Snoqualmie

Input overload! Error! Engage overflow valve!

The noon hour on the UC Berkeley campus, today, Friday, February 24th:

• A rally to save the ethnic studies department, with drums, chants, and speakers who may in fact have been poe-slamming, on the steps of Sproul Hall,
• The free noon concert, a melodic and interesting indie band called Malbec, accompanied by a duo of red-clad and deliberately silly dancers, on Lower Sproul Plaza, and
• One of the Cal choral groups, possibly the Golden Overtones, attempting to make themselves heard singing a capella at Sather Gate.

Personally, I was sitting on the balcony of the student union building enjoying the concert and snickering over a Hardly Boys book that I had just accidentally checked out to myself for two years (this is actually true). Do you know what? I like Fridays. I like beautiful, sunny February-in-California Fridays with music over lunch and the whole damn afternoon to do with as I please. I like beautiful, sunny February-in-California Fridays with a balcony to myself where I can watch people skipping giddily around waving streamers at bemused passersby for no good reason except that a band is playing. I like these things so much that I decided to spread my Friday contentment and largesse around by buying Malbec's CD, which adds another item to my list of particularly urgent likes: $5 music.

At the rate I'm going, it seems probable that if I run into you at any point today I'll be seized with an unassailable fondness for you as well. I'd appreciate it if you'd take this into consideration in planning your afternoon activities. In fact, I'd love it.