The Agrinautica

   On Saturday Kristy and I went to the party at the Loyola House, which was awesome. Kristy and I hadn't been to a party there in over a year (it used to be the premier party location in Davis). Kristy went as a cheerleader and I wore my black grim reaper cloak as an ambiguous halloween costume. If anyone asked we were going to say we were the Tiger Army song "Who killed the Cheerleader?," but no one asked (which I guess validates the ambiguity of the costume).
   Today, Monday, Halloween itself, there was a party at the Baxter House, an old abandoned house near the Davis airport. This was excellent because that place is only about a furlong from my apartment. It was due to start at 11pm, and as last time they tried to have a party there it got broken up with tremendous asaptitude I wanted to get there as soon as possible.
   Unfortunately I didn't even get back from campus until 11. And then I frantically searched for my cloak to no avail (turns out it was at Kristy's). Quickly I delved into my closet and assembled some kind of Soviet military costume. I think this actually turned out better than my Ambiguous Halloween Costume, but I did the Soviet military thing last year (file photo).
   The Baxter House it turns out is armed with a massive stockpile of old printer paper. Several people began filling a room with this, which at first seemed rather juvenile and vandalistic to me, but then turned out quite awesome when we had a huge pile of paper to frolick in.
   Tomorrow I'm going to go back out there and clean up any bottles and cans that were left behind.


Poll Time
[Poll #602721]


Picture of the Day

Halloween Weekend 2005

   As it has now been more than a year since obisan69 was kind enough to get Emosnail a paid account, and therefore a year since I first posted the Emosnail review poll, I thought I ought to post it again and see how things have changed in the interceding year.


   You will be asked to evaluate the following categories on a 1-12 scale. Consider six to be average for your friends-list. In general 12 is the more advisable condition. For Unbiasedness, consider 1 to be biased like the UCD MUN Secretary-General counting ballots, and 12 to be the opposite of this. On lengthiness, 12 does NOT denote the most lengthiness, rather 12 indicates the most optimal length. At this time the poll does not measure whether you are otherwise indicating entries are too long or too short, I'm assuming numbers less than 12 indicate too much length however, so if you feel otherwise you may want to note that. Relevancy describes the degree to which you find the entries worth reading, as compared to average on your friends list; similarly amusement describes the relative degree you find the entries amusing.

[Poll #501304]

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Berkeley Adventure - showing great foresight I manage to avoid Tobin's House of Moral Depravity and instead sleep on some random person's couch.
   Year Ago Today: DMUNC 2004 - and polling favourites

Continuing Hostilities
[Poll #440800]

Senate Meeting 02/17/05
   I had to go to Senate last Thursday because the bill to allow the members of the ASUCD Supreme Court to write legislation like the rest of campus was up (incidently it was brought up that employees of the Aggie can't write legislation either. Thats their rule, not ours). The shadyness was well, forshadowed, by the infamous ASUCD burrito launching fire truck parked out front, as well as hordes of dressed up frat/sorority people milling about for the "Arrow Jam" competition to start.
   Turns out legislation had been intentionally tabled and sidetracked so as not to come up this week so the Senators could scamper off to Arrow Jam (nearly (?) all of them belong to frats/sororities). Senator Janine Fiel (jayneenaa) gave them all a piece of her mind about this. While this was certainly dubious behaviour on the part of the Senate, it worked out well because I wanted to go with Kristy and her roommates to see Hot Hot Heat at Pop Scene in San Fransisco. Usually the Senate keeps me there as long as possible, so it was good for me they were in a hurry.
   Also contributing to the shadyness was a supply of red bull that mysteriously turned up. But at least it was made available to everyone present. I think it was excess from Arrow Jam. Anyway, I thought I'd do a weekly poll to measure the perceived shadyness of the ASUCD Senate. This isn't to imply anything negative about the Senate, this is just our form of public opinion polling.

[Poll #440801]

Picture of the Day

(Senate on Thursday)

   So last night being halloween, Kristy and I decided to actually venture out, and went to the party at the "pirate house." Armed with a lighter the looks like a small gun, my furry Russian navy hat (ushanka), a fur coat, and my KGB flask, Kritsy was a Russian spy. I put on the marine corps dress uniform that my former roommate Adrian had gotten at a thrift store for $7.
   There was an unusual amount of gothic people at the party. I think something attracted all the gothic people from miles around to this particular party. Our friend Alex fr3ethinker happened to be there as well, and being the gothic boy that he always is, he apparently felt the need to just be "himself" for halloween, something Kristy and I thought was Such Sauce. The party began disbursing around 10pm I think (it being a school night after all), and so we headed home to study because I'm cool like that. We offered Alex a ride but he was busy hanging out with some girl he'd met named Rochelle and opted to stay in central Davis.
   Most awesome costume award goes to this guy who was a tetris piece.


   This morning while driving to campus, Kristy and I passed a police car with lights on, three wheeled parking enforcement vehicle, an unmarked car, and an unmarked white car with siren-lights on on the inside all pulled over at the side of Russel. I think the unmarked car without lights was getting jumped my all available police units.
   Compare this to the similarly inexplicable Davis police activities of about a year ago.


Poll of the Day
[Poll #376861]

   So yesterday I'm standing outside the Ralph Nader speaking event talking to noted republican George Andrews when on the subject of politics someone I don't know says to me "you're an anarchist aren't you?" Then aggie reporter Stan Obklobzija asked me if I knew where rabid communist John Green¹ was and if I had anything to do with the Nader event.

¹If you could cross communism with rabies, John Green would have it.

   Former ASUCD President Sara Henry accused me of being a member of the green party in a newspaper interview, the ASUCD Ethnic & Cultural Affairs Commission once discussed whether or not I'm a republican. I dunno somehow it just seems to me to be very unclassy to clearly belong to a particular political stereotype. Anyway, time for a poll:

[Poll #365251]
[Poll #365252]


Entertainment Council
   Also we had an entertainment council meeting yesterday. I was actually given another title to add to my collection - I was declared to have the glorious title of "head grip."
   Also while brainstorming bands we want to bring to campus I plugged Momsex. The rest of you should help bring the ingenius creators of Zombies v Pirates to our campus by telling blushbystander how awesome they are over and over again.

("Now with 29% more blog!")

   Your thoughts on 30 Entries in 30 Days. Additional feedback via comments is welcome

[Poll #315102]

   I am way behind in my mission to post 30 posts by the end of this month, but I'm confident I'll have much more time to flood your friends lists now than I did while in Davis. I think I'll try to put a lot of them behind lj-cuts to minimize the wrath of shid et al.


Final Days in Davis
   Thursday night while hanging out at a low-key party at Sashie's place (though Sashie never showed up ::Shakes fist::) Kristy found a recipe for Shrimp Scampy on the refridgerator, and we immediately resolved to make it the next day.
   So Friday night we made us a fancy dinner (hey, I chopped some basil) and settled down to watched Pulp Fiction which neither of us had previously seen in its entirety, only... I don't know how to work my TV.
   When I say I don't watch TV you see, I am not kidding. I really haven't the slightest idea how to work the thing. After more than an hour of trying to make it work, I finally had to go downstairs and ask fr3ethinker if he could make it work. He came to our rescue but it seems the thing really was malfunctioning to some degree. We were forced to eat our cheesecake without the movie.

   Just when we had completely given up and resigned ourselves to an evening of tic-tac-toe¹, who should come to our rescue but fr3ethinker again, this time with his magic DVD playing laptop for our movie viewing pleasure.

   In conclusion, (A) I am a ludite who lives in a cave, and (B) everyone should live upstairs from another livejournal user.


   Amtrak report will be out shortly.


Poll of the Day
[Poll #310551]


Livejournal Declared Goal # 17:² I decided its not enough to get comments, I want my commentees to respond to EACHOTHERS comments. Currently plotting on ways to do this. Any suggustions? You know what would really help? If you just DID it. Thats your homework, respond to someone else's comment in one of my entries. (=


Related
   Year Ago Today: On My Roommates (and STILL stuck in Davis much to my dismay)


¹not really
²a randomly chosen number

Moden United Nations
   This weekend was the UC Davis Model United Nations Conference (DMUNC). I chaired the Special Political & Decolonization Committee, it was my seventh time chairing a committee. Didn't like the committee that much. My favourite committee of all time remains the kids I had for UCDMUNC last year.
   As per tradition Henry Gromet (to_live_again) explained in a speech what "emo" is. In doing so he wrote "his" livejournal on the board as "emosnail." For committee mascot "emo trogdor" beat out contenders "snail of death" and "the ninja turtles." The best placard award went to Guatamala who had written his girlfriends name on his. awwwww.
   During "Saturday Night Activities" I was stationed with one Anamica by the fountain in Voorhies (For the sake of delegates who couldn't pronounce it I referred to it as "rufies") for the scavanger hunt. It was cold and I was sick and sometimes no delegates would come by for an hour. My only consolation was watching the "terrorists" pounce on unsuspecting groups of delegates and soak them with water guns. The terrorists were someone's friends who were actual army ROTC kids, so they were decent at the sneakin and creepin.
   I wrote a more thorough report on (UC)DMUNC '04 in modelun.


Azver
   Last night around 2am Azver called because he was just getting out from somewhere or was in the area or.. something. (=
   So he stopped by. We talked for a bit and then he watched TV and drank a newcastle while I worked on my paper. Then we talked a bit again and he went home around 3am.
   I am very glad to have friends that are so random and feel comfortable stopping by like that.


Steel Reserve
   As you may or may not know, I'm very fond of my Steel Reserve (AKA 211). You also may or may not know there is a livejournal community dedicated to this delightful malt liquor, 211.
   Now see, we don't just sit around saying "man, steel reserve is so good." Well sometimes we do that. Often actually. But we actually have had some pretty insightful conversations lately about the differences between different batches of steel, or what makes it high gravity. The batch number discussion is under a members-only post for some reason, but the conclusion was that higher numbered (ie more recent) batches are better.
   Also, as per the observation that the last bit of steel in a can/40 is significantly more bitter, I'd recommend one gently shake their steel before consuming.
   In conclusion I nominate the 211 community for the award of most unexpectedly intelligent conversations.


Brother Jed
   Brother Jed, "the foremost campus evangelist in the USA," is back on campus. There are certainly other crazy evangelists who make the circuit, noticably That Last Guy but I don't think any others have the tendency to be as insulting to everyone as Brother Jed.
   In addition to being blatantly insulting muslims, jews, catholics and even other christians (in roughly that order of decreasing adamancy that the group is going to hell), he warned us all against the terrible sin of "premarital kissing" and amused the audience greatly by going into detail as to why specific sexual acts disgust him.
   Anyway, so he's back on campus. I haven't had a chance to watch him yet, but I happened to be walking by around noon today. He stopped talking and just watched me walk by with an amused smile. I kept walking with a "I know you're smiling at me and I'm certainly not interested in arguing with you" smile myself.
   Its funny that he doesn't know that I know who he is and that I'm the president of the agnostic and atheist student association at Davis, presumably I was just a kid with a mohawk to him. Maybe I'm crazy but I felt like the real reason we were both smiling was because the real fools are the ones who try to argue with him. I dunno. It was an interesting moment though.


Poll of the Day
   Direct links preferred, but I'd rather have you describe the intended entry as best you can than not answer at all:
[Poll #299099]


Related
   UCDMUNC03
   DMUNC04
   Year Ago Today: Bree Week - incidentally Corcat and Tucker just broke up the other day.

   The following poll is mostly for testing purposes.. which isn't to say you shouldn't vote on it in an accurate and complimentary manner.

   In other news it is currently 9:45am and I'm in the on campus computer lab. Walked forty minutes to campus this morning at 5am (because the buses weren't running yet).. at first I thought I'd have to wreak a terrible vengeance upon the entertainment council persons for not being abundant when I got here, but they showed up at 6:30 with doughnuts to appease me.
   My current plans are to go to financial aid and try to squeeze some more money out of them, and then to return to my lair and participate in some serious sleeping.


NOTE: In general higher numbers equal greater amounts of the subject of the poll question (more (better) writing functionality, more amusing entries, more relevance), but to keep with the pattern of higher numbers equal more satisfaction we shall say that the inverse is true for the "lengthiness" category: higher numbers do not equal MORE lengthiness but greater satisfaction with the length of entries. If you voted contrary to this you can change your vote at any time.
[Poll #294601]