The Agrinautica

   From Wednesday afternoon until early this morning I have been in Davis. The main reason for my visit was that before I filed for graduation I had to file for my minors, and I could only do the latter in person.

   This I was able to quickly accomplish once there, however. I have now officially filed to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations with an emphasis on "Peace & Security" and "Russia / Eastern Europe," and minors in Communications, History, and Political Science. Unofficially, thats Communication with an emphasis on conflict resolution and organizational communications, and the pre-law series of poli sci.


Episode 1: Welcome to Crazytown
   Wednesday, I came in on a 1:20pm SouthWest flight and took the Yolobus from the airport to Davis. At the Woodland mall bus stop I had to change busses. While there I saw two people talking about something. I'm not sure what, but one was trying to get the other's contact information and the other was saying he doesn't use a phone because he doesn't trust the phone company not to listen in. I filed them both under crazypeople in my mind.
   Unfortunately, one of them (not the one without a phone) got on the same bus as me and sat across from me. Of course, before the bus even started moving he started tryinng to start a conversation with me. Since I was dressed up, wearing a black tie, and had my briefcase, I thought it might be hilarious to tell him I worked for the government and then answer any further questions with "I'm sorry I can't discuss that," but on the other hand I decided he'd probably get all riled up about that and cause a ruckus.
   After asking my name and what I was doing, and finding me not to be a government agent, he pointed to some construction going on on the mall. "They're being very proactive here. They're building a watchtower on the mall." "Why?" "Oh five judges, the mayor of Davis, and some DAs are accused of kidnapping someone, so everyone is all freaked out." "Really? Who?" "Me!!" I proceeded to refile him under "completely off his rocker."
   Anyway, it turns out this guy was the infamous Crazy Joe Sherman, and basically he lived up to his description on the wiki page. He spent the entire time regailing me about how he is the victim of a vast conspiracy. It seems the more he annoys people, the more he thinks their reactions toward him are part of the conspiracy, and the more he feels like he's a rightious persececuted jesus character. He said he had just recently gotten out of 313 or so days of jail, where the other prisoners isolated and persecuted him on orders from the external religious establishment (because you know middle-class Davis churches have mad prison connections!). He also mentioned that he believes God has indicated to him that his true calling is to become a teacher -- which is somewhat concerning considering that several accounts on his wiki page allude to him having a creepy predilection for the company of young males. In a tangental note, wiki user MikeDurkee apparently thinks we should overlook his many creepy and socially dangerous behaviours because he is a "warrior of god." I would like to officially point at MikeDurkee and say "lol!"


Episode 2: Cover blown!
   Yolobus deposited me at the front of the school (from the student's perspective anyway, not to be confused with the Chancellor's idea of the "front" of the school, aka the back side, where important guests don't have to behold those pesky undergrads which burden down their business of corporate research). I was immediately spotted by ASUCD President Kareem Salem (The first ASUCD President since 2002 not to be sworn in by me). I took care of the Communications and History minors but the IR and Poli Sci offices had closed early that day. Ran into one or two more people. Went home and found the apartment much as a left it.
   Suprised the Court at their Wednesday night meeting, then went with Justice Harney to dollar pint night at Sudwerks, where we ran into Pete Markevich (whom you may recall recently survived a Senate witchhunt), along with Sen. Alexandra Frick.


Episode 3: One More Senate Meeting
   I had been reluctant to go to the Senate meeting, having been to so many in my lifetime that even Brent Laabs probably has yet to catch up to me. However, the Senate was considering a landmark bill to formally give control of the judicial rules to the Court, which is kinda big thing so I decided to go for that.
   Previous to consideration of the bill, a lot of the usual antics were re-enacted for the millionth time. Since budget hearings were this weekend, a lot of organizations came to "show and tell" how awesome they are in hopes of getting fatter budgets. Some guy with a penchant for beating dead horses harangued the whole Senate at length for being vaguely associated with someone who had during their free time expressed the political opinion that current policies are not satisfactory to ensure the safety and documentation of all immigrants. I found it highly ironic that his main point was that he thought the DCR event was immature, but I found it pretty immature that he was rightiously chastising the Senate for something they had no control over.
   Then representatives from the Muslim Student Association pre-emptively began defending the anti-semetic speaker they'd brought to campus, while at the same time attacking Jewish Senator Eric Friedman and the DCR immigration event. In short, business as usual.

   Anyway, eventually the bill came up and passed relatively quickly. I thought it was kind of ironic that they made the change in the obsolete Judicial Codes, which will soon be completely abrogated, rather than the general Bylaws or somewhere else where it'll remain, but it was largely symbolic anyway.

   Quote of the Day: "You're the reason people don't take ASUCD seriously" - Brent Laabs to Commissioner Jill Weinstein after she expressed the opinion that ASUCD is just a glorified student club, rather than possessing any semblance of the legitimacy of a governing body.


Episode 4: Scrabble I
   After the meeting, several Senators, Justice Harney & I went to Sen. Dan Xie's house to drink and play scrabble. Since Joe and I were the ones getting the alcohol I of course brought them steel reserve (though Joe also selected some hard lemonade).


Episode 5: Campus Life
   Friday afternoon there were people with a big sign evangelizing by the flag pole, which is not terribly uncommon. However, in this case they were PASTIFARIANS bringing the glorious messege of the Flying Speghetti Monster to the unsaved! True heroes of faith whom MikeDurkee should have a frank chat with.
   Upon investigation these people were not affiliated with either Campus Crusade for Chaos & Confusion (C4), or AGASA, but were in fact merely persons whom the Flying Speghetti Monster in His sauceness saw fit to reach out and touch with His noodly appendage. Their unaffiliated status is clear evidence of the Truth of the supposition.
   Also there were some people in a bathtub on the quad wearing feathered headdresses. Typical. Eventually I noted that Rob Roy and Elise Kane were over there and said hi to them. (Here's a picture of both the Pastifarians AND the girls in the tub)


Episode 6: Life in the Trees
   Friday evening the internet went out at The Trees, which is just so typical. It didn't come back all weekend. Moreover, the internet connection was still there, it just wasn't recognizing the hardware address (MAC address) of mine or my roommates computers. This has been a frequent problem throughout the time we've had this provider, especially on weekends when the tech support is out, which once one actually gets ahold of the tech support is usually resolved by them simply resetting their system. Notwithstanding, you should rent my room at the Trees!!
   Anyway, Friday evening I took a nap in hopes the internet would come back, as I had no other form of entertainment in the midafternoon. By 7 I was getting desperate and decided to take the bus to campus to use the computer labs.
   I took the 7:18 bus in, only to find the computer labs close at 6 on Fridays! I could have sworn they used to be open till ten on Fridays. Anyway, there was still free wireless on campus but my laptop was at home and the bus I'd just come in on had left already. I waited for the next bus, the 8:10, until 8:20, when another person waiting for it suddently exclaimed that they'd forgotten the busses were no longer running since it was Friday evening. This left me with an hour and a half until I had anywhere to be. I called Justice Wheat to see if I could come over early for his shindig, but no answer. Despite the fact that that location was near campus, I started walking home because I had nothing better to do. It took half an hour to walk home from campus. It being then 9:00, I'd have had to immediately turn around and head back had John not called me at that point and said he could pick me up.


Episode 7: Scrabble II
   When I got to John's place, two of his roommates were trying to punch a second hole into a coconut ("double penetrate it"), and into which they then poured rum to make genuine coconut rum. They didn't like the result terribly much so I ended up drinking from the coconut all night. After I finished the original coconut rum I just poured whatever I was drinking into the coconut because it was funny. This resulted in some comments about my nut being sticky, along with other comments about people handling my nut, writing on my nut, etc.
   Anyway, despite the fact that John aimed to keep it "low key" a good amount of people showed up (but not too many, just enough to be awesome), and it was quite fun. My friend Shemek (who was a campaigne manager for the original Lead slate of the Huerta presidency -- but left ASUCD in disgust over their rampant corruption) joined me there. John Wheat and his fellow English-tutor coworkers from the Learning Skills Center played scrabble, but others were reluctant to engage such English aces in such a game. I thought it was funny that when the ASUD officers played the game, they argued about the rules and what the definitive set of rules was and other governance related questions, while the English majors got into arguments about what parts of speech certain words were.
   Anyway, it was good fun. Good work John Wheat & roommates.


Episode 8: Daytime Ruckus
   On Saturday Shemek and I hit the Hunan's Lunch Special around noon . Then we met up with Miss Rosejean Weller. Since we three were former Davis MUNers, and the Davis MUN Conference was currently ongoing, and especially since fellow former Davis MUNers Akila Radhakrishnan and Nishan Bhaumik, we resolved to crash the conference. Then the idea got better when someone suggested we do it drunk. So it being around 2pm we got some 40s of steel reserve and drank them, along with some jagermeister. And we were good to go!
   After this, the three of us went to woodstocks for more pizza and beer. Finally after a good afternoon of good ruckus causing we parted ways. I then returned to the conference for a little bit and guest spoke as a Russian representative. I may have still been a little inebriated, but that may have been an accurate portrayel of the Russian government. ;)


Episode 9: A Formal End
   Just as I was getting out of MUN, Brittawater Segerstrom called me and said I should come over and go to a volleyball formal with them. Which was pretty random but it was only a $12 formal and I didn't have anything else to do, and happened to already be dressed up for the MUN conference.
   Over at the M Street I joined Brittawater, Julie Parker, Kim Bowles, Sarah Jones, and a number of others.
   Eventually we walked from M Street to the event at the Senior Center. As there were initially more than a dozen of us, this took awhile, and by the time the front of our group got there the back had disappeared completely and some had found a ride somehow.

   Anyway, after being there for a little while the group consensus seemed to shift towards a hankering to go to the bars, so once again the group set out on foot, this time towards Froggys on G Street. This brought the total walking distance up to 2.1 miles, and everyone still had to find their way home again (returning to M St would bring it to 3 miles. I don't envy the girls in heels).
   Eventually I walked with what was left of the group back up to fifth street, where they turned toward M and I turned to start my own 3 mile journey back to the Trees (since the airport shuttle was picking me up there at 5:15, crashing on a couch was not an option). Fortunately I happened to completely coincidently run into one of the girls who'd been with us earlier around Central Park. She had struck off by herself toward the Colleges but had felt very uncomfortable making the journey alone and so had called a guy friend, who happened to show up almost simulteniously with me running into her. As he was giving her a ride I managed to get a ride with him as well, which was quite a relief since I still had a very long way ahead of me.


Episode 10: The End
   Airport shuttle picked me up at 05:15am and my plane departed at 7:35am. Altogether, I had even more fun up in Davis than I thought I would. It was great seeing everyone again. There's so much more going on up there than down here in OC. I can't wait to come up with an excuse to visit again!

   Okay that was so fun last week, I'm going to once again do a general summary of our Court meeting minutes, so you can all marvel at what an august body we are.

8:10 - We have quorum with five justices, but Justice Coady is running late so Vice Chief Harney, who is presiding, holds off calling to order. While we are meeting informally Justice Wheat urges us all to vote no on Proposition 90, saying it will in effect allow the government to seize by imminent domain a lot of lands that would otherwise be protected environmental areas. Justice Harney disagreed, and it went back and forth until someone else (jokingly) suggested they schedule a debate in the coffee house.
   Next I announced my distress at seeing the Wikipedia article of the day declaring that .999... equals exactly 1. Particularly alarming, at least two of the proofs offered were very easy to follow and seemed compelling. I, however, remain suspicious that the problem is with our math system and not reality.
8:18 - Meeting called to order. We discuss the latest developments in the ASUC Berkeley scandal, discuss the case we discussed last week just a little more (as Harney had been absent at the time and had some thoughts). It is proposed that for further practice and to really hash out our thoughts on the subject we will cobble together a brief unofficial opinion on our take on the case - Justices Wheat & Coady volunteer to head this.
   We unanymously accept the Senate's recommendation that "Student" be stricken from the Judicial Codes where it erroniously says "Student Court." We discuss who will Vice Chief for the next two weeks, in accordance with our Partitioned Vice-Chiefship Plan, and parli pro starts to get a bit wacky. Coady: "Lets move on to the next agenda item then, nominations for Vice Chief" Harney: "Alright its moved that we take nominations for Vice Chief, do I have a second?" Coady: "I second" Harney: "you can't second, you moved!" Coady: "No, I recommended, YOU moved, so I can second!" We were of course joking, we're not that anal-retentive. Coady declined a nomination, Wheat was nominated and accepted uncontested as the new Vice Chief (for the next two weeks).
   Then we got into a discussion as to when exactly one is impeached. We know that an impeachment that is not successful is still an impeachment (for example I was impeached three times but never removed), but the Chief Justice before me resigned the morning of her impeachment, so was she technically impeached?
   Harney brought up that he'd talked to Student Judicial Affairs and they had said they might consider transferring review of parking ticket appeals to us. While this seems at first kind of an odd thing to add to our repetoire, a lot of Chief Justices at other universities I've talked to have mentioned having such a duty as well, and I think it might be a good addition to our role, didn't seem to have any major drawbacks (other than increased workload and potentially less interesting cases, but I think we could deal), and students would probably feel better about appealing their parking tickets to us than to faceless SJA droids. We were all interested in having Harney look into this further.
8:50ish - Meeting adjourned.


   In other news, the ASUCD Bill to formally remove us from UCSA has been written and introduced I believe. It was written by none other than former UCSA Chair Brent Laabs.
   Also, regarding the Berkeley scandal, apparently the attempt to pilfer the ASUC Berkeley treasury has been dropped from the Senate Bill. Now all it does is say that everyone should work on better bylaws. Now there's a shocking new policy. Maybe we should legislate that we should legislate as well!


Completely Unrelated Picture of the Day

Tom's catmom instincts kick in

   I ventured up to the Third Floor today, and ran into Kristen Birdsall. She informed me that it is her belief that the four justices OTHER than me on the Court were not properly selected, and thusly should not be considered to be currently in office. Specifically, the interviewing committee which was to forward nominees to Senate was incomplete, and some justices may not have been administered the oath of office.

   I am currently investigating these assertions, and will seek the advice of the 22 Chief Justices of other universities with whom I am in contact. I intend to take Birdsall's concerns seriously and maintain an unbiased position regarding this issue. As such, I will leave advocating for the involved justices up to them -- however, I must say that as a matter of universal policy, they are to be considered duly appointed until proven otherwise in some legitimate and official fashion.

   Since people are always eager to blame things on me, let me say also that the two procedures that were allegedly done incorrectly, composition of the interviewing committee and administration of the oath of office, are the responsibility of the President and the presiding officer of the senate, respectively.


Previously on Emosnail
   Three Years Ago Today: I am Appointed to the ASUCD Supreme Court - Sometime later I'd realize I hadn't been sworn in and go make someone administer it to me just to cover my ass. Also I meet Amy Zimmerman's twin sister Sharon and hang out with them. Also, good times as a Coffee House cashier. I was like, a CoHo cashier before it was even cool.