Lucy the Blog

The Sun Also Rises

Throughout its storied history, Lucy the Blog has taken some well-deserved shots at The Lowell Sun.

It began nearly two years ago, on May 9, 2007, with our *NEPA award-winning evisceration of the paper’s plump n’ pasty editor, Jim Campanini.  Thanks to that fine piece of journalism, a basic Google search will now tell you all you need to know about this skeevy predator, who continues to embarrass his unfortunate staff on a semiregular basis.

Shortly thereafter, we exposed the Sun’s loathsome and underhanded efforts to intimidate and mislead American Idol voters, thus derailing the AI dreams of the dreamy Sanjaya Malakar.  Scoundrels!

Ultimately, it was not their chronic ineptitude or their flamboyantly whitebread columnists or their fabulous typos that caused us to give them the final gooseface by canceling our subscription.  It was the simple fact that they relied on 7-year-old children and drunken vagrants to deliver the paper in a timely fashion.  Some of my best friends are 7-year-old children and drunken vagrants.  But I would not ask them to deliver a newspaper on a daily basis.

Lately, however, I have been having a bit of a love affair with the paper, or at least my relationship with it.  Its faults remain, but I look forward to reading it, so that must count for something.  Of course, this is mostly due to my relatively recent commuter status.  Pricepoints and convenience go a long way, and the guy at the train station hands you the paper if you give him a quarter.  One Quarter.  I’m no economist, but that’s a good deal.  I can almost always find a quarter before leaving the house.  At the full cover price of 75 cents, I’d probably stop reading.  Or maybe I’d only buy it on Thursdays to torture myself with Lowellita’s column; just reading about one of her late-night romps a few weeks ago left me with a mild case of the crabs.

In any case, given our past criticism, it is only fair that we occassionally commend the paper’s editorial staff, most of whom perform a commendable job in a thankless industry that swallowed me whole and crushed my spirit in less than three years’ time, leaving me with little more than a heavy debt load and lingering animosity.

I loved reading the Sun this week.  In large part, this was because of events on the ground here in Lowell.  The reporters had a lot to cover, but they covered it.  And if they hadn’t, well…I guess these guys would have.  And these guys would have.  And in their own way, they would have and they would have too.  But they certainly wouldn’t have been able to alone, or at least not for any sustained period of time.  That’s why newspapers matter.

Photo by David H. Brow, Lowell Sun

Because of the Sun, I know that cops arrested 22 drunk drivers in 3 hours at a Thorndike Street sobriety checkpoint.  Is that not insane?  These people should be executed immediately.  All of them.  Scary, scary shit.

I also learned about the United Teen Equality Center’s continued awesomeness.  They’re planning a $6.3 renovation to their facilities, which will hopefully get a boost from President Obama’s socialist pork funds.  As a result, UTEC will be able to serve even more kids and steer them from a life of hoodlum shenanigans.  Fuckin’ libruls!

(And speaking of this worthy organization, have you seen these lovely paintings of UTEC youths?  Why don’t you buy one of them, you cheap, selfish bastard?  Our family’s diapers, Perk Is A Beast t-shirts, and Budweiser drinks aren’t gonna pay for themselves, you know!!!)

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