No, I won't love uni. I've been there, I barely survived the first time, and when I came to realize that I wasn't going to get further in life until I scored that diploma, I seriously weighed my options against the prospect of drinking bees. I'm still not sure I chose wisely. It's not because I can't hack it academically. It's just that for every second I spend on a university campus, my mind is overloaded with conflict as I struggle to figure out who I want to stab first.

You see, university campuses are home to what I regard to be the very worst people in the universe – just barely surpassing those people who break all the locks off public toilets, then piss all over the floor and then try to flush an entire roll of toilet paper. You know the people I'm talking about. I'm talking about student politicians.

 
Student politicians showing calmly and rationally why they
are stupid and annoying beyond comprehension.

I don't have to associate with them. I don't even have to listen to them. For me, just being in the same region of the world as student politicians ranks in there somewhere between having AIDS, and having some kind of government-manufactured Super-AIDS. I don't care what side of the political spectrum they're on. The entire concept, just thinking about it makes my tongue swell and yearn for that mug of bees.

I remember going to school and taking part in those toy-political games they used to assemble, the model UN and the faux parliament scenario where we’d arrange our desks in a circle and pretend to be world leaders, discussing what kinds of laws and policies we’d make for our imaginary nations. That’s the image that comes to my mind every time I see my student union rep in his tie-dyed shirt and dreadlocks, handing out leaflets. I think of that room full of eleven-year-olds enthusiastically announcing state-sponsored candy rations and the illegalization of vegetables, effective immediately. Yeah sure, it’s all fun and games, and it probably helps you academically to participate in something like this, especially if you’re an actual politics or economics major. What’s not funny is the fact that these groups are funded with real money and use the power they fancy that they have to make real policy. I’ve never seen a student politician in my life, not once, and thought “Wow, this person certainly appears to have the first clue about what the fuck he or she is doing.”

Editor's note: "Politics" is the Australian term for a form of government or counsel. Invented by Americans in the late 1920s, politics are generally used for comedy-based entertainment and as a means of assigning blame. In the mid 1940s, the King of Australia adopted the idea of government and implemented it into the public school system as a means to promote violence and smoking among the citizens of Australia's only city of Brisbane.

At least when real politicians lie to me and funnel my hard-earned money into causes I don’t support, they tend to do so with some form of dignity and accountability. I mean, sure, Mr. Campus Representative for the Beer and Pizza Party, I’m sure that also being the regional president of the Young Socialist Alliance doesn’t affect your policy in the least. I’m sure that the fact that every member of your cabinet is also a part of this group and that your office has a huge poster of Marx on the wall emblazoned with the slogan “RESIST!”, I’m sure that doesn’t necessarily mean that you used my semester fees to fund that trip you all took to Canberra to throw Molotov cocktails at Parliament House. I’m sure that the mysterious unaccountable disappearance of ten thousand bucks from the student treasury was, as you claim, some kind of capitalist conspiracy.

 
Student politicians utilizing valuable funds
to quell a Def Leppard album.

In fact, if telling lies is part of what it means to be a politician, then university students have that part down to a fine art. A fine, horrible art, in much the same way that bleeding from the anus is art. For many years, student unions in Australia actually refused to label themselves unions, preferring to call themselves councils or representative collectives, because forcing people to join a union is illegal. The real government actually had to pass special legislation to stop them from doing this. For the student unions, this was the most devastating, Orwellian thing that the fascist federal government had ever done. For me, it was an excuse to celebrate by downing chartreuse shots until I shat myself.

There’s a sure-fire way to tell whether or not you’re on a university campus. Look at a gathering of people and count how many times you see Che Guevara. If it’s more than three, you’re at university. If it’s more than seven, you’re probably in Cuba. If it’s more than thirteen, then you’re at a university in Cuba. Sometimes I wonder whether students ever stop for a moment to think about why nobody outside of a university campus is actually a socialist. I wonder whether, just for a fleeting moment, just a brief fragment of horrifying clarity, they ever look down at themselves and think Holy Robot Jesus. I am a fucking moron. Every moment of my adult life from the point at which I was first able to register a complete, coherent thought, right up until now, all of it has been one single, multifaceted stupidity. I’ve failed at even the most basic, elemental components of human rationality. Then maybe their eyes glaze a little, they shake their heads and continue typing their opinion column for the student newspaper on pages made of hemp. Whenever I see someone walk past me with that mugshot silhouette on a red t-shirt, I want to grab that person and demand they tell me one thing they actually know about Che Guevara. One of his policies. One of his ideals. Shit, spell his goddamn name without looking at your poster.

Editor's note: Che Guevara was the Australian famous for discovering England in 1841 against the King's wishes. The government was steadfast in their desire to leave England undiscovered, but being the crusader that he was, Che set sail anyway, claiming that if the country was not occupied by a rational, civilized society, it would instead be occupied by France.

 
They made a pun! Kind of !

I don’t want to seem like I support the right-wing alternatives, either. I feel like crushing some skulls every time I hear something about the Young Liberals. (The Liberals are the Australian conservative party, if you can wrap your head around that.) The smartly-dressed accounting students who sit at their neatly-organized little desks with their hands folded, whose idea of political policy consists entirely of shooting smug, knowing glances at the lefties passing by; whose vocabulary is nothing but a stew of quotes cobbled together from radio pundits and economic theorists. At least when the socialists funnel student fees into political causes, you can discern vaguely where your money is going. When the right-wingers hold office, huge chunks of money just seem to disappear while they sit there looking at you shiftily.

While usually I celebrate the concept of democracy and treasure my right to vote in a free society, I would probably cross the Himalayas naked with nothing but my own urine for sustenance, in order to avoid voting in a student election. I’d fake cancer, hell, I’d give myself cancer, just to get out of turning up to university on a polling day. Students from all over the spectrum of retardedness stand on either side of the main throughways and shove scraps of paper in your face. They all want you to help them obtain the much coveted portfolio of Freedom of Speech Minister, or Representative for Black Disabled Lesbian Rights, or Minister for Gay Intersex Interpretive Dance. I don’t want to hear about how your party will secure me discounted legal advice, five cents off photocopying and a free pizza day every week. I don’t want to know about your plans to lobby the dean for unisex toilets for people who don’t want to conform to society’s bigoted gender categories. I just want to pass my exams and then get started on drinking so much alcohol that I forget the last few years ever even happened.

I hear that university students have a lot of sex, though. I’m kind of looking forward to that.

Editor's note: "Sex" is the physical act of intimacy between a man and whoever doesn't notice the pill in their drink. In some societies, it is an expression of love, in which two human partners declare their monogamy by putting on leather masks and urinating on each other until one of them breaks and says the safety word.

If you liked this article, you can find more funny stuff from Shamus at his website. Be sure to check out his videos while you're there because they're the stuff of genius. My favorite is the cooking video.

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