"Good Grief"
      by The Mick


Tuesday,  August 10,  2004 - 10:09 PM

 
            “AAARRRRGGGGHHH!”  It is in these immortal words of one Charlie Brown that I often recite to the onslaught on inane, droll, vacuous, and mind numbing idiocies that pervade society as a whole these days. What am I talking about you ask? What? You didn’t ask that? Oh, well….. in that case I’ll just tell you.  I’m talking about so-called financial aid, and the seemingly endless string of reality T.V. shows.

            To begin, as all students of a college well know to attend said institution of learning, you are going to have to pay lots and lots of currency.  Simply put, school cost a lot of money.  But, not to fear, those in power have decided that having an educated populace is a good thing.  That’s why we have all those lovely government sponsored academic aid available to us.  There is the ever popular Pell grant, Minority scholarships, and need based loans, all for the taking.  What our government doesn’t tell you is that you don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell (and no I don’t mean Dante’s version of it) of actually getting any of it.  Unless you have thirteen brothers and sisters, and live in a cardboard box, you can pretty much kiss that Pell grant good bye.  As for me, although I proclaim to be Celtic-American (only 17% of the current population) I don’t qualify for the minority scholarship either.  This leaves me only one other option to further my academic pursuit of the knowledge necessary to genetically create the ultimate in family pet and household appliance the world has ever known, the glowing,  purple, monkey lamp!!! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! * Cough *, er.. eh him, what I mean to say is I have to take loans.  This is not an uncommon event for most students these days. And as interest rates are low, I don’t really mind this necessity.  But, what gets me is that loans come in two different categories, NEED based and NON-NEED based.  Well I don’t know about the rest of you but taking out loans is hardly a weekend hobby of mine.  For those of you that it is please tell me how it’s working out for you?  Why? I ask in the name of all that is decent and good in this world would any one in their right mind take a loan if they didn’t need it.  NEED based loan is, in my humble opinion one of the great oxymoron’s of our time.

             Reality T.V.  Isn’t one of the ugliest things you’ve ever read?  It is my own very self-effacing conviction that reality T.V. is the bane of modern society. The list for these horrible visages of grotesque and mentally numbing shows goes on forever:   “Survivor”, “Big Brother”,  “Who Wants to Marry My Dad?”,  “For Love or Money”, “Guess the Serial Killer”, “Who Wants to Eat a Baby?”, “Vegetable” the compelling story of eight guys in a coma, the first to wake up gets a million dollars.  The list goes on, and the worst part is that people keep watching this crap. Why? I implore all people of common sense and an I.Q. above 25 to ignore these festering boils upon the hind side of humanity.  Real life is nothing like these shows and I for one would like a return to the days of scripted television, so I can once again pretend people like those who participate in these shows don’t exist. 

 
 "The Mick" - If an unhappy worker is disgruntled, is a happy work just gruntled?

Currently listening to: Arc the Lad piano collection
Currently reading:  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Currently playing:   Soul Caliber II ( X-Box )
Currently working on:  GRE Preparation