Hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego

A recent outbreak of Hepatitis A in the San Diego area has been linked to...guess who?...Chipotle Mexican Grill. That's right, everyone's favorite McMexican food restaurant is killing our livers like it's 1945 in Japan! (Too soon? Sorry Greg. But not really.)

The best part about all this? Hep A contamination occurs through the fecal-oral route (hot damn, MCB 103 actually taught me something), meaning that somewhere up the mass shipping line of the pre-packaged ingredients, an employee took an epic dump, and little did he (it was probably a he because, rooming with a girl next year, I refuse to believe that girls don't wash their hands after they use the restroom) know that this seemingly innoculate act of what we call "dropping the kids off at the pool" or "taking the Browns to the Super Bowl" would soon emerge as a hepatic massacre, all because he was too lazy to take the extra 30 seconds to put some antibacterial soap on his hands after he finished blowing the butt trumpet. Imagine having that kind of power. Our poor underpaid employee #13472 must be so proud.

Moral of the story: do not eat at Chipotle for the next few months. We do not know where the contimation occurred, especially in terms of assembly order and material breadth. My hunch is that the contamination is local at this particular location, given that all 14 cases thus far have been localized to this one restaurant in San Diego, but don't take the risk.

The beauty of not being in union

Hell, I'll temp. No shame. At least it's better than having an emergency call delayed significantly and worsening situations.

Brown + Le Farm = le expensive tickets?

Larry Brown just announced his resignation as VP of the Sixers.

Stanford still has a coaching vacancy, and Bowlsby is still interviewing.

Brown's agent claims that "he has the taste of coaching back in his mouth." (Laugh it off, he's a dumb guy, sentence was poorly formed, sounded like a "that's what she said" joke of Greg's caliber, which is to say that it's a terrible, nonsensical "that's what she said" joke.)

Good thing I get to go to games for free, but I would definitely pay to see a Mike Montgomery-Larry Brown match-up. Two of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, a little bit older, a little bit more stubborn, slightly bigger fans of applesauce due to its zero wear-and-tear on the teeth...going head to head.
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SI.com has DeSean "THA1" Jackson projected to go to my Niners at #29. It would be pretty awesome...but still not as awesome as the way-long-ago, pre-combine projection of him going to Buffalo, joining Marshawn "BEAST MODE" Lynch and Trent "AHHHH SHIT WHERE THE HELL IS MY PROTEC-*WHOMP*" Edwards for a monster Bay Area trio.

(Stop the Trent Edwards hate; he's a good QB, but never had the line, which was why he got pummeled over...and over...and over again.)

Change I Won't Believe In

Why does it seem like everything will be different next year? First, Welcome Week is gone, then Big Game isn't really Big Game anymore (well, it still is, but it feels completely wrong for it to not be the last game of the season), and most importantly, HENRY'S IS GONE. Hopefully breakoff will be just as fun, but based on comments from older folks who have been to the other pubs owned by this same person, the atmosphere will be less Bud and more Stella Artois. I was so looking forward to some awesome breakoffs...

I knew something was different when I walked past Henry's yesterday. The outside is different (no more big wooden overhang), and it looks like the inside will be getting some major renovations.

They had better not ruin the bar. If they do...---
A product of sheer emergency morning genius no thanks to Spring Show Party.

Recipe for Magic:
Equal parts Malibu, peach Schnapps, and Triple Sec; shake with ice. Add tonic water of volume equal to the sum of all the liqeurs.

BITCH GIMME YO WALLET

I bought a zinc alloy shell airsoft pistol from a shady-ass store in Chinatown for the much-too-low, lead-poisoning-inducing price of $15. It's much heavier than it looks - I can actually use it as an effective pistol whip, as opposed to the other cheap plastic crap that I've used before. Mine doesn't have the entire front painted orange as shown, just the exposed part of the barrel.

The oh-so-creative uses that have been executed thus far include lining up ketchup packets (from Burger King, no less) and a couple empty water bottles in the backyard and shooting at them.

One night ago, when the neighbors were having an impossibly loud party, I stood on Jia's balcony and shot a couple pellets in their general vicinity, after which I heard a "...what the fuck was that?" I ducked down in fear of beer-bottle-hurtling retaliation. I feel like I have an undeserved yet completely futile power.

"BAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEAH GAMERS EVERYWHERE"

That was the very appropriate response enjioh gave when I informed him that two professional Warcraft III players will be carriers for the Olympic torch in China.
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All I can say about the fight song competition is "How do I teeeech deez keeeeds?"

The art of motorboating

If you hear the phonez talking about Kate and motorboating (or vehemently asking/ordering/begging Bingley to take off his shirt), you'll know it was from Picnic Day 2008.

The best Picnic Day ever.

Jack Bauer can save the world in 3 minutes

I spent Friday afternoon having coffee with Tonya, catching up and discussing post-graduation needs.

She brought up the University of California's 10-year plan to double system-wide enrollment. The problem is that (and I only speak for Berkeley, although the same issues exist at most of the other campuses) the university is not taking the necessary steps to allow more students to come in. We haven't built enough new dorms. We aren't adding enough classes. Facilities are getting old and need upgrading. Some of the new constructions are nice, but buildings like Evans and Moffitt need revamping, and we certainly don't have the money to tear it all down and build from the bottom up. You simply can't add 4,000 new freshmen in and only have 900 extra available beds. I suppose that's why they made Bowles an all-freshman dorm, but an important piece of university history and student life was sacrificed for that.

I agree with the decision to increase enrollment - UC is a public university, after all, and has a duty to serve the people of California. Building new campuses all over simply won't do - it took almost two decades from start to finish to get UC Merced up and running, and almost half of that was simply trying to find a fitting site. The San Jose proposal failed, of course, although the reason provided was complete bullcrap. UC said that San Jose is too close to Berkeley, and therefore would be counterproductive in trying to extend its reach to Californians. Um...and Irvine and Riverside aren't close together at all. Right. The more reasonable excuse is that San Jose State already serves the area well. There's also CSU Hayward (or I guess CSU East Bay, Hayward Campus now). So what the fuck are they talking about?

At this rate, Berkeley will get booted off its throne as the leading public university in the country, all thanks the genius plan to cut funding from UC and then not find a way to alleviate the financial pressure.
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A confession:

I would much rather major in Psychology, but I am out of time. I thought I was interested in MCB, and these past couple years I was afraid that I might have made a mistake.

I know now that I did make a mistake and I'm almost done with school.

It's so much Fon to Due!

In the process of trying to write a piece of shit paper for my Batman DeCAL ("...Christian Bale's portrayal of playboy billionaire and Gotham's favorite son, Bruce Wayne, was arguably the best performance of all the actors who have had the honor of donning the cowl..."), I got distracted/temporarily retarded and proceeded to one of my favorite sites, SouthParkZone, which streams every episode for free, in an organized fashion to boot. I have been incredibly disappointed with Matt Stone and Trey Parker as of late, seeing as how South Park's quality has been very inconsistent in the past couple seasons. Season 12 was no different - the first two episodes were pretty bad. But this episode...boy, it really brought me back to the middle school days when the writing popped and the show was less formulaic: South Park S12E3, Major Boobage.

I couldn't help but think about the fact that when my cousin and her two cats occupied our basement for two years, one of her cats (the much older one, I believe) peed all over our white couch in the basement. We could never get the smell completely out, and when guests come over, I like to keep myself from blurting out "...and you're sitting in really old cat piss," but then I feel guilty so I simply tell them "...you may want to sit over there." If could can get donkey dick high as hell off of cat urine, then why shouldn't I just sit at home on that couch and just inhale away? School be damned, I wanna see me some tit-tays.

Alex, Ben. Ben, Alex.

My friend Ben, who goes to Princeton, has this funny/annoying tendency to call me when, in fact, he intends to call this other Gordon that he happens to know. It has happened around four or five times now. The conversations usually go like this:

G: "Hey Ben, what's up?"
B: "Oh...SHIT. I totally didn't mean to call you. I meant to call the other Gordon I know."
G: "Oh...well, uh, bye."
B: "Yeah, sorry man. Talk to you later."

Alex (Grande) called me just now and made the exact same mistake.

I had no idea Gordon was such a common name.

The rivalry just got a little better

Wow. Sources say that Mike Montgomery has agreed to coach Cal. He was at the top of my wish list (Mark Few was my other big hope), but I was so sure that he would say no. Sure, he's a bit of a douchebag (he can be pretty mean towards his opponents), but he's a winning douchebag.

Kind of like Pete Carroll.

I Believe in Harvey Dent

edit: picture of our guest lecturer. Not kidding.


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Today in Batman, our "surprise guest lecturer" was a fairly tall guy, presumably one of the former class facilitators, dressed as Batman...and lecturing to us...as Batman. By "dressed as Batman," I don't mean the awesome new military style Batsuit, as seen on Christian Bale in Batman Begins, which if you haven't seen, 1) you have issues, and 2) looks like this:



Instead, we got the Adam West Batman:
Granted, our speaker wore real Kevlar gloves and black military lace boots, but the rest of his outfit was pretty much the same, grey PJs and tight black briefs at no extra cost.

At least the guy wasn't short. He looked to be around 6'2" or so; the boots may have helped. He also didn't speak like Adam West (as much as I love West's speaking style, it simply won't do for the Dark Knight of Gotham). If anything, he sounded closest to Michael Keaton's Batman voice from Batman '89 and Batman Returns...same fake gritty voice, same attempt at intimidation, but not really quite there.

At any rate, he taught us a bunch of martial arts moves that we could use to get ourselves out of trouble, most of which I forgot because of the following very precious moments:

-Batman trying to show us how to get out of handcuffs with a hidden key but failing and spending a good 10 minutes trying to get one of his gloves off instead

-Batman explaining the California Penal Code regarding concealed weapons:
Batman: "Concealed weapons are illegal in the State of California."
Student: "What about guns?"
Batman: "Guns are allowed because it's a constitutional right."
...awkward pause...
Student: "HELL yea."

-Batman throwing people all over the room

-Batman doing a foreflip on himself and slamming into the ground on his back

-Batman revealing his preferred local food establishment: Dollar Curry on Shattuck ("Well being an independently wealthy person, I only go there to...uh...feed the many orphans of Gotham.")

-Batman showing us all the contents of his utility belt, which included four very real, very sharp shurikens and a poncho ("You never know when you're going to need a poncho - always be prepared")

We thought it was just a poorly executed April Fools' Day joke when Batman entered the class. Nope.
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Among the many website pranks today, such as Gmail's new backdating service Custom Time or Google and Virgin's new joint project to put man on Mars (aptly named the Virgle Pioneers), my definite favorite was YouTube's full-blown front page rickrolling. Just can't get enough of that Rick Astley, ya know?

Low self-efficacy

As I was walking home from physics discussion:

Flyer girl: "VOTE CALSERVE!" in a sickeningly bright, way too optimistic voice while shoving flyer in my face

Me: "Sorry, I'm not voting."

Flyer girl: "I don't understand, WHY NOT?" Her face literally looked like an emoticon frown, she was just that Asian.

Me: "I just don't see what the ASUC is doing for me or why I should really vote for any of these candidates. As far as I'm concerned, it's one big popularity contest, just like high school ASB."

Flyer girl: "Um, TOTALLY NOT TRUE." Her face turn into this: >=(

Me: "Oh? If you can give me ten reasons why I should vote CalSERVE, then I guarantee you that you have my vote. And none of those reasons had better be crap like 'because they're nice people' or stuff like that. Give me issues."

Flyer girl: "Uhm...what do you, like , MEAN by issues?"

Me: "Exactly."

We part ways. She sticks around, continuing to promote CalSERVE just as loudly but with what I believe was somewhat less conviction, and I waded through the sea of seemingly equally mindless campaigners across Sproul Plaza towards Telegraph, leaving her ever-so-confused brain hopefully a little bit more educated. Maybe I'm just too optimistic on that end.

I don't have anything against the ASUC elections. I just don't like it when it becomes a popularity contest, which it inevitably becomes semester after semester.

Stuff Internet Geeks Like

I got RickRoll'd on the phone yesterday.

No es frio. (Not cool.) - 5 bonus points if you get the reference.