Incite Magazine - October 2007

incite

Canadian theatre washroom graffiti

revisiting New Orleans

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PHOTOGRAPH BY J ESSE BAUMAN

CAN I REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YES, YOU CAN. You can vote if, on Election and Referendum Day, October 10, 2007, you are:

Am I on the Voters List?

Where do I vote?

NEW! – If your name is on the Voters List, please remember to take proof of identity to the poll when you go to vote.

• 18 years of age or older, • a Canadian citizen, and • a resident of the electoral district.

You vote in the electoral district where you permanently reside.

This may be where your family lives or where you reside while at school.

You can determine where you permanently reside based on the Election Act. The Ontario Election Act defines “residence” as the place to which you intend to return to whenever you are absent for any length of time. The Act states that: • The place where your family resides is your permanent residence until you move elsewhere with the intention of making that change permanent.

• If a person has no other permanent lodging place, the place where he or she occupies a room or part of a room as a regular lodger is his or her residence.

You can find your voting location on our web site by selecting Where do I vote?

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If you’re not on the Voters List, you can register to vote by providing proof of identity and proof of the address where you reside. You can register to vote at registration events, the returning office, or at the poll when you go to vote.

Identification Questions?

For more information on acceptable identification, please visit our web site www.elections.on.ca or call us at 1.888.ONT.VOTE.

PROVINCIAL ELECTION AND REFERENDUM DAY IS OCTOBER 10, 2007

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EDITORIAL

fter two years of penning a pop culture column, I’ve been looking forward to using this editorial space to write something different—something that will demonstrate an understanding that goes deeper than the screen, something without requisite references to America’s Next Top Model, Facebook, and the Olsen twins, something that my grandmother would be truly proud of (although I think she would have really appreciated any Golden Girls reference I could come up with). Every time I’ve sat down to compose a serious editorial, however, nothing but inane references to reality TV erupt in my mind.

Terrifyingly enough, that’s nothing new.

Last week, when editing a friend’s application to med school, I kept trying to orient her words within pop culture, to insert comparisons to the subject that I know best.

I distinctly recall trying to draw a metaphor between my friend’s tendency towards the sciences—hesitant at first but strengthened with time—to a typical romantic comedy, where the characters begin as adversaries, but realize that they are truly MFEO (Made For Each Other). Such references have even worked their way into my academic life.

In a literature class last year, I was almost courageous enough to raise my hand and compare a fictional couple’s sordid relationship to a Christina Aguilera lyric: “If you

love something, let it go; if it comes back to show, that’s how you know.”

I keep trying to coax my brain to come up with something more original, daring, and unexpected. I can think up references to Full House—I have 12 Incite columns to prove it—but when it comes to making those out–of–nowhere comparisons that inexplicably work, like wittily articulating a commonality between two–tiered healthcare and yellow argyle, I’m at a loss. Pop is what makes my writing pop, and that’s starting to get a little distressing. Or, at least, that’s what I used to think. I’ve actually begun to consider my propensity for comparing real life to pop culture completely natural.

There’s an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie throws a party after deciding to get married to herself. This bash is the result of Carrie’s realization that, other than birthdays, singletons are never celebrated past the time they graduate, and it made me notice the few significant moments, the limited number of “firsts,” that adults seem to have. The more I think about it, the more I connect pop culture with the dwindling number of purely original moments I’ve had recently. Sure, many opportunities for completely novel experiences are expended in infancy—first words are uttered, first burps explode from our lips, and first steps are stumbled through. But, perhaps the most significant of these “firsts” is a child’s

Editing and Production Co–ordinator

Rob Lederer Editors

Muneeb Ansari Chris Evans

Zsuzsi Fodor Ben Freeman

Katie Huth Kate Mackeracher Layout Co–ordinator

Ana Nikolic Graphics Co–ordinator

Erin Giroux Graphics and Layout

Boram Ham Christa Hirsch

Jennifer Torosian Siva Vijenthira

Jenny Zhan Poetry Coordinator

Alexis Motuz Contributors

Melissa Anthony Vasiliki Bednar

Patrick Byrne Tings Chak

Debarati Chakraborty Nick Davies

Chris Hilbrecht Julia Lederer

Julia McIntosh Jordan MacKenzie

Erin O’Neil Cory Ruf

Cassandra Tilson Maddie Tye

Siva Vijenthira Hannah Webb

Catherine M.A. Wiebe

Assistant Editor

Robin Studniberg Printing

Hamilton Web Printing

initial contact with pop culture.

I read a really compelling and entertaining essay a few years ago about how our interactions with the popular culture lead to unreal expectations in real life. The author concluded that he would never be able to fulfill a partner’s desires, because every woman wants something that he simply cannot provide: John Cusack in Say Anything. While the object of desire is variable, this concept has pervaded many late–night talks I’ve had with friends, dissatisfied with their love–lives—mainly one who claimed that Dawson’s Creek destroyed her chance of finding true love, because no man could ever measure up to Pacey Witter.

Pop culture alters the way we see our lives; it helps convince us of what kind of clothes to wear, people to date, and ditties to download. But, perhaps even more significantly, pop culture ruins our chance at legitimately experiencing many “firsts” with a blank slate. Before I had experienced my first kiss, I knew how it would go—or, at least, how it should go. I’d been privy to enough on–screen examples to be physically prepared, and, thanks to the neurotic tendencies of many main characters bent on extreme self–analysis, I also knew what I should be feeling at the moment our lips touched. The same goes for first dances, dates, jobs, and first years at university—all thresholds of adulthood and utterly overexposed.

Kerry Scott, the previous editor of Incite, has graduated from McMaster and begun graduate school across the pond at the London School of Economics. She has left the magazine to an ever–expanding group of writers, editors, artists, and layout designers. I’m extremely excited to be a part of this magnificent team and look forward to a wonderful year as Incite continues to evolve.

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INSIDE FEATURES

6 Scents for Cents 10 Present Imperfect 12 Love Letter to New Orleans 14 Up Close and Personal 15 Comic 16 The Artful Dodgers 18 It’s a Hard–Knock Life 21 Living off the Land 22 Sustenance for Sustainability

Incite sniffs around for the perfect cologne Original fiction

Tings Chak experiences the Big Easy

Fractal Broccoli!

A history of the kiss Rare Lenience

The writing on the stalls

Making your debut in Canadian theatre

Impact Youth Publications 119 South Oval Hamilton, ON L8S 1R2 incite@mcmaster.ca http://www.incitemagazine.ca Incite is published six times per academic year by Impact Youth Publications. 10,000 copies are distributed in the McMaster University–Westdale area. Entire contents copyright 2007–2008 Impact Youth Publications. Letters up to 300 words may be sent to the above address; they may be edited for length and clarity and will not be printed unless a name, address, and daytime phone are provided.

Opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Incite’s staff or Impact Youth Publications.

TV equips kids with a social education that not even the coolest sex ed teacher could provide. While these lessons provide children with a comprehensive guide to fitting in, they stifle almost any hope of novelty in the aging process. Having informed people of how to act, and how to feel while acting that way, pop culture leaves little to personal interpretation. To stray from the emotions you are supposed to be feeling at a pivotal moment can be absolutely alienating, making you feel like the only preppy professor–type at a Jock Jams–themed bash.

I feel so comfortable comparing real life to pop culture, and believe it is so natural to do so, for the simple reason that television has informed so many of my actions, feelings, and neuroses. It has been Ms. Frizzle to my Keesha, Giles to my Buffy, Britney to my Jamie Lynn, showing me the ropes, for better or for worse.

Original poetry

Why you should eat local food

Cover and back cover art by Jennifer Torosian

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DEPARTMENTS Happenings: News from Near and Far Column: Trappings Wanderings: The Mills Archives Column: Myths

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HAPPENINGS

MINUTES FROM LAST MONTH selected news from near and far

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT PRACTICAL MAGIC

FIFI?

CULTURAL CLASH

Keep on truckin’ For three days last month, insults and threats flew between university administrators, the McMaster Students Union, Hamilton City Council, and Westdale community members.

Westdalers, wanting to protect their sacred quietude from the noise of construction trucks, suggested that the vehicles be rerouted through Mac’s own student–choked lanes rather than along King. Most city councillors, including our own riding’s Brian McHattie, seemed to agree. The bigwigs of McMaster cried foul and insisted that University Avenue is private property. This led to a kerfuffle over why HSR buses are allowed on campus, resulting in McMaster threatening to disallow even them, to keep Mac a completely pedestrian zone. In the midst of all this, the MSU, led by the charming if grammatically– challenged Ryan Moran, stepped in with an online campaign that led to an aggressive and ponderous form letter being sent over 750 times to all city councillors. One councillor is reported to have replied tersely, “It’s always more effective to send

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inside the bubble original messages, rather than form letters to politicians. It’s good practice too for essay–writing.” On 26 September, City Council came to a “compromise” with no input from the university or the MSU. Now, King Street is no longer a truck route, but Sterling and Forsyth has been ruled an acceptable truck entrance until the end of January for a maximum of 25 trucks per day. The university, wounded and defenceless against the regulations, has retreated for now. No one is sure what will happen after January.

Digesting change Bridges, McMaster’s vegetarian café, has quietly gone completely meat–free, surprising and irritating some its most loyal supporters.

While Commons allows patrons to bring with them any outside food or drink they’d like, Bridges now prohibits even entering the premises with a meat dish in hand. Although originally focused on serving delicious (and highly recommended) veggie food, it now seems that Bridges’s interests have shifted to the space itself. The place is run in part

by McMaster’s Diversity Services,

so the move may have been made out of respect for its most ardently vegan customers, but it seems somewhat of an odd decision for a restaurant so dedicated to “building an inclusive community.” Should Bridges be renamed “Walls”?

A lasting impression The McMaster Museum of Art holds around 6000 works ranging from classical to more modern pieces.

Many Mac students, however, have never entered those hallowed halls of history and culture. That might change due to Professor Graham Todd. Inspired by a Spanish ceramic roof tile, Todd invites Mac students to leave their mark on one of hundreds of clay balls and, thereby, help to create the Museum’s next masterpiece. Even if you never mastered the art of colouring within the lines, your fingerprint could be on display next to a van Gogh or Monet, or at least beside a more obscure surrealist or post– impressionist. These ceramic pieces will be collected, fired in a kiln, and then returned to the Museum to symbolize the coming together of a community. This sentiment seems

eerily reminiscent of Welcome Week themes from the past: One McMaster, anyone?

Human mating call?

A McMaster University professor has published a study linking the pitch of a man’s voice to the number of children he will have. Dr. David Feinberg and his colleagues studied members of the Hadza tribe of Tanzania, one of the few remaining hunter–gatherer cultures, who use no modern birth control methods.

His analysis showed that men with lower–pitched voices tend to have more children than men who speak with a higher pitch, suggesting that baritones can find more women than their counterparts. Perhaps that’s why so many couples turn to Barry White to set the mood for a romantic evening at home.

Compiled by Melissa Anthony, Debarati Chakraborty, and Siva Vijenthira

in canada...

Bend it like Jupiter

Return of the jewellery

Bylaw goes down in smoke

TORONTO—Toronto FC’s nine game goalless streak came to an end on 22 September when they scored against the Columbus Crews. Prior to the game, Tamarra James, the high priestess of the Wiccan Church of Canada (Canada’s top witch), and deputy witch Nicole Cooper were called to BMO Field to put a spell on the home team. The pair stood at Gate Three with a goblet of wine held towards the heavens and frankincense sparking on a stand of charcoal. James prayed to Zeus, “Hear me as I ask for your blessings on this stadium, where bold men will strive on the morrow to wrest victory in the field.” So, to whom do we credit the goal, the fancy footwork of mortals or Zeus, Lord of Olympus? I’ve heard of Angels in the Outfield, but pagan deities on the pitch sounds like a bit of a stretch.

WINNIPEG—A bracelet was recently returned to its owner, 53 years after it disappeared.

Michael LeBow lost the piece of jewellery when he was 13 while swimming in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. When he received a long distance call from an American claiming to have found his bracelet, LeBow thought he was being scammed. He didn’t understand what the caller was talking about, until the caller described the unique engravings on the bracelet. George Mishovsky, the mystery American caller, had found the bracelet while combing the beach of Lake Tahoe with a metal detector. It had been a present from LeBow’s father, who wore it during World War Two. Using the bracelet’s inscription as a guide, Mishovsky tracked down LeBow on the Internet, without even using Facebook.

VANCOUVER—A newly proposed bylaw in Vancouver will ban smoking in commercial districts, including on sidewalks, in bus shelters, and in taxis. The bylaw has received unanimous approval in principle. Hookah lounge owners, however, have fought the proposal, claiming that the parlours provide a cultural aid for immigrants from hookah–smoking cultures. They argue that it gives them a connection to their native country and, in many cases, provides an alternative to bars, which their religion prevents them from entering. The City Council has temporarily exempted hookah lounges and cigar rooms from the bylaw.

From Nike shocks to culture shocks USA—Nike has unveiled a new shoe in an effort to promote physical fitness among the Native American community, which has relatively high rates of obesity and diabetes.

The “Air Native N7” will only be distributed through tribal wellness programs and tribal schools in the United States, with all the profits being reinvested in health programs for tribal lands. Researchers at Nike consulted with over 70 tribes and looked at over 200 pairs of feet to determine the proportions for the wider design. Suns, stars, and feathers are featured on the tongue, heel, and sole of each shoe. This is the first and, we hope, the last time that Nike has designed a shoe for a specific race or ethnicity.

One painful breakup CHINA—A woman in China was recently incarcerated for giving her boyfriend the “kiss of death.” After a couple made a macabre vow to either be faithful to one another or die, the woman saw her lover chatting up some other broad. In revenge, the woman put a capsule of rat poison into her mouth, and proceeded to make out with him until he swallowed it. He subsequently died a drawn–out, painful death.

This story serves as a warning message for all the horny teenagers out there: cheating leads to more pain than pleasure.

Breastfeeding Challenge commemorating World Breastfeeding Week. Ottawa was competing with other cities across Canada in an attempt to set the record for most babies breastfed at the same time. In the end, 198 babies latched onto their mothers.

The goal of the event was to raise awareness about breastfeeding and to empower women to do so in public. Breast milk reduces the risk of infection in babies and helps prevent obesity and heart disease.

Three, two, one… feed!

OTTAWA—219 Ottawa moms got together at the St. Laurent Shopping Centre to mark this year’s

Compiled by Julia McIntosh, Jordan MacKenzie, Maddie Tye, and Erin O’Neil

...and around the world

Filthy rich Facebook

CYBERSPACE—Microsoft is considering an investment in Facebook Inc. that could total between $300 to $500 million. The money would buy up to a five percent stake in the company. Talks between Microsoft and Facebook could draw Google Inc. to the negotiating table, too. Facebook co–founder and chief executive, 23–year–old Mark Zuckerberg, rejected a $1 billion purchase offer from Yahoo Inc. last year. The website is now valued at $10 billion or more, and there is speculation that the company will open for an initial public offering by 2009. Facebook currently boasts about 42 million active users and ranks as the web’s second most trafficked social network page after MySpace.

Wurst attempt to smuggle GERMANY—Staff at a German butcher shop made an unlikely find in two of their sausages on 19 September. A customer from earlier in the day returned, requesting that the butcher wrap and cool his purchase, because he was planning to transport the sausages to Dubai.

When an assistant noticed that the meat seemed heavier than it had earlier that day, she alerted the police. They investigated the suspect sausage only to find that the customer had removed some of the meat, cleverly concealing two latex dildos with a “natural look” inside.

“He could have just used a loaf of

bread,” speculated a spokesman for the police. “It’s not against the law here, but obviously I can’t speculate on what customs in Dubai will have to say about it.”

Nepal nixes nudity NEPAL—Nepal’s Mountaineering Association is set to ban nudity, thereby thwarting attempts to set “obscene records” on Mount Everest. The locals who live at the foot of the world’s highest mountain worship it as a god and see the stunts as disrespectful. Last year, in an effort to claim the record for the world’s highest display of nudity, a Nepali climber stripped down for several minutes in subzero temperatures while standing on the summit.

Other climbers have scaled the peak in various states of undress, including a failed attempt by a Dutchman wearing only shorts.

Trouble in paradise SWEDEN—A priest from the Church of Sweden has refused to preside over a wedding in which the bride wishes to be given away at the altar by her father. Rev. Yvonne Hallin has said that this practice of the bride’s offends the Swedish belief in equality. Swedish tradition dictates that a couple walk down the aisle together. The assistant to the Bishop of Stockholm added that the “un–Swedish” practice of paternal aisle–walking was introduced to

the country’s religion by American television in the 1970s and 1980s.

Despite claims by the Church that a father walking his daughter down the aisle represents his ownership over her, the family has commented that, as a 30–year–old who’s well– informed on the matter of equality, the bride has a right to decide how her wedding is performed.

Cradle robber BEIJING—A Chinese woman who stole a newborn baby in an attempt to convince her boyfriend that she had bore him a child is now in custody. The 38–year–old woman pretended to be pregnant in the hopes of gaining her prospective in–laws’ approval. They had previously vetoed the match after learning that the woman was infertile; so, she carried out an imaginative plan to fake a pregnancy, which culminated in her capturing a newborn infant from the maternity ward of a hospital in China’s Zhejiang province. She then kept the baby for two days, before turning herself into police custody. Currently the woman is facing an 18–month prison term, and the baby has been returned to its true parents.

Compiled by Julia McIntosh, Jordan MacKenzie, Maddie Tye, Erin O’Neil and Ana Nikolic

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REVIEW

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Old Spice Signature $24.00/bottle

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While the Old Spice website claims that this cologne is composed of no fewer than nine separate ingredients, we weren’t fooled. “Flowery with some citrus smells” was our verdict for Signature, although we couldn’t shake the suspicion that one could acquire a similar– smelling deodorant for a fraction of the price.

We imagine it’s the pretty glass bottle that makes this blend a little pricier than just any old Speed Stick. The scent is definitely aimed at a younger crowd, and you’d expect to catch whiffs of it all over university campuses: it’s fulfilling in that wholesome Harvard Crimson kind of way. One of us was even pleasantly surprised that this cologne did not smell like a “musky old man,” as the Old Spice name tends to suggest. It’s like a more expensive, but better smelling, Axe; although, we agree that Nick Lachey would have to work much harder if he were to make the switch.

In Hindu philosophy, an avatar is a reincarnation of a higher being on Earth.

Marketing this fragrance under the name of a divine manifestation is not only sacrilegious—it’s false advertising: Avatar cologne is typical at best. The world map silhouette enveloping the bottle is appropriate, however, as wearers of Avatar are most likely to be middle–aged, jet–lagged businessmen. As such, the scent is appropriate for boardrooms and drafting budget reports, and is not recommended for sensual encounters. An online perfume retailer markets the scent as “a refreshing, spicy, lavender, amber fragrance.” The amber and lavender are not at all evident, which is probably for the best, so your cubicle doesn’t end up smelling like The Body Shop.

Spirit by Antonio Banderas $25.00/bottle

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Ben: “Dad–worthy.”

Chris: “To be paired with a cheap suit.”

Zsuzsi: “Appropriate for the Stock Exchange…the Hamilton Stock Exchange.”

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Our most expensive competitor is totally worth the extra few dollars, if only for the sultry picture of Antonio on the box. The fragrance is extremely subtle and recommended by the website for evening wear. This seems appropriate since we’re pretty sure Antonio only comes out at night. It is further described as a mix of wood and fresh greens, making one reviewer’s stomach rumble. We wonder if a day of wearing Spirit counts towards your daily intake of fruits and vegetables. Upon testing the cologne, we inexplicably thought of Europe and grandpas. The scent did, however, fade very quickly, so it’s possible we just smelled the elderly European man sitting next to us. Regardless, there is an element of sensuality to Antonio’s eau of choice. It is not an addictive smell, but it’s fierce. Like Puss in Boots.

The Final Word

Ben: “More Spy Kids than Mask of Zorro.”

Chris: “Give me a kitten and I’ll reenact a scene from Shrek.”

Zsuzsi: “I wonder who would win in a fight between Antonio Banderas and the sweaty cowboy…”

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By Ben Freeman, Zsuzsi Fodor, and Chris Hilbrecht Stetson Untamed $23.00/bottle

The Final Word

The Final Word

Ben: “I don’t like Axe.” Chris: Unavailable following our discussion of Nick Lachey.

Zsuzsi: “Smells like my ex–boyfriend.”

Scents for Cents

Avatar by Coty $22.00/bottle

Oh, yes. This cologne goes for macho, and it pulls out all the stops in this pursuit. The packaging is Western–themed, adorned with a small logo of a cowboy on horseback and the word “untamed” emblazoned across the front in exceedingly manly handwriting.

Some quick research revealed that the brand name Stetson is also the name of a type of cowboy hat that was hugely popular in the late 1800s. This fragrance, we think, has complete saloon cred. One of us guiltily confessed, “I’m imagining a sweaty cowboy...” The Stetson Untamed website is almost too good to be true, with a gratuitous sweaty–cowboy shot, and manly words like “rugged,” “legendary,” “deep woods,” and “suede” displayed throughout. But does Untamed live up to its carefully constructed macho–ness?

In short, not really. Although this “sexy, masculine blend” does tend a bit toward the manly, its scent really isn’t that distinguishable from the others. What’s more, unlike the virile imagery of the packaging, the smell fades pretty quickly. This might actually be a good thing if you’re looking to wear it in confined quarters like an elevator, but all–out saloon brawls probably require something more.

The Final Word

Ben: “It tries too hard.”

Chris: “It should be called Stetson Whipped.”

Zsuzsi: “I’m still imagining a sweaty cowboy...”

Malizia $25.00/bottle

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Adidas $25.00/bottle

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This fragrance can be summed up adequately in one sentence: “It smells like bug repellent.” The Adidas cologne is certainly potent, and it definitely gives you the most bang for your buck, which may actually be its purpose. Like a freshly washed gym bag, it might just help in masking the less– than–desirable aroma of athleticism. Conversely, it seems like the amount of sweat mustered up during a morning jog might be needed to curb this cologne. It’s a tricky balance. Overall, Adidas has created a scent that would go well with athlete–worshipping fifteen–year–olds, introducing them to the world of designer fragrance, helping them to identify with their sporty heroes, and perhaps toning down that teenage smell just a little bit.

Before trying Malizia, we first noticed its alluring name and pictured its wearer to be a tall man in a pristine white suit, completely comfortable crossing his legs.

Packaged in a sleek yet unpretentious black–and–white bottle, the cologne sadly couldn’t live up to our high hopes of exoticism; its smell, overall, was pretty pedestrian. Nonetheless, we still found positive things to say about this fragrance.

Setting itself apart from standard colognes, this brew had a sweeter, less abrasive scent. Pleasant in a subdued way, we agreed that it would be best paired with a sweater vest and worn to a poetry reading, rather than the sun–soaked patio of a café on the Mediterranean.

The Final Word

Chris: “Androgynous.”

Ben: “Displays all the qualities of a golden retriever (without the smell).”

Zsuzsi: “It’s kind of burning my throat.”

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The Final Word

Ben: “It’s a gateway cologne.”

Chris: “I wouldn’t want to spill this.”

Zsuzsi: “It makes me crave a power bar.”

Diesel for Men $24.00/bottle

This is what we imagine the set of Miami Vice to smell like. Diesel’s motto for their men’s fragrance is “Fuel for Life.” While no cars were harmed in the manufacturing of this cologne, the slogan is appropriate in terms of the longevity of the fragrance. After a week in a knapsack, the sample card we picked up was still remarkably potent.

Unfortunately for Diesel, the scent is overpowering and flamboyant. We couldn’t find any descriptions of what the cologne is supposed to smell like, but its website featured a looped film clip of a naked man on a rainy high–rise rooftop. The most disturbing shot is a close up of the model’s open mouth as he tries to catch a raindrop. After quenching his thirst, he asks the viewer, “Are you alive?” Well, sort of: a little piece of us definitely died watching that video.

We’ve come to the conclusion that this cologne— sweet–smelling with a hint of citrus—is likely to attract kittens and underage girls at Quarters.

But don’t get too close. Upon inhalation, Diesel for Men has the potential to sear your nose hairs.

The Final Word

Ben: “I’ll take two.”

Chris: “It says ‘Hey baby’ and clears your sinuses.”

Zsuzsi: “Smells like my ex–boyfriend’s ex–boyfriend.”

Shopping Tips!

Bring coffee beans. Coffee beans help clear your nose, thereby aiding with the independent evaluation of each fragrance. Department stores and fancier chains will probably have some on hand, but that won’t be the case if you go discount cologne shopping. Bring your own from home, or if you’re like us, grab some from a nearby Williams.

Timing and research matter. It’s a no– brainer that’s worth repeating: comparison shopping is your friend. Retail prices are comparable between stores, but sales can make a big difference. Although they’re often difficult to predict, if you get lucky, you can really save some cash.

Easier to foresee are the gift baskets they sell around Christmas. These will sell for roughly the same price as a bottle of cologne, but come with extras like aftershave and deodorant.

Go for friendly service. The fragrances won’t change from one store to the next, so you can be picky about sales staff. If your scent doesn’t come with a smile, feel free to move on to the next retailer.

In our case, that meant moving from the independent shop where we started our search to a chain pharmacy. That’s where we were informed of the politics of cologne shopping and tipped off on the advantage of buying gift baskets.

Have a good cover story. We were severely unprepared. Faced with “Is this for college?” we looked at each other, hesitated, and stuttered, “Uh, no…it’s for research.”

Unsurprisingly, some salespeople are not interested in helping you with your homework or Incite assignments. When executing a covert shopping expedition, always lead them on. To be safe, take your wallet out and appoint an “interested shopper” to do all the talking.

Don’t take notes while shopping. This might not apply to all cologne shopping experiences, but it would’ve helped us avoid some accusatory stares and language from the owner of a perfume store. Although, at times her pushiness was amusing: Chris’s “I like it” comment prompted a reply of “So you love it?” Masking your intentions to leave the store empty–handed is always a good, safe idea.

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COLUMN

Trappings

By Siva Vijenthira

I’d Tap That

B

y the end of my first month at Mac, the deep bottom drawer of my desk was overflowing.

Not with papers but with bottles of water.

I had been warned within days of my arrival, you see, that Hamilton water is noxious, so I’d armed myself with cases of Nestlé’s Aberfoyle Springs water.

Each bottle featured a nice picture of snowy mountains and promised “natural spring water.” Sure, my puny biceps throbbed as I carried replacement two–fours from the parking lot to my room in Brandon Hall, but the convenience and safety of the grab–and–go bottles seemed worth it. And, having calculated that this tantalizing liquid was costing me under 30¢ a bottle, I smiled with smug satisfaction every time I saw a $1.85 Dasani.

In those heady days of smelly elevators and bad cafeteria food, I didn’t give much thought to the mountains on the label. They looked something like my mind’s stock photo of the Alps. But actually, the artist had captured a landmark closer to home: the snowy caps of the elusive Guelph Mountain Range, known only to bottled water marketing agencies and foreign tourists convinced that Canada is just an unusually large ski resort. The Guelph Range may have been created by the same plate tectonic shifts that brought us the Brampton and Mississauga Peaks, where Pepsi, Coke, and Danone uncovered similarly pristine sources for their Aquafina, Dasani, and Silhouette brands.

In case my poor attempts at sarcasm aren’t making it clear, all these companies bottle their water within 100 km of here. Nestlé bottles well water near Guelph, while Pepsi, Coke and Danone all use tap water from Lake Ontario. Closer to home, Flamborough Springs is also in on the business. Scepticism and resistance towards bottled water has been spreading for years, but the movement may have been galvanized this summer when Pepsi confirmed that Aquafina does actually come from “public water sources.” Enraged customers vowed to stop drinking this filthy, filtered tap water, but almost every brand they turn to likely uses a similar style of siphoning.

In Ontario, water and sewage charges for tap water are around $2.00 per cubic metre. There are 1000 litres in a cubic metre, meaning the rate for one litre of water is $0.002; for 500 mL, it’s a tenth of a penny. A bottle sold for $1.00, therefore, costs 1000 times more than a tall glass from the tap. It also costs twice as much as the same amount of gasoline. But people are still buying it, almost instinctively. In a country with the world’s largest freshwater reserves, 20 percent of us refuse to drink any unpackaged water at all.

Much of this suspicion is, unfortunately, somewhat

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deserved. Lake Ontario’s beaches are regularly closed for elevated E. coli levels in the summers, and many of its pollutants are nasty–sounding elements like mercury and arsenic. When was the last time people waded freely into the surf and took some water in their cupped hands to quench their thirst? Our distrust and even revulsion may be signs that we feel increasingly removed from the resource that, one could argue, represents much of our national identity.

The Great Lakes Basin waters are often referred to as our blue gold. But what is the significance of our willingness to allow private companies to take and sell billions of litres of these natural riches for profits bordering on the obscene? Are we so ill at ease with our home–grown assets that we trust multinationals to make them better?

The assets are, it’s true, not as pristine as they once were. But we don’t drink our water at its source.

Tap water goes through rigorous filtration processes before making its way into our kitchens. Ontario’s Chief Drinking Water Inspector now publishes a yearly report on the state of our drinking water, which establishes that, contrary to popular belief, Hamilton water is far from toxic. In fact, last year, the facility serving most of Hamilton passed 99.86 percent of its strict water quality tests. Ontario filtration facilities must test for hundreds of contaminants daily, and standards are reassessed regularly to be among the most stringent in North America. All this before the water even enters the Coke or Pepsi plants where it is redundantly refiltered an astonishing five to seven times. Parenthetically, this may explain Dasani’s somewhat odd taste: carbon residue from the purifying process.

One of the “impurities” removed by bottling companies is fluoride, a compound deliberately added by treatment plants to promote healthy teeth.

Children living on unfluoridated well water are already encouraged to take fluoride treatment. What about children living on bottled or even Brita–filtered water? Filtration also removes chlorine, which may help improve flavour in some localities; however, chlorine will naturally dissipate from a pitcher of tap water left in the fridge overnight. Eliminating it artificially certainly doesn’t justify the cost of a bottle.

According to the Canadian Bottled Water Association, the industry’s revenue was $652 million in 2005. Where is this money going? After filtration, several bottle companies also add vitamins or flavour before shipping it. Nestlé, Pepsi, Coke, and Danone have built bottling plants near most of their major consumer bases, but the Aberfoyle water bottled near Guelph travels as far as Florida. Water from more

exotic locales, like Evian, Perrier, and Fiji, is shipped around the world by air. And then there are the expenses of producing the bottles. The Pacific Institute estimates that a single 500 mL plastic bottle is made using at least two bottles’ worth of water, and that the amount of oil used to fuel production, shipping, storing, and recycling would fill a quarter of a bottle.

These environmental costs are staggering, especially considering that bottles cannot even be reused safely; after a few months they leach contaminants like antimony into the water they hold.

A significant percent of the revenue from bottled water sales, though, undoubtedly goes to marketing.

Remember when people who drank Evian were considered pretentious, or even stupid? Neither do I. Nowadays, a bottle of water is as normal an accessory as sunglasses. Following tragic stories of water contamination, from seven deaths in Walkerton in 2000 to this summer’s lead scare, bottled water has been marketed as sexy, convenient, and safe in a fast–paced and dangerous world. Ads trumpet each brand’s obsessive attention to filtration and the seemingly magical properties of its water. Specific kinds of bottled water can make the drinker become a better athlete (Propel) or feel uncontrollably happy (Aquafina). Best of all, Dasani confides, water has zero calories! It’s a compelling message. Hell, I fell for it.

To promote tap water, Toronto now offers free bottles of its water at city events and conferences.

It’s a good start, but it causes just as much waste as private brand bottles. On top of the costs of producing and shipping bottles, it is estimated that 80 percent of them go straight to a landfill. Meanwhile, provincial and territorial governments are considering the possibility of a national ParticipACTION–like campaign to encourage people to trust their water.

This summer, the American Water Works Association created a series of racy pro–tap print ads that feature, for example, a long, smooth faucet saying, “Do you know how often you turn me on?”

Tap water’s defenders still have a big battle ahead of them in the face of scare–tactic messages like Brita’s, which reveals that, shockingly, kitchen and bathroom water come from the same pipes. Of course, Brita manipulatively suggest that this makes the kitchen water dirtier than we think, when the truth is the reverse: it means the toilet water is ridiculously clean. Well, I’m not going to drink from the toilet tank, but I’m definitely not going to buy a filter or a bottle when I already get clean water delivered to my kitchen. And every time I drink a fraction of a penny’s worth of water from my Nalgene, I’ll smile smugly at the 30¢ Aberfoyles I pass by.

WANDERINGS

Run of the Mills Basement

By Patrick Byrne and Kate Mackeracher

B

ehind a door that the sleep–deprived herds of Mills Library slide by like Muggles passing the Leaky Cauldron, down a narrow twisting stair, our wandering feet took us into the mysterious depths of the McMaster Archives. Rare books, medieval manuscripts, precious first editions, the famous Bertrand Russell archives, and other historical curiosities totalling 3590 linear metres are housed in its underground recesses at 50 percent humidity and 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

What would bring two otherwise sane undergraduate students to the Archives on a warm, sunny, September afternoon? Academic zeal? Unpopularity? A crippling case of acne? Nay, these intrepid explorers came to unlock the secrets of one of the (we supposed) lesser–known places on campus, and perhaps cause a little trouble in the process.

At the foot of the stairs, our attention was immediately drawn to the glass displays flanking the doors to the Archives. We had stumbled upon a miniature museum in the bowels of the library: a garden–themed display of Canadian author Marjorie Harris’s archival materials. Our eyes first fell on an issue of Maclean’s from 1969 with the alluring headline “Why nice people smoke pot” emblazoned on its cover. Amidst another full cabinet of gardening books, we noticed what appeared to be a humorously misplaced volume entitled, The Bare Facts: My Life as a Stripper. (It turns out that Harris really was the ghostwriter of this intriguing tome, before she turned to writing about ecological gardening.) With our juicy finds still fresh in our minds, we excitedly opened the doors to the archive, each secretly hoping to find more scandal scattered amongst the dusty shelves.

After a brief fumble with the counter–intuitive, inward–opening door, we stepped into the utter stillness of a cathedral. It was difficult to believe that, above our heads in the Mills lobby, people were shouting to be heard; nothing disturbed the faintly cool, faintly dusty air of the archives except, now and then, a dry rattling from the air circulation system. We felt like modern day (successful) versions of Ponce de Leon, finding the library equivalent of the fountain of youth: actual quiet space in a McMaster library.

A Cerberus–like gentleman (although he was neither three–headed nor a giant man–eating dog) watched us from behind a desk guarding both the door to the outer world and the passages leading away to hallowed “staff only” domains. Presenting him with nervous smiles, we skirted the perimeter of the archives’ public room, passing under the nose of a magnificently ugly bust of Bertrand Russell, pulling open the drawers of perhaps the last card index in captivity. (A passing staff member quashed our rush of romantic nostalgia by crisply informing us that the index is completely electronic these days; the yellowed index cards are now themselves

historical relics.)

Two long, heavy tables, lit by huge blocky lights and lined by very serious square chairs, dominated the room’s centre. The near–immovability of the furniture declared that here dedicated academics could cultivate a respectable curve in their spines, turning the pages of weighty, pre–1800 tomes with their hands encased in the archives’ white cotton gloves—just as similar curves are simultaneously developing in the backs of latex–gloved researchers hunched over the lab–benches of ABB. The woman behind the magisterial desk (a changing of the guards had occurred while we weren’t looking) was beginning to eye our furious note–taking with some suspicion, and understandably: we were spending an inordinate amount of time peering up at an eerie statue of a monkey eating what looked like a yellow onion—or a discoloured heart.

We handed her a slip of paper with call numbers for a set of randomly–selected rare books, trying to look studious; she vanished into the forbidden “staff only” realm so long that we worried she was calling campus security to throw us out, but she eventually returned with our peculiar requests.

After donning the surprisingly stylish white gloves and substituting our pens for pencils (pens are a big no–no in the archives), we settled down for some intensive, serious study of books with funny titles from the early 1800s. Upon delicately opening the first specimen, a jaunty tome entitled Angling in all its Branches, one of us felt a sense of horror well up inside. There is no feeling like the fear that arises when, having just laid your (gloved) hands on a 200–year–old book, a sneeze explodes from your mouth. Awkward.

Thankfully, the intrepid wanderer was able to turn his head at the last minute and direct the spray onto his trusty partner, but we still have nightmares of a wrathful archivist tearing us limb from limb.

While returning our peculiar volumes to their keeper, we finally confessed to be writing an article about the archives and ventured a few questions.

Stereotypes about standoffish librarians crumbled during her knowledgeable and gregarious replies— although perhaps it was because Renu Barrett is actually an Archivist.

Asked to reveal her favourite documents in the collections, she named an array of items from early printings of Chaucer to the correspondance of Jack McClelland (of McClelland & Stewart) with famous authors. Warming to her subject, she satisfied our cravings for colour and excitement by describing the more unusual materials to pass through the archives: hair, old diaries, unopened liquor bottles, someone’s gallstones, and a pair of shoes accidentally packed away with an archival donation.

The deserted appearance of the archives during our visit was deceptive, she informed us; photocopies of archival documents (prepared with a one day turnaround time) are in demand from Canadian and international researchers, and when we returned for pictures on a Friday afternoon, the place was oddly hopping.

In Barrett’s opinion, even undergraduates are beginning to use the archives more frequently these days, in part due to new course assignments, although she wryly alluded to a few misuses. Refugees of the over–crowded upper library sometimes attempt to poach study–space (we wouldn’t recom-

mend this ploy—they may still be keeping a three– headed dog somewhere in the back), and one student came seeking a precious first edition copy of Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, because she couldn’t find any recent printings and just wanted to read the book.

Ambling through the archives may seem like stepping into an alternate universe of silence, cotton gloves, and backaches; many of its materials are as arcane as the bacterial proteins of unknown function under study in McMaster biochem labs— and as full of revelatory potential in the hands of imaginative researchers. Yet these underground collections have something to interest even hapless wanderers like ourselves: bits and pieces of scandalous people and colourful times, stories told in diaries and gallstones.

Gems from the Archival Ward–Hoard: The Accomplished Tutor; or Complete System of Liberal Education by Thomas Hodson This is no pedestrian rulebook; Hodson spices up his manual for tutors with such diverting assertions as “the Christian religion is to be considered as an improvement of the Jewish,” and “Christianity is infinitely superior to every other religious system, both in point of its religious doctrines and the effects it has produced upon society,” buried in the heart of his chapter on geography. Oh you crazy old 19th century Caucasian males, always stirring the pot.

The Good: Contains every random bit of knowledge you (n)ever wanted to know, from trigonometry, to geography, and even penmanship, in two convenient five–pound leather–bound volumes.

The Bad: “Complete System” is a bit of a false advertisement: the only arts subject to earn a chapter in his book is “Drawing/Engraving/Painting” (if we discount “Grammar”).

The Ugly: Slightly outdated information leads to maps with the whole of Africa labelled “Negroland”—not exactly a term you’d want to feature prominently in your next polisci paper.

Awfully Jolly Waltz (mid–1800s) Whether the waltzes in this book of piano music are indeed “awfully jolly,” your wanderers are unable to satisfactorily report, but the pale moustachioed soldier pictured in full colour on the title page seemed curiously glum for a man with a pretty blond woman in a low–cut dress leaning on his arm.

The Good: Songs with titles such as “First She Will and Then She Won’t” The Bad: The dearth of pianos in the archives precludes proper appreciation of this fine specimen.

The Ugly: The uniformed man on the title page— red is definitely not his colour.

incite 9

FICTION

I

by catherine m.a. wiebe

t is still there, underneath the piles of clothes and boxes of old canning jars. It is not gone, it is only hidden. Only hidden, just waiting for us to find it again. So see, let’s look at these pictures, that is you in the photograph. And that is me beside you. Here we are, drawing pictures of owls in the morning. We are on Vacation together.

(I do not reveal that I used to think of Vacation as an island, or a country, or a footstool, something—regardless of its shape—with a definite border, something that one could be on. I do not reveal that going to a place not called Vacation seemed dishonest. I do not remind her that she knows of my former foolishness, that she is the one who explained Vacation to me while we sat drawing owls in the morning.)

That is me in the photographs, but younger. I am shouting at her in my head, but in the living room, on the couch in the afternoon, I am just talking. In my head I am saying remember remember rememberre–memberre– memberre! but in the living room I am telling a story about how she taught me how to draw, how she sat with me while my sister cried, even when she was past the age of crying and I was not yet at the age where sitting with me was anything better than a task.

That is me in the photograph, but younger, she says, when I pause in my story to wrap a blanket around myself. I do not know who the—and here she points at herself—who that is, but that—and here she points at me—is me, only younger. My hair used to be the colour of yours, she said. And so she starts telling a story, but a different one than is in the photograph.

I did not have a grandmother for as many years as you, she said. Memories were not as long, then, as they are now, and so people died sooner. Their memories ran out, and they could not remember how to live, so they died.

But when I was younger, when I was younger my grandmother was not dead. I think that might be her, in the picture. Yes, I think that is her. See how she looks like me, only older? See how we both have small hands?

She was teaching me to write my name, in this picture.

And, I ask her, and?

She was teaching me to write my name in this picture.

And what else? I ask (and what else, what else, what else, what else? I am asking inside). How old were you?

She was teaching me to write my name. See, I can still write my name now.

There are some things worth remembering, she said, there are some things you shouldn’t forget.

I nod and say mmm hmmm mmm hmmm.

And while I am nodding and mmm hmmm–ing, while I am looking across the room to the clock which I cannot read from this far away, she takes out a pen, or a marker, from one of those folds in a grandmother’s sweater that always seems to contain something, an object invisible until it is procured at just the right time. And she signs her name. The two swooping loops of the capital letters perfectly framing my face and her face in the photograph.

Do you want to learn how to write your name, she asks.

She did not remember yesterday, or the day before. She does not remember getting dressed, and so she pulls on slacks over her skirt, and sweaters she may once have knitted over blouses and undershirts. She does not remember eating, and so she reaches for the box of stale crackers, before she forgets again what to do with them in her hands.

She does not remember that tomorrow is her birthday, that all of the bright paper squares, folded and set up in the window, are hers.

That tomorrow she is leaving for awhile.

She has no past, anymore, so she has made one for her self, as girls make stories for their dolls.

present

10 incite

This is the last time you will have this memory.

If only there was a warning, a lamp that was lit, a pressure in the space between your belly and your lungs, a taste on your tongue when you inhaled, telling you, reminding you that when you exhaled, when you fell asleep, when you turned the corner, that you would no longer have this memory.

Something to give you time, pencil and paper and a surface to write on, time to write it down, time to tell your husband, your daughter, your granddaughter, time to save your memory although you cannot keep it.

Or perhaps there could be no warning, and no ghost of memory either. If only it could slip away, unnoticed, if only you could forget that it was forgotten.

But you forget, and only remember enough to know that you have forgotten, you are haunted but not comforted, troubled with no possibility of calm. Your only certainty is that there was a word, once, or a phrase, a word to describe the picture in the hallway, a word for the jars with the old cucumbers inside.

I thought for awhile that you did not remember. That you did not know, anymore, what you used to be like. But I know now that all you remember is forgetting, that you cry in the night when you think everyone else is asleep, that you only remember that you must hide your shame, and you feel only shame because you cannot hide it.

We will make new memories, I said, a new memory for today, and tomorrow, and the next day. We will make new memories together, you and I. And so I get out the recipe that you have written for me, the recipe that you never needed, that you made only because I was not wise enough, yet, to know by the taste at the beginning how things will turn out in the end, to know that this bitterness now, will be mellow and sweet in the end. So I get out the recipe, and ask you for the flour, and you point me to the garden.

We will make new memories, you and I, we will go out and pick the flowers that you planted before I was born, that remember to come back every year, even after their names are forgotten. We will pick the flowers to set on the table, to make it beautiful. And then I will get out the recipe again, and ask you for the flour, and you will point me to the cupboard. Pour this, I will say, and I will rip the packet of yeast and hand it to you, and you will pour it into the bowl with the warm water and the sugar, stir it around, and say that it smells like home again. You will smile at me, and lean over the bowl to smell the yeast growing, to smell the smell of home again. Home again, you will say again. Home again. I will heat the milk on the stove, you will tell me to be careful, be careful, because that is what you say when someone uses the stove, be careful. The stove and the oven, and the pit for the fire in the back yard, be careful, you’ll say, be careful.

And so we scald the milk and pour it into the bowl from the island, pour it along the sides, and you stir it to make it cool, and we add the yeast, and the flour to make a sponge. And you lean over the bowl again and smile at me, and say this smells like home again. And we add the egg and the fat and the salt, and you stir while I pour; now I am taller and you are short, I pour while you stir, and then I stir when you cannot stir any more. And then we take out the dough, and I rip off a corner for you.

It will rise, you say, it will rise with the heat of the morning (though it is spring and the mornings are still cool). It will rise in the window, you say, not because you remember why, but because this bowl belongs in the window, because you do not remember, but you know that something is out of place. And so we put it in the window, and I do not bother to tell you that you used to make bread in the afternoon, and this window faces west.

Tomorrow we will make a new memory, I tell you, a new memory for you and for me. We will make soup tomorrow, I tell you, soup with the last of this winter’s squash, and we will can it to save it until the squash comes again. But you cannot hold the knife, anymore, to cut the squash, and you cannot peel the potatoes or the parsnips, and so you sit, on your stool, waiting for me to peel the carrots and cut them so that you can drop them, one by one, into the broth with the leeks and the onions. You stood at the sink and washed the leeks, peeling back the green ribbons and holding them up to the tap, scrubbing them with the pads of your fingers, cleaning half of them and missing the other half. You stood at the sink while I chopped the onions, cleaning the leeks and setting them, carefully, on the butcher’s block.

I think you are crying, but perhaps it is only the onions.

And so we leave the soup to simmer, and sit outside where it is too cold to sit, and you tuck another blanket around my legs, though I have already brought one from inside.

imperfect

incite 11

PERSPECTIVE

A Love to New

By Tings Ch

12 incite

e Letter Orleans

hak

I

spent two months in New Orleans, first arriving in the middle of the February Mardi Gras craze, and then returning on May 1st, at the height of Jazz Fest. It’s true: the Big Easy never sleeps. So as any free spirit should, I drank the daiquiris—Hand Grenades and Hurricanes— danced spontaneously in anarchist street parades, and filled my body with jazz and brass. I took in the heat and spirit of the South, all the while marvelling at the fact that such a magical culture could exist on this continent, which as of late I’ve become more or less jaded about.

In New Orleans, the second line is a funerary tradition. In the first line, family and close friends congregate for a formal church service. The service then spills into the streets as the second line follows with marching bands and teams of strangers, filling the width of avenues, of entire blocks with song and dance. The second line is just a great party, and appropriately so, since even after death, life should be celebrated and never mourned. I thought it was

beautiful to have such a dignified and spirited death, starkly contrasted to passing away in the context of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. For those thousands who died when they hit, and for those still displaced, our current indifference denies this dignity so entrenched in New Orleans’s culture.

During my stay, I lived in the much–stigmatized Lower Ninth Ward, a place which once housed 6000 residents, but where only 60 or so remain. I lived in a place where businesses wait months on end to re–open because, in a game of bureaucratic pinball, obtaining a permit is nearly impossible.

I lived in a place where, nearly two years after Katrina, there are still people living in toxic, ungutted homes with no other place to go, while many others have been forced to flee to friends and families scattered across the country—a diaspora.

And people ask me how this is possible after two years, in the almighty United States of America.

After many days of waking up, working, playing, and sleeping by the levee, I caught a glimpse of beautiful wetlands reclaiming the land, thinking perhaps this place was really never supposed to be inhabited by people. Then why rebuild? The sense of injustice pervading the place, however—the laissez–faire policing state, the brutality, disenfranchisement, and homelessness—made me, along with so many activists gathered from across the continent, believe in the fight to return, to rebuild former homes and not new strip malls, to close the environmentally devastating oil canals with the protection of all people as the priority.

Remember that Hurricane Katrina was not the “Big One,” the 100–year flood. It was merely a Category 3 (not 5) hurricane that missed New Orleans, felt mostly as a Category 1 or 2 when it hit land. So we blame sunken levees, flawed structural integrity; we point fingers at the US Army Corps of Engineers for, apparently, engineering poorly. If you ever look at an aerial view of New Orleans, however, you would see the criss– cross slashing of land by canals dredged—and often abandoned—for oil and gas exploration; you would see the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (“Mr. Go”), and you would see why these waterways are often called “hurricane highways.” These canals and surrounding levees divert sediment flow from resettling into the wetlands. As a result, the coast is washing into the Gulf of Mexico at the frightening rate of a football field every half hour. All the while, New Orleans continues to sink as oil gets sucked out from beneath it in a process called subsidence, and the sea level rises.

I could talk about the importance of wetlands by citing examples of their biodiversity, the lucrative shrimp businesses, recreational and commercial fishing, or how they represent one–third of the United States’ coastal marshland and yet account for 90 percent of the loss. What is essential, however, is that wetlands are a natural defense against hurricanes, where one acre absorbs up to 1.5 billion gallons of floodwater and 2.7 square miles lower storm surges by one foot. Numbers of this magnitude are hard to grasp, but know that over 2000 square miles of wetlands lost since the 1930s should be read as 2000 square miles of storm protection disappeared. How much of Katrina’s

impact was exacerbated by the continued and continuing neglect of the wetlands?

I spent a lot of time wading hip–deep through marshes, doing plantings as well as removing exotic and invasive materials, meanwhile catching a glimpse of Vietnam. The loss of the coast is so drastic and obvious that it is hard to make sense of the place. I came to a simple realization that decentralized and small–scaled plantings are inadequate. Along with a few friends doing wetlands restoration work, I teamed up with the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR). Despite being state–funded, their plantings still only number a dozen a year, securing only a couple thousand plants each time. I was told by the leader of the LDNR trip that one–fifth of this year’s plantings have already been gobbled up by the evil invasive species called Nutria (think: ugly water rats): one–fifth of the already too few plantings have been rendered useless. But given the right critical mass, it is amazing what ground can be covered, what land can be reclaimed by these plants in a single year—the Spartinas, bulrushes, live oaks, and cypresses. I fell in love with all of them and their resilience. I have come to believe, despite the pervading feelings of inevitable loss in fighting an uphill battle, that coastal restoration is not a hopeless cause. It is just beyond what any grassroots effort can hope to offer.

So is New Orleans just a punchbowl? Perhaps, but it is also not going to be abandoned for that reason anytime soon. If protection of the people must inevitably be made the priority, so should the wetlands. And if New Orleans’s most devastated areas will, without a doubt, be rebuilt, then the designs for canal–expansion to accommodate tourist ferries, contractors’ bigger plans to replace or gentrify former low–income housing areas must be resisted. The hardest hit regions, like the Lower Ninth, are not just blank slates or free–for–alls for developers, but they hold evidence of human neglect coinciding with privilege and power politicking.

And since the former community members’ voices have become muffled and diluted by the diaspora, it is only at the grassroots level that there is any sign of resistance, any hope of cultural preservation.

Yet I earnestly believe that in a place where roots run deep, if former residents want to return they should have that right.

While I was in the Lower Ninth, I witnessed a feat for the community, the re–opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology on the corner of Caffin and N. Claiborne.

There was the smell of the freshly painted whites and pastels, the dancing and community choirs, the passionate accounts of community members and council people fighting through bureaucratic barricades to re–open one school in an area the city had deemed too unpopulated to rebuild anything.

I remember an elderly lady standing behind me proudly proclaiming and believing, “Build it, and they will return!” I also remember an eerie feeling, I later attributed to the absence of mass media. For such a large step in the glacial process of rebuilding, there was no press save for some digital camera flashes from proud parents capturing their kids dressed up all pretty. It’s true that headlines have a shelf life.

These thoughts came to me after having resettled in Hamilton for two months, solitarily awaiting the two–year anniversary of August 29th. It passed by just like any other day, except this time without the jars of change floating around from hand to hand, and a little pat on the back.

incite 13

MUSINGS

Up Close and Personal:

W

e do it in greeting and when bidding farewell, to please and to tease, on dance floors and darkly–lit street corners, when blinded by lust and occasionally even as revenge, in the heat of the moment and after weeks of carefully planning its perfect time and place. It’s a ritual part of eternal unions and fleeting flings, filthy midnight rendezvous and hopelessly romantic Hollywood endings. We’ve painted it, sung about it, and witnessed it a few too many times in the back corners of Quarters. Yet, even after gossiping about it at more slumber parties than the Baby–sitters Club could imagine, I’ve begun to wonder how well we really know the kiss.

I always assumed that swapping spit was a purely primal act, an intrinsic part of that crazy little thing called lust. It wasn’t until I read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins that I began to entertain the notion that kissing, like hula–hoops and cow– shaped creamers, could be the work of human invention. Robbins’s brief history lesson begins in medieval times—no, not the dinner and tournament—when knights would make out with their wives in order to determine whether they had tasted the men’s mead while they were away from home. Kissing, as we all know, didn’t remain an “alcoholic chastity belt” for long. Oh no, it grew up, proving Faith Hill’s lyrics “This kiss, this kiss—unstoppable” unsettlingly accurate. Playing like a rerun of any child star’s E! True Hollywood Story, the kiss transformed from honest young workhorse to bucking teenaged rebel. Robbins claims that kissing for the sake of pleasure gradually gained popularity in the courts and spread from there. And, the rest is history.

G RAPHIC BY Boram HAM

Let’s take a moment to consider what Mr. Robbins has proposed: that the kiss—or, I should say, the tongue–on–tongue game of tonsil hockey that was romantically referred to as “Frenching” by countless characters on Degrassi—is not a natural action but learned behaviour, that every anniversary smooch

14 incite

A History of Kissing

By Rob Lederer

our parents exchange, every seductive lip–lock under the mistletoe, every X–rated office party mishap is not wholly an animal instinct. On some level, culture and not genetics has programmed us to suck face, and that seems pretty weird to me: who was the first, so daring, so courageous, to pull a move like that without any precedent, to press his lips and slip her tongue in such an unusual, untested way? It seems to me like a potentially awkward ending to a seemingly perfect first date.

Tom Robbins’s account of the kiss’s background is hardly the only theory that has been put forth.

Far from it! The kiss’s past, as we might expect from such a scandalous star, reads like a tumultuous Harlequin romance novel featuring Fabio on the cover.

Its unique history is a matter of constant dispute, one that will likely remain unresolved considering the scant material historians have to work with. After all, there are no Facebook albums for scholars to flip through, analyzing the Saturday night mating habits of old–school humans with every click of the mouse; likewise, art and literature can be a little vague on the steamy details.

While there are still many disputed points, it is pretty much agreed upon that kissing on the lips is not a universally performed custom: like country music and Yahoomail, this practice was introduced to Asiatic communities by Westerns. Despite this seemingly contradictory information—evidence supporting the notion that the kiss is a product of culture—several scholars have attempted to tie kissing to biology and psychology. In his “Afterword” to The Kiss in History, Keith Thomas notes Freud`s theory that the erotic kiss resembles an infant suckling her mother’s breast, as well as other schools of thought which connect this steamy action to the act of eating.

The ancient Egyptian verb “to kiss” also meant “to eat,” and this comparison reverberates hundreds of years later with the French Bishop Jacques Benigne Bossuet. According to Nicolas Perella, Bossuet drew a connection between the Eucharist—the ceremonial eating of the body of Christ—and spiritual and sexual love, where one desires to devour the object of affection, either the Lord or the lover, in order to integrate it into oneself. These attempts to understand the biological and psychological underpinnings of the kiss begin to deconstruct, to theorize, why this seemingly odd practice originated at all.

Currently more popular than trying to develop explanations for the kiss dealing with intrinsic human characteristics are efforts to construct its social history, understanding where this odd practice comes from and how it became the preferred pastime of lovesick teenagers and Blind Date contestants.

While Tom Robbins was only hypothesizing a biography of the romantic tongue–on– tongue smooch, the standard kiss has a much lengthier cultural back–story. Well before medieval knights roamed the countryside, defending the honour of every helpless damsel in distress, Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. And so we must go even farther back to tease out a plausible social history of the kiss.

PDA didn’t always mean awkward groping in the Student Centre; public kissing was, believe it or not,

part of the Catholic Church, only their kiss—“the holy kiss of peace” or pax—was a little subtler than nightly displays on the Funky Munky dance floor.

Scholar Craig Koslofsky says it likely functioned as a symbol of parishioners’ harmony of belief and could even have served as a way of spreading the Holy Spirit. Although, with time, this religious kiss worked its way into the ceremony of the Eucharist, Koslofsky notes that its star quickly faded. Soon, male and female worshippers were segregated, and by the thirteenth century, English congregations were kissing a pax–board rather than each other. Keith Thomas continues Koslofsky’s history lesson, adding that, around the same time, the French custom of the mouth–on– mouth kiss vanished as the preferred way to confirm a contract. The kiss of peace, employed as a demonstration of reconciliation, waned with the popularization of handshakes, oaths, and written documents used to seal the deal.

To construct a complete history of the kiss would require resources that simply do not exist; understanding historic interactions between people who were not in the upper–echelons of society is tough, because their actions, quite simply, went unrecorded.

In this way, the kiss’s past is much more nuanced than I first realized, a point acknowledged by the Royal Historical Society’s conference on “The Kiss in History” in 2000. At this meeting, each lecture focused on understanding one particular kind of kiss, in one place, at one time, indicating the inseparability of kissing from cultural context.

It’s important to remember that the sexualization of kissing, its move from the outdoors into private quarters, did not happen in a day. That being said, we can still try to understand how the kiss became so racy. According to research by Helen Berry, during the Early Modern period, a great deal of energy was put into classifying different categories of kisses, and distinguishing which varieties were appropriate in which social situations. While this symbolized an attempt to harness the kiss, the vagueness of the gesture also offered an opportunity to explore the kiss’s use beyond more formal application. Berry goes on to say that, because the connotations of each variety were not firmly established, practicing the kiss in its many forms facilitated the redefinition of appropriate and adulterous behaviours. The intensifying intimacy of the kiss is visible in the most unlikely of places: says scholar Santanu Das, kisses between men in World War I trenches, performed just before death, cast the kiss as supremely intimate, not sexual. How precisely our current understanding of making out evolved is unclear; however, traces of it can be found in every peck on the cheek, “kiss of peace,” and culturally– vague smooch hundreds of years into the past.

Towards the end of She’s the Man, there’s a scene where Amanda Bynes’s character refuses to don high–heeled shoes, because, she contends, “[they] are a male invention designed to make women’s butts look smaller, and to make it harder for them to run away.” Really, heels were first introduced to prevent horseback riders’ feet from slipping through their stirrups. Their evolution, from practical riding boots to stylish, sexy stilettos, I think mirrors the development of the kiss. Although its true genesis remains somewhat unclear, the kiss seems to have originated out of utility: a way to greet and a sign of peace, or if you believe Tom Robbins, an early Breathalyzer test.

As we all know, however, the kiss has shed its conservative pretensions, and thank goodness for it. After all, what would teenage fantasies and Nora Roberts novels be without our current, racy rendering of the kiss?

incite 15

C ARTOON BY N ICK DAVIES

COMIC

PERSPECTIVE

T

Incite investigates the sometimes obscene, sometimes philosophical graffiti in McMaster’s washrooms

F

ew aspiring writers will go on to produce a work of true gravity. Spending a few moments in a public washroom can help the budding artist to get their creative juices flowing. The bathroom cubicle hosts a free–for–all of uncensored ideas, and showcases human thought at its most primal. For this month’s issue of Incite, we were assigned a sordid task: to investigate, taxonomize, and derive meaning from bathroom graffiti. We embarked on a quest through McMaster’s grittiest and most secluded locales, those that have escaped the ruthless censorship of Housing and Conferences Services.

Graffiti is mostly a gross, unsavoury form of written communication. Likewise, a cubicle in a public washroom is not a particularly sanitary place, much less so when your goal isn’t merely to sit down, but to probe it’s every nook and cranny.

To see, for example, a message left behind the toilet by one determined soul, we found ourselves hovering with our faces just inches above the seat. By the look of it, someone else had assumed the same position the night before. More uncomfortable were the looks we provoked by peeking into every empty cubicle with clipboard and camera in hand, and on occasion, packing the three of us into a single stall.

Needless to say, what began as an innocent gallivant around campus quickly became a harrowing descent into the depths of the human psyche.

Graffiti in bathrooms around McMaster varies in purpose, perspective, maturity level, and subject matter. Nevertheless, recurring themes and popular topics emerge. The most obvious is the blatantly obscene. This includes crude genitalia drawings— particularly large, hairy ones—and, seemingly in

16 incite

aking an on–campus dump is the most private, reflective two–and–a–half minutes of my school day. When it’s time to go, I scurry to the quietest, least populated, cleanest restrooms on campus—Mills 5th Floor, if convenient—to quell my pre–excretory pangs. This serene environment (humming fluorescent bulbs, the gentle murmur of flushing urinals) affords the pooper a space for private contemplation—about relationships, culture, work, family, even coursework—hidden from the pervasive gazes of one’s peers.

On occasion, my attention turns to the visual character of the washroom. Graffiti, colourful and grimy in both its language and physical appearance, interrupts the otherwise grey, listless canvas of campus bathroom walls. We too often neglect this verbal detritus, treating graffiti as too vulgar, too inarticulate, and too meaningless to be worthy of our journalistic consideration. Certainly, the vast majority of it is gratuitously crude and ostensibly thoughtless; if we take bathroom graffiti to be truly representative of students’ thought processes, one would gather that sweaty balls, four letter words, and anarchism are the touchstones of Western culture. But by scanning through the trash that plasters McMaster’s stall walls, we can find written evidence that Mac students do some of their most introspective, impassioned thinking while carrying out one of life’s most intimate physical acts.

“JF + SH,” scratched into the door of a TSH Basement stall, is a precious, if trite, remnant of the Man Who Is Truly In Touch With His Feelings. Presumably, it’s the mark of a man who, while dropping a deuce, can’t get his lover off his mind. What compels the bathroom user, in the throes of intoxicating love, to carve his initials and those of his lover into the stall door? Does he believe that the apparent semi– permanence of his etching symbolizes a commitment to his partner?

Ah, young love...

Other scribbles allude to their authors’ emotional angst and vulnerability. Common are examples of graffiti that express worry about social isolation in our high–tech, late capitalist age, and students’ uncertainty regarding their looming post–undergraduate futures. A few poignant etchings communicate students’ feelings of futility in their wranglings with McMaster’s impersonal and labyrinthine bureaucracy. Though these writings do not constitute strong or effective acts of resistance against established power, they are visual proof that public washrooms offer a venue for angst–ridden students to get “shit” off their chests while they expel the literal kind from their loins.

Excretion itself is a cathartic and “expressive” act, conducive to relieving sensations of burgeoning pain or discomfort. Likewise, the stall is a grimy confessional; in a slapdash scrawl, visitors anonymously purge themselves of the passion, guilt, grief, and insecurity that weigh heavily upon their psyches. an attempt to be dramatic, profane but generally meaningless proclamations like “BULLSHIT!” (male washroom, CNH). Other equally crass comments seek to be sarcastic or, on rare occasions, witty. On a poster proclaiming, “Abstinence is always an option,” one girl wrote, “So is fucking your brains out” (female washroom, CNH basement). The “potty humour” category adds a juvenile slant. One poem, for example, reads, “Some come here to sit and think.

Some come here to shit and stink” (male washroom, TSH basement). There is a preoccupation with bodily functions and parts in much bathroom graffiti, quite logically, as that is what is on the top—or bottom—of one’s mind while in the bathroom.

People like to complain, and the bathroom stall seems to be an ideal forum for airing these grievances. “Mac will rape you for money” (male washroom, TSH basement) expresses frustration with high tuition. Discontent with “the system” is a popular theme, with comments like “They say jump you say how high” (male washroom, TSH basement) and “MORALS ARE AN ILLUSION” (male washroom, TSH basement). There is the occasional political commentary, “200 years of capitalist banality” (male washroom, The Phoenix), often with an anarchist bent. In the women’s bathroom in Chester New Hall, patrons seem to have taken particular issue with the poster “Abstinence is always an option… 37% of McMaster students have never had sex.” Comments include, “and to think for yourself,” “sometimes thinking for yourself makes you want a drink… or two,” “67% of Mac students are liars” (we suspect she meant 63%), “this is propaganda,” “does this include grad students?”, and “Pussies.” Where the poster specifies “n=215,” there are the replies,

“only?” and “is your population representative?”

Complaints written in public bathrooms betray the artists’ anxieties. Existential angst and concern over body image, relationships, race, and the future all appear. “Love your body!”, “unless you’re fat,” and “every body type is beautiful” (female washroom, TSH basement) all react to the social ideal of being thin. The philosophical question “Why exist?” (male washroom, KTH) was posed, and someone replied cheekily, “Why not?” “Want a job? Go to college!” (male washroom, TSH basement) echoes the increasingly indeterminate futures we foresee in a rapidly globalizing world. Discrimination, directed at minorities and homosexuals, is also revealing of the authors’ anxieties with our society’s multicultural, liberal bent. Relationships are another source of anxiety, but also sappy–sweet optimism, ranging from “may we give that which we desire most: unconditional love” (female washroom, KTH), to what might have once been a terrible MSN name: “To never love is to never loose… But to never love is to never live” (female washroom, KTH). Is “loose” a typo for “lose”? Or is the great dilemma of relationships choosing between truly living and being loose? When it comes to bathroom graffiti, it’s a toss–up.

Advertisements are posted on the backs of stall doors or above urinals in many bathrooms on campus. “Advertising Space,” scribbled over a row of urinals in the Health Sciences Centre, comments on these intrusions. There are also non–professional dabblers in this technique. Both official and non–official advertisers capture the attention of the wandering minds of the toilet user to further their own ends. Some graffiti is done in remembrance, to

immortalize a relationship, like “SB + KL – lovers forever” (male washroom, KTH), or an event “RIP Virginia Tech Victims” (female washroom, TSH basement). Websites and phone numbers are also offered as more personal types of advertisement, such as this gem: Yall are envious cuz ma rhymes are infinite And you are lyrically limited to tha little boxes you’re livin in I’m da only HAMILTON RAP dat IS da illest! www.myspace.com/problemsociety (male washroom, Ivor Wynne Centre) A surprisingly prevalent phenomenon is writing a telephone number and a comment on the owners’ sexual proficiency, “WANT A HORNY BITCH? CALL…”, “for good head…”, “for better head…”, “For the best head…” (male washroom, TSH basement). Apparently, this is done as an act of revenge on the person whose phone number is being publicized, as distributing contact information in this context is pretty malicious. One has to wonder whether there are people out there who take this endorsement seriously, and how many late–night calls these phone numbers get.

Graffiti at Mac shows several epidemiological trends. Graffiti in male washrooms is particularly crass, but in the women’s, it can be obscene too.

New bathrooms inspire less graffiti than older, more run–down ones. Psychologically speaking, people seem more likely to vandalize something when it is already in poor condition. As soon as one comment is written, others follow, spawning masses of graffiti on one wall, while other stalls remain empty. One of the samples of graffiti on campus is the far stall in the male bathroom of Togo Salmon Hall, across from Quarters. There is a single wall that is a gold mine of graffiti. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon and adds their thoughts to the jumble. A graffiti chain results when one person comments with a statement of an idea or opinion, like “Pink Floyd Rocks!” (women’s washroom, MDCL), followed by replies in support or opposition. This interaction leads to a variety of discussions, debates, and outright arguments, ranging from serious topics to the most petty: “Do all muslims believe in jihad?”

“Yes” “No” “Fuck them” “Fuck you” “Very good” (Male washroom, TSH basement) And another example of the graffiti chain, “Please vote on favourite XBOX 360 game:” “Dead Rising” (two checkmarks) “Rainbow S Vegas” (one checkmark) “Get a life loser” “Like you don’t play XBOX 360!”

“F.e.A.r .” (one checkmark) “Zelda pwnz XBOX” (Male washroom, TSH basement) This can be the most engaging type of graffiti, leading the reader to sit on the toilet studying the wall long after they have finished their business.

Before we further exasperate any bathroom writers who chance upon this article, we admit that this discipline is one we cannot claim to understand.

Most bathroom graffiti shocked, baffled or otherwise alienated us; rarely did we feel empathy for what people had written or what motivated them to post it. Maybe this is because we chose to funnel our talents away from the cubicle and into the quaint, naive world of student journalism. One question dogged us from the beginning: why do people write on bathroom walls? What muse impels people to compose poetry inspired by the act of pooping? What craving do they satisfy in sharing with the world crass, inane, and cliché comments?

Perhaps it’s the satisfaction of creating something, of publishing oneself on the world’s least reputable wiki. Maybe it’s the sadistic pleasure of unnerving a stall’s occupants when—for at least a minute or two—they have no chance of escaping. Or maybe it’s just the fumes. If bathroom writers know the

answer, they convey it in the most enigmatic of clues. For example, what can we infer from the following?

What was Princess Di’s bra size? Guess below: 32A, 34B, 36C (male washroom, Health Sciences Centre) We encourage members of the bathroom literature community to come forward, using their traditional medium if necessary. In the meantime, perplexed onlookers are left to speculate.

The bathroom stall is both a private and a public space. It is one of the few places where we can be sure that we are alone and what we write is anonymous. On the other hand, it is accessible to all, a forum sculpted not in marble but porcelain.

Unlike any other public writing venue, bathroom graffiti has no target audience—writers just spew, indifferent to any consideration of who will actually be reading their work. Nevertheless, they write it because they want to it to be seen. Perhaps graffiti isn’t just thoughtless scribbling, but a deliberate attempt to vent one’s most candid and personal thoughts without being identifiable—or culpable— as their owner. Though most graffiti is certainly mindless, can we isolate from Mac’s bathroom literature some deeper insights into the psychology of it’s authors? In the subtext of such declarations as “A smurf gave me herpes,” can we infer a subtle comment on modernity?

Graffiti has been around for a long time: Ancient Roman graffiti, including political satire, proclamations of love, and even the address of a particularly stunning “lady of the night” still mark the walls of Pompeii, preserved by Vesuvius’s eruption. In the United States during the 1960s, graffiti mainly functioned as a means for political activism, whether as a cheap and safe way of disseminating hippie values, or simply an act of defying “the system” by defacing public property with the quintessential symbol of individualism: your name. This conjures up images of past students vigorously shaking their fists at the institution, waving red flags at anti–war demonstrations, and setting fire to oppressive undergarments.

Even at McMaster, a mysterious, caption–less photo in Gilmour Hall shows a student protest from sometime in the 1970s. All this seems a far cry from the present, where students are accused of being apathetic and jaded about matters of social justice. Likewise, graffiti seems to have turned in on itself. Gone are political slogans or challenges to the Man around which people rallied; now we see introspective, highly personal opinions seemingly intended to just let off some steam. Where graffiti once held a message, an ideology, and a corresponding group identity, now it seems more the lamentations of insular, detached individuals directed at nobody in particular.

Granted, most graffiti reveals that very little is happening inside its authors’ heads. But even when it expresses frustration with political or social issues, the tone is clearly defeatist. In the 1970s, a famous graffiti slogan declared, “Dick Nixon Before He Dicks You.” Its modern day peer runs along the lines of something we found in the basement of KTH: “FUCK THIS BULLSHIT SYSTEM OF THINGS. IT’S SHITTY,” to which someone replied, “But you’re still a slave to it, and you couldn’t give it up.” Contemporary graffiti at McMaster is for the most part jaded, bitter, and sarcastic. In it, can we see the dissolution of large–scale social activism and loss of faith in revolutionary grassroots–led change?

Maybe. It’s possible that graffiti of this tone has always been around. But we can’t deny that it reveals students’ insecurities. While perhaps it has lost some of its political earnestness, graffiti still resonates in one way or another with its authors, and the student population from which they are drawn.

So, the next time you seat yourself in this unique creation—part confession box, part soapbox—take a look at what’s written inside. Better yet, bring a pen and join the conversation. After all, the title of “DA ONLY HAMILTON RAP DAT IS DA ILLEST” is up for grabs.

incite 17

PERSPECTIVE

It’s a Hard–knock Life: I

have often felt a rush of shame when someone asks me, “What are you studying?”

“I did my undergraduate honours in Theatre. Now I’m doing my M.A. in Drama.” Often the response is, “So we’ll be seeing you on a movie screen soon then?” This might come from a toothless man on the subway, an overweight man in a business suit, or a chemistry major—whatever the occupation, the line of questioning remains the same. As does my answer.

“No.” Not that I would turn down a role in a major motion picture, but I have about as much of a chance of being on the silver screen in the near future as a chartered accountant.

Sure, there is certainly some overlap between theatre and film, but theatre is enough of a beast to tackle on its own. I am studying theatre because I want to do theatre, not because I want to go into film. That could be likened to someone who wants to be a pediatrician studying gynecology: it’s not the craziest leap—they’re both a part of the same general discipline—but the two are very different practices.

Another familiar response upon hearing my chosen field is, “What do you want to do with that?” One short version of the answer is, “Work,” whereas other longer explanations tend to resemble Hamlet’s death scene: long, laboured, and more depressing than you initially expected.

I’m a playwright, an actor, a director, and sometimes a producer, dramaturge, and stage manager. Essentially, I’m a theatre artist. So why is that so hard to explain?

And how do you make a living at it? It seems like the lucky few who are actually making a living in Canadian theatre have won some sort of moneyless lottery. Or, they have forged a path, weaving through a Monopoly board of explosives and potholes, rolling the right number more often than not, and remaining focused on winning the game at all costs.

There is no “how” in terms of working in Canadian theatre. I think the most important consideration is “why.” If you want to go into theatre you need to know why. This reason can’t be something like, “I have never felt as good as when I played Tinkerbell in grade four.” If that’s the case, you either need to get yourself an adult–sized tutu and wings, or a good therapist. Perhaps, one leads to the next.

Your reason—your answer to the question “Why?”—needs to be sustainable. It is your engine. It can’t be for the money (because there is none), and it can’t be for notoriety (again, because there is none). If either of these things do come to

18 incite

you along the way, they are incredibly fleeting—and I don’t mean in a Britney Spears or even David Coulier kind of way.

When it comes to Canadian Theatre, they really do mean 15 minutes of fame. Or 15 seconds—about the length of a curtain call. Try naming five Canadian theatre practitioners. See how famous they are. So, if you can get it, really enjoy it.

A professor once told me that, if you’re going to pursue theatre, it has to be the only thing you can do. You have to know that nothing else will make you happy or satisfy you.

It’s fitting that even the decision to go into theatre is overly dramatic. You have to throw yourself off the boat of people with dental plans and regular working hours, into the unsteady turmoil of Canadian theatre, and find a way to swim.

That way you’ll have to get creative. Creative to the point of making your own water wings out of seaweed and commissioning a trout as a silent business partner. You have to do whatever it takes. And it never takes the same thing twice.

One of the most wonderful and frustrating things about a career in the arts is that it never happens the same way for anyone. There is no path, no exam, no contact, no Masters program that will guarantee your success. There is only persistence, vision, and passion.

As one of the gazillion young theatre practitioners working under the title “emerging artist” in Toronto, I have yet to find what it will take for me to make theatre a career. But I can offer what I’ve picked up along the way, for better or for worse. If theatre is a game of pin the tail on the donkey, consider these principles to help you navigate to the ass.

1) You have to swallow your pride. It doesn’t matter how well–educated you are, at some point you’re going to have to cater, be an office temp, make coffee, fold sweaters, or sell tickets to pay the bills. These jobs are flexible, which is exactly what you need. The way I see it, you’re saving your mental energy for the work you actually want to pursue.

Plus, you’ll bottle up lots of frustration to draw upon when creating your art.

2) No one cares how good your grades were in university.

It’s about what you know now and your ability to learn. Volunteer at a company you’re interested in, and cast yourself in the dramatic role of the sponge. Don’t be afraid to offer a well–considered opinion, even if it doesn’t reference your four–year undergrad degree, when the timing seems appropriate. Work, absorb, and put your skills to use wherever you can. This is your warm–up.

3) Look everywhere for opportunities. If theatre is a bakery, take the time to taste the goods. Even the lemon squares and marzipan. Don’t feel rushed to decide where you fit in; you can have more than one thing on your plate, even if the

Making Your Debut in Canadian Theatre

By Julia Lederer

sauces mix a bit.

4) Go see plays. If you see something you like, google the company and send them an email saying so. The more insightful and reflective you are, the better. They will likely respond and remember your name. Ask to meet with them to talk about their process. Think of some good questions.

Canadian theatre artists are often much more accessible than you might think, and some are incredibly generous with their time.

5) Be prepared to work harder than anyone you know.

Be prepared to love your work more than anyone you know, which is good because you’re probably not getting paid for it.

But have faith that eventually you will.

6) Help your peers with their projects. That way you can meet new people, see how they work, and get your hands dirty. If you assistant–direct a Fringe play, then you’ll know what to expect when you have your own show, and can plan accordingly. You’ll have some experience working on deck before you’re at the helm of the ship. Just think what could have happened if the Titanic had taken a test run—or maybe that’s a bad example.

7) Don’t become wild–eyed and crazy. You don’t need to do everything right now. There is a certain breed of theatre artist that rushes from project to project with dark circles under their eyes. When asked, “How are you doing?” they will list the four plays they’re directing, the two they’re in, the festival they’re producing, and the program for troubled youth they’re organizing before running to their fifth meeting of the day. And theatre artists aren’t always very athletic. It’s great to be busy and to gain diverse experience, but if you can’t think clearly or relate to other people, none of it is going to be any use. There is no point in doing so much of what you love that it makes you miserable.

8) Creating theatre is about patience. Take time to learn and plan. Remember to keep things in perspective. Too many of us “emerging artist” types think that we only have one opportunity to prove ourselves as creative geniuses, and must produce only earth–shattering creations. This results in long–winded plays that don’t know what they’re about, and so much pressure that all of the joy has melted into a puddle of stress. Have faith that the work you put into a piece will be apparent, whether it’s a one–man musical about underwear or a collective physical theatre piece about the pending apocalypse.

9) If you’re an actor, you probably think you need an agent. You will eventually. Finding a good agent takes time.

You can’t get a good agent without experience, but you can get good experience without an agent. In film you need an

agency contact just to land a reading for that lip balm commercial with the mermaid; in theatre a lot of opportunities can be found online and from mailing lists. You can submit your resume and head shot yourself. If you don’t get an audition you want, go anyway. Bring a book and hang around. Chances are someone will be late and you can steal their slot. Or the auditioners will give you a few minutes to blow their minds, since you’ve been waiting all day. Don’t spend more time pursuing an agent than you do pursuing work.

10) Be supportive of other artists. Theatre isn’t a competition, although at times it feels that way. If you feel threatened by the good work other people are doing, how will you ever enjoy your industry? What goes around comes around—if you support others they’ll support you.

Unless they have a heart of stone. Or you’re remounting The Tempest for the eighth time in drag.

11) Go to shows alone. Soon you’ll start to run into familiar faces. Or you’ll just become known as that loser who always goes to shows alone.

12) Tell people what you’re doing. Even if you don’t think CanStage cares about the avant–garde remount of Cats you’re doing in your parent’s garage, let them know about it. The more they see your name, the more likely they’ll be to remember it. This applies to smaller companies, too. Invite agents, artistic directors, and artists you admire to see what you’re doing, big or small.

13) Make an effort to keep in touch with people you meet in classes and workshops. You never know where it will lead (and I’m not just talking romantically).

Oh, and you should probably take some classes and do some workshops. While you may have stage managed a killer Shakespeare–Made–Easy in grade five, you don’t know absolutely everything about theatre.

14) Down the road, don’t name your company Soulpepper. It’s taken; plus, it’s cheesy anyway. Down the road, do consider naming your company Soulsalt. Come on, how funny would that be?

15) Learn the boring stuff, too. Budgeting, grant–writing, and producing are necessary skills, even if you only want to act. It’s really helpful to understand how everything works, because, a lot of the time, you have to be able to make your own work. Theatre artists are entrepreneurs by necessity.

This is both empowering and frightening. No business suit required.

16) Although you have to know how everything works, don’t try to actually do it all. Ask for help! There are tonnes

incite 19

of young artists willing to work for free. And you’re one of them.

17) You should probably get a beret. Most artsy types wear them, I’ve heard. A long scarf with good flinging range also adds to your mystique.

18) Practice saying “I can’t work like this!” in front of the mirror five times a day. Never actually say it in public.

19) Apply, apply, apply. Festivals are great. In Toronto there are two major summer festivals, The Fringe and SummerWorks, but don’t forget the numerous other ones that run throughout the year.

Don’t turn your nose up at any of them. Some are the New Ideas Festival, LabCab, the Spring Arts Festival, Hysteria, Rhubarb, Paprika, and the list goes on. Volunteering is great, too. Every festival needs volunteers, as do most theatres. Plus, if you usher at certain theatres, you can see the show for free; however, you may end up having to witness the talent competition of the Miss Canada pageant.

20) Lots of theatres have artist development programs, writer’s units, and workshops. The ones you don’t have to pay for are the best and usually the most difficult to get into. These are great ways to connect with a network of artists, and you can learn a lot too. These programs are associated with most of the big theatres, like Tarragon, Factory, and Buddies in Bad Times. They’re also run out of smaller companies you might not know. Nightwood, Theatre Gargantua, Native Earth, ScriptLab, and Volcano, among others, all deserve a good google. Make sure you read the fine print when applying. Actually, read all of the print. For example, if you’re not a Native artist, Native Earth might not be the place for you.

21) Don’t be shy. If you find a company or person you desperately want to work with, pursue it like crazy—although pulling a John–Cusack–in– Say–Anything and standing outside their window

with a boombox pumping beats probably isn’t the best idea. But do keep emailing, dropping things off, and asking to meet for coffee. If you apply to something one year and don’t get in, instead of staying bitter and angry, try again. Remind people of who you are, what you do, and what you want to do. And that you want to do it with them, but make sure to be clear; you don’t want them to get the wrong idea.

22) Go with the flow. You never know what is or isn’t going to work out. Put most of your stock in the experience and just a little in the product.

23) Eat a lot of carrots. They help you see in the dark, and in theatre you spend a lot of time there.

Don’t expect a tan in the summer.

24) Be nice to everyone. You never know who knows who: theatre is a very small, incestuous community. Your step–brother is probably your mother’s father and your childhood enemy’s masseur.

25) Enjoy theatre. Try not to complain too much, even though it is so incredibly easy to simmer in self–pity when it comes to working in theatre. It’s easier to have a career in whining about Canadian theatre than it is to have a career in Canadian theatre.

26) Practice your craft. If you want to be an actor, work on pieces and look for auditions. If you want to be a writer, write plays. If you want to be a director, find some actors and practice scenes.

Recently, I volunteered as an actor in a director’s class. There were over 70 thespians who applied to act for free, with no public show at the end. There are people who will practice making theatre with you. These are all muscles that need to be exercised.

Make time to work out. Screw the actual gym.

27) Don’t be afraid to branch out into other realms. Actors can be writers, can be stage managers, can be directors. Even if you try stage–manag-

ing and decide you never want to do it again, you’ll understand how another aspect of your industry functions. And even if you realize you hate stage– managing on the second rehearsal of a six week run, do your job, and do it well. This is where the complaining comes in. Privately.

28) Say what you are. It can be really hard to say “I’m a playwright” or “I’m an actor” or “I’m a theatre artist.” It feels like you’re admitting to a crime, or telling a lie, because that’s probably not how you’re making ends meet. Or, maybe it’s because there is no consistent way to be any of these things—and be grateful for that.

29) Know that what you’re doing is important.

Make what you’re doing substantial and commit to getting better at it. So much time and effort goes into this profession, and in my opinion, the people who are willing to do the work, to hone their craft, to re–apply, to stomach rejection with a smile, to accept criticism, more often than not, with a grain of salt, to keep scavenging for opportunity, and to keep creating, are the ones who are eventually going to pin that tail on the donkey’s ass. In a completely original way.

When navigating the theatre scene, don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t get all schmoozy or start flinging your scarf at people, if you can avoid it. There is no need to constantly quote Shakespeare as your greatest teacher or to turn down the role of Singing Spoon No. 2 in a community theatre production of Beauty and the Beast, because it won’t do anything for your career. Find what you love and develop it. If it’s important to you, important enough to forget about Boardwalk and start your own game that has no board at all, then it’s important. And you know why. Just leave your fairy wings at home.

G RAPHIC BY J ENNY ZHAN

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POETRY he urged the black van up the mountainside with a maddening certainty tires brewing a haze of dust he cracked the axle boot on the way up

where the road ended I stood on its crumbling edge and stared into a valley I had never seen I wept for the land beneath me crudely shaven, the stubble of tree trunks

and she would wait, this shorn abyss months, if not seasons with only the memory of that violation and hope for a planter to come along heavy with trees to be thrust into the earth beside the old wounds

G RAPHIC BY CHrISTA H IRSCH

Living off the Land

By Cassandra Tilson

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PERSPECTIVE

sustenance for sustainability

By Vasiliki Bednar

I

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you buy a hybrid? Invest in a new home heating system? Install solar panels? Take the bus? Granted, none of these efforts are mutually exclusive, and they raise concerns about student–friendly finance, convenience, readiness, and accessibility. Paralysis is completely understandable. If we have learned anything from bad breakups, however, it’s that a turn to food might be the ideal route, at least initially. Food is as global a concern as it gets, and with respect to climate change, we can each make a significant difference three times a day.

What you put in your mouth daily, and more specifically where that food came from, has far–reaching implications both for global food issues and the fate of our climate.

No worthwhile Seventeen article would be complete without models. Enter the students—role models. Many students are incredibly socially–minded people. We ride bikes, use recycled paper, haul around Tupperware, donate our hair, and don’t eat meat. While personal motivations certainly range from trend to conscience, it would still seem that there is a general interest in making a difference—whether it is reducing your ecological footprint, volunteering at the local library, holding a benefit concert, or even just having a bake sale. Hey, maybe you’ve spent a little bit of time in the Student Centre atrium trying to change the world, or even trying to save it. Here’s what I think: you don’t have to book a room in the MUSC to make a difference, but you do need to book it to the Hamilton Farmer’s Market.

See, the issue with eating isn’t what you’re eating, or how you’re eating it, or even why it’s found a place on tonight’s menu—the most important thing is where that food comes from. Last year, a Canadian couple from British Columbia published The 100–Mile Diet, a book about the year they spent eating locally, the challenges they navigated, and what they learned.

Spurning food imported from around the world and stored in air–conditioned buildings, their escapade has opened the door to the benefits of local eating and where it figures in globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattered threads of community.

The concept of constructing a diet around locally–produced food has also been praised for its potential to improve health, build resources, contribute to the sustainability of cities, and promote individual feelings of satisfaction and well–being. The further food travels to reach you, the greater the footprint it has. The food must be transported, either on a plane, ship, or a long–haul truck ride—this means using fuel, which translates to increased carbon emissions. Through the travel and even once it reaches your locale, the food has to be stored and packaged in a way to prevent it from going bad, meaning large, energy–consuming warehouses. When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled about 1500 miles from farm to plate. ConsiderG RAPHIC BY Erin G IROUX

often claim, in jest, to resort to advice bestowed by magazines in order to make sense of complex social situations. Is it just me, or in its heyday, did Seventeen Magazine set a precedent for every social scene imaginable? I’m not sure, but I can totally check the next issue.

Lately these teen (and semi–trashy) mags have had me scoping out the best and worst beach bods, Back–to–School Style (ok, I like reading that part), and ultimately wondering, “How did Hilary Duff lose all that weight? Could it really just be the breakup with Joel?” Naturally, I decided to take that query and run with it. Like a ravenous schoolgirl in the mid–afternoon, I just started to see it everywhere.

Food. It was in the grocery store, in my kitchen, in the Student Centre, and despite its classification as a prohibited substance, food even shows up in the library. It’s also at the heart of global sustainability, distribution issues, the Green Revolution, hunger, starvation, malnutrition, obesity, and general health. So forget Hilary Duff! Were I to publish a hit magazine, I’d cast food—universally thought of, ever–desirable, frequently lusted–after, ever–measured, and popularly debated, and one of the most pervasive global social and political issues—as my cover girl. The context? Climate change. How’s that for a Back to School feature?

Unfortunately, the worldwide expressions of our food choices and their often unseen consequences are not really what Seventeen interns busy themselves writing about.

But, like spilling coffee on a first date, we all have ways of coping with personal “crises,” and one of the most common is turning to gustatory comforts. Find your nearest carton of ice cream or bucket of fried chicken and consume. This short–term solution is hardly perfect, but as we find our collective conscience faced with climate change, an election, HIV/AIDS, Burmese Monk protests, avian flu, and the fall of Britney Spears, perhaps no diversion, even one so temporary and potentially heart attack–inducing, should be rejected. Climate change, at first glance, can be overwhelming. It is a multi–faceted phenomenon with far–reaching, pervasive implications and no easy fix.

It stands to alter the planet and subsequently our lives on an array of levels in fundamental ways. Pass the Häagen–Dazs, because just thinking about climate change causes a panic. Where on Earth, literally, do we as students begin to address it?

Initial responses to projections of environmental disaster often mean discussions about flooding, drought, hurricanes, dependency on fossil fuels, and combating that with alternative energy sources (wind, solar, nuclear generation), transportation habits, and home energy efficiency. This is nothing new. Once we have gained an understanding of climate change, once we feel its pressure, we naturally begin to ask what our response will be, but the problem seems so wide and each proposed solution so narrow that it becomes extremely difficult to find a starting point. Should

1 fan1t0 locaasltic produ ideasce !

ing that some studies show that a person’s food consumption makes up to a quarter of their footprint, one can see how cutting down to The 100–Mile Diet can have a very significant effect on their environmental impact.

The industrial nature of cities like Hamilton may not immediately seem conducive to eating locally grown produce, but in reality, this area boasts many farms and farming initiatives. For example, the Hamilton Eat Local Project (HELP) is a website–based resource committed to helping others promote sustainable food practices locally.

Another, the Hamilton Urban Growers (HUG), aims to support sustainable food production within this city’s boundaries by facilitating the exchange of practical gardening knowledge, skills, and resources.

As we look to the future, food remains at the crux of many sustainability issues. Our food choices have the potential to help alleviate new pressures placed on existing global food concerns. It is important to remember that you, the individual, have the potential to make small choices that have far–reaching impacts. So don’t stay frozen while our planet grows increasingly warmer—get going! Seek out local foods, and spread the word to your family and friends. The rising demand for energy–inefficient foods can be reduced, and subsequently so can the associated emissions.

Additionally, a conversion to more energy–efficient foods can translate to greater food availability, although the factors contributing to poor global distribution are complex and are not likely going to be resolved anytime soon. Nevertheless, the energy benefits alone make these dietary shifts worthwhile, particularly considering the ease with which they can be implemented and their associated advantages, of which global food demand is only one. Compared to other environmentally–friendly choices advertised to the public, simple dietary changes are extremely cost–effective. Not everyone can afford a new vehicle or install elaborate, efficient home systems.

The 100–Mile Diet is easy to implement, and for the most part, less expensive than what the average North American already chooses to consume. A reduction in food transport is a reduction in consumer costs. Finally, we cannot ignore the associated health benefits of eating local food—something even Seventeen would put in print.

The relationship between climate change and food can be approached in many ways, but the individual dietary approach provides a motivational starting point towards changing the state of affairs. While it is important to consider how a changing climate will affect agriculture and food supply on a global scale, a microcosmic approach to food consumption as a possible solution is entirely appropriate. With a global context in mind, eating locally–produced food is an antidote to that initial paralysis that climate change and other potentially crippling global issues can trigger. So, whether it’s your romantic relationship or the Larson B ice shelf that’s breaking up, knowing exactly where your food’s coming from makes a serious difference when you consider the future and our roles in shaping it.

COLUMN

MYTHS The Encounter

C

hristian stepped off the chattering subway car and ascended the dirty, worn steps into the morning light. He breathed deeply; he took a determined step and followed it with another, and soon he was pushing his way through a throng of businesspeople.

His thoughts dwelt on the day of work that was before him. Today his sales team’s yearly progress report was due.

Christian worked for an office supply company in Edmonton, and had made a name for himself in his ten years there as a particularly inventive and resourceful salesman. He was respected by his subordinates and well–liked by his superiors. He had been hearing rumblings of a promotion to upper management, which would offer him the opportunity to move back to his native Ottawa to work at the corporate headquarters. Thus it was quite important to make a good impression on the company manager, who would be present for his progress report. But he was not nervous. He had been preparing the report for some time, and had spent the previous night perfecting the PowerPoint slides. He was quite confident that they were without flaw.

He was so busy running through the presentation in his mind, he failed to hear the voice of a man calling his name. A moment later he felt a tap on his shoulder, and he turned his head. It took him a moment to recognize the face in front of him. It was Alex, an old friend of his.

Christian and Alex had been business students together at a college in Ottawa. They had met in their first week at school, both having responded to an ad requesting musicians to play in a band. Neither of them liked the type of music they were asked to play, but after a conversation at the frontman’s house, they decided to meet again to improvise together. From the beginning, they were inseparable.

They shared an intense love for music. Every Wednesday, Christian slung his electric guitar in its case over his back and met Alex in a music practice room at school. In their second year, they moved into an apartment together, and had developed a large enough repertoire to begin performing at bars and coffee houses.

Alex wrote all of the music they played. Christian had a more thorough knowledge of music theory, and secretly held Alex’s compositions in disdain for their simplistic structure and lack of originality. Christian believed that, given some practice, he could compose better music than Alex, and imagined that soon he would write songs of his own with more unusual harmonies and irregular time signatures; he would thus distinguish his writing from Alex’s compositions, which were written in a more popular vein.

In their third year, the pair went to listen to a Toronto violinist during a music festival, and they were enamoured by his performance.

He was able to coax the sound of four musicians from his instrument and the electronic devices which surrounded him on stage.

Christian and Alex were the first to stand during the applause after each song, and they both wanted to stay to meet the man after the show.

They waited in a crowd of hundreds outside the hall doors for the violinist to emerge. The crowd gradually dwindled, though the festival organizer assured them that the violinist would come out to meet the remaining audience members after receiving some family members backstage.

Hours passed, and soon it was time for the last bus that would return them to campus. Christian wanted to leave, as they had an exam the next

morning; however, Alex was insistent that they stay to meet the artist. Through the glass doors of the music hall, Christian saw the bus approaching. Alex still wanted to meet the violinist, so they agreed to split up. Christian ran to catch the bus, leaving Alex to walk home afterward.

Alex did not return to their apartment until after 6 a.m., and Christian was unable to rouse him for their exam.

But afterwards, Alex seemed unperturbed.

He explained that by the time the musician had appeared, he was the only fan remaining, and out of pity he was invited to join the violinist and the opening band for drinks. Apparently, Alex and the violinist had talked at some length.

“I honestly believe that it was a life–changing experience, Chris,” said Alex. “What are we doing wasting our time here learning to be obedient? We could make it as musicians. I know we could.”

But Christian was reluctant. He loved music just as much as Alex did, but lately he had been reconsidering his plan to make it his life’s work. Why risk failure when he could ensure his independence and keep up his art as a hobby, like he and Alex had been doing all along?

As Alex concentrated more on his music, his grades fell, while Christian continued to excel academically. In their fourth year, Christian was too busy with his studies to keep up their music sessions, and he and Alex drifted apart. Christian graduated with honours, but Alex barely finished his degree. After making contacts at a job fair, Christian accepted an apprenticeship with the office supply company, while Alex set out for Montréal to play the music circuit. That was the last that Christian had seen of his old friend, and once his work started to pay off, he no longer thought of his musical aspirations, and decided that he had made the right choice.

Looking at him now, Christian recognized Alex’s idealistic gaze, yet sensed in him a new maturity which he imagined must be apparent in his own demeanour as well. Alex excitedly told him that he would be headlining a concert in Edmonton that night. Christian congratulated Alex for the size of the venue he would be playing, but said he was unable to attend the concert because he had scheduled a celebration with his coworkers to follow the delivery of their yearly report.

Christian expressed his regret at the conflict, but Alex conceded that it was unavoidable. They exchanged further pleasantries and went their separate ways.

A moment later, Christian heard a voice speak into his ear. Alex was saying “You should have waited.” But when he turned around, he could not see his friend anywhere. Christian shook his head, convinced that he had been daydreaming, and kept walking, already imagining with delight the promotion that awaited him.

By Nick Davies incite 23

G RAPHIC BY J ENNIFER TOROSIAN

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