Doug Lief Lief is a fourth-year English student who dreams of electric sheep. Contact him at dlief@ucla.edu. Click Here for more articles by Doug Lief

In the present, UCLA is a post-apocalyptic nightmare world where its denizens fight for existence on a daily basis. They fend off the dangers of ‘professoroids’ and soylent dorm food.



The following is a fictional survival guide of one Homo sapien’s struggle to adapt, or to become food for someone higher up on the social ladder. I promise that I am not nearly as nerdy as the character. No, seriously.

This column is best read out loud with a terrible lisp:

This e-mail is a missive to all the kick-ass dudes in “Magic: The Gathering” chatroom, and I’d like to give a special shout out to Gothkidd01 who I just heard got his headgear taken off today. With that in mind, I would like to update my progress on project: Bruin-assimilate. I swear, this place is so like the Borg I should call myself Locutis. Hee hee hee hee >SNORT!!!<

Why did I type in the snort?

Anyway, Magicdudes, this was my first experience with a UCLA Thursday, and let me tell you, it was something out of H.P. Lovecraft (his early stuff before he totally sold out).

In the morning, I left my cubicle, er, dorm room, and took a trip down what they call Bruin Walk. Apparently it’s some sort of display put on by the psychology department to showcase paranoid schizophrenics. There were hillbilly preacher guys telling me I would writhe in hellfire, communists telling me I would writhe in hellfire (communism is so, like, 1917 anyway), and an Asian fraternity telling me I would writhe in hellfire.

I told the frat guy I would only pledge Lambda Lambda Lambda, but apparently they don’t have a chapter. Well, the dean is certainly getting an angry letter from me and Anthony Edwards about that.

  Illustration by RODERICK ROXAS/Daily Bruin

Then it hit me; it was already 10 a.m. and nobody had beaten the living crap out of me. I was neither in a garbage can, nor anointed with a “kick me” sign, yea Internet brethren, for I was saved from that scourge of high school: the dumb jock. At last Darwin had taken care of him. Now I only have to deal with the guys at UCLA who weren’t cool enough to be the dumb jocks in high school and are making up for it now. You know, the ones who walk around saying “Dude, that’s soooo gay” all the time. Seriously, those guys are so homo-phobicus I’m totally ROTFL ;) Ha, >SNORT!!!<



I finally got to class and you wouldn’t believe it, but this totally hot girl sat next to me. We struck up a conversation and she rocks. She says she’s still with her boyfriend from high school, which is back in Michigan. Score! This will take me to levels of platonic friendship never before imagined. I’ve got to tell you guys, this place is great. The women here bring a much-needed sophistication to the art of lying. It’s really a refreshing break from the overt rejection of high school girls.

So then I went to the Bomb Shelter for lunch, not far from the “Giant Waxy Ears” sculpture: a tribute to nerd-kind everywhere. I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. I told him the food was “hella-good.” He then pummeled me senseless for an hour and a half. It is a slang-habit I had better correct at all available speed.

But this is all a prelude to the best night ever. I went back to my dorm/walk-in closet where my roommate was waiting for me. He’s way taller than me, like, 5’7’’ or something. I mean, he’s freaking huge. I shall hereafter refer to him as Lotharg the Destroyer, as a tribute to the great ogre warrior Lotharg from Terry Brooks’ “The Elfstones of Shannara.” He’s a nice enough guy, but he listens to a lot of music from the Loud and Crappy genre.

Well, Lotharg got me into a frat party, where apparently appreciation of Loud and Crappy is mandatory. It was pretty cool for a while but then they brought in all this foam. It was fun to swim in the stuff until the foam had a bad chemical reaction with the cartridge in my inhaler and some kid wound up with third-degree acid burns. We decided that would be a good time to leave for the apartment parties.

I wasn’t keen on the idea of drinking so-called alcohol, but thankfully someone had left some individual servings of Jell-O out on a tray, and you know how we nerds love our semi-gelatinous non-Newtonian solids, hmm hey!

Why this all happens on a Thursday night is a mystery to me.

Supposedly it dates back to a fascist Chancellor in the 1930s who tried to declare that all students entering UCLA would now respect his new Year Zero calendar, wherein the Sabbath day of rest would be moved to Thursday to coincide with the Chancellor’s daughter’s piano lessons/Bacchanalia.

Getting back to the party, the next thing I knew, Lotharg was pressing himself against a mirror, claiming he was “Lord of the Glass” so I had to correct him because Brynwynnyll is Lord of the Glass, I mean, duh. Lotharg is supposed to be guardian of the sacred cudgel. LOL!

I was feeling a little dizzy myself, kind of like that great high you getwhen you find that first sword with a +7 against orcs. But then I turned around and saw that hot girl from class again. Sorry to say I was too blasted to remember her name, but going on probability alone, a UCLA female has a 78 percent chance of being either Jennifer or Sarah.

Jennisarah told me that she really felt like she could talk to me, which is girl code for: “regardless of sexual orientation, I’m going to treat you like my new gay friend.” She gets to dump all her problems on me, and I get to live the lie that I’m not attracted to her 24/7. It’s nice to finally have a relationship that’s so evenly give and take.

But here’s the best part Magicdudes, I totally laid down the Avatar of Will card and told her how I felt, and she said that maybe she’d consider being interested in thinking about possibly calling me sometime. So I looked her in the eye and told her “No.” I then walked out with my dignity intact, had some more special Jell-O, and (as I was later informed) got it on with the fireplace.

And so, Magicdudes, I bid you a kind Bruin farewell. Live long and prosper, and accomplish that by not saying “hella.” End transmission. 8-)