Bear Basics and its Obvious Respobsibility to Educate You

As is perfectly logical, reasonable, and noble for a group of privileged suburbanite attendees of the nation’s top public university to do, 70 students marched out of their desperately under-funded classes, tripped over half as many starving homeless, dodged twice as many bullets, and finally arrived at the Bear Basics, fully aware of the broad spectrum of problems facing the world today, and took offense to a t-shirt.

Correctly realizing that they themselves would one day be forced to buy and wear every T-shirt sold on the premises, the students continued to valiantly take offense to no less than two additional garments, demanding that they be removed.

It has always been a personal fear of mine that I might one day see a consumer item in a store and be faced with a choice of whether or not to purchase it. I am infinitely relieved to know that there are warriors out there willing to really take a stand and make sure to eliminate choices for the rest of us in this great, free society.

In a show of genuine concern for the overwhelming prevalence of possible negative choices available to consumers, the store’s vice president met with students to discuss alternative designs that portray people of color positively.

These students probably have a divine right, as the sole guardians and ambassadors of knowledge (as endowed by nature of their being enrolled in a humanities major at Berkeley), to determine between themselves how everything should be portrayed on clothing that other people wear.

"We're at Berkeley, which is supposed to be one of the most open and diverse campuses," one brave student said, solidly defending her position that rigid bans should exist to prevent the private sale of merchandise featuring vague messages that possibly reflect viewpoints not in perfect alignment with her own. "This is ignorance projected on a T-shirt," she went on to objectively argue, effectively explaining why it should be illegal for anyone else to choose to wear it.

Well said. In the name of freedom of speech, expression, and diversity of perspective, take down those T-shirts!

Heroic? Valiant? Above and beyond the call of duty? Sufficient adjectives do not exist to describe the recent fearless and selfless actions of Berkeley police, who on Friday, April 27th probably saved the world or something when they stuck a microphone to some 19 year-old college kid and paid him to ask people for beer, all the while waiting in vans across the street ready to pounce upon any and all threats to the free world who would dare to furninsh a legal adult with a mildly alcholic beverage. One such hardened and rotten criminal dared to do so, a certain 24-year old female San Pablo resident and former student; a time-bomb, waiting to explode, probably taking a break from systematically raping and drowning her neighbor's children. The police bravely fined her ass $350, while she cried (see picture, inset).

Let's face it: the rapist we read about in last week's paper probably turned himself in already, and that guy who got shot by the other guy who they haven't found yet is long dead. And really, some the Missing Person posters we've been collecting have been there for quite a while. It's high time that both we and the Berkeley police move on to solving our city's more pressing issues, including, and thoroughly limited to, fully independent adults with mechanical engineering degrees paid by the police to pretend to want to consume trace amounts of alcohol on Friday nights.

It is always a relief to know, especially in the midst of our state's financial crisis, that our government is ever willing to put first things first and spend our tax dollars fighting artificial crime, rather than wasting its resources on useful things like education. Of course, it is very difficult to identify and locate real criminals, but our illustrious police force has nonetheless increased its law-enforcement efficiency by capturing as many as 100% of its paid law-breakers, effectively increasing the total rate of crime punished! High-five!

Of course, nothing about these new methods of heroism widens my smile more than the comforting knowledge that any person I might run into might be "shoulder-tapped" and paid to ask me leading questions! Surely nothing could be more effective in building a strong sense of community, goodwill, and intimacy of conversation than an ever-creeping suspicion that the police are listening in, ready and waiting to save the world from the ravages of friendly generosity between students.

I can only a dream of a future in which we can ALL earn our taxes back by spying on each other. This new, reinvigorated and focused incarnation of the police department seems to be bounded by no limits- perhaps someday, many of us will be paid to be the first to jaywalk across empty streets... to drive at 70 mph right behind a car doing 65... to do our part, as loyal citizens of this great and free nation, to expose the disgusting criminal underbellies of all those around us for CA$H