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Subversive Gifts for New College Students?
openyourmind asks: "A friend's daughter is going to college, and I want to send her a package to help her in school. What kinds of things did you wish you had, but couldn't get, in college? I have already included a lockpick set, a UVmarking pen, and an LED flashlight in her care package. What else? Legal items only, please."
Lock box that can screw into a desk drawer. good for keeping the roomie out of your...stuff
Resolve carpet cleaner. Clean up that barf or bongwater before the RA finds out
Spray Bottle and rubbing alcohol. gets any nature of odor out of the air...quickly
"Do Not Disturb" sign. use your imagination
microcassette recorder. good for lectures, bugging and recording any nature of other thing
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I second the PDA vote. I honestly believe my GPA would have been a few points higher if I had had one in university. It doesn't have to be expensive, you can pick up a used Palm III or Handspring Visor (or Agenda VR3) off eBay for a song.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Keyghost (www.keyghost.com) keystroke logger. I'm buying one before I leave for college - never know when it'll come in handy.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
I'll second that. The single most useful tool I had in college (besides laptop). I still have mine and the knife on it is still extremely sharp. The can opener on it came in very useful in college, and the screwdriver is exactly the right size for the screws you'll find on PCs. It's also made out of steel, so the phillips screwdriver head didn't get stripped after lots of use.
Also, someone else already mentioned that lock picking tools might be illegal in her state. If you check the MIT Guide to Lock Picking, you'll see they mention that these are definitely illegal in MA, ME, NH and NY, so be careful. Also you might want to give her a piece of advice: fake IDs are illegal and have extremely stiff penalties. In addition, fake IDs aren't very useful in college, as even the most introverted, asocial geek can easily find some older colleague to buy the requisite vodka.
My freshman year i ate these things just about everyday. A hotpot is also nice. Its a small pot usally plastic that you can plug in to the wall to boil water. Good for ramen and coffee.
That's why you buy some of those lame plastic things to put over the top of the key - they're supposed to make it easier to tell one key from another, but what they are really good for is covering up the do-not-duplicate warning. If the clerk can't see it, he won't abide by it.
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
I will take the other side... little of this is good.
Part of being in colledge is NOT having this stuff. What good is it if you come in with it already? Improvising lock picks (if your into that sort of thing, I probably would have been if I stayed in school longer)
Sure you could send her off with a lockpick, a glass bong, a computer with all the latest whizbangs, aq kick ass stereo, a soldering iron etc etc.... but what fun is that? I often lookj back a tthose years and the shit we used to improvise to hget a job done and really apreciate the shit I have accumulated over the years...
I would never go back to clipping wires off the piezo speaker element of a cheap $10 alarm clock and hooking it to my stereo, or smoke my pot out of a cheap ass metal bowl these days (I have a nice alarm clock - evenb tho I quit using it except when I have a morning meeting) and I exclusivly uses glass bowls now... I still am glad I started out where I did.
I say send her off with a toolbox full of simple shit like a hammer and screw drivers, a cheap soldering iron from radio shack, a roll of duct tape
and let her have her fun! Remember... McGyver's defining characteristic was that he ALWAYS had to improvise, he NEVER had the "right tool".
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
BOOKS!!! Practical books!!!
And tools! Practical tools!
Books
"Cubicle Warfare" by Pardoe
"The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli
""Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun"
"Will" by G. Gordon Liddy
"Leadershiip Secrets of the Rogue Warrior" by Richard Marcinko
"How to Lie with Statistics"
The Compleat George Hayduke 'Revenge' series
Tools
Infrared/lowlight monocular
In-Plain-Sight Safes [hollow book, hollow can]
Motion-activated low-light camera and recorder
Shredder
Zip-Loc bags, duct tape, fishing line, lead fishing weights [for hiding things in water]
And finally a note on the electoral college -- you consider this anti-democratic, but it is there for a reason: in their wisdom, our Founding Fathers recognized that without such a mechanism, a few large states would govern the outcome of elections, and smaller states would have no voice at all. Doesn't sound very democratic, does it?
Our Founding Fathers thought that the average American was too stupid to make an informed decision and run their own government. The point of the electoral college was that you would vote for people smarter than you who would elect the President of the United States of America for you.
The same basic premise also goes for your legislators, while they are elected directly now, they were at one time chosen by your state government. Again, you elect people smarter than you to run your locality for you, they elect people smarter than themselves to run the country.
While electoral votes are not distributed exactly the same as actual voting population, (same as the number of senators + representatives from your state, since the number of representatives is determined by state population, its only the fixed number of senators that skews the numbers) but the same large states still can sway an election, either through electoral votes or popular votes. That is why you will see the candidates of all major parties campaign like crazy in California and New York, and they might make a stop in Alaska.
Its not a matter of the wisdom of our founding fathers, but the ignorance of our great-great-great-great (etc) grandfathers that caused this system. They simply thought the average American was too stupid, and you know what? They were right, and nothing has changed over the years.
That said. America is the worst country in the world, except for all the others
I reject your reality
Most jurisdictions forbid the possession of lockpics by those other than licensed locksmiths and law enforcement.
Most jurisdictions don't even have a licensing program for locksmiths, much less require such a license to posess lock picks. I'm a locksmith and here in Los Angeles we only need a city permit for our key duplicating equipment (because burglars used to buy $800 key cutters before that, right?) and a state resale #. There is no state licensing for locksmiths. Associated Locksmiths Of America members have been debating for years whether to lobby for mandatory licensing, but so far most states require no certification whatsoever.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Nylon rope. A knot book may also be required.
;-)
Walkie talkies - or I guess FRS radios these days
A Frisbee - nothing is more subversive on a beautiful sunny day!
Super glue or epoxy can also be great fun (and useful, too!)
Mag Lite. Watch out - not too big. A friend of mine had a 6 D cell one that campus security 'asked' him to stop carrying around.
Enrolment in a RAD course (Rape Aggression Defense) - some places are free
A good 1 hour lecture on not getting caught doing anything stupid, not breaking things, and on time managment - have fun but get the homework / studying done first
Uhmm... Sorry. Despite the fact that sex toys and sodomy (and by the strictest definition -- anything other than hetero, vaginal sex) are on the books as illegal in TX, dildos are still sold quite openly in the right stores.
I've been to Forbidden Fruit in Austin. Lived next to it for almost a year since it's across the street from the UT student commons, as a matter of fact. Just said no when my buddies tried to convince me to get a body piercing there. Ahem...
AT ANY RATE... They did indeed openly sell a wide array of sex-related merchandise... Including leather ball-sacs, cock-rings, love-beads, and yes, vibrators and dildos. Mind you, this was in '93, and I don't live in Austin any more. Any Austinites care to confirm or dispell my dated data?
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