In today’s Dirty, a Eugene resident named Mark Frisbee helps university/city relations by insulting college students. Now, why would a resident of the community insult college students? Could it be that the resident has problems with the parties that happen? Or the stench of multicultural groups as they whine and cajole about the latest Jesse Jackson stunt they’ve pulled? No, all he is complaining about is the opinion of one man on the plight of food.
The column in question was written by Tyler Graf, who talks about the culture of food and how the “food police” are basically spoiling it for everyone out in the world. Mr. Frisbee responds to Graf, stating “If it were not for you destroying the planet we share and inhumanely and unnecessarily taking the lives of animals simply to satisfy your taste buds, I would leave you to your own slow, artery-clogged death.” So, Frisbee starts off by citing the issue of the environment and connecting it with the direct consumption of meat by humans. Very Carrie Packwood-Freeman-ish, and also so very wrong.
The kicker in this piece, however, is the last sentences of the piece: “Get used to the “Food Police” being in your face. For as long as there are slow learners like yourself running around, there will the members of the “Food Police” there to guide you down the right path.” *gasp* Oh NO! The Food Gestapo is going to come and take me away for eating a steak in front of a vegan. Oh the humanity! Oh the horror!
The issue brings up a pet peeve of mine: other people telling me that I cannot eat what I want to eat because it affects others. Yes, I know that what I eat can affect others, but I do not care. I eat because I can. I eat because I must, in order to survive. I eat meat because I like it. For me, there is nothing like hickory-smoked venison, a side of yukon gold potatoes, some lightly steamed green beans, and a glass of red wine.
It is people like Mark Frisbee on this issue, Tipper Gore on the music industry, and others who are the problems…attempting to restrict people rather than letting them be individuals.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to kill a fish and have some sushi.
Barbara Handley, a local self-described “hardcore enviro-hippy-anarcho- primitivist-poet-goddess” steps outside of the standard Eugenian hippie dogma to support shopping at Wal-Mart. Well, to be more precise, she doesn’t endorse satisfying all your consumer needs at the big box retailer, but rather she points out that the local Wal-Mart Supercenter on West 11th Avenue provides a wide variety of organic and local foods. More importantly, these products are available at affordable prices, which is ideal for families living on limited incomes:
On[e] of my pet peeves, which I’ll be ranting about one of these days, is the way sustainability and healthly food are luxuries for the affluent in the U.S. Organic food is terribly expensive, bicycles and trailers for a family cost far, far more than an old beater car, and supporting small local shopowners may not be a realistic option for families who truly have no slack in their budget. Wal-mart makes it possible for people with lower incomes to buy locally produced organic food at prices that are comparable to conventional food. I’m quite honestly in favor of anything that makes sustainable options available to a larger group of people.
Barbara also provides a categorized list of all the organic and local foods found at our local Wal-Mart.
It seems like capitalism and radicalism can find some common ground here in Eugene.
Holy smokes. If you showed this video to any group of straight male freshmen here at the University, I think you’ll see a doubling, nay tripling, of journalism and French double majors. Does the J-school coordinate any international internships with French television?
The Oregon Commentator has received a $750 “Balance in Media” grant from the conservative organization, The Leadership Institute. The grant will be used, in part, to complete our computing upgrade.
Let us take a break from our discussion on college football and turn our attention to bees. Yes, bees. Ever thought about how honey is made? Yeah, it is kind of gross.
Fortunately, this post is not concerned with honey. It is about bees. More specifically, it is about bees, fire and explosions. Enjoy.
My mother just received a menacing call from a woman, asking for “the Niedermeyer who works for the Commentator.” This charming female then issued a long stream of invective and obscenity directed at myself with no actual criticism or complaint. This is completely unacceptable to me. If you have somthing to say about what you read in the Commentator or on this blog, please post it on this blog or send it to ocomment[at]uoregon.edu. If your message absoloutly has to be delivered verbally, look up my number on the student directory or thefacebook.com, but do not– I repeat, do not– call my family about me or my work for the Commentator, as any such further menacing will be an invitation to criminal prosecution. I understand that my contributions and editorial stance may be controversial at times, and I accept responsibility for that, but my family has no control over my actions in regard to this publication. Therefore, please direct your criticism, hate and rage to me and me only.
Help contribute to the OC’s Back To The Booze Bar Guide by joining staff and contributers for a weekend tour d’horizon of Eugene’s finest bars. Over two nights, we’ll will savor the sights, sounds, and yes, even the smells of Eugene’s downtown and campus bars. Obviously, the schedule will be subject to some drunken changes, so try to make the first bar of the night. Or just hunt down the wasted kids in Sudsy Tee’s. Your call.
Friday night we will be hitting the downtown bars, starting with Jameson’s at 10pm. The cosmopolitan panache of downtown might suggest a slightly busier schedule, just a warning.
Saturday night we terrorize the campus area, starting with Indigo District at 10pm, working east on 13th.
I’m on a bit of a Slate fix as of late, so here’s Jack Schafer’s latest grumbling about the so-called meth epidemic. It’s about “methamphetamine offender registries”, which are springing up like, well, meth offenders in trailer parks.
As of now, Oregon does not have a meth offender registry, but give it time. Thanks to all the breathless coverage of meth use in our fine state, I’d say it may be on the next legislative agenda (not that the current non-online registry is any less intrusive).
Oregon Commentator alumnus, Mark Hemingway, has a new piece in the Weekly Standard about the behind-the-scenes Republican scrum for the Michigan primary. It’s well worth reading.
As some may already know, this is Mr. Hemingway’s second major article in the Weekly Standard, his first being his extremely popular article about Jack Abramoff and the making of Abramoff’s filmic opus, Red Scorpion.
Props to Hemingway, a man most of us haven’t met, but who is doing this publication (and the Weekly Standard) proud.
I somehow found myself at the Oregon Daily Emerald’s end-of-the-year bash at my old house on Kincaid St. While enjoying a pleasant conversation with ODE Editor-in-Chief Parker Howell about the role of the paper (a personal note to Parker: I think you may overestimate the paper’s readership, and I have photos from the EMU to prove it), belligerent alpha-male Lucas Calderon interrupted and asked if either of us wrote for the Emerald. My guess is that he was making sure there was someone there to offend before he started speaking. As I have previously stated, Lucas Calderon, the instigator in the “drunken hilarity”, is one of the dumbest people I have ever met, and here is why:
The fight began because Calderon first criticized the Oregon Daily Emerald for trying to tell students that they could not get drunk at football games. After Howell and I refuted this point by clarifying the role of the newspaper (being that the paper’s job is to report on what is going on, and it cannot be held responsible for the administration’s decisions), Calderon moved to a backup argument. I do not know if Calderon thought this next point was more valid, but this is what he insisted: “the newspaper should only write articles about how you can’t make fun of minorities.” I wish I could make this comment seem even more idiotic than it actually was, but I am not blessed with such miraculous writing abilities.
Calderon refused to leave a party where he was everyone’s enemy. Personally, I am usually very conscious of when my presence is unwanted, and at times, I overestimate the level of resentment towards me and just leave anyway. Calderon, however, seems to lack any sort of self-awareness, and perhaps even normal human consciousness. He instead chose to stand in the kitchen and belligerently yell at an encircling crowd of pissed-off party-goers.
Calderon’s lack of normal human reflexes indicate a sub-normal intelligence. Not only did the Corona bottle he threw completely miss Howell, it instead went straight into the back of Catie Hager’s head. Additionally, when Emerald reporter Nicholas Wilbur (who was painted yellow, by the way) pushed Calderon out of the house, Calderon unresponsively flopped out of the door like a rag doll. While some people may point out that alcohol impairs reaction time, they need to keep in mind that although Calderon was drunk, stupidity has a far more detrimental effect on human reflexes.
Calderon followed up his night of wacky antics by faking a phone call to the Eugene police in which he claimed he was sexually harassed at a party. This was probably an amusing gesture on Calderon’s part at the time. However, his phone call is what inspired Hager et al. to call the police themselves. So, without that insignificant little act of revenge, Calderon would not have found himself with felony second-degree assault charges. Brilliant move.
Did I mention that immediately upon arriving at the party, Calderon had me participate in a drinking game in which five people pretty much stood in a circle and pounded cans of Milwaukie’s Best Ice? I can only imagine what the future holds for this up-and-coming History major. Personally, I am going to be watching my back and perhaps wearing a helmet in case any beer bottles are sent my way.
Editor’s Note: The OC was not invited to this party. Our contributor is not a member of the OC or Emerald staff. Our researchers tell us that Negro Modelo bottles make far better projectiles than Corona bottles.
There will be a meeting this Wednesday at 1pm at our office at EMU 319. All staffers are asked to attend, as are all those interested in contributing to our summer issue, or becoming contributers/staffers in the fall. We are looking for columnists, reporters, staff writers, editors, artists, technical advisors, webmasters etc to help keep the Commentator on top of its game. If you like what we do and want to join in on the fun, show up.
Poor college students. We are constantly being exploited, whether by Joe Francis, of Girls Gone Wild fame, credit card companies, or The Man. Now we’ve got another exploiter, in the form of internships.
Sonia Smith, a former intern, writes a terrible — TERRIBLE — piece of drivel for her former Mas’ah, Slate.com. This is some real sub-par high school journalism shit here.
Slate was great (honest!), but I’d have much preferred a paycheck to the course credit. … But fulfillment won’t put money in your pocket. The credit I got for my internship was one of 19 that I accumulated above my school’s required number. And the credits are worthless for a lot of students: Because of the rise of Advanced Placement exams, savvy overachieving freshman (the same ones who tend to chase after internships) enter college with more credit hours than any previous generation.
Yes, Sonia, that sounds awful. But here’s the catch: We’d all like to make vast amounts of money for the work we do. However, there are trade-offs that we make in life. These trade-offs can often be measured in opportunity costs. Getting an internship at a high powered company may not fill your pockets with gold bullion, but it will add an impressive line to your resume and allow you to network with professional mucky-mucks, some of whom might find some space in their on-line publication for your ignorant whining.
Smith isn’t the first to deride internships. Anya Kamenetz, author of the apparently abysmal Generation Debt, has been making a career out of it. Go to her blog and weep tears of anger. Anya Kamenetz is like an Ailee Slater with a book deal and professional cred. Will Wilkinson says all that needs to be said about Kamenetz here (hat tip: The Agitator)
So I wonder, if internships are so terrible, why do college students apply for them? Or do I not understand Kamenetz and Smith’s point altogether?
Man, it’s, like, totally bullshit that we college students have to work within this capitalist system that exploits us so that these rich weasels can simply get richer. What we need to do is unionize the youth, and topple the power structures that feed the dominant paradigm … Oh, shit, I’m late for my brunch date with Jann Wenner at Le Cirque.
There must be people who read this blog who have gotten internships while in college. How were your experiences, and did you find them helpful in the future?
Step one: follow link. Step two: observe argument that Insurgent violates “harassment” clause of Student Conduct Code:
Harassment is prohibited at the University based on race, gender, religion and other characteristics if it involves “specifically insulting another person in his or her immediate presence with abusive words or gestures when a reasonable person would expect that such act would cause emotional distress or provoke a violent response,” according to the code.
Step three: regard text within bold tags. Step four: go about your day, leaving the Insurgent unmolested, because there is no fucking way that they have violated this portion of the Student Conduct Code.
Meanwhile, Senator (and law student) Wally Hicks provides a quote that’s either sinister or hilarious, depending on your tastes:
With Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito on the bench, I would hesitate to assume anything right now with regard to obscenity… Obscenity is always arguable to some degree or another.
Get it? They’re conservatives! So of course they’ll be on board for this idiotic fishing expedition! Make no mistake, it is in the best interests of nobody for the ASUO to start selectively enforcing a nebulously-defined obscenity standard. Even if Hicks is correct that the Insurgent could be judged “obscene” - and I don’t think he is, or at least I hope he isn’t - this would set an incredibly bad precedent for the University.
I wrote this post’s headline as a joke, but now it’s making me wonder: it would be amusing for someone to file a grievance asserting that the Insurgent actually is guilty of treason. I’m starting to think it would receive serious consideration, particularly once someone explains to Dallas Brown that organizing a public execution might get him on the news.
The University of Oregon’s own Department of Public Safety (which ‘the Ol Dirty informs us “is like a police department for the campus,” a claim akin to saying the ASUO is like a government for students) is trying to get themselves some Tasers. According to this Emerald article, the “attempted murder” of two DPS officers who were nearly drowned in the Millrace by a 52 year-old man two months ago both is and is not the motivating factor in the move to “explore the possibility of arming campus public safety officers with Tasers.” It appears as if “Our pepper spray didn’t work this one time” is all the argument that DPS has to make to bring a “less-lethal” weapon which raises serious medical questions to our campus. Hopefully the Administration realizes that making DPS feel more like “real cops” is not worth the inevitable fiasco when some undertrained campus goon zaps the wrong kid, or someone with a heart condition.
Barbara Handley, a local self-described “hardcore enviro-hippy-anarcho- primitivist-poet-goddess” steps outside of the standard Eugenian hippie dogma to