Berkeley Sucks the Fat One

It's official: Berkeley sucks.

By Berkeley, I mean both the city and the school. But I'll start with the city.

There are zero good bars in Berkeley. There are a zillion annoying college kids, who I can no longer stand to be around for over ten minutes. The United States Communist Party is based right next door to Berkeley. Now I'm all for universal health care, but hating cars, claiming Bush planned 9/11, and having the absolute stupidest traffic patterns in the universe do not help the cause. The traffic in Berkeley is obscene--and why? Why do so many people want to go there? After all, it sucks!

In 1999, on a weekend trip to San Francisco, I attended a party in Berkeley. Walking to the car afterwards, someone threw a bottle at my head and missed by inches. I started screaming at the nearest building and what do you know, a bunch of stoner dudes lazily came to the edge of the roof and denied everything purely because I was about to rip their heads off. Guilty! In 2003, not having learned my lesson, I attended another party in Berkeley. This time, I was alerted that someone in an SUV had rearended my car while trying to park, and then fled the scene. There was minimal damage, although my Redskins license plate holder was toast. But still, Berkeley sucks.

On to the school: I didn't get into Berkeley Law. Keep in mind: I didn't WANT to get into Berkeley Law, as their International Law program ain't that strong, and I hate Berkeley and wouldn't want to live there. Even so, I applied as my safety school, thinking that at least it would be cheap. Apparently there's something Berkeley Law doesn't get, as I was accepted into better schools in a real city, not one filled by smelly, dumb-driving socialists. Now I don't even want to go to law school, which pisses me off even more.

Most kids who go to Berkeley think they're the shit on ice. And granted, Berkeley's an okay school, and there are lots of smart people who went there. But still, it ain't Harvard, it ain't Yale, it ain't Stanford, it ain't Georgetown. And most kids who go there think that California is the center of the universe and everything outside of it must suck because there is no beach, whereas the rest of the country thinks California is full of airhead weirdos that can't get over cold weather. I've lived both places, and both have valid points. But still, Berkeley kids, your school is fine but not amazing. Get over it.

Most annoying are the people who support the sports teams. This year, for example, Cal had an allegedly good football team and was denied a bid to the Rose Bowl. Berkleyites threw a hissy fit. And then, at the lowly Holiday Bowl, they got steamrolled by Texas Tech. Earth to Berkeley--Texas Tech sucks. And so do you.

The basketball team situation is even worse. If Cal ever beats Stanford or UCLA they think they are God's gift to basketball. Well I've got news for you, Golden Bears: the Pac-10, with a few exceptions, is a terrible conference. UCLA, Arizona and USC make it interesting sometimes, but Stanford is a choker team and the Pac-10 regularly gets smacked around by real conferences, such as the ACC and the Big East. Maybe you guys should lay off the weed and start working on your defense instead.

Finally, the latest affront: UC Berkeley extension denied me admission to not one but TWO writing classes. Why, you might ask? Am I a bad writer? As you've read this far, the answer to that is clearly no. In fact, UC Berkeley could not round up eight people to attend either their Novel Writing Workshop OR their Advanced Writing Workshop so they cancelled the classes. Of course, when I called to find out why nobody had contacted me about admission to the program despited having mailed in my submissing six weeks in advance, they lied and said the instructor was still reviewing manuscripts, not that their low-quality instructors don't attract anybody except the hungriest writers like myself. To sum up, they suck, and I'm going to Stanford, which has instructors I've actually heard of.

Now to be fair, there is one good thing about Berkeley. They have a great dog pound. (Not to be confused with Tha Dogg Pound.) There's a nice dog park too. But if you're not a dog, the place stinks.