Whoops: It turns out people read my blog. The same people reading all the student blogs: counselors and staff. Not that I was saying anything terrible, but I assumed nobody was actually wading through this absolute swamp of amateur blogging. Turns out Kim read me calling Northern Californian papers a combination of “mediocre metro papers” and “suburban rags.” Oops. I was actually referring to Bay Area papers, which may say something about the way people in the Bay Area–namely, me–falsely perceive their centrality, but I didn’t mean to dis the Bees (Sacramento, Modesto, Fresno), or the Record (Stockton), or any other papers. Also, the counselors saw that I called them incompetent… Hopefully it was clear I was calling them incompetent only in the field of conspiring against students, not in being great counselors. They are more than competent when it comes to that. If they did think I was calling them generally incompetent, then I’m impressed at how nice they’ve been in spite of that. I’ll just assume they understood. And for the record: if they really wanted to conspire against us, I’m sure they’d do a fine job.
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The Reporter: With Aneesa, I’m page one editor of the CSPA Reporter. Which I was surprised about, since never having physically drawn-up a page design, I thought what I turned in was underwhelming at best. But I’m glad to have been chosen. That being said, you don’t have a ton of freedom with the paper, which is understandable. They’ve figured out a formula that works and each year new content is plugged in. But still, there isn’t much you change around. It’s really cool to be making a paper with people who are both very talented and very motivated, which can sometimes be a struggle back at our respective schools.
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Thursday Phenom: I know it’s called the Wednesday Phenomenon, but I thought yesterday was even more “phenomenal” than Wednesday. I’m not sure exactly why, maybe it was carry over from Wednesday, but in any event I’ve talked to a few new people and it seems like I’ve finally gotten the hang of waking up with just enough time to take a shower, eat breakfast and get dressed (not exactly in that order, I eat clothed) and get to class on time.
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Franks Famous Dogs
Franks: As a class exercise we looked up 950 California St., San Luis Obispo, to find what the address belong to. Turns out it’s Franks Famous Dogs, Stan’s favorite. Well. If you look up the address in Google Maps, there’s that handy Street View feature. See anything funny in the picture above? Look at the parking lot on the left. Now look below for a closer shot.
Probably not Frank.
I totally understand the whole doing-funny-things-when-you-see-the-Google-Street-View-car-come-by thing. But this isn’t even funny. At least not funny, funny. Vulgar funny, maybe. But it’s not truly vulgar, just sort of gross. I think Franks will survive this as I highly doubt many people scout out their hot dog restaurant options on Street View and then decide not to go because they see a semi-nude man in the parking lot.
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Cutting Edge: Jake, Tyler and I finally found our way to the Campus Market. Which was great deli-sandwich wise. But the place seemed a little understocked (it is summer), and was lacking Cup O’ Noodle (technically “Cup Noodles” but I mean c’mon…). But in case you were worried, I can verify that it does have a fully-stocked supply of VHS tapes…
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Unwritten?: What does Cal Poly do with ugly students that want to lead tour groups around? Because from what I’ve seen, the tour leaders are all quite attractive. While I’m sure attractiveness isn’t listed as a qualification on the application, there must be some kind of unwritten code that keeps the undesirables away (does this sound as bad as I imagine it does?).
Television journalism has the same issue. The woman leading the tour at the SLO station spoke of how great all the journalists who worked for her were. Judging from all the portraits of them hanging on the wall, they were also all conventionally good-looking people. What does KSBY do with all those hard-hitting great journalists with… faces for radio, as they say? Jake and I speculated there may be a room in the basement where all the ugly but good journalists are slaving over stories for their better-looking counterparts above ground.
LOL no worries Arno, you’re forgiven
I agree, it’s a shame that the Bay Area doesn’t have more consistently strong newspapers, but I think that is more a reflection of the industry’s financial woes and subsequent staffing cuts than the quality of the journalists there.
And I’m glad the phenomenon kicked in, even if it was Thursday rather than Wednesday. Have fun!