Okay ranting time!

You may not be aware of this, but I am a college student, enrolled and attending the University of Southern California, more commonly referred to as USC. (I'm in the school of theatre )

This past weekend, I believe on friday, there was a block party on 30th street, between Orchard and McClintock. This block party was cleverly designed to be "around the world" with different houses having different themes.

Also, "the row" or, our row of frat houses, was not having any parties this week, as it was rush.

So as predicted on the infamous facebook group, over 1,000 students showed up for this block party, myself included.

I wasn't drinking, myself, having already ruined my system enough at college to not being able to smell alcohol without getting sick, but I was going from house to house, hanging out with people, having a good time. At the Spain house, I think, they were playing some pretty tight music, so I was out on the porch with some friends dancing. I was up on the porches railing dancing at one point and somebody put a spotlight on me, and, as a theatre student, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So anyway. A little past midnight this house turned off the music, which was lame, so my friend Sam and I went off to find another house to go enjoy.
Nobody else was playing music. LAME... and we decided we'd peace and go spend the rest of the night chillin at my place. So we wove through the tightly packed street, getting pressed and groped by the thousands of people crammed into this street, and left.

As we're walking back we hear a loud noise and turn around to see a helicopter flying in over what looks to be 30th street. We laugh at LAPD for sending a helicopter to what was just a mass of college students trying to have a good time, and continue on our way.

Flash to about 2, maybe 3 hours later. I'm in my guys friends apartment, playing Rock Band, and my friend Blake walks in, talking about a riot and that he actually got hit by a police officer.

Apparently LAPD sent in a RIOT FORCE to deal with this party. College students are apparently more threatening that the various other characters walking around South Central LA at 4am. Honestly, if LAPD had left the students alone, they would have all wandered home eventually. Instead, in all their wisdom, they incited a riot out of over 1000 students, not all of whom were drunk, arrested 9, and made it nearly impossible for students to get back to their apartments until the early hours of the morning.

The police used batons, mace, tear gas, rubber bullets to hold back the students. My friend Blake claims he drunkenly said "whats going on" and a cop yelled "GET BACK!" and hit him with the baton.

LAPD is a powertripping force of men who think that using violence against unarmed, non-violent college students is a good use of their time.

Assholes. I know its immature to call them assholes, but still.

For those interested, heres a video of this that I found, taken from the front lines.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjI2Zy…

Also, its fair to say, I'm just angry that I wasn't there for the riot. I apparently left 5 minutes too early.

Okay ranting time!

Lately, the only forum I've been chilling in has been the thumbshare forum, because there all anybody does is whore their artwork, theres not really that much interaction. So I've been there for awhile, and I guess I FORGOT why I left the other forums, like deviants, and the entertainment forums.

So I went back.

To discover that nothing has changed.

Dear Deviants, hear me, condescension does NOT make you cool. Yes its true, some people should smack their parents for breeding. Those people should not post in the forums, because it offends the rest of our intelligence.

But I was on a forum tonight and I saw someone had posted in a book forum "I liked this book it was decent." That was the whole post, basically, and someone MOCKED him with "okay, glad you liked it"

I'm asking, in the BOOKS forum, whats wrong with saying you liked a book? THe poster was probably looking for some discussion on this book.

So I investigated, and went to the page of the arrogant deviant who mocked. His journal consisted of links to other conversations showing off how wonderful his powers of condescension were.

Really? Really?

Its just not necessary. If someone say something stupid, engage them in a conversation and by all means shut them down. But just being pointlessly cruel and then flaunting it is NOT going to make deviantart a community where young, inexperienced artist will want to come and share their art, and converse with other artists.

If I had gone to the forums when I first joined this site, I wouldn't still be here, they probably would have made me feel so terrible about myself I would have fled.

I might write a news article about this if it keeps pissing me off.

Its one thing to shut down a dumbass. Its quite another to harass someone who just made a mistake, or misspoke.

grrr.. I hope that made sense, its 1am, and I haven't slept in a very long time.