Secret Truth

No one will admit it, but I would venture to guess that a lot of women prefers real soda to diet soda. To an even greater degree, we prefer real Snapple to diet Snapple. I know this to be true. I have no evidence except the obvious deliciousness disparity. Diet Snapple tastes like Kool-Aid made with Splenda. It's artificially fruity swill. If we hadn't spent the better part of our lives with some sort of weight loss initiative, buying the diet product might not be hard-wired into our brain with such intensity. Cranberry-Raspberry is particularly heinous. It reminds me of a calorieless version of a store-brand Crystal Light I once bought at Wal-Mart.

Last night, as we all anxiously awaited the confrontation expected to arise between the Take Back NYU Occupiers and the cops that NYU threatened to use come 1AM, my friends and I shlepped down there to see what was going on. Besides the occupying students, dancing with their bullhorn on the balcony, there was a throng of like-minded students below making noise, and then probably one and a half times as many nay-sayers, equally loud and with even wittier signs. The rest of the 400 some crowd was ogling. I think this isn't an entirely inaccurate breakdown of our generation: we want the revolution, the excitement, the circa-1960s scenes of student activism. We'd just rather play spectator than young radical.

It occurred to me that NYU, which I have always assumed is perpetually cool and professional because it is so faceless and huge, might actually be starting to seriously worry about how this stand off might end. Every few hours I hear that they've been granted another night of amnesty, another deadline to get out. Frankly, I think it's been 2 and a half days, and the ones who are going to stay in there are going to stay in there until someone physically gets them out.

I've also decided I can't really read Gawker.com anymore. At least not until this is over. Too much NYU naysaying. Too much of the same "everyone who goes to NYU is a rich white over privileged sheltered vegan sissy" shit.

So my good friend Ned is part of a fantastic project called The Juan Way Tour. In short, they've totally overhauled a school bus to run on veggie oil and serve as a badass way to get across the country in what might be the coolest 2009 version of the classic American college kid Road Trip. Go to their website and check it out, because, as Ned explained to me today, they're trying to establish a network of allies across the US who can provide anything from food, to laundry, to a place to park for a night. At the very least, check it out.

I have never wished for something on the Internet to be true so badly

Bill Gates unleashes a swarm of mosquitoes on the crowd at TED