Capilano Courier Volume 46 Issue 12

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07 2013

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talk PILLOW TALK pillOW WHY STUDENTS CAN'T SLEEP WHY STUDENTS CAN'T SLEEP

Goodbye U-Pass

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Royal Obsessions

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Barber Strides, man

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CAPILANO Courier TABLE OF contents news

The Staff 4

of this hella tight university newspaper

Let's talk caffeine

columns

6 JJ Brewis Editor-in-Chief

Hunted houses

arts

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Giles Roy Managing Editor

Samantha Thompson Copy Editor

Take a step to the dub side

features

12

Barbershop blabber

calendar

Lindsay Howe News Editor

Natalie Corbo Features Editor

Celina Kurz Arts Editor

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It's a calendar!

Opinions

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Leah Scheitel Opinions Editor

Scott Moraes Caboose Editor

Ricky Bao Business Manager

Incest isn't cool

CABOOSE

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Slug 'stache Katie So Art Director

Connor Thorpe Staff Writer

the capilano courier

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Stefan Tosheff Production Manager

The Capilano Courier is an autonomous, democratically run student newspaper. Literary and visual submissions are welcomed.

All submissions are subject to editing for brevity, taste, and legality. The Capilano Courier will not publish material deemed by the collective to exhibit sexism, racism or homophobia. The views expressed by the contributing writers are not necessarily those of the Capilano Courier Publishing Society.

Shannon Elliott Web Editor

Colin Spensley Distribution Manager

Leanne Kriz Ads & Events Manager

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× Letter from the editor ×

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR × ON the Cover ×

STefan tosheff Stefan Tosheff likes dogs, not in that weird way, where people have dog avatars and dress up like anemograph versions of it.

No, He likes dogs how normal people like dogs, normally.

Stefantosheff.com

Featured Contributors

Karen Picketts is all work, but some play. “I spend a lot of time drinking tea, being sort of hermit-y, playing Minecraft, and reading about random subjects on Wikipedia,” she says. In her busier time, Karen finds herself as a freelance illustrator for the Courier, as well as other clients. She volunteers with the World Wildlife Fund, doing digital graphics and design work. This work combines her most sincere interests. “Nature is my biggest passion, and art of course! I also love music, reading, and travel...and imagination, in all its forms.” Graduating from Fine Arts at Kwantlen and Capilano’s IDEA program have led to a colourful, quirky life. But Karen is also okay with indulging what she calls her nerdy side. “I love reading about cryptozoology and unexplained phenomena; I play D&D; I walk around in the woods whenever possible.” She’s fond of her memories living in Ireland, but creatively says, “I think my proudest achievements have yet to occur, so I'm going to work hard to make them happen.” You can see more of Karen’s work at Kjpicketts.blogspot.com.

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Featuring: giles Roy

The Voicebox gives you the chance to have your opinion heard, no matter how irrelevant or uninformed. Just send a text message to (778) 235-7835 to anonymously “voice” your “thoughts” on any “subject.” Then, as long as it’s not too offensive, we’ll publish it! It’s a win-win-win, unless you’re a loser.

“So when do you think we'll start seeing the ‘stepped-up’ checking of valid fare on buses that the city threatened in August?”

“Dude, I am eating so many eggs lately that I think it might be getting dangerous. You ever do that? They're small eggs though, so I think I'll last a little longer than those rich bitches that eat ostrich eggs or some kind of fancy shit like that.”

“I went to the music centre the other day to check out the sheet music library, and I'm confronted by some bald fuck asking what I think I am doing, and he proceeded to escort me out the room, to you I say ‘fuckaaayoooouuuuu’”

This person texted the Voicebox right after the Courier’s last issue of 2012 came out. We haven’t heard from them since, so it’s very possible that they’re dead. Be careful out there! Eggs are no joke.

Sheet music, you say? No nerds allowed in the library!

“On the Peter Pan Syndrome article: maybe those who turn into man-children are those who would be castrati and eunuchs if we still did that? If moving out of the basement and “trying new things” is terrifying, we might be better off without their genes floating around out there. Cull the weak!”

Just a quick reminder about how the Voicebox works: unless you text us utter gibberish, we will publish your submission. I’m aware that this person’s entry doesn’t make sense, but at least it’s comprised entirely of real words that exist. I’m left to assume that it’s some form of poetry, so we’re printing it. At any rate, I much prefer to get coherent submissions, so let’s all make that a goal in 2013.

I don’t know, but if anyone from TransLink is reading this, I hope they feel bad about themselves.

× 46 issue N o . 12

Ha, ha! We like to have fun here.

“Man this is good as fuck, joy footage”

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per cent of these people will pass away from the disease. Furthermore, 62 Canadian women are diagnosed with breast cancer each day, and 14 of these women will die from it. So no, there isn’t really an upside, but I will say this: Since my mom told me her news, I’ve been feeling more optimistic and passionate about life. My mom’s life. My life. Life, as a whole.

In the face of having something being taken away from me, I’ve turned into a fighter. Friends and co-workers have told me that I’ve been more happy and positive than they’ve seen me in a long time. And as much as I hate that my mom is going through this, I’m thankful that I’ve taken this really shitty thing and turned it into an opportunity to wake the fuck up and value and enjoy life for what it is. Luckily, my mom is being amazingly strong and passionate in her fight as well – being positive is just as much of an asset as being proactive, and I’m so proud of her in her battle.

But this isn’t one person’s battle; it’s all of ours, regardless of how close we are connected to the cause. Cancer is one of those terrible bastards in life that sneak up on you. We all know it’s out there, yet not a whole lot of us really think of it or do a lot to prevent it until it hits close to home. Well, now it’s living in my house and I’ll be damned if I let this take my mom away from me. As much bad shit as I have going on in my head, I am able to discern what is worth my time and what is more important. Right now my mom really needs me, and I’m going to be there for her to my best ability.

This isn’t really about breast cancer in general. It’s about life realizations and wake up calls. Although it’s pretty extreme, having this happen to my mom and my family is ultimately the biggest wake up call I could have received. It could have come in any form, but it came in a big ugly one. For me to look back and think about all the time I wasted worrying about a fucking stupid Christmas tree when I could have been helping my mom go through an unarguably tough time kills me inside. But all I can really do at this point is change the way I think and behave and move forward with this mindset.

Make sure you focus on the good things. It sounds cliché and I know that. But be present in your life. Let the people in your life know how much you care, because honestly they won’t be there forever. One in nine women is expected to develop breast cancer during her lifetime and one in 29 will die from it. At the end of the day, my mother may have to have part of her body removed. She’s terrified and so am I. But ultimately I’d rather a piece be gone, than my whole mom.

In early December, I came home from work and discovered that my family Christmas tree had been put up and decorated without my participation. Despite its beauty, my initial reaction was that of upset and disappointment. Why had I been excluded? I have a hard time around the holidays in general – when I was 16, my dad passed away less than a week before Christmas Day. This is on top of the general depression and seasonal sadness that comes with the darkened weather, lack of warmth, and all-over weird vibes flying around that time of year. So when I saw the tree was up and that I didn’t get to participate, my first instinct was to retreat.

I spent most of the holidays sheltering myself from my family, working the hours away and using my off time to be alone. Choosing to be alone. Just because.

Up until a few days before Christmas, I barely spoke with my sister, feeling isolated and alone. It got to the point that my reason of sadness and frustration was far removed from the catalyst. So they put up a fucking Christmas tree without me. Ultimately, this is not the end of the world, but I chose to act as if it was, and ultimately missed an entire holiday season I should have been spending with my family. In hindsight, such a fucking bummer.

On Christmas Day, we sat around the dinner table: my mother, my sister, and I, and my mom shared the news that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The news hit hard. It was honestly the last thing I expected to hear on what is supposed to be one of the happiest days of the year.

My first instinct was to crawl up into a little ball and forget about any good left in the world. My mom has fucking cancer? What did this even mean in the big picture? I wanted to hit pause, and rewind, and go back in time and correct all the times I’ve been a bad or negligent son.

I was so upset and angry at myself. I went upstairs, had a bath that was filled mostly with tears, and gave myself this one moment to let all my upset out. I made a deal with myself that this would be my one moment to break down, and from here on in it would be nothing but positivity and love and support.

It’s amazing how in these moments of desperation, people are able to pack up all their own baggage and focus on the important topic at hand. I may be dealing with a lot of mental health baggage on my own end, and I have no qualms with admitting that. In reality, mental health and something like cancer can each be crippling in their own ways, but sometimes the human body is able to be a little helper outer and let you push things aside when you need. Thankfully, something in me woke up with this terrible news. And right now, I don’t need to focus on how scary and bad the world is, or why I feel unaccomplished and don’t want to deal with anything real. Right now, all I want to do is be a positive beacon of hope in my mom’s life and everything else can just fuck right off.

There is absolutely nothing good about having cancer. According to the Canadian Cancer Society, last year roughly 22,700 women and 200 men were diagnosed with breast cancer. Among them, approximately 23

THE VOICE BOX

× Editor-in-Chief

the capilano courier

Tiaré Jung is “still working on a buildyour-own degree” with a cornucopia of illustration, design, and liberal arts here at Capilano. A native of Prince George, Tiaré daydreams of having two voice boxes, “Like a song bird! Then I could split my voice to beat box and sing at the same time.”

With a deep interest in community ties, Tiaré is “passionate about making delicious, goodsounding, body-rocking, soul-shaking things with my community.” Her current goal is “a documentary film musical that follows musical, dance, and radical cheer leading flash mobs for social change.” Tiaré is a member of two community choirs. “Right now we're making an a capella mash-up of gold themed songs to raise awareness of gold mining,” she says. But she’s also content lending her effort to matters close to home. “I'm trying to brainstorm ideas to fundraise for dental work my mom needs. I'll probably call it the tooth fairy campaign.“ Follow Tiaré’s adventures at Appiesforeyeballs.tumblr.com.

By JJ Brewis

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NEWS

News Editor ×

Lindsay Howe × n e w s @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

U-PASS PROGRAM'S FUTURE UNCERTAIN students vote on continuing the program Samantha-Rose Nelson × Writer

Currently, all students in British Columbia who attend publically funded post-secondary institutions pay for a universal transit pass as a part of their tuition fees. Due to the high cost of vehicles, gas and insurance, the U-Pass program has been of great benefit to those students who

must rely on public transportation to get from one location to another. The U-Pass BC program was implemented in September 2011, and British Columbia was the first province to have incorporated it into tuition fees. Starting in January, a referendum will be held to discuss the option of continuing participation in the U-Pass BC program. Students will vote based on whether they feel the transit pass is beneficial or not.

This referendum comes shortly after the most recent increase in transit fares, implemented in

×× peter pawloski

January 2013. The new monthly adult passes for 1 zone will be $91, 2 zones will be $124, and 3 zones, $170. In May 2013, the monthly U-Pass will be adjusted to $35, then $36.75 in May 2014 and finally to $38 in May 2015. Overall, that is an increase of $8 in the next three years, whereas the adult monthly passes increased by $10 at once on Jan. 1. For a post-secondary student who receives their U-Pass each month for one year, the total cost would be around $360. Many students rely heavily on the U-Pass, and would otherwise likely be unable to commute to school, work, or go almost anywhere else without it. Despite the many benefits of the pass, the fact still remains that not all students need it. Although the program is generally quite popular, it has its critics. The U-Pass program dictates that all students must participate, regardless of whether or not they actually end up using the pass. The disadvantage for the students that do not need it is that they pay for it in their fees regardless of necessity.

The downside to the referendum is that not

many students are aware of it. The consequence of this fact may be that the results could end up being inaccurate. Melissa Goodman, a student of SFU says that although she was “not aware of the referendum happening” she feels that the U-Pass has helped her and been beneficial in her two years at the university. She also notes that she believes the vast majority of students that do participate in voting will vote in favor of the U-Pass BC program being continued.

The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) released a statement on Dec. 13 announcing the upcoming referendum and a brief summary of the changes expected in early 2013. Zachary Crispin, a spokesperson for the CFS, explained that early in 2013 there will be a campaigning period throughout participating post-secondary schools where spokespeople for the U-Pass BC program and other organizations will be able to explain the pros and cons of continuing the U-Pass. Crispin also explained that students or members of the public that are passionate about the program can also take part in the campaigning period. After the campaigning, the voting will commence. Crispin said that voting stations will likely be set up in participating schools, and students will be able to vote on whether or not they wish the program to remain. After the voting has ended, the results will be tallied and a decision will be made.

For more information on the U-Pass program at Capilano University please visit Capilanou.ca/u-pass/.

Brewing a new cafe Recent survey allows students to vote on their most desired café Tiaré Jung

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The Capilano University library is opening a coffee shop. While a specific date is not yet set, renovations are beginning this summer, and a new café is expected to be operating within two years.

Although still undecided on which company will get the contract, the University has given students the opportunity to voice their opinions on which café would be best suited for the institution, providing students with not only the power to choose which company they think brews the most delicious java, but also the power to take into consideration which company supports the environment and fair trade practices.

“The Food and Beverage committee would like to see a full-service café offering students, faculty and administration a variety of high quality hot and cold beverages as well as baked goods and light meals,” describes Saam Nasirpour, student member of the Food and Beverage Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC).

“My involvement with the Capilano Students’ Union provided me the opportunity to chair the [Capilano Students’ Union’s] Food and Beverage Committee which in turn got me involved with

the University’s Food and Beverage Presidential Advisory Committee,” explains Nasirpour.

“The PAC members were tasked with coming up with recommendations regarding the proposed Café.” This committee will also be involved in making decisions for the new food service contract when Capilano’s current 10-year agreement with Aramark comes to term in August 2014.

Cheryl Schreader, an instructor on the Food and Beverage PAC and coordinator of Capilano’s waste audit, pointed out that reducing our disposable coffee cups is a big opportunity for Capilano to make less garbage. While paper coffee cups lined with a plastic or wax substances are not compostable in a home garden compost, at Capilano these cups can be put in the compost bin because for the time being their compost is processed in a commercial facility. Yet many cups are still found in the garbage. Results from Capilano’s November 2011 waste audit demonstrate that for approximately one-week worth of waste, 24 kilograms, or 53 pounds, were one-use coffee cups. Many cafés offer discounts ranging from 10 cents (Starbucks & Bean Around the World) to 15 cents (JJ Bean) to customers who bring their own reusable mug.

Students involved in the Food and Beverage Committee are interviewing

coffee businesses such as Bean Around the World, JJ Bean, Café for Contemporary Arts, Moja, and Starbucks about their business practices. A key take away, as Nasirpour describes, is “the complexities of harvesting coffee beans. It’s a lot of work.”

Grown in countries such as Guatemala, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and Columbia, coffee passes through many hands on its way to the cup. It takes two to three years for a coffee plant to mature.

Coffee cherries, the fruit that encompasses the coffee bean, do not all ripen at the same rate, and multiple harvests are required to collect the best yield of ripe cherries. The fruit flesh is then removed, and the raw beans must be dried and filtered by hand. Sorting through the beans is a laborious task, as many coffee farms set their beans out to dry in open spaces and much debris must be filtered out – including anything from pebbles and leaves to lost watches and sandals.

The employees visited at Ethical Bean, JJ Bean and Bean Around the World all expressed that coffee farmers must receive fair treatment to motivate the work required to produce top quality coffee.

Fair Trade Certification and direct fairly traded relationships are two options used to look out for workers’ rights. Fair Trade Canada certification means producers are checked by an independent auditor to ensure they meet fair trade standards

and “companies that buy products from fair trade-certified producer organizations must also adhere to strict standards… specifically they spell out the minimum prices that can be paid to producers” according to Fair Trade Canada. Alternatively, smaller coffee shop businesses with less demand can build direct trade relationships with farms, and set up their own trade agreements with specific standards that may pay more or achieve better conditions for workers than the minimum standards set by Fair Trade Certification.

The F&B PAC committee is taking these considerations and working to make socially responsible and sustainable decisions to improve the quality and variety of food on campus. They are garnering feedback from Capilano students and other members of the Capilano community through an online survey about the new café, in partnership with the University’s research department.

To complete the survey, visit Fluidsurveys.com/surveys/frank-v/coffee-culture-food-services-2012 or check out the Capilano Food Facebook page.

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COULD YOU USE A RAISE? BC Federation of Labour delegates endorse a new minimum wage Mike Conway × Writer

It’s doubtful that many would disagree that British Columbia is an expensive place to live. From the high cost of rent and transportation, to increases in Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan deductions that will be hitting in 2013, many people, especially students, are forced to live paycheque to paycheque with very little wiggle room while they pursue their education. These reasons, among many others, swayed the delegates of the BC Federation of Labour to speak up and put this problem on the table for discussion, resulting in a consistent decision among the delegates.

“The British Columbian Federation of Labour endorses the rise of the minimum wage to $12 per hour from $10.25 because we are trying to

close the gap between the minimum wage, and the living wage,” says Jim Chorostecki, Executive Director of the British Columbian Federation of Labour. “For example, the living wage in Vancouver is closer to around $18/hour. In other words that’s what’s deemed what it would take for the average person, or the average family, to survive.” Chorostecki believes that the endorsement came from the delegates recognizing that the minimum wage in this province does not reflect what it costs to live here, nor does it provide British Columbians with what they need to survive.

The BC Federation of Labour, along with officially endorsing the further raising of the minimum wage in B.C., has pledged to create an independent body that annually reviews the minimum wage system. “When the British Columbian government finally decided to move the minimum wage higher they promised to implement some sort of annual review process; so far they have done absolutely nothing towards that. So, along with voting to move the minimum wage to $12 an hour, we also voted to put in place a regulated review of the minimum wage system,”

says Chorostecki.

Although most would agree that a raise in the minimum wage in the province is much deserved and necessary with the high cost of living here, not all were happy with the delegates’ decision.

The British Columbia Federation of Labour faces sustained criticism for its position on raising the minimum wage from, among others, the Centre For Independent Businesses, a non-profit, nongovernment organization that represents thousands of independent businesses throughout B.C. and Canada. In a 2011, 26-page report, while attempting to quantify the effects of raising the minimum wage, the CFIB detailed the potential dangers of raising the minimum wage, issuing this public statement: “CFIB estimates that a 10 per cent increase in the minimum wage across all provinces costs between 92,300 and 321,300 jobs. These job losses can take the form of hiring freezes, slower employment growth, or direct job cuts during economic downturns. Not only minimum wage earners are affected by these job losses, but also those workers earning more than the minimum wage.” However, Chorostecki refutes the claim that raising the minimum wage hurts businesses, and Canadians alike. “I have heard this argument throughout the entire campaign, but in reality, businesses need to plan to pay fair wages. Businesses have to provide services, while also ensuring that people are getting fair wages, otherwise why are they running a business? It seems counter intuitive that the only way you can run a profitable business is by pushing down the wages of your workers, that doesn’t seem to me, or by many people, a logical thing to do.” Moreover, says Chorostecki, “The fact is that raising the

minimum wage hasn’t forced businesses to go out of business, it hasn’t forced the collapse of small business, it hasn’t been the link that is the major breakdown.” In further response to common criticism that raising minimum wage hurts the economy Chorostecki states,“You have to look at the other side of it, if people don’t make good wages, how are they going to buy whatever product your small business is producing? It’s a vicious cycle, and I understand the viciousness of the cycle, but you can’t do it by keeping down the people on the lower end of the wage system.”

Chorostecki explains that the British Columbian Federation of Labour’s position on the rise of minimum wage as one of common sense, and common good. “I don’t think anyone else in society would agree that it’s reasonable that someone’s wages are frozen for a 10-year period, because the reality is that our costs in society aren’t frozen for a 10-year period. When we talk to small businesses, they agree with us that their success depends on a vibrant economy, and that decent wages are an important part of a vibrant economy.”

The British Columbian Federation of Labour operates under the idea that increasing the minimum wage is one part in the larger, even more complex, umbrella that is poverty reduction, according to Chorostecki. “The endorsement of this raise in minimum wage is another step in creating the economic equality that so often eludes us.”

×× peter pawloski

anti-bullying website LAUNCHED website allows for anonymous reporting of bullies Vanessa Hawk × The Martlet (University of Victoria)

× News Editor

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The Board of Directors for the Capilano Students’ Union held a meeting on Dec. 5, at which many items were discussed. The Educational Issues committee is working with Capilano University’s president, Kris Bulcroft, on bringing an open dialogue event to Capilano. Inspired by an Ashoka Changemakers workshop that was attended by both Bulcroft and CSU representatives earlier in 2012, the open dialogue aims at creating conversation and sharing ideas between students and instructors from different faculties at the university.

The Stu de nts with Disabil itie s’ representative Sean Stewart announced that he will be supporting and running the campaign “Let’s Call Bullshit” at Capilano University from December 2012 to October 2013. The campaign is designed to get people to rethink the way they talk about, act towards and support mental health. Stewart plans on advertising on campus for the cause, collecting signatures and educating students on the importance of the campaign.

Aside from committee news, a new student club was approved by the Board of Directors called “Defend the Coast CapU.” The purpose of their club is to engage both students and faculty at Capilano, in regards to the pipeline and tanker controversies that are currently taking place in British Columbia. They are planning to hold a referendum where students and faculty will vote on the tanker issue in B.C., and hope to have Capilano University officially declare itself as being against tankers on the coast.

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having a team at each school made up of students, teachers, parents and community members who assessed their school’s particular needs and developed their own violence prevention program.

“I think that one coordinator per district isn’t enough. When we did our program, which worked very well, we had a team in each school because each school is a culture unto itself. And with that vast age range, K through 12, there are really important development differences in elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.”

Artz also highlighted the importance of regularly evaluating anti-bullying programs and changing them as they go – a strategy both McRae and staff at the Ministry of Education incorporated into the ERASE Bullying program.

“The ERASE Bullying strategy is a long-term, evolutionary project,” said McRae at the summit.

“If we’re missing the mark and we need to do better, then we can continue to evolve the website and the program to meet the needs of our pretty dynamic and exciting culture.”

The ministry is currently developing community protocols and provincial guidelines while reviewing feedback gathered at the anti-bullying summit. The summit brought together young people, educators and experts to discuss how to deal with bullying online and in schools across the province.

Lindsay Howe

the capilano courier

VICTORIA (CUP) — The launch of the ERASE Bullying website on Nov. 13 is the latest addition to the B.C. government’s 10-point anti-bullying strategy. The website not only provides students, parents and educators with resources and information, but also offers students a place to anonymously report incidents online.

“A lot of times, bullying doesn’t just happen physically in the schoolyard; it happens 24-7,” said Minister of Education Don McRae at the Nov. 13 ERASE summit in Vancouver. “It happens in your home, when you’re online, and then it comes into the school system as well. It’s a really changing environment, and so our strategy needs to evolve with this changing environment.”

The ERASE program – an acronym for Expect Respect And a Safe Education – was announced on June 1 by Premier Christy Clark. The fiveyear training plan for 15,000 educators and community members began in October, and the Ministry of Education held an overview training session for the safe school coordinators for each of B.C.’s 60 school districts. The ministry says training will cover violence threat risk assessment and fostering safe and caring school communities.

The ERASE reporting tool allows students to

report a bullying incident that they witnessed or were involved in, and this information is securely sent to the safe school coordinator in that student’s school district. The safe school coordinator then decides the appropriate action to take or alerts the police if necessary. This system will also help identify bullying trends and hot spots in B.C. The program is the first strategy to combat bullying that is coordinated across the province.

Between 1994 and 2006, at least one in three adolescent students in Canada reported being bullied recently. The consequences of bullying are at the forefront of B.C.’s social conscience after Coquitlam 15-year-old Amanda Todd committed suicide because of cyberbullying.

Sibylle Artz, a professor at UVic’s school of child and youth care, commends the thoroughness of resources on the ERASE website but believes that localized, team-based approaches are most effective in reducing bullying in schools.

“It’s always terrific to have some resource [like the ERASE website] to consult,” said Artz, “but it doesn’t take the place of somebody helping you.

And it can’t take the place of human support and human interaction.”

Artz was involved in a five-year project beginning in 1995 in 22 schools in a lower Vancouver Island school district. The project reduced school-based violence by 40 per cent according to tracked incident reports, vandalism repair costs and surveys. This was achieved by

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Columns

Columns Editor ×

JJ Brewis × E d i t o r @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

GRAHAMMAR

Graham Robertson × Columnist

“Useless” can mean many things

×× susan li

As a grad student in philosophy, I spend a lot of time trying to navigate the myriad issues that arise when human beings have enough time to think about where they stand in life. Art and philosophy are interesting, but what really interests me is how we talk and think about them. So, over here, in this dimly lit corner of the Courier, I'll be discussing topics on our general arts and literary

culture. I'll try to avoid the broad, maddeningly vague cultural diagnoses that assholes like me are so fond of, instead of revelling in the complexities. The best place to probably begin with that is to defend the standard prescription for reflection: education.

The newest hand-wringing topic of the past five years or so— perhaps more—has been the economic uselessness of many college degrees. I don't feel the need to reiterate such worries nor remind you of the statistics. I'm assuming many of you already spend a fair amount of time thinking about this. If you don't, I can guarantee your parents do.

In most countries, particularly the rich ones, this is partially the result of a conflict between the general increase in post-secondary education and the broken economic model in which we have the misfortune to inhabit. Enrolment has been rising steadily—now roughly one quarter of all young Canadians go to university, up from 15 per cent in the '80s—but there aren't as many straightforward opportunities to accommodate these numbers. In short, to open many doors, you need a degree. But beyond certain majors, that degree in of itself isn't actually much good in economic terms. Given the time sink and substantial debt—be thankful we don't live in the States—I'm unsurprised certain pundits are going so far as to say that college isn't a good investment.

It can be hard to refute them with the bare reality of prospect hanging over one's head. There's little to look forward to for those saddled with knowledge of sociology, theoretical physics or medieval literature. The future is bleak, gentle readers.

But here I am harping on the difficulties when I said I wouldn't. What I want to say is that I still believe, quite firmly, that a post-secondary education is valuable despite how useless it may turn out to be. Not for the usual reasons: the age old promise of the liberal arts is that you will gain the ability to think clearly, write persuasively and argue coherently—necessary skills for a wide range of careers.

This might happen, though there a few studies such as the notorious critical thinking evaluation which occurred at SFU—not a scientific consensus yet—which raise the troubling point that this is by no means certain. Having spent some time in the black hole of despair that is marking university essays, my slice of anecdotal evidence supports the scepticism. So you might not actually gain any economic or practical benefit. It occasionally feels like my degree only taught me about getting stressed and cutting corners, which isn't worth the debt.

Still, college is pretty awesome, as loafing around is pretty fantastic. I don't know about you, but I'm not an adult. I like having some time to start bands and take drugs in the company of other people who are also trying to figure themselves out. More importantly, however, college provides us with the opportunity to read difficult books solely because we find them interesting. That's huge. The true value of a useless education is developing interests. Real ones.

Memorizing the various muscle groups of a dog is hard, but that’s what makes it great. Starting to love that hunk of meat called your brain is what you’re paying for, not what actually goes in it.

SATURDAY NIGHT LOVE

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Bill Hader tries a different type of stand up

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If you were to meet me in the corner of a house party, the first thing you would notice is that I subtly try to inject an anecdote about Saturday Night Live into every conversation. I absolutely adore Saturday Night Live, and it may just be my view, but an SNL anecdote or piece of trivia increases the relevance of any conversation or topic.

In no way is this more obvious than looking through my address book in my phone. I have “alter-egoed” every guy that I have met in the last year, and have put them in my phone under an SNL alias. As an example, my editor at this paper, Mr. JJ Brewis, is in my phone as Lorne Michaels because he is the boss of that show. My last potential solid love interest went in under the pseudonym of Taran Killam, because he is my new favourite cast member.

I have never been more embarrassed by this as when I had to get my phone replaced, and the nice salesman at the store offered to switch over my contacts.

“Wow,” he exclaimed, pressing buttons on my dying iPhone, “You know Bill Hader? He is really talented at accents.”

“Bill Hader” was actually a guy I had gone on

two glorious dates with and was the last person to text me the morning my old phone kicked the can.

I didn’t have the nerve to explain my odd tendency to the phone salesman, so I meekly fibbed about my aunt being a writer on the show, and asked him to hurry up.

To outsiders hearing about me “casting” guys I meet as SNL cast members and alumni, I know it sounds stupid. I sound like some sad, 26-yearold who probably had some gnarly fixation with the Backstreet Boys in my teen years that has now progressed into a full-blown late night comedy obsession. But to my friends who have to listen to me drone on about some strange piece of SNL trivia that has no relevance to their life, they know how happy it makes me. It’s just so much cooler to think that “Bill Hader” texted me than Joe Blow, or whatever common name his parents gave him.

(This method has only backfired once, where I forgot the guy’s name, and proceeded to call him “Tracy Morgan” for a week.)

Over the Christmas break, I was whining on about a guy I went on a date with to my friend Jenny. Throughout my entire symposium, I didn’t use the guy’s real name once, but referred to him as “Will Ferrell.”

“Listen to you,” she said, after I had finished, and was checking my phone to see if Will Ferrell had texted me. “You’re stupidly obsessed.

You talk about this guy almost like he is Will Ferrell, and then you get intimidated by him because you glorify him like that. This totally affects your relationship.”

“No it doesn’t,” I snapped back, “It’s just a fun thing I do to be cute.”

“It definitely does. Personifying everyone as an SNL cast member plays with your emotions and you invest more into it,” she said. “And this is why it hurts you more when it doesn’t work out.

You think that SNL hates you. Remember what your ‘Bill Hader’ did, and how long it took you to get over that? It wasn’t actually ‘Bill Hader’ that dumped you.”

Admittedly, she had a solid point. After the two glorious dates with “Bill Hader,” he stood me up for the next girl, and I haven’t seen his name splash up on my phone since. Although I will never be able to prove it, my theory is that he discovered what his fake name was, and thought himself to be more of an “Andy Samberg” than a “Bill Hader.”

I was devastated, leading to wild dreams that featured the real Bill Hader in them. And, worst of

I worry that my future professional experiences, whatever those happen to be, will be boring. I think that's because, having worked in office environments, I can say what makes them so frustrating—besides the people who are as good at faking enthusiasm as I am at failing to do so—is that filling out expense reports isn't challenging.

Some activities are fun precisely because they're hard, especially if the reward is becoming smarter and more well-rounded. Even if we all end up in incredibly fulfilling jobs, there is going to be a lot of boring bullshit between nine and five. But I for one don't see the point of seeking out boring bullshit after the clock stops.

A degree in art history won’t necessarily get you a job. But it will allow you to attend art galleries.

Astronomy may give you the peace of gazing at the stars every night, even if your days are spent managing a Denny’s—though I don't want to say anything bad about the Grand Slam.

Like I said, the future is bleak. But your job can wait because the important part of your future is discovering what sort of person you want to be, which can start looking better every day.

Finding the subject that fires up your brain will go a long way towards your happiness, as once you understand how to learn and start to enjoy it, there aren’t enough books, bands, museums and PBS specials to stop you. Holding onto your education is important: it’s the only thing that’ll free you from the tyranny of economy, even just for the weekends.

Graham Robertson is a graduate student at SFU who writes about issues in the arts and literary culture.

You can follow him on Twitter @onehandhighfive, but it's pretty obvious he has no idea what he's doing.

Leah Scheitel × Columnist all, it almost tainted my admiration for the actual one. He is talented at accents, and I want to appreciate that without thinking of the time some guy stood me up every time I hear his name.

My conversation with Jenny stuck with me. So in honour of the New Year, and the resolutions and goals we aim to achieve, I will aspire not to put any guy on a pedestal, no matter what his name is, or his alter ego name is. On New Year’s Day, I went through my phone, and deleted the fake names of the guys that I will never talk to again. But, like most resolutions this one may not stick, and I will just recycle the name again. It is one hell of a thrill to see Bill Hader’s name in my texts, and it’s one that I want to keep – even if it means I have to endure a little more emotional turmoil to do so.

Leah Scheitel lives her own life like a sketch comedy. In this column, she will explore the stories and anecdotes of her love life and their correlation to her favourite late night comedy show. Her selfdeprecating wit and candid nature make her our very own Kristen Wiig. And we’re pretty okay with that.

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Growing Pains

Robert Catherall

Much Ado About Housing “Bright, cute, recently reno'd basement suite for rent – $950 (Marpole)” No smoking, no pets, no parties, no visitors, no coming home after 10 p.m. because it triggers the security lights. The “suite” is outfitted with a hot plate, bar fridge, and, to avoid scoliosis, you must shower on your knees. Quiet female student only.

Many of us have accepted this fate. Few stick it out for long.

I met my landlord, an unintrusive Brit that smelled of wet dog and afternoon Scotch, early last spring. I liked his uncomplicated nature and he liked that I had a steady job.

A rusty fence hangs waist-high between two cement walls before opening to a yellow Victorian boarding house with brown trim. All I can think of is French mustard. Inside, a meandering staircase with no discernible landing leads to a small common space, before an avocado green, and otherwise completely ordinary, kitchen with a dilapidated balcony attached. From it I can see a big backyard with a mouldy MG parked in it, whose plates indicate it hasn't been insured since 2008.

“We'll have the place refinished after you move in,” he assured me.

The remainder is host to a bathroom cloaked in black mould, an adjoining W.C., two rooms, and an office (so, three bedrooms by Craigslist standards). I haven't had roommates in over two years, and at 26 it seems like a step backwards. But the price is right.

For years, both tyrannical basement suites and rotten old Victorian rentals have left me to wonder, “Why is there a lack of reasonable housing in this city?” I'm not breaking any new ground by raising these issues, I know. But with a city layout that clings to out-dated colonial housing, spattered with monotonous high-rises, why have we not found a functional solution to the persistent demand for affordable, high density housing?

Vancouver is the only metropolitan area of its size in Western Canada. The next comparable city, Toronto, is almost 4500km away – over twice that of San Francisco or Los Angeles. This proximity often makes Vancouver a late adopter.

But for many here it's not as simple as saying, “If you don't like it, leave.” Common sense presses citizens to pursue community rather than alienation (the latter being notoriously rampant in Vancouver). A municipal government has equal responsibility for cultivating culture and well-being as it does for balancing budgets. Although, profits seem to trump practicality in our city.

Public policy, however, does not overcome perseverance. Especially that of the late Art Cowie, a housing advocate and former politician who began exploring the potential of fee simple row housing (i.e. non-strata town housing) in 2002. With the aid of architectural designers Otto Lejeune and Thomas Frauenberger, Cowie managed to nestle three freehold row houses at the corner of Cambie & 33rd, free of common areas, stratas, or shared utilities. Completed in 2010, each of the three story units boasts a front and back yard and a two car garage with a detached studio suite above. Three independent units comfortably lie where a lone single family home once would have.

But it seems we are not a sensible bunch in Vancouver. Nearly three years later, these remain the only non-strata row houses within city limits.

Homebuyers have been hesitant to embrace the unfamiliar housing, expressing concern over the lack of natural light (yes, in a city that made the top 10 in Environment Canada's “Cloudiest skies year-round” report), personal green space, and an obscured view. Of course, the usual privacy concerns have arisen as well.

Such excuses seem dated. They are synonymous with phrases like “It's always been like this,” or “I'm too old to change,” otherwise known as “conservatism.” Apparently we all still pretend we live in the wilderness and wince at the thought of having to greet each other with a harmless “Good

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morning.” And while row houses are being built in the suburbs – mainly Surrey – it still doesn't address the question of why Vancouver itself is so adamantly opposed to housing reform in the city centre.

The closest thing to row housing that currently exists in Vancouver are strata-controlled town house complexes that cater to strata council requests. These requests often serve the lowest common denominator, which inevitably leads to the death of residential personality.

“But what about the basement suite that currently subsidizes my mortgage payments?” they will ask.

Well, in Cowie's model the separate address and independent utilities make the well-lit studio apartments a fair and dignified alternative.

As a renter, you can say goodbye to overpriced utility fees and no longer have to ashamedly scribble “Basement Suite” as a unit number.

This reality may not be far away. On Oct. 3, 2012 the Vancouver City Council passed a number of recommendations made by the Mayor's Task Force on Affordable Housing, one of them being to thin the streets of some neighbourhoods to make room for additional housing.

Another is to update some residential zoning districts to a l l ow for r ow houses near major arterial roads, such as Cambie and Main St. It is not explicit whether the row houses will be freehold or

AN APPLE A DAY Willpower: a six billion dollar industry

Christine Bissonnette × Columnist

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such a simple math equation. Literally anyone can lose weight.

You don't need to purchase a membership to one of these programs. Just get a free membership to one of the calorie counting sites (like Myfitnesspal.com or Caloriecounter.com) and start recording what you're putting in your mouth.

If you want information on nutrition and exercise, there are many free websites that will provide you with the latest information on these topics. You don't have to spend money on a program to lose weight. If you can't do it on your own, purchasing a program is not going to help you. It's up to you to make a conscious and firm decision that you're ready to make a change in your life, and then to go through with it. Willpower can’t be bought.

If after all this you're still feeling discouraged by the slow rate in which the weight is coming off, think of the bigger number. You didn't “just” lose three pounds, you created a deficit of 10,500 calories. Willpower can't be purchased, but by choosing to look at the world a little differently, you can cultivate it within yourself.

Christine Bissonnette is Maritime-bred actress, writer, and health enthusiast. As a P90X graduate and author of wellness blog The-positivity-project.com, she is constantly looking for new ways to test herself, and challenges you to do the same.

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The dictionary defines “diet” as “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.” It's about a lifestyle change that is permanent. It's all about choosing whole foods that will keep you fuller longer. It's about practicing mindful eating habits, and not plopping a handful of chips into your mouth simply because you're bored. You could do all of this yourself, but people purchase a membership to programs like Weight Watchers because they are on a quest not to lose weight, but for a false sense of comfort. The negative correlation between the amount of money being spent on weight loss programs, and the amount of weight actually being lost, proves that people are purchasing these programs only to support their illusion that they are doing something, even if they aren't.

I'll bet that when I said calorie, a few of you flinched. For some reason, the word “calorie” has become a bad word. I put a post up on my Facebook wall asking people to say the first word that came to mind when they think of “calorie.” I got quite a few responses including: fat, eggnog, a treat, yum and food. Only a few people put what a calorie really is: energy. There are good sources of energy, and there are bad ones. Ultimately, you gain weight when you eat more units of energy then you're burning. Calories are not something to be afraid of; you should actually feel encouraged that weight-loss can be achieved through

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to know how: they want quick results, they want willpower.

The root of the problem is that losing weight takes time. It also takes discipline. You have to create a deficit of 3,500 calories in order to lose one pound. By creating a caloric deficit of 500 calories a day, you're only looking at losing one pound a week. In a culture that is fuelled by immediate gratification and hedonism (a new word I learned today which refers to a person who is motivated by a pursuit of pleasure, “especially the pleasure of the senses”), a weight loss of four pounds a month in exchange for exercising at least three days a week, and the elimination of your favourite chocolate covered snack hardly seems like a fair bargain, but that's how you do it. Any weight-loss program is going to tell you the same thing, while charging you for this “secret tip.”

Anything worth having takes work, and weight-loss is no exception to this rule. These weight loss programs do not eliminate the self-control and habit-forming work that falls on your shoulders. Weight Watchers “delivers a science-based, lifestyle modification program based on four pillars – diet, physical activity, positive thinking skills and a community of support.” There is no secret here. They're not trying to hide anything either: this quote is directly from their website. In the context of this quote, diet doesn't mean short-term starvation/restrictions.

Having seen some of the world's greatest (and worst) cities, Robert believes Vancouver can become the former. However, it will not happen without some growing pains. Through his writing he intends to show that development can have a positive social effect, but only if we are willing.

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There is no secret to losing weight: it can all be solved with a simple math equation; however, as many steer further and further away from their goal weight, I can understand the hopelessness associated with losing those excess pounds. We associate who we are with our physical form.

Changing one means changing the other.

According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, 60 per cent of Canadians are overweight or obese.

With this in mind, as a whole we need to grasp the bigger picture at hand before we can lose any weight at all.

If this number doesn't scare you, it should.

Obesity rates in Canada have doubled over the past 30 years. Tripled for individuals aged 20-39. So, what's this “simple math equation” then?

Every weight-loss program, if you dig through all the meaningless words, promises, and secret fat-melting foods, depends on one thing: that you create a calorie deficit by counting calories.

This information is very accessible to the public.

Still, weight-loss programs like Atkins, Weight Watchers, and fad celebrity inspired diets like “The Baby Food Diet” are on the rise in Canada, raking in an astounding six billion every year. Every four out of 10 Canadians are spending money on losing weight. Despite the significant profits of this industry, the results don't correlate. These programs provide information on “how” to lose weight, but Canadian consumers don't want

strata, however.

This will not happen without public outcry, I'm sure. To them I will respond: A critical housing mass has been reached. It's time we learn to share, or stop growing. Do you really need the backyard and the view? Is the previous solution, to sporadically build prohibitively expensive high rises marketed towards “young professionals,” a lasting one?

Who knows, maybe forcing ourselves closer to each other will help our city's notoriously lonely inhabitants become accustomed to a neighbourly wave and a higher tolerance for the cultural differences Vancouver so prides itself on.

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Columns

Columns Editor ×

JJ Brewis × E d i t o r @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

Cheapskate

Marco Ferreira × Columnist

Be Sexy; Spend Less the honey as popular cereal bees.

It's easy to remember getting hyped into fervor as children during the holidays for the new Battle-toads Galactica, or pink Just4Gurls Lego or whatever it was in that year. Adults let children know they love them by buying them lots of crap year-round, and then buying them more of it on Christmas and their birthdays. Most of us never grow out of that feeling of validation through consumption.

A 2012 study conducted by Marketingvox showed that “Total U.S. teen spending (products bought by and for teens) was annually $208.7 billion.” Companies recognize that teenagers are a huge market and advertise to them proportionately. Teenagers also often start their first jobs (or receive copies of their parents credit cards), which adds to their disposable income. Without a mortgage, babies or other life expenses, they are free to spend all their money on non-essential items.

Companies are also trying to build brand loyalty in teenagers, which further increases the intensity of the advertisements that are directed at them.

“Young consumers (aged 18-34) in particular seem to believe that they have wasted lots of money on things they don’t really need, with 52 per cent feeling this way,” reads a survey by Euro RSCG Worldwide conducted in 2012. As children age, their commercial interests shift from toys and candy, to more mature products such as video

People who participate less in consumer culture are often called cheap, stingy, frugal or a handful of other unappealing names. The less you consume, the more subversive to you appear. A homeless or destitute person would stand out in a shopping mall because their non-participation in consumer culture is clearly visible via their personal appearance.

Most people do not want to live as fringe members of society, preferring to identify with people who appear comfortable. The ideal lifestyle, however, is that of extreme privilege, and it is easy to overspend in an effort to attain that image. We start to live a lifestyle not actually available to many of us.

Consumerism is what we teach best as a society, and it shows. As reported in the Guardian in 2001, the European Union published a survey on addictive spending, which found that 33 per cent of consumers displayed a “high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption.”

Advertisers competing for the money of parents go directly to the source by targeting children.

There are broadcasting restrictions in Canada in regards to advertising to people under 12, but they aren't very restrictive anywhere except for Quebec, where it is prohibited outright. These restrictions are not a very big deal though, as marketing is transitioning to the Internet where kids can play video games where they race cookies and defend

games, music, fashion and electronics. As young consumers we are taught to identify with what we buy and where we shop. The regret of wasting our money comes when we have been tricked by advertising, or we realize we aren't being responsible consumers.

Clothing is an obvious example of something that carries a perceived social identity. You wear certain clothes because you identify with people who wear the same clothes. Because trends are always evolving, this encourages us to update our wardrobe every season, sometimes before last year's clothes have even worn out. Many young people’s wardrobes begin to balloon to astronomical size, becoming unmanageable and impractical.

It isn't only young fashionistas who are encouraged to over-consume, though. Sports brands are very good at making their clothing synonymous with an athletic lifestyle. Most cyclists don't need Lycra body suits to ride to the office, and joggers don't need special sweat-wicking shirts to train.

The superficial image of a successful athlete can be bought by anybody, allowing people to instantly feel as though they are living a healthier lifestyle, while in reality fitness has little to do with wearing the right stretchy pants.

A more responsible consumer approach to shopping for clothing would be to buy clothes only when they need to be replaced. Sticking to the staples you need will help you better manage

your finances. You can also easily purchase quality clothing staples second-hand, from Value Village or Salvation Army, rather than a vintage store, and stay mindful of the rest of your wardrobe so that you can still maintain cohesiveness, despite the minimalist approach. If you want to go the extra mile, rely on hand-me-downs from friends.

By not buying new clothes you aren't doomed to live without a fashion identity – in fact, your expression may become more genuine. Your appearance no longer relies on what stores are currently selling; you can break free of the mold you have put yourself in. Although it may seem like you are losing your established identity as you consume differently, you can learn to truly value the clothes you already have, and perhaps value yourself more in the process.

Marco is a long-time contributor to the Capilano Courier, previously as both the Humour Editor and Opinions Editor. In this column he will be going over ways in which to save money, challenge societal norms and live more simply, with the goal of improving our quality of life. His sense of humour has a tendency to wear out his opinion, but don't let that dissuade you from following any of his life advice. Marco is currently living frugally in Sydney, Australia.

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did it multiple times per day.

Do it your way.

www.truopen.ca/yourway www.capilanocourier.com MC117213

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Enrol anytime, study where and when you want and transfer credits back to your on-campus program.

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NEW YEAR'S RETRIBUTIONS A Cheetah’s guide to rebirth Shannon Cheetah Elliott × Web Editor If 2012 was a boyfriend, he would be the boyfriend who only texted you after 2 a.m., drank all your beer, hit on your mom and pooped at your house. To paraphrase: 2012 was a terrible year for me, and I have nobody to blame but myself.

I'm not sure when I realized that it would be the year of the downward spiral for me. Maybe it was after I had to postpone my plans to move out of my parents' basement due to my abysmal credit card debt. Maybe it was when I found out that two of my ex-boyfriends were going to jail and I realized I have horrible taste in everything.

Maybe it's when I started getting really into dubstep.

Either way, I'm looking forward to 2013 with a feeling of overwhelming relief and some pretty solid New Year’s resolutions. And just for the sake of keeping to my word, I’m here to run you through my list of how I’m going to get through this next year.

I WILL DATE MEN OF QUALITY Classy ladies don’t go out with people who live on bare mattresses on the floor of their buddy’s living room. Come on! Have some standards. This year I think I can date up to the level of Used Car Salesman at least. Anyone have a cousin in dental school they’d like to set me up with? No? It’s fine.

I’m probably too good for all of you slobs anyway.* *The author was later found dead in her apartment, smothered by cats.

I WILL GIVE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY I’ll be the first to admit, I’m the horrible cliché combination of privilege and apathy that stems from an excess of liberal education. No more will I feel the flood of shame when the Sarah McLachlan animal abuse commercial comes on television. Instead, I will immediately dial the number on the screen and throw her a bunch of money. Maybe it’ll mean she’ll stop singing?

Maybe I’ll even volunteer at a soup kitchen. Screw that, I’ll go Katy Perry, and join the Peace Corps. I will finally know what it is to feel the overwhelming smugness of the true liberal.

I WILL STOP SAYING YOLO This one is going to be the hardest.

I WILL FOLLOW A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE I will be in bed every night at a sensible hour, actually use my gym membership and start eating like an adult. Unfortunately, this new regimen will only apply to weekdays because my ulterior motive for being healthier is that it will enable me to party 300 per cent harder on the weekends.

There's a reason that the last people on the dance floor are always swole douchebags and yoga divas who consume only kale. They're the only people with any physical stamina, and after they shut down the club, they’ll probably be up again for a 5K run in the morning, following some athletic sex. Meanwhile, we weaklings of the world have long since crawled back to bed with only a slice of Uncle Fatih’s for company.

I WILL BE FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE

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The last time I checked, I had thirty pairs of shoes to choose from, but no food in my cupboards. I know that my hierarchy of needs is pretty self-indulgent so I really need to start thinking about how I distribute my wealth. In order to ensure that my coin is delegated where I want it to be, I’ve made a handy list. Things I should waste money on in order from most to least necessary: top shelf alcohol, bottom shelf alcohol, high quality fast food, shoes, low quality fast food, rent, groceries, and scratch-and-wins.

Seriously, you guys, with this plan I’ll be Set for Life in no time.

I WILL IMPROVE MY TASTE

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A grown woman probably shouldn’t have posters of Justin Bieber in her room, think that bagel bites make a nice addition to dinner parties, and still make room for South Park references in general conversation. This year I’m going to finally catch up on all the Sufjan Stevens b-sides, shop at farmer’s markets, and watch every episode of Boardwalk Empire so I can actually have a real conversation with all of you snobs. I will be sure to mask all of my Nicki Minaj/Bieber duets in iTunes as rare unearthed Sonic Youth demos. This way I can save face when people peruse my music library, and save a little slice of top 40 heaven for moments of bagel bite-level desperation.

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arts

arts Editor ×

Celina kurz × a r t s @ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

THE ART OF THE PARTY Electronic dance music for the masses JJ Brewis × Editor-in-Chief

because I do 200 shows a year, and I know how passionate the fans are about it here as well – so I think it's important to offer that kind of programming in the city.”

Now that Vancouver’s had a taste of the European-style big league EDM festivals, Prol believes we may be ready for more large-scale EDM shows, putting the genre on par locally with standard pop or rock concerts. “It's about doing something that hasn't been done and continuing to push the city forward, and again for some international recognition,” he says.

BC Place won’t be the only location you can catch EDM shows in the city. For Blueprint, Prol says, working on every level will keep the talent rising. Prol and Blueprint have worked with Deadmau5 over 15 times, and brought Skrillex to Vancouver in a tiny show at UBC last January. Both artists now sell out 20,000+ seat venues around the world. “Every artist has to start somewhere. It's important to do the club-level events because that's where you find all of those guys that played our clubs before they moved up to arenas or convention centres with us,” he says. “It's very important to stay connected to the underground, and to be able to move things up. It’s important to offer your artists a small plain where he can get introduced to the market, to grow with him as an act, and getting him to the big-scale events.”

For Prol, the influx of dance music in our culture is something he’s glad other people have warmed up to. “The vibe you can create going to

the right kind of party with this kind of music is something that no other kind of music has done for me.”

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The hallowed grounds of BC Place tried on a different costume this past Boxing Day. Gone were the elbow pads and helmets of the venue’s sporting events. Enter neon tribal makeup, a nonstop parade of LED lights, a crowd of 10,000 plus people – not your average music experience. For those in attendance for Contact, Western Canada’s largest EDM (electronic dance music) festival, it was quite clear that the genre has indeed made it to the big time, and is more than the flash in the pan that some critics saw it as.

Boasting dance stars like Nero and Alesso, as well as arguably the biggest name in dance music today, Deadmau5, Contact filled BC Place to the brim on Boxing Day. The draw for an electronic music show, particularly one of this magnitude, is the fact that it’s a far cry from the typical stadium music fare due to its more inclusive and social element, says Alvaro Prol, founder and talent buyer of Contact’s promoter, Blueprint Events.

“The experience is different from rock concerts,” Prol says. “When it comes to dance music, people come and it's a party from the beginning. A rock concert is a little more formulated where the lights are on and there may be an opening act. and then the show happens. Dance parties like this are more about the whole experience from start to end, where it's

more about dancing the whole time and having different genres, DJs and artists playing through the whole event.”

The world of EDM is still a relatively new phenomenon to mainstream North American culture. Stars like Deadmau5, Skrillex, David Guetta and others have given the genre some mass appeal, and Prol hopes the recent splash will encourage Vancouver to host more high-profile events similar to the large-scale European dance festivals that have been happening for years.

“People in North America … are starting to realize what a good experience an awesome concert like this can be. They're more exposed to it than they used to be, and there's more of an open mind to it now. “ Contact took nearly a year to plan, and the result of the success does great things not only for Blueprint as a promoter, but also for the EDM scene as a whole. Having an artist like Deadmau5 to headline BC Place is a huge milestone for dance music (BC Place has only held a handful of music concerts in the last half-decade, seeing only career artists like Paul McCartney and Madonna among the select few). “In North America, people have been waking up to it recently but in Europe, electronic festivals are a part of daily business in a lot of cities all over the world,” Prol says. “There's no reason for [Vancouver] to not be a viable market, because we are. I just want to make sure we have these events of our own [in Vancouver] because I believe people here want to have them, and the people who live here love dance music. I know that

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SNAG, YOU'RE IT You could win at weekly art raffle event Celina Kurz × Arts Editor “It’s a hipster bar now; me and my friends I guess by definition are cool people.” Andrew Young, art alias Drew Young, is referring to the Cobalt, where he has, since October, been hosting a mostly-weekly art raffle event called Snag. Young is a graduate of Capilano's IDEA program, and is changing how some people experience art.

Snag began as a way to fill in some empty weekday slots at the Cobalt, to justify keeping the bar open. “I brainstormed the idea with my boss Patrick Drodes who … is one of the owners of the Cobalt,” Young explains. “Wednesdays are a hard day to fill, nobody wants to go out, especially to the bar. I've done some art events there in the past and [Drodes] said, ‘Why don’t you do an art thing?’”

The event itself is fairly simple in formula: every Wednesday night, four artists do live painting, and raffle tickets are sold – one for $5, three for $10, and 10 for $20, accompanied by tunes provided by local DJ Bikes. Young is also trying to feature other forms of live entertainment, which has included in the past things such as live music and a burlesque troupe. “We’ve got an open stage so I'm constantly asking people if they have any random skills,” says Young. “Can they blow fire out their ass, can they bend their legs around their head twice? Come down, do your thing, we'll get you drunk!”

At the end of the night, a draw is held and anyone who buys a ticket has a chance at winning one of the four completed artworks. “You go there and anyone can win from just buying a raffle ticket; suddenly you can win, that sort of creates a new buying emotion attached to art that's really exciting and that permanently gets attached to the piece of work,” explains Scott Sueme, Young's studiomate, himself a past participant.

One of the winners was Tatyana Dobrolowski, also a Capilano University alumnus. On top of winning, she was also one of the performers. “I ended up winning a piece by Alison Woodward, who is an amazing painter and tattoo artist ...

Honestly, I would have been happy with any of the paintings because they were all incredible,” she says. “[The artists] were all so different and talented. There were no duds.”

Beyond the excitement of winning, a key aspect of the event is that it makes art ownership accessible to a wider audience. “This formula, the public is only asked to pay $5 to $20,” Young explains. “I’ve heard a thousand times, ‘Oh, I really like your work but I don’t have the money,’ and that’s the case with everybody – this is the only kind of thing where you can walk in with $5 and you can walk out with a $500 painting and that doesn’t happen [anywhere else]. I think anyone wants that, everybody wants artwork.”

Many live painting events exist primarily to offer exposure to new artists exclusively, explains Young, but Snag differentiates itself by also offering a set monetary compensation for all the artists involved. “There’s a lot of events out there that, people in my position would say, it’s good for visibility and getting exposure and that sort of thing,” he says. “This is definitely that, but it also gives financial homage to the artists who are participating.”

So far, the event has seen relative success. “The attendance has been anywhere from...as low as 40, but it’s been as high as 120,” says Young. “The real beauty about the event is I ask for different artists every week … and I make sure there isn't overlapping, as far as the crowds they’re gonna get,” he ×× Johnathan Dy explains. “So I might get more of a fine artist, then I’ll have a commercial illustrator, and I might have an animation guy and I might get a tattoo artist.”

This flexibility offers opportunities for infinite expansion. “That’s the way that it keeps growing, because it’s always new people, new circles, and every time one of these things happens I meet someone that I haven’t met from one of their crews, and it keeps me kind of expanding on new artists and finding people for it.”

The event also offers an alternative for experiencing art outside of a gallery setting: “It’s a different atmosphere: it’s less stark white walls and bright lights, it’s a little more inviting and less intimidating,” he says. “It’s in a bar, and everyone’s chatty, and you’re welcome to talk to anyone, and you're not going to get cold shouldered by anyone, and it’s just a different vibe in there.”

As far as the future goes, “We’re just gonna carry through ‘til it’s a major success or it, I dunno, dries up and falls apart.”

Chief Keef - Finally Rich (Deluxe Edition)

By Giles Roy, Managing Editor

ALL THE LITTLE LIGHTS - Passenger

By Samantha Thompson, Copy Editor

It’s not often you can call an album both a throwback and progressive, but Tyler James has managed just that. And like his late best friend and former collaborator Amy Winehouse, James has no problem pairing classic elements with his own spin on current sounds. The disc reads like an old set of ballads that have been revisited by a young rebel rouser, with James tying together a few unorthodox pairings: On “Baby Don’t Care”, his spot-on falsetto soars over the cluster of urban beats; on his cover of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love”, he swaps out the ‘80s synths for a classy stripped-down piano vibe, giving it an entirely new tone. Much of the production and instrumentation subscribes to a minimalist approach, but James’ voice is capable of doing the heavy lifting here.

No point letting that other stuff cloud up the rest of the picture.

Is Chief Keef bad? This is something I wrestle with every time I bump his album, which seems to happen with shocking frequency.

The brainless style of incredible-sounding slogan-centric anti-rap passed down from Young Jeezy to Rick Ross to Waka Flocka has been perfected on Finally Rich, which is a genuine feat. In fact, I’m pretty sure this managed to be the best album of 2012 simply by sidestepping any of the requirements that might normally entail such an achievement. You could take issue with the number of thought-provoking songs here (none) or the amount of effort it took to make it (very little) but there’s seriously no point. In fact, there’s no point to anything. Why are we alive, even?

Folk-indie heartthrob Passenger had a milestone year in 2012.

He started with a high profile opening act for fellow Brit Ed Sheeran, launching his own career across the pond in North America.

Returning less than two months later on his own solo tour, he was selling out theatres from coast to coast. The year 2012 also marked the release of his fifth album, All the Little Lights, which was selected as iTunes UK’s singer/songwriter album of the year. A perfect blend of slower songs with emotive lyrics, like “Let Her Go” and “Life’s for the Living”, to the upbeat anthems of “I Hate” and “Holes”, All the Little Lights is filled with melodies that are the perfect accompaniment for every emotion of Passenger’s diverse fan base. It was not too long ago that Passenger was busking on the streets of various countries, and this release is the solid reminder that with a little perseverance, each of us can accomplish what we’ve set out to do.

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TYLER JAMES - A Place I Go

By JJ Brewis, Editor-in-Chief

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MY BARBER BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO THE SHOP And they’re like, “I want my hair chopped” Connor Thorpe

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“Barber shops went through a major lull in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when men started to groovily grow out their hair,” says Judah Down of JD’s Barbershop. “In the ‘80s, men started really embracing hairspray and hair salons. The old school barber shops were really feeling the dip in business and started to close down one by one.”

But now, with the advent of revamped barbershops like JD’s, The Dominion and The Belmont, things seem to have come full circle, as another smaller, more recent cultural shift has brought barbershops back into popularity. The renewed interest in barbershops – and the increasing approach to barbery as an art – can be attributed to the adaptation of barbers to a new and rapidly evolving cultural landscape.

The appetite for a more diverse array of hairstyles ran parallel to the cultural awakening in Western society that was facilitated by the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Perhaps as the attitudes towards drugs, sex and rock and roll became more liberal, the attitudes towards propriety in hairstyle followed suit. Down explains that barbershops at that time had been accustomed to a rather narrow focus when it came to their trade, making it difficult to keep up with new trends.

“Part of the problem was that the old guys never evolved and learned how to do anything beyond a classic barber cut – they would only use clippers,” he says. Contributing to the decline was the introduction of cheap, fast and convenient hair salons like Great Clips, Supercuts and the like, as well as the continued innovation and improvement amongst safety razors designed for home use.

Dating back to Ancient Greece, barbershops have filled the role of a cultural forum that caters to – traditionally – the men in a community, in addition to serving their practical purpose.

The gatherings of men at barbershops even produced an entire genre of music – the “barbershop quartet,” referring to an a cappella group of four, comprised of lead, tenor, baritone and bass singers.

Barbershop music sprung from African American barbershops – which play a major part in African American culture. In the essay, “The Barbershop in Black Literature,” Trudier Harris quotes the Grier and Cobbs psychological study Black Rage: “The barbershop is the black man’s way station, point of contact, and universal home. Here he always finds a welcome – a friendly audience as he tells his story and a native to give him the word on local doings.”

This description bears a resemblance to what Rhys Kearns, who frequents barbershops, describes as their primary appeal – asserting that the sense of camaraderie and social stimulation that accompany barbershops are what set them apart from cheaper unisex salons.

“Every time I’m there I just shoot the shit and pick up from where I left off last time,” he says.

Kearns cites the lack of conversation and interaction at a salon as causing discomfort for patrons.

“I think it’s really awkward when you’re getting

your hair cut and you’re not talking. The person is touching your head, and running their hands through your hair, and if you’re not talking to them – it’s sort of a personal thing and I just find it really awkward.”

Down and Kearns agree that a renewed appreciation for the social aspect of barbershops is an integral part of the experience and appeal – though the prospect of a glass of single malt scotch with a cut doesn’t hurt.

“There aren’t many places where guys gather and just do guy things. We have a female clientele, but the barbershop is known as a guys joint,” Down explains. “Another reason has to do with the cyclical nature of getting a haircut. Chances are you’re going to the barbershop every four to six weeks. You get to know the barbers, the other clients. It becomes a place of familiarity and friends. Guys feel comfortable there and so the chin-wagging ensues.”

In the article, “A Man Should Have a Barber” for Esquire, author Tom Chiarella describes the appeal of barbershops further – suggesting that it is an intimate relationship based on trust that bonds a barber and a client.

“It has to do with loyalty. With reliability and respect,” Chiarella wrote. “This stuff exists between a man and the man who cuts his hair – barber, stylist, hair guy, whatever. A man entrusts his barber to tend the facial nethers without comment, with a rhythm both efficient and personal. It becomes a partnership, quiet in particularities, declared with his return business as much as his tip.”

Still, as salons have become cheaper and the tools required for satisfactory home grooming have become readily available, barbershops are forced to offer more than a rewarding re l a t i o n s h i p and good conversation. For Kearns, it is knowing that you’ll walk away with a quality haircut – consistency is key.

“It’s reliable. I can go in there, I know what they’re going to do, I know I’m going to pay the same price every time – it’s consistent,” he explains. Kearns feels that an increased appreciation for hair aesthetics amongst young people makes this consistency invaluable.

“More and more young people especially really care about how they look, self included,” he says.

“We all care about the clothes we buy, the movies we watch, the music we listen to – and after a while you’ve explored all of those things and then it’s like: where do I look to next? Okay, grooming.”

After hairstyles – men’s hair- ×× katie so

styles in particular – became more diverse, the need for barbers to become well-rounded has become evident.

“The barbers that work for me have to know how to cut every kind of hair – men, women, Black, Asian. They also need to know how to do colour and shaves as well [and] these days you need to know how to cut a shag or line up a fade,” Down says, citing his business as an example of a modern barbershop that has embraced a varied skillset for the increasing diversity of hairstyles.

“Your skills have to be top of the line, and you have to be able to satisfy any client that walks in the door. There’s a lot more training involved to keep clients happy – you can’t just know how to do one haircut.”

Despite the litany of options available for those seeking quality grooming, Down maintains that there’s one place for a man specifically to get their hair done right. “Barbering is a very technical art requiring skills that most hair schools don’t teach,”

he says; referring to the fades, hot shaves and other facial hairstyles that barbers must be confident and familiar with. “Hair salons are great for women, but if you want a proper gentleman’s cut, you need to go to a quality barbershop.”

While the barbershop has acted as a cultural forum, a community hub and a place of debate and casual conversation for most of recorded history, it’s the attention to the product that is being revamped by shops like JD’s.

“I think the biggest differences between barbershops of the past and barbershops of now are the quality and variety of the work being done,” Down says. “As far as the barbershop being a man’s place of refuge, a place to hang his hat – that’s going to stay that way for generations to come.”

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Capilano Courier $tory Meeting

join us for story meetings every tuesday at noon in maple 122 (next to the csu)

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SLEEPLESS at CAPILANO Students’ battle to stay well-rested waged with everything from stress to night terrors

Lauren Gargiulo

“I have a really hard time falling asleep,” says Elizabeth Topping, a third-year UBC Medical student.

“There’s just so much to do, that I work myself up.

School, work, deadlines, due dates, there’s always something.”

Sleep, or lack thereof, is an issue that every student has to contend with. Between balancing all the facets of their lives, and the amount of stress that naturally comes with those things, some sleep deprivation can be assumed. For some people however, lack of sleep goes much further than stress-induced insomnia. Night terrors and narcolepsy, a disorder where the brain is unable to regulate sleeping and waking states normally, all compound the average student lack-of-sleep cycle even further.

Lack of sleep not only affects students’ moods, it also affects their work ethic. The majority of students in class at 8:30 a.m. are huddled over coffee and tea, blinking sleepily at their professor, who may be just as tired as they are. “I’ve had professors who have straight up told the class that they hate teaching this early, and that you can’t really retain much information first thing in the morning anyway. Next term all my classes start no later than

A SOCIETAL EPIDEMIC? In 2009, 43.7 per cent of people aged 18 to 25 in Canada reported falling asleep unintentionally during the day either at school, work, or while driving. The ability to sleep keeps your body healthy, as well as your brain. Three consecutive days without sleep, medically speaking, equals insanity, and severe insomniacs have had visits to both the hospital and the mental ward due to severe lack of sleep. “It’s very common for students to have trouble sleeping and develop sleeping disorders,” says Dr. C. Wilson, a family doctor who also works at a local drop in clinic in North Vancouver. “Lack of sleep in students can be from stress, anxiety, hormones – your body is still growing, and so lack of sleep can be age-related sometimes. Chronic

pain can be a cause – it’s a huge one in boys.”

Dr. Wilson adds that sports injuries and even genetic pain can also contribute to sleeping problems.

Stress, in particular, resonates with most university students. “I hang out with friends to just forget about the stress for a bit. But it’s still there. Group projects are the worst for stress, because you’re relying on other people for your mark,” Topping says.

“I get really stressed about school … I can’t sleep when I’m stressed at all, but I’m so tired I can’t really focus on school. It sucks.”

Dr. Wilson explains how the stress and lack of sleep create a feedback loop: “When you can’t sleep it causes your neurotransmitters in your brain to go low. When they go low, they cause more anxiety, which causes more stress, which cause lack of sleep. It’s a cycle. What you have to do is break that cycle.”

While breaking what seems to be a vicious cycle may sound next to impossible, for some it could be as easy as exercising regularly. “Exercise causes your neurotransmitters in your brain to go up. It’s

a fantastic way to relieve stress, and it makes you feel so much better,” Dr. Wilson says. While setting time aside every day for exercise seems like a lot, the benefits could be worth it. Not only does exercise make you tired, it relieves your body of toxins through sweat, which helps lower anxiety levels, and, in turn, lowers stress levels.

For many students though, adding something else to their day – something that takes effort – can seem like more work to stress about. “That’s fantastic that exercise is good for you. I don’t have time,” Topping says. A lot of students get up, spend most of their day attending classes and finding time to eat and study while at school, then go to a parttime job, maybe see a friend for an hour, and finally go home. After doing some more work, 3 a.m. can come quickly, and then class starts in just seven hours. Trying to keep up a daily schedule is difficult and may just add more stress if you set aside two hours for schoolwork, and then take three and then realize you still haven’t gotten to the gym.

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10,” says Topping. “The commute to school is bad enough, so I have to wake up around 5:30-6 a.m. to get to my classroom on time. I don’t have a car and transit isn’t the most reliable thing,” she vents.

Most students know how horrible it is to miss your bus by seconds and be late to school by an hour.

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LIFESTYLE MATTERS Despite the often workload-dependent schedules that students keep, regulated sleep hygiene is vital to people’s ability to get enough rest. “A consistent bedtime and wake-up time is super important, since your body needs to adapt. A steady schedule throughout the day is also really helpful.

Time for school, work, study, exercise, free time.

Eat a couple hours before bed, never right before,” Dr. Wilson advises. For most students, pulling allnighters for homework or exams and then waking up early for school during the week, and catching up on sleep during the weekends is their norm.

But by doing that, your body doesn’t adjust to any proper sleep schedule, which means you can often have trouble sleeping.

Although stimulants like coffee and energy drinks are popular for students, Dr. Wilson cautions that these aren’t helpful for maintaining a good sleep cycle. “If you’re tired and you drink coffee, it’s going to make you more tired. It’s also really bad for women close to their period ... It’s proven that drinking coffee during that time results in your body reacting stronger to it, making it even harder to sleep. Warm milk is good, and herbal tea such as chamomile. Anything caffeinefree,” Dr. Wilson says. While health-wise, coffee and Red Bull may be inadvisable long-term solutions for students, most would cringe at the idea of doing without these short-term energy boosters.

“I NEED my coffee. And my tea. And my late night Red Bulls when I’m cramming ... It helps me cope with the mass amount of schoolwork,” Topping says.

“Proper sleep hygiene doesn’t stop with a sleeping schedule,” adds Dr. Wilson. “Having a clean room also helps. No screens. No TV, laptop, iPods, and video games, nothing. It’s actually best, if you have trouble sleeping, to have a separate room for all your work related things. Laptop, homework, nothing in your room, because that causes stress.”

An hour or so before bed, it’s best if all technology is turned off to give your brain time to rest and calm down.

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For some, getting minimal amounts of sleep is a reality that’s more difficult to treat.

“It’s bad enough that I have homework, a parttime job and a social life, that’s slowly starting to disappear. But on top of that, after I go to bed at 2 a.m., after finishing everything up, most nights

brain that regulates when you’re asleep, and when you’re awake. The main symptoms of narcolepsy are daytime sleepiness and drifting off throughout the day, as well as hallucinations and loss of muscle control. Narcolepsy not only affects your sleep at night, but how you function during the day. Treatment for narcolepsy is available and not hard to attain. Often a side-effect of depression, Narcolepsy can be helped with therapy, both group or solo, changes in one’s everyday schedule, and natural sleeping products. “There’s always a way to get more sleep,” says Dr. Wilson.

Students who feel like they have a real problem with falling asleep may need help from a doctor who can refer them to a sleep clinic. There will always be some form of treatment that your body and mind will respond to. There are so many students who do nothing about their lack of sleep because they’re so worried about school, but getting more sleep helps focus in school, and will make you feel better in the long run.

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A WORSE SLEEP THAN MOST

I wake up screaming bloody murder and wake the whole house up,” explains Laura Pickwell, a first-year student at Capilano who suffers from night terrors. Night terrors, contrary to popular belief, aren’t a problem that only young children deal with.

“I get them every night, but sometimes I don’t wake up. Some nights I don’t remember them.

Most nights I don’t. In the morning I never do.

I have no idea what I’m dreaming about, only that I wake up screaming,” says Pickwell. Unlike nightmares, night terrors are not caused by feelings of fear or horror. Night terrors in adults happen mainly in the ages of 20 to 30 and often are indicators of an underlying mental illness. Pickwell, who is a surviving brain cancer victim, started getting night terrors in her late teens, shortly before her brain tumour was discovered. “I’ve tried therapy, and it didn’t work, I can’t take certain medications cause of my condition.” Although the tumour is gone, it could always come back, and potentially leave some serious medical problems behind. “I can’t have any caffeine at all, I’m supposed to get lots of sleep, and I can’t drink much. I tried sleeping pills but I didn’t find much of a difference [with night terrors]. I’ve been dealing with it for so long, I’m just used to it by now.”

“For cases like these, sleeping pills are needed for longer times because they get no sleep at all. They need to get their body used to sleeping again, and get mentally better. Often this involves sleeping pills designed specifically for them, which can take a couple of years to find something that works.”

Dr. Wilson says. Other serious chronic sleep disorders may forgo the use of pills altogether.

Narcolepsy is another potentially dangerous chronic sleep disorder that affects the part of the

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Although many serious sleep disorders require more involved treatment, some sleeping problems may be solved quite simply. A glass of warm milk a couple of hours before bed can help, due to the tryptophan that gets released while milk is heated up. Tryptophan is a natural chemical the body makes and releases, found in warm milk, bananas, and turkey. Eating these foods or getting a prescription from your doctor for a supplement of tryptophan could help add much needed hours to your sleeping schedule.

“I used to take two melatonin pills before bed, but now those don’t work, so I use tryptophan.

I just don’t want to get addicted to any stronger manmade sleeping pills,” says Topping. She has found that tryptophan works well for her. “I don’t take them when I’m tired, cause there’s really no point. If I’m wired, I take them a couple hours before I want to sleep, I do my homework, calm down, and then I go to bed.”

Melatonin, similarly, can be found in both pharmacies, and grocery stores in the health section. “Melatonin is good for shift workers, and young teens. It’s not good for jet lag, and anyone older generally builds up a tolerance to it quite quickly,” says Dr. Wilson. “Natural sleeping aids are non-addicting. You may build up a tolerance over time and end up having to take more, but will this cause your natural supply [of tryptophan] to not work? No.” Sleeping pills such as AR Divan and other prescription-only sleeping aids are “an iffy subject. If used for two or three nights to get sleeping back on track, they can be beneficial, However, if

used for more than three nights, your body has a dependency on them, and that can get tricky,” advises Dr. Wilson. “If you grow dependent on sleeping aids to sleep, your body will develop a tolerance and you then will need to use more, causing a vicious cycle.”

Other drugs can further complicate the sleep cycle. Anxiety is another cause for sleeping disorders, but so are drugs to treat anxiety. “Some people need anti-depressants, and some don’t … since lack of sleep is a major side-effect of most anti-depressants, then there’s this cycle, and we have them on this cocktail of sleeping pills and anti-depressants, and there really isn’t much you can do at this point,” Dr. Wilson says. Although some students may need to be on anti-depressants, it can be beneficial to try to stop taking them, and see if it helps improve their ability to sleep.

“I was on anti-depressants in high school. I stopped taking them and I actually sleep better. I don’t sleep as light anymore and I don’t wake up as often. I may not get enough, but I try organizing school and work so it’s as balanced as I can make it. It’s not perfect and it never will be, but it’s better than getting no sleep at all,” Topping says.

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Fri. Jan. 11

Thurs. Jan. 10

Wed. Jan. 9

Tues. Jan. 8

Mon. Jan. 7

cap calendar First day of classes Zip up your boots, pack up those new spiral notebooks, and get your ass to class! You’ve just had a month off, and it’s time to learn!

Let’s all have a great time sitting in a room and gather information and knowledge by osmosis. Maybe I’ll pass one of my classes this term, who knows!

All day. Capilano University. Cost of costly tuition.

First day of slackin’ For those of you without any scheduled Monday classes, use this opportunity to look at funny Wikipedia entries all day and immerse yourself in the knowledge of such topics as: House of Wax(Paris Hilton movie), red pandas, French onion soup, colonialism. Did you know these items all have something in common? They’re all on Wikipedia!

All day, Wikipedia. Free!

Gossip Girl Marathon Post-vacation blues got you down? Cheer ‘em up with a little Blair on Chuck action! We all know what happens at the end and who is Gossip Girl - if you missed it, you likely were living under a rock, or working at your job, or having a life, or something along those lines.

Regardless, I have all the seasons on DVD so feel free to join me.

All day, my house. Cost of themed snacks.

James Dean Marathon This is the first year ever that I didn’t get a James Dean calendar for Christmas (though I’m pretty stoked on my Disney one). In lieu of such black and white beauty missing on my walls, I’m willing to make up the difference with a film festival of all three (that’s all he ever made) of James Dean’s movies. My personal favourite is East of Eden. God, he’s dreamy.

All day, my house. Cost of v-neck sweater and pomade.

Nelly Furtado Nelly’s like the new shape shifter, trying her hand at everything from trip-hop (that’s a real thing, lol) to bad girl sexy baby (Does anyone else remember Loose? That album was the shit.) At least she switched working with Timbaland to Nas now, and that’s definitely a step up. She better just play “Maneater” ten times in a row.

7:30 p.m., Commodore Ballroom. $75.

Charlie Black’s Birthday One of our most keen contributors at the Courier is Charlie Black, the lovable “freelance commentator” who moonlights as our quasi-official British correspondent. Charlie knows everything about Skins after “studying” it for an opinions article last term. Oh, Charlie. Now I wanna watch Skins all day.

All day, everywhere. Price of Netflix.

Lady Gaga The hype around her has died down, but this is still way better than anything else you could possibly come up with to do tonight.

Do people still dress up for her shows? I hope so. They should. Wouldn’t that be like not looking like an asshole at a Chris Brown concert? Last time I wound up at a Lady Gaga concert I met Terry Richardson and spent $500 on a bejeweled poster.

7:30 p.m., Rogers Arena. $105-193.

Lady Gaga AGAIN For those of you who missed seeing her last night, here you go. For you insane maniac fans who saw her last night, you’ll be there again hearing the same exact stories about “I need applause to stay alive like Tinkerbell!”

Oh Gaga, what has become of your disco stick and your lyrics about sucking dicks? Go back to cheesy shit without trying to save the gays, we’re doing just fiiiiiiiiine, gurl.

7:30 p.m., Rogers Arena. $105-193.

Nicolas Cage’s Birthday Party Happy birthday to the very very very best actor in Hollywood! Star of such gems as Sorciere Noire, Season of the Witch and literally every other movie since 1994, today is Nic’s big day! Let’s all toast to the most hilarious man in the history of American cinema. Back to school and Nicolas Cage, what a fucking beautiful day.

All day, planet Earth. Cost of Sorciere Noire.

Sherlock Marathon Have you jumped on this bandwagon yet?

Get on it! It rules. It’s going to be the Next Big Thing. Bigger than Glee, Friends and How I Met Your Mother put together. Yeah, I went there.

All day, my house. Cost of Martin Freeman’s sexy face.

Henry and Alice: Into the Wild The Arts Club on tour presents this sequel to Sexy Laundry. Henry and Alice return in this camping tale, in which the wilds of the wilderness force them to do what every couple fears... examining their relationship.

8 p.m., NSCU Centre for Performing Arts. $35/39.

Shen Yun This is that performance about “5,000 years of Chinese civilization” (woah) you’ve seen advertised everywhere. I was at Metrotown a little while ago and they even had a little booth in the middle to sell tickets or something. I’ve never been but it’s supposed to be amazing, so we should probably make 2013 the year we check it out.

7:30 p.m., Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Price varies.

Ronettes Marathon Once you’ve watched about 100 hours of the greatest television and film from the ‘50s to present, you’ll just want to get up, stretch those limbs, and impersonate the greatest girl group of all time – The Ronettes. I fell in love with them all over again during the winter break, and now my life ambition is to befriend Ronnie Spector and become her new lackey. Or maybe just learn all the words to “Walking in the Rain”.

All day, my house. Cost of beehive wig and eyeliner.

Campus tour Learn all about this wonderful university and where the hell you can find trees (everywhere), and decent food (nowhere).

If you’re busy waiting in line for textbooks, there is also another tour on Jan. 18.

1:45 p.m., Birch Building. Free, but must RSVP.

Here Be Dragons Choreographer Henry Daniel and Musical Director/Composer Owen Underhill team up with a slew of dancers, musicians, and artists from Spain and Vancouver to create a multi-media array that delves into the pasts of both cities, and the concepts of travel, narrative, and identity.

8:00 p.m., SFU Woodward’s. $19.

Young Artists Concert Cap classical and choral presents 2012 Knigge Piano Competition Prize Winner Jocelyn Lai in this piano concert. Free piano show, what more can you ask for? I hope she’s as good as those Aristocats!

11:45 a.m., NSCU Centre for Performing Arts.

Free!

The Theory of Everything Produced by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (VACT), The Theory of Everything is an award-winning play from Thai-American playwright Prince Gomolvilas. It tells the story of seven Asian-Americans who gather on top of a Las Vegas wedding chapel every week in search of UFOs.This heartwarming comedy examines the Asian-American identity over three generations, and is sure to make you think amidst laughter. Perfect!

Until Jan. 12, Roundhouse. Prices range.

Calendar@ c a p i l a n o c o u r i e r . c o m

Vancouver Winter Farmer’s Market Farmer’s markets aren’t just for summers anymore! Come shop the wares of local farmers’ fields. Make an event out of it! Invite some friends and chow down in some fresh local pineapple and stuff. Mmm! 10 a.m., Parking lot/plaza at Nat Bailey Stadium. Free!

Sam’s Mom’s Birthday Today is Copy Editor Samantha’s mom’s birthday and it gets to go in the calendar because yet again Sam is missing it to attend a journalism conference (three years in a row!

SORRY, MOM). If you want to wish her a happy birthday buy her some British sweets and make her a tasty cup of Tetley tea.

All day, Sam’s house. Cost of British things.

Lady Gaga Afterparty Before Lady Gaga was a big deal, she used to strip in a dual rock n’ roll getup act with her BFF Lady Starlight. Now Gaga tours the world with her catchy-ass songs and the rest of us have to pay penance by watching Starlight open all of Gaga’s shows with a bad DJ set. Well, now she also plays afterparties. This is for the hardcore Gaga fan. Rumour has it Gaga will not make an appearance. Neither will Sam’s mom.

9:30 p.m., Post Modern Dance Bar. $40 advance/$50 door.

Jenny Lea MacCormick plays singer/songwriter jazz hip hop covers This is Opinions Editor Leah’s cousin and she’s awesome! According to Leah, “She does a really good cover of ‘Juicy’!” It sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s free, so get on over there!

9 p.m., King’s Head pub. Free!

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Sun. Jan. 13 Mon. Jan. 14 Tues. Jan. 15 Wed. Jan. 16 Thurs. Jan. 17 fri. jan.18 sat. jan. 19

Noodle Mania Yum yum yum noodles are so tasty, no matter what kind they are. With Noodle Mania you get to head on out around Vancouver and try a whole bunch of different noodle dishes at restaurants around Vancouver. Talk to chefs, try delicious dishes, feel like a true Vancouver Foodie.

3 p.m., around Vancouver. $35.

Rogers Arena Tour You could literally do this any day of the year, but since there is fuck all to do today, why not? Oh, you have class? Then don’t go.

See if I care. Personally I wanna know if they bring you to the dressing room where stars like Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj get ready.

Maybe one of them left some money behind.

All day, Rogers Arena. $8.

Tea for Two Blossoms Three tiers of treats, granny style teacups, and fancy-ass tea. Is this something anyone living actually wants to do? I am tempted by the treats. But I could always just go to 7-11 and pick up some coconut flavoured M&M’s.

Have you tried that shit? Oh, man.

7 a.m., Truffles Café at VanDusen Botanical Garden. $28 for two people.

PuSh Festival Beginning today, Vancouver is in for three weeks of treats with this annual festival filled with exciting works of dance, music, performance, and theatre. Various events around the city means there’s something for everyone! A little smorgasbord of cultural treats.

Various times, various venues. Prices (you got it) vary!

Gastown Dishcrawl Get this, all of you wacky food-obsessed people. You can head to Vancouver’s most historic neighbourhood and take a look around and then try a sampling of exciting culinary offers from the neighbourhood’s eclectic food offerings! All of the locations are being kept secret for now, but will revealed the day of the event! That could either be really exciting or really scary.

7 p.m., Location TBA. $60.

Amaluna It seems like those big yellow tents have been perched there between Main and Stadium skytrains for a long ass time. Well, the show closes on January 20 so you’ve got limited time to enjoy this beautiful array of storytelling in Cirque du Soleil’s newest and most innovative touring show in recent years!

Various times, Big Top at Concord Pacific Place.

Various prices.

The God That Comes Remember that song “I’m Jealous of Your Cigarette”? Neither do I. But, the person who sang that, Hawksley Workman, is performing in this one-man-band rock-and-roll cabaret hybrid show. Sounds like all of my least favourite things combined?

8 p.m., Performance Works. $33.

Two Gallants San Francisco indie rock duo, on the road promoting their new album The Bloom and the Blight. I know very little about these guys personally, but I am pretty down with their spooky video they’ve got going with sheet ghosts, smeared eyeliner, and G-unit cut-off tees. Thankfully their music sounds like none of the above.

9:30 p.m., The Biltmore. $15.

Last Day to Change Your Schedule Making the perfect schedule is hard work.

This semester, I dropped no fewer than five classes in an attempt to get my schedule down to the maximum efficiency, but it took me over a month to make it perfect. If you’re like me, take special note that today is the last day and if you do anything after today THERE WILL BE SEVERE CONSEQUENCES. All day, Capilano and online. Your soul.

Vancouver Giants vs. Tri-City Well, we all know by now that the NHL is on strike (or something? I don’t really get it) so the Canucks aren’t playing. Which hopefully means more people are going to our other hockey team’s games, which are not only more fun but also cheaper. Go! Giants games rule! You won’t regret it!

7 p.m., Pacific Coliseum. $19-$25.

JJ’s Birthday Our very own editor-in-chief and BFF’s birthday is today, and you better bet we’ll be celebrating! We’re going to turn the office into a Disneyland-Hogwarts hybrid adventure, and yes, you’re invited. Make sure you bring him lots of presents that fit within the theme, and also some tasty gluten-free cake!

All day, Dizwarts. Cake.

Human Library The human library is this awesome new concept where you go to a real library and “take out” books about people - but the books are the people! You sit around tables with the “book” (a REAL PERSON) and they tell you their story and you can ask questions. It’s all about destroying stereotypes and stigma and I’m totally down with that.

Runs on several weekends in Jan./Feb., Downtown VPL branch. Free.

Ride the Cyclone Arts Club presents this dark musical in which a pack of high school students die on a roller coaster, only to be brought back to life to sing their sordid tales in dramatic song! If I died on a roller coaster and came back to life to sing one song, I’d probably sing about how badly I want a French Bulldog.

8 p.m., Granville Island Stage. $29-49. Plays through February 16.

“Canada’s Top Ten” Two of our country’s greatest film works in a double bill. In Stories We Tell Canadian film icon Sarah Polley delivers her first documentary, a candid look into details in her family’s past. Rebelle, Canada’s nominee for Foreign Language Academy Award this year, shows a mother from the Democratic Republic of the Congo explaining her life story to her infant child.

6:30 p.m., Cinematheque. $11.

Spring 2013 Withdrawal Period Begins Note: During this period, withdrawals will be noted on the permanent student record as a ‘W’ and getting the ‘W’ sucks so try to avoid it if at all possible. It’s not nearly as cool as the “W” in your O.W.L.’s. You’ve been warned.

Gojira Oh, that makes more sense. French metal band play Vancouver. That makes a lot more sense. They will play loud metal music and people who like metal will go there and enjoy this metal show and then it will be done and the metal fans will say that it was good.

8 p.m., The Vogue. $28.

Last day for Traffic: Conceptual Art “Traffic is organized along regional lines while at the same time emphasizing the effervescent, sometimes contentious, lines of traffic between them.” It sounds like an amazing exhibit, today’s your last chance to see it. By going to the VAG you automatically feel more cultured, especially if you go on a Sunday!

All day, Vancouver Art Gallery. Price of admission.

Return to Oz. In the ‘80s Disney thought it was a good idea to do a ‘sequel’ to The Wizard of Oz and cast Vancouver’s own Fairuza Balk (later of The Craft) as Dorothy. This film has it all: talking chickens, head-swapping villains, the ruby slipper-hungry Gnome King, and an escape from a psych ward. This was my favourite movie as a child, and that probably explains a lot about me.

1:00 p.m., Cinematheque. $9.

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Chelsea Wolfe LA-based, experimental folk singer-songwriter, on an acoustic tour to support her latest release “Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs”.

9:30 p.m., The Media Club. $13.

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Melissa’s birthday Our resident concert photographer and new photography columnist is having her birthday today! I’ll likely be celebrating by eating a lot of cake and taking Melissa for sushi and we will probably laugh about how silly Javier Bardem was in Skyfall.

All day, everywhere. Price of sushi.

Monday the 14th!

You thought Friday the 13th was spooky?

How about this day! Stay at home with all your favourite horror classics: Scream 2, Child’s Play 4, The Return of Jafar and more!

You’re in for a REAL scare. Watching horror movies during the day takes all the fun out of it.

6:66, my house. Cost of fear!

×

Gojira I watched this movie for the first time ever in a class last semester and I must say, for an older movie it has held up quite well! There’s drama, special effects, and a giant monster that nobody knows how to kill. But here’s the catch: the whole thing is one giant metaphor!

I know right!? Mind-blowing. Wait, is this movie playing somewhere today? Why is it on the calendar?

Any time, anywhere. Cost of DVD rental.

Gluten Free Expo Celiacs and anti-gluten gluttons unite! It’s time to learn about the world of food without that rat bastard gluten! Taste, sample, buy, lurk. Whatever you wanna do. Learn about new ways to cook without gluten. Buy some pre-made goodies. Gluten is such a weird word. Gluten. I don’t really like saying it. Gluten.

10 a.m., Vancouver Convention Centre. $9 online/$12 at the door.

the capilano courier

sun. jan. 20

Golden Globes This year, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler co-host the annual Hollywood circle-jerk. Will Bradley Cooper be rewarded for his portrayal of a rehabilitated dancer? Will Jon Hamm and Zooey Deschanel both get trophies for doing the same shit as last year? Let’s be real. This shit is boring and we only watch it to get a glimpse of Alec Baldwin making a snide face at someone’s speech.

7 p.m., on your TV or computer. Cost of cable or Internet or whatever?

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OPINIONS

Opinions Editor ×

Leah Scheitel

× opinions@capilanocourier.com

Royally F#%&ed

A year in review for the monarchy Charlie Black

the capilano courier

×

volume

46 issue N o . 12

× British Correspondent

2012 has proven to be an absolutely bonkers year to be a member of the Royal Family. While their day-to-day lives are perhaps not as extravagant compared to the common person's experiences today, what with pregnancies and somewhatsordid tales of Las Vegas, these situations are placed under a microscope and examined, dissected and distributed as social currency and water cooler chit-chat.

With all this intrigue orbiting around the young members of the House of Windsor, a curious question arises: why do we care, exactly? Why do their lives provide us with such gossip fodder? Why are their daily lives more interesting than our own?

Since becoming man and wife in April of 2011, Prince William and his blushing bride Catherine, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have assumed the mantle of British media darlings.

Joining them in the spotlight is William's brother Harry, who has drawn attention to himself in years past.

Nude photos emerged of both Prince Harry and of Catherine, in very separate occasions and contexts. Harry was snapped playing strip poker in Las Vegas with some friends, indulging in the Vegas lifestyle before his next tour-of-duty in Afghanistan, whereas Catherine was photographed sunbathing topless on a private estate in France with her husband.

The tabloids pounced on each story, with Harry lionized as a lovable party-boy serving his country and certainly entitled to some debauchery, and Catherine inspiring her own intrigue as her innocent and private activities elicited shock and awe from Brits, astounded no doubt at the gall the Duchess must have for daring to have breasts.

Furthermore, after many curious whispers since the wedding ceremony, it was announced last month that William and Catherine were expecting their first-born child. However, the occasion was soon muddled by Catherine's stay in hospital for a particularly rough bout of headline-worthy morning sickness followed by the side-story of two Australian radio DJs prank-calling the hospital and obtaining confidential information about the Duchess' condition, further leading to the unfortunate suicide of the nurse responsible for taking the call.

So why does this all matter so much to us?

One must initially consider that the Royals have been in the media spotlight for decades, if not centuries, by means beyond their control. They do not have a must-watch reality show on E4 (essentially the British MTV), they are simply followed and photographed for us to draw conclusions, without full or proper context. Then again, so is anyone with some modicum of power and relevance these days.

Though this draws us to another observation: one must additionally consider, when weighing all the hype and hoopla, what being a Royal means in today's world. In the post-World War II world, the British Empire has fragmented into many independent states, some of which still maintain ceremonial ties to Britain as members of the Commonwealth. As such, the monarchy has essentially been castrated by antiquity.

Reigning kings and queens today no longer

×× susan li

wield the mighty power they once did, trading important diplomatic decisions for charity events and photo opportunities.

One thing has certainly not changed from days gone by: The public's fascination with the Royal family remains to this day a ravenous beast with a never-satisfied appetite for news, gossip and scandal.

The pressures of Royal life have sometimes proven deadly, as Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash after being chased by paparazzi. With her sons growing up as young princes and going about their lives, the media machine has kicked back into high gear, like a sadistic child with a magnifying glass watching an anthill.

The question of why we as a society give so much of a damn about what the Royals do with their lives boils down to the simple fact that even if they hold little in the way of political power, they are still recognizable and well-known. We care

because they are famous, and their lives become a story we can follow. The more wild, the more tragic, and the more relatable it is, the higher the ratings are.

From a media standpoint, the Royal Family are the world's longest-running reality entertainment. Where America has had many famous and powerful families over time, from Kennedy to Kardashian, Britain and the Commonwealth have a much more constant, reluctant and withdrawn version in the Royal Family. Where Kim, Khloe and their flavour-ofthe-month peers throw themselves at cameras and force the world to pay attention to them, the Royals and those associated are essentially stuck, born into a media circus from which escape is impossible.

The Royals' reticence and helplessness make them seem much more human than the spray-tanned masses of American reality stars

looking for their moment in the spotlight. Though fantasy has its attractions, people cannot truly empathize with the tribulations of dating and marrying rich and unfaithful NBA stars as much as they can relate and connect with the simple tale of a man and woman going through the motions of engagement, marriage and pregnancy.

For William, Kate, Harry and their future lineages, there is a somewhat tragic thread that weaves through the lavish tapestry: People will always be watching, and anonymity is but a dream to them, much as some dream of being princesses or princes, or at least of being famous. The best thing they can do is to simply live their lives without letting the pressure bear down on them too hard, and be the best and most honest they can be. Even if it's not exciting, the world will be satisfied.

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Insta-Changing

Terms of Service alterations spark outrage Victoria Fawkes × Writer

At the end of 2012, Instagram shocked its users by announcing that it would soon legally have the rights to their photographs. The popular website, that allows users to filter and share photographs over the Internet, introduced some controversial new changes to their terms of service in early December. The new terms, which will become effective in mid-January, stated that Instagram could exercise its right to run web advertisements alongside user's pictures, as well as to use photos posted on the site in its advertising campaigns.

The changes to the terms of service blindsided users and left them questioning the motives of Instagram, and whether it could still be viewed as a free outlet for expression and inspiration. As well, with the new terms that Instagram plans to employ, the door will be opened for the kind of distrust that users of social media sites such as Facebook often hold for these other networks.

Under the new terms, if a user deactivates their Instagram account without deleting their pictures, Instagram can use the existing images in accordance with the required terms of agreement contract. The new terms of use state that, “... a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/ or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.” After reading that, many Instagram users went berserk, taking to Twitter to express their distain with tags like #deleteaccount and #leavingsinstagram.

It’s a digital era, and people post their entire lives on social networking sites, trusting that its networking site is sacred. Being a responsible and informed member of a social networking site means knowing the risks associated with usage, but when a site pulls the rug out from under its users without a formal announcement, user

confidence is left visibly shaken. Most users forget that when you agree to a site’s terms of service, you are signing a contract, but the updated terms should not have applied to users who had already agreed to the previous terms of service. Instagram’s right to change around the terms now makes it clear to users that any social networking site can take advantage and make a quick buck off of them.

After sending its users into a tailspin of rage for its alleged betrayal, Instagram quickly attempted to backtrack from its original statement, apologizing for what it called a “misunderstanding.” But it was just damage control. Not many users believed that such a huge change could really be seen as a misunderstanding. The newly introduced terms allow for further control of a program that was once free of advertising influence and prided itself on being an outlet for selfexpression and creativity.

While Instagram never outwardly stated that it now had ownership of its user’s photos, many believed that it was implied within the updated terms of agreement contract. The CEO and c o - f o u n d e r o f In s t a g r a m , Kevin Systrom, tried to contain the damage through his blog, by declaring that Instagram’s intention was not to sell its user’s photographs. Systrom said that the new policy “was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true, and it is our mistake that this language is confusing.” Systrom went on to clarify that Instagram did not mean to confuse its users. “To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos,” he said. “We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.” Despite the negative reaction from Instagram’s users, Systrom never explained why Instagram planned to update their terms of service.

In early 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for a cool $715 million. While Facebook is no stranger to making sweeping changes that leave users muddled and wishing for its older incarnations, it seems to be preparing Instagram for some big changes as well. These changes could be due to the fact that more and more photof i l t e r ing ser-

×× Katie so

v i c es are popping up all over the web, ready to take away Instagram’s users. The Facebook-owned Instagram will soon encounter competition from a Twitter-powered photograph filtering program, which allows users to filter photos directly from their Twitter account.

Google-run Snapseed and the smartphone application Hipstamatic also offer similar results as Instagram. The more options there are for pho-

tos, the more Instagram will have to be competitive to retain its popularity.

The backlash from this has been so strong that some users have even begun to take legal action. On Dec. 24, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Instagram by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk. The lawsuit wishes to void many sections within the new terms of service, including those that involve ownership and the lack of photographer compensation. “In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us,’” said the firm.

It’s true that Instagram is a company, and companies need to make money to succeed, but many accused Instagram and their sudden changes of bad business. The way the new terms were introduced came off as underhanded, and Systrom’s apology had many users thinking twice about trusting Instagram with their photographs. While it’s easy to lie and click “agree” when asked if you’ve read and agree with the terms of service for a site, the responsibility falls on the user to know what they’re getting themselves into. But it’s unfair of Instagram to change up the terms of service for users who have already agreed to a previous set of terms, despite Instagram being both a company and a free service.

the capilano courier

× volume

46 issue N o . 12

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OPINIONS

Opinions Editor ×

Leah Scheitel

× opinions@capilanocourier.com

LET'S TALK ABOUT INCEST

Mother-daughter porn duo aim to become “filthy rich” Connor Thorpe

the capilano courier

×

volume

46 issue N o . 12

× Staff Writer

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Let’s be frank: banging your relatives is a no-no.

There’s no shortage of good reasons that this is true. Inbreeding – and its cumulative effects on generations of children borne of incestuous relationships – is the most frequently derided byproduct of incest. It is generally accepted that children borne of incestuous relationships can expect to face a litany of negative consequences, including a higher probability of impaired cognitive ability, an increased rate of infant mortality and a greater prevalence of genetic defects. However, the bulk of the negativity associated with incest lies within the intangible, emotional impact it can inflict. Victims of incest often find themselves grappling with debilitating emotional problems later in life. Information from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network indicate that victims experience reactions similar to other survivors of sexual abuse, including a more difficult time trusting others, anxiety, suicide attempts and the onset of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Despite the logical case against incest in Western society, and despite the fact that it is a severe and relatively widespread societal taboo, a mother and daughter in Tampa, Florida have begun producing pornographic films together, distributing them on their website – and it’s all perfectly legal. The duo, who bill themselves as “the Sexxxtons,” argue that the sexual activities the two engage in on film don’t constitute incest because they enlist a third party with whom the mother and daughter have sex with at the same time. As they are not interacting with each other – or, as defined by Florida law, penetrating each other – the acts in Sexxxtons videos technically don’t qualify as incest. But that certainly doesn’t make them okay.

The legality of the arrangement isn’t even the most important thing to consider. It’s the ethical ramifications of glorifying incestuous relationships and the subsequent profit made off of this glorification. Each video mother Jessica and daughter Monica make is an insulting trivialization of the trauma suffered by incest survivors. Monica even seems to acknowledge that there is something wrong with the Sexxxtons’ act, telling the Huffington Post that she gets through scenes with her mother by thinking about “how [they’re] going to be filthy rich.” Despite Monica’s admission, she maintains that she is the mastermind behind the operation – essentially conveying the idea that it’s okay to engage in activities that are wrong, so long as the result is profit.

Psychiatrist Dr. Carol Lieberman explained the concept of “emotional incest” within the context of the Sexxxtons to the Huffington Post: “Even if they’re not having sex with each other, it has to be titillating to one or both of them,” she said. “So it crosses the line since sexual arousal comes into the mix.”

The exploits of the Sexxxtons are the most recent of numerous highly publicized incidences of incest in Western society. Some of the reported cases are concrete examples of incest, like the sporadic, decade-long relationship between The Mamas and the Papas singer John Phillips and his daughter Mackenzie, as depicted in her 2009 memoir, High on Arrival. Phillips portrays her sexual activity with her father as consensual – bear-

ing a resemblance to the consensual parent-child activity demonstrated by the Sexxxtons – while being marred by drug abuse and emotional trauma.

Other relationships veer into a grey area, like that of Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn – who also happens to be the adoptive daughter of Allen’s ex-wife, Mia Farrow. More recently, Bobbi Kristina Houston – daughter of late singer Whitney Houston – became engaged to Nick Gordon, whom the singer adopted when Gordon was twelve years old.

While the latter two incidents don’t involve blood relatives, it begs the question of what it is exactly that defines incest.

In the cases of the Sexxxtons, who are biologically related but never engage in direct sexual contact, and Allen and Previn – who are not related by blood, but do engage in sexual activity – the common denominator is a deep-seated emotional attachment, gleaned through instinct or adaptation. Allen even characterized his marriage as having a “paternal feeling to it” in People magazine. The introduction of sex into a family relationship violates this emotional attachment – and the support and trust provided by family, biological or adoptive, is invalidated when a sexual aspect of the relationship is established. This isn’t limited

××

to the participants in an incestuous relationship.

Allen remains estranged from his three children – biological and adoptive – from his marriage to Farrow. Son Ronan Farrow told the Daily Mail that Allen’s relationship with Previn crossed major boundaries.

“He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression,” Farrow said. “I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent…to say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.”

While it’s hard to deny that the relationships of Allen and Previn, and Brown and Gordon, are inappropriate, there’s nothing illegal about them.

Still, that doesn’t lessen the harm that has been caused by them and relationships like them – and it doesn’t lessen the justification for withholding support for them.

The fact that these incidents are only publicized because they involve celebrities is indicative of a more widespread cultural issue – and while it can’t be definitively proven that all or even a majority of incestuous relationships are harmful, societal acceptance of incest does nothing but lessen the perceived severity of the situations of those who

experience emotional trauma and other negative effects later in life.

The logical course of action is simple: don’t line the Sexxxtons' pockets. It’s the duty of the individual to recognize the toxic view held by the mother and daughter – and consequently, to leave their videos unwatched and unprofitable.

sHANNON ELLIOTT

13-01-03 8:19 PM

BATTLE OF THE BUSES

×× dave mcansh

TRANS-STINK JJ Brewis × Editor-in-Chief

Natalie Corbo × Features Editor

× volume

Search for #translink on Twitter. The amount of rage that Vancouverites reserve for TransLink is boisterous. This rage is directed at an immensely efficient service that moves almost as many people per day as Seattle and Portland’s systems combined.

The problem with people hating TransLink, and blaming the organization for any and every transportation shortcoming is twofold. One is the sheer irony of people’s conflicting complaints, some of which should not be directed at TransLink at all. The other is that an organization like TransLink, which is publicly funded and operates arguably for the public good, can operate better if the majority of people support it. More users, and more public willingness to put tax money into the organization translates into more funding, which ideally translates into better service wherever the demand is increasing.

One thing that many people don’t realize is that TransLink is a somewhat unique organization within the realm of transportation providers. It operates transportation services within the entire Metro Vancouver region, which means that transportation across modes and across municipalities is easy, all operated by one body, and all based on one fare system. For the entire metro region of Vancouver, TransLink provides all service – but in the metropolitan area of Seattle, the agencies include: King County Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit (for Snohomish County), Everett Transit, Pierce Transit and some ferry providers. This means that each separate agency will have different fare structures, scheduling, websites, and data collection.

This single-agency system does mean that TransLink has to do the difficult job of balancing service and funding to all the municipalities it serves. It’s probably true that the infrequency of the bus route in your suburban community is a hassle. But it would be incredibly financially and environmentally inefficient to run

it more often, unless more people use it.

Ironically, the most common complaints about TransLink are related to funding and service levels. Everyone complains about bus frequency, or overcrowding, but no one wants to pay for better service. It costs an incredible amount of money simply to maintain current service levels, much less build new infrastructure or add new bus routes. Some of this money comes from taxpayers, some from those who buy transit tickets, and some from drivers who often fail to realize that TransLink is actually involved in financing, planning and managing the major road and bridge networks in the region.

People’s expectations for TransLink, in many cases, are simply absurd. For the most part, buses stay relatively on schedule. But as long as people still drive cars, traffic will be a variable that will affect the timeliness of buses. If there could be dedicated bus lanes on all major routes, that would largely solve the problem, but the outrage that results from cars losing even a few parking spaces, or a lane of traffic indicates that the public would never allow such a thing.

The Dec. 19 snowstorm is another example of out of line expectations. It took everyone an insane amount of time to travel anywhere that day, by car, bus, or on foot. There is little TransLink as an organization could have done to mitigate the problems that day, apart from keeping people well-informed via the Internet about their service levels. Their mobile site, regular site, and Twitter all did that. Impassable roads were primarily the fault of the City, who is responsible for salting and plowing, and all the people who chose to drive their cars in such disastrous conditions.

As TransLink CEO Ian Jarvis told BC Business, “The things that we do are big ... they impact people’s daily lives, they cost money, and you’re naturally going to have these tensions, and that’s just part of the environment that we work in.”

But it’s worth recognizing that public hate for the organization is completely out of line with the incredible amount of people they transport efficiently and reliably every single day.

the capilano courier

TransLink. The mere word alone sends chills up my spine and may be the reason I’ve been forced to invest in a night guard so as to not grind my teeth any further while I sleep. What’s so bad about TransLink? Let me count the ways. Drivers are often grumpy, the vehicles have a tendency to be over packed and reek of stale B.O., and the overall efficiency has become a laughing matter.

But the butt of the joke may be the rider population—after all, we’re paying for this unreliable and unstable service.

For what a TransLink pass costs its user, the quality of service really doesn’t live up to the fee.

While it’s become a local pastime to berate the organization’s Twitter with complaints, or commonly exchange frustrated transit woes with friends, the reality of the situation is that at the end of the day we’re all left out in the cold waiting for a ride. The solution is out of our hands. As of January 2013, Lower Mainland residents are paying anywhere up to $170 for a monthly transit pass. At this rate, people deserve a reliable method of transportation.

That really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

The issues and resulting complaints are insurmountable. Despite TransLink’s best efforts, the mode of transportation just isn’t getting the job done. There aren’t enough vehicles, the routes are sometimes random, or don’t run frequently enough. The problems at hand are more than I could even fit into this publication.

Given that the organization has had a monopoly on the Lower Mainland’s non-car-owning population, the reason they can pull these kinds of stunts is that the average TransLink patron likely has no other option. For the state of frustration that transit riders face on the daily, the organization barely seems to compensate. A tweet to their official Twitter page often ends up with them telling you to email them specific information about your late bus. Speaking from experience, I took even more time out of my day to send them such

details, never hearing back with reasoning nor an apology, only to have the same inconvenience pulled on me the very next day.

Recently TransLink announced that they would be performing routine “scheduled track maintenance” on the SkyTrain on weekday evenings.

While it’s fairly obvious that an operation such as a SkyTrain needs to have such work done to ensure its efficiency and safety, it makes zero sense to perform such maintenance at a time when people are obviously tired from a long day, and already are going to be waiting for less-frequent bus connections at the end of their train leg.

What’s the point in having up-to-date bus arrival times available if the vehicles are so rarely on time? It almost just adds insult to injury waiting for a bus that grows later by the minute when you know the exact time it was scheduled to arrive.

The cost of living goes up annually, as do the prices of most products and services. It is only natural that TransLink needs to raise their fares to keep up with rising costs of running a business of any kind. But if we’re paying more and getting less, the logic behind saving up for a car is becoming the more viable option.

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46 issue N o . 12

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caboose Editor ×

Scott Moraes

× caboose.capcourier@gmail.com

bad boyfriend

EMOTIONAL HIGHFIVE a rollercoaster of feelings by stefan tosheff

KATIESO.TUMBLR.COM

Where the Slugs go at Night Max Olesen × Writer

Marie-Josette thought back to the nearly constant misty drizzle that blanketed her small town in the forest. The rain never pelted the ground there.

Destructive drops never dynamited craters in the ground, but instead wrapped everything in a protective slickness.

Marie-Josette felt Maurizio’s heart beating through the mattress and turned to him.

He breathed steadily, his thick, brown chest contracting regularly, always moving. His densely muscled arms lay immobile, thrown up around his head, his fingers entwining his black hair. His mouth was gently parted and a small trickle of mucus flowed from its corner. Though the rain fell, the night was humid and sweat beaded over both their bodies. Even Maurizio’s moustache was glistening dimly, like a rotting stump. Then it began to move slowly down his cheek. Maurizio’s eyes were open, and his hand was reaching for her face as she began to scream.

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good-natured, fraternal one-upmanship.

Marie-Josette later abandoned air-breathing slugs for the study of nudibranchs, the beautiful, psychedelically-hued sea slug.

She moved to Manila for this research and there she met and married a marine biologist who worked mainly out of Australia. They would meet on weekends in either country, occasionally coming together for longer trips, one accompanying the other on fieldwork. His name was Maurizio, and Marie-Josette loved him deeply enough to overcome her longstanding aversion to facial hair.

She was very happy in her life with Maurizio, and grew desperately lonely in the times they were apart. She decided to retire from her studies and move to Australia so she and Maurizio could begin a family.

She lay sleepless one night, three months into her first pregnancy, staring out the window of their Brisbane home. A heavy rain fell outside, battering the balcony. Lightning flashed brightly every few moments.

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When Marie-Josette was a child she became fascinated with slugs. She had been born in the same sunny, dry, people-filled country as her parents, but she lived as a child in a small town in a large, wet forest. Slugs abounded in Marie-Josette’s world.

From the time she was six years old, Marie-Josette already knew that slugs were gastropod mollusks, like snails, and that there were many, many kinds of slugs, since the only defining characteristic of slugs was that they weren’t snails. She didn’t care much for snails. Sometimes, apparently only on special days, her mother would cook snails for supper, and this intimacy of contact eliminated any interest Marie-Josette might have had in the other gastropod mollusk.

Marie-Josette had only seen two slugs get eaten. One was consumed by her neighbour’s corgi, Dylan. The other had been eaten by her brother Andre when he was three years old.

Neither of them appeared to have enjoyed the experience.

One day in April Marie-Josette was closely observing an Arion slug. She spent a long time pressing alternately on its light-sensing feelers and smelling feelers, making one contract, then the other. The slug’s delicate tentacles withdrawing into its shiny body, the colour of a rotting log.

She started to think about how slugs spent their days. Since they only moved very slowly they probably couldn’t accomplish much, but whenever she did see them, slugs were always moving. She reasoned that they would have to sleep sometime, but she had never seen them doing it.

This thought began to consume Marie-Josette, but since she was not allowed out at night she could not investigate. Over several weeks of intellectual frustration Marie-Josette formulated a hypothesis regarding slugs’ nighttime lives. She began to believe that slugs spent their nights on men’s upper lips, usually in pairs, and when the men enjoyed this, they would kill the slugs and

paste them on their faces permanently. Some men loved the slugs so much that they covered their jaws and cheeks completely, and put slugs up next to their ears. Marie-Josette mourned the murdered slugs, grotesquely mounted on men’s lumpy and heavy-boned faces.

Marie-Josette began to fear and hate men with slugs on their faces, something adults called “a moustache.” This soon turned into a marked social problem for Marie-Josette and her family, since the decade in which Marie-Josette was a child saw a fashion for facial hair. Initially her mama and papa convinced Marie-Josette not to articulate her theory on slugs, nighttime, lips and “moustaches” in public, which was a major coup many weeks in the making.

Eventually, with the help of Marie-Josette’s understanding elementary teachers, some high school biology teachers and then a zoologist from the nearby college were brought in to talk slugs with the young girl. She began to understand that her hypothesis had been formed with insufficient empirical data, and could not withstand scientific scrutiny. Marie-Josette abandoned her belief in mounted slug-moustaches.

Marie-Josette grew into an accomplished young woman, leaving her town, her damp, wooded world and her slugs for a big, old university in a bigger, older city on the other side of the country. She became a zoologist and specialized first in pulmonate land slugs, becoming a co-discoverer of the banana pancake slug, the longest, flattest slug yet found, during fieldwork in Jamaica.

Her first lover, the leader of the study, a man named Hector, would die shortly after publication from parasiteinduced meningitis as a result of eating raw slugs during a night of drunken celebration and

×× karen picketts

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Scott Moraes

× caboose.capcourier@gmail.com

Scottgun reviews

2012, A SHITTY YEAR Samantha-Rose Nelson

SKATEBOARDING LESSONS Celina Kurz

25K0105 MINI PLIER STAPLER Giles Roy

OH, GRANDMA Leah Scheitel

It could be just me, but I feel as though 2012 had this dark cloud of extreme shittiness looming over it all year. This was supposed to be one of the best years of my life too, which makes this cloud even darker, and even shittier.

2012 is the year I graduated from high school, was supposed to go to Europe, started university, expected the world to end, etc. None of those things happened as I would have liked.

I mean, is it wrong that I was slightly excited to see giant asteroids crushing people, massive storms and possible raining fire? Actually, don’t answer that… One good thing though, is that the few friends I have left all agree that 2012 sucked the big one. Epic year-long shittiness has brought us closer, and our pessimism has bonded us. That truly is a silver lining if I’ve ever seen one. So as awkward as 2013 is to say (it really isn’t as smooth as 2012), I have an uplifting sense of optimism about it, and I hope that this new positivity thing will be contagious. I sincerely hope that that is the only contagious thing being spread around this year, though…

Learning to skateboard when you are a 22year-old woman is simultaneously really hard and really easy! The hard parts are when you show up to the skate park with your one other girl friend who is learning to skateboard and there are a flock of lanky bros all shredding the hardest and going really fast and you feel really dumb because you are wearing a helmet and you fall down all the time and you feel like you're in everyone's way so you go into the corner to practice ollying but then you get self-conscious because all the bros obviously learned to olly when they were 10 or something and also you get extra clumsy every time you try to do any tricks. The easy parts are when you can get a bunch of friends to go and the skate park is empty and your friends spot you when you are dropping in for the first time off the tiny ledge and then you finally do it without anyone spotting you and you are like, WOO! YEAH! Skateboarding rules!

Wow, a stapler! And not just any stapler – this is the 25K0105 Mini Plier Stapler. Ever heard of it?

Five solid inches of Vietnamese power. The sleek chrome-plated design says “let’s party,” but the small size says “we can be discreet about it.” It fits snugly in my hand, making it easy to grip in hard-to-manoeuvre stapling situations. It nicely staples through surfaces of any thickness, including (but certainly not limited to) paper, cardboard, and posterboard. Heck, it even comes with 200 extra 9.3 x 4.5 mm staples, just in case.

This is one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever gotten. Thanks, Dad.

The thing about my grandmother is that everything is her “last time.” “She’s old,” they’d say, “This may be her last Christmas.” That’s fine, but it has been her last Christmas for 15 long-ass years now. My 70-pound grandmother is now 89 years old, smokes cigarettes, and has at least two gin and tonics a day. And she is mean. At the “Last Christmas” of 2009 she yelled at me because I didn’t want to sing Christmas carols, as I had just found out what Atheism was, and figured it made more sense. This holiday dinner, she simultaneously attacked both my cousin and I. Cousin Mike because he is 33 years old and still hasn’t figured out that “drinking too much causes hangover.” As a result, he wasn’t allowed to partake in the lively conversations. And me because, still in my “atheist phase,” I didn’t want to hold hands to say grace, and spent the time making faces at poor, hungover cousin Mike. All of this, and I’ll still go back for “Last Christmas” next year. Man, I love Grandmothers. Who else can get away with this shit?

SNOOZE BUTTON Fine line between genius and outright stupid ZERO DARK THIRTY TORTURE CONTROVERSY “We used enhanced interrogation techniques. That don't sound like torture, does it?”

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“WHACK AND UNWRAP” I love it when my chocolate talks dirty to me

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THE HOBBIT Why trek deadly mountains if you can ride giant eagles?

JANUARY Financial hangover COURIER STAFF IN TORONTO Please donate sunscreen CHRISTMAS ORANGES We shall mourn your departure MY MOM Queen supreme of inept gift-giving 1000-PAGE PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW TEXTBOOK No wonder the world is unlawful DJANGO UNCHAINED Well, at least no one got hurt

×× celina kurz

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