An angry tirade from the Chief

By Michael Leung

This is no goodbye note. This is a lashing out–essentially a giant fuck you.

Yep, that’s right, your 2001/02 Gauntlet Editor-in-Chief has nothing to say to everybody else out there and will reserve this space for a message to his staff: Take your wussie-shit sunshine goodbye sentiments and shove ’em. This year has been perfectly atrocious for the Gauntlet, and I’m taking this opportunity to eloquently flay my useless staff in print.

Allow me to fully describe the fetid, wretched shit show that is Gauntlet this year.

First of all, my entire staff stinks. All of you section editors were nothing less than the spawn of evil. Not only did you never, ever get your copy in on time, you handed me absolute tripe every time with your ugly little fast-food smiles to boot. Bailey, you’re the worst for this-and in fact, your ego is so big you barely fit through our front doors. Ben, you’re weird. All of you can’t edit if your life depended on it, and all of you make the same mindless mistakes repeatedly.

To each of you, I know your desire to improve ended somewhere in August, and I’ve done nothing but act as a crutch for your sorry-ass excuses for sections ever since. You all sat back amongst your smug selves, thinking how important the work you were doing was.

Well guess what, it wasn’t. You’re all useless. Laverty, you think you’re the cat’s ass as a writer, but if I sat down and really edited your copy, it would only smell like something out of the cat’s ass. Too bad I’m too busy editing everybody else’s crap. Ruth, I hate everything you’ve ever written, and you are not one of the best writers here. I always want to strangle you. Lucky for you I’m diplomatic.

I don’t care if we had a mind numbing terrorist attack, I don’t care if your mom needs a ride from the heroin rehab clinic and I don’t care if your dog just chewed off its own leg in an epileptic seizure. Get your fucking copy in, all of you. And do a better job editing it.

Hello, McFly? We use "it’s" when we want to say "it is," and its when it is possessive. Em dashes, en dashes and hyphens all mean something different. No, Ross, there isn’t any space this week and no, you can’t run that because it’s not funny. Nicole, stop trying to use that ugly font.

Oh man, and don’t get me started on the layout end of things. You fuckers completely blitz me every Wednesday and then whine about not getting your pages back quickly enough. Maybe, if you did the changes correctly the first time around, we wouldn’t have these issues but apparently, nothing can get that through those neanderthal skulls of yours.

In truth, you guys all stink on the computers, and I can’t believe how many times I have to clean up your filthy files because you’ve all left the stupid registration marks on the pages more times than I can count on my hands and feet combined.

I can’t believe how long it took you all to learn InDesign, and none of you have ever demonstrated you know how to use a computer, let alone click a mouse. Don’t even try anymore. Dumbasses.

And your design skills? My god, you people have no skills whatsoever. None of you would recognize a decent typeface if it gave you a blowjob. You wouldn’t know how to crop a picture despite the fact that all the pictures look like ass anyways-and Aaron, that means you. You call yourself a photographer? You make your living off of it, busy guy? Whatever. James, I can’t believe you made my Banff film festival piece about as good looking as your tits-you’ll never be a designer. Andrea, if you keep asking me to box a page with mistakes on it, I’m going to tear it into tiny pieces, and mix it into your chocolate milkshake after I run it through the toilet. Alison, I could draw better with my right foot-and I’m left handed. Sheesh!

On the whole, this year really has stunk, and nothing incredible happened. The whole penis thing was a perfect example of the disaster of this year, and I can’t believe I had to shovel the shit for you guys on that one. I’m disgusted with each of you, so I’m glad it’s over. Jerks.