Personal rant...

Time for a personal rant:

I'm in a class at the University of Denver. It's a distance learning style class where, through the partnership of a certain television company that broadcasts the most riveting entertainment the House of Representatives and Senate have to offer, my class gets to chat with many high profile, important, and experienced guests about the political landscape. This proves especially fun with the B.H.O. v. H.R.C. war currently on.

We have an exam coming up. Our professor teaches class from Washington, DC -- so we never see him, and expect that when papers are due we will print them or have them written on the exam itself or whatever, so that we may fed-ex them to him for quick and easy grading (apparently he doesn't like to print things off himself, even if it is 15 people in class.)

I digress.

We get an email two days before the exam from the TA (this is not her fault in any way, she was just the messenger) letting us know that we had to buy a blue book for our test and that they were available in the bookstore.

In my head the conversation proceeds something like this:

Wait. What? Say that again?
I said you have to buy your own blue book.
We do?
Yes.
Our own blue books...what we'll be writing our test in, we have to buy it ourselves?
Yes.
From the bookstore?
Yes.
I'm sorry, I'm still a little behind here -- Let me get this straight. We're taking a test, we have to write our tests down for the professor, and he mandates that we purchase our own blue book for the test?
Yes.
Stop saying yes.
No.
Thank you.


I don't understand how this makes sense. Why is my notebook not good enough? Perhaps you could go the short route of letting us use our computers for superior typing speed and therefore exam quality (theoretically) but no. We have to write it on a bluebook. That's fine. Until I find we're to purchase them ourselves. I'm not worried about the cost, I have a full-time job so I make enough to afford the $10 or whatever ridiculous cost the University of Denver bookstore dares to charge for these things, it's just the principle.

If you're going to force us to hand write a test, you should not have the audacity to then expect us to buy something additional on which to write our test!!! You want me to write it? Perfect. I'll use my notebook. That's not what you want? Tough shit. Do I get to mandate which format can be used for class communications? I don't except email communications, I have to be overnighted all class related communication from the professor. What's that? Email is most convenient for you and everyone else in the class? SO IS YOU BUYING THE BLUE BOOKS FOR US LIKE MOST REGULAR COLLEGES!

It's a ridiculous pain in my ass to leave my full-time job 20 minutes earlier in the day to make sure I can stop by the bookstore and pay some a king's ransom for a bluebook.

I've recently been informed that this happens a lot in undergrad. All I can say is you idiots went to the wrong schools, this shit should never happen. It's asinine, ridiculous, insane, and pointless. I can't think of a single good reason why this would be beneficial to the class.

In fact nobody can. And if they think they can find a good reason for forcing us to purchase our own blue books, they're wrong and their idea is dumb. That's it. End of story.

J-Wall out.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

this blog is a repost of mine from my blog for my networked journalism class




Finally! Someone as crazy as Jason Leopold seems to be.

Stick with it until the end. Or walk away while it's loading, and then cut straight to near the end.




WTF?!?!?! Whiskey...Tango...Foxtrot.

I've just signed up for www.myspace.com/firebilloreilly....soon that'll be off the ground to gain legions of fans!

Riddle me this, how does Kelly Tilghman get suspended for two weeks from the Golf Channel for suggesting that his rivals "lynch" Tiger woods in a back alley, yet Bill O'Reilly says he personally wants to lynch Michelle Obama and nothing happens?! Granted this was recent -- but how is he not on his ass fired already? You have to be kidding me. I'm against political correctness in most circumstances, I think people need to have tougher skin and should learn to laugh more, but I don't understand this double standard. Plus he's talking about

killing the wife of a candidate for the President of the United States.



Let's not be unclear about this. While there aren't many people (myself included) who believe that he would actually commit murder (if for no other reason than they wouldn't let him have a radio show in prison) this is an actual threatening statement. The Tilghman incident was clearly in jest, but this is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Bill O'Reilly should be fired ANY day now. The fact that Fox "News" allows this to happen is incredibly inappropriate.

It's times like this when I'm glad we have things like the blogosphere and networked journalism -- hopefully NOBODY lets Bill-O escape this one.

~J

Libel is as libel does

Over at my blog for class, the class on networked journalism, we were recently given some assignments for reading. That link has the exact blog entry.

Upon the issuing of the assignments, two of them about Jason Leopold who happens to be a former journalist who used to uphold the tenets of journalism and report stories, emailed our professor accusing her of libel. See his emails here.

Really? Honestly? By asking us to read about his fuck-ups and subsequent refusal to admit he fucked up, our professor commits libel? Asking us to read the truth about what happened is libel? By understanding that he's a liar parading as a journalist is libel? Honestly the only thing separating him from Matt Drudge at this point is his own website complete with shitty HTML. Oh wait.

I can't wait until nobody reads your website, Jason Leopold. You have the gall to email my professor and accuse her of libeling you? You lied, and fabricated sources in a piece for Salon.com, almost completely made up a piece for Truthout.org, and had the publication of your own memoir canceled because of concerns over....care to guess? Lying! That's right! We have a winner!

Douche. Terd Sandwich. Toolbag.

That's right, I'm name-calling. It's not libel, it's opinion! Prove my opinion wrong, I dare ya!

Or maybe he'll just make up some fake sources, emails, and quotes about me.

~J

Pssst, Pass it on!

This just in, Mike Huckabee won (surprisingly) a few states today during Super(duper) Tuesday. Many now consider him back in the race.

Therefore, Hucka is the new Hella.

As in: That is HuckaSweet. That movie was HuckaAwesome. That girls breaststs are HuckaTasty. You get the drift.

Pass it on!


~J

A big eff you to Coors Light

So I made the below video with my cousin to enter a contest for tickets to the 2009 Superbowl. Well, despite the fact that it's head and shoulders above any video on the Coors Light site that was chosen as a finalist, I'm quite bitter. All the videos they chose sucked, ours required hard work, devotion, creativity, originality, and plus we're just fun.

No, we're awesome. But Coors Light chose to ignore our video and go a different route. So I'll never drink Coors original or Coors light again unless I'm on their brewery tour. Fkrs.

Below is our video. It's excellent.



~J