SEPTEMBER 22, 2006

Ryan Gallant Contributor

Well, summer’s over. It’s again that time of year when you can feel the impending onslaught of the coming fall and winter. A time when the fresh scent of frost greets you in the morning, when school busses resume the transportation of young minds to and from their places of education and a time of year when, if you try camping in a tent, it feels like it’s about -367 degrees outside, and you are pretty sure that you are going to wake up dead. Unfortunately, camping last week, for me anyway, was not all that fun, as a few successive “welcome back” rounds of tequila at The Wave forced me to spend much of that night, and the balance of the following day, holding onto the floor for dear life. Oh it’s good to be back.

Now I don’t know who the came up with this brilliant plan, but someone apparently thought that it would be a good idea to wait through the entire four months of summer break so they could paint the Student Centre on the first day of school. Now I understand that there’s a lot of work to be done on campus in the summer, but perhaps it would make more sense to paint BEFORE 4,000 students return to campus. Oh, and paving the roads and pathways around campus on day one was definitely a good idea too. Not like it isn’t a huge inconvenience or an unflattering portrait of incompetence and disorganization to present to our students on the first day of school or anything. Speaking of pave and stuff, why the hell is it going to take $3.5 million and three months to re-design the Peter Pan corner? Now I know some engineering students may disagree with me here, but as far as I understand, all they really have to do is bulldoze some dirt around, put down some pave, and throw up some traffic lights. A million bucks, a couple 2-4s, and some friends and I could have that done by lunchtime tomorrow. And they’re only a million dollars over-budget; even though they just started. Wonderful.

Phe elite - forces <of + the Charlottetown City Police have once again displayed their superior abilities as a crime-fighting force. Now, I wouldn’t say that it would be incredibly stupid to deploy the entire

... And Now For Something Completely Different: The Rants of a University Student

City Police force for the Black Eyed Peas concert, especially given the ridiculous reactions of the citizens of the City. Maybe a little over-dramatic, but all-in-all, a pretty good precautionary measure. However, | would say that it would probably take a fairly severe bout of brain damage to come up with the brilliant plan of telling the whole world that, “Yeah, so our entire police force is going to be down at the CDP for six or seven hours on September 3.” Good one. Idiots.

Of course the Dudley Do-Right antics of the City Police are matched only by the incredible ignorance of the residents of this city. When it was announced that the Black Eyed Peas would be at the CDP, the people of Charlottetown reacted with all the grace of an irate pack of rabid Balinese monkeys on crack cocaine. By the letters and horror story scenarios sent to The Guardian, you would think that instead of a Black Eyed Peas concert, Charlottetown was playing host to a Hitler and the Third Reich tribute concert, complete with the 10" SS Panzer Division and live grenade launcher demonstrations aimed somewhere into the downtown core. One woman told the CBC that she was pissed that no one had come to ask her how she personally felt about the Black Eyed Peas coming to town. (“Well ma’am,” someone should have told her, “no one really gives a shit.”) She continued, telling the CBC that this wasn’t just any old concert, “This concert is going to take 13 to 25-year-olds. A lot more alcohol, drugs, needles, whatever can take place at any concert.” Wow, what faith this society has in its young people. Yeah, those 13-year-old prostitots are definitely a huge threat to this city, eh? And needles? When is the last time you saw heroine addicts scrambling in line to buy tickets to a concert? Pretty sure they’re saving up their cash for other things rather than Black Eyed Peas there, dear. People need to lose a little bit of their anal retentiveness around here and calm the hell down. Maybe worry a little less about your pristine lawn, about your boat down at the yacht club, and whether or not we should have pop in cans, and worry a little more about whether criminals are

going to break into your house while all the police are down at the CDP.

This was a busy summer for the airwaves on PEI, with a ton of changes in the realm of radio. Most notably were the end of the CHTN era and the beginning of Ocean and K-Rock. (By the way, if you are reading this and you are the new K-Rock 105.5 $10,000 Fugitive, you owe me.) With the popularity of the new stations however, there are some who can’t help but feel sorry for the old hapless and embattled Magic 93. They were there for years, pumping out the pop beats of a generation, and people are starting to miss, or at least feel sorry for Paul and Anne. I guess somewhere in everyone’s psyche there is a little twinge of guilt for switching over to a new station and some nostalgia of the Top 9 at 9 that pulls at our heart strings. Yeah? Well not mine. Paul and Anne and the whole Magic 93 fun bus can go straight to hell. ’ve had enough Great Lite Rock Hits to last four and a half lifetimes, and if I never hear a story about Paul Allen and his damn addiction to chocolate Easter bunnies again, it will be too soon. I don’t think anyone can understand how much I absolutely despise Magic 93. It took me roughly 3,800 hours of forced listening on a school bus and 12 years of Paula Cole, Shawn Colvin and Billie Myers to develop a hatred this severe. Good riddance, I say. All the over- played songs that Magic killed are now avenged.

Can someone explain to me the rationale behind the name Island Dale Estates? I’m not even sure what to say about this one. Sure, I can deal with the “Island” part of the name. Ok, so we're on an island. Not all that original, but whatever. I can even overlook the “Dale” part. Mind you, by definition, a “dale” is a low-lying area or valley, and Brown’s Court happens to be on the top of the highest hill in Charlottetown, but whatever, I don’t care. Seriously though, “Estates”? Honestly. If I were asked to make a list of 4 billion words to describe Brown’s Court beginning with the most appropriate, all the way down to words that don’t even remotely relate to the premises, “Estate” wouldn’t even be among those 4 billion words. It is more

THE CADRE @ 6

likely that I would resort to words in Swahili and Mandarin Chinese before “Estate” would even cross my mind. This is, remember, the same area that encouraged one of my friends, after seeing it on New Year’s Eve, to exclaim: “Oh my God. Brown’s Court is like Rwanda!” Of course, there are far fewer drunken idiots in Rwanda.

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