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It's nice to know that while [the fraternity] seems determined to inform the rest of the campus that they're a bunch of utter boors with no redeeming social importance, at least they have virtually no influence in these parts. --Yours Truly |
Tuesday, February 22, 2000 In Sickness and in Hate Mail My mood has just magically transformed. I've been feeling sick all day, y'see, as my cold has dovetailed with my insomnia in interesting and creative ways, causing me to miss my class (and this is the one I've already missed the first three sessions of, so I'm not happy about that), 'cause I was out cold when it came around, and then I had to leave the apartment because I was out of tissues. That's the one problem with living alone: it kinda sucks when you get sick. No matter how you're feeling, if you need supplies, you've gotta go get them yourself. And there's nobody else to make you tea and toast. Not that I ever had anybody to make me tea and toast when I lived at home -- with the possible exception of that time in eighth grade when I had the flu -- but at least the potential was there. Of course, the flipside of this is that, when you live alone, you don't have to take care of your housemates when they get sick, so I guess it all balances out in the end.
Anyway, so the new issue of the college paper came out today. I haven't yet seen it, as I didn't make it to the campus, but it features my latest column. This particular one is concerned with an advertising campaign by a fraternity on campus, which features women in their underwear and is generally really offensive in my book. So I wrote a column about it, in which I more or less ripped the perpetrators to shreds. Although I must say that the final product was much nicer and more genteel than what I'd planned to write when I first sat down at the keyboard... but my opinion still came across. So, just now, I got an e-mail from the editor who's handling my section, to let me know that the paper has gotten a number of letters demanding a retraction. This, after just one day on the stands. I am thrilled. It's taken until my fourth semester writing this column, but I'm finally getting hate mail! Oh, I've dreamed of this for ages. I even had a running total of "days without hate mail" across the top of every column, until somebody finally sent me one letter towards the end of my second semester writing the thing. Nothing like this, though. I haven't seen the actual letters yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so. It's not that I feel any particular need to be attacked in print; I'd happily take fan mail also, but I have yet to get any, and I don't really expect to (although I've met people on campus who like the column, but that's not quite the same). All things considered, I figure negative feedback is all I have much chance for. And, well, given that I write this column every week, it's nice to know that people are actually reading it. It's also not as if I deliberately try to write controversial columns. I just rant about whatever's on my mind that week. Kinda like this journal, except that I usually try to have an actual point. But, anyway, I'm comfortable with every assertion I made in this week's column, so if I've managed to make the fraternity in question feel uncomfortable, so much the better.
Of course, the column in next week's issue is not going to be anywhere near as high in quality. It's part of a group of columns that can best be described as "columns in which the author has nothing to say, and spends an entire column saying so." I've had at least one of them every semester, in fact. I consider them to be my weakest work, but at least one person has informed me that she loves reading that sort of thing, so I guess they have some entertainment value, at least. In this particular case, I start by acknowledging that I have a cold and am not up to writing anything, and then slide down a long slope from there, somehow tying in assignments from all three of my classes, with frequent references to an imaginary friend. Well, it's better than nothing.
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