A Canuck bids farewell

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I hate eight out of 10 of my readers.

That’s not a misprint. Admittedly, some weeks the number of hated readers might fluctuate from anywhere between five and nine-and-a-half, but a majority of my readers are as frustrating as a panda’s reluctance to eat anything else but a diminishing bamboo supply. Pandas, you will die unless you broaden your diet. Readers, you will likely perish unless you learn to lighten up from time to time.

If you enjoy this column, I don’t intend to cluster you with the group of readers I am singling out. In fact, your loyal readership (and in my mom’s case, her unconditional love for me) is much appreciated.

Yet some of you out there, let’s call you the stubborn pandas of the Internet, have failed to realize that this column was satire (even if only mediocre satire at best), not hard news.

I’m not sure if the caricature of my visage that graces every column or the fact that I openly stated from the beginning of the school year that this column was “a non-serious (that means you shouldn’t get offended by anything I write) look at all things Canadian,” in addition to repeated reminders of the nonsensical nature of this column, hammered the point home. Anonymous commenters, for example, “thetit,” “OU812, and “Henry Eighth,” clearly did not receive the aforementioned message.

Said Henry (missing a definite article) Eighth: “Overcompensating, clearly. Poorly written, dull article. ‘Canadians are polite.’ Yawn.” Canadians aren’t always polite, Henry. I’m flipping you off right now.

Had the Kernel not reformatted its comment board system around January, many of the comments for my earlier columns, some real gems, would have been preserved, particularly those comments in defense of Justin Bieber.

I learned that when I poke fun at a multi-millionaire teen idol in a student newspaper, I should expect to be called an ass and jerk by those people who have Justin Bieber synched with their Google Alerts.

Then there was the string of comments throughout the fall from the anonymous poster, “Canuck’s Dad.” For the record, he is not my father (who would’ve been far more critical in his comments), but I commend him in persistently asking his supposed son to stop writing this column.

I’m not bemoaning any of your comments, actually, even if they come from stubborn Internet pandas (and especially when it comes from real pandas). But if you don’t like the article, then don’t read it. That applies to anything on the Internet.

And when I say that these readers are my “hated readers,” I don’t really mean that I hate them, but sometimes their ignorance, rather than displeasure of what they had read, was staggering.

However, their comments did provide me with a good laugh, which is all I sought to accomplish with these “Memoirs of a Canuck.”

The very first line I penned in this series of columns was, “Hello, my beloved readers,” an acknowledged attempt at pandering. Now, 30 columns, nine months and 247 days later, I finally have my closing.

To a certain eight out of 10 readers who dislike this week’s column, excuse me, but you seem to have mistaken me for someone who gives a damn about what you say.

Goodbye to my two out of 10 beloved readers.