Walter-versary. Ten Years Ago on RYS.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Where We Don't Even Pretend To Try and Figure Out What To Write For a Title

A professed fan of the site sends along this list of "ideas":

Y'all gone soft there at RYS. There was a time when you put the cart in front of the horse, or just ate the horse for lunch and pushed the cart down the mountain. Now y'all just nice and polite and it's making me a little sick. (Look, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.)

Well, I've come to save the day. I want to be one of those "chief correspondents" you are always yammering about. I want to be recognized for my wisdom and perspciapacity or whatever. I want you to marvel at my ideas, give me a shocking title and a cool blurry graphic. I want to be in with the COOL KIDZ.

So, here are my suggestions for the coming year. I am in my new office at my old school and I've got a new laptop that the Dean had to buy me because I'm such a research stud, and I'm about to let loose with some ideas that will make your little website as popular as http://www.IFartedForMyPhd.com/ or http://www.UnmarriedBitterSingleProfessorWithACat.org/. Feel free to use these, but make sure you give credit to me - a chief correspondent in the sciences from a slamming R1 in Texas.

• Every Friday, post a picture of the cutest ass in someone's class. Profs can turn the tables and whip out their own cell phones and capture a hunnie or a hunk. You could post them with funny captions. I can think of a hundred ideas already.
• Every Saturday and Sunday, turn the blog over to a random professor. Just tell someone to write a "smackdown" of their own and then watch the vitriol fly!
• Start identifying students with more comical descriptions and made up names. Saying "Bitchy Brenda" is not enough. Say that Brenda is a petite 5'3" brunette made up of sugar and spice, oregano and combat boots, and that she often has tunafish in her hair...and you get my drift. Spice it up, I guess. This is not TELEVISION, MAN, it's the written word, and let Chaucer and Le Carre and Cussler be our models...describe, describe, describe!
• Put an immediate kibosh on any post that starts with one of these: 1) I love my students..., 2) My students work hard..., 3) I care about my students... and you get the drift. Those posts always suck. They're always introspective and that's pure death on any of these blogs. Just quit posting shit like that and you'll stop getting such lousy submissions.
• Just quit trying to be so serious. All of the people in my department are dunderheads, old farts who are on the long slow decline to dementia and retirement (at the same time, do you get me?!?!). If I wanted to be bored to death I'd go talk to them. I come to RYS for some fun. It's not rocket science, baby. This is a blog that's supposed to rip a new one to those students who turn our classes into daymares. So let's have some fun with it.

Okay, so just let me know how amazed you are by all of that. And I didn't even break a sweat. You can thank me at some convention some time. I'm always asking colleagues, "Yo, are you the Rate Your Students guy, huh? Would you tell me?" I'll find you, you bastard, I really will.

Sign me,
Wicked Walter from Waxahachie

(that's nothing...I got a million of them)