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Showing posts from October, 2008

Desperately Sikh-ing Stigma

Through a delightful series of events I found my head being wrapped in a turban yesterday. It turns out UC Davis has a vibrant Sikh Student Association who were eagerly exhibiting their mad turban skillz at an activity fair. Aside from the normal enjoyment I get when people pay attention to my head (ask anyone, I love haircuts) I was especially excited to finally expose the town of Davis for the racist cesspool that it is. In the vein of "Black Like Me" I would undergo a near complete transformation (putting on a turban) and be the object of intense prejudice until I got bored or had to go to work a few hours later (whichever came first). Turbans are actually pretty comfortable, as it turns out. My head didn't get hot at all, despite it being definite t-shirt weather, and the wrapping of the cloth around my dome felt snug, but not unpleasant. Kinda like a turtle neck for your head. Fast head movements took a bit of getting used to, since I was balancing a bit more ...

Naughty Girl Moment

Once again, I love the train. I went to the Amtrak station to take the westbound 737 down to Berkeley to meet up with my dad for a matinee of The Dark Knight and was lucky enough to get to the station with 5 minutes to spare. When I arrived there was a young, skinny guy wearing a wife beater and jeans, absolutely belting songs. He was just finishing up one as I got there and when his iPod shuffle transitioned into “Tonight I'll be your naughty girl” he followed it without flinching. I confess, sometimes I sing softly to myself while walking down the street, or I might treat passersby to an especially breathy rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” while nearing the end of a run, but I’ve never done anything even remotely this bold. I don’t even thing I could sing that loud in the shower. (People who have lived with me may be able to dispute this point.) But the thing that made this an exercise in awe instead of in public embarrassment was the fact that he was easily one of the three ...

How to Shame Friends and Impress Enemies at Your High School Reunion

If, like myself, you're one year out of college, that means you're also five years out of high school. I understand that high school might not have been the best time for everyone, so it is imperative that you make a good impression on your former crushes and current targets of Facebook-stalkery. I like to keep a couple of things firmly in mind to make sure I let everyone know how great I'm doing. 1. Jobs (Or in other words, how badly you're doing.) Everyone you'll see will have only had a year to get their life together after earning a mostly worthless BA from an expensive liberal arts college, so you'll be on pretty much equal footing to begin with. But since you all want to stay as idealistic as possible, the winner of the vocational contest will go to the person who is making the least amount of money doing the least desirable work. Good idealist jobs: Unemployed, interning on a remote organic lettuce farm, working for a nonprofit that encourages the hom...