business with entities that many students are opposed to.

One concern brought up at the commission meetings is that such a resolution is intimidating or unsupportive of Israeli, Jewish and Zionist students. ASUCD should take to ensure that such students feel welcome on this campus, and welcome to support Israel by their own means.

However, not supporting Israel financially is different from being unsupportive of Israel. Whether or not one supports doing business in the Gaza strip, the University of California has effectively chosen a side by investing student and state money in these companies. Divestment is not anti-Israel; it is neutral. But continued investment is as good as taking a pro-Israel stance in the name of students and their tuition dollars.

If the Regents are listening, which we doubt they are, a resolution from ASUCD in favor of divestment would be a symbolic nudge toward depoliticizing the UC’s financial agenda.

Whether or not it is ASUCD’s place to rule on divestment is a separate question. We do not believe that ASUCD officials have some insight or clarity that has been lacking in any academic or politician regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ASUCD commission discussions were largely rotund and superficial, leaving students on both sides distracted and marginalized. Rather than fighting one another about international politics, students should band together and ask the UC Regents why a UC education comes with such a great sacrifice and compromise of politics and identity from our diverse student body.

If you think you have a drug test coming up, you should stop smoking now.

The cheapest and most common type of screening is the classic piss test. It is also the easiest one to pass.

If you’re a heavy smoker, you should take about a three week break before a urine test. During this time, drink as much water as you can. And of course, you should not ingest marijuana in any shape or form, including edibles, concentrates, or shakes.

Instead, drink tea. And go on runs and get sweaty.

Avoid other smokers. Second hand smoke is not only mischievously alluring, it can also get into your system and make you fail your drug test.

Sometimes, it is the act of smoking that people get used to, not particularly the weed itself. These people find it pretty easy to give up getting high so long as they have cigarettes or hookahs or Spice to turn to. It is true that these alternatives are legal and won’t fuck up your drug test, but they will take a toll on your health.

There are many other safer, smokeable alternatives. The Happy Herb Shop, online and in Berkeley, has a line of “non-addictive herbs for relaxation, pleasure, happiness and breaking habits!” Smoking these mixes provides an effect comparable to that of getting high, and you can even choose between herbs meant for sleeping, stimulation, and general “happiness.”

The idea is that you should start off by mixing these herbs in with the weed in your bowls or blunts. As you get used to smoking this new stuff, slowly and casually begin to use less weed and more mix in your sessions. After a while you should cut out weed completely, and only smoke the herbal mix. It is much easier to quit smoking weed if you ease out of it instead of dramatically cutting it out of your diet.

If you find yourself missing the psychedelic effects of marijuana, then you might benefit from trying a little bit of salvia.

Salvia is legal, safe and relatively cheap. It comes in different potencies, with 10x being the gentlest, and 80x the strongest. It is definitely not an everyday herb like tea or marijuana, but a little toke might satisfy your urge to feel high.

Avoid detox kits. These are expensive and usually don’t work. Urine tests can even detect the chemicals in these detoxifiers; though testing probably won’t even be necessary, since your piss usually turns blue or green after trying them out.

While you might find testing a little unfair and unnecessary, you have to remember that it is within an employer’s every right to do so, especially after some sort of workplace accident.

You should also remember that having a doctor’s recommendation does not protect you from drug tests, and you can still be fired (or not hired) regardless.

LEO OCAMPO can be reached at gocampo@ucdavis.edu.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. My stockings are falling,” declared the woman wearing seven-inch platform heels and enough fake hair to comfortably nest dozens of baby birds. Her false eyelashes threatened to abandon her face and the same birds would have loved her impressively arched blue eyeliner and shadow, as it was reminiscent of the blue daytime sky.

She couldn’t adjust her hose, because the ropes holding her to the iron St. Andrew’s cross barred free movement, but she could wiggle around and look helpless — to the satisfaction of her dominant. He was behind her, a lopsided smirk above a body clad in black pleather, flicking a small rubber whip at her ass. “Nasty slut,” he would occasionally whisper up the curves of her hips and past the channels of her back.

Curled into the fetal position, on a couch opposite their scene, I looked down at my own outfit. My stockings didn’t have any runs and were holding up fairly well, but I was far from classy: my filthy black boots were held together by safety pins, my nipple tape was peeling off and I had chewed off my bright red lipstick hours before.

Stopping for a moment, he traced her contours with the handle of the whip. Instead of pulling away, she arched back towards towards him and the blunted torment.

Nerves. Spinal cord. Brain. The path that pain takes seems simple. Yet, even on this fairly straightforward journey, endorphins, natural opioids, are triggered in order to help our bodies handle trauma. Just like the synthetic drugs prized by so many narcotic abusers, natural chemicals induce a hangover once the high has ended.

While my own high, brought on by a wooden paddle and some well-placed electrodes, was starting its downward journey, the other play party invitees were just beginning to feel the euphoria that often accompanies such extreme passions as pain, fear, lust, anger and jealousy.

Around the room, people engaged in kink scenes that, intentionally or not, harmonized with the beat of the dark industrial music that was playing over wall-mounted speakers. One older man was using a cane, a tiny piece of bamboo resembling a wand, to rhythmically slap the two college-age girls whom he had balanced on his lap. They screamed and cried, but when he stopped they kissed his lined cheeks, begging for more.

Slaves and servants, clad in chains and collars but little else, wove around undulating bodies and handed out drinks. They would periodically stop to pour water into dog bowls on the floor for pets, the few adorable fur and ear wearing players who meowed or barked with gratitude.

A gorgeous dominatrix, in the corner of the dungeon, stood over two younger men who looked as though they were bowing, but upon closer examination turned out to be licking and sucking each of her bare toes. Every minute or so, she would gently kick one of them in the face and remind them to clean her “nasty feet” more to her exacting standards.

Swaying bodies, anchored to the ceiling by a huge amount of intricately knotted rope, would every so often stretch, yawn or look over at me and smile — half-awake.

Even amidst all these lures, my gaze kept falling back on the couple in front of me. Crying had turned her mascara into two black rivers, and the underarms of his black shirt were soaked with sweat. Their clothes had fled: he had taken off his huge trench coat, and she was stripped down to a pair of blue panties. But they still kept scening, surges of dopamine released in response to their every sensation.

When I first arrived at the front door of the non-descript San Franciscan building, I was all giggles and fresh make-up, full of adrenaline and energy drinks. Finally burned out, sitting on a couch that had probably been soaked with all sorts of bodily fluids during its lifetime as a piece of dungeon furniture, I sat and watched. A voyeur lost in a sea of exhibisionism.

KATELYN RINGROSE at knringrose@ucdavis.edu would like to invite you to a party — one celebrating the Earth. Whole Earth festivities will be occurring on May 10, 11, and 12.

As a single girl in college, living in a small college town, recycling is important to me. I put my bottles and papers in the designated bins and also scroll through my contact list late at night when I need to scratch my proverbial itch. I recycle exes, hookups, friends with benefits and really any sex partner that I’ve deemed worthy enough to have an afterlife.

To recycle your favorite sex partner is doing your part to save energy so that you can focus on the more important factors in your life. It is difficult enough without the constant worry of how you are going to handle your human desire. And to have a contact list full of potential bed buddies is a luxury that must be explored. It is a massive waste of a perfect, untapped resource.

I like to reuse the hookups I enjoyed the most — the carefree and spontaneous hookups that ended without any malice or spite, the ones that rank on my top 10 adult sleepovers. Those are the most reuse worthy. That’s the name you want to press on at 3 a.m. when all else has failed.

My other favorite recyclable is the overtly attractive hook up, the one that you are the most proud of snagging and banging — we all have those. The chemistry is obviously eminent and is ready to recycle, no need to butter up with tedious foreplay. The best thing about this recyclable is that there are no ties and no emotions to get in the way of the matter at hand. The connection probably never was established and never will be and that’s fine, since they’re just your recyclable, your good time.

My favorite reusable pleasure is a friend from high school, with green eyes, dark hair and the ability to carry me around — he is perfect. When in town, he is my go to recyclable. With him, there is always a good conversation pertaining to nothing serious and then the actual act. After, it’s a good “see you later,” and that’s it. It is, in essence, the perfect demonstration of recycle, reduce, reuse. The better the terms, the shorter the conversations, the better the sex.

Through my couple of years of being single and implicating the recycle, reduce, reuse routine, I have also accidentally recycled exes that should have been either composted or thrown promptly into the trash.

These non–recyclables can be designated into the discard bin as soon as you realize that you are emotionally scarred or exhausted by them. I find that my exes from two or more years induce this in me, since I once tried to recycle a very prominent ex and it got messy fast. The sex was great and everything was going accordingly. But emotions were very much present — that is not the ideal circumstance for a reusable ex.

To deem an ex worthy of the recycle bin and the late-night booty call attempt is risky. I have never executed this perfectly, but have faith that most people can. All in all, the ex just cannot be recent. You do not want residual feelings to spill into your reusing ventures.

Consider using exes from a separate sphere of your life, someone who has his or her own life and won’t intrude on yours. With no bitter feelings and a mutual desire for one another, recycling should be made obscenely simple.

To recycle and reuse does not mean to permanently keep in your life. Recycling relationships is something that can be saved for an entirely different column. In this world of ex and ex sex, to recycle means to keep around for intercourse. They know what you want and how you want it. It is how most college kids can contribute to the recycle, reduce, reuse movement.

MARISSA HERRERA can be reached for sexual inquiries at mdherrera@ucdavis.edu.