07 October 2005
♥ Janet Zamboni and How She Continues to Ruin My Life
If you ask me, the most important purpose of a blog is to complain about things that piss you off. So why update when nothing is really pissing me off? Because I've been pretty happy lately.
But then a terrible plague entered my life, something comparable to Yoko Ono bringing down the Beatles, except it's not like I'm giving up music genius just to have my very own personal Venus (ten points to you if you know what song that's from). Also, no one thinks I'm bigger than Jesus.
If there's something that bothers me more than uninformed Christians and people who write you story-type letters to end friendships (another ten points offered here, but it's not a song), it's people on the newspaper staff who are unqualified to be there.
Okay, backtrack. In order to be on the Spectator staff, you have to take Journalism first. It's only a semester-long course, but it's really essential - you learn the inverted pyramid style and, possibly of more importance, certain required elements of journalism (checking your facts, for instance). But said member of the staff has not taken journalism, and it is evident in his writing.
Which, for the record, sucks.
Like seriously. It's really bad.
I mean, I'm not pretending to be any kind of fantastic writer, but just because you can write a flowery English essay most certainly does not mean you're qualified to be on the staff of one of the most acclaimed high school newspapers in the state.
But if I may, it seems necessary here to go on a bit of a tangent. Janet Zamboni is ruining my life even after I've passed (with an A, I might add) her class. Because if it weren't for this self-important gremlin of a rapscallion, said member of Spectator staff would not be such. She recommended him, for the sake of Pete (may he rest in peace)! Apparently he writes well as far as English goes, though with his unfortunate inability to proofread his work or, for that matter, make it coherent, I find this hard to believe.
Anyway, I'm really pissed off. I mean, if he were a really excellent writer, his (lacking) people skills would be all but tolerable - the repetitive joke-telling, the sucking up, the extreme know-it-all attitude (could anything be more annoying than this?), and the constant mooching. But that's just the thing. Because there are a lot of really annoying people in the world who are really good at what they do. But he is not one of those people.
And not only is the writing itself horrocious, (thank you, Jenny) - for God's sake, ever heard of proofreading?! - but he doesn't check his damn facts! You can't just go around calling people "sophmores" (that's right, there's no "o" there on purpose, because that's how he thinks it's spelled!) when they're really not! And if it's a team of boys, it's not the "boy's team" - that would be the team of the boy. It's the boys' team, which is the team belonging to the boys. And you can't just guess how many runners were at a cross-country meet (that's right, there's a hyphen), you have to find out for sure. Because that's what journalists do. They don't just say, "There must have been at least 400 runners." Beause anyone can go to a cross-country meet and be like, "Yeah, I bet 400 guys ran in that race." The point of journalism is to INFORM people so they know the FACTS. Not the approximate guesstimations of stupid unqualified morons.
MORAL: Have a general idea of what the hell you're doing if you ever write for a newspaper. And if you don't, don't pretend you do. Just do.
But then a terrible plague entered my life, something comparable to Yoko Ono bringing down the Beatles, except it's not like I'm giving up music genius just to have my very own personal Venus (ten points to you if you know what song that's from). Also, no one thinks I'm bigger than Jesus.
If there's something that bothers me more than uninformed Christians and people who write you story-type letters to end friendships (another ten points offered here, but it's not a song), it's people on the newspaper staff who are unqualified to be there.
Okay, backtrack. In order to be on the Spectator staff, you have to take Journalism first. It's only a semester-long course, but it's really essential - you learn the inverted pyramid style and, possibly of more importance, certain required elements of journalism (checking your facts, for instance). But said member of the staff has not taken journalism, and it is evident in his writing.
Which, for the record, sucks.
Like seriously. It's really bad.
I mean, I'm not pretending to be any kind of fantastic writer, but just because you can write a flowery English essay most certainly does not mean you're qualified to be on the staff of one of the most acclaimed high school newspapers in the state.
But if I may, it seems necessary here to go on a bit of a tangent. Janet Zamboni is ruining my life even after I've passed (with an A, I might add) her class. Because if it weren't for this self-important gremlin of a rapscallion, said member of Spectator staff would not be such. She recommended him, for the sake of Pete (may he rest in peace)! Apparently he writes well as far as English goes, though with his unfortunate inability to proofread his work or, for that matter, make it coherent, I find this hard to believe.
Anyway, I'm really pissed off. I mean, if he were a really excellent writer, his (lacking) people skills would be all but tolerable - the repetitive joke-telling, the sucking up, the extreme know-it-all attitude (could anything be more annoying than this?), and the constant mooching. But that's just the thing. Because there are a lot of really annoying people in the world who are really good at what they do. But he is not one of those people.
And not only is the writing itself horrocious, (thank you, Jenny) - for God's sake, ever heard of proofreading?! - but he doesn't check his damn facts! You can't just go around calling people "sophmores" (that's right, there's no "o" there on purpose, because that's how he thinks it's spelled!) when they're really not! And if it's a team of boys, it's not the "boy's team" - that would be the team of the boy. It's the boys' team, which is the team belonging to the boys. And you can't just guess how many runners were at a cross-country meet (that's right, there's a hyphen), you have to find out for sure. Because that's what journalists do. They don't just say, "There must have been at least 400 runners." Beause anyone can go to a cross-country meet and be like, "Yeah, I bet 400 guys ran in that race." The point of journalism is to INFORM people so they know the FACTS. Not the approximate guesstimations of stupid unqualified morons.
MORAL: Have a general idea of what the hell you're doing if you ever write for a newspaper. And if you don't, don't pretend you do. Just do.
10/07/2005
