Blurbs and Bad Behavior: eFilmCritic.com Watches the Critics

An analogy to that law of Dashiell Hammett's "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter" is "The more gushing the critic, the smaller the typeface on his name." Dark Horizons, as e-critics point out, is a repeat offender. Their staffers review every movie as if their mother worked all weekend to make it.

Ecritic is worth checking out just to read the article on serial plagiarist Samir Patel. What a career! At long last, the U of Missouri at Kansas City is deleting some of his stolen work from the newspaper (while never making an apology).Fortunately, there's plenty of Patel's own columns still on line; as the article on Patel notes, there's a grave disparity between the stuff he was writing on his own and the stuff he was lifting from the New York Times and publishing under his own name. A little sample to whet the appetite (from Patel's article on the problems of dating on campus.)

I am not a sexual icon.

As much as I hate to admit it, a sincere sense of realization sets in every time I think I'm something of a dating lothario.

Columbus can't even compare to my conquests.

And then the alarm clock goes off, and I realize being drugged by delusions isn't a healthy dose to my diet.

Thus, I try to get back on the bandwagon and pursue new interests, starting off by enjoying the female form presented at this campus. However, that's when I realize the obvious: dating is dead at this campus.

By that, I mean the whole aspect of heartbreaks and dates due to UMKC.

Kansas City is one of the worst dating cities in America. I think I agree with that.

Lately, a section in The Kansas City Star has intrigued me.

It's all about "dating and relating" in the big city.

As a loyal, long-term student at UMKC, I've noticed much about the subtleties of dating.

For starters, dating is seemingly non-existent here.

Here are the cold hard facts: the UMKC campus is not a dating hotbed.

It's simply not allowed to be.

We have no student union. We're made up primarily of commuter students. And after class gets out, this campus turns into a ghost town.

Now, I know this doesn't apply to the entire campus.

Fraternities and sororities provide a hotbed of interplay, and various graduate schools provide an atmosphere not only conducive to learning but also socializing.

It's always amazing how the midnight hour brings together stark opposites into a sordid encounter involving gratuitous groping and lip-locking.

I've even heard tales of a certain Hindu hero disguising himself as the make-out bandit at those wee hours.

But I digress, as these instances don't demonstrate anything the campus has provided.

For instance, it's extremely difficult to initiate any sort of personal conversation with a student you really don't know.

Most of the time, you see the person in class, tap your foot incessantly as a stream of hormones clouds your judgment, and then suffer an emotional letdown as he or she walks out of the room...

(it goes on, believe it or not.)

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