oh, and

I would also like to thank everyone I know for all the wonderful birthday wishes and free drinks. I am truly grateful for you all, and you will never know how much you truly mean to me.

the best thing in the world

I've posted this before in my cleverly-titled "things" section of this blog, but I would like to reiterate the awesome nature of "Stuff White People Like".

Never has a written publication been simultaneously so true to my heart and so embarrassing. It's like the writers have personally interviewed me and everyone I know, and come up with a fairly comprehensive list of all the stupid shit we find fascinating for no reason at all.

I check it every day.

breakin' the law

The corner of 1st and Berendo is a right-turn only. There's a big sign right next to the stop sign, and a big arrow painted on the street.

Unfortunately, I need to turn left on 1st to go to school every day. So for the past year-and-a-bit, I've simply ignored the sign and gone on my merry way. I could never figure out why it was right-turn only to begin with.

Today, all that time I saved finally caught up with me. I got pulled over. The cop walks up: license, registration, and insurance.

"You a California resident or a student?"
"Student"
"What's your address here"
"[My address]"
"Ah, local. You should know about that turn then"
"Yeah, I know"

He writes my ticket, comes back to my window.

"You really should pay attention to that sign. Giving tickets for that is really easy"
"I imagine. Why is it a right-turn only, anyway?"
"I dunno. Doesn't make any sense to me"
He hands me my ticket, then says:
"So you have to appear in court on June 9th. You can get that date extended, though, if you want to. I go on vacation in July, so you might want to extend it until then"
"... What?"
"You didn't hear that from me. Have a great day"

And he's gone.

this is a disaster

The pentagon just announced they're deploying hand-held lie detectors to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an attempt to more accurately weed out terrorist activity. The detectors have three electrodes that attach to the suspect's hand, and the device displays "Red" if it believes the suspect is lying, "Green" for the truth, and "Yellow" if it can't tell.

We invaded Iraq six years ago in some misguided attempt at a "War on Terror", and now it's looking like that war has been reduced to 20 year-olds using color-coded palm pilots to protect us.

How far we've come.

socio-economics lesson

I'm going to preface this with saying that I am not an expert on real estate, gentrification, community development, or the North University Park neighborhood. But something fascinating is happening around here, and I want to give my two cents because it's my blog and I can so deal with it.

This week, the good ol' Daily Trojan has been running a series of articles on USC's "Master Plan", which is a 30-year, $3 billion plan for USC's expansion. (The details from the DT can be found here, here, and here.)

Since you probably don't want to read all that, the basic principle of the master plan includes incorporating the land that is currently the University Village on to campus, razing it and replacing it with retail and higher-end shops catered to students, and narrowing Jefferson Blvd. from a 4-lane arterial to a 2-lane campus street.

While obviously the university is wildly enthusiastic about the plan, the non-university-affiliated residents of the community are not, and I find this fascinating.

Let's start from way back. In the 1960s, USC used a policy called "eminent domain" to seize areas surrounding the current campus to give us enough space for the campus we have today. I had to look up "eminent domain" on Wikipedia, but apparently it's a policy the U.S. has that allows private property to be seized for specific purposes, generally government or development related. Apparently "university purposes" qualifies as sufficient enough reason to seize land. So after USC's land-grabbing 50 years ago, the community is naturally distrustful of basically anything it does.

This time, however, there's a bit of a difference. Downtown is becoming livable once again. There are lofts, condos, restaurants open past 5 pm, supermarkets (well, okay, one), a mall... Droves of people are moving in, land prices are skyrocketing, and gentrification is in full bloom. One mile south, USC is also growing. Enrollment is at an all-time high, construction is going on like mad (between the new commons and the new cinema building, everywhere I go borders a construction site), and USC is facing tremendous pressure to start housing students with an out-of-state enrollment of around 50%. The Jefferson-Fig-Exposition-Vermont border is bulging at the seams.

Meanwhile, evil corporations like Conquest Housing are taking advantage. The housing shortage around USC is jacking up prices like mad, forcing students to grab their ankles and driving long-term residents out of the area. There is a definite problem.

USC claims their master plan will ease this issue. By focusing on residences, they believe more students will move back to campus, easing local demand and decreasing traffic in and out of the area. And frankly, I agree, but only because USC's change fits in to the broader way Los Angeles is changing.

I hope it's rapidly becoming obvious that Los Angeles, in it's current form, is an unsustainable city. The population is not decreasing. Traffic is disastrously bad, and all this Caltrans improvement shit isn't having any effect that anyone can see. The freeway-based city dreamed up in the '50s does not work with the current several-million population.

Los Angeles is changing. Not quickly, but they're working on. For the past year, the MTA has been working on expanding the already-existing but barely-useful subway line to include several stops around USC's border before making it (eventually) to Santa Monica. The East-West public transportation option is the missing link, and I applaud USC for being one of the first institutions I've heard of in Los Angeles to say, "You know what? This is broken. And the only way to fix it is to actively make it more difficult for people to drive. Fuck you all, we're forcing you to take the train, or to walk, or to ride a bike".

As for the additional neighborhood impact, I'm afraid it may be a losing battle. Of course no one wants to drive anyone out. I doubt it's USC's goal to be a fungus on the community. But these wheels have been in motion for a long time. Capitalist demons like Conquest have been driving out residents for years, both directly through their price jacks or indirectly through their offensive and demeaning 15-foot billboard ads. At least USC is trying to help. It may not be the silver bullet, but it's a strategy that makes sense. Thirty years is a long time. The neighborhood will change, whether anyone likes it or not. Let's not let people like Conquest do it for us.

can't fight the flood

It's been a while. Probably long enough that everyone who was once so excited about the intimate details of my life has long since stopped waiting for updates.

Well, I'm still here. But I don't have much to say. The past month has been a sleep-deprived blur, and unfortunately, I'm still knee-deep in the shit until next week. All my neglected activities during production have caught up full force, and for the next five days I'm going to be struggling my way back to shore.

But then I'm done. DONE. Nothing but piña coladas and little drink umbrellas for the rest of the semester. Maybe I'll even drop a fancy picture update. How fucking sweet is that?

best part? already lost the coupon

Last semester, I bought a bag of cookies from a vending machine, and there were only three cookies in it. Dennis told me I could write them a letter, send them the bag, and they would send me a free box of cookies. It took a few months, but I finally mailed the damn thing.

A couple days ago, I got this in the mail:

"Dear Mr. Max Hurwitz,

We appreciate the time you took to report the experience you had with Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies, and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Our goal is to provide customers with wholesome, high-quality products. Stringent quality control measures are set for each of of our manufacturing process from the delivery of raw materials through the distribution of packaged foods.

You have the right to expect top-quality products from our company, and we make a concerted effort to maintain the highest standards with every package we produce. Many inspections take place during the packaging operation to prevent a situation like the one you reported. Occasionally, a partially-filled or unfilled package may get through the system undetected.

We value the comments you have shared with us and will report them to our Quality Assurance team for follow-up. The information that you provided will help ensure that our products and services continue to meet the highest quality standards.

We hope you will be pleased with your next purchase, and are sending a coupon for you to use the next time you shop.

Sincerely,
Natalie Felix
Consumer Affairs Department"

That response sounded like it came directly from the "politically correct things to say to an upset customer" manual. "We value the comments you have shared with us"? Come on, Kellogg's. You don't value shit.

I want my box of fucking cookies.

they're so open minded

This morning, France made history. It became the first country whose First Lady can be seen naked at any time.

Congratulation, France!

a big victory for lawyers everywhere

To say that the United States is a haven for moronic litigation is so cliché that I'm embarrassed I started my blog post like this. But I just read in the Daily Trojan (USC's primo attempt at journalism) about one lawsuit that is particularly close to my heart.

For those who aren't familiar with the fascinating politics of the West Adams neighborhood, USC has, for the past 100 years, been slowly eating away at the original neighborhood like a fungus. Any traces of non-University-related businesses or residences are rapidly disappearing, leaving an amorphous mass of Victorian structures right next new apartments built out of cheap plaster and hope.

One company (appropriately named "Conquest") has established itself as the official slumlord of USC, owning and "operating" over a dozen buildings in the area. Conquest is the devil. Their prices are ridiculous, their maintenance is laughable, and they admittedly take advantage of students who are just learning the process of leasing an apartment.

In the past few years, though, they have been winding down a particularly evil path. See, USC admits it has a housing problem. As they make the transition from a commuter school to an international college destination, they've been struggling finding the space to house their students. They can't build dorms fast enough. Recently, the school developed a plan to build a structure called the "University Gateway", which would be a mixed-use building on the corner of Jefferson and Fig that would contain retail space and housing for 1,600 students.

Conquest smelled a threat to it's diabolical monopoly, and did the only thing it could: sue. They sued the school for wanting to house students in buildings that weren't owned by Conquest. Seems ridiculous, but Conquest managed to throw enough bureaucratic hurdles in the permitting process to delay the project for two years. But USC had a plan: they sued Conquest for suing them. Hilarity ensued.

Today the DT announced that a settlement had been reached: both lawsuits were dropped on the condition that Conquest and USC aren't allowed to sue each other any more. Matthew Burton, a leader of the project, called the verdict "a big victory."

Excuse me? A big victory? If spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and ending up right back where you started is a big victory, then I clearly have been setting my sights too high. They went to court to fight for the right to not go to court anymore.

I love America!

lowbrow

I want to know when collages made from cut-outs of porn magazines found on the street became considered high art.

Can someone explain to me why that deserves more respect than Armageddon?