Generation Magazine Vol. 28 Issue 4

Generation Magazine - October 19, 2010 - Leaf peepin’

CONTENTS

Featured Also 05 | Editor’s Letter

Naughty professors (but not in the good way)

Something is usually happening.

Usually.

The good, the bad, and the totally idiotic in pop culture.

Steve and Catherine go at it again. If you know what we mean.

07 | Agenda

12 12

| Hit or Bulls***

08 | He Says, She Says

What Halloween is really all about.

14

We run down the sluttiest and funniest Halloween costumes, in case you haven’t made the big decision yet.

09 | What A Day

An RA complains about the perils of her position.

A variety of delightful Irish day trips.

10 | The 4-Leaf Journal

14 | Creative Costumes

How to DIY your ridiculous and impractical outfit for the big night.

Without catching on fire.

15 | Getting the Treat in

Her Pants

Skimpy outfits mean only one thing.

We tell you how to get it.

17 | B.i.l.l.

18 18

16

The Bills suck.

18 | Whalay Beach Short story by Jeff Pelzek.

(716)2010-GEN Stairway to Hell

Our world is in peril! A portal to the darkshde has opened up in Clemens Hall. It’s nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a nice fresh coat of paint and some airfreshener, however.

Text or call our anonymous tipline with suggestions or questions for our advice columns. Forward us your texts from last night.

If you’re still spinning away at a rotary phone, just call us at 201-0436.

Photo credits: Cover design by Dino Husejnovic. All Flickr photos are under Creative Commons Some Rights Reserved license, non-commerical, free to build upon license. “What a Day” background picture by Flickr user paulcapewell. All costumes photos are courtesy of HalloweenAdventure.com, and all costumes can be found for purchase on HalloweenAdventure.com. Page 14, Cheney photo by Rob Boudon. Burning man photo by Flickr User Dunkr. Page 15: Eiffel Tower by Flickr User palindrome6996.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Bad, bad professor

I am going to make up a statistic: 99 percent of students experience distress, anguish and anger at some point during their time in college due to professors that should not be professors.

I find this stat to be pretty accurate without giving away Target gift cards to survey-takers. We all have had our share of crappy professors. This year, I must say I got lucky. Most of my professors and instructors are decent, if not great at their jobs. The past few years, I have had some of the worst and best professors that one could possibly get, and I want to share a few tips and ways to spot them early on, and if it is too late, like this letter is, then I want to offer up some suggestions on how to deal with the situation.

My first experience with subpar college education was during my first year at UB, when I was a Computer Science major. I was taking Intro to CS for Majors I and II, and although I was comfortable with the content, the professors taught the course in a lecture hall with a projector. The students mostly had notebooks and laptops out; these are two crucial instructional mistakes.

If you do not know much about programming, one thing you should know is that writing computer code on a piece paper is absolutely pointless. When it

comes time to study, you have no idea what you wrote down. Also, if you let a Computer Science major use a laptop during a boring lecture, he or she will probably end up installing the latest Linux distribution while you ramble on.

Regardless, I got an A, because I stayed home and read the book.

That same year, I took Math 141, also known as Calculus 1. I love math, I liked programming and it was a requirement, so I had no choice. Keep in mind, I was a clueless freshman and I had no idea ratemyprofessor.com existed and was also the last to get a shot at the open classes. I do not wish to single any professors out, because the people I am talking about are probably still around (which is a problem on its own.)

This one did not speak English and wrote equations in Chinese characters.

I was not able to understand anything they were saying, because they spoke quietly, had a heavy accent and had trouble explaining things in English.

Don’t get me wrong, this professor was smart, but in my opinion, I just do not think they are suited to teach at UB (or are they?). Regardless, I passed with a B. Two more instances followed.

Sophomore year, I decided to tackle Calculus II, hoping that I would get a better professor. This time, I scoped out an American professor name before registering, not realizing that it was a trap.

This professor seemed decent at first, but mid-semester, I had to resign the class. He flew through all the content and when students would ask a question because they were confused, he would either tell the student that their question is stupid or would not answer the question well enough. He would put effort in asking if we have questions, but he would not even look up to see if anyone raised their hand, and would continue as if everything was dandy.

At this point, I dropped Computer Science as a major, because I was tired of dealing with crappy instruction techniques and was simply bored. It also meant I did not have to take any more math classes, since I switched to Media Study.

Everything went smoothly until I took a class with a professor who I’m pretty sure was too old to teach and had some

type of a disability that affected his thinking, and I’m not being sarcastic.

This professor would show up to class, say hello, and disappear for anywhere between 10 and 50 minutes. There were multiple times I wondered if he was coming back at all. He would read from a book, but stutter and mumble.

As hard as I tried to pay attention, I failed. At the same time, there was no way to judge my class performance, since there was only one assignment due the entire semester, which was a 15-page final paper on any topic of my choice. I automatically assumed that this professor had their tenure. Simply put, it was hell. At the end of the semester, I found out I got an A, since I attended every class.

What can one do once it is too late to drop the class? At this point in the semester, it is still possible to resign, but no one likes an R on their transcript. If you absolutely need to resign, you can always retake the exact class next semester and erase the R from the transcript. Another method I found helpful is that if your class is in a lecture hall and has multiple sections, attend different lectures with different professors until you find a professor you find the most effective. This helped me get through Calculus, since I needed an Englishspeaking professor to pass the class. If you are struggling and are stuck with one professor, there are probably other students who are struggling as well, so team up and spend a night discussing how much your professor sucks, and maybe learn a thing or two as well. TA’s can be pretty useless sometimes, but give them a try. If you are still afraid that you will fail the class, speak to the department chair about the performance of your professor. They might be able to have a little talk with them and get you the knowledge you paid for.

Dino Husejnovic Editor in Chief

Submit your letters and articles at ubgeneration.com, or e-mail us at ubgeneration@gmail.com

Generation Magazine 2010 - 2011 Staff Editor in Chief Dino Husejnovic

Managing Editor Kathryn Przybyla

Creative Director Elizabeth Flyntz

Copy Editor

Catherine Prendergast

Associate Editors Seon McDonald Steve Neilans Allison Balcerzak

Photo Editor

Allison Wasneechack

Circulation Director Rashid Dakhil-Rivera

Contributing Staff Josh Q. Newman Nathan Grygier Jessica Brant Allison Ruiz Samantha Engel

Business Manager Ariella Goro

Ad Manager Tommy Zhao

Asst. Ad Manager Ted DiRienzo

Cover design by Dino Husejnovic.

Generation Magazine is owned by Sub-Board I, Inc., the student service corporationat the State University of New York at Buffalo. The Sub-Board I, Inc. Board of Directors grants editorial autonomy to the editorial board of Generation.

Sub-Board I, Inc. (the publisher) provides funding through mandatory student activity fees and is in no way responsible for the editorial content, editorial structure or editorial policy of the magazine.

Editorial and business offices for Generation are located in Suite 315 in the Student Union on North Campus. The telephone numbers are (716) 645-6131 or (716) 645-2674 (FAX). Address mail c/o Room 315 Student Union University at Buffalo, Amherst, NY 14260 Submissions to Generation Magazine should be e- mailed to ubgeneration@gmail.com by 1 p.m. Tuesday, a week before each issue’s publication. This publication and its contents are the property of the students of the State University of New York at Buffalo 2010 by Generation Magazine, all rights reserved. The first 10 copies of Generation Magazine are free.

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AGENDA MOVIE | PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 | OCTOBER 22

The sequel to the surprising box office hit promises bigger scares backed by a bigger budget. After a series of break-ins prompt a family to install security cameras around their homes, it soon becomes apparent that something much much more eerie is at work.

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PARTY | HALLOWEEN BASH | OCTOBER 23

Possibly one of Buffalo’s biggest Halloween parties, the event features costume contests with a grand prize of $2000, a $500 scream contest and live music from The 80’s Hairband, Johnny Smoke and Equilibrium.

Tickets are available through Ticketmaster for $25 Venue: Buffalo Central Terminal

MOVIE | SAW 3D | OCTOBER 29

Now you can enjoy the nightmarish snares and bloody puzzles in full 3D as Jigsaw returns in the 7th and final chapter of the Saw franchise. The story comes full circle with survivors of the previous installments coming together for support while the Jigsaw mounts his most daring traps yet.

CONCERT | BLACK MOUNTAIN | OCTOBER 30

Canadian rock band with a penchant for blending classic rock with an edgy experimental sound is stopping by in Buffalo to perform along with The Black Angels. Check inside this issue for a review of Black Mountain’s new album “Wilderness Heart”. Venue: Tralf Music Hall

SHOW | CIRQUE DU SOLEIL | OCTOBER 27-31

Perhaps trick or treating isn’t your thing. The good news is, Cirque Du Soleil is in town for a special performance of “Dralion”, a fusion of Chinese dragon folklore with an expressive experimental approach. Be prepared to be dazzled. Tickets $44-$99 Venue: HSBC Arena

TEXT US YOUR QUESTIONS! 716-201-0436 8 | ubgeneration.com

He Says, She Says An advice column divided by the sexes, starring Catherine Prendergast and Steve Neilans

My parents surprised me on family weekend and walked into my room while I was tuggin the rope. How do I get rid of the awkwardness?

CP: Lock your door! Have you seriously not learned this yet? You are in college. Really? What do you think, the world is your oyster where you can just do whatever sexual activity you want whenever you want, with an unlocked door just a few feet away? What if a burglar walked in? A child molester?

A rapist? You would be defenseless.

At least those people you are not related to. Now your own family has an unforgettable image of you and your erect penis. I don’t see any fast way of getting rid of the awkwardness. I think everyone is scarred for life now.

SN: First off, do not give them a handshake for a while. Secondly, tell them to learn how to knock on the door.

Finally, lie to them and tell them you were itching yourself or something stupid like that. I seriously doubt that the sight of your boner was on your parents’ bucket list, so maybe if you trick yourself into denial, they will go into denial with you. Just watch the first couple of American Pies and you’ll know exactly what to do in any sexually awkward situation.

My girlfriend is pretty hot, but she refuses to make me a sammich.

How do I make her make me a sammich?

CP: Oh no! She won’t make you a sammich? That is simply awful. How grotesque! How uncalled for! How absolutely horrid! All good girlfriends must live by the unwritten code that is their duty: always look nice, always speak when spoken to, and always be ready to make your loved one a sammich.

Your girlfriend is not living up to her full potential! Sammiches are not being made! You may have to get a new girlfriend entirely, one who will make you without question chimmich sammiches, turmmich sammiches, and peammich butter and jemmich sammiches.

SN: You dump her and get a new girl to make you a sammich, that’s how.

She might be hot, but she sounds like she’s extremely anal (not in a good way). If you don’t dump her soon, you’ll wake up 10 years from now and realize that marrying an uptight bitch was the worst mistake of your life.

And you still won’t have a sammich for yourself.

I heard that people have been getting stabbed all over Buffalo. I don’t want to get stabbed. Where can I not get stabbed?

CP: Well, I guess you could go to main stre—oh wait, no. Elmwood is safe. Actually, not always. Englewood Aven—nope, no. West Northru— oops, don’t go there either. The bars

are usually—oh, good god, never mind. South Campus is probably an ok—oh wait, it’s also pretty dangerous. Well North Campus is—well, actually, someone did get jumped in one of the student parking lots last year.

Ellicott maybe? Except there’s always really sketchy people lurking around the food courts. Well, congratulations, you have completely stumped me. Every spot in Buffalo is a potential stabbing zone. No where is safe. Maybe we should all move out.

SN: Maybe Governors? I hear that things get wild up in Governors all the time.

I think that my boyfriend has a crush on my best friend. Whenever we’re at a party and she’s there, he always hits on her. What do I do?

CP: He probably does have a crush on your best friend. She’s probably prettier than you. She must have a better personality as well. She has a good sense of humor and just seems to always say the right thing. She often thinks about if she wasn’t your best friend, all the things she would be doing with your boyfriend right now… just kidding. I think the only way to solve this one is to suggest a threesome. Your boyfriend may be attracted to this girl, but he is not looking for a new wifey. He may be getting restless. Maybe a little agitated at being around the same female body day af-

ter day. Propose the idea and see how he takes it. This way, your boyfriend will get over his temporary infatuation with your friend, and the two of you will have shared a new, exciting experience.

SN: What are you, like 8 years old?

Nonetheless, I’ll give you two options. If you actually have a thing for your boyfriend, grab him by the balls and give him the scariest sex imaginable. Like whips and chains and that sort of dominatrix stuff. He will totally forget about his schoolboy crush and become scared of you, but in a good way. You can kiss any thought that he may cheat on you because he will now be scared shitless.

Smoke mad bluts?!1?

CP: Um, yes?!1? Sounds good?!1? Who are you?!1? Is this an offering?!1?

Smoke mad bluts did you say?!1?

Do you mean smoke mad blunts?!1?

Typo?!1? Slang?!1? Or did you really mean bluts?!1? What are bluts?!1? I think I’m down for bluts?!1? Are they exactly like blunts?!1? Can you bring some for everyone?!1? Yes?!1? Can you bring mad bluts?!1? And then we will smoke mad bluts?!1? I think this sounds like fun?!1? I still don’t know what bluts are?!1? But yes I accept, where can I find you?!1?

SN: Yes.

GENERATION October 19,2010

WHAT A DAY

By Samantha Engel The RA starts her “day” at midnight studying for her organic chemistry exam.

On the edge of a breakdown she gives up around 2am and goes to bed with some NyQuil. She’s woken up by one of her residents at 3:37am; she’s locked herself out and vomited in the hall. The tired RA lets the drunken resident into her room down the hall and pretends she doesn’t smell or see the vomit. Trying to go back to sleep she wonders why this stupid freshman went out on a Tuesday night. Waking up at 7am to go to organic chemistry, she takes a shower and uses the Breast Examination diagram hanging from the showerhead to see if she has a lump. She doesn’t have a lump. But being over-tired and on the edge of burning her textbook with lit cigarettes causes her to become a hypochondriac. Leaving the shower room with soap in her eye, she almost stepped in the vomit. While dodging the mass of alcohol and nachos her towel falls to the ground just as a junior male leaves another resident’s room. Grabbing her towel that conveniently landed in the foamy stomach juice, she runs to her room. Mortified and pissed she screams her frustration. As the neighbor bangs on the wall for her to shut up she looks at that organic chemistry book, “I hate you” she says. As she pulls on her clothes that haven’t been washed in three weeks she hears something. The neighbor that banged on the wall is actually doing the bang-bang game. The RA turns on her music and looks at that organic chemistry

book. Without hesitation she picks it up and hurls it at the wall she shares with Miss Bang Bang.

Leaving her room to go to her 8am organic chemistry exam she avoids the hall with the vomit by taking the sketchy old elevator. The custodian leaves the handcrank tin box and she thinks about the pile she’s about to encounter. Sitting in the front row of the classroom she puts her head on her desk waiting for someone to poke her with the test. Reading the questions she starts to day dream about the guy she met at the bar last week. She had almost ended up at his place until she passed out on the bench outside of the eatery on campus. “Ten minutes,” the TA says. Mumbling obscenities to herself she circles random letters for the last ten questions. She goes back to her dorm with the newly clean hallway and throws her textbook to the floor. She goes to sleep and skips her next two classes. Her cell phone blares loudly “Like a G6” as her mother calls. “Hi honey!” “What’s up mom?” “How are you?” “Tired.” “What did you do last night? Did you go to a bar?” “No, I was studying for a test.” “How did you do?” “I aced it.” “That’s great honey; well I got to go back to work. Love you!” “Bye.” The RA hates when her mother calls.

Even though it’s just once a week she hates it. After she left for college her single mother started dating men ten years younger and stayed up late going to clubs. How she got in the clubs, the RA had no idea. But the worst part? Her mother gets tagged in the club’s photo albums on Facebook and they aren’t exactly family appropriate.

The RA leaves to get some food and is stopped in the hall by a hysterical resident.

“I got a B on my paper.” “Well it could’ve been worse.” “No! I never get B’s!” “It is definitely better than a C though.” “I’m going to die!” “No you’re not.” “My GPA is ruined!” “Well the sun is out.” “Yeah…”

*sob sob* “So it could be cloudy.” “Yeah…”

“Maybe you can go to the writing center or your teacher to have it looked over before you officially hand it in.” “Yeah, I guess.”

“Are you okay now?” “Yeah, I’m just going to go talk to my teacher to see if I can do extra credit.” “Okay.”

Walking away she thinks about how ridiculous some people can be about grades.

As she leaves her building she is staring straight into the eyes of a ferocious beast.

He’s known for attacking students; biting their feet, jumping on their backs, and chasing them as they leave their buildings.

The RA has heard stories of this creature and has now encountered him. Chip-Chip the squirrel stares at her and munches on an acorn. The RA stands still, aware that her hair is down over her shoulders and will most likely be victim to Chip- Chip’s little claws. She takes one step forward and the squirrel prepares to sprint. The RA takes off in the opposite direction; ChipChip pursues his newest victim. Due to an adrenaline rush the RA screams at the top of her lungs while a group of music majors stood close by. Chip-Chip picked a new target; the music major took his trombone to the squirrel. Chip-Chip died that day.

Eating her hamburger that she wasn’t sure was cow, she stares around the cafeteria. While watching some people play Dungeons and Dragons she finishes her squirrel-burger, licking each finger with gusto.

The RA makes it back to her dorm room drama free. Such a relief compared to the kind of day she’s been having. She retrieves her slightly mangled organic chemistry book from the floor. She tapes a few of the pages that ripped and closes it nice and gently. Maybe if I treat it right, it will be nice to me and let me understand. Or maybe it’s a cruel sick piece of tree. Why kill trees for the sake of such a book? There are squirrels that lost their homes to print

this book.

Instead of going to the library right away she made a memorial for Chip-Chip on her RA bulletin board. She didn’t have any pictures of him so she printed some pictures online of evil squirrels with pointed teeth and she Photoshopped blood dripping from his mouth. Another resident approaches her as she was putting the finishing touches of glitter on fake ChipChip. She’s locked herself out. This resident was a sweet girl, never complained or bothered anyone and always smiled. The RA unlocked her door and let her in. One thing was normal today.

After spending three hours trying to find the trombone player on Facebook, she gives up. She’ll try again later. She grabs her bag and goes to the library. She got her favorite cubicle. SCORE! In her absence someone stuck three wads of multicolored gum to the desk. The RA pulls them off and flicks them on the carpet. She searches in her bag for her hand sanitizer. It’s gone.

Licking her fingers to get the sticky off she thinks, “So I get swine flu, big deal.”

She stares at her organic chemistry book and picks up her pencil. She starts poking it which gives her an odd satisfaction. Eventually she’s made a fairly large hole in the cover. Mission accomplished.

At 11:30pm the RA opens her textbook and starts studying again. Drifting into LaLa Land, the RA thinks of her day and realizes that it wasn’t that awful. She could’ve slipped and landed face first in the vomit.

ubgeneration.com | 9

The Four-Leaf Journal Saturday Journeys

By Josh Q. Newman Note: After reading the last journal “The Illegal Alien”, the reader will be happy to note that Josh is no longer illegal. He cleared himself with immigration officials on October 4th. Whether he’ll do anything else illegal is unknown.

I love Dublin, yes, but I don’t want people to think that I secluded myself to the capital city alone. On my Saturdays I always try to do something fun. Lately I have been traveling to other parts of Ireland. Below are descriptions of what I have done in three different places: Wicklow, Kilkenny, and Belfast.

Wicklow Wicklow is a county situated south of Dublin, about a 45-minute drive away from the urban center. I can attest to its quiet beauty. It is dense in forestation and mountainous terrain with fog and mist inundating the valleys. Green and gray are its colors, not overstated yet lavishly drawn as if by design.

The lakes and rivers gently invade the fields and are surrounded by lush grasslands and the inevitable rocks, large and small. The water itself is opaque and Guinness-like in color, having seeped through the course layers of earth in its journeys from Dublin and elsewhere. The mountains literally touch the clouds, not so much that they are high as the clouds are low. One can only imagine what the locals a thousand years ago thought of the land as they proceeded to construct bell

10 | ubgeneration.com

towers, churches, Celtic crosses, and seminaries that now grace the county.

Wicklow is rich in history, being the location of things as diverse as a pre-Norman theology school to the grounds of many Irish rebellions. The British, in the height of their imperial power, built an army barracks in the early 19th century to keep the country in line after a bloody rebellion in 1798. The barracks, ironically, has been converted into a house of peace, hosting various diplomatic meetings and accords. Films such as “P.S. I Love You” and “Braveheart” were filmed there; the famous Omaha beach scene in “Saving Private Ryan” was filmed in the neighboring country Wexford. It contains the homes of the Guinness family and acclaimed Irish-British actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Besides that, however, and perhaps more importantly, the county contains many revered and historic churches, graveyards, and round towers that illustrate Ireland’s architecture and art.

The Celtic cross, a normal Christian cross with a halo-shaped circle attached to the arms and stem, is very popular in Ireland. It is considered a symbol of the country’s ancient roots and it was apparent in the local graveyard, having many such crosses. Also in the graveyard was a stone church that dated back hundreds of years. The church has a deep history behind it. According to the locals, for example, a woman and her baby were saved there during a storm by a deer. The Catholic Church has traditionally

played a major role in Irish affairs and the church in the graveyard said no different.

Another iconic structure there was a round tower. The round towers were built during the Medieval Ages. As its name suggests, it has a round base and main body which leads to a cap on top. It was gray and seemingly sturdy – a majestic feat in engineering. Scholars are still not totally sure why they were built, but the leading theory is that they were used as bell towers to summon the local monks and residence.

They may also have been used as protection against Viking invaders. Either way, there are approximately twenty round towers left in Ireland, and I was fortunate enough to see one of them.

By the time I left Wicklow, after I had walked through the forest and sat in front of two gorgeous lakes, I was exhausted yet pleased that I was able to travel to such an Irish Eden.

Kilkenny Kilkenny is a county southwest of Dublin, about a two-hour drive away. Though there were no breathtaking beaches for my companions and me to see – the county is nearly landlocked – there was a river that ran right through the city center. Kilkenny city itself is more like a town. You could walk to and from the city edges without much hassle.

The buildings, too, were tidy. Two-to-three story houses and stores cropped evenly along the streets. Their colors – orange, brown, blue, green, red – made the streets

a pleasure to walk along. Yet the most strident colors of all in Kilkenny hung from the roofs and facades of the stores: the county flag. Kilkenny had recently competed in an all-Ireland hurling competition (the equivalent of our Superbowl) so the flags waved proudly in the streets. The flag is simple: black on the left side, amber on the right.

Sometimes the flag will have a checkered pattern. Kilkenny may have lost the game but it didn’t lose its pride.

My friends and I walked around aimlessly for a bit before we went to the tourist office and picked our first sight to see: the Smithwick’s brewery. (I must say we outdid ourselves with that one.) Smithwick’s is a red Irish ale that is older than the United States. It was founded in 1710 and placed next to St. Francis Abbey, which had brewer friars of its own who dated back to the 13th century. We were taken to the abbey and shown where these friars made their brews using the abbey’s well. The abbey was mostly run down yet beautiful nonetheless. The tour, which led us to the “tasting room” and the actual brewery, ended with a premier tasting of the beer itself. Our tour guide was so good at pouring the ale that he was able to make an island using the suds. It was one of the best beers I ever had, and I had two.

Afterwards we went about the town and decided to check out St. Canice’s Cathedral.

Kilkenny is known for its churches and abbeys, and St. Canice’s is one of the more prominent ones. The former Catholic, now

GENERATION October 19, 2010

Anglican church is huge. It’s the largest and most impressive church I’ve been to (keep in mind I’m Jewish). There were tombs of medieval knights and lords, relics from an ancient past. The stain-glass windows displayed images of saints, Jesus, and biblical stories in miraculously superb condition. Beside the rather large pipe organ was the altar, highly decorated in the best Christian tradition. My friends and I were astounded by its elaborate and sacrosanct dignity.

Before we left, we saw and went into another round tower right next to the cathedral. The tower, about 100 feet high, gave us a view of the whole town and, really, the entire county. Despite the rain we enjoyed our opportunity to see Ireland from high above, and when we left, I was even more inspired to see more of Ireland down below. This leads me to Belfast.

Belfast I went to Belfast by myself on a train. It took about two-and-a-half hours to get there.

As you know, Belfast is in Northern Ireland (also known as Ulster) and is technically

part of the United Kingdom. This was made evident by the many Union Jacks found waving all over the city. Yet the city is, like much of Ulster, definitely Irish. The people speak with Irish accents and hold on to their roots.

Though this may be a bit of a stretch, I would like to think that a great many Northern Irish, especially the Catholic ones, would agree with this small yet piquant statement made by poet Seamus Heaney: “My passport’s green/No glass of ours was ever raised/to toast the Queen”.

I first stopped at St. George’s Market, a traditional vendor market that has been running since the Victorian era. Delicious pastries, fresh meat and fish, and authentic clothing and wares were sold there. People from all over town crowed to buy the products at their convenience. I wandered there for a bit before deciding to head outside and look around. A five minute walk on May Street took me to City Hall. A magnificent building, City Hall took up an entire block. Its grounds include a statue of Queen Victoria and Northern Ireland’s main war memorial,

the Garden of Remembrance.

The city itself, tightly compact and structured, not unlike Dublin, has everything you could want to buy or see. I saw most of the city through a bus tour after encountering an insistent tour guide on the streets. I passed by the shipyards where the Titanic was built and a bar dating back to the 17th century. I saw the Northern Irish Assembly, known as Stormont, which was on top of a well-kept mile-long hill and featured a statue of the great Northern Irishman and Unionist Edward Carson, who is depicted as brooding and raising his left arm in the air. I saw Belfast’s world-famous wall murals, which depict the violent times in Northern Ireland from 1970 to 1998. The murals depicted both sides; the nationalists drew rather militant depictions of the IRA’s struggle against Great Britain while the loyalists drew equally passionate pleas for staying with the UK. Perhaps the most famous one is the mural of Bobby Sands, a member of the Provisional IRA and a British MP that died on a hunger strike in a British prison. Birds and colorful broken

chains surround his face, which was rather feminine and childlike. On the left side of his face read “our revenge will be the laughter of our children”. The murals not about the Troubles ranged from Picasso paintings to pro-Palestinian propaganda. Belfast chose to represent itself in murals and the world certainly has watched. I went to Queen’s University and strolled around the botanical gardens before making my way back to the train station.

I plan on traveling more of Ireland in the days ahead. There’s so much to see and do.

But, unfortunately, thought the possibilities are unlimited, the number of Saturdays I have left before I go home are not.

Halloween

the sluttiest and the funniest

Halloween is only days away and if you don’t have a costume picked out by now, you are already behind. True Halloween-fanatics have been planning their outfits since the first leaf turned orange in Buffalo, but don’t fret because you are not too late. Here we have compiled some of this season’s sluttiest and funniest costume ideas to really get attention this October 31st. A few good classics and a number of new comers will make this Halloween one of the most creative yet. So if you’re looking to be the life of the party and have the costume that everyone is talking about, take our advice.

by Kathryn Przybyla

The Classic Devil When it comes to hotness, one can have trouble trying to beat the classic sexy devil.

Usually dressed all in red with a pair of shiny red horns and matching tail, this look is undeniably appealing. A teeny-tiny red dress is all you need to pull this off and trust us, it’s never been so good to be bad.

The Family Girl Almost nothing can top a funny costume that pays homage to one of guy’s favorite shows; Family Guy. This take on a Brian costume will really hit it off with the male gender.

It shows you don’t take yourself too seriously, but you’re still a classy martini drinker.

Snooki There is not much to explain with this costume. You need a poof, orange tanned skin, and a dress that doesn’t fit you.

Take some fashion cues from the Long Island girls here on campus and you pretty much have a similar look. Don’t forget the pickles!

The Colorful Clown While some people are deathly afraid of creepy clowns, a sexy clown can be just what you need to overcome that fear. Ruffles are a must, with a short colorful dress and a cute clown hat. You will be the perfect circus act for a night out and will attract any ringmaster that comes your way.

The Cougar I don’t know what it is these days, but cougars are definitely on the prowl. Fine your favorite pair of Mom-jeans and some low cut tops and you really have the whole outfit.

Extra points if you make use of some vintage 80’s blue eye shadow.

Beer Pong Table A few sheets of poster board and some super glue can make this costume pretty awesome. We all know you have hundreds of old red cups lying around. Make use of them this year and watch the elbow.

The Mardi Gras Girl Celebrate Mardi Gras any time of year with this purple, green, and gold get-up. Lots of feathers and dangling coins will be the perfect accessories with some gold heels. Don’t forget your Mardi Gras beads to hand out to other Halloweeners; you are sure to be a party favorite.

The Lion & Hunter Couple costumes can be hit or miss, but picking something other than a witch and a warlock is a good idea. A lion and his hunter make perfect sense, especially if things get a little wild on Halloween night. Rawr.

YouTube For those who cannot think of anything else to be, put yourself on Youtube with this costume. Attaching an actual screen with a video playing would be epic, but a piece of cut out cardboard has the same effect. Tag me!

The Police Man Nothing is hotter on a guy than short shorts, so dressing up as a no-nonsense police man is a good choice. You can go with classic navy blue and badge, but we are feeling the tan Reno 911 vibe that this guy is giving us. He means business and is willing to arrest you.

The Valentine’s Day present No one said that slutty outfits are just for the ladies. It’s time for guys to step up and really show what they’ve got this year.

If you are a gym frequenter and like to work out, an early Valentine’s Day present is just the costume for you! Hersey kisses for friends would be a nice plus.

The Plug & Socket The guy wears a plug. The girl wears the socket. Get it?

The Breathalyzer This is the costume for the comedian of the bunch. He’ll think he’s really creative with the strategic positioning of his outfit.

Most time this leads to inappropriate pictures being posted on Facebook the day after. Proceed with caution.

Tiger Woods A bruised face, gold club through the head, and don’t forget the Nike visor, and you are pretty much Tiger in a nutshell. Extra points if you can get a chick to go as Elin Nordegren.

But now it’s up to you. Make all of us here at Generation proud with your fantastic outfits this Halloween.

Send your best costume ideas that you came up with on the 31st to ubgeneration@gmail.com Have fun, be safe and don’t forget we’re partying on a Sunday this year. Have someone take notes for you on Monday!

Creative Costumes

By Catherine Prendergast The year is 2010. Halloween is going to fall on a Sunday night, so that means plenty of time to get creative. Don’t spend hours at party city, walking down the aisles, trying to decide to be a witch or any other extremely generic creature. There will be three – wait, actually four – chances of rocking a totally sick, one of a kind costume. There’s always the risk of at least some idiot not having a clue what you are. But at the end of the night, it will be totally worth the thought and risk.

If you are a guy, consider a political pun.

Karen Hanley from UB remembers her friend’s Halloween costume last year. “He made a costume consisting of a full body suit of a dick, and then attached a real chain around him. Dick plus chain equals Dick Cheney. Unfortunately he got a lot of questions from the less news-aware, like, Why are you a dick?”

There’s also Kanye West. Last year, a guy was the infamous artist and interrupted everyone at the party he was at, ala Kanye at the VMA’s. If you do that this year, it will probably be a little outdated, but Kanye West is always doing something ridiculous, so he’s kind of like an automatic win card.

Feeling artistic? Kayla Green, from Tulane University, had a friend who was a Roy Lichtenstein painting. They held up a poster of a classic Lichtenstein scene and painted polkadots all over their face.” A lot of girls are also

“walk-of-shames”: messy hair, heels, a men’s buttoned down shirt and smudged makeup. “The only problem was a lot of people thought of ‘Risky Business.’”

Are you a WASP? An art major from UB combined the two uses of the word. “I’m a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant – and proud of it! Last Halloween I went as a wasp! That is, the insect kind. Wings, striped yellow and black, antennas. A WASP being a wasp.

Double-whammy!” Bonus points if you add a polo sweater or a tennis racket to the ensemble.

If you have a group of people who need a costume, consider Starburst. You can easily paint cardboard boxes and get your friends to be the different flavors. Sesame Street has several characters that would be fun to dress up as, Elmo, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster…if you have a willing group of seven people you guys can be the Seven Deadly Sins: green for envy, for example. Eight people? Feeling nostalgic for childhood? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Finally, if you want to be really punny, there’s always the serial (cereal) killer costume: a box of your favorite cereal (mmm, honey comb) and a knife or weapon of your choice.

Do not let this be another uncreative, no effort, last minute Halloween where you don’t even really like what you are dressed up as. Make this one count! Stand out! Spend some extra time thinking of something clever, and trust me, it will be a good night.

Staying Safe • Plan costumes that are bright and reflective. Make sure that shoes fit well and that costumes are short enough to prevent tripping, entanglement or contact with flame.

•

If using makeup, ensure that it is non-toxic

• When shopping for costumes, wigs and accessories look for and purchase those with a label clearly indicating they are flame resistant (unless you are dressing up as the Ghost Rider) •

Avoid entering homes (unless they are your friends), or getting into cars for treats.

•

Trick or Treat as a group, Do not wonder around by yourself at night.

•

Look out for on-coming traffic and other road users while traveling around.

Now, you are all set for the spookiest night of your life. Take a trip back to childhood! But at Generation, we know you just want to get wasted, so if you are drinking, please drink responsibly, and most importantly – be safe, have fun and unwind from all the college stress!

14 | ubgeneration.com

GENERATION October 19, 2010

Getting the Treat in Her Pants: How to Pick Up a Halloween Slut

By Nathan Grygier and yes, this is technically an upskirt of the Eiffel Tower Halloween is easily up for debate, as one of the greatest holidays that is celebrated.

When you’re a kid, you’re treated with free candy just from banging on someone’s door in a shitty costume. When you’re an adult, you’re treated to a world of partial boobage, potential nip-slips and more exposed legs than the movie Showgirls. Now although all these ladies are lovely to look at, the hard and rewarding part is talking to them, and actually having them give two shits about what you’re talking about. There are a few pointers that I can give to help you get somewhere with a Halloween slut, even if you don’t end with with your hands in her goody bag.

First of all, because you’re going to be in costume, you need to understand that you’re not the person you’re dressed up as. Let’s say for example you’re dressed up as a racecar driver, (which by the way is a horrible costume idea which will lead to lonely masturbation and celibacy), you need to know that

you can’t hit on girls as a racecar driver. They make think that one costume related joke is cute, but don’t overdo it. If you ask her if she wants to shift your stick, she’s only going to realize that your car can go from 0 to jackass in under 60 seconds.

One good way to strike up a conversation is to somehow incorporate a coat/jacket into your costume. Seeing that we live in Buffalo, it’s bound to be cold as balls on Halloween.

That however, will not stop girls from prancing around in tiny, revealing outfits. If you have a coat or jacket to offer them, you will be seen as chivalrous and you may get an invite to hang out the rest of the night.

Another good way to strike up a conversation is to be somewhat identifiable, but not too out there. For example, if you dress up as H.R. Pufnstuf, you probably won’t get laid.

If you do, however, get laid as H.R. Pufnstuf, you should probably tell everyone you know, because that is something to be proud of.

Be wary of being too obscure with your

costume though. You do not want to end up having an awkward conversation with a girl.

If someone approaches you and asks “What are you dressed as?” you don’t want to reply with “Oh, you can’t tell? I’m the victim from Law & Order: SVU season 4 episode 21.” Not only will she think you’re a loser, she will dry up almost instantaneously.

An easy way to get a girl to talk to you is to be something that they remember from their childhood, something that when they are drunk, they will wanna talk to. Let’s say you and a bunch of friends go as the cast of Boy Meets World, I guarantee you will at least get a handy for bringing up Disney nostalgia.

I advise not going after the girl who is the most intoxicated at the party for a couple of reasons: First of all, it’s completely classless.

Secondly, you may end up with a “confident” drunk girl. These girls are so drunk that they think they know what they’re doing, even though in reality it’s just uncomfortable and

painful. You don’t want a girl who gets on top of you and thwomps and crushes your genitals, because in her mind she is rocking your world.

Be on your toes. It is Halloween and a lot of girls will be covered in makeup and wearing masks, hiding their true, horrifying self. A lot of times what’s under the mask is scarier than the mask itself, am I right fellas? Avoid girls who have their entire face covered, because they’re probably hiding it for a reason.

Let’s review: Go as something identifiable, not something ridiculously obscure and secular. Bring a coat or jacket to offer a girl because they’ll probably be frigid, even though they won’t admit it. Avoid drunk chicks, because their performance will be less than stellar, even though they think they’re good enough to get paid for their skills.

StairWay to HELL

By Kathryn przybyla

She used all the strength she had to open that metal door that led to the dark and damp stairway. Filled with apprehension and fear, she slowly made her way down the musty, dirty steps, nervous at every turn. A quick glance around the corner, and luckily no one was there. The coast was clear as she continued, with a light flickering in the distance. The pungent smell of mold filled the air and was almost unbearable, but luckily the door leading out of this stairway was in sight.

Stepping over garbage and dodging a few exposed pipes, she grabbed the door handle. A sense of relief came over her as she used every ounce of muscle to pull open a second metal door.

Checking her phone, she noticed

Photos by Allison Wasneechak

the cell service was nonexistent down here. No one could help her if she needed anything now. Walking through the deadzone of a hallway, she ducked under a missing ceiling with exposed wires, lights and more rusted pipes. Hanging by a thread, she wondered how long that light fixture would even stay up there. Turning the last corner down the deserted hallway, her final destination was near.

Cautiously, she approached the door and turned the knob, entering room number 6. The others had made it.

Unharmed, she settled into her seat… patiently waiting for her intercultural communication class to begin, in the basement of Clemens.

What may have started off like a horror story is really in fact that expe-

rience students go through on a daily basis while heading to class in the dreaded basement of Clemens Hall.

Known as the “Dungeon” to some, the walk down to these classrooms is almost an unhealthy one. When entering the stairway down, you almost need to hold your breath to not inhale the musty and damp odor that permeates from the walls. The rusted yellow stairs overhead just add to the misfortune of the bottom floor.

While the rest of Clemens is pretty clean and comfortable, this “stairway to hell” seems to be overlooked. Besides the scary steps, overcrowded classrooms make up the rest of the floor. Barely enough space for students and their backpacks, some rooms even have exposed ceilings with numerous tiles missing. Is any of this really OK? The frustration of students is very apparent when it comes to complaining about their choices to make it to class. Is our only option to take the elevator? It could be that a serious round of renovation is taking place and we are just in the middle stages.

But after four years of personally having a class in the basement of Clemens, I have seen little improvement.

So as class registration draws near, keep in mind where you will be learning. There is no reason to pay tuition and have to travel through a moldy environment to study. It doesn’t make any sense. Just be prepared to complain a lot on the way, because your next semester could turn into a horror story of its own.

By Steve Neilans

The B.i.l.l

“Boy I love losing Super Bowls” has turned into “Boy I love losing”.

When Donte Whitner says the Buffalo Bills are the laughingstock of the NFL, something is definitely wrong. The same guy who guaranteed that the Buffalo Bills would make playoffs in 2008, is now admitting that he thinks the 0-5 Bills are losing fans by the minute. If Whitner doesn’t “Billeive”, then how can fans be expected to?

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever cared less about a football season than I do this year. If the Bills win a game then it’s cool, and if they lose a game it’s cool. The more the Bills lose, the better our draft pick gets. Andrew Luck here we come.

For many Bills fans, including myself, this past Sunday was truly a day of rest. The Bills didn’t lose, and my blood pressure didn’t go up too much. I could enjoy a Sunday like it was meant to be, by recovering from a hangover. I didn’t even have to rely on the NFL to blackout the Bills from my life, I could just do it on my own.

Life for a Buffalo sports fan is pretty rough right now. Life is especially rough for a Buffalo sports fan who likes the Red Sox. I feel like the only thing keeping me interested

in any sports is fantasy football domination.

Not good.

The Bills are bad, the Sabres are underperforming, the Sox aren’t even in the playoffs, and my will to live is slowly fading. Woe is me.

Going into this year I had expected things to be bad, but not this bad. For three years I was a season ticket holder for Bills game. I saw all the bad, and a little bit of the good.

I even tried to turn the bad into good so I didn’t go mental. After the Monday Night collapse against the Cowboys, I saw the drunkest Bills fan ever start a fight with a Cowboys fan. Did I mention he had to be about 60 and had a kid with him screaming “Let go of my grandpa!!!!”?

Maybe it was messed up that I laughed at that, but that old guy was being a complete bad-ass and I loved it. It broke my heart to have to cancel my tickets, but even drunkenold-man fights couldn’t justify the money I had to pay.

I think 0-5 constitutes as constant losing.

I’m relatively happy that I decided to invest my money in beer and pizza instead of Bills tickets this year.

The Bills will always make me want to shout, profanities.

ASTRO ZOMBIES

By Steve Neilans It’s only a matter of time until the zombie apocalypse happens. If all it takes is one crazy monkey escaping from its cage and coughing blood on a random scientist, we’re all doomed.

I already know that I’ll have a hard time faking that I’m not excited when the zombie apocalypse happens. The only thing that really scares me is the thought of getting jumped as I’m sleeping, where I wouldn’t even have a fighting chance. It would be the absolute worst way to die. I wouldn’t only be dead, I would have also missed my best chance to appreciate a zombie up close and personal.

Maybe it’s the violent video games kicking in, but the thought of using everyday house appliances to beat someone up sounds awesome. The scene in Shaun of the Dead where they throw records at the zombies literally changed my life. If I can use a cricket paddle to knock a zombies head off, that would be like the Bills winning the Super Bowl for me.

I need that in my life, now.

Fortunately, the zombie apocalypse may be closing in on us. Zombies have already been found in nature and “zombies” have already been created. Scientists may not be testing the rage virus on monkeys in secret labs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have an ace up their sleeve…

But in order to hear where we as living humans are going, we must hear where the undead has been.

In a backyard near you, there are actually

snails that can turn ants into zombies. To do so, the snail glides over a leaf or something and leaves a trail of slime. Meanwhile, an ant comes along and picks up the slimy leaf. Unbeknownst to him, the slimy leaf contains a liver fluke called dicrocoelium dendritcum, which basically translates to zombie mind control parasite which will make the rest of an ant’s life living hell. The ant is about to get pwned.

The parasite climbs into the ant’s brain, and takes control of the ant. But it doesn’t stop there. The liver fluke wants to be consumed by something even larger, like a cow. The zombie ant is then told to go find a cow and to serve himself for dinner to said cow. The cow eats the zombie ant, and the parasite lives on.

In most cases, the zombie ant doesn’t actually kill the cow, but I’m sure you’re a feeling a little queasy about ordering that next Big Mac made from zombie ant meat.

Then comes the case of a Haitian man named Clairvius Narcisse. In 1962, Narcisse made a couple of his family members very upset. He was being very greedy and refused to give his family their fair share of land. One of his brothers took this very personally and decided to find a Haitian sorcerer. Trained in ancient Vodoun religion, the sorcerer created a “zombie powder”. The powder, which is paste made from the toxin datura stramonium, induces a psychotic state onto the user. Once the brother obtained the “zombie powder”, it was on. Narcisse was drugged,

became very ill, and was confirmed dead by his family and 2 surgeons days later.

Or did he?

Once pronounced dead, Narcisse was allegedly dug out of his grave. He was then beaten to remove any chance of his human spirit coming back, and sold into slavery. His slave master was instructed to serve him the “zombie powder” in order for him to stay obedient. After 18 years in slavery, the slave master died and was unable to provide the powder anymore. Narcisse broke free from becoming a zombie and walked home, where he was met by his family who had seen him die nearly two decades earlier.

So the only things to worry about are eating meat and staying away from Haiti, right?

Wrong.

Modern medicine is great for saving lives, but it will also soon be great for making zombies. Scientists are working on creating selfreplicating microscopic technology called

By Josh Q. Newman

The Elephants in the Room 18 | ubgeneration.com

Last August, Time Magazine placed writer Jonathan Franzen on its cover under the heading “Great American Novelist”. Franzen, in his fifties with a whopping head of hair, grizzly stubble, and nerd glasses, looked somewhat pensive. I can imagine why without too much difficulty. Besides the obvious connection between him and the likes of Hemingway, Twain, and Melville, he might be nervous about the reception of his new novel “Freedom”, which was coming out the following month. I hope he wasn’t too concerned because “Freedom” is a tour de force, a memorizing, meticulous, and thoughtful (if not brutal) portrayal of contemporary American life. He depicts a nation on the edge of intellectual decay. He sees the ins and outs of American society without sounding selfrighteous or neurotic. He chooses to focus on a nuclear family whose peculiar, often paralyzing troubles reflect the dilemmas of the post-9/11 years. Even the title is ambitious; as if one novel can handle the complexities of a concept very few, if any, people can fully comprehend. Yet like “War and Peace” and

nanobots. These nanobots will go directly into a human’s brain and repair neural connections even after a person dies.

All is well and good, until these computers start becoming self aware. Once the computer realizes its host is going to die, it will inevitably need to find a new host. Solution?

Find a new brain. This is how the zombie apocalypse will begin, with a horde of zombies and a bunch of self-aware HAL 9000’s… awesome.

If the prime directive for all astro zombies is to exterminate the whole human race, until our faces drop in a pile of flesh, then we are screwed. Glenn Danzig and Zombie Kid might live, but the rest of us are total goners.

We might as well all be great zombies and like turtles.

I just hope that we can at least be the badass fast zombies instead of the lame slow ones.

“Atonement”, two books Franzen references, “Freedom” lives up to its gigantic and potentially vague namesake. Franzen writes with a refined prose that knows exactly how to bait and gut the reader’s sentiments and with ideas that one can’t help but challenge without walking away in defeat. Franzen has a few tricks up his sleeve.

“Families are always rising and falling in America”, Hawthorne once wrote. Franzen adheres to this like a hawk. Similar to his last novel “The Corrections”, which put him on the literary map and was awarded the National Book Award, “Freedom” paints a picture of three hundred million Americans by focusing on just a few. The main characters, Walter and Patty Berglund, are a well-educated, liberal middle-class family that resides in a small Saint Paul, Minnesota neighborhood.

Walter is a lawyer and mild-mannered to a fault. He’s passionate about environmental issues yet has trouble pursuing his beliefs.

His wife, Patty, is a complicated (well, what woman isn’t?) former college athlete and housewife that slowly falls into depression.

Their children, Joey and Jessica, aren’t so typical either. Joey displays his “coolness” toGENERATION October 19, 2010

REVIEWS

ward his parents throughout his life, and it cumulates when he decides to move in with his extremely conservative neighbors during high school. Jessica’s relationship with her parents, unfortunately, isn’t much better. So the Berglunds are a rotting family right from the beginning, and it gets much worse from there.

The novel is divided into four mains parts: an introduction that lays out the Berglunds’ problems, an autobiography written by Patty about her uncomfortable life hitherto, a long section about their doings in 2004, and an epilogue that completes the story of all the players involved. The autobiography, deprecatingly titled “Mistakes Were Made”, traces the faults of Patty’s life. Patty sees nothing but mistakes: her decision not to persecute a snotty rich-kid after he raped her in high school, her choice in choosing a pathological liar as her college best friend, her lack of drive after she ends her basketball career following an injury. But most importantly, her biggest mistake was falling in love with Walter. She, after all, only fell in love and married Walter after being rejected by Walter’s cynical musician roommate Richard Katz. She had an intense longing for Katz but Katz hated women and would have nothing to do with it. So she married Walter out of a yearning for male affection. She sees the good in him but only that, which is why she can’t fully absorb the love for her husband.

The part that takes place in 2004 jumps all over the place and can be hard to follow.

Walter and Patty have moved to Washington, D.C. and have become part of the elite. Walter works for an oil-and-gas company that wants to mine the hell out of West Virginia using the infamous mountaintop removal procedure. He begrudgingly goes along with it as well as its ties to a corrupt defense contractor only because the company agreed to set

up a wildlife preserve for a species of bird.

Patty’s deep depression, meanwhile, puts a strain on their marriage. It also doesn’t help that Joey becomes an independent University of Virginia student that gets involved in a mix of questionable dealings and relationships, including one with the defense contractor in cahoots with his father’s company and another with his high-school sweetheart. And then there’s Katz, who shows up in the picture by making it big with his indie band and even bigger with Patty. Tragedy is in the air for this poor family. It seems as though no amount of thinking and strategizing can put an end to their first-world misery.

A real strength of “Freedom” is Franzen’s eloquence. His prose is rich and carefully crafted. He can be funny and warm or cranky and misanthropic. His sentences are often long, which he creates with precision and care. He has a keen ear for dialogue and, really, a keen sense of the way people behave.

His use of characterization is up their with Dickens and Fitzgerald. As a fan of “The Corrections”, I was expecting Franzen to deliver another literary knockout. Indeed he has. His writing style is irresistible: modern, limpid, and sometime crude (he’s not afraid of using “fuck” as a verb and “shit” as a noun). When it comes down to it, he’s a realist, an apt, witty describer of the world he creates.

Another admirable trait of Franzen’s writing is its ability to make truly unlikable characters into symbols for human struggle. Of all the major players in the novel, only Walter, and to a lesser extent Katz, are remotely worthy of the reader’s sympathies. Walter is an intellectual klutz that can’t accomplish anything of substance and Katz is so downto-earth for his time that you can forgive his misogyny and general prick-ness. Everyone else is either too self-absorbed or too clueless to really be welcomed by the reader. Yet everyone can certainly relate to the story.

Even if you don’t have a runaway son or a mansion in Washington, certain themes of current American life – unhappy marriage, lunatic relatives, depression, inept government – hit home hard. The characters don’t want anything besides being happy; to be free to be themselves. Yet in a country that defines freedom as having personal rights rather than being a person, it can be difficult to accomplish. Life and liberty are one thing; the pursuit of happiness is quite another.

Mind you, this is only for the family. America’s national struggles feature strongly in the novel. Franzen captures the post-9/11 political era quite strongly. The bulk of the novel takes place during the Bush years, and boy are they tiring. Franzen refers to the Bush administration as “the worst regime of all”.

He makes many references to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and the gang. Now, let’s be clear. Franzen is clearly no Republican (he donated money to the Obama campaign) but he’s not exactly a bleeding-heart liberal. The novel is about a quintessentially liberal clan and is written, you could say, through a calm

Black Mountain Wilderness Heart

By Seon McDonald

progressive lens. Franzen is not very flattering about Bill Clinton or John Kerry and he certainly doesn’t have the Jon Stewart selfrighteousness about Bush and the Republican cabal in general. Rather, he writes with a tamed subjectivism. Yes, he seems to be saying, Bush was bad but it’s not like someone stood out before Obama. The Iraq war was wrong but it’s not like our generation did anything about it besides whine. He targets both American apathy toward the problems of the earth and the partisanship and blind ideology that led so many astray during the Bush era.

Yet to talk about politics in this manner may be doing a disservice to the novel. It is, in its core, a family novel – not a political one. To consider “Freedom” a condemnation of Bush or a satire against liberalism is a fallacy. Everyone at that time talked about Bush and the politics that were tearing the country apart.

For Walter’s purposes, the building of an environmental safe haven, politics was crucial.

Joey, too, got involved in Republican politics, which isn’t a surprise considering the college he went to. Walter’s main bugaboo, I should mention, is overpopulation. He believed that the earth’s rising population would eventually ruin the planet and that it was essential that people start dealing with the problem directly. How? By not having children. Franzen puts us in a unique position by talking about overpopulation within the context of a family. It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about yet may be the greatest challenge of our time.

Challenge, after all, is what ultimately defines literature: the challenge of doing something that has obstacles in its path. Franzen realizes this and packs in every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence, an ironic take on the elephants in the room, whether they are the infuriating nature of love, the tumultuous nature of self and politics, or the impossibility of true freedom. Freedom, or the right to make choices absent of force, doesn’t exist because there are forces in the world we can’t perceive or control. In what’s left, all we can do is hope for a better world for ourselves and for those around us and to work at doing so. Though it would be a stretch to say that “Freedom” has made the world a better place, it’s not a stretch to suggest that Franzen is on to something.

Various bands have different ways of making music. It is evident that Black Mountain took a much more organic approach and put together an album that brings together classic rock, folk and an almost metal sound into an electrifying set of songs that any band would be proud to call their own.

Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, the rock band has been in the indie scene honing their guitar riffs that’s now meticulously tuned on this 10 track album. Starting things off is the sweet ode to the youth and life in “The Hair Song”. Despite building on an acoustic guitar, the song is as heavy as it is light meshing well the charismatic voice of lead singer Stephen Mc Bean and the alluring vocals of Amber Webber. Hitting their stride on the electric track “Old Fangs”, the influence of 70’s classic rock is not only evident in the song, but spills across nicely into the video which appropriately features a 70’s mustang and retro video effects.

Radiant Hearts opens with a delicious folksy acoustic strumming guitar that contrasts the stark somber lyrics. “Children play softly near the explosions tearing up shrapnel wrapped up in clothing” the metaphors are heavy as the song soars on string orchestrations. It’s hauntingly beautiful and melts into the lyrical musing of McBean. “Can’t you hear me calling your name” he croons “The hardest truth to believe that all is worth, and all that is gained could never replace the most beautiful things that brought you so close to my heart”.

Highlights on the album include Rollercoaster, a heavy chugging track that’s palatable enough for radio play without turning off the average listener. Amber Webbers vocals are as avid as the guitar solo that tears through the song to rousing effect.

“Let Spirits Ride” is sure to be a crowd pleaser as the frantic drumming match the fervent memorable hook making for a fun foot thumping song. The title track “Wilderness Heart is an excellent embodiment of the band’s psychedelic rock that hard to ignore. Overall Black Mountain has crafted a fine album that is fun yet reverend towards the classics, dark and heavy yet light and positive. Strong vocals, excellent musicality and memorable lyrics promise an irresistible live show. Black Mountain will take to the stage October 20th and share their magnetic aesthetic with I’m absolutely certain, an eager crowd.

Hear them live in Buffalo at the Tralf Music Hall October 30th

ubgeneration.com | 19

LITERARY

Foreign Forays

The Dynamics

Between

Men & Women

By Vinny Chase Over the years, the dynamics between men and women have been discussed, dissected, and devoured many different times in many different ways, in order to try and figure out why each sex operates the way that they do.

In many sitcoms and romantic comedies, you’ll often hear a guy say “I just don’t understand women at all” and that certainly isn’t from a lack of trying. Whether you’re a teenager (when it’s REALLY hard to understand females) or whether you’re a grown man who’s been around the bend a few times and still managed to become baffled by women and what they do, it is natural for us to be amazed by what women do, even during those moments when we think we know them the best.

On the flip side of that, in a very subtle, very discreet way, women don’t really understand men much either. Sure, we’re a lot more provincial than women are because we tend not to think as holistically as they do, but sometimes, things are most confusing when they’re at their simplest. I’ve heard a bunch of women say (though they won’t always admit it) that they don’t understand men, and that’s completely normal.

The reason that women won’t admit it is because when it comes to “the understanding of the other species” women tend to have a leg up and they don’t necessarily want to lose the position of power, which, when you think about it is understandable.

The same concept applies to the theory that states that men should always open the pickle jar, because it’s the honest job, and it takes strength and power to open it, but more importantly than all of that, it keeps the man happy because his ego isn’t bruised, therefore, everyone wins.

For as long as we’ve been on this Earth, we’ve been trying to figure out how the other gender ticks so thoroughly that we end up more confused than when we started. But 20 | ubgeneration.com

maybe there is a simple human solution to everything we’ve been trying to understand since the beginning of human existence…

Maybe we’re just not meant to understand each other. Maybe that’s the answer we’ve been searching for this whole time.

Think about it, the reason we’re attracted to the opposite sex sans actual physical appearance, is the mystery of it all.

When you find someone you’re really attracted to, you spend every moment you can trying to figure out exactly who they are, and how they got to be that person at the moment that you came into their lives.

If you manage to still be interested (because let’s face it, some people are fucking crazy) then that’s when you start looking forward to building a future together and really settling on the idea that you’re going to be with this person for as long as love will allow.

Years go by and you’re with this same person and you’ve managed to pick up on the nuances that make them tick, and in some ways you understand them better than they might understand themselves, but there is always those one or two things that just baffle you, something you will never understand for as long as you’re with that person.

It may annoy the hell out of you, and you may try to put an end to it as many times as the person will do it, but that’s the best part about the dynamics of men and women.

That’s what makes us love them even when we’re not in love with them.

It’s about the mystery. It’s about the chase.

It’s about leaving yourself open to understand as much as you can instead of forcing yourself to miss things you wouldn’t have had you not tried to “figure them out.”

As men and women, we aren’t meant to understand each other, because it gives us far more room to appreciate each other.

By Sushmita Sircar “Kind of.”

These have got to be the most disheartening words in the history of language learning.

I know more about phonemes and grammar than I thought I had any desire to. I’ve been told my sentences make no sense more times than any intelligent person aims to hear. I’ve repeated words till they’ve lost their newly acquired meanings.And I still only ‘kind of’ get it.

Whether it’s the French ‘r’, which is absolutely beyond me, or the Chinese tones which range around making no impression whatsoever on my ear, it seems like an entirely different world.

Which, of course, it is, and therein lies its fascination.

Inherent in every language are its hidden idiosyncrasies. Basic concepts that one would’ve thought fundamental are challenged. If you think ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ are fairly simple concepts, try out how different languages interpret them. Then again, there are the hidden connections- similar words, eerily close sayings.

Ironically, it was only while struggling with French grammar that I could gasp, fascinated when I spoke English- coherently, accurately, eloquently even- with no more than a passing thought. If French is eccentric in the way it sounds, surely English is even more so. And every time I use a phrase that is half metaphor, half idiom, or a jumbled maze, I can only be ever so glad that I already know the language and don’t need to wander the maze of grammar and vocabulary from scratch.

And then there are the occasional breakthroughs you have.When you hear a sentence and it sounds wrong before you know why. When you read a page and realize that you know the meaning of words more than five letters long. When the French radio you’ve been listening to for months is sud-

denly not gibberish but coherent sentences that actually convey information (who would’ve thunk it?!).

And yet, as I stare at the characters I need to sketch out for Chinese this afternoon, I have to question whether their history and traditions and distinct way of life are worth it. Whether I’ll ever even achieve basic literacy in the language (apparently that requires 3000 characters- I know less than a hundred at the moment).

But then again, it’s just really cool to have songs in four languages on my IPod, and say that I can understand each of them.

To read Tintin in the original, to immerse oneself in an altogether different culture… and so I continue to etch out the strokes, listen to gibberish and hope.

GENERATION October 19, 2010

LITERARY Love Canal

by Michael Chung

Rising Upward

by David Dodge

The cold breeze from the open window tickles my cheek.

I rise up and, I keep rising, Rising more than humanity contends.

Ashes to ashes Dust to dust Soil of our ancestors We bury our sins apathetic vengeance nature mirrors, as a dead end. pity, sorrow worn by innocence art, love, waste along a trail of ignorance Ashes to pollution Dust to infamy

Mama

by Allison Ruiz

Mama, perhaps the single most powerful word a baby can say.

Have you ever been called Mama?

I have, And no I’m not a mother; At least not in the literal sense.

I’m not another statistic, A girl forced to grow up faster than normal.

I grew up by choice, A product of love overcoming the social stigma.

Where am I?

It wasn’t my intention to become a mother.

I spent months fighting it, Afraid of crossing boundaries, Of becoming too attached.

I am neither here nor there.

But a baby has a mind of their own.

There is no golden staircase,

The first time I heard it, I acted like I didn’t.

The second time I heard it, I corrected him.

No fiery breath of Cain ruling over me in darkest hell.

It is not supposed to be like this.

But wait! O God, there is a light, Dare I walk the tunnel beyond?

I must! O Grace, Mercy, and Peace, I am home at last.

Now when I hear it, I still correct him.

But in my heart I know why he says it, And my heart says it’s ok.

He’s not my blood, But blood means nothing these days.

He’s not my son, But I love him more then I thought possible.

ubgeneration.com | 21

WHALAY

By Jeff Pelzek

In her memory, the finer details of Whalay Beach would exaggerate themselves; its perfect clarity, all the way to the weedless shallows, seemed more pure in the annals of her subjective recollection. But that one dry summer afternoon that she spent at the lake never strayed far from a perfectly vivid recounting, and it danced in front of her innermost thoughts, as if it was also a young adult in the midst of its best days.

Caroline awoke from a reverie when her boyfriend cried out, mid leap, from the high branch of the tree that stretched out over the lake. Beyond Eric’s freefalling body, was one of the last French-vanilla skies in August, rolling out beyond the hilltops to the west.

It was the fifth straight week that Caroline had spent in the company of her boyfriend’s friends, and being the only girl, she had already, out of necessity, gotten used to Tarantino films on Friday nights - drinking ICE beer from the can, listening respectfully to everyone’s dubious “This chick…” stories, and going to the rope swing at Whalay Beach.

On most drinking nights Eric looked over at her, smoky-eyed and frog throated, and told her: “Wanna stay here tonight?”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t a bad gig though, she thought.

Caroline had always been able to get along with boys, since she was in secondary school, where she found herself on weekday nights, on the third floor of a boy’s house with the other girls in her small group, laughing hot air into the fog of marijuana smoke, and sampling the adolescent firsts that came with seventeen.

She had, by then, gotten used to male humor which, in this group, amounted to gotchas, made-you-looks and keen sexual metaphors. Though probably more fun than girl talk, it disillusioned her from real emergencies and literal conversation; and it had become difficult for Caroline to exist in both the masculine and feminine realms, where the “other” always made no sense.

And it had finally come to that point in that summer, when living with a best friend reaches its climax, and begins its slow descent into the depths of idiosyncratic dull22 | ubgeneration.com

ness. Eric’s dry, malignant buffoonery had come to a crowned head; at times she hated that he couldn’t look anyone in the eye, and that he had a cheap joke for everyone. Some of them, she could see, couldn’t afford to recover from the expense.

She loved him, though.

A pale cloud of motorboat exhaust hung just over the water like a fog, where the dragonflies zoomed in reach of the fishes, that would jump from the lake and easily achieve their small prey. Here, it seemed to Caroline, was where the natural could take hold of a city child; it would hit them all at once, as they flew from the rope, and took in all Whalay’s scenic grandeur, just above the amber water into which they plunged.

On the jagged rock beach, littered with rusty steel and broken beer bottle glass underfoot, a small campfire smoked, and several shoddy pieces of furniture survived, shortly, before the weather or the town kids would catalyze their inevitable ruin.

Caroline stood on the ledge of the tiny mud cliff that met the edge of the lake at its trough. From that vantage, she could be in the powerful sunlight, and she could just barely see across the quarter-mile lake to where the houses, around fifty of varying size and shape, docked their boats.

Her golden silhouetted body tanned in the radiance. Her wavy auburn hair blew in untidy clumps over her brow, where she centered her closed eyes in a meditative pause, letting the sun crash all over her body, warm like a paternal embrace. It was here, at this natural gem, that Caroline felt she could truly get away from the rough and overbred city life. She could be still for a moment, detatched like a wild animal in its mysterious, silent absorption.

She heard voices coming from down the abandoned train tracks along the tree line, which traced the lake’s eastern periphery, and that led to the rope swing. Caroline looked up at Eric on the high branch, who had heard it also, and was looking from the higher vantage to see whom he already knew was coming.

He visibly demurred, nudging his head toward the noise and muttering, “Look who’s here,” to the other jumper in the tree.

It was Raymond, Merrick, and Cassidy,

three of the group’s tertiary friends that also called the lake their own. They had brought with them several non-descripts: a couple of ragtags, all given to conversational reluctance, but smiling at the sight of their secret spot, and ready with food and drink to relax at the local watering hole.

They all approached, but split up to set up their tiny camps where they would shed their shirts and shoes, and leave their belongings, freeing themselves to take a swim.

An unsaid grudge had developed between their groups somewhere in the past, and it had never resolved itself. Despite Merrick’s efforts to liaison, to offset the ambiguous animosity, there still existed a bad taste when the two flavors mixed. Eric spent what little social compromise he had between him and their group bumping heads on points of humor and ideology, spinning neutral words into verbal weapons, and playing dumb to diminish serious context. He especially had a thing for Raymond, who woke up one morning from a party, to Eric’s index finger, repeatedly poking him on his eye, to his gang’s amusement.

Eric’s group grew quiet at their approach, waiting for him to make the first move, or to say the first word. It filled the air with a throbbing awkwardness, as Eric remained silent.

Raymond sauntered through the thick tension up to Caroline, who visibly felt less beautiful than she was as she wriggled under the weight of his stare. Caroline knew why Eric especially didn’t like Raymond, and she thought, sometimes, that it outlined the basis of his appeal.

Raymond was a square-jawed sunshine blond - scruffy and lanky, but not enormous in stature, with a one-sided smile. He wore finger-smudges of red, from the bastardized raspberries along the train tracks, all over his white tee shirt. When he laughed, it seemed backwards, a formidable “ah ah ah!” instead of a “ha ha ha,” and when he talked, he almost sang, in an unusual non-rhotic drawl: “Sweet Caroline, how are ya honey?”

“Okay,” she smiled back.

Eric witnessed the approach, and he felt his stomach dip. To neutralize the attention that was clearly directed away from him, he leapt headlong into the air for the water,

screaming into the evening sky.

The splash and his cry, turned Caroline around for a moment, and as Eric paddled to shore, she made it a point to maintain an aversion to Raymond’s intrusive gaze, and to maintain appearances.

“Quite a fall,” Raymond grinned.

Caroline looked sideways at him, not knowing how to reply.

“What’s up Ray,” Eric accosted, sarcastically, from the edge of the water on the beach. He approached, edgy and dripping wet, standing upright to his full height to say it all without talking.

“Let me get a Marlboro,” he said, like a bully, not asking, as he made a spectacle out of putting his arm around his girl.

Raymond produced a cigarette from the box and, smiling, lit it for Eric.

“Thanks,” he grunted, clearly satisfied with his failed subtlety.

Eric drank from the cigarette, as if the fumes were life-saving oxygen. And he turned away to watch his two friends tandem jump into the lake just past the sandbar.

Crying out a congratulations, Eric kept his arm around Caroline.

But she was looking at Raymond, as he looked at her.

He beamed into her tiny, sun-stared pupils, the specks like the little black north poles of two blue-green planets, that turned their axises away in shyness after only a moment.

“Do you wanna go for a swim?” he asked.

Instantly, her mind darted away without her. She smiled, dumbly staring at the question that hung in the air, waiting for its answer. The invitation echoed meaninglessly in her head with its tenor drone, as time raced by like small prey in mortal desperation. And as reasonable time between words elapsed, she grew furious at the ideas that ran by her mouth, as she stood there in absolute verbal paralysis.

Raymond saw her, struggling with the self limitation which tamed that wild “yes.” His hands twitched at his sides, as he vicariously caressed her lips with his eyes. He had her, frozen in a quiet romance, a slipping prude begging for an end to the rapture.

“Okay.”

And Caroline moved from under her boyGENERATION October 19, 2010

BEACH

friend’s heavy arm, and for a moment, he did not notice.

Raymond and Caroline rushed to the shoreline. Caroline, dizzy with a mischievous rush, tore off her shoes, and tiptoed to the shallow water, which licked the rounded rocks and sand with the small waves that came from the middle of the lake.

Seeing her and Rayond splash into the big drink together, Eric stalled in taking immediate action, halted by the small, smoldering white cylinder in his hand.

His friends saw this too, looking back and forth from Caroline and Raymond in the water to Eric alone on the beach.

They asked aloud, “You guys going out?”

“Not me,” Eric answered the group question. “I’ve got a stogie burning.”

Still uneasily choosing between pursuing them in a jealous chase, or pacifying the stagnant inertia of his apathy, he stalled before a half-hearted plunge, and then decided to do nothing, but cried after them: “Caroline! Where the fuck are you going?!” over the water.

But she couldn’t hear him. She could only hear the blood rushing through her waterplugged ears as she glided through the cool water, finally getting her hair wet.

The flavor of wet wood and mud immediately overwhelmed her senses, and she dove under the surface and opened her eyes, looking around the pale-jade underwater world.

They were about fifty yards out, when she caught up to Raymond; she kept her eyes off the shore.

Water dripping down his face, Raymond asked, “wanna go to the docks?”

“That’s nearly a quarter mile, Raymond,” she said, the right corner of her mouth turning up in a surfacing smile.

“Well, let’s go to the middle and see how it goes.”

“Okay.”

Always keeping each other in modest physical proximity, the two swimmers paddled out to the center of the lake with relative ease, and stopped to tread water.

They almost hallucinated in the lake’s natural beauty, devouring the view with gusto, absorbing it all at eye level with the separation between water and air. Letting themselves stare into the shy orbs that floated in their eyes, like children they chased the imaginary celestials in the mild evening aurora. Its setting rays reflected off the water, shimmering in their peripheral vision like a lazy strobe.

All the two swimmers could see took on the texture of the radiant juice in which they swam, and they kicked and glided through

the orange sherbet sky over the horizon, and ran their fingers through the leaves on the soft green trees.

Their friends were now the size of tiny toy soldiers on the shore by the rope swing, still flinging themselves into the air and cheering, just audibly.

Having rested, and not wanting to go back, they continued their frolic across the lake, with their eyes tagging each other, and still flirting with physical contact.

When they reached the other side, exhausted and dizzy from the swim, the dock, a few feet off the water, took several tries to mount, and their faces bobbed with the heavy wood, almost kissing the spider webs that had occupied the airy parts under the deck. Panting, and finally summiting the wooden planks, they took spots next to each other, with their feet dangling over the water.

Caroline could feel Raymond’s arm, going up and down her bare back, and felt the hot wind of his breath as she melted under the pressure of his touch. She looked over at him, and she could only see the whites of his eyes, as the sun set over the trees behind them.

He then threw himself on top of her, and a wave of sensual panic rushed over her body, and she felt blended into him, like where the fresh river water meets the salty mouth of the sea. Rolling in the waves of his satin skin, immersed in the dank stench of his mammal heat, Caroline tangled her ankles with his, and pulled him deeper into the abyss. She was drowning in his musk, frenzied, like one who underestimated the power of the sea. And then it was like dying, a painful surge, like blood rushing toward an open wound.

And almost as soon as it had risen, the tide had ebbed, its emotions gone out to sea, and what was left was like an empty oyster shell, abandoned by its pearl. The two lovers were tired, and the nightingale had sung its siren’s song in the distance, beyond the eastern shore, from whence they came.

“What are they doing over there?” they all asked each other on the other side.

“I don’t know,” said Eric, “I can’t see that far.”

Unable to look at each other, Raymond and Caroline swam back in silence, the dusk turning the lake’s former scenic brilliance to a bleak grayscale. The soupy water sloshed between their fingers as they chopped through the heavy slop, eager for the other side.

When they crawled out of the lake, it was

clearly time to go home. Someone had re-kindled a small fire that wanted more wood, but it was unable to flare up in the dampness, and it was becoming difficult to believe that they could make it back to the road before they lost all reasonable visibility.

“It’s about goddamn time,” Eric said to Caroline, as she rung out her hair, just a slender shadow in front of the twilight.

“It was the tide,” she raised her voice at him, her silhouette’s glaring blue eyes piercing Eric through the heart. “It made it harder to swim back.”

Eric blinked at her, and frowning, took her reason for granted.

He turned around to leave, putting on his tee shirt to hide his embarassing tattoos.

Raymond stood dripping wet, facing her, with the lake and its western shore in the background.

And she walked past him, without looking, with Eric in front of her, and Whalay Beach to her back.

They walked down the train tracks back to the trail, which led up the hill to the road.

In the car, the young couple sat in silence, like usual, as Caroline looked through the windshield, craning her neck toward the city, which glowed like an indigo sunrise, a little halo of light polution over the peak of the southern hills.

There, her life would be like it was that yesterday, where she could listen again, and not talk, to Eric’s friends in the basement of their parents’ raised ranch houses. And they would be back in the city, where the people held closer to eachother, and where they feared strangers. They could blind themselves with sunglasses, and be happy heads in the horde, unable to see beyond the burning ends of their cigarettes.