I crush interns with the full mass and anger of my size 15 stompers. every. year.

Last week was Walmart week, this week is nameless, but it continues September's theme of nothing in our meaningless existence changing, ever.


At this time a year ago I was an intern reporter for the Peoria Journal Star.
They trained me in a variety of beats. I got experience writing as a cops reporter, covering local political matters, etc. But mostly I was resigned to the purgatory of featurizing festivals and Civic Center events.

"Hey, just have the intern cover it."

The bizarre thing is, these events happen. every. year. with the same organizers, the same place and the same fund raising goals. They could print last year's article into perpetuity, just changing the date every year.

So now when I read the Journal Star, I read about the same events happening at the same places, for the same reasons, only now its written by another faceless intern with a byline. Every week I partially relive my senior year by reading some hideously bland article about an Alzhiemers Walk.
It's an out-of-body experience. Like it's still 2007, but now there are 2 Ed McMenamins, one writing cheesy articles about cat fashion shows (really) and the other working in Pekin and reading said cheesy articles.

On the sane side of things, it's fun to read the articles about the "Black Expo" and "Fiesta en el Rio" and see how much mental torture and anguish it took for the new intern to wring out 14 inches of newsprint. You can almost smell the embarrased sweat dripping onto the keyboard.
Typically my reaction is as follows: Open paper ... think, "oh my god I forgot all about this event/cat fashion show, it was so horrible I blocked it from memory until now." Audibly chuckle, and then think "I was so much better than this lame intern, I made this event/cat fashion show sound almost interesting."

Take that, intern.

As if I needed another reminder that things don't change, they just become more irritating.