It’s too bad I’m graduating this week. I just found
out that Bunche Hall has actually always faced the same direction
and was never rotated because it was shining glare onto the 405.

We get contemplative as our college careers come careening to a
close. Instead of focusing solely on papers, finals and vacation
plans like we have at the end of previous quarters at UCLA, we
spend our time musing about the unanswerable questions, such as
“Have I spent my time here wisely?”, “Have I made
the right decisions?” and “Will they still let me
graduate if I have $4,750 worth of unpaid campus parking
tickets?”
But while we look back on our time here with regret or
wistfulness or simply with joy that we’re done, we also fear
for the time ahead.

I would bet a few dollars that most of you are not particularly
pleased with the president’s performance at the moment.
I’d also bet many of you would like to see him out of office.

With gas now approaching $800 per gallon, and your drug dealer
turning the screws just as you’re needing your
end-of-the-quarter fix, you’re probably finding your wallet
uncomfortably empty nowadays.

Tonight, Undergraduate Students Association Council elections
will come to a nail-biting end. Members of opposing slates will
gather in front of Kerckhoff Hall to wait for the results to be
announced.

It’s late on a Monday night. You have homework to do, but
instead, you’re downloading some Rage Against the Machine,
watching the end of the UCLA-Gonzaga game again on YouTube, and
perusing the message boards at BigCorporationsSuck.org.

During the Cold War, the two most heavily armed militaries the
world had ever seen stared each other down, and neither fired a
shot. During the current quasi-Cold War between India and Pakistan
over Kashmir, two of the world’s most bitter enemies have
come to the brink of nuclear war, and neither has pulled the
trigger.

We avoid numbers just like we try to avoid the people they
quantify:
“¢bull; 88,000: the number of homeless people in Los Angeles
County ““ three and a half times the number of students at
UCLA.

As New Orleans residents begin to inch back into the waterlogged
city they used to call home, attempting to find new ways to live
their old lives, the companies that provide Americans with their
insurance are attempting to extract every last dollar from them in
a fashion similar to wringing a wet towel.

On a Saturday night in Indiana, Armageddon looms. “This is
like Y2K,” Purdue University information technology spokesman
Steve Tally said to Wired News, “except this one is really
happening.”
I, for one, am stocking up on canned goods.