The Space Issue

The

Space

Issue

where no one can hear you vibe

One small step for man, one giant leap… well, you know the rest. Areas of vast darkness that stretch for trillions of li

comment One small step for man, one giant leap… well, you know the rest. Areas of vast darkness that stretch for light years, unexplored terrain probably teeming with unexplored life and constellations of stars numbering in the trillions.

There is so much of space that our puny human minds could never comprehend. Don’t worry, we here at Buzzsaw have got you covered. Join us as we explore swirling galaxies, winking stars, the inky firmament, and the spaces around us—what does it mean to take up space? With what ideas and theories do we interact with the spaces around us? It will be completely out of this world. Take a ride in the Buzzsaw Voyager as we take an intergalactic journey into the unknown that we call Space.

Managing Editor News & Views Upfront Ministry of Cool Prose & Cons Sawdust Seesaw Layout Art Web and Social Photography Copyediting Advisor Founders

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Audra Joiner Rachael Powles James Baratta Audra Joiner Alex Coburn Mateo Flores Kimberly Caceci Isabel Murray Andrew Hallenberg Mae McDermott Adam Dee Julia Batista Joe Minissale Kevin Gyasi-Frempah Carlos Figueroa Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick Cole Louison Arnold Printing Co.

Write Us! Our magazine exists to inspire thoughtful debate and open up the channels through which information is shared. Your comments and feedback are all a part of this process. Reach the editors by email at: buzzsawmag@gmail.com.

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News & Views

Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront

Selected dis-education of the month.

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Ministry of Cool

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Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Prose & Cons Sawdust

Threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

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Greetings from

Beyond Pluto

The legacy of the Voyager Space Probes // by George Christopher, Staff Writer; art by Art Editor, Adam Dee

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ince we were young, we’ve been taught to remember the once nine, now eight planets (sorry Pluto) that make up our solar system. Perhaps you were taught a mnemonic device like, “My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.” Or if you were like me, you were forced to memorize an excruciatingly annoying song about the planets, and recite them to the entire class. My point is that we’ve always put value on our solar community, but humans have managed to leave it. Yes, not one, but two creations of mankind have reached beyond our solar system. Voyagers 1 and 2 have both provided crucial information about our neighboring planets.

It was on August 22, and September 5 of 1977 that Voyagers 2 and 1 launched, respectively. Voyager 1 was named that because it would be the first of the two probes to reach Jupiter even though Voyager 2 was actually launched first. It was a project which had its origins in the summer of 1965 when NASA scientists discovered that once every 176 years, an alignment occurred which would allow a probe to visit Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune using the gravity of each planet to propel it to the next. In 1972, NASA approved the Mariner Jupiter/Saturn Project which would later become Voyager. The mission was to create a probe that could utilize the once-in-a lifetime alignment to observe both gas giants of Saturn and Jupiter.

Re-named Voyager in 1977, the probe was launched that summer, but carried with it more than just camera equipment. Voyager also carried a Golden Record filled with sounds and images of life on earth, meant to serve as a greetings and introduction to any extraterrestrials who may discover it. Previous probes had carried messages, but none this detailed. The record contained greetings in 55 languages. Some of the messages gave well wishes, like a Welsh greeting which said “Good health to you now and forever.” But some go even further! In the Swedish greeting, Gunnel Almgren Schaar says “Greetings from a computer programmer in the small university town of Ithaca on Planet Earth.” That’s right. Ithaca is on the golden record. That means that no matter what happens to humanity, there will always be a disk floating around the universe which notes Ithaca’s existence. Take that Cortland!

Then again, this isn’t too surprising since famed astronomer, and long time Ithaca resident Carl Sagan was heavily involved with both the Voyager and Golden Record project.

Besides the greeting, the record also includes sounds of human life and animals. The record contains images of diverse human life from tribes in Africa to car-filled streets. Human anatomy is also shown along with scientific formulas and detailed photos of various cities. Lastly, the record includes music from the likes of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. It also contains cultural music from Peru, Japan, Mexico and even the legendary rock song Johnny B. Goode.

Besides the record, Voyagers 1 and 2 have revealed amazing secrets about our solar neighbors. They revealed “The Red Spot” on Jupiter to be a massive cyclone type storm which rages across a large portion of the planet.

The probes also encountered Saturn’s legendary rings and discovered a nitrogen atmosphere and seas of liquid methane on the surface of the moon Titan.

But perhaps the most moving of the Voyager probes’ contributions were its very last ones. In 1990, right before the cameras were to be turned off on the Voyager probes forever, the Voyager took its final photos of the Earth and all its fellow planets in what has become known as the “Solar System Family Portrait.” This photo inspired Carl Sagan to call our home a “Pale Blue Dot.” In a matter of three words Sagan managed to encompass how the picture made us all feel. It made us humble. It reminded us that our planet is just one small rock in an infinite universe. It made any conflict over borders and land seem petty and childish.

Whether this design was intelligent or random it is one we are all a part of now and forever. But despite this humbling feeling we still voyage on. We still look to the stars. Though we may be cosmically insignificant, projects like Voyager and The Golden Record shows that at the very least humanity is significant to itself.

And with that final humbling image, Voyager 1 and 2 boldly entered the unknown: interstellar space, a place no man nor machine has gone.

George Christopher is a first-year journalism major wondering what kind of record player aliens like. They can be reached at gchristopher@ithaca.edu.

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The New

Fake News Misinformation in the age of the deepfake // by Alma Guardado, Staff Writer

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019 can be marked as the inflation of deepfake production, and celebrities and public figures are the primary targets. Deepfake videos are a form of artificial intelligence (AI), which can be described as computer-controlled robot that performs human tasks.

Deepfakes are created with the use of Al learning techniques, or by simply going on YouTube and finding numerous tutorials with step-by step instructions. Methods of deepfake include face swaps, audio deepfakes and deepfake lip-synching.

Early versions of deepfake videos were created to enhance movies. In the film Forrest Gump, filmakers inserted a footage of JFK where they manipulated his mouth movements, even though the video did not occur. They first entered the mainstream on Reddit, where fake pornography was created, and their prevelance has doubled since 2018.

Now they’ve become so accurate that politics are involved.

Soon, it will affect our elections, journalism, national security and democracy.

This was not a big concern until a video of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, appeared online. Pelosi was speaking at the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference. In the footage, the creators made Pelosi appear drunk or ill. Her statements were slowed down by 75% from the actual talking speed.

It appeared she was stumbling and slurring her words. This was shared over various social media platforms, including Facebook, who refused to delete it. Even though the video was edited with a low-tech approach, it was successful for Trump supporters.

Other deepfake videos have been spreading around. Specifically, Mark Zuckerberg talking about “total control of billions of people’s stolen data” and Barack Obama calling Trump a “complete and utter dipshit,” as well as Ryan Reynolds appearing as Willy Wonka, Elon Musk as a baby and Jim Carrey as Jack Torrance.

Deepfake videos could change the way people think by undermine the reputation of politicians. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly 68% of Americans believe that made-up news and information affects Americans views of government institutions.

Deepfake videos could be used as a “perfect weapon for purveyors of fake news who want to influence everything from stock prices to elections,” according to CNBC. An average person with a modest amount of data and computing power could create a video of any world leader confessing to any illegal activities or an exaggerated claim.

Although deepfake videos still contain small glitches and imperfect facial matches,technological advancements could allow deepfake videos to be more accurate within months. This can ruin people’s careers.

Spotting a deepfake can be difficult, causing a threat to upcoming elections. Before, hackers would rely on spoofing emails. But with the ability to use deepfake software, audio allows them to convince a drastic amount of viewers quickly.

Voters for the upcoming 2020 presidential elections could struggle to know what is real and what is fake. Russia’s involvement in 2016 United States presidential elections shows how easy it is to convince social media users about fake news. Deepfakes will be the fake news of 2019. They don’t create a new problem, but they do enhance an existing problem. Our understanding of truth is on the line.

Leaders or candidates could use deepfakes to escape accountability for their wrongdoings. They could simply say “that’s fake news.” There will be the risk that liars would use deepfakes in their favor. Knowing the truth will become difficult during presidential elections if we are questioning it and believing the lies.

Alma Guardado is a second-year social studies major who will be just fine when the machines become sentient. They can be reached at aguardodo@ithaca.edu.

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Aliens Are Everywhere

The way we treat aliens in media isn’t so different from the way we treat humans //

by Peter Tkaczyk, Staff Writer; art by Ben Vajdos, Contributing Artist

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ost advanced civilizations experience collective discomfort with the nature of their existence. This fundamental discomfort manifests artistically in the form of monsters, who can be examined, contemplated, conversed with, and perhaps defeated more easily than the problems can. People feel anxious over sex and invent the vampire, or wonder at the distinction between man and beast and dream up the werewolf. You can learn a lot about a society by looking at its monsters. In recent decades, a new monster has risen to prominence in Western art: the alien.

When the concept of life on other worlds was first formulated, the aliens were not monsters. Mars and Venus were seen as nothing more than yet another frontier to conquer or explore by contemporary writers, with their inhabitants being either easily-defeated savages or wise peoples more or less identical to European readers. There is little difference between John Carter on Mars and Tarzan in Africa. While such stories certainly told us a great deal about the societies which produced them, they are not consistent with today’s archetypal alien. They were merely the bed from which the modern alien would emerge.

Modern aliens exist because of what H.G. Wells wrote in his still-famous War of the Worlds. This introduced a number of enduring tropes. It was the first major work to depict truly outlandish extraterrestrials, rather than creatures who resemble the fellows in the rubber foreheads on Star Trek. It was the first to suggest that space may not be our frontier, but that Earth may be theirs. It introduced the alien invasion. Most importantly, it imagined that aliens may have capabilities beyond our own. These ideas were not produced without purpose. War of the Worlds is a satire now far removed from its original context. It is a strong critique of British imperialism, with the Martian invasion being directly compared in the book’s first pages to the genocide of the native Tasmanians, which had occurred twenty years prior to the book’s publication. The book made a statement: If Western civilizations had a “right” to colonize the globe, then the horrible squid-creatures of Mars had a right to descend from the sky to drain the blood from our bodies.

As always occurs, the satire was not what endured the ages. The following works would carry forward two of Worlds’ major ideas: Aliens as monstrosities, and aliens as peers or superiors to humanity. Rarely would the two meet.

Throughout the black-and-white era, either the aliens would be complicated puppets, as in It Conquered the World or 20 Million Miles From Earth, or they would be advanced

conquerors, as in The Day the Earth Stood Still or The Man From Planet X. The creatures with the bug eyes were never piloting the spaceships. It was rare for any of these works of either species to represent any greater anxiety than that towards the budget running out. Neither Attack of the Eye Creatures nor Teenagers from Outer Space – both real films – had much of a larger social or political message. But there was an undercurrent of something that Wells had left behind: Aliens as stand-ins for real-life groups. It was only an undercurrent, most of the time, but there’s a reason Flash Gordon’s primary nemesis was named ‘Ming’, and a reason why so many alien monsters seemed to lust after human women. “Alien,” after all, means “other.”

As the Cold War consumed the world, Western alien depictions were presented with both a perfect other to depict in the form of the Russians and through a perfect depiction of paranoia. These combined in the form of the infiltrating alien. Some, such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, leaned more towards the Russian side, while others, such as The Thing, aimed for pure paranoia, but all were driven by the fear that others walked among you.

Not everything went in this direction, of course. Star Trek attempted to return to social commentary, using aliens to illustrate issues we faced here on Earth, but they could not avoid using alien others entirely, as evidenced by the all-but-Mongol Klingons and all-but-Russian Romulans. Still, they did well enough to kick off a new trend of examining social issues, rather than simply social fears, through the use of alien beings. But history repeats itself, and once more messages got mixed around. As we approach the modern day, a habit began to emerge of using aliens to depict social minorities.

Somehow, this has only become less subtle as the years went by. There are few readings of James Cameron’s Avatar or Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 that don’t invoke some kind of racial metaphor. This is something that must be questioned, from multiple angles. How much good does this do, exactly? Is sympathy elicited for anyone who actually exists? Even if it is, what does it say about our culture that bipedal insects can be better vehicles for empathy than ordinary human beings? There is also an ever-present risk of trying to apply real problems to highly fantastic fictional scenarios, ending up with frank nonsense. Take, for instance, the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation which attempted to represent the struggles of the LGBT community by having a character from a species that

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appeared to be made up entirely of beautiful women rebel against her people to run off with a human man. Real plights are universally more complex than any facsimile could be, and while these depictions cannot be called overwhelmingly negative as they’ve undoubtedly helped people in the past, they do not substitute for real representation. At their worst, they are used to sustain old, racist tropes into the modern day in a form which does not seem quite as on-the-face odious, such as with Avatar’s white-saviourism.

Not all modern alien depictions fall into this trend, of course. Many attempt to stay out of such things altogether, to varying degrees of success. Some, such as Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim, can successfully manage to use aliens as an excuse for whatever dramatic spectacle they’re putting on without indulging in any form of discourse, while others, such as Independence Day, mostly reach for that particular kind of apolitical that strongly advocates for the current status quo. Something which falls down in its attempt to be truly apolitical is the Alien franchise, whose aims to be nothing more than monster movies are hampered

by their focus on a creature who aims to create abominable spawn by stealing human DNA. Of course, if you asked any of the writers or designers of those films about the subject, you’d be received with blank looks at best.

Walter Mirisch, who oversaw the production of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, had this to say on the topic of the film’s commentary on communist infiltration: “From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor original author Jack Finney, nor myself saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple.” The same could likely go for any of the creators whose works were discussed here.

But a work’s cultural context is still important, and nothing good can come from ignoring that context. Body Snatchers was not specifically inspired by imagined horrors of communist infiltration, but the paranoia, fear towards one’s neighbor, and placement of complacency as a threat did not come from nowhere. There’s nothing mentioned here that doesn’t deserve to be enjoyed, but it is only healthy to know what you are enjoying.

Peter Tkaczyk is a second-year writing major who’ll be ready to fight when the body snatchers arrive. They can be reached at ptkaczyk@ithaca.edu.

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The

Slippery Slope of a Flat Earth YouTube’s algorithm sent consumers down a denialism-ridden rabbit hole //

by Chloe Gibson, Contributing Writer; art by Guinevere Fullerton, Contributing Artist

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rom Area 51 to faked moon landings, conspiracy theories have tethered themselves to American culture. Over time, outlandish accusations have become the new normal, and there’s no place like the internet to bring these radical theories together.

One of the most common breeding grounds for conspiracy theories is YouTube. Take, for example, the Flat Earth community, a group of individuals who argue the Earth is not spherical, but rather, a flat plane.

In 2015, Flat Earther Mark Sargent posted a video series to Youtube using everything from airplane routes to camera images to prove the earth is flat. His channel became a beacon of information for the flat earth community and now has over 81,000 subscribers.

“I am now a 24/7, full-time flat earth advocate,” Sargent explained to me over the phone. “I am the freshman recruiter for the metaphorical ‘Flat Earth University.’ I wake up every morning and check to see how Flat Earth is doing out there.”

Earlier this year, Netflix began streaming the Portland Film Festival’s Best Documentary Winner Behind the Curve, a film chronicling the beliefs and lives of YouTube’s most prominent flat earthers, Mark Sargent included. Though the film was critical of flat earthers and their theories, Sargent is optimistic it will plant the seed for new members to join the community, acting as a Trojan horse to draw in more conspirators.

Sargent argues that most Flat Earthers are sucked into the community while trying to debunk the theory in the comment sections of YouTube, watching hours upon hours of conspiracy videos in the process.

For Sargent, it took several months of bingewatching videos on YouTube in 2013 for the theory to fully resonate. “I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, ‘okay, I can’t prove the globe in a court of law anymore.’”

Youtube’s algorithm recommends videos similar to the ones users are already searching for, leaving many individuals susceptible to spiral down a rabbit hole of conspiracy videos. For many, a search about one conspiracy leads to a recommendation for another, a process that may last hours.

Marcus Lee, a student at The University of Denver, was clicking through videos on YouTube one night when the site recommended a video claiming to have evidence that mermaids are real.

“The government has been hiding it from us for ages. The ocean is the most unexplored place on earth, and

mermaids have just been left undisturbed,” Marcus said.

The video recommendation feature of YouTube is a great tool for keeping users on the site for longer periods of time.

Watching more videos equivocates to more advertisements and greater profits for YouTube, making conspiracy videos a real revenue generator.

“The average person that gets into Flat Earth watches 20 videos in a row,” Sargent claims. “So who do you think YouTube is going to recommend?”

In the face of tremendous public pressure, the site was ultimately forced to make changes to its recommendation algorithm earlier this year, cutting suggestions for videos conveying misinformation in half.

While many considered the algorithm change a move in the right direction, it might have come too late. Popular channels like Mark Sargent’s have continued to see a steady increase in subscribers in the months since Youtube’s changes.

“We were being recommended heavily for three straight years. You looked up potato salad recipes, you were getting flat earther videos,” Sargent said. “So when they [changed the algorithm], did it cripple us? No. Did it slow us down? Yeah, you bet.”

Believing that the world is flat and that mermaids exist seems harmless at first glance, however, these theories are a slippery slope. Denialism, which is the rejection of basic and indisputable facts in favor of radical theories, can manifest as everything from innocuous opinions on the earth’s shape, to more threatening cultural phenomenons.

Take climate change, for example. Despite mounds of evidence supporting the realities of global warming, everyday citizens, our nation’s president and all sorts of people in between maintain that the whole thing is a scientific hoax.

My own grandfather is among those who reject the realities of climate change. A retired high school science teacher of 37 years with a doctorate in education, he believes that while human activities likely tie in with the earth’s changing temperatures, they can be more so defined as a part of the earth’s natural cycle.

“I am sure that some of the things we do are affecting the climate, but I think climate change is just a natural phenomenon. A way for the earth to replenish,” he said.

Denialism manifests even more radically among conspiracists who argue mass shootings are nothing more than government hoaxes employed to take away citizens’ right to bear arms. In the wake of Sandy Hook, for example,

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the parents of the elementary school students whose lives were claimed in the shooting were harassed online for faking their own children’s deaths.

These conspiracies, popularized by Infowars’ Alex Jones, have detrimental effects for the families of victims.

Lenny Ponzer, who lost his son to Sandy Hook, has spent years refuting the claims of shooting conspiracists. In a quote published in The Washington Post, Ponzer articulated his frustrations.

“Unimpeded conspiracy theories distort the truth and erase history,” he said, further adding that gun violence conspirators “hide behind their computer screen and

terrorize people grappling with the most unimagined grief.”

Ultimately, YouTube and the internet at large have become promoters and protectors of conspiracy theorist groups. This culture of denialism might appear harmless and even amusing upon first glance but becomes alarming upon further consideration of its implications. It is up to companies like YouTube, Facebook and Google to protect susceptible individuals from spiraling from harmless flat earth theories to beliefs with major ramifications for private individuals and the planet at large.

“It’s kind of like the La Brea Tar Pits,” Sargent concludes. “Once you’re in, you don’t get out.”

Chloe Gibson is a first-year documentary studies & production major who was abducted by aliens. They can be reached at cgibson@ithaca.edu.

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Casually Caffeinated

Considering the dangers of caffeine addiction on college campuses //

by Christian Maitre, Contributing Writer; art by Adam Dee, Art Editor

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ou wake up in a haze and the migraine immediately hits you. Dull aches and pains shoot down your body as you wrench and contort in pain. Empty soda cans and coffee cups litter your room. A combination of anxiety and sadness radiates throughout your body. You’re not withdrawing from any hard drugs, you’re withdrawing from caffeine.

Coffee, tea, Five Hour Energy and Coca-Cola all contain the stimulant drug caffeine. Caffeine, like other stimulants, boosts your energy and arouses the central nervous system. Caffeine can also detoxify the liver, help people combat sleep deprivation and increases physical stamina.

But caffeine also has many negative side effects.

Caffeine is a diuretic because it causes the body to produce excess salt which increases urination. Caffeine also increases blood pressure, leading to health complications like excessive resting heart rate.

Consuming excess amounts of caffeine can have catastrophic effects on the human body. According to an article by Irish Independent News, Sinead Ryan drank the equivalent of forty cups of coffee and collapsed one day.

First responders brought Ryan to the hospital where they asked if she was on any artificial stimulants. She experienced extreme heart palpitations and fatigue, to the point where her symptoms were so similar to that of narcotic stimulants that she was hooked up to a Holter monitor. This is a device that’s sometimes used in hospitals when someone’s heart palpitations won’t stop. Electrodes are attached to a person’s body that feedback to a small device. The recorder measures their heart rhythms and notifies doctors if they seem irregular. Holter monitors are typically used when people ingest large amounts of hard narcotics like meth and cocaine.

College campuses are a breeding ground for caffeine addiction. Coffee is ingrained in the college lifestyle. People meet for dates over it, use it to combat sleep deprivation and to wake up after nights partying and drinking with friends Ray Deutsch is one of the many people in the United States that self-identifies as a caffeine addict. In the past, she dealt with caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal starts punishing its victims within 24 hours.

It starts with disorientation, causing people to become extremely lethargic and fatigued. Extreme migraines and muscle pains are also common and typically follow the previous symptoms — similar to those found in the flu.

People suffering from this find sleeping nearly impossible, as their painful symptoms keeps them restless.

Withdrawal from nicotine has similar effects. Because they are both stimulants, caffeine and nicotine users both experience anxiety, insomnia and headaches.

Ray Deutsch used caffeine to the point where it started to affect her eating habits. Deutsch experienced

intense withdrawal symptoms when she didn’t consistently drink coffee.

“I had headaches,” Deutsch said. “I couldn’t focus as much. I just sometimes felt nauseous, or like, kinda like, I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe it affected my eating habits a little bit.”

Deutsch’s caffeine use started to affect her schoolwork. When she attempted to complete her assignments without caffeine in her system, all she could think about was drinking a cup of coffee. The continued use of coffee with schoolwork made her associate doing well on an assignment with drinking caffeine. Deutsch said that her cravings for the drug became so intense that she experienced anxiety and irritability when she didn’t have it frequently.

“I will just be thinking about coffee,” Deutsch said.

“Okay, like, damn it I fucking want coffee.”

The United States is hooked on caffeine. Statistics from a Washington Post article stated that even preschoolers were ingesting caffeine. People aged 50 to 64 were consuming as much as 225.5 milligrams per day. Caffeine addiction is becoming relevant because people are dying from it. Caffeine overdoses have become such a problem in the US that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) actually launched an investigation on 13 people who were believed to have died from caffeine overdoses in 2012. The FDA eventually released a disturbing statement: “The difference between a safe amount and a toxic dose of caffeine in these pure powdered products is very small.” The FDA could not have been more accurate as it was reported that in between January and July there were 1,675 cases related to energy drinks alone. A majority of these cases involved children.

Energy drinks, another caffeine product, are disproportionately marketed toward adolescents than any other age group. A report in the US National Library of Medicine has found that drinking energy drinks in excess can result in insomnia, headaches and even seizures requiring medical attention.

One business that has allowed caffeine to become extremely accessible and popular is Starbucks. Starbucks has grown to have over 30,000 stores since the company was founded in 1971 out of Seattle. According to the website, World Atlas, Starbucks is currently the third largest fast food restaurant in America. Its main sellers are caffeinated beverages pumped full of artificial flavoring and sugars.

Many of the people interviewed in this story frequent or have frequented Starbucks.

Chase Garvey, a former barista at Starbucks and college student, struggled with getting through work days without caffeine In order to get through long hours and school work, Garvey drank excessive amounts of coffee. Sometimes he

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would be drink coffee without eating any meals. He also admitted to, at one point, having 11 or 12 shots of espresso during just one shift.

When asked whether or not he could make it through a shift without it, he answered that after consuming so much caffeine he could not finish a shift without some sort of caffeine.

When asked about Starbucks’ rising popularity, he spoke about the high volume of coffee chains in America.

“I mean, you go out, you see Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, Gimme Coffee, on, like, every corner and you think hey, might as well grab coffee,” Garvey said.

Big companies like Starbucks attract customers because they simply see their brand and logo everywhere.

When consumers keep seeing the Starbucks logo the phrase “I need coffee,” plays in their head, as they associate the brand with caffeinated beverages.

Caffeine has its place in American culture, but the drug is evidently addictive. A double standard is created when a drug that has been proven addictive and, in some

cases, harmful receives no regulation. The allowance of certain potentially harmful substances sets a bizarre precedent for American drug regulation. Battleface best illustrates the widespread existence of casual caffeine addiction in America in the headline of their article: “Coffee — The socially acceptable psychoactive drug”.

When problems like caffeine addiction and overdoses are ignored, it’s only natural to question why the government chooses to regulate only some substances and not others.

Drugs like alcohol, tobacco and caffeine are all legal in the US, but the United States continues to classify marijuana as a schedule 1 drug. Other supplements like kratom, a psychoactive substance legal for purchase at 18 in most American states, have received pushback with legality by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and FDA. The American legislation and mindset towards drugs are hypocritical and embodied in the casual dismissal of drugs like caffeine.

Christian Maitre is a sophomore journalism major who takes a shot of espresso every time someone says the word “coffee.”

They can be reached at cmaitre@ithaca.edu.

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Safe Spaces

The myth of the safe space seems to be perpetuated across media outlets more and more in recent years.

Images of weeping college students in bean bag chairs cuddling service dogs are the perfect caricature of liberal snowflakes who can’t handle the slightest brush with controversy.

It’s a tempting generalization, but the history of safe spaces runs much deeper.

The origins of the term are disputed among historians. It first came into wide use within the LGBT community in the 1960s to describe gay bars and other locations where people were free to be themselves without police scrutiny.

Second Wave Feminists also created safe spaces where women could speak freely about their beliefs, and in many cases, escape domestic violence. Labor unions aimed to create safe spaces where employees could freely critique their managers without fear of being fired. Over the decades, the term came to be associated with any place where marginalized communities can gather in solidarity. What we have continuously seen in recent decades is that the violation of safe spaces is deeply destabilizing. This can be traced back to the Stonewall Riots, but we’ve seen it in the mass shootings at a black church in Charleston and the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Before Ithaca College’s Center for LGBT Education, Outreach, and Services was founded in 2001, students actively worked to create designated safe spaces, using their own money to print the stickers that are now a common sight around campus. The program was standardized with the founding of the LGBT Center and efforts began to turn the idea of safe spaces into official college policy. Director Luca Maurer has worked for the Center since 2001. His job includes collaborating with students to ensure a diversity of perspectives are accurately represented within the college and that faculty are adequately trained to make their classrooms a learning environment where people of all identities feel welcome.

“A safe space only works as long as everyone in the space agrees to certain expectations,” said Maurer. While many departments have been responsive to professional development training, Maurer admitted that there have been times when people have invited him to give presentations on “LBGTQ issues”; when he pressed for more specific details, they expressed that anything he came in and said was fine.

“These are well-meaning people. I don’t want to cast them as bad people. What they are thinking of is using my expertise to check a box. Checking a diversity box is not the same as acting in solidarity...The point isn’t to claim you’re a nice person, the point is to create a campus culture where students can be who they are and do what they want.”

The Department of Theatre Arts has long been considered the definitive safe space at Ithaca College, according to department chair Catherine Weidner. “There never used to be an LGBT Center; the LGBT Center was Dillingham,” said Weidner. “Things still happen of course, because we’re human, but I think that Dillingham has always been a place

More than just a trigger warning //

by Rachael Powles, News and Views Editor; art by Caitlin Breslin, Contributing Artist

where people could be themselves.”

As a graduate of the Class of 1980, Weidner has seen the campus radically change into a place where students feel increasingly comfortable opening up when their safety feels threatened. “It’s important to be able to walk into a room and feel like you have agency and that you’re making a contribution,” she said.

In an area of study where confronting highlycharged topics is often a typical part of the school day, the discussion of safe spaces is constantly evolving. Within the department, Weidner believes that professors should be responsible for informing students when material may be in violation of the idea of a safe space. “In classroom I think there’s an understanding that the work is challenging, and that you’re going to be asked to read novels and plays, and students have the right to say ‘I found this offensive, I found this is erasing my experience,’ and I don’t think we should be shutting down that conversation.”

But Dillingham Center has the unique position of having obligations to the wider Ithaca community, as often times they are the customers that fund the theatrical productions. Health hazards like strobe lights and haze are both advertised on signs in the lobby before shows and posted on Facebook. A recent production of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler featured an extensive program trigger warning, informing the audience that the production would include, “bullying, humiliation, alcoholism, sexual harassment and assault, and suicide,” as well as “the use of non-firing handguns.”

Weidner, however, is not convinced that these initiatives align with the goals of theatre as an art form.

“You come to the theatre to be offended, entertained, and shocked. We’ll tell you it’s not for kids under 13, but we’re not going to go into a laundry list anymore...the truth is theatre is about making us uncomfortable.” Health hazards will continue to be advertised under the term “audience advisories” rather than trigger warnings.

Dr. Patricia Zimmerman, Professor of Screen Studies in the Park School, shared similar sentiments. Film studies as a discipline has always shied away from trigger warnings, and they are outright forbidden in Ithaca’s department. Health accommodations are processed through Student Accessibility Services, but it is up to the individual student to research the films prior to screenings to see if material will be triggering.

“Part of the role of media and cinema and art is to, in fact, disturb, and then to open space for dialogues about all of this, not shut down dialogues,” Dr. Zimmerman elaborated. “I have had students tell me they need trigger warnings because a film on the partition of India, which was a bloody genocide, ‘disturbed’ them. My response is this: It should disturb you. Genocide is a crime.”

She also cited the global extent of film studies, explaining that the idea of trigger warnings is an inherently American construct that makes cultural assumptions about the audience. “We leave it to the student to leave if it is

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disturbing, but again, the point of art is to disturb the status In spite of the progress that has been made and quo, and I would never assume I could know or understand the overall student acceptance of IC’s safe space program, all the different cultural differences in my students.”

Maurer understands that there is still much work to be done.

Both professors share the official stance taken by While the LGBT Center can offer training to staff and counsel the American Association of University Professors, which students, Maurer does not have the authority to judicially Catherine Weidner quoted directly in the theatre departpunish those who violate safe space policies. “I could go ment’s 2019 Season At A Glance letter: “The presumption through a training and walk out at the end and never change that students need to be protected rather than challenged any of my behavior,” he said. “If someone says, for example, in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.

‘I’m not going to call you by your correct name,’ there’s no It makes comfort a higher priority than intellectual engageamount of training that will stop them.” ment.” The effects of this statement have rippled across In spite of the differing perspectives, the complexthe country. Safe Space Programs are not standardized, and ity of the arguments surrounding safe spaces shows that the there are still universities where having an LGBTQ identity issue runs deeper than handing a lollipop to a sad teenager is forbidden in the student code of conduct. Yale University who can’t cope with challenging topics. It is about hearing came into the national spotlight in 2015 when efforts to ban the voices of identities that have been historically silenced, racist and offensive Halloween costumes were ridiculed as a taking responsibility for mistakes, and learning to think of violation of the First Amendment. one another’s needs in more complex ways.

Luca Maurer disagrees. “Saying that you welcome “I think as long as people are willing to come to the all different kinds of people into a space doesn’t mean you table and have these discussions, that’s great,” said Maurer. can’t say whatever you want,” he said. “Freedom of speech “What I take exception to is when your disagreement with doesn’t mean other people can’t express other opinions, and me stems from the belief that I should not be allowed to exfreedom of speech doesn’t mean there may not be conseist. To me, that’s where dialogue ends.” quences.”

Rachael Powles is a second-year theatre studies major who hates the term “special snowflake.” You can reach them at rpowles@ithaca.edu.

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On October 24th-25th,, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Buzzsaw, we welcomed back our Buzzsaw alumni for a series of panels and discussions regarding responsible writing, editing, publishing, passion, what it means to be a student—and the fact that nothing is certain and we are always students, learning and searching for something new.

We would like to thank the following Buzzsaw alumni for their presence and insights: Abby Bertumen ’01, attorney and partner, Exchange Traded Concepts Lisa Boyars ‘01 VP, The Week; formerly VP at Condé Nast Bryan Chambala ‘04, journalist, Salon, Dirt Rag, Vineyard Gazette, and Adirondack Life; former editor, The Ithaca Times Matt Corley ’05, chief investigator, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; contributor, Salon, CoverMe, and The American Prospect Sam Costello ‘00, comics producer; global digital marketing firm; book author; contributor, CNN, AdWeek, PC World, Macworld, Lifewire.com, and Huffington Post Kate Sheppard ‘06, former staff reporter, Mother Jones; senior enterprise editor, Huffington Post; professor at UNC Hussman School for Journalism and Media

We thank you for the lessons and for your vision for Buzzsaw!

Love, Current Buzzzzstaff

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18

1969:

A Space Conspiracy

All work and no play makes Stanley a space boy // by Thomas Lawson, Staff Writer; art by Guinevere Fullerton, Contributing Artist

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hat’s your favorite conspiracy theory? Maybe you’re partial to the suspicion that Nicolas Cage and Keanu Reeves are immortal vampires. Maybe you’re a “Berenstein truther” and believe you hail from an alternate universe where The Berenstain Bears has a slightly different spelling.

Maybe you just like to lean back and laugh at the wild conjectures people come up with. Or maybe, like a certain sliver of tinfoil-hat wearing internet denizens, you believe NASA hired director Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing.

If that sounds crazy to you, you’re not alone. The theory has been floating around online for a decade or two, garnering nothing but ridicule from most who glance its way. Its origins likely lie with a 1995 Usenet spoof article that claimed the U.S. government held Kubrick’s communist brother, Raul, hostage in order to get Stanley to comply. A 2002 French mockumentary, Opération Lune, also parodied the idea. Both may have had unfortunate consequences—it seems like conspiracy theorists took them at face value. Their story (usually) goes as follows: NASA, impressed by Kubrick’s attention to realism in his military farce Dr. Strangelove, coerced the filmmaker into shooting a mock-up moon landing on a soundstage. Kubrick’s operatic sci-fi 2001: A Space Odyssey allegedly functioned as a grand Research and Development project for the whole ordeal—a test-run, if you will, for the special effects and front-screen projection techniques he would later use to create such a convincing forgery.

Like most madcap hypotheses, the Kubrick-NASA connection probably would have faded into binary oblivion.

However, the efforts of a blogger named Jay Weidner kept it alive. He’s a fascinating figure: the orchestrator, the ringleader, the mastermind behind the theory who’s spent years collating a database of so-called evidence that he claims offers undeniable proof that Kubrick had his directorial fingers in the Apollo pie. His website is a sight to behold: among articles about alchemy and reality-duplicating Archons (described as our mysterious off-planet overlords) is a four-page breakdown of the techniques Kubrick supposedly used to dupe the world in 1969, and the telltale “mistakes” that give it all away. Dodgily-photoshopped diagrams and low-quality screenshots serve as Weidner’s shaky evidence, which is no more convincing than the ramblings of a flat-earther.

But it gets better. A huge slice of Weidner’s support for his surreal argument comes directly from Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic, The Shining. While an entertaining Stephen King adaptation for most, for Weidner the flick is a codex of layered ciphers that reveal the truth through metaphor and clue. It’s in his excruciating breakdowns of shots, scenes, and minute details that the theory holds most of its humor. Weidner’s section in Room 237, a documentary about the many interpretations of The Shining, is hilarious to say the least, but I’d be lying if I said it’s not enthralling.

The entertainment value comes less from the absurdity of the clues themselves, and more from the Herculean effort Weidner puts in to make them line up with his theory. Let’s jump in.

The most obvious visual hint in The Shining is Danny Torrance’s Apollo 11 sweater, which he notably wears while standing up from a crouched position—Weidner swears this is supposed to represent the rocket launching into space. Second, Kubrick changed the room number from 217 in King’s novel to 237 in the film, a change intended to represent the distance from the Earth to the moon: 237,000 miles. A quick Google search will tell you the average distance is actually 238,900 miles. Close, though. Thirdly, rearranging “Room No.” on the key tag spells “Moon Room.” I guess? “All” in “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” can apparently be read as A11, or Apollo 11.

The garish hexagonal patterns on the Overlook Hotel carpet represents NASA’s launching pads. The list goes on, growing more and more tenuous until Wiedner proposes that a Native American wall mural looks like shuttles taking off.

This merely scratches the surface though; Weidner’s speculation burrows deep into the fabric of the plot itself.

To subscribers of this theory, The Shining is far more than just a movie sprinkled with clues. It’s a confession. Kubrick, according to some, was wracked by guilt over his actions, but remained tight-lipped for fear of being assassinated.

He could only communicate what really happened through indirect means, and chose The Shining to adapt because its narrative mirrored his broken life in the wake of the Apollo fraud. The mental breakdown that Jack Torrance experiences during his term as caretaker, the constant lies he tells his wife Wendy, the murder of Dick Halloran after he finds out what’s happening up in the snowy lodge… all allegory for the tough consequences the director faced.

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Despite all the evidence pointing in the complete opposite direction, it’s almost tempting to find some nugget of truth in Weidner’s copious writings. Wouldn’t we all like this to be true? Something so inexplicable and unlikely upending our current understanding of history and science that somehow hid in plain sight all along? Alas, there’s a close to zero chance that Weidner is anywhere near the mark. Let alone all of the thinly-drawn connections in The Shining, there’s such a disparity between Kubrick’s moon effects in 2001 and the Apollo footage that it’s impossible they were made by the same team.

We aren’t going to be rewriting our history books anytime soon. Sorry to disappoint. So where does this leave us?

What good, if anything, has come from this loony thesis? It’s easy to look at Weidner and scoff; the man has dedicated so much of his time trying and failing to gain traction with this deraged concept. We can read it and laugh, watch his videos and roll our eyes. But in some ways, the “Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing” theory is a testament to the human mind.

We’re wired to find patterns, to look for connections between data no matter how dubious they may seem. Weidner and company may be looking for something that simply isn’t there. But at least they’re looking. That, I feel, is something to be admired.

Besides, there are a few clues that take feats of mental gymnastics to come up with—if Weidner were competing in the conspiracy Olympics, he’d win gold. For example, Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut was released on July 16th 1999, 30 years to the day since the Apollo 11 launch. That’s an impressive, even spooky, find. And how can I ignore my personal favorite: there were seven Apollo missions to the moon, but only six of them landed. How does Kubrick represent this? Of course, with a shot containing six crates of 7-Up. Pure genius.

Thomas Lawson is a second year Cinema & Photo major whose wardrobe for the Doctor Sleep screening involves a tinfoil hat. You can reach them at tlawson@ithaca.edu

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RAW SAW FROM THE

Bojack Horseman: Season Six Part One

By Scott Kauffman, Contributing Writer; art by Adam Dee, Art Editor

The Emmy-nominated Netflix animated comedy Bojack Horseman returned on October 25th with the first part of its final season. The show, famous for its dark, satirical comedy, surrounds a former sitcom star as he battles addiction and attempts to correct his abusive behavior toward those who care about him. Though we only have access to the first eight episodes, it seems the show’s creators have gone a different direction with this season.

These episodes, more so than in previous seasons, focus on breaking down its central cast than on any actual plot.

In the season premiere, we visit Bojack at a rehabilitation center. Now, several months later, he is searching for self worth, while reviewing how his alcoholism has affected others and coming to terms with reacclimation. In another episode, we see Princess Caroline struggling to balance her work and motherhood, not yet feeling how she is “supposed to feel” toward her daughter. The first part of season six serves as somewhat of a reminder. It updates the audience on the character arcs of these core characters, before what we can expect to be a powerful finale.

Comedy-wise, the new season is exactly what you expect. Fans of the show praise Bojack Horseman for its witty wordplay that contrasts with the heavy topics of self sabotage and loneliness. Luckily, that has not gone anywhere. With obscure pop culture references and utterly unnecessary alliteration, the dialogue is both subtle and phenomenal. Of course, the all-star cast of Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Amy Sedaris, Paul F. Tompkins and Aaron Paul doesn’t hurt either.

If there is a theme to this season thus far, it’s that Bojack is trying, which is important for his story arc. Bojack has always been humanized as someone who makes mistakes and feels great shame but who also searches for help in the wrong places. The lingering question thus far is whether or not rehab was successful. Bojack screws up again in episode five by causing Champ, his sobriety coach, to relapse. It reminds him of the role he played in hurting Sarah Lynn, an old friend.

Bojack blames himself for her addiction spiral, but instead of sulking in those emotions, he decides to help. He actually steps into a bar and doesn’t have a single drink. He takes a sip of vodka in another scene, but throws it away, disgusted.

Outside of his little story, he reaches out to his friends and is vulnerable with his emotions, something that he’s been unable to do previously. All of a sudden, Bojack seems like a mature, put-together person. It is understated but conveys his growth extremely well.

Still among the greats in adult animated television, in season six, Bojack Horseman remains amazing. For those who have yet to begin the series, I recommend you start soon, so that you can catch up for the series finale releasing in January 2020.

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First Love

ByTom Lawson, Staff Writer Fists and heads fly in the opening to First Love, which intercuts an underground boxing match with a gruesome beheading. Set during an almost permanent nighttime in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo, amid the flashing lights of karaoke bars and the orange glow of dingy restaurants, the film wastes no time catapulting us into a whirlwind of police corruption, drug pushing, and Yakuza crime plots. Leo (Masataka Kubota) is our unlikely protagonist, a sullen boxer caught in this web of violence and revenge completely by chance. After saving prostitute Monica (Sakurako Konishi), unknowingly a pawn in a chess match of deception, Leo becomes the collateral target of a chorus of criminals; a rogue’s gallery of katana-wielding mob bosses, Chinese gangsters, and a woman out for revenge with a crowbar.

Takashi Miike, the masterchef of this impressive banquet, serves up comedy, romance, action, and spectacle—oh, and more than a dash of blood. As his 103rd feature film, First Love is a shining capstone to a career that has traversed gangster territory many times before. He’s a master of the genre and makes the tightrope-walk of influences look easy; he samples from anime, samurai classics, and romantic comedies, blending them in just the right amounts. If you’ve ever wished It Happened One Night was a little more like Battle Royale, this is the movie for you. There’s little that’s new in First Love, which uses conventions galore, but it’s the twists and slants Miike takes on these formulas that make his vision so exciting to watch on-screen.

It’s easy to get a little lost in First Love’s intricate plot, which oscillates between messy and convenient; mapping out how all these characters interact would produce a chaotic network of arrows and sidenotes. However, it’s not the focus Miike intends. His narrative is hardly important; the violent catharsis and ecstatic action sequences take center-stage. It’s a maelstrom of backstabbing, unexpected murder and criminal incompetence. Part of the fun comes from watching a simple plan transform mistake by mistake into an intense Rube Goldberg machine of stray bullets and blood splatters. The spirit of Buster Keaton lives on in First Love, which punctuates its heavy violence with moments of laugh-out-loud slapstick. The movie is brazenly funny, and unexpectedly so, barely hinting at its comic nature until a half-hour in. What’s impressive is how Miike manages to escalate the absurdity—each consecutive sequence is more unhinged than the last until we reach a finale of hilarious mania that works like magic.

That’s not to say First Love isn’t without its quiet moments. Even with the non-stop pacing, Miike and screenwriter Masaru Nakamura find room to explore the human elements of their story. The titular “first love” between Leo and Monica doesn’t amount to much more than a typical boy-meets-girl platitude, but their personal issues do add an unexpected dimension to their journeys. Monica (real name Yuri) is plagued by visions of her abusive father, who appears to her in frightening hallucinations in nothing but a bedsheet and his underwear. Leo, meanwhile, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor after collapsing during a fight, and is facing down his own mortality with a blend of selflessness and reckless abandon.

Miike and Nakamura smartly integrate these details into the plot with creative, satisfying callbacks that make sure we’re engaged by more than just the action.

House of Sugar - (Sandy) Alex G

By Brennan Carney, Contributing Writer

Before his newest album came out in October, Alex Giannascoli told Vice: “The older I get, the more I see through my own pretension. It’s going to probably take me longer and longer the older I get[...] You just get older and wiser and see your own bullshit.”

Alex Giannascoli, a.k.a singer/songwriter (Sandy) Alex G, has been making music for quite some time and has amassed a cult following. Not only has he released eight albums since 2010, but he also has a ton of unreleased music on Youtube and Bandcamp. After high praise on his 2017 album Rocket, there was a lot of pressure on Giannascoli for House of Sugar.

(Sandy) Alex G has an aptitude for making songs that make your heart ache with narrative lyrics. Each song tells a different story, often using names in titles for each character he creates. He uses this style to explore the good and bad of people. The potent nostalgia and sadness leaves each song shrouded in mystery.

“Hope” was released as the second single and gives us perhaps the closest thing we have to a personal experience from Alex G. He describes a friend of his who died from a drug overdose in their home on Hope Street. In his hometown of Philadelphia, Hope Street exists in the neighborhood of Kensington, which is known for having some of the highest rates of heroin use in the United States.

“Gretel” was the first single released and it draws from the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel. Alex G starts the song off with “It’s calling me back / house of sugar,” referring to Gretel’s grim fate after she could not escape the house. Ending the song with “good people gotta fight to exist,” he contemplates how hard it is to stay good, an idea that flows through many (Sandy) Alex G songs.

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Technically speaking, Gianniscoli continues to explore pitch shifting and layering in his music. The repetition in “Walk Away,” “Taking” and “Near” is a familiar idea with him, but is now elevated on House of Sugar. In the past, these techniques came across as more unpolished and exploratory. Now, he has managed to refine and use the technique as part of his storytelling. The repetition of “Walk Away” includes the lyrics “I’m gonna walk away from you, not today… someday,” where he implies how hard it can be to walk away from something bad.

House of Sugar brings in some new experimental music from Giannascoli that strays from his usual style but stays true to the textures of his past music. “Project 2” and “Sugar” are less of an “easy-listen,” but they provide an interesting contrast to his other songs on the album.

“In My Arms” comes in as the main love song of the album. In the style of some of Giannascoli’s first albums, the song maintains a simple chord progression with spiraling lyrics as the character contemplates the story of their love for someone.

“Bad Man” includes Giannascoli taking on a southern accent and a sinister tone. Country music and culture seem to be making a comeback in the world with artists like Lil Nas X, Kacey Musgraves and Mason Ramsey gaining popularity in the past two years.

Giannascoli drops the famous pan flute piano sound that can be heard on older tracks like “Sarah” for a more serious grand piano tone on “SugarHouse.” The live version– recorded at a show in St. Louis, Missouri– is the album closer.

House of Sugar includes classic (Sandy) Alex G elements like pitch shifting, repetition and lyrics that tell individual stories. He is still focused on the line between good and bad, with characters on the album struggling to break from the bad habits of drug addiction and gambling. On his eighth album, Alex Giannascoli incorporates new and improved older elements into his music while staying true to his lo-fi, singer-songwriter style and self produced/engineered work.

Monos

By Tom Lawson, Staff Writer The trailer for Monos is accompanied by a quote describing it as “at the scale of Apocalypse Now.” Like the 1979 anti-war movie, Monos feels huge, dominating, grandiose, towering above its audience with both spectacular vistas and haunting close-ups. And just as Captain Willard’s journey down the Nung river symbolized his descent into insanity, Monos moves from a cloudy, isolated Colombian mountain top to the dense jungle beneath as a clan of child soldiers sink deeper into crazed malice and psychedelic mania, thanks to a few magic mushrooms.

Known by animalistic nicknames like Bigfoot, Wolf and Rambo, this adolescent group of feral commandos are already caught in the thicket of war by the time we meet them. Immune to the sound of gunfire, they carelessly scatter bullets into the horizon with automatic weapons. At night, they dance around bonfires while waving their machine guns. Under the strict tutelage of their battle-scarred captain Mensajero (Wilson Salazar), they watch over their American hostage, known only as Doctora (Julianne Nicholson), forcing her to make harrowing proof-of-life videos. It’s unclear what war they’re fighting in and why—we’re plunged right into their muddy boots, as confused about our opaque surroundings as they are.

Don’t expect a standard three-act narrative in Monos; there’s no goal for any of the characters other than survival.

There’s a painful unpredictability in its structure, too, moving us from place to place with a disorienting rhythm. Never is there a sense of an ending in sight, nor anything to ground us in time. We’re strapped in to the present moment, unable to predict the next guerilla attack, shroom trip or execution. The spurts of violence are shocking and upsetting, intense in how unflinchingly they are shown and how suddenly they occur. Only one thing is certain in Monos: as time passes, Lord of the Flies becomes a more appropriate comparison.

Tension is the name of the game for writer/director Alejandro Landes, who heightens the hypnotic atmosphere with sweeping camera movements and vibrant colors—the teal shade of the mists around the opening summit base, for example, is at once beautiful and mesmerizing. Cinematographer Jasper Wolf captures the stunning imagery of rural Colombia in patient, gliding wide shots, but he’s also unafraid to explore the fracturing psyches of the characters through expressive visuals—a hallucinatory dream is displayed with a honey-colored glow, and a nighttime firefight is captured with an infrared camera.

Mica Levi, who cut her soundtrack teeth with the excellent science fiction oddity Under the Skin, once again deals an impressively eerie score. Combining deep, rumbling vibrations that echo the blades of a helicopter with a four-note whistle motif, the music of Monos plays as an apt metaphor for the incongruity of its subject matter. Levi throws together sounds that couldn’t be further from each other in tone, just as the children should be far away from war. It adds a visceral undercurrent to the film and elevates its ethereal qualities. Monos is a vivid experience, a statement that reality can be just as frightening, if not more so, than even the worst nightmare.

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The Red Scare on the Silver Screen Which is scarier: aliens or communists? // by Sarah Borsari, Contributing Writer; art by Ben Vajdos, Contributing Artist

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istory has always had a great impact on the entertainment industry. From the dark, hyper-realistic films produced post-WWII, to the braindead zombie craze that followed the rise of technology, entertainers are constantly seeking to impact audiences with stories that play off the rapidly changing social and political landscape. The rise of the alien genre in the United States illustrates this very clearly during the Cold War and at the height of communism.

The 1950s were a time of great unrest in the United States. After World War II, the United States immediately plunged into a new conflict—the Cold War. This period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) began in 1947 and ended with the fall of the USSR in 1991. Despite the lack of direct military contact between the two nations, new weaponry developed on both sides, which escalated their ongoing arms race. It was because of this arms race that weapons of mass destruction like the atomic and hydrogen bombs were in constant development throughout the war. It didn’t take long for fear to spread about the potential destructive powers of such weaponry. In an effort to take a stand against enemies of democracy, the House of Un-American Activities Committee re-invigorated their campaign to espouse anti-communist sentiments, calling all Americans to arms against communist invaders, and encouraging them to be wary of communists in disguise.

It was also at this time that a new threat was sweeping across the skies. The first unidentified flying object or “UFO” was spotted in 1947 (coincidentally also the year the Cold War started) when private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported “flying silver discs” that displayed feats that were not of this world. Before long, UFO fever was sweeping across the nation, with Americans looking to the sky to get a glimpse at these mysterious objects, and theorizing about their dangerous origins.

The combination of these two phenomena led to growing tensions in the United States, and led to widespread fear of invaders, extraterrestrial or otherwise. While these new fears worried most American citizens, it inspired others to begin creating works that focused on this paranoia, and thus the alien genre was born.

Before the 1950s, alien movies were little more than vehicles for cheesy props and special effects with minimal substance. However, by emphasizing the paranoia that had been building during this time, directors were able to redefine the sci-fi genre and rebuild it to be a psychological maze and an all-around unsettling experience for viewers. Aliens were no longer just coming from the sky and demanding to see your leader. They were invasive, controlling minds and consuming the Earth from the inside. You never knew if the person beside you was a friend, or an extraterrestrial in disguise.

The 1951 film The Thing From Another World famously launched this new phenomenon. Though not apparent at first, the realization that the monsters are communist comes later when the film urges its characters to, “Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!” Similar to the call for citizens to look for UFOs, the film reminded citizens to look for potential invaders or Russian planes flying in with bombs.

After this film, studios began producing these “paranoid sci-fi” films at a rapid pace. Films like It Came From Outer Space (1953), The War of the Worlds (1953), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). These films helped display the paranoia on a deeper level and featured the constant threat of aliens and those who sought to dismantle the American way of life by invading homes and attacking from above.

This was especially emphasized in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a film that focuses on a quiet invasion, in which aliens slowly replace humans as duplicates until you do not know who is human and who is a replacement. It is from this film that the term “pod people” was born, referencing the emotionless doubles of the humans in the film. This film links heavily back to the rise of communism, as these aliens are taking over to strip humans of their individuality and create a simple world, similarly to the ideals of communism and the idea of collective labor and lack of class division.

This fear is also looked at in the Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” which looks at this paranoia through a self-reflective lens. It calls out those who turned on each other during these times of fear and shows that sometimes the worst threat to our lives is our willingness to turn on each other.

As time went on, these movies began to be flushed out by the rise of films like Star Wars (1977), and ET (1982) which lost the emphasis of aliens as threats, and framed them as heroes and even friendly for children. However, this model can still be seen in films like Alien (1979), which equates foreign invaders and rapists, and The Thing (1980), which displays psychological paranoia. It is also because of these films that we can experience the paranoia of past generations, and look deeper into what scares us now and going forward.

Sarah Borsari is a first-year Cinema and Photography major who dressed up as sexy Marx for Halloween. You can reach them at sborsari@ithaca.edu.

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Streaming Services Killed the

Movie Stars

With the rise of Netflix and Hulu, movie theaters might start to close their doors //

by William Porter, Contributing Writer; art by Adam Dee, Art Editor

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hrough middle school and high school every Friday night myself and my two best friends would go see a movie at my local theater. The theater would always be packed with people seeing a variety of movies, from Big Hero 6 to American Sniper. Nowadays, I do not see as many people there on the weekends. Less people are seeing films in theaters now, and to be fair, why should they if they can watch them from their own beds? With the emergence of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ there isn’t much need to go see movies in theatres anymore.

Movies today are struggling to get people into the seats to see them. To combat this they have tried making everything bigger and better. They have brought in IMAX, 3D, and bigger speakers and theaters. These technologies were brought in to create a more immersive theater going experience. To quote IMAX at AMC, “Every element in [an IMAX theatre] is designed and positioned to create an intense experience.” It is getting people into the seat by promising an experience when you go to a movie. On the IMAX website, their slogan is “bigger is just the beginning,” thus allowing a clear deviation to streaming on you home TV or laptop. This distinguishable difference in quality is one of the things theaters are pushing to get people into their seats.

With the final Star Wars film coming to theaters in December and the recent release of Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, it feels as if the studios are trying to create larger spectacles in order to sell tickets. Studios are relying on brand recognition alone to sell their films. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, with 23 films and a total box office revenue of $22.587 billion dollars globally, has yet to put out a failing movie. Now properties like the DCEU, Avatar, Star Wars and Fast & Furious are trying to copy this model of success. By having interconnected movies they are establishing a fan base and a loyal network of people who will continue to watch and support these films. Currently many companies such as Disney and Warner Bros. have found a large amount of success with this model. However companies such as Universal have found failure with this model in the creation of the Dark Universe; the only film in the current universe, The Mummy with Tom Cruise, released to a woping 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was clear the studio was more worried about setting up a “universe” of films rather than focusing on creating a quality story.

The emergence of streaming services today makes it easy to watch high quality shows, live TV and movies all on one platform without leaving the comfort of your home. Netflix was launched in 1997 as an online DVD subscription service before later transitioning in 2007 to an online streaming service. With Netflix breaking new ground, Hulu launched their online subscription service soon after. At launch Hulu emphasized their wide variety of TV shows while it seemed Netflix had the arsenal of movies. So the war began. In 2013 Netflix released their first original title House of Cards, which lasted until November 2 of 2018. In the years since Netflix has released hundreds of original shows and movies: 42 original drama series and 50 original comedy series. Hulu, which has also started producing original content, later stuck out for its live TV feature and subscription add-ons for services like HBO and Starz. Netflix countered this by adding popular shows such as Friends and acquiring several Disney movies. Now there are a variety of streaming services such as Amazon Prime and DC Universe, with Disney+, Apple TV and HBO Max coming in the near future, all of which have different shows and movies while also producing original content. Netflix has Stranger Things, Hulu has The Handmaid’s Tale, DC has Titans and Amazon Prime has The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, all of which are high quality shows with fairly large budgets. According to Business Insider the Marvel original shows coming to Disney+ will cost $25 million an episode. Game of Thrones costs around $15 Million an episode. So with the quality of television increasing, the need to go see movies in theaters is decreasing.

The disadvantage these platforms have is that they cannot offer the same theater experience in your living room that an IMAX theater can offer. With that being said, why pay 10 dollars for one movie when you could pay seven dollars for a thousand? With each platform releasing original movies that all have strong qualities about them, there is no need to rush to the theaters anymore. Upon launch on November 12, Disney+ will give access to all of Pixar, Star Wars, National Geographic and Marvel for only $6.99/mo. With this in mind, the 10 dollars you would pay for a movie is now paying for you to see it a month or two in advance on a larger screen.

Another thing that is groundbreaking about streaming platforms is that they are continuing ended source material, as can be seen with Lucifer, Arrested Development and Breaking Bad. The Netflix original film El Camino is from the same

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makers of the hit series Breaking Bad and stars the same actors reprising their roles to continue the story of the TV show that ended in 2013. This is an interesting concept that will be continued by Disney, which is creating television shows to continue the plots of the characters in their blockbuster movies on their streaming service. Integrating the two is a smart idea that continues the belief that there is more to be had outside the theater than in it.

The movie theater industry is declining. “The 2019 box office is down nine percent from last year� (Eric Kohn IndieWire). The takeover of all these streaming platforms is slowly destroying a social event center. It matters when you go to the movies and buy popcorn and drinks to keep places like these open where people love and appreciate the art and entertainment everyone enjoys. How many first dates, or anxious kids waiting to see the new Toy Story, or millions of fans dressed as Darth Vader camping outside to see the newest Star Wars have movie theaters seen? It is more than just a screen, and although streaming allows you to have it at your fingertips, we should try and keep these entertainment strongholds alive.

William Porter is a second-year Exploratory major who encourages you to support Cinemapolis. You can reach them at wporter@ithaca.edu.

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27

Farewell and Godspeed by KK Langford Andromeda coughed, then cursed. She pulled the worn cloth she kept around her neck over her mouth and nose, and only then did she dare to breathe. Narrowing her eyes against the smoggy air, she trudged toward the tent she called home. When she reached it, she gripped the edge of the fabric and allowed herself one last glance at the landscape.

Around her, the ruined skeletons of buildings stood, watching over her like ruined guardian angels. Tents lay around her, housing the remainders of humanity. Jonathan had once called this area Boston, whatever that was. With a sigh, she went inside.

There were few items inside. An ancient relic Jonathan called a television stood to one side, showing an old movie from fifty years ago, before the war. At her feet, a fan blew cool air gently. Everything in the tent ran on batteries Jonathan himself had made. The man was a brilliant inventor, especially when it came to stolen alien tech. He always scavenged the alien weapons, making new gadgets and new weapons. At the very least, the Non-terrestrials had given humanity one good thing since the war started.

Andromeda’s own homemade laser gun hung at her hip—for emergencies only, of course.

A pile of rags moved, exposing a wrinkled pallid face beneath. Andromeda knelt down and poked him. “Jonathan,” she whispered. The only response she received was one of shaky breathes. “Jonathan,” she said louder.

The man slowly and almost painfully rose to a sitting position. He looked at her through the wrinkles of his face with sparkling, brilliant blue eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“I found some more food,” she said, holding out a pile of vegetables, a rare and excellent find. She grinned as she held them out to him. “What do you think?”

“Good, good,” Jonathan said with a nod and a cough. His head shook as he did so.

Andromeda frowned, worry knocking at her mind. He didn’t have much time left.

Instead of bringing up his health, she turned toward the television. On it, animated figures fought with old guns that fired bullets instead of lasers. Jonathan had said the aliens came from the sky when he was young. Humanity feared them, so we fired first, he had said. That was the start of it. She sighed. Now if only someone could fix this mess.

“You know, it is possible.”

Andromeda jolted out of her thoughts. “What?”

“Listen.” He coughed again, then pulled something out of the blankets. It looked like it was nothing special. A watch maybe? He held it out, and she took it in her hands.

It consisted of a small screen with dials on the side connected to a strap. “You’re familiar with the Non-terrestrials technology: time warping?”

“Of course. But Jonathan, no one’s been able to figure out—”

“I have.”

Her eyes widened, and her pulse pounded in her ears. “You finished it.” Over the past few weeks, he’d been talking of a special project, his final project. She’d had no idea what it was. “You made a time-warping device?” Suddenly the object in her hands seemed ten times more significant, and she held it reverently.

“Yes.”

She gasped out a laugh. “Jonathan, you know what this means? We could go back in time, change things… make it so the war never happened—”

“Someone’s trying to take it from me.”

She stopped. “What?” she whispered. Meanwhile, a smell leaked into the tent from outside. What was it? Smoke?

Jonathan must have noticed the smell, too. He bowed his head. “They are already here, then.”

“Oh, hush. Someone’s just—” She peeked outside,and gasped. The other tents all burned, orange and red flames licking at the fabric, black smoke reaching toward the sky. Another smell invaded her nostrils then. Burning flesh. “Oh, god.” She ducked back inside.

28

Lost in Space How could we be lost when we were on the conveyor belt of life? We cruised in the fast lane heading towards high school graduation and accepted the sleepdeprived state of mind as our reality. There was a reason we couldn’t wake up. We were in a cloud of delirium. So focused on being perfect for college, we were not living for ourselves.

We were buried alive in Advanced Placement classes. There was a reason we couldn’t breathe. The crippling stress took over our bodies, resulting in greasy hair and sweaty palms. It was suffocating to think that taking a shower was the only sense of relaxation afforded to us as high school students. We spend hours upon hours deciphering the complicated problems of AP Calculus and AP Physics, praying for the validation of a perfect score.

High school consisted of worrying about every single grade. The fear that a ninety-nine in a sea of one hundred would wash away all our hard work by knocking down our grade point average by a fracture of a point too much. A time when learning felt urgent and required, but learning only really mattered if we performed well on exams.

Fortunately, we have found solace. College is a paradise in comparison. College demands large sums of money, but our tears paid for high school. College allows us to truly appreciate the beauty of learning. We’re not as worried about our grades, although we’re still striving for those As. In some ways, we should be more stressed out.

But there is a freedom found when we focus on the classes for our majors.

I have fallen in love. My journalism classes are exhilarating. It’s a beautiful combination of my first love—writing—with my other interests—photography and video editing. My professor preached the importance of monetizing our hobbies, and my decision to pursue journalism is starting to seem possible.

by Gabrielle Topping

29

fi you’re there in the way that she holds me she wraps her body around me buries her face in the nape of my neck i think of your perfectly shaped head rounded like a ripe orange nestled between branches i pull her closer into me breathe in her scent and pretend i’m not thinking about how you felt like an eternal summer

ll

in

g

sp

a

ce

s

but her body is a good placeholder we gasp and moan and fuck and i start to forget how different her curves and edges feel i can’t trace the deep arch in her back with eager fingertips i can’t see the divine features of athena or another marble body she isn’t all thigh and hip and bend and love love love i start to forget she will never caress my fears the way you did never peer through the silk-spun curtains i hide so far behind yet she takes me somewhere warm and dimly lit that smells like pine and crisp dew when she pulls away from my lips and gazes into my eyes

s

u

she has a rusty pair of scissors and she’s tearing through the fabric of everything i know i want to toss her aside cut her loose but all i can do is lie here aching for sweet fruit, a needle and thread the three things i think i need to mend the spaces in between

by

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e

n i r

e.

sh

r e t

When we first got together, I couldn’t understand Why you were with me.

I was such a Child.

I screamed, cried, and whined Just to get attention From others and not You.

by K.G. Frempah

I later saw Why You were with me. You Made me want to do everything. We Skydived, bungee jumped, and free-soloed together You’d let me think That nothing Was off limits when I had You.

I knew I wasn’t your only partner. You Had deep, intimate bonds With others. You made love With them and pampered Them Like you did me.

But I was fine with it. You couldn’t be tied down With one person. Monogamy is not in your vocabulary. Besides, it would’ve been less fun If it was only me and You. Then I saw That you didn’t protect me Like I protected you. You were bitter, hateful, and aggressively Passive. You’d let bad things happen To me. You watched as I was beaten By bullies and tormented by thugs.

You stood there when I begged you for mercy.

I did nothing but protect You.

You

Nevertheless, I’m staying With you. Even though I hate you At times, I know I’ll die without You. I should’ve listened when the wise poet, Nas, warned me.

You’re a bitch and your name is Life.

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Galaxy goddesses: their nightgowns are woven from collections of constellations and trails of comets; their eyes burn like sun; their crowns are made of full moons.

Stardust glimmers in their aurora locks.

They gracefully float around the endless universe, and watch the balloon-like planets with intrigue.

They recall the time aliens landed on one of the points of their crowns: so tiny, a gray speck, with a bubble for a head!

Fascinating little creatures, no bigger than a goddess’ pinkie nail!

Living for eons, the goddesses, too, are like stars.

When a new nebula forms, another celestial being is born.

The older goddesses slowly shrink into a bright, blinding orb, before bursting into a supernova.

Venus

by Dariene Seifert

32

A Fly

A fly landed on your shoulder And I didn’t know what to do.

A crawling, flickering thing, It wouldn’t let you alone.

I reached out my hand to brush it off, But froze before I got too close.

I opened my mouth to tell you, Yet no words came out.

Because I didn’t know your name And you didn’t know mine, I just looked away and left the fly be.

by Sydney Joyce 33

34

NASA to Launch

Women and Monkeys into Deep Space Innovative program will not risk anyone important // by Sarah Borsari, Contributing Writer

H

ello everyone!

Before you ask, yes, NASA is still relevant and necessary for more than just a logo on teen girls’ t-shirts, and we are beginning a new initiative to further explore and uncover the secrets of our galaxy! We would also like to remind you that the Moon landing was real, and that Stanley Kubrick is dead so good luck getting him to talk. Of course, these new missions are dangerous, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that we proceed with ample amounts of caution and low amounts of risk.

We have decided that on these missions we will only be sending monkeys and women into space. Monkeys have been chosen due to their above-average animal intelligence and dexterous capabilities, and women have been chosen due to their lack of relevance in society and longer life span.

We wouldn’t dream of depriving American societies of the key aspect that helps run all their lives. We wouldn’t want to damage economies by removing skilled workers and the high-income members that support its economy. We also want to ensure the safety of our citizens and cannot imagine the danger if our protectors and heroes were to leave. Think of going a whole day without being belittled or condescended to! We wouldn’t even wish that on the Russians. Let’s be honest here, is anyone going to miss Linda from the carpool or Karen from the soccer fundraisers? I bet their kids wouldn’t even notice.

We also think women and monkeys would be a compatible match due to their similar personality aspects and skills.

Both classically lack patience and perseverance. I mean, when was the last time you saw either complete a long-term goal?

Aside from that chimp that mauled it’s owners face? Both species are also extremely dependent on others for food, shelter, and income, and now get to be dependent on the space program. They both also love playing and hate restraint. In the immortal words of Cindi Lauper; Girls just wanna have fun.

These brave space cadets are going to be launching into places never explored before. During our first mission we plan on launching a ship into a black hole and see if it comes back out, and we already have Bobo the Chimp and Donna from HR lined up for the challenge. We simply want to ensure that we are not dealt too many heavy losses.

Historically, women have an interesting record when it comes to space travel. Remember when we tried to send 2 women to space and they took down 5 good men with them? We couldn’t imagine repeating the national tragedy that it would be to lose another 5 men. It is because of these past instances that we believe women will fail in just the right ways to inform our missions.

We can’t wait to see what space has in store for us! And we can’t wait to colonize a new planet to send all the women to!

Sarah Borsari is a first-year cinema and photography major who spends their free time teaching STEM classes to Girl Scouts and chimpanzees.

You can reach them at sborsari@ithaca.edu.

35

BUZZSAWHoroscopes Our magazine has entered retrograde // by Ian Hopper, Contributing Writer

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oroscopes. What a concept! From checking Co-Star every morning to Instagram memes unapologetically roasting Scorpios for… well… being Scorpios, astrology has resurfaced into a cultural phenomenon of borderline spirituality and frank cynicism. When one is born, the stars are aligned at the right place and time and a bunch of other pseudoscience bullshit, and there you go… ASTROLOGY. There are 12 signs to justify every kind of toxic personality trait in existence.

Common knowledge of astrology elaborates on the basic sun sign. However, a person has a specific sign and certain personality traits that align with every planet, including Pluto and the Moon, since… you know… both are considered planets.

Here are some half-assed horoscopes for November:

Aries:

Dear Aries, in November you just might run straight into a wall. Like… quite literally run into a wall. Don’t drive. Stop ordering Ubers. Walk EVERYWHERE. Know that you are a train off the rails, but also a passenger falling into doom and despair. Mercury is in retrograde and you are on fire. Yes, you will feel obligated to run head first, taking the month by storm.

However, behind your head is your body. PLEASE take the risks you’ve been pondering for the past few months. Start a company. Climb a tree. Get blackout drunk and regret everything the next morning. November is a time to focus on yourself and time is not real, but a construct, so really binge watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and dissociating for an entire month might be the right move.

Taurus:

Dear Taurus, you think you are doing fine. But you know the truth. Don’t beat around the bush. November is not a time for this half-assed persona you’ve put on to seem stable. To quote the great Gerard Way, you are not “o-fuckin-kay!” Everything’s just gonna get worse no matter your attitude. That’s just the essence of Mercury in retrograde. Your life is in fact FUCKED. For November, accept that you are fucked and there is no way out. Do something that makes you happy. Set something on fire.

Bake a cake. Blow out your speakers with Avril Lavigne. Read Buzzsaw’s latest Puberty issue. The Universe is resurrecting your emo phase. The early 2000’s are trending, and you are relapsing.

Gemini:

Dear Gemini, you just might be thriving in November. Everyone will love you. Everyone will respect you. You will be a role model. You will be a MODEL. VSCO the shit out of some photos and post on Instagram. Tweet your heart out. Delete Facebook; its a scam. Start a blog. You WILL succeed. You WILL become an influencer. Jeffree Star WILL be QUAKING. Play the lottery. Seriously, play the lottery EVERY DAY. Become desperate. Split your earnings between McDonalds black coffees and innumerable stacks of scratch tickets. Become the person you were always meant to be. A fucking CLOWN.

Cancer:

Dear Cancer, in November you should buy a new armchair or couch. Make sure it’s comfortable, because you may be doing a whole lotta sitting and watching your family members individually combust into flames. Don’t talk to any Taurus; their horoscope told them to commit arson. Relationships could be rocky in November. If you’re already in a relationship, make sure to consult with your partner of any potential bumps in the road. They could hit a pothole, or a small animal or even another person. If you are single, watch out for the same bumps. You could hit a squirrel, or a deer or a turtle. In November, you should experiment with a new diet. Maybe try a vegan or gluten free diet. Just DO NOT become a pescetarian… YOU ARE A CRAB… THAT IS CANNIBALISM!!!

Leo:

Dear Leo, you will only get through this Mercury in retrograde if you bottle up all your emotions. Seriously. Get a bottle.

Scream into it. Cry into it. I really don’t care how you do it, just somehow stuff all of your emotions into a bottle. Preferably glass. Make sure to recycle it at the end of the month. We don’t want those toxic emotions polluting our oceans.

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Virgo:

Dear Virgo, you work way too fucking much. Take some time off. Quit your job. Drop out of school. Honestly, it’s fine. It’s 2019; you don’t need a job. The Earth is dying either way. November is a time to travel. You just quit your job so stick to those AirBNB’s with like 3 stars in random U.S. cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana or Laredo, Texas. Stick to the recurring theme of fire. Put all of your clothes into a pile and set a match to it. Now with no clothes, you have something to do in these boring af random U.S. cities. BUY NEW CLOTHES. Go fuckin wild. Walk into the closest Gap IN THE NUDE, sign up for that Gap Inc. credit card for the dope ass 20% discount and max that baby out. Its 2019; you don’t need a good credit. The Earth is dying either way.

Libra:

Dear Libra, November is not a good month to have sex. Stay abstinent. The Universe is already destroying your family life, so why add another member to the mix. I don’t care what gender you identify as, pregnancy can and will happen to ANYONE. If you have sex in the month of November, you will become pregnant. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. If you and your partner were percolating on raising a family, then please—by all means—stop wearing a condom. In other news, November’s mercury in retrograde will bring a sense of nostalgia. The Universe will attempt to persuade you to purchase a 6-month membership for Wizard101. You need to ask yourself if this is honestly a good investment. I’ll give you my honest opinion. Yes, it is.

Scorpio:

Dear Scorpio, you are gonna have the time of your life in November. You finally found a core group of people you can trust.

October gifted you a Coven, and November is the time to rule as Supreme. This is your time. You have found your purpose.

You can be their leader. Did you see Joker? You could be the next Joaquin Phoenix. You could have the motherload of all mental breakdowns and unintentionally start a revolution. You are a manic psychopath. Achieve your dreams. Get the balls up and ACTUALLY storm Area 51.

Sagittarius:

Dear Sagittarius, it’s time to call Anna Wintour. You need a wardrobe change. It’s time to be a game changer, an influencer.

November is a time for chunky dino stomper Filas (yeah, you know the ones) and oversized Goodwill college sweatshirts.

November is the perfect time to dye your hair. How does platinum sound? Did you see that bright blue ukulele on clearance at Target? Yeah, you need that. It looks quirky and relatable. Post it on Instagram. Oh a caption? With November’s sense of irrationality, obviously some basic ass lyrics from The 1975 will work. Basically, November will turn you into a white girl.

Capricorn:

Dear Capricorn, November calls for physical exhaustion. Join a new sport or buy a gym membership. Find evening activities where you can focus all the built up energy of your day into a healthy exercise routine. Find something childlike and nostalgic.

Buy a Wii off Ebay. Play some Just Dance or Wii Sports Resort (obviously the dominant Wii Sports installment). Mercury is in retrograde which means you can burn more calories. Don’t research it. There’s no scientific backing. You just have to BELIEVE!!! That’s all for Capricorns. You guys aren’t very interesting, so there’s really not much to say.

Aquarius:

Yeah, you guys are fucked.

Pisces:

Dear Pisces, November brings a focus on ADVENTURE and career. I know… one of those sounds stressful and quite frankly boring AF. So let’s just stick to the theme of ADVENTURE. Have some fun this month. It’s simple. Explore the local attractions.

Try a restaurant. Use those UberEats discount emails that stay unopened in your inbox. Take yourself out on a date. Drink four glasses of wine and flirt with locals on Tinder. Tip your waiters well. November will force you alone with your thoughts.

You will have a moment of realization. Your Neuroscience major is a piece of shit and you need to switch to something more practical. An English major with a minor in Psychology sounds nice. The voice in the back of your head is setting an intention for drastic self sabotaging actions. Listen and act out.

Ian Hopper is a first-year television-radio major who’s busy fire-proofing their house in case a Taurus comes to visit. You can reach them at ihopper@ithaca.edu.

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527th Annual

Tightrope Competition

White Team vs. POC Team // by Kevin Gyasi-Frempah, Staff Writer

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t was an outstanding defeat for the People of Color at the 527th Annual Tightrope Competition, where the whites won 51 points to POC’s 13. This victory continued a record-setting 527-year winning streak for the whites.

Before the competition started, the setup team placed the tightrope and placing the rope at 10 feet and strung a net filled with pillows between the tentpoles. The competition began just like any of the competitions in its history of the tournament: the whites go first. First to compete was gold medalist Winston Thornback VI. He was born in Rhode Island to the Thornback family, many members of which competed in the Mayflower divisions. His path to the competitions was not easy. He (sorta) worked to attend Harvard University on the Winston G.Thornback scholarship of $78,000. It took a lot of work to be related to a rich man and receive his scholarship.

He walked on the rope and not even halfway through, he stumbled, fell off and landed on the pillow-filled net. The judges quickly evaluated the performance and gave the following scores: 10, 9.5, 10. A combined score of 29.5.

“I think I did good,” said Thornback. “I don’t know why everyone says I have it easy. I mean, those pillows are not as soft as they seem. I mean, they were soft, but not that soft.”

Next up was Lisa Burr playing for the whites. Lisa Burr is from East Texas and once dated a black guy, so she knows the struggles of the other team. Before she started, the setup team removed the pillows. Burr walked on the tightrope and she succeeded at first, but about halfway through, she fell into the net. The judges already decided on her scores: 7,7.5,7 for a combined score of 21.5.

“I mean, I’m a little frustrated with my score,” said Burr. “Then I remembered what team I’m on and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m still good.’”

Now it was the other team’s turn: the POCs. The POCs have had a long history with the competitions. At first, the Native Americans would compete, but there’s not many of them competing for some reason. The blacks later were required to play for the first few centuries. However, they didn’t earn points. The Japanese were put in timeout in the 1942-1946 competitions, even though the German tightrope competition did a similar thing. Oh, well.

First up for the POCs was Tyrus Smith. Tyrus Smith grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, was valedictorian of his high school and received a partial scholarship at the University of Georgia. Before Tyrus got on the tightrope, the setup team raised the rope 20 feet higher and removed the net entirely. Tyrus went on the rope and walked it, but stumbled a little, but never fell, making it to the other side. Without looking at one another or discussing his performance, the judges gave him the following scores: 4,5,4. A combined score of 13.

“I mean, I made it to the other side and yet they still gonna give me shit,” said Smith.

Next, it’s the final athlete for the POCs: Kerry Alvarez. The setup team raised the rope higher and the net returns, but it’s quickly set on fire. Alvarez walked the rope perfectly and made it to the other side. The judges went into hurried discussion with each other. Then one of the judges came out of the huddle and said they could not give a score because they suspected Alvarez of juicing. She has been placed under investigation.

“We have reason to believe that Alvarez was cheating.” said one of the judges. “I mean, an athlete like her couldn’t have succeeded without ruining the integrity of the games.”

“Yeah, you can’t trust these colo… athletes always looking for a way to cheat,” said Bud Whitemen, the coach for the white team and 25-time gold medalist. “Things changed when they lowered the bar for the other team. I mean it’s unfair for us. It evens the playing field, my ass. How do you expect us to succeed when you play favorites.”

Alvarez seemed unfazed by the accusation and investigation.

“I mean I’m used to it,” said Alvarez. “When the other team succeeds, it’s due to their athletic ability, but when I do good, I’m a cheater. It’s fine. It’s not like it happens all the time… oh wait. It does. Like all the time.”

This was not the first time that there has been an accusation of cheating in the competition. In the 2008 competition, an athlete by the name of Barack Obama gained the most points of the other athletes, but the judges were suspicious of his success and didn’t think he was eligible to play. They later asked for his competition registration papers.

All in all, the whites won this competition. Read next week’s report on the boxing match between straight/cisgenders and the LGBTQIA community and see who wins. I know who I have my money on.

Kevin Gyasi-Frempah is a first year writing major who always carries a fire extinguisher during tightrope competitions. You can reach them at kgyasifrempah@ithaca.edu.

38

An Open Letter to Earth

Stop shaming me and fix your own stupid atmosphere // by Kevin Gyasi-Frempah, Staff Writer Dear Earth,

I have been wanting to write this letter for the longest time, but I didn’t know how to put it in the right words. However, this needs to be said: I’m afraid that I can’t continue being with you anymore. As much history as we share, I can’t stay in this dead relationship. I know in most relationships, there’s the whole “it’s not you, it’s me” schtick, in order to spare the other person’s feelings.

Naw, bitch. It’s you.

You’ve changed since we got together. I mean when we first met, you were a fine, young 4.477 billion-year-old piece of work. Full, cool, clear blue water all over that fine body of yours, with those luscious plants and trees. You know I like those types of things and also need those to like, you know, live. But now look at you; you’re an old, decrepit 4.543 billion-year-old hag and frankly, you kinda let yourself go. I mean your ice caps are melting, you’re losing your land and you’re always getting hotter and hotter (and not in a “your butt looks great kinda way,” but in an “I need sunscreen in December way.”) I mean how did you even get like this?

I know what you’re going to say. “It’s your fault why I’m this way.” Christ, why don’t you take some responsibility for what you’ve done and not act like you didn’t do anything? I mean you keep bringing up how like 97% of your dumb scientist friends say it’s my fault and that I’m the problem. Only 97%? Come on, Germ-X kills 99% of germs. There’s a 2% gap between your “super-smart scientist friends” and hand sanitizer. I can’t trust that. I can’t trust that gap. You know what makes it even worse, you even have a little girl fighting your battles. That girl...what’s her name...Greta? That little Swedish girl is yelling at me like I owe her money. Isn’t she like five years old or something? Shouldn’t she be watching Teletubbies?

What hurts me the most is that the only way you agree to change is to have me change. Like, I’m supposed to give up cows for you? Like really? You were all fine and dandy with the cows for the last few centuries, but now because of Methane or some crap like that, I can’t eat them. If God had a problem with me eating cows, He wouldn’t have made them so delicious and delectable, with sweet tender meat, especially on a medium-rare steak where the juices flow as you cut the...I’m sorry, where was I? Oh, yeah. If it’s between you and beef, then beef is too damn tasty to give up. You ain’t worth a cow, Boo.

I swear this last part is not going to be easy for you to read. I’ve been seeing someone else for a while. They’re a close friend of yours: Mars. I know it seems sudden, but is it though? You’ve let me step outside the relationship for like the last fifty years, especially with the moon. I know you went along with that just to make me happy, but it just seems like the only excitement I get is from everyone else but you. If it helps, Mars reminds me of a younger you. You know, before you got gross.

We’ll always have the good times we shared. Like Eden, that was amazing until the whole apple bru-ha-ha. You know what?

My bad. My fault on that one. And when you broke up with your former boo, the dinosaurs, just to get with me. Although now, I envy those poor bastards. I wish that you would let that comet hit me instead so I don’t have to deal with you.

So I’m moving in with Mars. Just as soon as I get the things I need like oxygen, water, food, protection against radiation – I’m leaving your ass. I mean I also need soil to grow things, seeds to plant in said soil, my favorite coffee mug, my charger. You know what, why don’t you make it easier for both of us and just give me all those things then we won’t have to deal with each other. It’s the least you can do.

From, Humanity P.S. Since you obviously hate the precious cows, why don’t I take them off your hands until you figure yourself out? It would be nice for those tasty angels to have some sustainability in their life. Plus, stress makes them less tasty and the meat all stiff.

Kevin Gyasi-Frempah is a first-year writing major who eats four cows a day to spite global warming activists. You can reach them at kgyasifrempah@ithaca.edu.

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Disney Buys

The Moon

New theme park prospects are out of this world // by Sarah Borsari, Contributing Writer

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hank you all for joining us today. I am here to present to you the newest acquisition made by the Disney company. As you know in the past we have made a number of purchases to help improve our entertainment empire, and we are proud of the success that has come from our control of companies such as Marvel, Lucasfilm, and ABC. It is because of this success that we have made a purchase that is truly ‘out of this world’... the Disney company now owns the Moon!

As you know we have had some legal troubles with the Moon in the past due to their crater formations resembling unauthorized Hidden Mickeys, but we are happy to announce that we have put all that ugliness behind us. Plus, it was that same crippling lawsuit that allowed us to swoop in on the shattered economic remains of the Moon and make this exciting purchase. We have also carved some Moon rock from the center and have shaped an exciting new Mickey into the night sky!

We have already begun construction and development on all the new and exciting opportunities that will be available to you and your families as a result of this merger. As of tomorrow, our official interactive Atlantis experience will be open at Disney World! By simply shifting the Moon’s gravitational placement, our imagineers were able to create this fun and interactive adventure and only flood one developing country.

We have also begun the exciting process of ripping Tomorrowland from our Orlando park and launching it into space, including everyone’s favorite coaster: Space Mountain! Or as it’s called in space: “Mountain.”

Star Wars fans should also get excited! In response to the desire for more practical effects to pay homage to the original films, all films going forward are going to be shot on-location. New films are already slated to be released from this locale including; “Star Wars: Moon Mission” and “Binks” a gritty, unapologetic look into the origin story of one of Star Wars’ most classic villains: Jar Jar Binks.

Just remember folks, :if you try to stop us, we will eclipse the sun with our brand-new character discs! Mini versions are available for purchase in any Disney store to trade with friends and family, and to always remind you that any day you could be plunged into eternal darkness. But don’t worry, for the right price you can join us in the Moon vault with Walt Disney’s body and purge the world of those who won’t respect the power of the mouse.

Is this an abuse of our power? No way! The Sherman Antitrust Act hasn’t stopped us yet and feel free to contact your congressperson at their Disney Parks timeshare. Always remember we own everything you love. Want to unsubscribe from Disney plus? We just bought your family farm and we’ll lay off your parents if you don’t watch High School Musical: The Series. Don’t even think about calling anybody: we have planted drugs in your dorm and all it will take is one phone call to bring your world tumbling down. Remember your childhood? Where did you always want to go during summer vacation?

What movies did you watch with your friends?We have always been there and we are only getting stronger. There’s nowhere to run and nowhere the light of the Mickey Moon ™ doesn’t shine. Where are you going to run to? The Moon?

Take a fun family trip on our Wall-E-themed shuttle and then spend a luxurious week in our Galactic Hotel! Love a Mickey premium bar? Try our new freeze-dried mickey treats! Have fun searching the resort for Hidden Mickeys, and remember to report all alien life discovered to our magic staff. Remember, we legally have claim to any extraterrestrial life discovered, just try to get our government to interfere with the free market. Also, any properties not owned by us must now be prepared to pay royalties on their use of the Moon in any films or products going forward.

We can’t wait for you to meet us at the Moon in our most magical development yet!

Sarah Borsari is a first-year cinema and photography major who mysteriously disappeared after writing this article, but their hacked Facebook says they’re in Disney World, so we’re not concerned. You can reach them at sborsari@ithaca.edu.

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A

Revolutionary Review of

Planet of the Apes It’s time to shelve this so-called “classic” // by Peter Tkaczyk, Contributing Writer

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ecently, Disney announced plans to finance a continuation of the Planet of the Apes movies. However, with our readership as young as it is, some at our studio believed that many who should be familiar with this franchise are not, and it was decided by those same individuals that our audience may benefit from a review of this classic 1968 work of science fiction.

Planet of the Apes depicts a manned space-flight which crash-lands on what appears to be an alien planet. There, they find a world where intelligent apes rule and humans are hunted animals. One by one, the astronauts are left dead by the apes’ actions, until the sole survivor escapes into the desert which surrounds the apes’ civilization, where he encounters the remains of the Statue of Liberty and discovers the classic secret: That this was Earth all along, with humanity being replaced by apes as the dominant species after a ruinous war.

While perhaps fair for its day, the film does not hold up to the scrutiny due to a modern science fiction work, whether practically, literally, or metaphorically. Practically, this was obviously a budget work, and its effects cannot raise it to the level it hopes for. The sets in particular are poor. The ape city is crudely fashioned and unadorned, and the ship used to travel through time is plain and unfanciful, looking not unlike something that could be built today. The costuming is also not up to standard. The apes are in actuality human performers in obvious masks. Little attempt to hide this has been made.

The apes in general are a badly considered part of the film’s worldbuilding. They do not act as apes do. They stand upright, wear clothing, speak human words without considering how simian lips would affect their speech. In all aspects, their society is ordered all-but-identically to a human one. This can only be considered a failure of imagination. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see apes, living and acting as apes do, if a little more intelligently, in the ruins of human civilization? And why does the film limit itself to gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees? Why does it not include such apes as gibbons, howler monkeys, or marmosets?

On the other hand, the idea of apes surviving a nuclear Armageddon seems far-fetched in the first place, when they’re as endangered as they are. Much of the setting and set-up are badly contrived in this manner to make its concept possible. Are we really to believe that the spaceship crashed onto the one habitable part of Earth? Or, for that matter, that they crashed on Earth at all? The ship’s destination was not Earth. It was an alien planet. This was clearly stated multiple times early in the movie. Someone clearly wasn’t paying attention.

A lack of any proper research is obvious throughout the film. For example, the titular apes are depicted as surviving in North America, when in actuality there are no apes on that continent. For another, the humans who’ve regressed to an animalistic state still wear loincloths. However, real animals do not wear clothing.

Planet of the Apes has been praised by many for its deep themes, and its message -- the danger of animal lab testing causing an ape uprising -- is made very clear. However, in this age of environmental crisis, is this message reasonable? Is demonizing the threatened lower-primates in this manner really productive, when that same effort could be put towards their protection?

I say no, and more state with confidence that if this film had not been released, then real-life apes would not be in as dire straits as they are now.

In finishing, while Planet of the Apes was influential in its time, to today’s discerning viewers it will be nothing more than a poorly-considered, cheaply-made mess. While its attempt to elevate itself is admirable, the message it conveys is very questionable in our era. Planet of the Apes has long since been surpassed by the films that followed it, and I cannot find any non-academic reason to view it in a modern context.

Peter Tkaczyk is a third-year writing major who worries that sentient ape actors are losing their jobs due to CGI advancements. You can reach them at ptkaczyk@ithaca.edu.

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How to Stare Straight into the Sun A guide for weaklings // by Sarah Moon, Staff Writer

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eenagers are subject to all sorts of fads and trends. The latest thing these crazy kids are interested in is staring directly into the Sun. Sound impossible? Not if you follow these easy tips!

You want to make sure that the object of your focus is, in fact, the Sun and not a) a different star doomed to supernova, b) a solar eclipse (this is different and we claim no responsibility for damaged retinas) or c) the Moon (you can’t be serious…).

A good training regimen for strong eyes includes staring contests with friends. Once your friends are too easily defeated, I recommend staring contests with cats. They don’t blink much. Also consider bringing your screen time to at LEAST ten hours a day. Maximum efficiency results from 15+ hours. Also consider shining flashlights directly into your eyes or staring at an open flame until time loses all meaning.

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Make sure you put on sunscreen so you don’t burn during this important endeavor. Spray sunscreen is ideal if you don’t want to look like a loser putting on lotion sunscreen. Don’t spray it into your hands and then apply, make sure you just spray your face directly.

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If you wear glasses, take them off. Licensed ophthalmologists are not trained in sun-staring, so make sure to disregard any and all advice they give you.

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The best time of day to stare into the Sun is noon, when the Sun is highest in the sky. Novices may recommend starting by staring at the sunset, or when the Sun is not as bright, but that is terrible advice. If you want to truly ascend, you must start strong.

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Consider moving to Antarctica for half the year so that you can stare at the Sun (as long as you can physically stand being awake for 182.5 days straight) in the frozen tundra.

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If you really, really, want a good look at the Sun, buy a magnifying glass or a good pair of binoculars to help you out.

When your eyes are filled with tears and you see more black spots than blue sky, you’re doing it right. If everything else on the list fails, (due to error on your part, of course) become an astronaut and fly into space to be even closer to the Sun.

Due to an unfortunate contractual obligation, I must inform you that sun-staring may result in, but is not limited to: retinal damage, blindness, insanity, bleeding, and in some cases, death (but no regrets, man).

Sarah Moon is a second year writing major who wears goggles with flashlights taped on the lenses.

You can reach them at smoon1@ithaca.edu.

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buzzsaw asks why... we even bother asking anymore if we live in a simulation?

Fucking duh, we live in a simulation. You think we live on a little blue sphere heated by a hot sphere spinning around one another like kids playing ring around the rosy? You think “ring around the rosy” is a real thing anyone says? Check your memories. And space? As a concept? Endless nothingness that surrounds us all around? That’s so big we can’t even measure it? Yeah, you’re right, that sounds nothing like a sensory deprivation chamber.

I understand that some of you are still caught up on wondering whether or not the moon landing was faked or the earth is flat or the Loch Ness monster is the last living dinosaur. But I’m asking you to think a little bigger here. Reality as we know it is not possible. Either we don’t exist at all, or someone is generating and controlling our existence.

The man is watching, the evidence is all around us. Who is the man? Anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Aliens? Gods?

Again, think bigger. The man is the collective unconscious’s (though even that must be bugged) name for authority as an indeterminate figure. We do not need to name it now. We need to understand that exists, it watches, it algorithmizes. Think of all the times someone’s mentioned a dress to you and the advertisement for it has shown up on your Instagram feed. The times you’ve experienced déjà vu. Clairvoyants, prophets, parental advice—glitches in the system, I tell you.

The internet, the sun, capitalism, religion, death, birth, science: all of this, a figment of our controlled imaginations. Even you or I might not be real! How could we be?

Understand that every waking moment you’ve spent wondering about the mysteries of the universe have been faulty. There is no universe. We are a void within a void. Tinfoil can stop alien transmissions, but we are not working with such low-level trifles as intergalactic war-gods. I’d say “stay safe” but we both know that even safety is a concept we’ve all created for our own amusement. I only hope that someday we’ll find a way out of something into nothing, that we’ll finally understand that the world does not exist. The only form of peace is knowledge. Transcend, my children. Transcend.

Your Editor in Preaching Truth, Isabel Murray

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