My time as your columnist is almost up. According to the calendar, I’ve only got four or five of these things left. Two of those might actually be good.
The editorial staff of The Hatchet usually looks far and wide before giving the page two column to someone’s friend, but I think this year the columnists should choose their own successors. Mine will have to be Brother Stephen, the man whose stand-up routine regularly draws in dozens of passers-by right outside the Marvin Center. He even made it into last Thursday’s Hatchet, where his one-liners pushed college newspaper humor to all new heights. The story actually quoted him as saying, If you love your homo friends, you’ll tell your homo friends not to put that gerbil up their ass.
I’ve had my moments, but that was really hysterical, and I wondered how he did it. The editors once removed the phrase hand jobs from a column I wrote about overpopulation, yet there was Brother Stephen, homophobia, gerbils and all. If he knows how to write as well as read, Brother Stephen will make an excellent addition to GW’s world of ideas. He speaks out against the evils of smoking, drinking, using drugs, sex, masturbation, Catholicism, Judaism, wearing white pants after Labor Day, adding salt to your food before you’ve tasted it and pool. Imagine how much more exciting these things will be when you’ve got someone telling you they’re wrong.
This is all based on the premise that Brother Stephen is just acting like a maniac to get attention and laughs. What if he actually is a maniac? So much the better. The thing about raving lunatics is that they never run out of inspiration or ideas. I write about being alienated, materialistic and self-centered, but how long can anyone keep that up? If, on the other hand, I were insane and thought everyone around me was going to hell, I could go on forever.
Another important point is that we don’t hear enough from raving lunatics in print. Maybe that will change once the Student Association elections get underway, but for now there definitely seems to be a sanity bias in The Hatchet.
I enjoy reading about people who put on shows, what people heard at a lecture last week and what life is like in the Mount Vernon Colony, but once in a while I’d like to hear from someone who narrowly escaped a government plot to suck his soul right out through his pineal gland. If we’re a community, we should hear everyone’s story.
If they can’t get Brother Stephen – saving souls might be a full-time job – they should replace the column with profiles. It wasn’t until I opened the first-ever issue of The GW Journal that I realized how much I missed profiles.
Last week, the Journal gave us the story of Aaron Myers. Myers majored in political communications at GW and seems to have found a job that combines both politics and communications. You see, by hearing the stories of others, you realize what a truly involving drama life is. So many twists of fate.
If that fails, I would like to be replaced with lists. When was the last time The Hatchet came out with a good list? They did do the 10 most intriguing people at GW, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that information. Was I supposed to try to meet them, be like them, what?
I was looking through a recent issue of People magazine, and it was filled with useful lists. Did you know, for instance, that pleated pants turned up on a list of things that are totally 15 minutes ago? I had no idea people felt that strongly about pleats or even knew what they were.
Now you do, and you know that you can completely write someone off just by looking at the front of his pants. Now you are a well-informed public, and that’s what the page two column is all about.
