I'm back! I had a great time with the Beekeeper and the Texas and California roommates. I also got to do something I've been excited about for months: I went to Serendipity Books, one of the most famous used books stores in the world. It's chaos inside; I didn't buy anything because I couldn't get to most of the shelves. That's not a bad thing, however, in my book -- it's a dream come true!
I didn't quite see any of these people, but I did meet one guy putting up "50% of New Yorkers believe 9-11 was an inside job" and "Bush caused 9-11" signs; when I talked to him, he explained that Bush worked with evil Jews to fake the WTC attack. All righty then.
The Sri Lankan Hamburger, the Kerry voter with whom I was staying at the beginning, told me she's started walking around certain parts of campus with trepidation, because of the harsh verbal assaults from certain LaRouchies. She took me to her classes as well; I was so gratified to hear for myself the claims that earn a certain professor there some measure of ridicule -- to wit, that Sanskrit is a Dravidian language.
She and most other people I met expressed shock and surprise at the outcome of the election (and, amusingly, surprise and disbelief at the new employment numbers). The "it's all the homophobe vote" idea seems to be catching on there, numbers (and New York Times articles) notwithstanding. The San Francisco Examiner had two headlines visible through the newspaper-box window: "Bush sets forth ambitious agenda," and "Hundreds of city workers to get laid off." You had to look inside to find out that the latter headline had nothing to do with Bush's agenda, but rather with SF's budget being shot because of massive welfare-state/entitlement spending.
To be fair, I did notice one Jehovah's Witnesses table in the tabling area, but, at least when I walked by, they were quiet and looked lonely. The Jewish ex-Boyfriend assured me that Berkeley College Republicans and "Jesus-People" and so forth do exist, and, though vastly outnumbered, they're just as shrill as the rest of their classmates. The level of dialogue at Berkeley, he said, consists of groups of people shouting past each other.
For all the bizarre conspiracy-theorists and occasional Jew-haters I come across here, man, I'm glad I'm at Texas.
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