»29th January 2006

Evil Knows No Bounds

The esteemed Arts Editor and resident flatmate Mark keeps encouraging me to start contributing to the Leeds Student, the uni newspaper which is supposedly a very good example of the genre. Last thursday I finally caved in and hastily wrote up a letter to send to the paper. Letters have to be 200 words and can be on supposedly anything. As no one actually reads the paper and even fewer bother to contribute to it, they quite often have to make up letters for the letters page. You can easily tell which ones are made up firstly by the names, such as Piers Montebank, and secondly by the subjects of the letters, such as a short discussion on the failings of the arts section (much to Mark's annoyance). So practically anything I send in will get printed. Having read up on the sort of stuff which gets into the paper, I decided to go down the lines of angry self-important student politics. How did I work myself into such a fuming state? Well firstly I put some Slayer on, in this case their debut album, as you may have guess by the title of this update and the first sentence of the letter. Next up I thought about something which actually does annoy me, which conveniently was the way the Union is filled with petty bureaucrats who like to keep up appearances by bashing the FACELESS EVIL CORPORATION.

Dear editor,
It seems the hypocrisy of the Student Union knows no bounds. First it bans all Nestle products and now there are rumours it will ban Coca Cola products due to 'unethical practices'? All this whilst the Union continues to sell cigarettes, whose manufacturers not only share Coca Cola's 'unethical practices' but whose products are the single biggest cause of a variety of respiratory diseases and cancers. It's good to see the Union looking out for the health of its members whilst it pursues its pseudo-radical anti-globalisation ideals.
It shouldn't be up to the Union executive to force its partisan and unrepresentative views onto its membership. The current ban singles out Nestle who are neither the only or the worst offenders when it comes to unchecked globalisation. The ban only serves to illustrate the incoherency and insincerity in the Union's policy and (unrepresentative) views. Does the Union not think students are capable of making their own minds up on these issues? The ban should be revoked, the Union should stop treating its members with such contempt in denying them choice and the Union should cease to be the mouthpiece of a self righteous and extreme minority.

████ ████████████.
3rd Year History


It's worth noting that I included my year of study and subject both in keeping with the convention of the over opinionated posers who have previously sent in letters but also to illustrate my clear advantage in the hierarchy of contributers to the newspaper.
At the bottom of the ladder are the first years. They shouldn't even be allowed to contribute to the paper, they're a bunch of naive posers, they are probably studying pointless subjects like 'cultural studies', in short they're about as h4rdc0re as kittens and marshmallow. After the first years comes the second years, and perhaps those few people who study a real subject like history. These people are allowed to have an opinion because they've been around Leeds long enough for them to probably not be total shit heads. Also, they've most likely abandoned that fresh faced outlook that first years have, their clothes have become disheveled, they have empty grey eyes, broken and soulless, they've probably spent some time in the library. Next up there's third years, these people have earned their place, they've seen horrors the first years could only dream of, they stalk the hills at night and pray to the gods of Sarnath under the full moon light. Then there's fourth years, post-graduates and mature students, they're just irrelevant old people who shouldn't be let outdoors anymore.
Finally there's LUU officials. These evil, twisted miscreants are the spawn of Satan, they are the meddling pedants who oppress the Student Union with their apathetic tyrany. They are led by the high priestess Hind Hassan. No one knows who Hind Hassan really is, some say she is a demon, a bride of the dark lord himself. Many have tried to defeat her, but have failed. The hides of these brave souls adorn Hind Hassan's throne room, their names cursed and spat by the acolytes of the LUU and forgotten by all else.

Armed with knowledge gained in the depths of the library, I feel I now have the power to take on this evil sect. The next step of my plan is to send a letter in for this week's Leeds Student, I think I'll complain about how epage (the supposed internet culture page in LS2, the newspaper supplement) sucks. And epage really does suck, the whole thing is wrote in the third person "epage thinks that..." "epage can only guess that..." etc. etc. It's the sort of thing which was kind of amusing for about five minutes two years ago, but now it's just tired and makes for impenetrable reading. Oh, and don't get me started on the inumerable typos LS contains.

Extar, over, out.

What an amazing smell!