Grandma is dying...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/08/BA4A12PS83.DTL&tsp=1

So... big news! They have cut down all but two of the trees. The university finally said FUCK IT and decided to proceed. However, they are still unwilling to be the bad guys and actually pull the sitters out, so there is one lone tree stand in one lone tree. It was pretty pathetic looking. I decided to take a little drive around and check out the circus. Things I saw:

-Several news crews with their ambiguously ethnic reporters eagerly noting the hullaballoo and waving enthusiastically up towards the tree line.

-About 15 police officers guarding the fence, obviously wondering how (again) they ended up spending the past year and a half sitting for 8 hours a day guarding these morons and regretting ever joining the force.

-A lot more old people than I would have expected. And by old people, I mean Berkeley's particular brand of aging hippie. Several women in long organic cotton dresses, their graying hair loosely braided and tied with a length of hemp rope and a sheaf of flyers clutched to their Obama button adorned bosoms were looking rather dour as they glanced hopelessly into the trees. A lot of men in their fifties sporting backpacks and the same tshirt they've been wearing to protests/prayer circles for trees for closing in on fifty years....

- A PRAYER CIRCLE. Yes, there were actually a variety of hippies, young and old, all holding hands and chanting something. Not a big group, but still...

- A frat boy riding a bike who was SUPER HOT in that pretty preppy white boy way that I so adore... AND I think that by his expression, he was also thrilled to see the hippies get their comeuppance.

- Lots of angry looking young hippies. Really fucking pissed looking. Like the way they looked when they saw all the pictures of the prom they didn't go to because they don't believe in that sort of thing in the yearbook and all the rage they felt towards the popular kids who had been having fun and rubbing it in their faces ALL THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL while they themselves cared about SERIOUS issues and the environment and shit were laughing and, yet again, having a good time. Anywho, they just look really angry.

-Homeless people. They tend to show up when anything interesting in Berkeley is going down in public. They can usually make a fortune of the hippie tourists coming in from like Modesto and Stockton and shit.

-Lots of tractors and other construction related stuff in an empty field!! Because they cut the treeees down! All that's left, apparently, is the one they call Grandma (really? I mean, really?) and one other....


So some pretty big shit is happening. Keep checking back.


GO RAIDERS!!!!!!!