Are you interested in one week's work placement in The Irish Times? Transition Year students can learn first-hand about the workings of this newspaper if their submission is published in Media Scope's weekly Over to You column. Just send us a 200-word piece on a media-related topic
Sarah Rees Brennan, Rathdown School, Co Dublin
In recent years, we have observed a popular phenomenon invading our screens: making the stuff of nightmares funny. It began small, with shows like The X-Files and the uninspired Hercules. Terrible as Hercules was, it spawned Xena: Warrior Princess, which provided more mythical monsters made jokerrific.
Vampires and demons are the hapless victims of the heroine's quips as well as her super strength in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which her most terrible enemy is a dead ringer for Billy Idol. Its spin-off, Angel, stars a vampire as the hero and a demon as the comic relief. Roswell High is continuing the good work The X-Files started by making aliens laughable.
I think it is important to remember that these shows are best loved by teenagers, caught in this awkward stage between adulthood and childhood, still afraid of monsters under the bed but far too cool to admit it. There's nothing really to be scared of in them. All the monsters are side-splittingly funny, and the "kids" always triumph and never have zit phases.
Emer Mac Diarmada, Scoil Chaitriona, Glasnevin, Dublin
This Christmas I received a present of the Guinness Book of Records 2000. It looks very futuristic, with its shiny 3D cover; it was only when I started it that I realised how stupid and pointless about 60 per cent of the records were.
I then went and looked back at the Guinness Book of Records 1989. The difference is amazing. In 1989 the book published interesting facts about "the tallest person", "the oldest person" and all the usual sporting and historic records. In the millennium edition there is more emphasis on abnormal, pointless records.
When I came to a chapter named "Bodily phenomena" I just had to laugh: included in this chapter are "greatest eyeball protrusion", accompanied by a very disturbing picture, "greatest distance milk shot from eye" and "most straws stuffed in mouth". Among the many other records there is the "longest blindfold skywalk" and the "fastest stamp licker". What kind of society are we living in when the "youngest cider-pouring champion" and the inventor who invented "the most useless inventions" are recognised as record breakers?
All these belittle the great achievements included. Somewhere in this book, lost behind pictures of people balancing cars on their heads, is a little caption stating that a man named Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon.
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media scope is edited by Harry Browne.
