I have already forgotten the name of the next YUSU President. If you were to remind me of their name I would forget it again immediately. I am literally incapable of retaining the information. Even if you tattooed their name onto the inside of my eyelids I would have no idea what it referred to, assuming instead that it was some sort of message from beyond, and that I had been chosen by God for some higher purpose. I could marry every single member of the sabbatical team, live full lives with them, raise children, lie next to them every single night, have long ‘conversations’ about death with them, and I would still not retain a single memory of my life.

As a matter of fact, I have forgotten the name of the current YUSU President. I have forgotten the names of every single past sabbatical officer. I seem to remember that they were ostensibly alive people, although their level of consciousness was up for debate. I don’t really remember the purpose of YUSU, or anyone that works there, or why anyone gets elected to any position at any time ever.

I don’t believe that this is a result of the head injury I recently received whilst on a YUSU-sponsored team-building trip to Raqqa. Nor do I think it is a sign of early-onset dementia. Nor do I think it is a sign of early-onset dementia. Anyway, the point is: I don’t think that this is an indication of early-onset dementia.

I think the real reason I cannot remember their names is because they aren’t really ‘people’ now. They are just pieces of braised matter. Yes, they can still make sounds from their face holes and make their appendages move in certain ways. And yes they can still sit in chairs in a glass office like a person might if they were required, paid even, to do so. But in strictly academic terms, ever since their ‘successful’ ‘election’, they are just incidental collocations of material that have been elected to roles that require occupation for no obvious reason. They are just items in a vast arrangement of cosmic dust, orbiting themselves in ever-decreasing circles of significance, until they collapse in on themselves, without the required density to even form a black hole. Maybe they will just slowly phase out of existence, dissappearing from this plane of reality and reappearing in another one where rice is fascinating and flour is entertainment.

One can only hope that once they leave their roles as YUSU sabbs, they will regain those hallmarks of person-ness that they willingly left behind when they decided it would be worthwhile to work for an institution so inherently pointless that the most significant thing it has done in its entire existence was run a referendum so pointless it literally achieved less than nothing, a feat previously thought of as impossible.

Oh, by the way, I’m running a campaign (don’t ask what for because it doesn’t really matter), and my slogan is: ‘The LEMON Press for Lemon Prez the SATIRE Way’. What do you guys think? Also, check out my campaign video where I hold a YorCup with Ian Hislop’s face on.

– Myles Dunnett