Today's (other) Rant - Apr 21st 2001
*shudder* The horror... the horror of shoddy IB student writing...
In a total opposite of today's OTHER rant about Bernard Landry, found here, we have a lighter topic (but one that I'm even more disgusted with), and therefore a lighter background. Yes, today is a day rife with symbolism. We have two topics in this other rant (I figure I'm gonna leave The Calgary Herald, Sun and Calgary's TV stations alone because of a lack of hard facts. It's all opinion. Right, "since when has that stopped you before?" Yeah. I know what you're thinking). One of said topics regards the recent Student Council elections, the other regards the disgusting quality of writing in the school newspaper, the "Western World". I hope you enjoy reading this rant as much as I enjoyed bitching about it.
Western Canada High School has a tradition of excellence, of the highest achievement in any area, and of an old boys' network the size of milwaukee. Therefore one would think of a Mensa-style society of thought when one thinks of our Student Council. Well, you'd be pretty far off (but depending on your view of those argumentative brainpans at Mensa, you may be closer than you'd think). In fact, the way I see it, Student Council is more along the lines of an ineffectual group of people just looking for something to put on their resumé. However the group of candidates this year seemed even less impressive. These people went beyond ineffectual. One might have seen more impressive and diverse speeches and promises from the thousand monkeys who typed on the thousand typewriters. ("It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times!?!?! You stupid monkey!" - The Simpsons episode whatever.)
It was a nice way to get out of class, I thought, but after the fourth speech, my eyes had glazed over and my ass was asleep. It was the same thing over and over and over again, however I was interested to see that everyone had pandered to the lowest common denominator - Throwing candy. I mean, the audience was like a pack of slavering animals, not even listening to the same old promises to be the "students' link to administration", "to fix the parking problem" (even my cynical views couldn't cope with the impossibility of such a thing), and to "represent the student body to the best of their abilities". And then BAM! Out came the candy.
I thought my intelligence was a bit insulted by having to sit through the same assinine, ineffectual (hell, this thing's more of a popularity contest than the Miss America Pageants) speeches, watch some people chuck candy to the crowd like zookeepers throw fish to the seals, and then be expected to vote based on this?
I mean, as if that wasn't bad enough, I didn't get any fricking candy either!
Second, the school paper, The Western World, has got to be the worst piece of ass-kissing garbage I have ever had the displeasure of touching. You may think I'm being a little dramatic here, but you just try that link and you'll see what I mean.
What fries me is that these are IB students. They're smart people, yet the best they can come up with is some right-wing biased tripe about the coke machines at school. Why can't they put some effort into tackling more hard-hitting, relevant issues than why it was so wrong for Mike to kill that boar on survivor (More on that in a bit).
My constatation about why the quality of writing is about as risqué as any given episode of Barney and Friends is that they're ruled over by an iron-fisted tyrant of an editor. Yep, Ms. Koch is a wonderful lady, but she has about the tolerance of Heinrich Himmler (head of Hitler's Gestapo for the folks at home. I think, I may be wrong) when it comes to anything that could offend ANYONE. This is why I don't write for that piece of fecal matter, I need the freedom to say "ass" at least fourteen times in an article. Whether or not I exercise that franchise is beside the point, but god damnit, I wanna say ass!
Anyway, the height of my disgust came to a culmination when I read a FULL PAGE on the wrongness of killing a boar for our "entertainment". Talk about bias. I mean, is that show not about survival of the fittest? If that boar couldn't run the hell faster, then it deserved to be killed and eaten. I won't get into the details of it because, well, frankly I already wrote it in an angry letter to the editors and it's my page, so you people bloody well better deal with it. (Geez, and I called Ms. Koch iron-fisted?)
At any rate, please don't go off on a tangent saying "well if you hate it so much, why don't you join the paper and do something about it ya stupid bahstahd?". Well, as I said earlier I can't work under such tight constraints. Plus I need funding in order to hit the real issues, so I suppose that instead of investagative journalism (oh, that gives me an idea. I'm gonna make a newspaper a la Lone Gunmen), I'll just stick to witty, bitter, mocking satire. Ahh life is good.
Okay, there are both of today's rants. Hope you enjoyed them. As always, please feel free to write me with any questions, comments, concerns, etc that you think of while reading these rants.
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