Snooze-fest.

Do you remember the good ol’ days freshman year? Sitting nervously in front of your laptop on a Sunday morning, awaiting the moment your friends would post the infamous pictures from the weekend? Then, it happens. At around noon, after a long breakfast spent reminiscing in the cafeteria Facebook explodes with album after album of weekend adventures. You spend hours laughing at your screen with your roommates: Who is that rando taking shots with us? You did a keg stand this weekend? Oh, so that’s where we got the blow-up doll!

Back in the day, Sunday mornings (or the entire day…) were dedicated to reflecting on the moments captured from the night before via Facebook. I know I used to love those days, when you found out you weren’t the only one running around campus having a good time….er….looking like a hot mess.

But fast forward three years when everyone and their your mother is watching what you decide to post on Facebook. You can’t just post everything you want anymore with reckless abandon; you’ve got your future to think about, and the judgment of your entire extended family (who are all now your FB friends), and the fact that Facebook is changing their privacy settings so often, you have no idea who can see your latest drunken exploits. So you start thinking before you post, de-tagging unflattering (from a professional perspective) photos, and deleting anything remotely inappropriate (“Let’s get crunk tonight!”)  from your Wall.

And everyone else is doing the same. A recent study at the University of California Berkeley found that young adults are becoming way more private than they were five years ago. A once tell-all generation is becoming more and more weary about what they’re posting, unsure of how publishing their personal lives in a public space will affect them and their futures. Which explains all of those recently hidden tagged pictures, absent funny drunken wall-posts, and lack o’ profile pictures of dudes wearing mesh green thongs…

Basically, all the good stuff. The reason I have a Facebook profile in the first place.
The stuff that I look forward to when I turn on my computer every Sunday morning.

While I understand it is way smarter to be a little hush-hush about your extracurricular drinking activities in public to land that perfect job and protect yourself from severe embarrassment, I’m a little disappointed.  Everyone’s new-found (super incognito) Facebook life is just not so great for the rest of us, bored in class with nothing to preoccupy us! I want the entertainment value! I want looking at new photo albums to be fun again! I want to point and laugh and snort!

Yes, we’re all going to grow up someday, but tell me – can’t grown ups still go to theme parties and post pictures for everyone to enjoy?

I’m the president of the Anti-PDA club.

You wanna express your love with your man? Fine, but keep it in the bedroom. No one needs to see you shoving your tongue down his throat (or your hand down his pants) when they’re going about their daily business.

And you know what else we don’t want to see? You shoving your hand down your own pants to adjust those boy shorts that keep creeping up your crack. Seriously, people, there are some things that should be left in the privacy of your own room/car/bathroom. Let’s make a deal, shall we? You keep the following disgusting habits to yourself and I get to keep my lunch down.

Deal?
Deal.

Loogies
Ew, ew and more ew.   As if the sound hawking up some phlegm isn’t bad enough, having to actually witness that slop drip from someone’s mouth is just plain disgusting.

Nail clipping
Sadly way too common, people think it’s okay to just clip their nails (and toenails!) in the office, the train, the bus, in class, etc.  But no, no, no. That is not, in any way, okay. Seriously, no one needs to see your clippings shoot across the room and they definitely don’t want to have to sit down on the remains. And, PS, filing those talons isn’t OK either. The sound of a file against nails? Shudder.

Using snot filled tissues to clean your snot filled nose
I get it; no matter how gross the sound of whatever is coming out of there, sometimes you just have to blow your nose. But that doesn’t mean that grabbing a dry, already-used something out of your pocket and then using it again (only to then stuff it back into your pocket) is okay!  Ok, so you’re trying to be green, but there are other people around. And we can see the leftovers. Smearing across your face. OMG, barf.

Picking…well anything.
I understand that sitting in lecture halls in college is actually painful, (well, painful is an understatement), but that does not mean that picking your face apart in order to pass the time is acceptable. Zits and scabs shouldn’t really be picked at in the first place, but if you must, do it in private. AND, keep your hands out of your ears. Picking ear wax is nothing short of nasty.  Q Tips were invented for a reason.

Adjusting down below
It could be itching, picking your wedgie, whatever.  No one really needs to see you do it.  Attempting to do it subtly is one thing, even though there is no way to play with your junk subtly, but going elbow deep to adjust that thong should be punishable by law. For real.

Public bathrooms may be gross, dirty, and definitely smelly, but they are the one place where it is acceptable (in a stall, please!) to do your nasty deeds.  Respect other people in public and keep your dirty self to your dirty self.

Is it true though? Or are the tabloids just running exaggerated fantasies to harpoon mass appeal? It’s hard to know because these grandiose lifestyles are perpetuated by the attention drawn to them (unless the celebrity is actually talented). Case in point — the Kardashian sex tape.

Bad publicity is good publicity, I suppose… especially for the venues that become associated with celebrity attendance (who doesn’t want to go to places where you might see a rockstar in a bar fight or catch Paris Hilton stripping down to… well… a slightly more naked version of her usual self?).

When talking about club publicity, nothing turns up the temp on a particular venue more than the drug habits of the celebrities. The scandalous behaviors of one Miss Britney Spears has made headlines for a variety of clubs in New York including an all time personal favorite, Marquee. Yes, she has been caught using drugs in the public bathrooms all around town and she’s not the only one. The question then becomes, of course, how many drugs are being done in these places? Certainly you run a high risk (pun intended) of being caught abusing drugs if you are a celebrity, but what about us ordinary folk? Are drugs swimming through the clubs as the tabloids would have us believe?

The answer is YES. I would never consider myself a drug abuser, but I know first hand that almost every club I have been to has it’s own underground microcosmic drug scene. Club Stereo was closed last year after several cocaine busts, though this came as no shock as Stereo was known for being “pot friendly” and leaving the club was like opening the Scoobie Doo van (smoke pouring out). Tenjune turns the other cheek when it comes to smoking the reefer in the VIP section and won’t ask why there are so many girls leaving the bathroom with runny noses. The real shocker comes from Le Souk where I witnessed some special k being snorted in the wide open.

I have also witnessed people getting arrested. Again, Club Stereo, you win in this department with flying colors. On two — no three occasions I witnessed drug raids there, but in the end, drug use was far far more frequent than the arrests that were made. This can probably be said true for almost any club and can be said especially true for celebrities. Amongst my celebrity encounters few involved sobriety (or much respect for, I dunno… THE LAW). Indeed, the Studio 54 mentality lives on in places like Bungalow 8 (where you might just order “a rum and coke.. hold the rum”).

These scenes are often under the radar of the public because of tight security. It’s nearly impossible to get in unless you know someone, ARE a celebrity or (at the very least) have your very own assistant. Places rarely have to answer to the law because undercover cops simply do not fit the demographic of these super-dooper (more like super-doper) high-end venues.

This doesn’t mean that the celebrity lives we read about aren’t embellished to perfection, but it certainly adds validity to the stories. The truth of the matter is, we aren’t living lives so separate from those we read about and if anything can be learned from the tabloids, it’s two things: 1) where the drugs are 2) where people get caught doing them.

But give me my own bathroom.

Co-ed bathrooms are one of college’s biggest mysteries. Who thought it would be a good idea? Who decided that it would be totally cool to completely devoid college kids of any type of privacy? Did none of the inventors of co-ed bathrooms ever have a crush?

And if they did, how could they fathom perhaps bumping into that crash while they still had pimple stuff on their face and crow’s nest on top of their head?

I just don’t understand it. The bathroom is sacred. Private. It’s not a place I want to discuss homework or chat about the newest TV show.

I don’t want to step out of the shower and come face to face with the captain of the lacrosse team. I don’t need that sort of horrible awkwardness in my life.

Also, in case no one’s noticed, guys and girls take very different approaches bathroom etiquette. Guys often think nothing of taking the entire sports section into the stall with them and staying in there for hours, while girls prefer to get in and get out without anyone really seeing.

Dealing with a dining hall “situation” (that bean burrito went through you a lot faster than expected) in a public restroom is bad enough, but passing a guy going into a stall at the same time as you? Incredibly, painfully embarrassing.

Has anything good ever happened in a coed bathroom? Has a romance ever blossomed by the hair-clogged showers or toothpaste encrusted sinks? Have the genders ever come together in perfect harmony underneath the harsh florescent lighting? I don’t think so.

After years of strict separation in high school, many freshmen probably look upon co-ed bathrooms as a titillating experience during their first weeks, but as time goes on, they learn the tired lesson that bathrooms aren’t for sharing.

Got a co-ed bathroom story? Let us know!