11 June 2008

pacman jones and student loans: just bein' rebellion at the script club.

recently on the jim rome radio program, there has played a soundbyte of much maligned cowboy cornerback adam "pacman" jones in which he is being interviewed about his penchant for trouble and more specifically his prediliction towards places in which young ladies remove clothing. pacman's answer horrified me as it the incident seems a microcosm for a much larger problem facing this country. his answer goes a little like this.

"it aint no sin to go to the script club...(not a typo)
"i'm just bein' rebellion"

now, i'm not trying to make any moral judgements about pacman. after all, he is correct about the fact that it is not a sin, or at least against the law, to go to the script club. i have been there many times myself. unfortunately, my version of the "script" club involves screenplays for films that play in my head. and that's a little bit different than the man implicated in a shooting incident at a...say it with me now pac...s-t-r-i-p club. yes, children it seems as if pacman is once again involved in a shooting. this time however, the only thing he was trying to murder was the english language.

or maybe im just bein rebellion. no...im starting a rebellion by being rebellious. see the difference pacman? but again, this is not the real problem. after all, the first time i heard it i laughed the same way i did the first time i heard dolphins linebacker channing crowder ask if "they speak english over there in england" after claiming that he couldn't find it on a map. hell yeah, i laughed, right before it started to make me angry.

see the sad fact is these fucking guys went to college, or at least housed themselves on or near college campuses for a few years. the worst part is that they did it for free while most of my friends and aquaintences actually graduated owing sums of money the size of small mortgages. it apparently does not matter to the granters of free education that these dudes' iq are about as low as their 40 yard dash times. it apparently doesn't matter that these guys clearly did not take advantage of the academic oppurtunities and rewards granted them free of charge because of their football prowess.

now i dont begrudge pacman and channing their success in the nfl. i dont begrudge them the spoils that come with it. but i do begrudge the fact that these guys paid no money for the use of academic facilities of the universities of west viginia and florida respecively. especially when people i know who merely wanted to be more intelligent, well rounded, and better spoken human beings are going into debt up to their eyeballs just to take advantage of the academic institutions that pacman and crowder took for granted.

it seems to me that this is indicitive of a larger problem in the united states as we use far too many of of our not quite as abundant as we thought resources pulling up idiots to the middle (or higher) and not enough of our resources allowing the intelligent to make themselves even better. we have the talent in this country to constantly be setting the bar higher and higher in all walks of life. but unfortunately the welfare system of college scholarship awards has brought us to the point of granting education to the likes of pacman jones, channing crowder, and maurice clarett, while inflation has brought us to the point that alot of capable people are unable to self resource alot of ideas because of the financial burden that their educations became. alot of talent is being wasted and the bars seem to be being reset at a slower pace than at any time previous in human history with perhaps the possible exception of the dark ages.

and that is fucking depressing...oh well i'm gonna go to the script club.

3 comments:

mmaier2112 said...

More than half of all college "students" do not need to be there.

And if our moronic government hadn't effectively outlawed IQ tests for employment, a college degree wouldn't be required for most jobs.

You're over-romanticizing "higher education". They're paper mills. They give you a degree for money. That's all there is too it.

There are plenty of brilliant people without degrees. There are colossal morons with Master degrees.

None of it means anything.

troy myers said...

it is not about the degree...it is about the access to study under some of the greatest minds that angers me. the scientists at florida invented gatorade and while channing crowder was there drinking it, not coming anywhere near those professors, somebody out in the world that lacks his athletic ability was denied the access to do so. and that is the part that sucks.
how pissed would you be if steve vai was teaching music at iu, and you were told no while fucking moron athletes got to sit in his class?

mmaier2112 said...

Life sucks, then you die.

Everything is about money. Most college students wouldn't ever go there if they didn't "have to" to get a better paying job. Actually educating themselves is pretty far down on the list of things to do while there.

But I still think you're over-romanticizing organized education in general.