I am sick and tired of people complaining to me when the gripe line isn't funny, as if Richard Pryor is calling the antique answering machine multiple times a week and I have just decided to ignore him. The funniest thing you people give me every week is some terrible joke about balls and you know it.

Here's an interesting story to prove to you people why you all suck at the gripe line.

Last week, there were exactly 10 straight messages left on the gripe line from a person who made sure I knew his name was J.B. Or maybe it was Jaybee, he didn't bother to spell it. And judging from the way he slurred his speech, I doubt he could have.

J.B., or Jaybee, or whatever, left me nine consecutive, unnecessarily drawn-out anecdotes about the president of some fraternity being a homosexual dwarf. His tenth gripe, however, was a pitch. He said we should consider writing an article about him, as he is very interesting and quite unpredictable.

Now, anybody who does something, anything, 10 times in a row could be considered predictable. I can tell you I wasn’t very surprised when I started playing his tenth message. And if you do something as exciting as calling the gripe line 10 times in a row, you aren’t very interesting.

Obviously, none of J.B.’s gripes were good enough to be in the gripe line. And considering one of the gripes that did make the cut was "chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot pieeeeee" that’s really very sad.

Other people (those not inebriated enough to forget they called in the first place) might notice their gripes not being printed in the gripe line every week. This is because those gripes are not funny and have no other redeeming properties.

Also, people sometimes accidentally delete all the messages on the answering machine before anyone can hear them. But that’s probably your bad karma and you did something to deserve that. So either way, you people have no one to blame but yourselves.

There is some advice you morons can follow to make me look better when the gripe line improves and I can take credit for it.

First, don’t call several times in a row. Unfortunately, the J.B. incident is not an isolated one. It would be perfectly fine if you philistines called multiple times with many different things to say. However, most of the time, well, actually all of the time, some wino calls numerous times to say the exact same thing.

That is quite unacceptable. Even if you do say something good, which doesn’t happen nearly enough, it will be negated when you repeat it five times.

Second, go read any previous edition of the gripe line. It really doesn’t matter which one. Note how long each gripe is. The fact that you people call the gripe line and ramble on and on for five minutes straight leads me to believe that you have never even heard of the gripe line before, let alone read it.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, keep it short. And don’t think I’m just going to paraphrase whatever you say, because it’s impossible to paraphrase something that has no point to it. The only way I could paraphrase some of your awful gripes would be to call you dumb.

And finally, if you’re trying to be funny, try harder. Trust me, if there’s anyone on campus who knows something about trying too hard to be funny and failing miserably, it’s me. That’s why I gave up comedy long ago. This is an educational advice column. But the gripe line is still the one institution that can actually still be funny. However, it depends on the people who call it to be funny. Which is why it’s not my fault.

You people have no comic timing. And when you call the gripe line, leave a message, realize it’s not funny, it won’t become funny when you repeat it three or four times, no matter how many times you say "fuckin'.

In short, you are all doing a swell job, but if you don’t do a better job, you’re all fired.