Here’s the basic process for AGM II: the meeting starts at 9 a.m. and goes until 5 p.m. Over the course of the day, candidates for vice president of campus issues, finance, student events and university affairs will be vetted in a process very similar to how the Gazette operates the USC presidential media forum — candidates give opening statements, answer a variety of pointed and general questions, and then give closing statements.

Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, there’s a few flies in the ointment when the USC gets involved. First, there’s no cap on the debate time period. If councillors really want to stretch something out, then the process can take hours (like on Friday, when the VP finance segment spanned two hours and over 50 questions for a measly two candidates).

I’m all for democracy and getting questions out there — these candidates are supposed to represent thousands of undergraduate students in a variety of forums both outside and inside the Western community. But with that being said, I’m not entirely sure how constructive the process is as it currently stands.

Maybe it’s just me being an egotistical prick, but I like to think the questions I put together along with the rest of the Gazette election staff for the media forum are well-researched and require some thought on the part of the candidate to answer the question well.

Saturday, on the other hand, featured questions like “what platform point would you take from one of your opponents if you win?” or “which candidate would you vote for if you weren’t running?” These questions serve no purpose. They don’t tell you anything about the candidate other than that they aren’t afraid to recognize a good idea when they see one — a quality that would hopefully arise over the course of the campaign anyway.

Then there’s the bigger issue of sabotage questions. Let’s face it: most of the USC enters this meeting with a pretty good idea of who they’re going to vote for. While there were a couple of close votes, the likelihood of a multitude of votes switching over is an idealistic misconception. As a result, excessively negative or soft questions pop up, either to make one candidate look bad or make another look better. Which in effect means everyone just looks foolish.

Unfortunately I think the biggest perception this first-time viewer had coming out of the AGM was the same jaded perspective I’ve obtained from covering the organization for the last three years. This meeting serves more as a means for councillors to hear the sound of their own voice and perform for an audience instead of representing student’s interests like they’re supposed to.

Tonight the USC decides whether it will put the changes proposed by the governance review panel into effect. After years of watching a disinterested council be led around by executive teams of various power levels, I would love to see the average councillor take some pride in their job and start to represent the students they were elected by.

Rejoice! The future of the automotive industry is here. Surely we can look to Ford, GM and Chrysler to bring us wondrous creations that will allow us to travel across the country on a single tank of gas, with the scent of flowers coming out of our tailpipes and woodland animals prancing along beside the highway as birds serenade our journey.

Well, unless Ford’s new 400-something horsepower Mustang relies on unicorn farts for propulsion, it looks like the Big Three have ignored consumers demands for greener transportation. Indeed, all manufacturers seem to be strongly in the “business as usual” mindset, with supercharged sedans from Cadillac and big SUVs from GM and Chrysler. Perhaps “green” was supposed to mean the paint colour.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The North American automotive industry long gave away any illusion of remaining at the forefront of innovation and development. While many have wished for a second coming of the Big Three, the 2010 North American International Auto Show may only represent an epitaph for a dying breed.

So maybe this situation was inevitable. With China now representing a larger market for automotive sales than anywhere else in the world, Chinese manufacturers may be able to make a better case for internal sales than an international car company trying to break into the market.

“Okay,” I can hear my editor saying, “what does this have to do with our readership?” True — unless you had your heart set on picking up a green machine created by an American car company, their decision to stay firmly stuck in the past is unlikely to have much of an effect.

But, as just about every single newspaper reported when the American government  bailed out GM, there are too many industries counting on a healthy automotive sector. If 2010 marks the beginning of the end for cars in North America, then things are going to look pretty bleak for the economy.

Worse still is what the Big Three’s backwards mentality represents. It’s an abdication by one of the oldest industries in North America of a place at the forefront of innovation. A cynic may say it’s a muted recognition of our shift from a society of thinkers and innovators to a society obsessed with consumption and the service industry (a hardened cynic may say we’re there already).

So congratulations Ford, Chrysler, and GM. While many had already chalked you up as irrelevant years ago, you weren’t having any of that. No, you stood up and said “Don’t just assume we’re irrelevant, we’ll prove it for you!” Instead of fading away you chose to burn out in an orgy of fossil fuels, proving to the world once again that North Americans rise above the rest in our need to be self-absorbed. Well done.

Partially inspired by this comic, I have put together a few selections of what I would really like for Christmas. Since the holiday seems to be centred around gift-giving (no matter how many of you bleeding hearts may say it’s about family and togetherness), I figured I would point out the fact that the things people want most are invariably the gifts that are impossible to give.

So with that in mind I present to you my (impossible) 2009 Christmas wish list.

1. An end to the habit of using “gate” after every scandal.
Climategate, Kanyegate, Tigergate (should that even qualify as a “gate”?) … the inanity of this statement still seems lost on the general public. This has been a recurring wish of mine for several years now, though I’ve virtually given up hope of it ever coming true. Folks: the Watergate scandal is named after the hotel, not because some copy editor thought it’d be snazzy to add a vestigial suffix to Nixon’s screw-up. Burn it with fire, nuke it from orbit, I don’t care. Just stop naming every single scandal “-gate.” It doesn’t give the event any more importance, it just shows how idiotic the folks who run the media are.

2. Dogsleds (temporarily) replace the LTC.
Okay, so we’ll need tons of snow. And a massive pooper-scooper brigade. But think of how awesome it would be! Dump 10 feet of snow on the city and ship in some huskies. Not only do we rectify the dismal puppy-to-student ratio at Western, we could also invite some Americans up from the US and  show them their stereotypical notions of Canada are accurate. All those folks upset over the transit strike will be all smiles after zipping along Richmond street behind a team of dogs. As an added bonus, because the strike issue won’t likely be solved before the snow starts melting, we’ll have the perfect transportation system during the winter months during which time the city can save on snow removal.

3. The Tragically Hip become O-Week 2010′s opening band.
If Western managed to promote this in the springtime I can guarantee applications for the school will increase dramatically. It could be the first year the school doesn’t receive noise complaints, and there’d be an outpouring of community goodwill. If we put the show on at TD Waterhouse we could even sell tickets to non-students and save the school money! Do I really need to explain this one any further?

4. For the new Sherlock Holmes movie to not suck.
This film presents a synthesis of some of my favourite things in the world: Robert Downey Jr’s acting, Guy Ritchie’s directing, and one of the most badass detectives ever created. There are even rumours that Holmes will be portrayed in an accurate manner – i.e. like Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House. But since this film appears to be synthesized awesomeness on paper, there is now an approximately 99.9 per cent chance it will induce vomiting in all those who attempt to watch it. While I have already begun preparing to endure a poor remake of Snatch with a turn of the century setting, there is still a very slim chance that Hollywood has managed to avoid screwing this one up.

5. Replacing the water cooler in the Gazette office with a perpetually refilling Red Bull fridge.
Okay, maybe I’ll be the only one to get any use out of such a device, but damn if it wouldn’t be delicious. I know my colleagues may hate me for getting rid of their healthy water, but after a couple of days on a Red Bull diet I’m sure they’d come around. Though I may keel over from a massive, caffeine-fueled heart attack after less than a week, I am positive I would shake off this mortal coil with a smile on my face.

6. Doritos 3Ds are brought back as a potato chip.
To round out my food and drink-related wishes, I would love it if the powers-that-be at Frito-Lay decided to bring back this awesome snack food. Don’t get me wrong – Doritos are quite possibly the trashiest food ever created. If food existed in a society similar to our own, Doritos would be living in a trailer park and watching Nascar. But I don’t care. Ever since they were taken off the shelves, there has been a hole in my life – a hole that can only be filled by jalapeno cheddar flavoured Doritos 3Ds.

7. A return to the “Mad Men” aesthetic style.
Let’s face it: suits are awesome. To any guy who has yet to try a suit on, do so now. Add a hat into the mix and you’ll be wanting to start dancing like Fred Astaire. Unfortunately the only thing worse than being the only guy in the room not in a suit is being the only guy in a suit when everyone isn’t. Yes, Neil Patrick Harris can pull that look off. For the rest of us mere mortals we have to hope society will once again recognize the daily importance of the pin-striped three piece.

8. Someone to finally make a “Christmas Special” that bucks the trend.
Why is it that every made-for-tv movie around the holiday season has to be about how the cute fuzzy animals end up saving Christmas? Do I honestly have to rely on South Park for a subversive look at festive specials? There’s a reason why people hate that guy who ruins the ends of movies – if we already know the end of the story then there’s no point in watching the film. The same goes for the Christmas special. We already know the heroes are going to save Santa from being eaten alive by the  dinosaurs. I say scar a few children in their formative years, make them think the jolly old elf never made it off of Treasure Island, and then when Christmas comes and they actually get presents they’ll be surprised and happy.

9. Hammocks in the University Community Centre.
Western has already announced students can spend the night in the UCC if they’re stuck without a way home. Unfortunately, those couches that have been casually strewn throughout the building are sadly lacking on the comfort factor. I suggest setting up a colllection of strategically placed palm trees and hanging hammocks in the gym — there could even be nightly slumber parties during  exams. And, if administration wanted to, they could pipe in soothing ocean sounds and let students feel their troubles melt away. Or they could just provide rum and parrots so we all could feel like swashbuckling pirates instead of stressed out students.

10. An end to blogs that provide all their content in list form.
Most bloggers have figured out that there’s quite a bit of money to be made in list writing (“Stuff White People Like” — I’m looking at you). Llazy writers across the intertubes have embraced the list as a platform for their writing. Yeah, it may be an easier way to write, especially if a deadline has unexpectedly snuck up on you. But honestly, what serious writer does this anymore?

I had hoped to devote this week’s update to the insidious phenomenon of Christmas creep, but I was forced to poach the topic for a column in tomorrow’s paper. You can read that particular lump of coal on Wednesday’s page four.

Instead, I have chosen to tackle holiday tunes today, and before I proceed I would like my two faithful readers to recognize the extreme sacrifice I have made by choosing this topic. As I write this, my ears are trying to fully separate from my body in a desperate attempt to avoid any future infliction of Christmas tunes.

The following is merely a brief glance at the lengthy catalogue of horrible Christmas music. I also chose not to present the songs in any particular order, since once you pass below a certain level of quality there’s really no point in ranking.

Grab your earplugs, folks — these ones are stinkers.

“Wonderful Christmastime” Paul McCartney — Though I racked my brain to find a more over-played Christmas tune, I could not. McCartney’s contribution exists in that weird realm beyond the “classic” Christmas songbook, and for good reason. It’s awful. The sing-song chorus is one of the more persistent ear worms of the holiday season and does little more than exponentially increase the rage level of Christmas shoppers. With Wings, McCartney showed himself to be “the insipid Beatle” and this song only serves to sweeten an already too-sweet holiday season.

“Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” Tom Waits — I love Tom Waits. He’s what you would expect would happen if you were to blend Frank Oz (of The Muppets) with Randy Newman in a vat of bourbon. Tom Waits’ career has experienced a remarkable lifespan for someone who sounds like Grandpa getting drunk at karaoke. He opens this tune with a rendition of “Silent Night”  — one of the most cringe-inducing experiences you will ever have. The song that follows remains remarkably true to the title, though whether such an accomplishment is a good thing remains to be seen.

“Santa Claus is Coming to Town” Bruce Springsteen —The Boss should be careful making songs like this.  Though most people avoid New Jersey like the plague, Santa Claus still manages to make the trip every year, though that may change after he hears this tune. Bruce remains unintelligible for most of this trainwreck, with the occasional “woo” thrown in to show how exuberant he is for the holiday season. This is the song that gave me the joy of experiencing my eardrums attempting to vomit.

“Little Drummer Boy” Everyone… but especially Michael Jackson — I really can’t understand the love this song receives. Not a year goes by without some starry-eyed young artist wanting to cover it. I’m not religious by any stretch of the imagination, but the crassness of commercializing what I can only assume is a solemn devotion to  the Christian faith is remarkable. Plus, “pa-rumpa-pum-pum” is quite possible the worst onomatopoeia ever invented. No drum has every sounded like that, ever. I would have thought the rendition by Peter Griffin of Family Guy would have dissuaded people from playing this song.

Anything by Alvin and the Chipmunks — I thought briefly about citing just one Chipmunks song. But that would be an exercise in futility. They’re all equally atrocious. It’s bad enough that someone decided there was money to be made in creating “A Chipmunk Christmas,” but why do we feel the need to listen to it on an annual basis? Haven’t we suffered enough? Crappy singing sped up to 78 RPM is still crappy singing.

“Do they know it’s Christmas” Band Aid — Yes, I think they do, and even if they don’t, repeating the song’s title endlessly for the chorus only serves to irritate anyone listening to this piece of tripe. Donating money to charity is a noble pursuit, but every holiday season I can’t help but wonder if this song hurts more people than it helps.

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” Mariah Carey — Surprisingly enough, there was a time when I had a girlfriend. As a result, I was forced to endure a plethora of romantic comedies, one of which was “Love, Actually.” In the movie this song accompanies a  scene so cheesy my eyeballs rolled out of my skull. They needed to be surgically re-attached. Honestly. Carey shows her versatility by reaching octaves above a normal audible frequency.

“Mistress for Christmas” AC/DC — Coming from the 1990* album “The Razor’s Edge” (also known as “the one people only listen to because the first track is ‘Thunderstruck’”), Mistress for Christmas is a remarkable piece. Nobody has every claimed AC/DC to be the most subtle of bands, but this song really stretches the line. Without a doubt one of the raunchiest Christmas tunes ever written (though “Back Door Santa”  comes close), with the line “I wanna ride on your reindeer honey and ring the bells,” this song reaches new depths of depravity.

* The original article incorrectly listed the date as 1980.

Unfortunately, the issue of “Christmas Creep” will be a topic covered in a future blog post — mainly because writing about Christmas Creep still constitutes writing about Christmas and frankly, I don’t want to be part of a phenomenon I despise.

No, a better topic for today is the issue of morality. Regular viewers of various holiday specials will recognize how I managed to jump from Christmas to talking about being good — after all, being good (or trying to) is really what Christmas is all about.

Honestly though, what’s so good about being good? Everyone seems to have this  preconceived notion that goodness and virtue will result in long-term rewards, but I’m not really seeing it.

Take a look at the major players in just about any industry. It’s often said that psychopaths normally have an easier rise to the top of a corporation, and a quick scan of the business practices and ethics of most CEOs would seem to support such a statement. Though he may not be the best example, Bernie Madoff managed to put together a disgusting amount of money mainly by being a scheming, duplicitous crook. The man didn’t care he was taking money from charities, or folks who had their entire savings sunk in with him.

And you know what? More power to him. Because after all, deep in the sub-cockles of their souls people are selfish. Think about it. If everyone was good, then life would be boring. We’d all be communists working towards a greater good and not worrying about self-advancement. Being selfish is what makes the world go around.

Maybe it’s a symptom of my religious beliefs, or rather a lack thereof. It’s kind of hard to understand why being good is so important when the reason most people point to is the afterlife. Maybe I’ll have a red gentleman with hoofs and horns toasting my buns over a fire for all eternity, but eternity is only a possibility — personal gain is immediate and much more rewarding.

And to those who point out that being good is good enough for itself, I’d say you’re being more of a hypocrite than the CEOs bilking people for millions. Isn’t a byproduct of performing a good action the good feelings and benefits you see as a result? Performing an evil act is just removing the middleman from performing a good act. As for the guilty feeling you get a long time after performing an “evil” act, well that’s just society doing its best to thwart your natural, human behaviour.

So let’s see people be a little more upfront with their intentions. Being good is boring – much better to make life interesting.

Join Mike’s twitter account and find out if he gets a lump of coal in his stocking at www.twitter.com/hayesatgazette

Take the recent example given by Fanshawe’s junior riot club. I know the whole incident is a week or two behind us, but that behaviour is all too common after the drink is consumed. I highly doubt the folks at Fanshawe would still want to test the effects of gravity on beer bottles if they were sober, just as I highly doubt many of the idiots who start brawls at the bars are really that aggressive without their beer. Though perhaps some of these folks’ rowdy behaviour can be attributed to being a part of a mob, the role alcohol plays in these messes is undeniable.

But of course not everyone feels the need to lash out when they’re drinking. Others seem to prefer to use alcohol as a support mechanism.

You all know the type: they’re calm and mild-mannered by day but once they take a sip of tequila the nearest lampshade attaches itself to their head as if it was drawn there by a magnet. They claim they just can’t have a good time unless they have a drink in their hand and seem to get much drunker than everyone else much quicker, as if they’re unable to enjoy any experience of life while totally sober. Call me jaded, but if all it takes to bring you out of your shell is a drink or two, then the outgoing part of your personality can’t lie too far below the surface.

I understand there are numerous other reasons to drink, and I don’t want to come across as some sort of puritanical prohibitionist. My concern isn’t necessarily with people’s drinking habits, but rather how they want to absolve themselves from personal responsibility whenever they drink. We seem to have arrived at a point where alcohol has become the ultimate excuse creator. We don’t question whether being drunk or not remembering from drinking is an acceptable excuse for ridiculous behaviour. Even if you’re not externalizing it by explaining your behaviour to someone else, the act of drinking itself allows an excuse for you to withdraw from the outside world.

Now, I’d be lying if I said I had the answers to why we as a society seem to feel the need to absolve ourselves from any sense of personal responsibility. The cynic in me would just say it’s the nature for people to try to do anything but accept responsibility for their own actions. After all, it’s easy to say you drink because you feel like you don’t fit in, or because your heart is broken, or any number of things. The much harder thing is to accept yourself for who you are without the aid of some fermented grains.

So maybe this year, after you face down the double-barreled shotgun of tests and assignments, it’d be a good idea before trundling off to find what’s at the bottom of the next pint of Guinness to scrutinize your own reasons to drink. Though the propensity to drink seems to have found its way into the lexicon of the university/college experience, maybe we need to figure out whether it plays the role of an occasional friend or a crutch.

There’s something that happened in the 90s. I’m not sure if it was all those Saturday Morning cartoons telling us we were special, but our current generation seems to have this idea that it is we, not the meek, who will inherit the Earth.

You see them in class all the time — those people who complain incessantly about how they should get five more percent on their essay because they “worked really really hard.” Or the folks in tutorial who get miffed when people don’t hang onto their every word as they explain how their current relationship totally relates to Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.

Whatever happened to a sense of humility? Everyone seems to think they’re in Generation Awesome. And it’s all over the place. The internet has given birth to the embarrassing phenomenon of fan fiction which has grown, like some demonic hellspawn, into an industry with a rabid, adoring audience. You end up with situations where steamy tales of Captain Kirk and Spock’s forbidden interspecies romance are treated like the second coming of Shakespeare, even if the language is the literary equivalent of a cow turd.

So why is this a bad thing? It lowers our standards. A sense of entitlement, if fostered by society, creates a situation where everyone gets praise for nothing. It infantalizes our society — like a toddler may be praised for making a doodie, we now have high school students told their laughable one page summary of the Cold War is worthy of a passing grade.

Perhaps tough love would be the best solution. Maybe if we didn’t make having a university degree a requirement to flip burgers at McDonald’s, a high school education would actually mean something. As it stands, a lobotomized child with narcolepsy could sleep their way through high school and still get into university. If our school system actually educated students then we’d have a situation where university could be a place of intellectual development instead of a farm for resume building. But apparently we can’t do that, because such a system would inevitably involve holding someone back a grade – a cruel inconvenience sure to scar a child for life.

Next on the list is getting rid of reality television. I don’t care if the networks love how cheap it is. It’s harmful for society to have so many idiotic people rewarded for acting like idiots on camera. Now everyone seems to think they’re entitled to their 15 minutes of fame, which results in stunts like the Heenes’ balloon boy. It’s never about actual accomplishment, people just think they’re worthy of being rich and famous without putting the effort into it.

But the best solution of all goes back to parents. While it may be a comfort mechanism to treat your offspring like they’re some unique snowflake, the harsh reality is your child is merely a cog in the greater machine of society. If everyone knows from the start that their lives and opinions are unimportant to the greater scheme of things then maybe some actual accomplishments could be achieved instead of everyone waiting for success to fall into their laps.

Thanks again. Until next time…

I hate blogs. Really. I see them as the logical evolution of an education system where everyone is told they’re a special, unique snowflake. The conceit required to assume there is an audience out in the vast expanses of the Internet who cares about the specifics of your inconsequential life is staggering. Yet we see new blogs springing up all the time, and don’t even get me started on Twitter.

There may be very specific examples where these services can be used for good — the Iranian “blogosphere” that sprung up following their elections is a recent case. But seriously, what we have for the most part is a market saturated by self-absorbed twits who have yet to experience the real world.

Which brings me to the topic of today’s post. Yes, I realize there’s a certain irony involved in writing a blog post condemning blogging. Let’s just set that aside as a necessary evil. I pledge in this inaugural “Hell in a Handbasket” entry that I will only post information on things of importance — the day I describe my totally super fantastic awesome day will be the day I will voluntarily take myself behind the woodshed.

To my two readers, thank you for your time. Until next time…