Not Worthy

I Hate Asymmetrical Stuff

I hate the amphitheater. And this is not just a simple hatred, but a clean, cold, clinical hatred for that which is far from functional. And alliteration, I hate that too, but that's another story. I hate the uneven, useless, ugly and poorly-maintained Matt Scotten Memorial Amphitheater, future home of the ASUO Gallows and Firing Line Theme Park (guess who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes? After the Commentator staff, that is). I hate the fact that instead of actually doing something useful with our monies, the past ASUO Exec decided on some FDR-esque public works/make-work program. I'm guessing they did this as a means of boosting our economy. What economy? The local pot trade with Honduras and Eastern Oregon?

I also hate the fact that somehow, the UO student body has once again elected the same sort of twerps who came up with this idea in the not-too-distant past, and my fellow students are going to end up suffering through the same crap again some time down the road. But I'm sure someone else has this covered here, as, after all, this is the annual hate issue.

In the words of Henry Rollins, I like to hate...

The new public amphitheater--henceforth referred to as the Memorial--that we built to replace the old, homely, cobbled, grass-lined one is far from perfection, and it certainly isn't worth the year of walking around the biggest single structure on campus whenever we wanted to go from class to anywhere else. In fact, this may have been the single largest reason for drop-outs and skipped classes in recent months, more so than even the devil weed and furtive sex in the back hallways of the library. Which is to say nothing of the fact that we helped pay for it too, just like we once helped pay for OSPIRG to insult our intelligence and give being environmental a bad name.

After it's all said and done, the Memorial won't even be a great skate park like myself and other skaters, bladers, and out-and-out maniacs had hoped it would be, what with the only vaguely evenly-laid brickwork in the center. First, there's always some self-interest--oh, sorry, public-interest--group complaining about the mistreatment of silk producers in mainland China silk factories, or some such drivel, and they clog up the paths that could be more properly used to blade on, or pester me with leaflets when it should be obvious that I am not going to stop just to be publicly annoyed, especially if I just hit 45 mph with worn braking pads. The Memorial simply isn't built for any cool usage, although, to be fair, the blood drain at ground zero will make those Black Masses easier to clean up before the Tae Kwon Do club starts breaking bricks and small boards. Those blood-covered bricks are hard to grip with your feet, and blood never comes out of your gi, no matter how many times you wash it. So there are a few points in its favor, although in the end the thing is virtually useless and hardly rational at all; I mean, would anyone have built the Empire State Building simply to see if spitting off the top would kill a passerby below unless they were blowing someone else's money to make a name/monument for themselves by doing so?

What I also hate about that mass of discombobulated pathways is the fact that at no time were traffic-flow patterns even considered as being important in designing a system of heavy-use walkways which lay in the center of a very mobile community of nearly 17,000 foot-bound sheep-like organisms. I mean, I'm not a city planner, traffic analyst or even an actual architect, but I know that no one is going to walk all the way around some cedar bark when the more adventurous can merely jump a two-foot gap and save a couple of seconds on the way to class. How long has the Memorial been open? A month, maybe two? And yet already there are two foot trails in the newly-planted cedar bark garden, where those two who are ostensibly very environmental have no compunctions about walking across fragile organic matter merely to save themselves from a slightly longer walk on nice, clean pavement.

A noted, award-winning author of science fiction (with emphasis on the science part) by the name of John Brunner, has written many works focusing on the issue of how to control people in cities, dealing with the age-old problem of getting people from point A to point B without getting in the way of all those people coming from point C (which is always somewhere between points A and B) and going to point D (could be the Folk Festival or the Floater concert, doesn't matter). Hopefully you, dear reader, see the connection.

The new, theoretically more efficient Memorial should not have any traffic flow problems, at least not for a few years, if the designers, builders, etc. did their homework; wasn't it a student-designed plan? They'd better have done their homework; otherwise, we are now the proud owners of an amphitheater designed by an architecture student who flunked out of our fantastic AAA program. And furthermore, shouldn't there have been some sort of design oversight committee? Maybe the student's own teachers could have looked over his/her work, saving us from the (now realized) possible embarrassment of building an inefficiently planned amphitheater. Thanks, guys. I can tell we might be paying you too much.

To wrap it up quickly, cleanly, and in the best way possible (none of which were guidelines used for the Memorial), I just plain hate this cement plug in our EMU, our student union, our campus. We weren't asked if we needed it; we weren't asked if we wanted to foot the bill; and never were we asked if we wanted the ASUO to waste a year on something many wouldn't use, no one wanted to pay for themselves (let's see, I have a couple extra bucks, I'll spend it on a cement plug where we once had grass), and would never be that much of an improvement on the original. God, I love student politics; even on our best day, we can't make this shit up, at least not this good, even with 40 ounces of some kick-ass pilsner or ale in the old tummy.

Hey, speaking of ale, if I want to walk from here to Clancy Thurber's! for a drink, I need to walk all the way down to the corner of 13th and walk back up the sidewalk, cross the street and finally make my way down to the minimally-abled person's ramp to the door. Maybe if I just sort of walk across the cedar bark here in the Memorial's tree garden I can make it in time for a drink...