Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Freedom of speech, motherf**ker

Since I had NOTHING to do at work, my boss graciously gave me today off. I decided to go explore Berkeley, since it was on my list of things to do before I leave the bay area (in t minus 10 days...insane).

Walking down the street an aging hippie was advertising "subversive" (though not really) pins and buttons with the sign "Freedom of Speech, motherf**ker". I ask, what is the symbolic meaning behind the asteriks? Was this a pointed reminder than there really is no such thing of freedom of speech? Or was the man conceding that it was unnecessary to use the 1st ammendment for the sake of shock value? Or was the hippie just uncomfortable with the word "fuck"?

In other news, I decided to wander onto the campus of UC-Berkeley (or Cal, to locals, which took me like a month here to figure out). It was 3p.m on this beautiful day so students were Since I've been out of the college-bubble for six months, I decided to eavesdrop on what the kids were saying to help me with my return to academia. Here are excerpts from the first four convos I heard after I decided to do this experiment:

Overheard at Cal #1: "A 3.3 is an A-."
Overheard at Cal #2: "Yeah, I try not to highlight everything."
Overheard at Cal #3: "Did you ever find out what happened to that care-package?"

Yup, apparently college students in Berkeley are as dorky as those in Evanston. Thank G-d for "Overheard at Cal #4: "Just because you've been to Tel Aviv doesn't mean you can claim you've been to Israel." While out of context that makes absolutely not sense, since Tel Aviv is obviously in Israel, hey, it's freedom of speech, motherf**ker.

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