Articles from McGill

  • Summer Love


     

           Years ago there existed a bald, fairly unattractive, English man named William Shakespeare. Currently, most know him simply as the scribe responsible for penning the basic plot to such groundbreaking films as Romeo Must Die, High School Musical, and Ten Things I Hate about You. However,he also (apparently) wrote some other stuff. One such "some other stuff" includes the oft' repeated Sonnet 18. To the layman, people who had sex in high school, or anyone not pursuing a degree in literature, it is most recognized as the one that begins "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" only to continue with "thou art more lovely and more temperate." Now I really don't want to be the one to call out William Shakespeare, the man indirectly responsible for the baffling fame of probable transvestite Zach Efron. However, Willy Shakes' admiration for summer forces me to call him out, and call out I shall.

                When Shakespeare attempts to lay down some serious Mack - sonnet style - he begins by comparing his lady fair to the inherent temperance and loveliness of a summer day. This seems to indicate beyond a doubt that Shakespeare is not only a horrible flirt, but also a fucking idiot. Summer is not temperate nor is it lovely; it is a soul crushing and brutalizing time of year where one (reads as: any university student) is willing to sell their young fragile life to the highest bidder. I am one such student; who has for years been confined to this endless drudgery, more formally titled The Summer Job; WHY WILLIAM?! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?!!!

                Now, by this point, most of you are probably thinking I'm just being dramatic (After all wasn't the author of this article the lead in a high school play titled Orange, Talk, Door?) Very astute observation Faithful reader and likely stalker, however, I assure you my summer employment experiences eclipses any agony you have yet to encounter in your bambi-like existence.  Since I've entered the workforce at the tender age of 16 I've worked six different summer jobs. On a whim of charitable kindness I've decided to traumatize you, the reader, with a description of only three of these experiences. I have listed them in chronological order, so that I can faithfully represent my digression from David MacLean: Human Being to David MacLean: Sadness Incarnate.


    Job: DDDN Pizzeria
    Date: June 2006  
    Age:16
    Status: Human Being


    I will never forget my first job working at the local pizzeria DDDN; where the D stands for digestive or delectable or delicious depending on which D you're talking about. The N stands for nutritious. Curiously, there is no letter in the pizzeria's name to represent the phrase "shitty name for a pizza place." My official duties at this pizzeria were, to the best of my knowledge, (my boss only spoke and understood Korean) to wear a red apron-skirt contraption, a red shirt, and a red hat emblazoned with the letter's DDDN. On busier days, for some inexplicable reason, I was trusted with handing out free pizza to people on the most populated street in my neighbourhood; this was often accompanied by a spectator chorus of, "Holy fuck, that kid is lame." Eventually I just stopped coming to work; a decision I reached once I realized my boss had decided that she would pay me in pizza (one slice a day). I have yet to formally resign or quit. I am technically still working there.


    Job: The Brick 
    Date: May 2007
    Age: 19
    Status: Overlord of Hobbit Creatures and one guy with really bad Eczema                                                                                                                                                                                          

    The Brick, to all you unfamiliar, is a furniture warehouse store most noted for its no money down financing options and its immunity to all forms of combat; nobody beats The Brick - ever. I worked in the warehouse at The Brick for all of five days before handing in my 2 week's notice. However, in those two and a half weeks I was given an astounding glimpse into another world, which previously I had assumed existed only in the works of JRR Tolkien. I worked with 5 men at the brick; three of which I'm fairly certain were hobbits. Now, in any other scenario I would have been psyched to have stumbled onto such an oddity, however I was forced to move furniture with these tiny boy-men, which was difficult for my 6' 2" frame. However, luckily, there was one other man working there of moderate height. This man was "Guy with really bad Eczema." His skin was so incredibly dry that his eyes would periodically water and tear while you were talking to him. This made for fairly awkward conversation (do I look at the eyes, do I not look at the eyes?). The story does end happily however, as he left me alone with the hobbits for a week, so that he could attend his wedding and honeymoon. This was a major blow to my ego, at the time, as I hadn't had a girlfriend for over two years, while eczema man was apparently a hot item. Other highlights at the brick include convincing an obvious drunk driver that it would be impossible to load a fourteen piece furniture set into his Geo, building a BBQ backwards with my bare-hands, and attending to a man who insisted on referring to each piece of furniture as "Mr." I had to move Mr. Couch beside Mr. Bench so that there'd be enough room for Mr. Desk. The Brick is where happiness comes to die.  


    Job: Gardening Assitant
    Date: July 2008 
    Age: 19
    Status: Sadness incarnate


    Gardening sounds like the perfect summer job. You get to work outside, enjoy the sun, play around in dirt and build a close relationship with our large silent friends - the trees. This was exactly my thinking when I showed up for my first day of work. However, I soon realized that in order to enjoy the sun, the sun actually has to be shining. During the summer, I live in Vancouver; it rains...a lot. It does not rain as much as it does in the winter, granted, but still for the first two weeks of my employment I was soaked, covered in mud, and desperately trying not to pass out in my company supplied rain jacket which seemed to mirror the breathability and comfort of a pool cover. Once again, this scenario is one which I'm sure some of you will relate to with a simple shrug and a "whatever that's not so bad." Well fuck you guys; because my job was made exponentially worse by a little variable known as Paul. Paul was my Strict, Italian, David hating boss. At first I thought he'd be a nice guy based almost solely on his uncanny resemblance to Luigi of the Mario Brothers. However, after a while I learnt that this cartoonish resemblance to my favourite Mario-kart character was in-fact a cruel deception so vile that it had to have been inspired by some sort of summer job anti-Christ (I believe that the old testament refers to this character as "Sumjo usurper of the mellow.")  Paul didn't like me to begin with, I wasn't hired by him, I didn't really know what the fuck I was doing, and I kept pulling up tomato plants suspecting that they were weeds. All this culminated in Paul's decision to make my life a living hell. When it rained I couldn't sit in his truck, I had to sit under a tree; when I slammed the door of his truck he told me, in Italian, to "fuck a cat."  Once I actually showed up to the wrong building and arrived to the actual job site a half hour late, my Italian is kind of shaky, but I'm fairly certain that he was accusing me of raping an orange. However, the very worst part of the gardening job was not my dispassionate boss but the fact that I had to pick up leaves in some very sketchy parts of Vancouver. To all of you not familiar with Vancouver this means several close encounters with Hypodermic needles. Now, I suspect that many of you had unpleasant jobs over the summer. However, unless you were, on several occasions, inches away from a possible HIV infection you better shut the fuck up; when it comes to summer jobs there's really nothing comparable to nearly becoming HIV infected.

                So William Shakespeare, if you're reading this article, I hope you'll reconsider a few of your most famous lines. "Beware the Ides of March," might be more relevant today if it were worded "beware the Aids of August,"  

    that "Now is the Winter of our Discontent" line should probably read " Now, finally, the Winter; David MacLean is contented." I would also like to apologize for calling you a fucking idiot. I have on occasion been incredibly moved by your work. I particularly like the line from Taming of the Shrew Act II scene i, "Asses are made to bear, and so are you." Finally something I can relate too.




  •                                               Why I Totally am Hot Shit

          I know what you're thinking, who is this fool, this brazen braggart, who claims to be so vastly superior to us all in his cultural practices; physical adornments; and scrumptious food. Well this fool is David MacLean and I've created a culture so absolutely unique to my own self that I am cast aside by the social mainstream and forced to live a life of solitude and impoverishment.
          The first major cultural practice that sets me so widely apart from the social norm, and in turn has lead to mass banishments from cities and towns around the globe, is my hatred of all things made of glass. This hatred runs deep in my culture; at the tender age of 5 a window pane killed my father and raped my mother. The ensuing riots that followed this age of turmoil cumulated in the outlawing of glass and or fiberglass substances from use within the Davidist culture. The subsequent riots of Davidists throughout Funhouses and department store change rooms have virtually isolated us from these communities at large. The Lack of glass has also been extremely hard to deal with as the Davidist people (IE "I") am/are very beautiful and are therefore limited to seeing myself only once or twice a year through film and or the reflections off tepid pools of water. 
           The second major cultural practice which has lead to the discrimination of my people came about out of a somewhat petty, albeit necessary, hatred of math (just ask my former grade 7 math teacher Mr. Bernard known better as the Davidist high priest of mathematics). At age 12 we as a people grew despondent in the mathematical practices of our social peers and as a result did away with, what some call, necessary functions of mathematical systems. We are most notably excluded, due to this development, from the purchase of goods as they cannot be represented in our culture under numerical value; but rather to a comparative value against Oxen and or Will Smith albums. For example in our culture one Willenium record is equal to two Big Willy Style. albums which are both equal to half an oxen. Our people have had trouble surviving as supermarkets, often through frivolous and ignorant denial of our practices, have refused to accept Will Smith albums or Oxen in the purchase of lesser goods. As a result Davidists have turned to theft and have been imprisoned unrightfully based solely on our individuality of economic principles/illegal ownership of oxen within commercially designated zones (In other words, RACISM).
           Finally The Davidists as a people have long been relegated to the margins of society based on their belief that all clothes must be made only of Saran Wrap in order to appease the Davidists gods which, oddly enough, took their form in deified images of sandwich bags. The exposure of, what Bernard Weber of the school of Modern anthropology has described as, "towering and almost boisterous" appendage(s) has lead to the outright banning of Davidists from the entire state of Utah. Though we/I as a people are different in our ways we hope that you, the reader, will use this knowledge of our social exclusion to preach equality and temperance when dealing with a culture as diverse and in a sense unsubstantiated as our own.

    Oh, professor if you want a bibliography I can send you some photos or something, thanks

    Dave



  •               Hangovers follow me through life like some sort of hell-bent stalker planning my inevitable and painfully slow destruction. They are a constant weekend occurrence, and genuinely can be functionally explained as the bane of my existence, however are hangovers really that bad a thing?

                Now I know the average young scholarly minded University prepster is scratching his head perplexed, "what the devil is a hangover?" Well Johnny B. Study, I'll tell you what a hangover is, it is quite simply [insert your favorite religious deity or deities] way of saying he loves you. I've come to this conclusion not through years of theological study or thorough laborious research in the world of metaphysics but rather through an intrinsic deduction process I like to call self reflective research, (or in layman's "thinking while on drugs"). You see when you wake up after a night that could best be described simply in the word "Whiskey," and you feel like Thor, god of thunder, is wailing on you're face with his hammer of dwarf forged Steele you get a friendly reminder that Alcohol, though fun, is not a lifestyle.* Quickly, one is forced into a period of self reflection as the blurred images of the night before come streaming in like light through shattered glass.


    Beer bong - vodka - breasts - cheetah- Rum


    However, this self reflection is, of course, immediately abated by the realization that in the period of ten unconscious, possibly naked, hours your mouth and throat have turned into a Mad Max like wasteland. You'll grab a glass of water and then spend the rest of the day lying on your couch as Bob Barker stares out from your TV set; mocking you as he speaks into his disturbingly outdated and phallic microphone. You'll gaze contemptuously at the contestants of the Price is Right hating them and their wild enthusiasm, thinking madly that just an evening before you were as happy as that outlandish young marine who, like some kind of stupid-fucking clown, guessed $100 for the furniture set (I mean c'mon $100, that shit came with an ottoman, douche bag).

                Now, I know you're thinking how does the blind hatred of Price is Right contestants translate into the J-man throwing down some of that fine beardy love? Quite simply, without hangovers would we ever stop drinking? Drinking, though fun and conducive of a good time, generally only gets in the way of doing actual "important" things. To put it in a comparative vein, Hangovers are to drinking what chaffing is to fifteen hours of non-stop sex before an Anthro final (that's right ladies, fifteen hours...I'm winking right now). That is to say it's a reminder that the amusement of the night before came with a consequence; in the case of a hangover this consequence is the inability to think without feeling tremendous pain, in the case of chaffing it is the inability to masturbate without bleeding. In summation, a hangover is the natural way in which we are forced to realize the harsh reality of our own lives, forcing us into a fit of tears followed by a manic period of intense and unabated work. Without hangovers we'd all be alcoholics (and not the fun Churchilly kind).        


    * This statement can be disregarded by all hobos who are reading the article

    1 I realize that hobos can't read LAWLZ



  • Istick

                There are a lot of people out there who are technologically obsessed. They buy tech magazines and frantically flip through them. Their eyes sparkle and gleam with joy as they glimpse each new LCD mounted device and labor saving mechanism.

                "Oh my!!!" they scream as they look at the latest electronic banana peeler or clock and camera imbued gramophone.

     However these people are all being mislead by the fanatic consumer culture that perpetuates the selling of any device that is tagged with an "I" placed in front of an improper noun. Iphone, Ipod, Ibook, Icondoms, Ijello, Igiraffe; these are all needless over-marketed pieces of crap, not to mention fragmented sentences. "Iphone," I phone what or who?!! How can the heartless corporate marketing team at Apple start a sentence, carve it into metal objects millions of times, and never complete it. If Apple came out with a product that was branded, "Iphone Todd twice daily," than maybe I'd be a little more open to this new and humdrum trend so casually referred to as "modern technology." However, they do not, and as a result I have refrained from using all, but one form, of technology throughout the course of my nineteen year life.

                This piece of technology is, of course, the stick. The stick was first used somewhere prior to the Paleolithic era and, therefore, is better than any other form of technology. In other words, since the stick is arguably older than any other technological device it is naturally superior to all of them. This is made true by the well known formula that states: "if something is older it is better." If you need any evidence that this fallacy driven formula is, in fact, the truth just look to Hollywood and gaze at the haggard leather faces of the Douglas family. Kirk Douglas, the older Douglas, is totally badass and Spartacusy whereas Michael Douglas, the younger version, through the use of some sort of witchcraft, convinced Katherine Zeta Jones that she'd be better off grabbing at his saggy, fold-weary, genitalia than at my supple and formidable fleshed temple of doom. This is an obvious indicator that older things are better: Kirk Douglas is better than Michael Douglas who, somehow, is better than me.

                The stick is also superior in its ability to synthesize all the technological fineries that have been produced by society. The Iphone claims that it is a phone, mp3 player, and camera all in one, well so is the stick. Yesterday, for example, I called my friend on my stick by throwing it at the back of his head and yelling "Hey!" (PHONE)  I then took my stick and knocked it against a tree catalyzing the creation of what can only be described as "Slick and Solid Gangsta' Beats" (MUSIC PLAYER). Later that day I spotted a bald eagle and decided to take a picture, however, my wooden stick was out of film so I simply bludgeoned the rare bird to death got it stuffed and now it's on my desk (CAMERA). I'd like to see the Iphone take such a realistic three dimensional rendering of an exotic bird. Yes, there might be some people out there clambering for the latest and greatest devices, but to me they're all pathetic shiny pieces of garbage compared to my versatile and affordable stick.



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