“You there! Stop having fun!” (Jeremy)
Dear Jeremy;
Us good folk at the University at Melbourne have now, with the aid of many, many staff, and, in a panicky finish, the Managing Director’s Tattslotto numbers, managed to evaluate your final score for your subjects. We have discovered that you have achieved a mark below the 60% range. Here at the University of Melbourne we like to say that we encourage all students to lead an active co-curricular life outside of the University. As far as you yourself are concerned, this is a barefaced lie. You have not performed to the standards acceptable for a student of an institution that has a fancy Latin motto (from memory, we think it’s “flagellatus et cunnilingus”) and thus, we wish to send you this letter, which is probably currently sitting in your recycle bin.
The University of Melbourne (or, when we’re feeling really trendy, ‘UniMelb’) has expounded far too much money to become NUMBER NINETEEN IN THE WORLD and more to the point has spent far too much money on advertising the fact that we are NUMBER NINETEEN IN THE WORLD for you to go and get average marks. How on earth are we going to attract all those international students who don’t have enough marks to get into the first eighteen universities in the world if we’re not number nineteen anymore? Could you imagine the horror if we had less full-fee paying students coming through our doors? It would mean we’d need to have MORE HECS PLACES and wouldn’t that be the end of society as we know it. At the worst it would mean that people from public schools stand a fighting chance of attending our institution and at the very least it would mean a larger membership for the ALP club. Thus we have sent you the following application (enclosed):
Application to Not Enjoy Yourself In Second Semester
I, (insert your name), hereby promise not to have any fun whatsoever at the University of Melbourne during the second semester of 2006. I anticipate that this will not be difficult as I will be spending all of my time (studying/earning money to pay off future bribes/writing for the First Year Blog (circle one)). I hereby promise to squash all desires of a sexual nature by (castration/thinking of John Howard and Kim Beazley making out/contracting herpes/getting married (circle one)) and all those of a social nature by (being a lame **** and making excuses (circle one)). I have made provisions for a saline drip and a portaloo to be installed at my desk so as to not waste valuable study time during my regular day. I appreciate and accept that failure to meet required standards at the University will result in (explusion and disgrace/an Arts degree/a long and satisfying career in the exciting world of a Public Servant/living in a share house till I’m thirty-five (circle all four)). I will try my hardest to rectify this situation.
(Yours Truly/Sincerely/In Worship Oh Great One/Well I’m really f***ed now aren’t I (circle one)),
(insert name here).
*** NOTE *** In all truth, although I haven’t worked as hard as I would have liked, I haven’t done too badly at all in first semester. Maths has been hard to catch up on, especially after so long out of the education system, but hopefully next semester will be a different story. Time to knuckle down, I think. That, and in reality UniMelb isn’t quite such a stuffy institution as I make it out to be, but there’s no point in letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Hope your marks went ok for you;
jez
ps – Try and have a little fun with the picture attached at the bottom. A starting hint; that massive airship is a Led Zepplin. The address for the full-sized picture is http://virgindigital.com/wallpapers/virgindigital1280x960.jpg. No looking at the solutions first, dammit!
Let’s see…
– Guns and Roses
– Matchbox 20
– Smashing Pumpkins
– Rolling Stones
– Hole
– Iron Maiden
– Manic Street Preachers
– The Pixies
– Crowded House
– Scissor Sisters
– Radiohead
– Cornershop
….?
Yup. There’s meant to be 74 in there, but I think that a lot of them are American bands (and you’d assume they’d all be signed by Virgin Records too). In addition to yours, I got Eminem (see the M and Ms), Nine Inch Nails, The Cars, The Police, Deep Purple (the colour at the back), the Doors, Queen, the Sex Pistols, the Gorillaz, Prince, KISS, the Killers, Madonna, Talking Heads, the B-52s, 50 Cent, Greenday (see the calender), Lemonheads, Whitesnake, u2, Bee Gees, Chilli Peppers, Alice in Chains, Garbage, The Eagles… the one who really has me stumped is that yellow man leaning against the shop… ARGH!!!
Methinks guy on the far right is Blur.
Posters on the left near the clown have Seal and Presidents of the USA.
Two eels on the road are The Eels.
And there’s some corn in the fruit stand. Korn?
Not sure about the Yellow guy – if you wanted to take it at a stretch, you could look in his line of vision to the right to those crows on the street sign. Could be Counting Crows? Also, the reflection on that big silver spoon looks vaguely like the cover of the Verve ‘Urban Hymns’ album, but that’s also at a stretch 🙂
It’s such an awesome poster, I wish I had the patience to keep looking!
“the one who really has me stumped is that yellow man leaning against the shop” — i think you got it without even realising jez. i do believe it’s yellowman (jamaican reggae dude) xx