March/April 2012

TRENT’S ALTERNATIVE PRESS

absynthe

13.6

April 2012

$4.00 CA

But only if you want

T his issue completes my fourth (though not fi-

nal, despite earlier plans) year with absynthe, and not toot my own horn, but I think it just keeps getting better. During the time that I’ve been with absynthe it has seemed like the magazine has taken on a life of its own.

Absynthe, it seems, has been seeking to find a place amongst the politics and controversy of a campus that has two duelling sides when it comes to its identity.

I fall on the side of the purests. I want Trent to stay as it was meant to--which means we need to rewind ten years and bring the downtown campuses back. I would like to see a university that has students come before big business, that doesn’t take the full credit English courses that are actually enjoyable and cram them into a half-credit courses. In the same way I want absynthe to be a magazine that will publish whatever Trent students will throw at us. We want to deliver articles that are relevant to students whether it’s political, silly, informative or even a little kinky.

Don’t forget us when you’re out living your lives over the summer. We’ll be waiting for your awesome content in September!

Caitlin Jones Editor-in-Chief

Absynthe is Hiring - 14 Horoscopes - 30 Tyra Mail - 31 The Truth About TOMS - 5 Social Media Bloodlust - 6 Pokemon Rumble Blast Review - 8 Gluten Intolerence: More Common Than You Think - 10 Blue Boxing At Trent - 12 He Left Home: Production Review - 16 Absynthe Interview: Michel Chikwanine - 18 Discover Peterborough This Summer - 22 The Power and the Price of the Online Protest - 24 Butterflies and Green Walls- 25 Carpe Diem, and All That Jazz - 26 Jackson Creek Press- 32 E-Publishing: A Quick Run-Down - 33 2012 Short Story Contest - 34 Absynthe Interview: Mountblood - 38

Just a reminder: Absynthe Magazine is a submission based publication. You can create, submit, and make it what you want it to be. If you have something that you’d like to see featured, please, do not hesitate to contact us. With that said, many artciles that are featured will be written in a conversational style of writing.

Hey, you!

Yeah, you!!

You look like you’ve got some talent in you, kid.

Submit your work to Absynthe Magazine!

Submission Guidelines Absynthe is a submissions-based magazine. Any Trent student who wishes to be published can send their work to us at trentabsynthe@gmail.com. Submissions can be any length, and can be written in any style.

Submissions will be subject to editing for spelling and grammar as well as verified for appropriate content.

Please include your name for publication. Photos and images are encouraged, but are required to have a minimum resolution of 300dpi. Articles may be held for publication at a later date.

Nora Grant-Young They’re one of the biggest fads of the last few years, cute shoes with a humanitarian motive.

You can give yourself a pat on the back for doing your part for the world by shopping online at home. Your biggest choice is your size, colour or pattern. Then click, sit back and enjoy being one of the many with these comfy and stylish shoes. Who would have thought that this could go wrong? Can I get an amen (or an ‘I told you so!’) from International Development majors? Wait… most of you probably have a pair of TOMS. No, I am not here to spread shame or crucify you for being a victim and an enabler of Capitalism, but to spread the truth about these miracle shoes.

According to the founder and ‘chief shoe giver’, Blake Mycoskie. “Shoes have value beyond being critical for physical health…many schools require shoes for attendance and some soil based diseases cause physical symptoms and create cognitive impairment too”. Furthermore, Dr. Larry L. Thomas, Chairman of Tropical Health Alliance Foundation, claims that “shoes are a status symbol”. If you talk to anyone who’s been abroad and worked in rural communities, you might get a different side. They might tell you how kids love to run around barefoot, or remember your own experiences of running through

grass and mud barefoot in the summer. While Thomas and Mycoskie have valid points to their arguments, they rely on a lot of ifs. Children need shoes IF they buy into our capitalist materialism. Children need shoes IF they’re going to school and IF they have access to a school, rather than investing in grass roots education programs run by the people you are giving shoes to.

“Focus on the Family began an initiative to become a TOMS international distributor in Africa. don’t worry, only the straight boys will receive shoes.”

Another question revolves around the production of these shoes. The TOMS report assures that the “factories in Argentina, Ethiopia, and China are all third party audited to ensure they employ no child labour and pay fair wages”. With this statement comes many issues. Firstly, a business does not pay fair wages, and cannot prove they pay fair wages until they are Fair Trade Certified.

Truthfully, it is a lengthy process, but if you are going to advertise that you make that commitment to your consumers and producers, it should be in the most legitimate form of a contract. Child labour certification follows similar suit.

Secondly, the factories within

Argentina, Ethiopia, and China undermine the idea of ‘giving’. It is a Neo-Liberalist’s wet dream: people working so that their children may have shoes while producing the shoes for our children.

The turning point of the TOMS reputation was not about the flaky policy, but about a public event. The founder and ‘chief shoe giver’ (please hold your gags from his superiority), Mycoskie partnered with Focus on the Family, an anti-woman, antichoice, and anti-gay organization that is as well known for faith fanaticism as the Westboro Baptist Church. You might recognize them by such gems as the slogan “Gay marriage will destroy the earth” or for drawing a connection between legal abortion and 9/11 saying “the wages of sin is death”. Mycoskie attended a public appearance where he discussed ‘faith in action,’ and Focus on the Family began an initiative to become a TOMS international distributor in Africa. But don’t worry, only the straight boys will receive shoes.

As we live in a democracy, we’re supposed to be accepting of other people’s values and beliefs.

We’re supposed to be fine with organizations and governments that threaten to impede on our rights and freedoms. Frequently, there is just one condition: you can goose-step, and we must be fine with it, only if you goose-step

Joel Vaughan In mid-January of this year, an American high school student was set upon by seven other teens. He was thrown, beaten, and kicked into a senseless pulp by masked teens who showed no remorse or hesitation towards the seven-on-one situation.

It was videotaped.

The video quickly went viral and became known as the “7 BULLIES ON ONE ASIAN KID” clip, always cautioning its graphic violence in a subtitle clearly meant to appeal to human temptations. The video was shared and viewed and commented upon and hyper-linked and emailed, to the point where it was just a general assumption that the internet wanted “justice“. Facebook wanted these kids, and this was very clear in the way comments that called for their public execution, or at the very least, their own personal seven-on-one situations. Facebook wanted blood.

Perhaps it was the fact that this video allowed us to engage our love for graphic violence without all the nasty guilt, for we were sharing this for a purpose! We were sharing this for justice! Regardless of the reason for sharing, justice was served. All seven students were identified from their online attention, and sentences were dished out. Though far from the demanded guillotine, Facebook won.

It is interesting to note that during the video’s internet blow-up, it came to surface that this filmed assault was actually retaliation for an earlier incident in which the video’s victim and “nineteen of his friends” surprised a pair of the video’s bullies and gave them a similar treatment. This revelation almost made the commenters’ suggestions sound unnervingly similar to the video’s original intention: to humiliate and injure a student in retribution for the humiliation and injury of another. But it was too late - social media had tasted human blood.

The legal charges applied to these seven bullies showed the internet that they could be a collective agent of justice, marking the beginning of a witch hunt. Newsfeeds everywhere were flooded with pictures of abused animals, mutilated faces, and bully victims, all with the caption: “If you know who did this, contact the police now!”. It was always assumed that anyone who knew would come to the internet first, so we could properly apply justice. Social media wanted to be the hand of karma, and the millions who tagged along to causes seemed more interested in creative punishment than problem solving.

A bloody picture and a Facebook tag became an excuse to light the torch and sharpen the pitchfork.

This brings us to the very recent “KONY 2012” movement. Activist Jason Russell put together a thirtyminute documentary about Joseph Kony, rebel leader of the Ugandan guerrilla group, the Lord’s Resistance Army. Mainly criticized for his activities in the kidnapping of children and forcing them into the military/ sexual slavery, Russell argues that the reason Kony could get away with such atrocities for twenty-six years is that no one knew his name. He hoped his documentary would change that, drawing the United States into intervention and bringing the man to justice. On the night of March 6th, the cause exploded.

In the spirit ofAsian bully-victims and mutilated dogs, Facebook users shared the story thousands of times, each time adding the familiar “Get active - find this man” caption. Russell claims that the aim was to “make Kony famous”, a goal reached in a few hours thanks to clever editing, appeal to youth, and a cause one could rally around.

Despite this explosion of Facebook shares, one cannot help but wonder how adamant these followers are. Is this explosion of popularity attributed to the victims of a stolen childhood, the social injustice of Kony’s actions? Or are they rather the next step in Facebook’s hunt for blood - a continuation of the deaths of Muammar Gaddafi and Osama Bin Laden?

If we are so willing to be called to action over the atrocities committed overseas, then why now? Why Kony? Why isn’t social media blowing up over the current situation in Syria? Why did we forget about Egypt immediately after the revolution? Why isn’t anyone engaging the question of whether or not Henry Kissinger should be charged as a war criminal?

One must also take claims made by “KONY 2012” with an unfortunate grain of salt. The organization behind the movement, Invisible Children, gives only 32% of its income towards the actual cause, with the majority of donations going to staff, travel, transport, and its eleven films.

It is difficult to fully support an organization who spends a significant amount of time advertising merchandize, while also holding an accountability rating of 2/4 by Charity Navigator.

Eliminating the threat of Joseph Kony is necessary, but it must be seen as the treatment of the symptom rather than the disease. If we are to actually “change the world”, as the movement aims to do, a social shift is more necessary that clicking the “like button“. Kony was allowed twenty-six years of blissful ignorance by our current social system. He’s now being attacked by a morraly ambiguous grassroots movement in the west, not because of social epiphany, but because of a violent internet trend who cares more about revenge than development. A trend who would rather see him sodomized and shot than incarcerated as a war criminal.

We need social change, else we forget about Kony’s replacement as soon as the new Twilight hits theatres. **** Since writing and submitting this article, it has come to light that critiques circulating on the internet were not entirely accurate towards the organization Invisible Children. On their public website, the organization addressed the accusations listed above (concerning donations not reaching the children and their accountability rating) and as of the time of writing it is not known which source’s statistics is more trustworthy. With this information in mind, it is important that this is not read as a critique of Invisible Children’s intentions, rather the sincerity of the following it has amassed in its most recent film’s short existence. ■

Continued from Page 5

in your home. Whether Mycoskie is a gun totting, gay and woman hating faith fanatic used to be of no consequence. Now, I am not a business major, but my half-credit in Micro-economics did not have to teach me that there is a private sector, and a public sector. Mycoskie is not a man of politics, he is not advertising Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney on his product site. They don’t have an American flag or equally stereotypical symbol on them. But the moment that a business man steps into a public event that oozes hate and bigotry, these characteristics will not only be applied to him, but to his business. Mycoskie is the poster boy for TOMS. Mycoskie, according to Converge Maga-

zine, has since ended the partnership stating that “he would have not spoken at the event and called it an ‘oversight’ on both his part and the company’s part”. While some may be celebrating their triumph over Focus on the Family, this situation reveals the truth about Mycoskie’s business ethics.

Can you trust your money and soul to a man who cannot commit to an organization, and excuses this by suggesting he has poor judgement?

I’m sure this article is oozing with pretention. The truth is, I’m writing this article because I bought these shoes, and frankly, I feel lied to. My TOMS, which fell apart in less than two weeks, I will have you know (and wonder how the hell they are expected to

hold up in rural communities with extreme walking distances), were supposed to be a step forward. I read the tags and got hopeful. It’s easy to sound cynical and pessimistic, and that is not the point of this article. I’m sure Blake Mycoskie and this business associates were and are full of good intentions, but when you start a business, you have to be prepared for the responsibility it takes. There are Fair Trade shoes out there if you want to find them, and if you truly pride yourself on doing something for another person, you will. Simply, you go to Trent University, for Christ’s sake. Do some research. ■

Christian Metaxas

Back in the 90’s life was simple: I came home from school and watched YTV every night, my mom would make hotdogs and wrap them in the Pillsbury Croissants and there were only 151 Pokémon. They started in 96’ and got warm in 98’; this is when Pokémon Red & Blue hit the US on the Gameboy. Just typing it ushers in a wave of nostalgia: memories of tapping different button combos while it loaded to change the ingame colours and chasing down MissingNo. off the coast of Cinnabar Island come flooding back to me. Here we are in 2012: fourteen years, five generations and over 600 pocket monsters

later, this ladies and gentlemen is the definition of ‘staying power’.

In that time, we’ve seen a number of portable classics alongside a number of franchise spinoffs (Hey You Pikachu, Pokémon Puzzle League, etc.), if Pokémon survives this recession it’ll really be something else.

Pokémon Rumble Blast (PRB) is a 3D dungeon crawler for the Nintendo 3DS. I was one of those retards who bought the 3DS before the price drop at the end of 2011; so naturally I’m still a little bitter (about everything the 3DS has to offer). But despite the gimmicky nature of the 3D, the free games they gave me really are a nice gesture, plus its nice to play

a game like Starfox64 with the 3D turned up to eleven. Having said that, the 3D does not prove to be all that incredible of an experience in regards to PRB. Much like when I was playing Ocarina of Time, I found myself turning the 3D on and off, then on again, alternating the setting while playing through. The dungeon crawler is fairly simple in its plot and objective, making for a rather pedestrian playing experience, bad Pokémon have taken glow drops (from a magical fountain that heals your Pokémon) and now there is a glow drop shortage in town.

Looking past the fact that the ‘glow drop shortage’

is a terrible plot device (the only plot device), the other Pokémon, having never met you before, allow you to use the scarce remaining glow drops for yourself whenever you please (I must have a trustworthy face). The game allows you trek through a number of levels, each with a specific environmental theme (forest, beach, cave, volcano…). You roll in with all your friends and fuck shit up, collecting new Pokémon as you go. The game is simple in the respect that you have two attacks (two buttons respectively), and waddle your way to the end of the level.

At the end of the level you run into the boss, which is usually a souped-up, evolved form of one the Pokémon you’ve fought on the way there (still adhering to the environmental/type theme). After completing the level, you rally up whatever Pokémon you’ve collected, count up all your money and move on to the next one. At the end of each stretch of levels (think WORLD/LEVEL like Super Mario Bros.) you have to conquer the Battle Royale to advance. The Battle Royale is a level exclusive, ‘last man standing wins’ style challenge at the end of each world. The game adds an additional level of difficulty by throwing a countdown clock or type restriction into the mix, making it slightly more difficult for you. Winning at the arena

grants you safe passage and some more cash. This in-game currency allows you to purchase new moves and other things.

So what’s the appeal of PRB? The game doesn’t offer any sort of intricate and expert challenge, the controls and concept are simple enough, plus you can essentially wipe your ass to collect Pokémon, so what makes it a good game? The answer is, it’s not. PRB is a terribly contrived and poor dungeon crawler. The game barely has a plot, and aside from basic math and 3 useful buttons, there really isn’t much to it. To evolve or ‘befriend’ the evolved forms of Pokémon, you need to release seven of its lesser form (releasing seven Pikachus would get you a Raichu in return). In spite of this, counting to seven and even basic arithmetic aren’t entirely necessary to play; the game tells you if a new Pokémon you’ve collected is your new strongest (it happens fairly fre-

quently if you play enough), and you can stack the Pokémon you currently hold in order of power level to make it even easier.

For me, the game’s appeal came purely from the fact that it was a Pokémon game. At my age it’s a little sad to admit, but I’m a sucker for Pokémon. The game is gimmicky and rather prosaic, with no real plot. Simple controls and not much to think about other than mindless tap-attacking other Pokémon; the game finds itself without depth or a definitive driving purpose. If you don’t like Pokémon (and if you didn’t you probably wouldn’t be reading this) then steer clear of this game.

But if you are fond of Pokémon, enjoy wasting time and don’t mind the monotonous simplicity, then you might want to consider grabbing Pokémon Rumble Blast.

4.9/10 [Not a Pokémon fan] #swag/10 [Pokémon fan]

Gluten Intolerance and Celiac Disease: More Common Than You Think E. Deshane

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease where the surface of the small intestine is damaged by a substance called gluten. This leads to the malabsorption of foods, which can lead to a slew of other issues such as gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, vitamin and mineral deficiency, and even psychological disturbances.

Since most people who have the disease have known fairly early on in their life, there tends to be a mentality that if you don’t have it now, you don’t have to worry.

This is not the case at all.

Many people have celiac or gluten intolerance/sensitivity and do not even know it. Most have been misdiagnosed with other diseases or syndromes that mask the same symptoms (such as irritable bowl syndrome, chronic fatigue, arthritis) and the doctor has not bothered to search any further for a diagnosis. Also, many celiac or gluten allergy tests come out negative or inconclusive, and yet, these symptoms still manifest themselves.

More so, sometimes people can eat wheat and other gluten-y products for most of their life and the disease lays dormant in their system and waits for a trigger. A trigger could be from something like a small dietary change (cutting out one allergen sometimes leads to the discovery of more allergens) or a stressful time period.

Once the trigger has been activated, food that was one so yummy

has suddenly become the enemy.

While celiac disease is a disease and there is no cure, gluten intolerance and sensitivity are less drastic in terms of their overall heath repercussions. Gluten sensitivity and intolerance tend to have gastrointestinal symptoms only (think of gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, nausea, and all those other fun stomachachy things), but it has been also documented to cause concentration problems, anxiety, and depression. Most of this is caused by a lack of nutrient absorption.

Think about your small intestine for a minute: there are tons of little villi there and it is their job to absorb and use what you eat.

“It is exhaustive to relearn how to eat all over again, especially if you’re in the university.”

If these keep becoming damaged through repetitive eating of gluten-y products, then you’re not getting the benefit of all that hard work of eating.

Nutrients are not properly absorbed, so of course you’re tired and cranky all the time and can’t concentrate on your work.

Does that scenario sound familiar? For most university folk, the crankiness can be due to a lot of external factors (like hangovers, caffeine overindul-

gence, a bad grade, hunger, or hormonal changes). But there’s probably a handful of you who are gluten intolerant and you’re probably not getting what you need. There is no cure or magic pill for intolerance, but it can be mended with a gluten-free diet, much the same way celiac can be as well. Even if you’re sure that you probably aren’t gluten intolerant, eliminating wheat and other gluten products from your diet, especially processed foods that contain glucose-fructose, wouldn’t hurt and would probably help overall health.

However, it is exhaustive to relearn how to eat all over again, especially if you’re in the university. Not only are you stressed all the time with assignments or exams, but you want quick and easy food that doesn’t take too much energy to think about. Cooking food, let alone gluten-free food, can seem like a monster task. Most of us haven’t the first clue about nutrition as well. But when your body is suddenly becoming your enemy, you have to learn to adapt quick in order to feed yourself. Below are a list of gluten-free grains and easy alternatives to the food that you have been eating before, as well as a list of all the foods that contain gluten (some of which are extremely surprising!).

Foods to Avoid Gluten Containing Foods and Ingredients Atta (chapatti flour) Barley (flakes, flour, pearl) Beer, ale, lager Breading and bread stuffing Brewers yeast Bulgur Communion wafers Couscous Croutons Dinkel (also known as spelt)* Durum* Einkorn* Emmer*

Farina Farro or Faro (also known as spelt)* Fu** Graham flour Hydrolyzed wheat protein Kamut* Malt, malt extract, malt syrup and malt flavouring Malt vinegar Malted milk Matzoh, matzoh meal Modified wheat starch

Oatmeal, oat bran, oat flour and whole oats*** Pastas Rye bread and flour Seitan **** Semolina Spelt (also known as farro or faro, dinkel)* Triticale Wheat bran Wheat flour Wheat germ Wheat starch

* Types of wheat ** A dried gluten product derived from wheat that is sold as thin sheets or thick round cakes. Used as a protein supplement in Asian dishes such as soups and vegetables. *** Unless they are from pure, uncontaminated oat **** A meat-like food derived from wheat gluten used in many vegetarian dishes; sometimes called “wheat meat”.

Foods Allowed

Amaranth Arrowroot flour Baking soda Bean flour Buckwheat Cassava (Manioc flour) Chick pea flour Corn flour Cornmeal Cornstarch (Masa farina) Cream of tartar Dal or Dahl(Legume from India) Flax Gelatin Green pea flour Invert Sugar

Kudzu Lecithin Legumes (Channa,Chick peas, Gram, Lentils, Peanuts, Peas) Soya Malto dextrin Maltol (A sweetener not related to malt) Maltose Mannitol Millet Molasses Mustard flour (ground mustard) Oats* (pure uncontaminated) Poi Potato flour Potato starch Quinoa

Rice flour Rice flour (glutinous, sweet) Rice polishings Rice starch Sorghum Soya flour Soya starch Spices Sweet potato Tapioca flour Tapioca starch Teff Tofu White vinegar Xanthum gum Yam Yeast

Caitlin Jones

I recently had a chance to sit down with Lauren McIntyre and Lisa Corp Blueboxing @ Trent through Community Living Peterborough to discuss the Blueboxing program and its contributions to both Trent and the Peterborough community. The Blueboxing program first began at Fleming College, and has been able to expand thanks to early Trillium grants. At Trent the volunteers lead many programs that are having positive impacts on Trent's quest to be as green as possible.

Community Living Peterborough seeks to give its participants and their families support and services in the community. The mission of Community Living Peterborough is “to inspire respect and equality for people with an intellectual disability by promoting: community knowledge, organizational excellence, and individual quality of life.� The program creates an opportunity for Peterborough citizens with intellectual disabilities to engage in the community in which they live and create a community with the volunteers and staff they work with. Community Living got its start because of the barriers that are in place for people with intellectual disabilities when it comes to involvement in the larger community. The leaders are also attempting to dismantle inaccurate assumptions about people living with intellectual disabilities and encourage respect. The Blueboxing website says the following about the program “Blueboxing is an environmental partnership between Community Living Peterborough, Fleming College and Trent University. Volunteers who receive supports from Community Living dedicate their time to green projects at one or both of their local post secondary campuses. These volunteers are on campus Monday to Friday dedicating time to recycling and composting initiatives. Alongside these volunteers are student volunteers who dedicate time to assisting them with carrying out their recycling tasks on campus.

It is an opportunity for people to learn new skills, meet new people and contribute a valuable service to community. In exhange for their hard work, the volunteers are able to access campus resources like, the library, computers, classroom space, sports equipment and athletic facilities.

With support from staff and students at Fleming and Trent, Community Living has developed a very successful recycling program that highlights the abilities in people and encourages people with and without disabilities to work collaboratively toward a healthier environ

ment. Blueboxing volunteers participate in the life of community, build friendships, and are respected on and off campus!�

In my opinion Blueboxing is a win-win for everyone involved, the volunteers are able to feel valued and contribute to the community in which they live, and the Trent students benefit from having the volunteers in place to educate them on the procedures around recycling and green programs.

The Blueboxing team is on site at Trent from Monday-Friday, and is committed to helping Trent increase its green potential. Through the assistance of Champlain College, Ray Dart, Aramark, and Shelley Strain (just to name a few) the Blueboxers have found a home, volunteers, and encouragement as they educate Trent students. The main responsibilities of the group consists of collecting ink cartridges and having them sent to a recycling plant, taking down expired posters, and promoting the importance of composting and recycling especially on a campus of Trent's size.

However, according to Lauren pizza boxes are a major problem as well as students not being sure of what can go in which bin. Which, in my opinion, means that Trent students should take advantage of the assistance that we are given through the Bluboxing program and asks questions. We should be taking an active role in the way our university operates environmentally.

To Get in Involved Contact: Lisa Corp, Outcomes Facilitator 705-931-0905 lcorp@communitylivingpeterborough.ca

Anthony P. Gulston The serious parts were funny and the funny parts were awkward.

The Cultural Studies Department’s production of He Left Home presented at The Market Hall was an excruciating two hours of too much dialogue, poorly done instrumental mixtures with canned music, and a confusing mixture of too many borrowed theatrical styles. In the words of one audience member: “That shit was two fucking hours?! I had other shit to do.”

The play must have had a stunningly significant pedagogical value for those involved, but for those of us who had to watch, it was a sea of useless references, a barrage of half loved monologues, and a grade school dance level of frigid physicality between people in this notabsurd-enough tragic comedy.

The Tadeusz Różewicz play was written in Communist Poland in 1964 and tells the story of a nuclear family that has to deal with Father’s amnesia after he utters the officially unspeakable word that he is ‘unhappy.’

With such a simple plot, you would think that Różewicz could handle some subtly is the dialogue when it comes to dealing with the existential motifs (“My fear is existential fear!”, yells Father) and some clarity when it comes the plot. Różewicz was

dealing with too much content and instead of following a single theme throughout the play, he crams in as many references and allusions as he can as a way of showing off to academia and making the play something you have to study, instead of something you can see once and enjoy.

themes, theatre of the absurd in the purposeful alienation of the audience, Comedia Del Arte with the slapstick humour and Greek tragedy with the plot and chorus.

This play is a great one to study, but a muddled mess to watch.

It did not help that it seemed like the actors were reading the play for you instead of “The sensual, perceptual, bodi- performing it. And Różewicz ly themes were let down by the did not help the actors any by awkward rigidity of the stage writing such stilted, unnatural, violence and in general by the choppy lines for them to say like close, body on body interactions “time seeps into the upper half between actors.” of my body” (says Mother). The blotchy speech may have been a bad translation but the privaPlays of its time and tempera- tion of thematic continuity needs ment like No Exit or Waiting for no translation. There were lines Godot take up a single existential that were delivered with such question and attempt to answer it grace and perfection that it was in the most amusing and/or/and a temporary reprieve from the despairing way possible, keep- rest of the uncomfortable journey ing the whole production stark you had to take to get there, like to make space for the audiences’ when Leah Radda, the Mother, participation, not just the produc- says “This body doesn’t rememers’. But He Left Home does not ber anything.” The characters are want to explore one issue sur- so hollow and unworkable that rounding Communist Poland (ex- most of the acting came from istential crisis, death, freedom, the dialogue and the only voice authority, masculinity, bodily per- that was really heard above the ception, forgetting, remember- monotonous din was that of the ing, identity, selfhood, etc.) but author himself. The goofy grin make a comprehensive list of in- and expert timing of lead man tellectual curiosities that emerge Will Brereton made the slapfrom Red Polska. It was also a stick bits funny and the sad bits laundry list of theatrical styles: significant. A notable example is existential theatre in some of the his delivery of the joke: “English

cooking is like the cooking of cannibals.� The children, Ehmerah Mullen and Robert Reid, were able to communicate their characters’ circumstance and, in the case of Benjamin, existential angst, with great devotion to the plot, and their parents.

The sensual, perceptual, bodily themes were let down by the awkward rigidity of the stage violence and in general by the close, body on body interactions between actors. In order to negotiate such themes the actors needed to have been much better paced, melodic, and confident in their own skin, especially between husband and wife.

The meek, simplistic choreography was more instrumental than interesting and was full of missteps and missed steps. They were set to a crackly recorded version of traditional Soviet state

designated music that worked well to establish the dancers as secret agents but was just utterly boring to listen to and to watch; the introduction of a new acoustic environment like that needs to be evoked consistently or used purposefully to alienate an audience.

The original guitar pieces done

by Andrew Shedden were ambient but intricate and reinforced the present space. The production would have done well to have him do all of the music instead of sloppily integrating canned music. The acoustics of the Market Hall were put to good use with the polyphonus, madness inducing chorus and the punctuating snare drum rolls that at times were too loud or monotonous.

The visual presence was amazing with the red and white of Poland front and centre but the blocking left the actors desperately looking

for any excuse to use the space.

While they were harking back to the Greek chorus, they tried to also implement the traditional choral staging techniques. If the play was going to be a Greek tragedy though, it could have used more androgyny and Bacchus fervor instead an Apollonian dryness. The lighting was expertly executed and in some scenes did more acting than the actors.

The hetero-normativity as well as the portrayal of mental illness and disability as comedic in and of itself was unreflexive, uncritical and went unchecked.

He Left Home must have been a great learning experience for the Nietzsche toting, satchel slinging, ironic hat wearing Cultural Studies students who studied it, but it was a public performance of masturbation for the rest of masturbation for the rest of us. â–

Sarah Stunden and Caitlin Jones At the age of five, Michel Chikwanine, a resident of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was abducted by guerrilla rebels and forcefully initiated into child soldiery. Before he was able to escape from his imprisonment, he was made at gunpoint, blindfolded, to shoot his best friend. At the age of ten, after his father’s murder by similar rebel forces, Michele was again forced at gunpoint to watch while each female member of his family was gang raped by a team of armed soldiers. His story is the terrifying truth experienced by millions of children and adults living in impoverished communities worldwide. Harnessing the experience of the trauma he himself, and so many others have incurred at the hands of various villainous sources, Michele, now a graduate student at the University of Toronto, has become involved with Free the Children’s Me to We project, and has now spoken to over 100,000 people internationally about personal involvement, and the value of education. After his speech in Champlain College’s Great Hall, Caitlin and I stole him away to ask a couple of our own personal questions regarding such topics as education, not for profit organizations, and international ignorance. Here are the results: My first question kind of branches off of a little bit of the discussion that just opened up at the end there. You were talking about the fact that Africa is usually portrayed in the media as a continent in need of help, and I think a lot of programs like Kony 2012 sort of envision themselves as being the saveiors of Africa. I was wondering if you could articulate what you think the international community’s role then is in actually supporting movements that are happening already in Africa, instead of starting their own?

Yeah, I mean, all the time I see in the media so many times – I hate those commercials that show little children on garbage, and I’m like “Oh, come on! You’re giving such a false representation of the continent.”

I think, if you’re going to help Africa, give Africans themselves an opportunity to get themselves out of poverty, because there is poverty. There’s no question: poverty exists. Not everywhere, it does exists, diseases exist. So, give opportunities, like build clinics and employ African nurses in these clinics with African doctors, because they are there. There are so many students studying to be nurses and doctors. Give them the opportunity to prove themselves and their community. You know the saying goes “give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for lifetime” and I think that’s how the International community’s approach should be. For the longest time the approach has been “lets give them a fish”, and then when the money’s taken in by somebody, they’re all “Oh Africans are all corrupt” when it’s not true.

You’re giving it to the wrong people instead of giving it to the community and letting the community decide for themselves, giving it to the wrong people.

I guess sort of off of that, what is your take on the sort of boom of people going to foreign countries from North America to teach English?

That one’s a little hard, you know? I would say it depends on where you go, how you go by it. I’ll give you an example. With Me to We trips what it does is, communities actually invite you guys – they invite stu-

dents to come in. And I think that’s what people need to do: ask for permission. If the community doesn’t want you to go, then don’t go. If they want you to not take cameras, then don’t take cameras. I have a little bit of a problem with the whole “Oh, we’re going to go teach English.” I have a problem with it, but at the same time I also understand the importance of us here from North America learning about issues first hand, because for so long media would portray that Africa needs help, but when you go there you get the actual picture of what Africa is, and I think that’s also important to learn. It has to be both ways. It’s a catch 22 thing. You know, it’s really difficult to say, but I just think it depends on how you go by it, what community you go into, and if they welcome you into it, then go. Honestly, go. If they don’t, then don’t go. Don’t impose yourself on the community. That’s what I have a problem with, when you impose your thinking on other people.

Okay – This is something – we actually just saw the Kony 2012 video like everyone else. The part that bothered me the most, to be perfectly honest, was the discussion of the, I guess, the main protagonist saying that without education there was no reason for him to be alive. I was wondering if you could tell me what the main difference that you see from the values of Canadian school age children and teens is versus the teens and youth of your home.

Congo – I mean when I was a kid, to this day still education, like, parents grill you – it’s like “School!”, and if you don’t go to school you are like yelled at for the longest time. School is so important in so many places. Wherever you go on the continent it’s the number one priority because they understand with education you have an ability to read, to write, you know? You can read your rights when you’re applying for a job. Simple things like that that we take for granted here, like how to write an essay. We write them every single day and are like “I hate them so much” but it’s like simple things like that. When I came here, I didn’t know how to write an essay. But I know that’s important for me to write essays in university in order for me to pass and I think education in that way is very important to many people on the continent of Africa. In North America I feel like we’ve had it, it’s a privilege, you know, it’s something you have every single day. You don’t think “Oh, it’s never going to be there. I will always have it. Who cares?” And I think we’ve lost sort of the value in education and why it’s important. And that’s not to say, for some people school, that’s not their thing, right? but I think you also have to look at the education system itself.

There are different learners. I’m a visual learner, I came to find very recently. And I prefer reading and debating stuff than I am writing and stuff like that. So I think catering also to people’s educations needs as well, that’s my criticism of the education system – that in order to value it, students need to feel welcome in it as well. So that’s my take on it.

I was wondering what you think, I guess sort of going off of a few questions that were asked, what you think about sort of placing racial difference on a hierarchy and so saying automatically that because someone is white that they are ignorant or whatever they may be. And obviously in Canada you see racism, but with stuff with Kony 2012 I saw a lot of internal racism where people were automatically blaming North America or white communities, and do you think that by having stuff like that you are creating less positive impacts and more negative?

So I had my own criticism of the video to offer. And I have criticism for the criticisms that people are doing. The criticism that I have for I guess the critics of the video is that it’s not constructive criticism and I think the problem that I’m having with it is things like oh, you know, “North Americans are so ignorant, like you guys are being saviours again.” It’s not constructive. Something constructive would be things like, “it’s important to grab Kony, but it’s also important to keep attention on the issues that exist

Photos by Caitlin Jones

Discover Peterbor ough this Sum mer... ! y t i c r ou

y w o n k Get to

Jen Freele

As we get nearer and nearer to that final closing of the books for this academic year, many students are beginning to shift their thoughts to the summer and how to occupy the four months of break that are just beyond our grasp. Some of us will head home to work and spend some time with our families, and some will take off on an awesome adventure and fill the summer with traveling and new experiences. But then some of us will be trying to hack it here in Peterborough, and will suddenly have hours upon hours, and weeks upon weeks of free time to spend discovering a city that can expose you to just as much comfort or adventure as you like. Here is a quick overview to some things Peterborough has to offer in the sunniest of seasons.

If music is your dish, then there are numerous venues around the city that are worth your while to check out. The Gordon Best Theatre, Showplace Theatre, The Spill, The Red Dog, The Montreal House, The Venue and Market Hall are all unique spaces where local, national, and international musicians flock to.

Keep your eyes out for posters around the city for upcoming shows; there are shows practically every day, depending on where you look, and they tend to be fairly affordable for those struggling without OSAP for the four months off. Music festivals are another trademark of the summer, and there are some pretty decent ones for you to spread a blanket out and enjoy a beer to in this fair city. Little Music Fest, that begins June 30th and has performers all the way until August 25th, has an expansive line-up including Trent’s chancellor Tom Jackson (who knew he could sing?), local legend Kim Mitchell, and blonde-bopping-bros Hanson. Just outside the city, in the good ol’ town of Havelock, the famous Country Jamboree will be taking place August 16-19. So shine up your cowboy boots and stock up on red solo cups because this festival is boasting some pretty impressive performers such as “Free Bird” legends Lynyrd Skynyrd, ‘60s rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), and for those with an ear for twang, George Canyon, Doc Walker, and Emerson Drive will be making an appearance. So update your iPod with some classics of these performers and get ready to sing your summer away. I wonder if Hanson will perform an “MMMBop” remix to keep it current….

As Trent students, our bus pass is now valid all throughout the spring and summer, so take advantage and explore all around the city. Need some fresh food after a winter of canned and frozen delicacies? The Peterborough Farmer’s Market runs each and every Saturday from 7AM to 1PM in Morrow Park (the corner of Lansdowne and George Street), and has everything from chocolate scones to fresh fruits and vegetables - even handmade pasta and cider are available for your enjoyment. You’ll be helping to support local businesses and farmers, but you’ll also be getting better quality produce and food. Head on over to other local hot spots in our city that you may not have had the chance to visit yet - East City, the Canoe Museum, the Lift Locks, the Art Gallery, are some suggestions of where to start.

Use your break and take advantage of the gorgeous weather during the summer. Hop on your bike and take the trail all the way to Lindsay. Pack a lunch; it’s a long ride. Go to the beach at Beavermead Park, or even pitch a tent for the weekend. Go star-gazing in Jackson’s Park on a clear night. Re-discover the Peterborough Zoo and see the otters getting fed right after a quick jaunt through the splash pad. Hike the nature trails on Trent property (if you want to return to campus before absolutely necessary). Walk the downtown path along the Otonabee and tiptoe across the railroad tracks. Take advantage of the public library to borrow out movies for free for a cheap date night in. There are so many different opportunities around every street corner if you just get outside to look around.

Peterborough in the summer is home to many friendly and interesting people that you may have skipped over while you had your nose in a book throughout the school year. Now that your head’s up, take the time to look around. Go to new bars (the Only has an awesome patio), and speak to new people. The summer will be what you make of it, so make it a good one. ■

Candicce Germani We are the children of the baby boomers. My parents have fond memories of a multitude of consumerist opportunities, seeing the Beatles at the CNE in the 60’s, and swarms of protests and politicians promising a better tomorrow. As a result, we grew up with the memory of social change, and the expectation we would live up to our parents’ mission by taking up our own battles.

However, we have a powerful new tool to use in our battles that many of the baby boomers cannot even wrap their heads around: the Internet. The power of free expression is placed the hands of Average Joe citizens with different stories, experiences, and opinions on how to change the world, and it is quite marvelous.

Rather than corporations with the financial means to advertise virtually everywhere dominating debates and discussions, ordinary people from around the world are connected to each other within seconds and have the power to share what they believe to be wrong with their governments and corporations to the masses.

Governments cannot keep up with the amount of sharing done over the Internet, and for the first time in a long time, cannot effectively repress its society’s objections to the system. In a communist fashion, once something is shared on the Internet whether an episode of How I Met Your Mother, videos of protests in Syria or

evidence of government corruption on wikileaks.org, it belongs to everyone, and exact copies can be shared, making tracking the original virtually impossible.

In attempts to control the Internet, various bills and treaties such as ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, Bill C-11 and Bill C-30 have been propositioned. But as information is shared at an incredibly fast pace, movements against these bills and treaties emerged at an incredibly fast pace, effectively shutting down the majority of the above governmental constraints on the Internet.

“The shallowness of “activists” who change their mission every month, makes maintaining the interest of potential followers hopeless.”

While Internet movements are a powerful method to share and protest globally, the speed these movements can be cultivated at is also its weakness as an effective means of promoting social change. This can be demonstrated with the recent Kony 2012 movement: a 30-minute viral video that popped up everywhere on everybody’s newsfeed in the First World, calling for the arrest and International trial of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda by promoting awareness and social interest in finding him. It sounds like a great cause to promote.

However, as with many Internetled movements, thousands of people followed this movement blindly, doing no external research as to the social and political state of Uganda in the present, and once they pressed “share”, they believed their part was done.

In 2012, too many people sit at their computer chairs and promote a thousand movements at once on a shallow and safe level; rather than taking to the streets on issues they are passionate about and fighting tooth and nail for them. The fast pace of the Internet has enabled our generation to become educated on any issue we choose around the world; but it has become so fast that as soon as we are presented with a movement and support that one, another is presented on a completely different topic, and being generally good and moral citizens, we support that one as well. The overstimulation of the population caused by our awareness of a million different issues has lead, and will lead many more to a position of apathy. The shallowness of “activists” who change their mission every month, makes maintaining the interest of potential followers hopeless. For another activist will spirit them away once we are done speaking.

The flower children would be disappointed in us for abusing the amount of resources we have to run effective protests. What’s worse is that we may not have the

means to communicate our missions over the Internet for much longer if our world governments manage to succeed in controlling our access to knowledge.

The Motion Picture Association of America sold ACTA to global governments as a method “to shut off sites that embarrass your government” (Glen, Emily. “ACTA: SOPA by a different name,” Urban Times: Feb. 3rd 2012). In other words, the government could

shut down not just the constant stimulation of online protests, but all online protests. The Internet and social media are incredibly powerful tools for the regular citizen to have their voice be heard, and could be taken away.

And with such a dependence on the Internet for social movements, a sudden loss could leave many notable causes in the dust.

Our generation has an incredible opportunity to protest for Jenny Lawrence

social change, but we must learn from history. While we have access to abundances of knowledge, use it to broaden and follow issues you are TRULY passionate about; and learning from our parents, take to the streets and put everything on the line for something you care about. For the feeling of pride and accomplishment will not truly belong to you if the only thing you did during a protest was share a YouTube video.■

The man sitting on the other side of the room is not a comfort. Tiny behind his giant grey desk, he looks at me angrily. The room is so narrow its walls almost seem to converge into his sunken face.

His expression is stern when I approach him and gently slide my paperwork over his large, grey desk. As he looks them over I wonder how he ended up with this job, why he appears to be so bitter.

He looks up sharply and with an air of impatience instructs me to sit down and wait, as if I should have known the procedure already.

I find a seat far from him and lean back into the old, brown twine backing. Faced with the choice of reading the tabloids or staring at the walls, I make the mistake of staring at the walls.

There’s something wrong with you. Pale green paint that stretches on forever, bare of any portrait or poster to make a punctuation mark. They speak a seemingly endless chant, “there’s something wrong with you there’s something wrong with you there’s something…”

There are people sitting around me, pale faces reading the magazines or staring at the walls as I do. Some simply avoid the wall’s gaze, like the mother’s with their heads tucked down, watching their children play with building blocks.

One after another their names are called, and they stand up to walk past the man at his grey desk and around the corner.

Why, I wonder, did they choose green? What possessed them to make this colour the stamp of medical institutions everywhere? Is it because they think it’s not threatening? It’s not loud. It won’t cause the patients anxiety. It won’t offer them hope. It’s the colour of sick, of wrong things that ooze form the body, of old, hard candies you don’t want to eat, of a doctor’s mask, of—There’s something wrong with you—You are not to be bright as yellow, or passionate as red, you are just pale and green.

They call my name and I walk around the corner. The nurse asks me to sit down, then to lay my arm on the table, then to relax as she wraps a green plastic band around my bicep. It squeezes tight.

When she picks up the needle I see its chamber, a dull transparent white, the needle itself, is grey.

All I can think about is the cell rich fluid that is soon going to be filtering into it, carrying abnormalities yet to be diagnosed.

It had been a year since I laid on the operating table, when they had cut that slimy organ from my throat. It’s shaped like a butterfly, they said. To me it’s just a bug. They cut off half its wing and left the other half to flutter a make mischief inside of me. Today they test to see how well it flies on its own.

Relax your arm please, she reminds me and suggests that I look away—I look to the walls— There’s something wrong with you. ■

Jen Freele

As students, we spend so much time living in the future. I’m already stressing for this paper due in 3 months that’s worth 50% of my grade that I need to do well on so that I can keep my scholarship and afford to graduate from university and get my dream job … or something like that. Rare is the moment when we take time to focus on the present and appreciate our situation, because, for the vast majority of us, it’s a fucking life that we have. We are in university and we have our lives ahead of us. But it’s so important to wake up and take each day as it comes and to not let day after day slide away into oblivion. I’m not sure if you’ve received the memo yet – but there’s not a day that goes by that we can’t get back.

I am one of the worst procrastinators out there. I know what it’s like to put off papers until the night before, or wait until you literally have no clean underwear to make that 4 block trek to the laundry mat, or hit snooze 3 times and then proceed to stare at the ceiling for 15 minutes before finding

the gumption to roll out of bed.

That basically sums up my life; well that and my addiction to One Tree Hill. We all have those little things that weigh us down more and more as we put them off longer and longer. But as students we need to write papers, and wear clean clothes (debatable…), and wake up each morning. These are necessities and we keep thinking to ourselves that once we’ve dealt with our “I need to’s”, we can finally have a life again.

“The fact that life is short and beautiful and we cannot afford to waste it. And yet still we waste our time. Finals are upon us, and everyone is stressed, but please remember to breathe and enjoy other things too.”

Instead, once that paper has been written or the load has been folded, we revert to Facebook creeping and watching reruns of Jersey Shore until the next crisis comes along. So when does the living start?; because I’ve seen almost every show there is and have spent hours roaming

stumbleupon, and I’ve yet to see anything that resembles a life there. Why is it so damn hard just to peel yourself away from your comfort zone, and go outside and live?

In less than a year I have lost two friends, both the age of 19, in car accidents. One slip of the wheel, one distracted moment, and they were dead. Both had promising futures; Rachel was in school to be an x-ray technician and had a boyfriend that she loved with all her heart. And Hillary was gearing up to be a teacher, a profession she had always felt a calling to. These girls were a part of my life, and I think of them often, and I miss who they are and who they were on their way to becoming.

But Rachel and Hillary died. It could have happened to anyone, but it happened to them.

And if we don’t learn from the ending of their young lives then we’re missing out on the greatest lesson this fucked-up life has to offer us. The fact that life is short and beautiful and we cannot afford to waste it. And yet still we waste our time. Finals are upon us, and everyone is stressed, but

please remember to breathe and enjoy other things too. Enjoy the sun and take a walk just because. There doesn’t have to be any rhyme or reason – that’s the best part about life. There are beautiful people all around, and if you can unplug your ears and pry your eyes away from the dim of your cell phone screen for a minute, you might actually meet someone new and amazing and who will change your life.

So before you go back to bed and watch another five hours straight of Jersey Shore or set

down to refresh tumblr every 30 seconds, think about this: if this is the last day of my life, would I want to look back on these precious few hours as ones that I spend watching fake tanned assholes parade around nightclubs and read dumb blogs and photo captions that discuss this life that you’re missing out on? I know that is not the way I want to live my life.

We all have that moment when we realize Fuck. Life is short. I know I’ve had several of these moments, and each time this

realization hits me I lift myself up closer to my ideal life, consequently pulling myself farther away from glowing screens and nearer to the gorgeous people in this world and nature. Maybe this article will be one of those fuck moments for you , and the story of Rachel and Hillary’s brief lives will make you think twice about how you want to live yours.

So live for the day, seize the moment and all that jazz. Whatever mantra you adopt, just make sure that you actually take it to heart.■

continued from page 19 in Uganda.” Like, what are the issues that exist? Lack of education, lack of jobs. I think that’s the focus it should be. And then there’s the other side, the criticism I always hear, that I’ve been listening to, “Oh Africans are so corrupt, they would never stop”--I hate when people say that. It makes me cringe. You really have to understand, I mean I’m taking African studies, and we’re really studying why are African leaders so corrupt? I mean, is it something innate that’s built into Africans? Where is the problem? Is the problem leadership? And the problem really does come down from different issue. One, way Africa was introduced to the international community was in a terrible way. Every country in Africa had sort of like, you know “You’re going to produce coffee and give it to England” or “cotton is going to be your one industry” so there’s only one industry. And when country’s got their independence, the people have no school, no education, they don’t even know how to run the industry that was left with them. In that way, because people don’t have education, they no idea how democracy runs in the first place, they’ve never heard of the word democracy, so introducing foreign words and foreign concepts to people who have never understood what the concept is about. I could go on and on. So I think there’s deeper issues within each criticism that goes to it. With the North American thing, they’ve recently discovered oil in Northern Uganda, something that people have no idea, or well, I’m sure people have heard Uganda has oil now. And the reason why the American government is sending in troops is oil. So that’s the other criticism of it. I don’t agree with the idea of North Americans being saviours, but people want to get something. A lot of North American politicians don’t go to help for free. There is something for them there.

I, being female, was obviously effected by the stories you told about you female family and the little girl who’s hands were cut off [for having gone to school]. And I was wondering if you could even start to think about, or if you have already, ways that gender needs to and can be dealt with to bring about a universal social change.

Great thing to ask. Yesterday we were discussing in my class, should women be leaders in Africa? Are women supposed to be the saviours of the continent of Africa? When you think about it in general, women have a caring heart. It’s very true. Naturally women are much able to care about communities and people who live in them rather than the males. Most of the time we’re very individualistic. We only think about ourselves and our family and that’s it. So I think educating women on the continent of Africa, I think female education is to be top priority. I think something that has been lacking for years and years and years, because females have been told that “you are not human, that you exist only to serve your husband, and your children and to cook, and that’s it”. And I know from experience that I’ve heard even my own grandparent talk like that, telling my sisters “when you get a husband, do not go to school! Stay home and cook.” I think giving women an opportunity to go to school and get an education would be incredible.

Let me give you an example. Sherlife (sp) in Liberia, she’s the president of Liberia, a woman, and look at how she’s sort of turned Liberia into something incredible. Not so long ago they were in a war, a civil war that involved so many people in that country but now the country, I mean, they’re not there yet, but they’re getting there because of her leadership. When you look at the other candidates who want to be president, I’m scared. If they were here, people would be like “why are those people even considering to be presidents?” But she was smart, she cares, and you know it’s something that a lot of women, you know, students I guess, in the continent of Africa should look up to her. And I think that’s just an example to the world that if you give women a chance to be in power, they can do incredible stuff. I’m sure there are some women leaders who are not as good as well, but I think female education would be an important way to encourage social justice and social change in the world.

You’re sort of told us how you got involved with Free the Children. How do you suggest finding an organization that is not really corrupt and questionable, and how for example Toms, people are buying Toms and learning “oh, they use sweat shops”?

Like I said, research and I think we don’t do that often and it’s like, someone comes out with something, and it’s like “oh that’s the greatest thing in the world!” We’re just like mindless sheep. We just follow what we think is important, and I think even our own media itself my professor said we have lazy media because they just run stories that other people are running and it’s just like recycling stuff instead of researching and questioning. So I think, if you want to be involved, number one, find what you’re passionate about. I’m passionate about education. It’s something that I strive for and I want to make sure everyone in the world gets and opportunity to get access to that. I found Free the Children, and before I got involved, I had really researched details like what is the organization about? I really looked up both sides for criticism that the organization has and I found that they had a ten percent administration rate. A lot of organizations are sixty percent admin rate so when you give a dollar, sixty cents goes to their staff.

Which, I mean, you need to pay your staff, that’s important, because they have to live. They’re not going to live on like mats. They need to live. I think researching the organization, making sure that “if I donate the money that I’m donating to, is it going to go to where it’s going to?” So, ninety percent of Free the Children’s income goes to schools, to build schools and it goes to the program. Me to We was created, Me to We’s business was created because they wanted to make sure every dollar people donate to Free the Children goes to free the children. So every product that Me to We sells, half of it goes to pay off Free the Children’s admin costs and they’re hoping that in the next five years, unfortunately with the economy it’s set it back, but the reason why Me to Why was created is for that reason, so that when people donate to Free the Children all of it goes to the program and Me to We’s set up as a way to pay off the admin rate. So researching organizations and really knowing, “okay, what is the organization doing? What do they stand for? And do they really go along with my values?’. I had a problem with—I don’t like naming organizations—but, I had a problem with World Vision at one point when they were showing like sponsor a child, and I was like “that’s not how that works”. So okay, I’m going to sponsor a child, and I’m going to send him shoes—and I’m sure people care, I’m not trying to say people are not caring but, give them a shoe, but think of the other children in the family—they’re going to be jealous of “hey, my brother got a shoe, why am I not getting a shoe?” so you can already see the problem that creates in the community.

So I say don’t give, let the community get itself out of it. Encourage things like building schools, microfinance loans. I know there’s criticisms for that too, but we know ninety percent of the time they work for communities. That and they run businesses and they get themselves out of poverty, and I think that’s important. Knowing what organization you’re donating to or you’re being involved with. Just researching, and I guess finding out if they’re in line with your values.■

going to the groAries cery store, orBeyoucareful may find your name (Mar 21 - Apr 19)

entered into the Hunger Games. And you’re not Katniss, either. Better stick to buying your food at the liquor store where you only have to fight off the outside drunks and the attendant who doesn’t believe you’re 19.

Apr 20 - May 20)I really hope (May 21 - Jun 21) You’ve been a Taurus(you’ve been to the doctor. Like, seGemini talking head recently... the only riously, you should go. That trip you took recently is coming back to haunt you in a very distinct way.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? It may already be too late.

problem is that you’re the only one listening.

Perhaps it’s time to stay silent and listen to what other people have to say, whether or not you’ve infinitely smarter than them... nah.

Jun 22 - Jul 22) That boy that you like doesn’t like you back. You’re probably not smart Cancer(enough, pretty enough, funny enough etc. Have fun being on the friend track for the rest

of your life. I see a movie being made about you. Something to do with your best friend getting married.... or wait! I see a lot of dresses in your future. 27 of them to be exact.

(Aug 22 - Sep 22) Classes are al(Jul 23 - Aug 22) Slept in again, and you don’t Leo remember the name of the person who is Virgo most finished for the semester, time sleeping beside you. Seems like the average week-

end, huh? Maybe you should clean up the dishes in your room that are collecting mold and you should probably get that itch checked out.

to manipulate all those “friends” to help you study. Who needs to actually understand the content. #winning

(Sep 23 - Oct 22) Well, aren’t you pretty today! You probably haven’t left the bathroom

Libramirror all day, which is fine when you’re only missing class, but it’s exam time soon.

You better peal yourself away from your own reflection long enough to take them, or else start working on how you’re going to seduce the prof to pass the course.

23 - Nov 21) You’ve been singing some cheesy romantic songs from the 1990s as you Scorpio(Oct try to pursue your new love interest. It’s all fun and games though until they realize you’re ripping off the Goo Goo Dolls and you have zero originality of your own.

22 - Dec 21) People might call you a hippy but you’re actually a rockstar. Time Sagittarius(Nov to start being a douche and sleeping with as many inappropriately aged “groupies” as you can. Quantity over quality. Just be sure to glove it. You can’t spell stud without STD. Just sayin’....

(Jan 20 - Feb 18) Student Dec 22 - Jan 19) RememAquarius Capricorn (ber loans creeping up on you? that assignment that

you had to upload to submit? Surprise! It didn’t work. I suggest you start propositioning your prof with sexual favours to get those marks back...

Probably a good idea to take all your money and hide it under your bed for safe keeping. Paying bills is overrated. So is showering.

Feb 19 - Mar 20) Did you remember to turn the stove off? What about putting out that Pisces (cigarette that you smoked and placed on the table for “just a second”. You’ve been

forgetful lately. It probably means you’re dying. Should get that checked out.

Dear Tyra, I’m just starting a relationship and I’m unsure how much he cares about me. How can I tell?

-Insecure Dear Insecure, Don’t be Insecure, girlfriend! If he’s with you, then he wants ya, and if he doesn’t, then take that booty to someone who knows how to treat a woman. Don’t waste your time doubting your fierceness!

It’s the end of the school year and I don’t have any plans for the summer. What would someone as fabulous as yourself do?

-Wannabe Tyra Dear Wannabe, First off, I wouldn’t be comparing my life to anyone else’s. Summer is the time for love, laughing, and living that life of yours to the fullest. You find your own way to be fabulous, missy, and then start to own it. But for the curious onlooker, I like amusement parks, long walks on the beach, and chasing down the ice cream truck for that perfect summer treat.

Want advice from Ty-Ty?! Send your questions in and she would love to respond.

Email: trentabsynthe@gmail.com We at Absynthe feel that you should check out this amazing youtube video. Also, be sure to check out this area of the magazine every month, ‘cause chances are, one of the staff members has stumbled across another video gem that should be shared with the world...

Okay, so just Trent’s population that reads the mag...anyways...

Motivational Speaker Michel Chikwanine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69JgbJnfUlk

E. Deshane

Just down the street from Traill college lies not made it into this production. Called the “hell a printing press that is over one hundred years old. drawer,” it is full of misshapen and miss-matched It still runs like the day it was built, and with a pieces that are still useful, but don’t always have a new coat of blue paint on its sides and spinning place anymore. He goes on to tell the students who wheels, it is ready to make protest posters, flyers are there that the printing press’ assistant was often for art shows, or just a nice thank you card for a known as The Devil’s Apprentice and we begin to friend. This is Jackson Creek Press, and it’s hid- understand the metaphors that are working here in ing right in plain sight inside someone’s garage. this small garage. Even as it begins to snow out Jeff, who used to work as a graphic de- side, the small space heater in this workshop keeps signer, now runs these two printing presses. us warm inside this small out-dated (now known He’s been taking in students from the MA Pub- as ‘antique’ or ‘vintage’) printing factory. Way belic Texts Program at Trent University for the past fore we had any of the distribution that we have few years, in addition to participating in Peter- now for texts, the power used to lie in the hands of borough and St Catherine’s art scene, as well as these people. If texts were deemed obscene, more just printing stuff for his own pleasure. He tries often than not, the printer would simply refuse to to do one book a year, and his current project is have the pages go through the press. The responon the Canadian painter Greg Curnoe. The paint- sibility fell on them if they did print the obscene er’s iconic moustache stares back at whoever en- materials, and they would be arrested along with ters the small garage printing workshop, having the writer who wrote the words. Printers had to be been carved onto a wood tablet, coated in neon extremely vigilant about what they did, and at the colour, and then run through the printing press. same time, they also had to be quite sneaky. Jeff tells us about how printing presses used to run off fliers and protest literature at night so they would “If texts were deemed obscene, not be caught, and would be able to distribute them more often than not, the printer would in the morning. This was usually the apprentices’ simply refuse to have the pages go role - The Devil’s Apprentice. The job was hard through the press.” to begin with: often cramped, noisy, and dirty, the night reconnaissance was one of the few perks. Because of these apprentices, and the huge role that It’s pretty amazing what can be done on a machine the printing press itself played with the distribution that is over one-hundred years old, and what can and the changing of text, the printing press itself be carved from these little tablets. Metal ones fill and the type of art it produces will always be syndrawers and contain letters that can be set up in onymous with change and the power of revolution. order to do posters and fliers, from sizes 18 to 72 Jeff posts pictures of his work on tumblr, his and then larger than that. Anyone familiar with website, and facebook. He has cards, quotations, and Microsoft word knows the font Wing Dings and other inspiring art prints, along with his own books, there is even a drawer here in this workshop that and other commissioned projects he invests in. This is dedicated to those pieces. In fact, wandering type of art is still important, because although we around and looking through thesee drawers, it have our own Wing Dings on our computers, we begins to feel as if Microsoft word has suddenly should remember our roots and for anyone who turned into a play and we are all acting out the es- advocates for change, they should see where the say that we’re trying to compose at the same time. texts of the revolution where initially run off.■

There is also a place for letters that have

E. Deshane The book market has transformed in recent years, due in part to the technological advances of e-readers and other devices, and things like downloading and open access. Although some of us still like to hold our books in our hands (and smell them too), copyright and what people are allowed to do with a text puts issues between publishers, book buyers, and authors - not to mention readers like yourself. Publishers are not as likely to take risk with new authors, not ones with at least a bit of prestige, prior publishing, and some type of platform. This makes sense, with the amount of money lost and books turned into pulp each year. But how is a new authors, who has written a book and been working on it for years, supposed to be able to get the “prestige” and “platform” if no one is willing to help them out in the first place?

Most people in this position have already turned to blogging, and indeed, this is a good place to get a beginning readership and to develop a fanbase. It is also a great place to get criticism and feedback before going to the corporate and big-business model where all of a sudden, the book that you’ve spend your years preparing is out of yours hands.

But some people are bypassing the big business set up all together. Instead of writing cover

letter, chapter summaries, and building up that platform, they are doing it themselves. Lulu.com and smashwords.com are some of the self-publishing websites that have been running for current years, and have garnered quite a bit of attention. Vanity publishing predated this type of system, and was far more costly to the author.

Vanity presses operated in very much the same manner that most publishing places did; by printing a set number and then acquiring payment for that shipment.

“Even some staff at Trent have gone this route with their own books” Only this time, the onus fell on the author, who turned into book seller, advertiser, and author. If the person had a good book, it wasn’t too big of a deal to buy two thousand copies on a vanity press and sell them yourself. But if you were amateur, or just wanted to have a copy of your book for your own sake, then it meant taking a hit financially. Lulu.com and Smashwords.com differ from this significantly because if you only want one copy of your book, then they will only print one copy of it.

All you do is upload your word document on their system, work through their templates to design a cover, and then the rest falls on their shoulders. You will

only incur the shipping fees and the binding fees. You also get to set your own royalty, so if people buy it online, where you may have had to pay 9.99 for your book to cover the binding, if you wanted 2.00 in fees, then everyone else would be paying 12.99 for your masterpiece. This is clearly not going to make you the next J.K. Rowling, but hey, in this day and age of etsy and DIY culture, it doesn’t hurt to have maybe five or ten dollars in your paypal account and a unique contribution to the internet’s now growing source of e-self-publishing.

There have been some success stories. Elliott DeLine and his novel Refuse has won LGBT awards and he has become a “fringe” star in the transgender community for writing his novel that goes against how most trans* men are figured within the existing literature. Cory Doctorow is another noteworthy example who often gives his books away for free with an optional payment process (similar to how Radiohead released In Rainbows).

Even some staff at Trent have gone this route with their own books, but I will leave it up to you to find who those professors are. In an age where print is dying - or at least changing very quickly - there are many ways to adapt along with it and find new ways of expressing creativity.

Yeah, that’s right. Dickface. I’m not sure what the motivation behind this was but it was the start of something twisted. The image of a person with a penis coming out of their face formed in my mind. Next on the listed came swallow. Do you see the theme? Maybe it’s just coincidence I thought to myself. In my opinion pianist was consistent with the pattern. I assume you are aware of its common mispronunciation. I was happy to see hope and abstract on the list. It was possible I could get away with a story that didn’t have to do with someone sucking a penis coming out of someone’s face.

This is a start: My name is Shelley Frost and I go to Trent U which is right outside of Peterborough, Ontario. I am 26 years old and this is my first year at Trent. When I was 19 I began a career as a professional pianist. CBC news has just called me Ontario’s greatest treasure. When I was 15 I joined the Royal Conservatory of Music and became one of Ontario’s best piano teachers. It was the conservatory’s mandate that I suck…

David Bender: GOD DAMN YOU, FREUD!!!

Gilbert Enenajor

She looked at the lone banana left on the table. Pretending it was nothing more than a snack, she grabbed it softly and began to peel it while staring into his eyes. This side of her never comes out... she's a good girl. Earlier that day she was watching the star student of her grade 2 class draw a perfect unicorn running through a field of sunflowers. She was a gifted artist herself but was never satisfied with her own work. She was too pedantic and her selfimposed mandate to make the perfect piece of art made it impossible for her to ever actualize her dreams. So she changed them and became a teacher. But tonight, the repressed wild side that made her a daring artist was ready to come out. This was the staff barbeque, yet her eyes were trained on a guest. The P.E. teacher, Mr. Nash, brought his friend. He was a plumber.

Brutish, vulgar, and unkept, he was everything she wanted, but everything she couldn't have. As she stared at him, her whole body began throbbing. She tried to obfuscate what she was obviously feeling, but everybody there knew. The stares that came from her co-workers made her feel as though she, and her repressed desires were on display. She was naked. She walked over to where he was standing, the words on the tip of her tongue, her lips ready to speak, her heart ready to actualize the ddreams she gave up so many years ago in a single night. She looked him up and down, flicked her hair, and said, "I don't know a lot about plumbers, but I heard you

Christian Metaxas Even in the highly popularized US dance scene, it’s hard to ignore someone with a name like Mountblood.

After sitting down and sinking your fangs into his hand crafted tracks it’s easy to understand how Steven Molina is blowing up in a big way; as the saying goes, “everything’s bigger in Texas.” The meticulously built Blood Session Mixes (powerful one hour sets) and songs that can be found on Molina’s Soundcloud are just a glimpse of how conventional genres are almost left behind in the pursuit of a new fresh sound.

Hot off the heels of Miami Music Week with some of the biggest names in EDM, Mountblood agreed to sit down and take some questions regarding himself as an artist, the culture of Electronic music, and the industry at a glance.

It seems a lot of Electronic artists have headgear or masks (Daft Punk, Danger, deadmau5, SBTRKT), what’s the story behind yours?

I have always been connected with wolves; I love all dog-like animals. I feel that they represent what I go through as an artist. I am not sure about the headgear idea. Many artists want to remain mysterious or want you to associate them with their logo or character. The wolf is more of a character, being played in the EDM game through me. I can see it developing more through out time.

The Blood Session Mixes are sick! What kind of process do you go through in order to complete something like that?

I record all my sets live on my pioneer mixer, it takes about an hour or so to complete. I love to play everything I am into at that time during the mix session. I use various effects to blend each track and make it an enjoyable experience for the listener. I try not to ruin the songs by chopping and cutting too much out, I think it is an insult to the original producer. I try to play at least three minutes of the track to get a feel and vibe for what that artist was putting out.

The sets on Soundcloud are free but your tracks are not, what’s the deal with that? Do you have a tentative date for an official release?

Right now I do not want anyone to have a copy of my tracks; I know that people will still bootleg from sites like Soundcloud. I am waiting to officially release the tracks before they are up for download. As of now, no official date is available.

How do you think social media and social networking has changed the music industry? Do you think it’s for better or for worse, and how?

Social media runs the music world now. You cannot survive or be relevant to anyone without using it.

It is honestly a double-edged sword… It has ruined a lot of the ‘artist’ feel for music and corrupted the purity of the creative process, turning it into a popularity contest instead. It also has made it very easy for people to find new artists they can enjoy. So I am not sure how I feel about it yet, but I do use social media sites often to put out my music.

To whom and what are you listening to lately? Any artists that people in the EDM scene should be keeping their eye on?

I have been listening to sludge house, selective post dubstep and a lot of dark doom impending beats.

Even some darker takes on the trance genre have been caught howling out through my headphones.

Tommy Trash is great for remixes right now.

Any chance you’ll bundle up and come to Toronto one of these days?

I wish to hit up Canada again soon; I lived in Vancouver for a while in 2010. I love it up there, the music scene is great. Really nice vibes from everyone the last few times I played up north. I can see Toronto in the future very soon.

What was your most embarrassing moment involving one of your performances?

I hate when random hype dudes who think they have some reason to be in the booth take over the microphone. It has happened to me often, mostly at club parties. Brohammer.

You’re a self-proclaimed “gear-slut”, any other little idiosyncrasies or pre-show rituals you engage in?

I have a few, most of the occult variation. I love rituals.

Any advice you’d be willing to give to aspiring musicians and producers in the EDM scene?

Stay true to your roots, don’t fall into the trends. Everyone seems to make what they think the fans want.

Music should express who you are, not what they want.