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Joey Comeau’s newest book, Overqualifieder, is the second collection of cover letters Comeau has put out, following in the footsteps of similarly titled, Overqualified. I picked it as a fan of the Canadian author’s other work, namely a web series called “A Softer World.” Despite my high hopes, I ended up disappointed.
When I opened up this little collection of cover letters, I was met immediately with the “Dear Reader,” where Comeau notes that every letter was sent to a real employer. I’ll admit that’s an interesting concept. Once I started reading the stories, however, I found myself bored, confused and annoyed. The entire project was rather juvenile. I didn’t find it to be funny or cute, but rather simply self-indulgent. Even the title is contrived. “Overqualifieder” is a neologism, meant to be a smart attempt to dub this as a follow-up to his first piece.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy tacking suffixes onto every word I can but this one is not enticing in the least. Despite this fallacy, I think that it does exactly what a title is supposed to do: summarize what is inside for the casual bookstore browser. Be assured that the content of this book is just as trite as the title.
A lot of the content aims at jolting the reader. I have read Comeau’s other works, and I can distinctly recall another short story about the rape of a ghost. He did what he intended to do: he wrote a story that was scandalous enough to stick with the reader. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it stuck with me for good reason, though. A common theme for Comeau is to write uninteresting stories, with attempts at shock-value to intrigue the audience. He has an affinity for producing perverted postulations in the form of stories as a sort of catharsis. This would be intriguing if he were to be pioneering this sort of thing. Yet, he isn’t doing that at all — we’ve all read Guts by Chuck Palahniuk. We get it.
Don’t get me wrong — I love visceral descriptions and writings that discuss taboo ideas. The perverted descriptions of sexually exploiting people and killing yourself with electric radios in bathtubs aren’t what make this collection of writing awful. I’m the first one to talk about masturbation loudly in a public setting, but Comeau simply seems to lack any subtlety.
Comeau’s earlier work on the “A Softer World” comic series was reminiscent of this collection, but his style worked much better in a short format of only a few lines. Over the years, I found that the ASW comics were hit or miss – but mostly hit, which is what kept me reading for so long. It’s unfortunate to watch an artist do something different, but not succeed in the same way.
I’ve been thinking that maybe Overqualifieder is the type of piece that is more of a formative work like Catcher in the Rye. I mean, if you don’t read that shit before the age of 19, you’ll end up hating Holden’s whiney, bad fuckin’ attitude. But, then again, if that is the case, wouldn’t now be the right time to read Comeau’s book? I mean, I’m out here in my fourth year of university, mere months away from trying to find some mediocre job with my English degree, and yet this book still doesn’t strike a cord with me.
I found myself asking the same question throughout the entire collection: why did he actually send these letters? He’s just wasting the company’s time with these pieces, giving himself fuel, and content for his books.
Comeau’s Overqualifieder is the type of book I would see at Chapters, pick up off the shelf simply for the aesthetic of the cover and for the name printed on it, flip through a few pages, and then put back.
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This past week Apple unveiled the soon-to-be released iOS 9, which heralds in new emojis, including a taco and the middle finger. It was a truly blessed day as it meant the human race was one step closer to getting rid of words all together. Just a few years ago young people everywhere were typing sentence fragments on their Blackberries. A few years before that people were typing out paragraphs in emails, but now we can just use emojis!
Nowadays, if someone asks you how your midterm went, all you have to do is type “crying face emoji” and “gun emoji” and you’re good to go. Incidentally, there has been debate about whether the dead face and gun emoji combo can be constituted as a threat in a court of law, which is equal parts interesting and hilarious.
Emojis conveys your point clearer than words do. They elevate the mundane to a visual and visceral experience. If you’re really happy that your mom bought you groceries, does a simple thank you or ten heart face emojis convey your message better?
Jokes aside, emojis may actually be the first global language. Someone in India may not understand what I mean when I say, “I’m pooped,” but they’ll understand if I send them a sad face and poop emoji. Admittedly, emojis are somewhat culture specific, but it’s not a stretch to imagine a world in the near future where this is not longer the case. The eggplant emoji, for one, is quite confusing. Are you looking to catch a dick or just get some eggplant ganoush? Luckily we’re making strides to an inclusive emoji world. Just a few months ago we finally got emojis that included people of different races.
How far has emojis penetrated our way of living? Check out Emoji Tracker, a website that visualizes the real time use of all emojis on Twitter. Be warned: you may get an epilepsy attack or lose faith in humanity. Who knew the cry laughing face is so popular? In other news, someone even translated the entirety of Moby Dick into Emoji Dick.
You might say, “Wait. Sometimes emojis can’t fully express my emotions.” To which I say, “You need to download GIF Keyboard.” It’s an app that allows you to easily search for gifs based on hashtags and send them on Facebook Messenger. If you’re feeling hungry, just search it on GIF Keyboard and you’ll get to choose from Bart Simpson starving, a hamster eating a bunch of baby carrots, and Tina Fey shoving a sandwich into her mouth while crying, among other great choices. What a time to be alive.
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Rodeo is Travis Scott’s major label debut and boasts the studio-refined polish that is befitting of an artist who counts Kanye West as his mentor.
Despite being laden with all the right features, Scott’s album reeks like the output of someone who would drown without the help of those whose influence he’s leeching off of.
It’s funny that Kanye went from ostracizing Kid Cudi, who he described as his favourite artist in 2010, to singing praises of Scott, who seems intent on trying to become a current day version of the Cleveland rapper.
Everything from Scott’s faux rags to riches tale, his penchant for breezy sing-song melodies, to his adoption of Cudi’s first name (Scott Mescudi) is a poorly veiled attempt at fashioning himself into Kid Cudi 2.0.
After his 30-minute set at this past OVO Fest, Kanye grinned as he introduced Scott as the torchbearer of the new generation before the latter pranced upon stage to begin an energetic performance. Despite the excitement he inspires in crowds, the University of Texas dropout could do with less slack from his G.O.O.D. Music cohorts, as his penchant for disrespecting innocent cameramen and yelling homophobic slurs on stage will begin to grate on even the more buzzy PR companies that desire to propel him to the top of the charts. People were quick to throw Troy Ave, a talentless New York rapper billed as 50 Cent’s heir, to the curb for his shitty views, so why can’t the same be done with Scott?
While Scott doesn’t struggle to produce conventional bangers like Rodeo standouts “Antidote” and “90210,” something tells me
that’s more due to his talented peers than the meagre breadth of his artistic vision. My qualm isn’t with $cott’s induction to the mainstream, but rather with his insistence that he is pushing anything more than an amalgamation of his inspirations.
Billy Haisley best summed up my gripe with Scott in his Deadspin piece, “Travis Scott is Worse Than Iggy Azelea,” when he said: “While he talks a big game about artistry and honesty, almost all of his songs are basic party anthems; he big-ups Drake’s honesty but gets on a track with him (“Company”), waits while Drake drops a verse with concrete images demonstrating his selfish approach to relationships, then kicks a bland verse about doing drugs and hooking up with a completely amorphous girl.”
Kanye plugged millennials heavily during his acceptance speech at the recent VMA’s, but the term when used by West is a general one that only seems to encompass wealthy, apathetic, fake-deep scene kids like Scott, Jaden Smith, Ian Connor and Luka Sabbat. If the youth that Kanye so trusts with revolutionizing the world are simply being weaned on Scott’s bourgeois turn-up plagiarizing then we all have reason to fear the future.
At its best, which isn’t saying a lot, Rodeo reeks of the vapid soma-induced escapism that made Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World so incredibly frightening. In a world where the Yeezy-clad privileged middle-class is so eager to get through the week just so that they pop pills at a club, there remains little hope that anyone will actually do something to change the condition of anything in the world other than their Fear of God-inspired wardrobe.
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If you know any of the five candidates on Facebook or other social media platforms, chances are you’ve seen a gratuitous amount of pictures of them this week. Granted, some candidates are more guilty of this than others, but it is an endemic problem that I’ve seen in each of the last four elections I have witnessed. Sometime in this decade (and perhaps before that) campaigns became more about personality than about problem-solving.
Take, for example, the myriad of images in which the candidate is posing with a supporter. Popularized in previous president Campbell’s second campaign, it has become a sort of campaign chic to surround oneself with faces of students, just like you the voter, to get across this idea of approachability and being “one of us.” When David did it, it was during his campaign, not at the start, consisted of students found in MUSC, and he asked them what they want.
On day one of this campaign, candidates were ready out of the gate with a slew of these pictures, without the randomness and requisiton. What purpose does it serve to voters wanting to absorb your message if the majority of your campaign is materials in which you are surrounded by people you selected to support you?
If the imagery wasn’t oppressive enough, many of these campaigns also muddle their message as they try to find some “simple” analogy to wrap it up neatly in one buzzword or phrase. By trying to simplify your message, you are assuming that students are too dumb or apathetic to understand it, and that is not the kind of message you want to start your campaign with. We are not in high school. We are in a place of higher learning, so please have faith that we can understand your platform even if you don’t condense it into one snappy, #hashtaggable quote.
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I am not going to call out any of the candidates specifically, because I do not think I can possibly hurt your campaigns more than you have done already through these tactics.
Don’t pander to the lowest common denomiator. Don’t look down on the student body you are hoping to represent. And don’t try to give us the abstract of your campaign.
We’re smart enough to hear your message the way you see it, even if it is hard to fit beside that enormous picture of your face.
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