I am so sick of hearing local teenagers complain about where they live.

(I live in Danville, so this is specific to that; however, I’m sure there are similar issues in a lot of towns/cities, nearby and elsewhere.)

If only I had a dime for every time I have heard someone my age complain about living in “the middle of nowhere.” Excuse me? Danville is thirty miles away from San Francisco, twenty from Oakland and Berkeley, less than an hour and a half from Santa Cruz, two hours from Monterey…I could go on, but you get the idea. At the risk of sounding dorky, I would have to say that Danville is in the middle of everywhere rather than nowhere. In my opinion, kids who call Danville the middle of nowhere need to look at a map and think of all the other places they could be living - be it a town with a population of twelve that actually is in the middle of nowhere, an unsafe part of a big city with a bad school system, or a third-world country, Danville kids have it pretty good in comparison.

I am far from innocent in this - I did my share of complaining about Danville until I realized how idiotic that was. While I dislike a few aspects of my hometown and definitely look forward to moving elsewhere in two and a half years, I can’t imagine a more ideal place to have grown up. Aside from the proximity to everything that is good in the world (the Bay Area) we have near-perfect weather, highly rated schools, safety, and even a nice downtown area.

Another big complaint I myself have made and have heard from others is about all of the “spoiled Danville kids.” I have one thing to say about this: spoiled Danville kids complain about Danville. By complaining about Danville, and, yes, the spoiled Danville kids… one becomes a spoiled Danville kid.

So, please, Danvillians and non-Danvillians: before you open your mouth to whine about where you live…stop.

-Allison Levitsky

I keep stumbling upon articles about Facebook.

This one is about Beacon, a Facebook application, that, from what I can gather, tells all the user’s friends exactly what he/she has been doing not only on Facebook, but on other websites as well. I don’t know how this works (after reading about it I didn’t want to add the application!) but it seems to be stirring up quite a controversy.

And this one made me laugh; it really rings true. The all-powerful Facebook relationship status!

-Allison Levitsky

I would be very afraid right now if I were Hillary Clinton or John Edwards.

That is all.

-Allison Levitsky

I couldn’t help but get excited when I heard about the San Francisco plastic bag ban that was put into effect last night at midnight.

Plastic bags drive me insane; especially the frivolity with which people use them. They cause litter, hurt wildlife and often end up in the water - like the huge mound of plastic in the Pacific Ocean that is said to cover an area twice the size of Texas. Not to mention the unnecessary waste created in the production of plastic products.

Replacing the plastic bags in San Francisco are biodegradable bags made from corn by-products.

I look forward to seeing how far this ban spreads, and how long it will take to happen in the East Bay. It will be a happy day when we in the boondocks of Danville can check out at Safeway and be asked, “Paper or corn?”

-Allison Levitsky

I’ve been a member of PaperBackSwap since the beginning of last month and I’m loving it. You go to the site and make a list of books you want and at least nine books that you have that you are willing to get rid of. If someone else has one of the books you want, they have to send it to you, and if someone says they want one of your books, you send it to them. It’s free, too. It’s not as economical as I thought, because you have to pay for postage on books you send out (around $2 per book) but the site is rather addicting. So far, I’ve sent out eight books and have received eight.

-Allison Levitsky

Lately, I rarely have a conversation during which I don’t bring up a little anecdote from one or both of my two current TV addictions: 24 and The Office.

I don’t remember the last time I watched TV in the traditional manner - turning on the TV to view a show with commercial interruptions. I’m a deprived individual (yeah, right) with basic cable and no DVR, so I have about 20 channels to choose from and I would have to remember when a specific show is on in order to watch it. Forget that, I order season discs of TV shows from Netflix.

Because of this recent addiction, I find it much easier to talk to people who watch either 24 or The Office. Who else but a 24 fan would appreciate a play-by-play account of Elizabeth Nash, Senator Palmer’s aide, stabbing Palmer’s would-be assassin with a letter opener? (Yeah, I’m way behind - just finished disc 5 of the first season.) And who but a devotee of The Office would stand around and listen to me gush about the Pavlov-esque experiment Jim conducted on Dwight, offering him an Altoid every time he rebooted his computer?

And don’t get me started on the time at the drugstore when I spotted glasses that looked exactly like the ones Rainn Wilson wears. I was with one of those poor, sad friends of mine who don’t watch The Office and therefore didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was shrieking about.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t shrieking. I’m pathetically involved in these shows but I haven’t gotten to that point yet.

I mean, I wasn’t hardcore enough to go to the gathering in Scranton, Pennsylvania. (Does anyone know anyone who went? I kind of want to hear how it was.)

-Allison Levitsky

I heard about this guy named DaVido on NPR today - he’s a singer who wants his album sold in Starbucks stores. His song, “Java Jitter” would be great publicity for Starbucks (as if they need more…) but for whatever reason Starbucks refused his music. So DaVido has taken his video camera to hundreds of Starbucks locations, where he has been thrown out because they don’t allow video cameras inside. As cheesy as DaVido might be, I think the footage he compiled is pretty entertaining. Watch it here.

-Allison Levitsky

Actually, just no more books.

Why does state law only require books to be provided by the end of the eighth week of the school year? While no class I have ever been in has taken this long to provide books, I personally have been subjected to my fair share of beginning-of-the-year filler class periods. Before the class is ready to begin the curriculum, we comb through the class policies, do various “getting to know you” activities, and sometimes there is a day or two when we don’t do anything at all.

This article presented the fact that many Bay Area classes are actually assigning essays and tests without books available to students - an unfair practice that needs to be stopped. This is a waste of both students’ and teachers’ time, so why does it still take so long to get books out?

The answer is probably just bureaucratic disorganization and laziness. In any case, the system by which books get from point A to point B and point B to point C (point C being the backpacks of students) is not working, so the education of thousands of students is suffering. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but we only have about 180 days of instruction per year. Can we really afford to miss out on up to forty days of valuable learning time just because of this inefficient system?

Sure, there is more to education than books. Teachers should only use books for a fraction of their lesson plan and present a variety of learning tools. But how can a student be expected to write a literature-response essay with no book to quote from? This was exactly the situation College Park High School senior Elliot Meme found himself in this year. He was not given a copy of T.S.Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and therefore struggled to write an essay comparing the book to Oedipus Rex.

Such unfairness can, in extreme cases, damage a GPA.

It’s the ninth week of school now, so hopefully everyone has their books.

-Allison Levitsky

Drunk seventh graders - am I the only one worried about this?

Staff writer Jackie Burrell’s article about teen drinking in the Times today got me thinking. The fact is, more teens drink these days. Not only that, but younger teens drink (nine percent of seventh graders statewide reported having been “very drunk”), and more teens of all ages are binge drinking - almost 7.2 million teens admitted sometimes drinking five or more alcoholic beverages at once.

Why are statistics such as these worrisome, aside from the obvious correlation between alcohol use and other destructive behavior, such as driving under the influence, sexual activity, and physical assault? Teens who start drinking by the age of 15 are four times as likely to succumb to alcoholism in their adult years.

Twenty-eight percent of party-going teenagers said there had been parent chaperones at alcohol-filled parties they had attended. Norman Constantin, program director of the Public Health Institute’s Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development, had a good point when he said that the drinking age leaves no opportunity to teach kids about safe drinking. However, can we really call parents who buy kegs for their children’s parties responsible?

Then again, teenagers will always drink. The number of alcohol-using teens can be lowered by stricter laws, firmer parents and better alcohol education, but there will always be notes in the police blotter about busted parties and the occasional tragic obituary of a sixteen-year-old in a drunk driving accident. Maybe the best way to go for these kids is a drinking-in-moderation education from their parents, à la many western Europeans, who drink watered-down wine from an early age.

Surely, like anything else, this aspect of parent-to-child education depends on the parent and the child. Teens who find themselves (and parents who find their teens) in situations in which their options are drinking like maniacs and drinking in moderation should choose to drink in moderation.

Perhaps there is always a third option, not drinking at all, which is the ideal - but, again, it depends on the teen, and some teens just don’t seem to know how to say no.

Cheers!

-Allison Levitsky