What Is This?
Sam Burnett is a a hilarious Student Union president. He says he tries to maintain a low profile, but his reputation precedes him. Sam writes for A little bit of wisdom in every box…, billed as “My fight with verbal dysentery - watch the shame.”
This definitely isn’t This, so what is it? It does depend entirely on what This is, though, because I suppose this being here makes it inherently This. There are certain philosophical hurdles to be overcome when inviting people to write on your blog - you wouldn’t let a tramp babysit the kids and then sleep in your bed, because that would be yucky. For the time being at least we’ll just have to suspend our disbelief, because This definitely is something else.
It’s daunting being asked to wax blogical on such a revered site, a diary cherished by the online Buddhist community (did you ever hear the one about the monk in the sandwich shop? ‘Make me one with everything…’ Sorry.), and amongst company as distinguished as…well, I’ve heard of at least a couple of them. Blogging royalty. The sort of people who would consider suicide if they went 13 days without a single comment on their laboriously-typed posts, people whose visitor stats look like footballers’ salaries, people who aren’t me. These people are successful, they have interesting lives to talk about. I do picture series of me making brownies on a Saturday night when every other student in town is lying face down in the gutter vomiting on a kebab. I’ve got three-quarters of the senior management team at Bangor University reading my blog on a daily basis to see if I mention them, but that doesn’t count; you wouldn’t accept a compliment from someone whose testicles were nestled in your clenched fist.
This is a very political business - networking is replaced with blogrolling, fawning sycophancy replaced with the lazy link [ie - read this , it’s hilarious], well-connected parents and an Etonian education replaced with friends at the Guardian and a hard-luck story involving disability, poverty, sex or all three.
I’m just not cut out for it, to be honest - sorry, Cliff, I really don’t think I can fill in for you.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Wow - the relationship between Student Reps and Senior Management has certainly changed since my time at University. Back in the day you were lucky to get a firm handshake.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
There were some great effing lines in there… but I keep going back to the one about the student vomiting on a kebob:
You and I are classmates?
April 10th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Reading that line about the testicles back makes me wince. I hope they don’t read it…but then if they do read it, it almost justifies putting the line in.
I get in trouble for writing about them but don’t hear it until months later. Oh well - I’ve slagged of bloggers, made fun of Buddhism and threw in a tramp reference for kicks. It’s all in good fun.