But I am not afraid. I'm not sorry if
I do not address issues of police brutality or gay marriage or media
censorship or interplanetary wars or other important topics in these
lines. It's my magazine and I can do whatever the hell I want with
it.*
Oh yes, I am a rebel. But I have a
cause: to redefine what an editorial can be. I think it is without
hyperbole that I can be considered the modern Lenin, changing the
course of history, only not in Russia. No longer is the editorial
page just the opinionated bollocks of someone you've never met and
probably don't care about telling you what you should be caring
about; it is now a place where I can let rip the darkest monsters
from my cerebral cortex to infest the pages of debate with the
ravings of a paranoid, egotistical, unbalanced, modest, drop-dead
gorgeous young Trekkie and help you pass a few minutes of your day
without being so overwhelmed with opinions that your head explodes à
la Scanners.
When I came in at the start of the
year, I vowed to go Extreme Makeover: Editorial Edition on this
page's ass. I've tried my best but the trouble is that I have no
idea whether or not I am being successful. I live in the fortress of
solitude that is my office. I rarely venture into the open urban
jungle and ask people their opinions of my work. I suffer from many
things, one of which is an allergy to students. You guys disgust me.
So the only feedback I get is the occasional angry letter.
There's a saying that if you have a
good experience at a restaurant you tell your invalid grandmother who
hasn't left the house in 18 years. If you have a bad experience you
go on Campbell Live and let rip. Or something like that. So by that
rational, every time we get a positive feedback letter, that equates
to 2,000 positive letters. If we get a bad one, that equals -200
complaints, which is actually a good thing (don't question this
logic, I used to work for NASA).
This year, so far anyway, we have been
relatively hate-mail free, which means there has been even less
praise mail. Don't get me wrong, I hate hate-mail and this is by no
means a desperate plea for you to place a brick on your caps lock and
virtu-yell until the larynx in your fingers are swollen and sore.
Such tirades can keep me up at night which explains my extensive set
of steak knives and exercise equipment that never get used. So from
the lack of death threats, I am sleeping well and my boss is happy.
But this does create the problem that I
have no idea how stuff is being received. So in order to gauge some
perspective as to how well these Jeditorials are being absorbed into
the blood stream, I have come up with a simple scale that you can
rate my achievements on and send them back to me:
On a scale of 1-10, 1 being "oh my
God they are awesome" and 10 being "the greatest written works of
all time", how would you rate these Jeditorials? Go on, be honest.
*AuSM General Manager Sue Higgins may
have a slightly different point of view than this.
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