Band-Room Rats

   Deputy District Attorney Tim Wallace & I have embarked on a joint lobbying mission. Our goal is to convince the owner of the Fat Cat Cafe (Edna) one of these days to make corn chowder as the soup of the day.


Historicity
   Moving right along with the pre-Emosnail series, since I left off in the middle of a story:

   Tuesday October 26th, 1999: the day after the day I'd set about becoming the new best friend of the girl my best friend Alberto had a crush on -- After school Alberto convinces me to go with him into the band-room, which was known to be Oakley's habitat. The band-room immediately steals my soul and I am cursed to not go a single weekday without entering the bandroom for several weeks thereafter.
   In what may be a direct precursor to this livejournal, I end up writing a "weekly band-room rat report" on the weekly antics of the band-room rats. This report was compiled weekly through extensive interviews and research (really), and published in the weekly SWO Newsletter, which had a circulation of 700+. Though SWO stands for "Simpsons World Order" I got away with writing nonsimpsons-related articles for maybe a year before editor-in-chief Matt Mullen told me I needed to write about the Simpsons or get canned. Senior year I also wrote a weekly column on "the World According to Mr Drinkworth," who was a history teacher who would very routinely try to pass of retarded things as fact, such as "cold air rises, thats why there's snow on mountains." I also started writing a weekly Futurama report, since Futurama is awesome and kind of Simpsons-related. Anyway, eventually Mullen canned me, and the whole enterprize immediately went under. In preparing for this entry I searched for the archives but they're no longer on the internets. Mullen says he has them on a computer at home somewhere though so maybe someday they will be resurrected.
   I immediately launched my own weekly satire newsletter called the Chosen Echidna, which continued for a short time, and I reserve the right to resurrect at any moment.

   Anyway, enough of that tangent. So Alberto and I ventured into that dank cave known as the Band Room. There I ran into bassoonist Elena Jordanov again. The next day we hung out with them there at lunch. By Thursday evening Alberto called me:
Him: "Dude!" (which translates to "you're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you")
Me:  "Dude!" (trans: well tell me already)
Him: "Dude!" (trans: no really I have a great idea)
Me:  "Why are you calling me? we were talking on AIM"
Him: "Hey we should try to get Oakley & Elena to go trick-or-treating with us"
   And so we proceeded to work out some devious overly-complicated plot to ask Oakley and Elena to spend Halloween with us (which was the upcoming Saturday)
   The next day as we were standing on the band-room entrance ramp getting ready to put our devious plan into action, Oakley pulled out a "so, you guys should hang out with us on halloween."

Justices Find Own Appointment Unconstitutional

   So I went to Senate today, since two new Justice appointees were up for confirmation.
   Only problem is, of the people the Constitution lists must be on the interviewing committee to forward judicial nominees to Senate, the Elections Committee chairman had not been present. In fact, Chairman Leathers hadn't even been told about the interviews. It is unclear if this is because he is regarded as a troublesome dissident by the administration or just an oversight.
   So I decided to give the justices a little test of character. I had Senator Sanders ask them during the hearing what their interpretation of the implications of the improperly constituted interview committee was, and I gave them five minutes to think about it by advising them that it might come up as a problem (and giving them absolutely no guidance other than that).
   They're answers?
   "Its pretty clear that they need to be there"
   "Unconstitutional, its quite clear."

   And then, after the two judicial nominees both declared their own confirmation unconstitutional, the Senate confirmed them. (!!)

   But man, I was so proud. I don't think very many people would declare their own confirmation unconstitutional like that. And this is exactly the kind of people I want on the Court.
   As to the Senate though, while this emphasizes how extremely qualified the candidates are, I personally wouldn't have confirmed them. They were incorrectly nominated, moving on without addressing this just facilitates the exclusion of officials of differing politics such as Leathers, and the legal situation gets a lot messier and hard to undo once they are confirmed.


   Also under discussion while I was there was the cutting of some $3,000 from Cal Aggie Camp (a philanthropic summer camp for underpriviledged children, a third of their budget), to give to Aggie Pack (the promotional arm of the university athletics division, totally less than a tenth of their budget). Former comptroller Devin Whitney made a reappearance to lambast them for this. Current comptroller Kai Savaree-Ruess defended his budget though, saying that the Aggie Pack reaches one third of Davis students, and was therefore important. Incidently, I thought I'd point out that this argument is hinges upon a fallacious implication: that the Aggie Pack servicing of 33% of campus hinges upon this $3,000. Aggie Pack may reach 33% of the campus now, but without this money they will reach 32.87% of campus, while the servicing of underpriviledged children will go down by a third. I just thought I'd point that out.