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Want to contribute? Email secession09@gmail.com
This is the second issue of the first volume of The Secession, printed on April 6, 2009 in Walla Walla, WA on one hundo percent recycled paper. The Secession is funded by the Student Development Fund of the Associated Students of Whitman College. The Secession uses the Gill Sans typeface, designed by Eric Gill in 1926.
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CONTENT//
Pandaelwyns// Aelwyn Tumas.................................................................................................................................................p.3 Untitled (Photograph)// Jen Ng.............................................................................................................................................p.4 Brain blips// Paris White.......................................................................................................................................................p.4 On flaccid penises// Iris Alden.............................................................................................................................................p.4 Garden party (Illustration)// Bryan Sonderman.................................................................................................................p.5 This is a short piece...Jonas Brothers...Internet// Andrew Hall.....................................................................................p.5 Lover’s isle// Leah Koerper....................................................................................................................................................p.6 poems from... five twenty-seven am... people I know// Peter Richards.......................................................................p.6 Motorcycle One (Photograph)// Lauren Imbrock...............................................................................................................p.6 Wedding narrative one// Bryan Sonderman.....................................................................................................................p.6 Crow (Illustration)// Sam Alden.............................................................................................................................................p.7 Crows are cool, I guess// Hannah Johnson........................................................................................................................p.7 Peanust #2// Karen Terrier....................................................................................................................................................p.8 Animal Discoveries #1// Alan Farts....................................................................................................................................p.8 Terrence #2// Iris Alden........................................................................................................................................................p.8 Microtrasnochando// Sam Alden..........................................................................................................................................p.9 John’s Mug #2// Finn Straley..................................................................................................................................................p.9 Game review: Rhythm Heaven (Nindedo DS)// David Kanaga...................................................................................p.10 Pigeons (Photograph)// Lauren Imbrock...........................................................................................................................p.10 College:life::preschool:school// The Emperor.................................................................................................................p.10 McDo (Illustration)// Iris Alden...........................................................................................................................................p.11 Refrigerator// Jon Handwerk..............................................................................................................................................p.11 Thesis revelations// Caitlin Tortorici.................................................................................................................................p.11 Untitled// Danny Cryster....................................................................................................................................................p.12 Between the lines// Jessica Conrad..................................................................................................................................p.12 Gay or Eurotrash?// Iris Alden...........................................................................................................................................p.13 Dividing Lines (Illustration) // Katie Higgins......................................................................................................................p.14 Lost property// Leah Koerper, Carly Spiering, Andrew Hall........................................................................................p.15 Untitled (Illustration)// Leah Koerper................................................................................................................................p.16 3
Brain blips
by Paris White After a week of sitting zazen three hours a day at a Zen monastery, I found out that I am a packrat in more ways than one. Mentally, in this case. Meditation reminded me of all those times when my sister and I would have to clean our room in the fourth grade. For us, the process of cleaning turned into a sort of excavation, where we dug into piles of junk, sometimes mystified, other times ecstatic, by what we found there. Sometimes I couldn’t remember where the junk came from, and was convinced my room had barfed it up in my absence. I had a similar relationship with my brain during the retreat. The mind I once saw as a storage container now feels to me more like a biosphere than anything else, evolving and breeding weird animals. And although, during the retreat, I failed tremendously at emptiness, I have a new respect for the fullness I possess: the uselessness, meaninglessness, usefulness, meaningfulness, and the sometimesnot-quite-discernable. Anyway, this is one of the brain blips I wrote down in my journal. It’s a sci-fi, I guess. Enjoy. ************************************ Alternate Reality #6026
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Imagine a world where women have begun to outnumber men. Maureen Dowd wrote a book called Are Men Necessary? that referenced this theory and explains it a little. ImagSECESSION// VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2
ine the world, right? Women’s social etiquette takes over as the dominant democratic method, our societal norms are getting stirred around with a wooden spoon. Just take a moment and try to think about what that reality looks like. Oh-kay! Now, evolution, that faceless, nameless being we all talk about, decides that the gender balance just isn’t looking too great for humanity. So it throws a flourish of pixie dust into the operation and... voila, The penis gains a consciousness. A sentient penis. A dick with a shtick. Only, it doesn’t change anatomically. It’s not like it grows a brain. We’re dealing with a different notion of intelligence, and thus, humans have no idea that the change has occurred. So how is this going to help fix the gender imbalance? Well, it’s a complicated strategy. The first part is simple- since men decide the gender of their children, penises over time start releasing only male sperm. And then, because the penis is conscious, it controls when men orgasm, and chooses the time based on pleasuring women, in order to make women want to have sex more often so that they can get them pregnant. Except, men stop feeling pleasure from sex, because all the satisfaction is being absorbed in their dicks. Let’s fast forward one hundred years. At this point, only male babies are being born, women are sexually fulfilled, men aren’t, and no one really gets why. A million embarrassed cadavers have had their unmentionables both
mentioned and dissected by this time, and doctors have cited a million possible causes. Men have not only regained their place in the gender balance, but the balance has shifted the other way, and yet again, evolution shakes his head at mankind and pulls another feat of magical delight, which is Women’s genitals joining the realms of intelligence. The vagina is now IN THE KNOW. Again, humans are startlingly ignorant of this bodily revolution. And what do the vaginas do? They decide to shut down baby operations until they see a fellow female swimming along in the vaginal canal in sperm form. Does the penis relent, and give in to this demand? Why no, they’re rather stubborn, and they know when they’re being manipulated. You can’t just let vaginas have their way whenever they want! That’s crazytalk! Endpoint: A lack of a third party(the human race could have served this purpose, but we were busy getting married and having kids), the gender imbalance becomes an unsolvable disagreement. The human race becomes extinct. Cows and chickens rejoice. //
On flaccid penises by Iris Alden
The tradition of showing breasts in movies is deeply ingrained in our cinematic culture. Flopping around in slasher flicks, bouncing during animalistic sex scenes of dramatic features, and tenderly caressed by lovers in romantic pictures, the image of the breast is a staple of most any
R-rated production. With so many boobs gracing the screen, the question of objectification has become almost entirely irrelevant. It is a truth: women are beautiful objects, and their aesthetic luster can and should be harnessed for financial gain and to arouse the viewer. In an already sex-seeped society, I see no need to deny the pleasure of a breast image. For who does not enjoy the sight of smooth, soft flesh, embellished by a little pink button? However, in confronting breast after breast (big fat, small pointy, luscious African, buoyant, asymmetrical, large-nippled, coy Asian) in movie after movie I cannot help but feel upsetted by the sexual inequality of the bared flesh. It makes me wonder, where are all the flaccid penises? An erect penis is distasteful, both in moral and legal terms. Just as a pink vagina would guarantee an NC-17 rating, a boner would not pass in any commercially viable picture. An erection evokes nothing but sex itself, as it states plain and simple, “Hey! I’m ready!” Thus, the flaccid penis is left as the only item to be objectified (the butt, of course, being a gender-neutral physiological feature). It is essentially a fair trade: wormy willy. Both have sexual interest, as each sex lacks the other and thus finds it desirable and exciting to see. Additionally, both are silly! Unaggressive and unimposing, the flaccid penis wiggles about in a way that harkens to boyish innocence. And surely anything that jiggles when it is dropped (see Jello-O, water balloons) is fun. Understandably, images of flaccid penises are often met with discomfort, as we are not yet accustomed to them. One friend’s experience of the film adaptation of Watchmen was almost ruined by the continual floppy dick bearing. I, on the other hand, found the theme of Flaccid Penis most refreshing, and perhaps one of the film’s only redeeming qualities. I commend you, Zack Snyder, for wisely braving the condemnation of the male audience to bring us the pictoral wonder of Billy Crudup’s pee-pee. The late Andy Warhol, in his book POPism:The Warhol Sixties, had a great insight about Hollywood and nudity:
derground films started getting big, it threw Hollywood’s timetable off. They would have wanted to have everybody waiting out another twenty years to see total nudity while they milked every square inch of flesh. So Hollywood began to say that they were “protecting public morality,” when the fact was they were just upset that they were going to rushed into complete nudity when all along they’d been counting on lots of money from a long-drawn-out striptease. “
“...the early ones used to have sex and nudity-like Hedy Lamarr in Ecstasy--but then they suddenly realized that they were throwing away a good tease, that they should save it for a rainy day. LIke, every ten years they would show another part of the body or say another dirty word on screen and that would stretch out the box office for years, instead of just giving it away all at once. But then when foreign films and un-
A close associate recently told me that he liked the fact that no matter what he searched for on YouTube, 90% of his results were Jonas Brothers fanfiction videos. Either I’ve gotten good at not spending the majority of my time searching YouTube, leaving other people to discover things like the fact that there’s such a thing as Jonas Brothers fanfiction on YouTube, or
Perhaps the invention of the Blockbuster in the 1970s, with its simultaneous ability to capture the American imagination and crush the potential lucrativeness of independent productions, got Hollywood’s timetable back on track. Perhaps we are just getting to the part of striptease where a un-aroused males take off those briefs and let their dongles dangle. Be that the case, here’s to the future. //
we’re searching for very different things. But this isn’t about me or the fact that this terrifies and baffles me so much as it is about failed mass-use of a medium. After I learned this, I was driven to see what he was talking about when he said that there was fanfiction on YouTube. Fanfiction, largely unbound by the technological requirements of filmmaking or the economical restrictions surrounding publishing, runs rampant in various selfcontained forms on the internet, but it has rarely been reenacted with any sincerity or success, thus my confusion. I understand the concept of fan response to art, as well as the fact that the Internet is a veritable mountain of insanity and terror. YouTube can cover both these bases quite easily, as it can serve as a repository for performances of Star Trek fan scripts and features selections from Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam, a Turkish film known primarily for its lifting scenes straight out of Star Wars and using detuned variations on the theme from Indiana Jones every time something important happens. Nothing about the fanfiction medium lends itself naturally to YouTube; this is a good thing, as fanfiction is the most unnecessary genre. Take, for example, a piece called “Goku/Anne Frank: Until the End of Time” by someone named gofer-chan in which the titular hero from Dragon Ball Z teleports to Berlin, kills Hitler, then marries Anne Frank and moves to Australia. It’s hard to produce a good answer as to why such a story needs to exist, but given its fringe nature and its being fated to linger on some website no one will ever see unless soul-crushing boredom drives them to search for Dragon Ball Z/Diary of Anne Frank crossover fiction, it’s hard to consider it a very real problem.
This is a short piece tangentially about the Jonas Brothers but mostly about the Internet by Andrew Hall
Despite the fact that there is no reason for fanfiction to exist, let alone exist on YouTube, it does, and I can’t help but find it confounding. A search for “Jonas fanfiction” yielded over 7600 videos, leaving me largely terrified as someone trying to write about this phenomenon. Conveniently, they all follow a similar pattern: User “JonasFanFic16” has a 115-part playlist called “Jonas Fan Fic Season 1,” but most of the videos are under one minute in length and all of them simply consist of Jonas Brothers photographs and fanart set to the band’s music. “EmilyLovesJB” takes the same approach, and her compilations of Jonas Brother photographs and Jonas Brothers music does in fact tell me that she loves the Jonas Brothers. I did not, however, see any storytelling take place in any of these videos. These are not proper YouTube videos. A proper YouTube video communicates its basic idea in two minutes or less and can communicate that idea without the barrage of racist
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comments that accompany it in its natural habitat. These, if embedded elsewhere, will appear as a jumble of Jonas Brothers fan-collages and nothing else, and while the creator’s love of things Jonas survives, their desire to contribute to a creative community-even if that community is the Jonas Brothers’ internet fanbase --is lost entirely. It took me several minutes of investigation to discover that any and all plot development took place in the YouTube video descriptions, a noman’s land typically used for one-totwo-sentence contributor comments. In these videos, it becomes the site of scripts, often heavy on inane dialogue. One exchange reads: -Joe~ Hey -Jasmine~ Hi -Joe~ Um i’m sorry i asked -Jasmine~ Its okay and ends with “~they play monopoly the rest of the night, then went to bed. The boys are going to show Jasmine all the fun places to hang tomorrow~ .” The video tags “Joe,” “Jasmine,” and “Nick” provide almost no additional insight. I assumed that such a creation with languish in obscurity as most fanfiction does, never to be read by anyone. But this is the Internet and I was wrong. Despite having only a few hundred views, each video appears to have received a number of comments from readers who are intently following the creator’s scripts. User “wishinonastar07” appreciated the writer’s “board games make me bored” line so much that they responded by asserting that “that never gets old lol,” and in a later installment “DrFunkyTetris” adds that “The jonas brothers can’t play guitar” [sic]. Despite being relegated to a fringe audience of tremendous nerds, there’s a very real community consuming non-narrative videos. And I can’t not be terrified by something that cannot be easily reblogged. //
Lover’s isle
by Leah Koerper They professed their love on the deck of the ship; she swooned, he caught her in strong loving arms and their lips met in a kiss affirming all they had said and the romance of the moonlit air over dark and languid waters. They were the only survivors of the shipwreck, marooned on a sandy island with a single palm waving in the breeze. They clung together, lovers, partners in tribulation, watching the horizon for ships. “I love you, my dearest, my pet, my peach,” he
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crooned as he gnawed her delicate calf. The sun broiled down on them, glimmering on the hot sand, reflecting off the cool blue water. He chewed rhythmically on her bronzed thigh. “You are my one and only, my sweetheart, my dove.” She tilted her head, asking quizzically, “Do you love me more than life itself?” “Of course I do darling, of course. But I am hungry.” He folded her small hand in his. “Of course I love you, I always will, even if you are old and grey, even though you no longer have fine lithe legs for dancing and long evening gowns, I love you.” He nibbled a slender finger, tasted a curved elbow. “When we are rescued, my poppet, my belle, I will carry you in my arms to the ship. I will take you home, my cherub, my dumpling, and I will feed you from a silver spoon and gently wash your tender brow. Because I love you, my beauty, my pearl, I will care for you.” //
Poems from March ninth 2009 at five twenty-seven am: 8 lines about people I know by Peter Richards Never have I ever:
I will go to Carl’s Jr. I will go to White Castle As I have been to Burgerville And Steak and Shake before And I will not puke up the food Even if I have stayed up all night Because it doesn’t make me a bad person Because no one takes Polaroids of my stomach
To Isabel:
I think I am pregnant Because sometimes I crave expensive food I live in a giant room Filled with words I have forgotten about //
Thank You:
No, I am going to kill those words On their coffins I will spray paint a dick I will spray paint my dick in gold paint It will be a ‘fly’ thing to kill them, and everyone Will remark at their absence: “Where did ‘thank you’ go?” Saying those words as if words excused themselves “Excuse me,” I will say, “I killed it; and it’s dead” “Because I hated it, and you’re welcome”
Sent from my iPhone:
Hacking it out like a wolf at dinner Like the last moment of light Like the history we haven’t had And in the future we won’t Trying hard to hide the knot In context, and in food courts everywhere, Until there is nothing left of me But my celibate wife //
Wedding narrative one: by Bryan Sonderman
The photographer’s pregnant. And she’s taking our pictures in the backalley of Central tavern, not the bar and grill, that’s the Center and that’s on the other side of town. Nothing too fancy but the scene’s got personality, right? Everyone’s going to see the pictures because the pictures are going to be on the wedding invitations and in little frames at home and in Tam’s scrapbook.
You know she’ll show the whole town. Ty says: here boy! Here Andy! Put Andy on your lap for the picture so he can hide that butterfly tattoo you don’t remember getting. Just hold him he’s not going to sit still. Good boy. Ty knows it’s not time to have a cigarette but says so anyway. He looks at Andy and untangles his leash. Look at the camera! He can’t sit still for even two lousy seconds. She says: let him kiss you now c’mon act like you like each other. Not yet. Now. Woops, lens cap. Again. But that was good that time. Okay one more time. And I say: Andy! Get back here! Oh don’t mind him, trust me, he’s not as scary as he looks. He just wants to kiss you, he’s actually real friendly for his breed. They can get pret-ty mean, rottweilers. Oh no don’t worry about it he’s good with kids. Put on your sweater, Ty. Its cold and then that shirt won’t be in the picture. And she says: Almost finished. Okay perfect. Now…okay perfect.
The Big Day:
Don’t you worry about the cake it’s in the box, no mushrooms I asked them to leave off the mushrooms for you. Of course I do…everybody knows you don’t like mushrooms, Ty. Now save some for the guests because they’ll be here any minute. The beers and pops on cold, the lights are too dim. Just a little bit more…okay perfect. Just sit on that milkcrate over there and wait, or relax. Oh you might want to wipe it off first. Well shit. That’ll come right out don’t you even worry about it. Today’s the big day right? No mistakes. No that doesn’t count as a mistake. Did you invite Lindsey the pregnant photographer? O-k I guess you’re right that probably would be a little strange. We don’t know her too well after all. This doesn’t seem much like her kinda party anyways right? I wonder if she had that baby. I wonder if she knows where we’re registered. Maybe she’ll just send a card then. Get me a diet coke and one of those airplane bottles. O-k here come the guests finally, now you can turn the music down. Tie up Andy he always gets so excited around new people. And get some seats. And some cups. And put the cake on some paper plates. And just leave the plates on the table they can get the plates themselves. Like a buffet not like school lunch, Ty. Welcome everybody! You can just leave those presents on the table over there. No that’s fine you didn’t need to wrap it. No you didn’t have to really don’t worry about it we’re just happy for your company, and the present. Have a seat wait here’s a paper towel. Don’t make the same mistake Ty did. Aw thanks you two. One dollar lottery ticket and two pennies change. They say: one to scratch and one for good luck. //
Crows are cool, I guess. by Hannah Johnson I hate crows. I really, really do. I hate them passionately, and it’s not because I was too young the first time I saw The Birds or because they sit outside my window making noise at six in the morning. I just hate them, irrationally. I came out of the womb hating crows. I hate their glossy black feathers and beady little eyes and the noise they make, like death and a screaming baby and the approaching apocalypse condensed into a single sound. This is extremely unfortunate for me because species of crow are found in nearly every part of the planet. As if it couldn’t get any worse, most species of crow are synanthropic, meaning they live near and benefit from human populations. The American crow, the most common type of crow in the US, typically breeds no less than five kilometers from human populations. Rapid urbanization and the spread of the human population, which poses a threat to most species, has been a boon to the crow. Their numbers are increasing in the US and worldwide. Fantastic. Despite my fervent hate for this animal, I have to admit that crows are amazing. As a group, crows score highest on the avian intelligence index, and also possess cognitive capabilities previously thought to be unique to primates. Most animals cannot understand that other animals have a mind and think, and as such cannot adjust their behavior to account for the knowledge and thought of other animals. Humans and primates were long thought to be the only animals with this ability, which is called theory of mind. However, observations of crows deliberately deceiving one another indicate that crows also possess theory of mind. In many ways, the intelligence of crows rivals and even surpasses primates. No non-human animal wields tools with the level of sophistication and apparent understanding of function demonstrated by New Caledonian crows, which inhabit an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. New Caledonian crows have been observed using a variety of tools. The crows carefully craft each tool, even seeking out specific raw materials,
and carry them around for repeated use. It may not seem incredibly impressive, but creating and understanding the function of a tool as simple as a hook is an incredibly cognitively complex task. Primates cannot do it, and human children don’t reach this level of cognitive ability until they are two or three years old. As a species, humans began using hooks only 80,000 years ago. All over the world, crows are making their intelligence known. In several cities in Japan, crows have learned to drop nuts which are too hard for their beaks to break into the street. Passing cars crush the nuts, and the crows wait for the light to change in order to retrieve the nuts safey In Sweden, crows wait for fishermen to drop p ly.
lines through the ice. When the fishermen leave, they pull the line in and steal the bait. Signs warn visitors to the Florida Everglades that bags, even if closed, should not be left unattended because the crows have learned to open zippers. Crow enthusiast Joshua Klein believes that humans can use the intelligence of crows to our advantage. In 2007 Klein presented his master’s thesis for the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. He calls it a vending machine for crows, and it uses operant conditioning to teach crows to drop coins into a machine in exchange for peanuts. In tests on a flock of crows in captivity, the crows quickly learned the association between coin and peanut and began to look for coins which had been scattered elsewhere in their enclosure and bring them to the machine. Klein believes that machines like his will allow us to harness crow intelligence for tasks such as garbage clean up and finding valuable metals in old computer parts. So, crows are intelligent. One day, they might even be useful. But I stand firm in my hate for them. Maybe the intelligence of crows partially explains it. Maybe I’m just a little jealous. I mean, crows are smart and they can fly. They’re like that girl in my high school math classes who was younger than me but smarter than me. Sure, it’s impressive, but I will always hate that girl. //
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Game review: Rhythm Heaven (Nintendo DS) by David Kanaga
When I play most rhythm games, I feel like I’m going to a music school for preteens. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I love music, I think it works very well in a formal schooling context, and I think that things designed for preteens generally need to be (and thus are) pretty engaging so as not to lose their audience to the more physical thrills of shoplifting and vandalism. Indeed, I can imagine a number of games built on a “music school” metaphor that would make me very happy. Unfortunately, most every rhythm game I’ve played has failed in this respect. The thing that bothers me most about this genre is the fact that none of the games I’ve played have ever required me to use my ears. The Konami games (DDR, Beatmania, etc.) and, by virtue of their having identical gameplay, the Harmonix games, too (Guitar Hero, Rock Band), are all reasonably engaging dynamic notation systems, but, like all notation systems, they leave the player more concerned with visual than auditory information. Rhythm Heaven (for the Nintendo DS) doesn’t really have this problem at all. If the Konami games can be thought of as analogous to a sight-reading class, then rhythmic ear training is Rhythm Heaven’s most obvious analog. It is basically a collection of call-and-response mini-games in which two controls, tapping and “flicking” the DS’s touch screen, are used to control what is usually a character making different sounds and performing different actions as you tap and flick. The game was designed by a combination of Nintendo’s in-house developers (the same ones responsible for WarioWare) and Tsunku, a Japanese record producer famous (in Japan, at least) for, among other things, his work with the girl group Morning Musume. It’s hard to know how much of the game’s design we can attribute to Tsunku versus the Nintendo team, but it was apparently collaborative enough that Tsunkuhosted morning training for the Nintendo programmers, in order to teach them the principles of rhythm. The music, of course, is Tsunku’s own, and, as Rhythm Heaven is a music game, it serves a very central role. The musical style seems to be all about silliness, which is probably a combination of artistic intent and Japanese cultural norms. Tracks range from standard J-Pop to tinny genre pieces (Western, Samurai, Rock ‘n’ Roll), and all are completely stupid in the same preteen way, which, beyond just not detracting from the game experience, actually suits the interactions perfectly. Indeed, this is one of the things that is so satisfying about playing Rhythm Heaven. While Harmonix’s games pair idiotic gameplay with sometimes legitimately satisfying music, Rhythm Heaven pairs idiotic gameplay with idiotic music,
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creating a sort of bizarre design harmony that’s maybe more captivating than it should be. Now, I don’t want to misrepresent my opinion of the game’s merits. I keep using the words “stupid” and “idiotic” and I really do mean it, but not at all in a derogatory way. Because the game only has two play mechanics, tap and flick, and because it’s rhythms are designed to be played by non-musicians, the scope of what the player ends up playing is very limited, and we find ourselves playing very simple “tap-taptap-flick” rhythms all the time, which is very very stupid. Why it works is that the game really grooves. Set me at a drum set, and I’ll be happy to play a “tap-tap-tap-flick” rhythm for an hour if there’s something else for me to listen to, to musically interact with, say, another musician. While Rhythm Heaven doesn’t actually provide meaningful interactions between musicians, it also doesn’t keep up the same groove for an hour, and so, the interactions it does provide manage to be very fun for the short time they last (usually around a minute). Because of the design focus on the player’s ears rather than her eyes, it is actually possible to play most (if not all-I haven’t tried yet) of the mini-games with shut eyes, responding to sounds rather than symbols. In some cases, it’s actually a lot easier for me to play this way, because I don’t get confused by the animations, when exactly the knife is supposed to be cutting into the watermelon; all I have to listen for is “tick-tick-tick” and I’ll respond with “tap-tap-tap-flick.” What’s more is that the game actually seems to encourage this style of play by occasionally taking away some of the visual information so you’re left to rely on just your ears. To go back to that school metaphor, Rhythm Heaven really does succeed as tool for teaching
basic rhythm skills, as it does so aurally rather than visually. More importantly, though, it succeeds as a piece of entertainment because responding to these aural stimuli is in every way more musically satisfying than responding to visual/symbolic stimuli is. The game is very simple, and it did get boring for me after about 20 songs, which was probably about an hour and a half or so of play. This doesn’t bode well for those that think a game needs to be long to be good, but I actually prefer a shorter game, and was very satisfied by the experience. That said, it’s $30 price tag makes the puny length seem a little less desirable, but I got it for free from the president of Nintendo, so I didn’t have to worry about that :P //
College:life:: preschool:school by The Emperor Prelife-We don’t have what we need in order to live life. We don’t know what we want in life or how to live life; we must be educated. An institutionalized education can teach these things, college matters. Grades matter, for life and for happiness; perhaps they are even indications of how well we will live our lives. There seem to be almost distinct sections to the narration that is Whitman campus depending upon year, these lines will of course be blurry. As freshmen whitties come to college not knowing how to live, the activities nor what these activities are; so a special branch of the school must be created in devotion to this. So
residence life institutionalizes all the activities of life they deem essential. Since we don’t know how to live with others or have social interactions these things will be created for us and we will be required, or rather, recommended to participate. After two years of this, as the story goes, we have learned these things, like eating, and social interaction so we may house ourselves and feed ourselves. After four years of being taught what we should do and how we should do it we will be ready to go out into the real world. For there to be a community, group, or an institution there must be an underlying narrative? This narrative is fundamental to every identity in the collective. This narrative is not that which takes place in everyday speech for it need never be spoken, it is always assumed. How many whitties derive their sense of worth from their societal relations to other people?
Prolife So prolife I imbedded your wife, once, twice, thrice. I know the secret of dunes magic spice and if you ain’t read the book I’ll take your life. Don’t even need a wand that kind of spelling, about the side effects they’ll be no telling. To the devil that’s a verb it’s called Helling. Responsibility leads to self condom nation— alienating us from our respawn ability. Secede this sequence or suffer the consequences. This is the sex session. //
Refrigerator Jon Handwerk
As children, opening the refrigerator seemed
to be more off a surprise ffor us. That is because we didn’t put the things in the refrigerator. The only time we experience that wonder again is when we forget what we put in there or open someone else’s refrigerator. //
Research We all learn a thing or two we don’t expect to in the process of thesis research. Here are some things I learned (oh, and by the by, my research question went something like, “Do today’s über-famous pop stars actually have business claiming empowerment or are they simply objectified whores with a new vocabulary?”): 1. You cannot research Beyoncé for four straight days without her consuming you entirely.
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I lost minutes, even hours, inserting the “é” symbol whenever I had to type “Beyoncé” or “Deréon.” You may recall, in “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It),” the line that goes, “Hold me tighter than my Deréon jeans.” In a quest to prove BK’s conflation of Girl Power with consumer whoredom, I visited dereon.com to see how much Deréon jeans went for. I was in no way prepared for what I found. As a merciless god would have it, Beyoncé created the Deréon line with her mother, Tina Knowles. As if I had not gotten my fair dosage of “SASHA FIERCE,” the album played, quite loudly, as I navigated through blinding booty-bearing jumpsuits to the jean collection. If I have one pet peeve in life, it is websites that won’t shut the hell up. As far as I could see there was no way to quell the synthesizers and hiccupy vibrations of “SASHA FIERCE.” Even as the website loaded, no matter how poor my wireless connection, “Shake your derriere in ‘em Deréon” (the Deréon anthem) came in loud and clear. After my first visit, I thought I was done with dereon.com. But later, after discovering via The Washington Post that Beyoncé launched an offshoot of Deréon, called “Deréon Girls” (the advertisements for which featured second graders in full makeup and high heels), I found myself logging back on to see if Beyoncé cared to include any idiotic quotes about second graders empowering themselves through lip-gloss barelythere-wear. I nearly exploded with irritation as I waited for “Shake your derriere in ‘em Deréon to overpower my Pandora bitch rock playlist. I thought, after taking eight pages to analyze “Single Ladies” that Beyoncé and I were through. But then my sister (who thinks “Single Ladies” is “just plain awesome,” even though she seems to hate everything else in life) informed me that “If I Were A Boy,” the single off “I AM…” simultaneously released with “Single Ladies,” could be perfect for my study. And God-derriere-shakingdammit, she was right. I spent another seven pages balls-deep in Beyoncé.
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2. I thought I had beef with BK. But the PG advertisements for purity are really the ones I’d like to stab with a stiletto. I reached an unfathomable level of frustration the day I analyzed “Love Story” by Taylor Swift. At least Beyoncé leaves a little bit to the imagination. Taylor Swift’s blatant example of compulsory heterosexuality intersperses corsets with statues of praying angels with douchey Disney dreams. And she doesn’t even let Romeo kiss her. The least this video could do is show me some sex instead of mocking my pain with Eskimo kisses. And most nauseatingly, TS is every American mother’s dream and my friend Dan’s wet dream. And Dan is the kind of guy who enjoys being in relationships on Facebook and “saving” girls from the sad hook-up scene. I thought about including Miley Cyrus in my study. But then I remembered that Miley Cyrus is the grossest person on the planet and promptly needs to be made fun of on South SECESSION// VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2
Park. At least Taylor Swift doesn’t parade around in parking lots with her Disney-branded labia flopping around for everyone to see. Anyway. I haven’t the time to discuss Katy Perry, but Sam Alden drew an excellent comparison at the patisserie this afternoon: Katy Perry is to lesbianism what Sarah Palin is to women in politics. Massage oil is also something you should avoid putting in your vagina.
Love,
Caitlin Tortorici //
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Danny Cryster See the boy, he is thin and warm. He pulls his fleece over his head and says says “the bro bros are headed up Canada way.” So. He still smells like Southern Comfort. A girl’s drink surely. You learn that you can stay and that no one cares. The room all yours in brilliant disarray. “Sixes and sevens,” you mutter and he mishearing jerks up from his camping gear and cocks a tustled head. Love that he shades his chin in with blond bristle. The bed is friendly and he says and asks “i’ll see you later?” But you just curl up in the blanket and you. //
Between the lines Jessica Conrad
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Gay or Eurotrash? a fashion quiz
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Found items // Lost property
This item was found on page 168 of Tao Lin’s short story collection Bed on April 2, 2009 by Andrew Hall. //
This item was found by Carly Spiering on April 5, 2009 via Omegle, a chat service in which the user is paired with a random stranger. //
This item was found in the Multimedia Development Lab in Hunter April 3, 2009 by Leah Koerper. //
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