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Mar 11, 2010 Posted by VC on Mar 11, 2010 in Breaking news | 0 comments

Beefing up background checks

by Vanessa Castañeda

FREMONT, Calif--

Dec 11, 2009 Posted by VC on Dec 11, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

On the 11th hour of the 11th day

I share with you my final multimedia project. (Complete coincidence, I swear.)

For more stories about silicon valley by Stanford journalism students, check out svalleypulse.com.

Oct 23, 2009 Posted by VC on Oct 23, 2009 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

Nudity should not be a crime

It’s a standard morning routine. Get out of bed, brew a cup of joe. And if the house mates aren’t around, why bother putting clothes on? Eric Williamson knows what I’m talking about. The Springfield, Virgina resident was going about his business in the buff when a lady walked by his house with her kid. She looked in his window, saw his birthday suit and called the cops.

Creating laws to protect people from people who revel in imposing their bodies upon others is understandable. I certainly don’t want to sit in a puddle of potentially infected spooge left on a bench by some random naked person. That’s something easily prevented by wearing clothes.

However, when a person is arrested for being naked in their own kitchen, a line has been crossed. Not only does this violate a primal urge to roam free unrestricted by fashion, public dollars and man hours were spent on sending officers out to the residence. What a waste.

What irks me further is that the woman was walking through Williamson’s yard with her son. What’s the big deal if he sees an adult penis? The mother has obviously been exposed to penis in the past. Why was she so upset at the sight of a naked man that she called the cops?

I wouldn’t mind a naked man in my kitchen making coffee. One more attractive than Williamson, naturally.

In related news, the very chiseled swim team was running around campus earlier today, wearing only sneakers and fire engine red speedos. Ahh, life is good.

Oct 16, 2009 Posted by VC on Oct 16, 2009 in Media | 0 comments

Just for Me?

In a grumptacular state of red wine induced hungoverness, I perused through my Google reader’s customized content.    Hello Niiu. It’s  a start-up newspaper based in Germany whose papers will be delivered for the first time on November 16th.   Not just a paper, but a customized paper very similar to the digital content my google reader’s rss feeds aggregate. You pick your content, Niiu prints it, and then it gets delivered to your door.

One thing that may prove challenging to their revenue stream is that the reader selects the content that will be printed online the evening before it is delivered.  Why would I get a print version of something I’ve already read?  It’s unclear whether the stories would be blurred, leaving only headlines available for selection. Would I still be interested in the topic the next morning? Or would I move on to the latest and greatest updates in my GReader?

Sep 18, 2009 Posted by VC on Sep 18, 2009 in Musing | 0 comments

The Beavers conundrum

Surely this was a name made up by a perv male grad student to take advantage of another Netflix promo code. It seems like too much of a proclamation of  sexual prowess created to raise the eyebrows of mailmen or make frat brothers snicker.

Robyn Beavers.   That can’t be a real name.

When the two Netflix envelopes in my mailbox greeted me from their bed of junk mail, I flashed back to that night in Vegas.  I knew my laptop was on the nightstand when my eyelids creaked open the next morning,  but the specifics of the night’s activities were cloudy.  Last thing I remember was pointing my new H2 Zoom audio recorder at an obviously inebriated, chatty cathy doing a sobriety test on the side of  ”The Strip” to test my gain settings and microphone pickup pattern. Had I been lame and ordered a Netflix account? Nah.  The Manhattans weren’t that strong.  Plus, a bunch of my friends have shared their Netflix password with me.  Why would I pay for something I can get for free?

I excitedly considered how much trouble I would get into if I satisfied my curiosity and ripped open the envelopes like it was Christmas morning.  Just to see if I had lucked out and gotten an interesting flick I’d never heard of.  Thieving other people’s mail is a crime, sure.  But what’s the rate of enforcement on post pilferers around here? From reading the SUPDS Community Crime alerts, I should be more worried about 125 lb Asian males with designer glasses who like knives.

No one would ever know if I had opened up the envelopes, watched the DVDs, then slipped ‘em back into the return envelope. I doubt The Beav would come knocking on my door demanding to know where her discs were. Then again, when I looked at the title of the movies through the bar code slot of the envelope, I thought maybe she might.

Galactica. Season 1: Discs 1 and 2

So not worth it.

Naturally, I facebooked the name to see if she was for real.  Turns out she is.  Poor thing.

Am I really the only person who would have a pre-birth brainstorm session to think about all the ways that the name I chose  for my baby could be distorted during its adolescence?  Seems like common sense to think about how a first name sounds with a last name. E.g.  If the kid’s last name will be McCrevice, you should have the forethought not to name your child Phillip.

Now that I’m thinking of it, if I do reproduce somewhere down the line, this is definitely going to be an event for only my most inappropriate friends.  I’ll need all the input I can from the types that enjoy a waltz on the douche side.  I can see the event invitation now.

You’re cordially invited to “Shame That Name.”  Bring your own puns.  Thesaurus optional.  Best two out of three gets godparent status and a guilt trip if the kid doesn’t go to college. <insert obscene event description here>

I don’t want to have to convince my sobbing tween to come out of the bathroom they’ve locked themselves into, ‘cos Freddy “I’m peaking in high school” Football Hero bragged about how he burgled the beaver last night all over his friends’ walls.

If Facebook hasn’t gone the way of the Myspace by then.

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