The undergraduates have arrived back at UCLA this week so every line on campus is now considerably longer. How is it they can get properly educated starting school so late? Sheesh.

The UCLA daily newspaper (what's it called? The Daily Bruin or something? Are bruins typically a daily occurrence in nature?) is almost indistinguishable from The Onion except that it's, you know, real.

The Onion, you see, exists on two distinct levels of satire. One is its take on the news of the day. The other, which I believe goes over the head of most of us city dwellers, is its parody of small-town papers with their overblown opinion pieces, "local color" columns written by local characters, fascination with minute goings-on not really suitable for journalistic coverage, etc.

Student newspapers I suppose are exempt from some of this scrutiny because despite being meant sincerely, we assume that they're published by people who don't know any better. In the meantime, I savor the feature articles about the outrageous difficulty of purchasing bedsheets in Westwood Village, and the editorial cartoons drawn with ball-point pen on dining hall napkins.

01 Oct 04