Ah, Summer Vacation.  It's rapidly closing in on that magical time of the year when university employees such as myself have a solid three months of surfing the internet and playing Game Boy for six hours a day before closing the office and going home early.  That glorious time when all the "hard work" from the last nine months pays off in the form of empty inboxes, student-less hallways and infrequent phone calls.

I feel that I have adequately documented my experiences working with students here, but I have yet to mention one of the greatest joys of summer:  visiting the University Student Union and not being accosted by all manner of things that piss me off and make me want to hijack a back-hoe and drive it through the university until all the buildings and people have been completely leveled.  You may ask how can I possibly have anything disparaging to say about a building that houses Burger King, Subway, Starbucks AND a greasy Italian pizza restaurant, but let me tell you that it's not the fine dining establishments that bother me about the union:  it's the people who frequent it every single day that school is in session.  For nine months the Union has been a veritable cesspool hive of irritating bitches and loud shitty music and finally being able to walk the halls of the food court unmolested by flyer-waving jackasses or grey-market hamster vendors is one of the greatest joys of summer.

But how can the union be so terrible, you may (or may not) ask?  Well, I'll tell you.  This week, to celebrate my surviving another school year without killing myself and/or anyone else in a blaze of stapler-related deaths, I present to you the top seven things that piss me off about going to not only my university's student union, but all student unions in general.

1.  The Campus Preacher

I haven't seen a single campus preacher since I came to Boston, and I'm almost starting to miss the accusatory finger-pointing, the hate-fueled anti-everything rhetoric and the being called a "fucking harlot" every time I want to get a small order of fries from the Union.  I really enjoyed getting yelled at by some suspenders-wearing zealot assclown for no reason at all.  It was really the sort of thing that maked me want to fall to my knees and convert to whatever bullshit religion they believed in immediately.

For all of you not lucky enough to attend University in the Bible-thumpin', Wal-Mart shoppin', lynch-mobbin', football-lovin' Dirty Deep South, keep in mind that the typical university campus preacher isn't some happy-go-lucky, amiable, puppy-loving, this-is-the-moral-of-the-story neighborhood Seventh Heaven-style pastor -- This is the kind of guy who, if given the means, would break into your house while you're sleeping, delete all the porn clips on your hard drive and replace them with a fifteen second video of Jesus crying and then wait for you to wake up so that he could throttle you senseless with a ten foot-tall wooden cross and a picture of the Virgin Mary eating a Bible.  He's he kind of guy who hires assistants to wear giant sandwich boards that say PC things like, "If You Can Read This Sign, You Are Going to BURN IN HELL", "Homosexuals Are Sodomizing THE DEVIL", and "If You Touch Boobs Out of Wedlock, Jesus Will FUCKING KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!"  They all rant and rave in awful Southern accents about fire, brimstone, Satan, Jews, pants and a bunch of other jibberish that doesn't ever seem to make a whole lot of sense, all the while pointing and yelling at random bypassers like a crazed homeless person who forgot to take their medication.

The thing that pisses me off about the campus preacher isn't necessarily that he randomly picks people like me out of the crowd and yells "sinner!" at them (because, duh, like I didn't already know that), it's that he basically goes out of his way to be as offensive as possible for no reason other than to agitate people and be as big a jackoff as possible at all times.  Sure, I do that on this website as well, but this is very different because he believes in different stuff than I do and that is completely unacceptable.  Plus, I don't really ever make an effort to try and change anyone's beliefs simply by yelling at them really really loudly.  These guys say whatever comes into their heads and do their best to piss people off so they can have some sort of retarded religious "debate", which nine times out of ten just degenerates to the student bypasser making several rational arguments and the preacher responding by yelling the word "HELL!" over and over again as loud as he can until his face turns read and the veins in his head explode into a shower of Jesus Dust.

I once saw a bumper sticker that read:
"At least in HELL the campus preacher won't bother me"

2.  The Tree-Hugging Hippie Who Sells Incense and Bob Marley Posters

In addition to the cacophony of retardation that assaults your ears when you enter any area within 500 yards of the Union you can almost always clearly catch a whiff of that ever-so-potent mix of incense, marijuana, patchouli and B.O. that constantly emanates from the hippie vendor's sweaty, partially-food-encrusted pores.  You know who I'm talking about.  He's the guy who looks like he spent the better part of the 1960s half-naked passed out face-down in the back of a shag-carpeted VW bus entranced in some sort of acid-and-pot-induced coma listening to Jimi Hendrix while his flower child friends painted pictures with imaginary colors that nobody else could see and only ate hash brownies and drank lemonade made from rainbows.  Now he's relegated to sitting in a three-foot by three-foot square in a small corner of the Union every single day surrounded only by a handful of Jamaican flags with Bob Marley's picture superimposed on them, black-and-white photos of Bruce Lee, a small amount of obviously-hand-made hemp-and-bead jewelry and a crappy 1980s-style boombox blasting either some old malformed low-fi Bob Dylan cassette he stole from a vintage record store in 1976 or a twenty-five cent Ravi Shankar sitar-and-tabla compilation tape somebody donated to him out of sheer pity.

In his own mind though, he's the coolest shit ever.  He's living the dream, man -- he doesn't have to worry about answering to "The Man", he can do whatever he wants, and he's got more "glass tobacco pipes" than a head shop in Amsterdam on April 20th.  To him, there's nothing greater to aspire to in the world.  On the one hand, good for him.  On the other hand, what the fuck.  Get the fuck out of the god damned food court, because you are getting your foul hippie-stink on everything.  I'm hungry, and I'm interested in the delicious aroma of freshly-made greasy pizza.  I don't want to close my eyes and feel like I wandered into some crappy counterculture crystal-wearing wicca shop or India by accident.  Nobody gives a flying fuck at a rolling donut about your crappy bead collection or your bottle of white boy dreadlock shine oil and the only logical uses I can think of for your stupid two foot-tall hand-carved "multi-stick incense holder" involve using it to injure or maim you in various violent and perhaps comical ways.

3.  Fat chicks Wearing Shirts That Say "Look at How Hot I Am" and the EAT My Ass Sorority

I think it's so cute when big fat unattractive slutty girls wear shirts two sizes too small for them that say delightfully humorous things like, "SUPER CUTE" or "SEXY" on them in that crazy retro 70s-style lettering that's all the rage with the kids these days.  Not.  I'm just like, "is this irony?  Is that what you're trying to go for here?  Because it's working.  I don't care how many times or how many different ways you try to convince yourself and/or me that you're anywhere near bone-able, no non-intoxicated person with at least one functioning eye is going to fall for it."

Seriously.  What's the deal here?  When the letters of the silk-screened rhinestone-encrusted word "SEXY" are distorted, wonky-looking and nearly illegible because your undersized shirt has been stretched out of proportion by your fat rolls, it's a problem.  You never see hot girls wearing stuff like that.  Probably because they realize that they don't actually have to try as hard as they possibly can to convince anyone of that fact.

Semi-humorous, somewhat-related side note:  There's a sorority on one of the campuses in town called Sigma Delta Tau.  When the Greek letters Sigma, Delta and Tau are put together they very much resemble the English word "EAT".  As if it wasn't bad enough that there's a sorority on campus that has the word "EAT" in huge letters hanging over their front door, these chicks also have special super-small super-slutty sorority butt-shorts that feature their organization's name in huge letters centered across their asses.  So every time they have a car wash or something they're inadvertently telling everyone to eat their asses.  As such, Andrea and I have dubbed Sigma Delta Tau the "Eat My Ass Sorority".

4.  Idiot Extracurricular Groups That Play Loud Pop Music and Yell for No Reason

These are sometimes the most contemptible of the Union rabble.  They're the jerkass insignificant organizations that make a point of recruiting the most irritating people on campus to advocate for whatever stupid bullshit fundraiser or event they're running that week.  These jerks range from the trio obnoxious blonde airheads shrieking, "come see Dirty Dancing at the auditorium on Sunday!" like a gaggle of intellectually-challenged banshees to the fucking über-perky bitches trying to force brownies in your face to support the university women's swim team bake sale to the flyer-waving College Libertarians inviting you to take advantage of the opportunity to urinate on Noam Chomsky when he gives his seminar talk on Thursday evening.

All these bitches have one thing in common - they want your support.  Never mind the fact that if you actually gave two shits about their stupid organization you would have probably joined it already;  They just want you to come out and assist them in whatever inane crap they're participating in, and they've beaten themselves in the skull enough times with a hammer to convince themselves that the best way to drum up support is by standing in the middle of the Union and yelling at anyone who walks by them.  Well guess what dipshits?  I'm just here for a coffee.  I don't give a fuck about anything that doesn't involve caffeine, so you can just raise up off of my bozack because I'm about ten seconds away from becoming a coffee-deprived zombie and biting you in the neck.

5.  The Fat Guy Who Looks Like The Comic Book Guy From The Simpsons Who Sells Questionably-Legal Bootleg CDs

It's important to differentiate this guy from the afore-mentioned patchouli-blazing hackeysack vendor who doesn't realize he's not Jamaican and this isn't the 70s.  The bootleg CD vendor is a different beast altogether.  This guy is a veritable obscure bullshit media connoisseur - he knows everything about everything and is more than happy to let you know how smart he is at all possible times.  He can (and will) recite the complete discography, track listing and liner notes for anybody who ever released a CD on any record label from Atlantic Records to Three Guys in a Basement Burning a Collection of Weird Noises onto a Blank CD Records, and holds a complete and utter fucking contempt for anyone who doesn't share his base of knowledge.  To prove to everyone how serious he is he always wears band shirts, plays the most shitty obscure music on his incredibly loud portable CD player and has a TV/VCR combo behind his stand that's constantly playing concert footage of early 90s jam bands.  His table is completely covered with worn-out shoeboxes and pizzaboxes full of cryptically-labeled CDs ranging from the ubiquitous "Pop/Rock" to the more specialized and expensive "Indie Bootleg Instrumental Prog Post-Modern Synth-Rock Japan Imports".  If you've ever wanted to pay over $100 for a used, half-eaten CD, he's your man.  If you've ever wanted to see what your life would be like if you never mentally matured beyond the age of sixteen, he's also your man.

6.  Commie Student Protesters Who Think They're Doing The World a Favor By Protesting Stupid Shit in a University Food Court

These jerks are even more deluded than the flyer-waving jerks trying to convince you that you should drop $50 and participate in an all-night dance marathon to support the Irish-Jamaican-Israeli Student Association.  No, these are the motherfuckers who think that standing in a University food court yelling about political injustice is going to ignite some mythical fantastic sweeping change in American foreign policy.  They're the idealistic assholes who say shit like, "oppose the brutal treatment of Palestinian POWs in Israel!"  OK there, Ghandi.  Let's assess the situation here.  You are a fucking eighteen year old dipshit.  You are surrounded by college students, fifty percent of who have to make a concerted effort to get out of bed in the morning and actually ATTEND class instead of sitting around all day eating chips and beer and playing HALO.  I mean, is there any creature on Earth more lazy than the typical college student?  Doubtful.  Getting these guys to organize against whatever stupid shit you feel like you need to protest is going to be like herding cats.  The rest of us are university employees who are jaded and bitter and realize that no matter what you do it's impossible for one person to ever enact any sort of meaningful change.  The sooner you realize that NOBODY FUCKING CARES, the sooner you will start to understand how this country works.

Once that happens, please feel free to get the fuck out of my way.  I am headed to Burger King and there is nothing you can do about it.

7.  Stupid, Shirtless Dipshit on the First Sunny Day of February with the Barbed Wire Tattoo Around "The Guns"

This guy is one of the rare Student Union types who doesn't actually want anything from you (unless you are a hot girl).  He's content to just strut his stuff and pretend he's Mr. Universe when he's really just some fucking awkward-looking hundred and eighty pound white boy with a farmer's tan who's desperately trying to act hard.  OK Rambo, let's put the artillery away.  Please go bench press more than you can handle and crush some sense into your head with a barbell.

This picture came up when I searched for "barb wire tattoo".
I'm just going to go with it.