The College Hill Independent February 24

The College Hill The Brown/RISD Weekly

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FEBRUARY 24 2011

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Volume XXII Issue 3

FROM THE EDITORS:

THE ISSUE:

I still haven’t seen Thom Yorke dance. Not even in June 2001, when I rolled down the passenger-side window just enough for a scalper’s grubby fingernails to slide me two tickets to Radiohead’s show at the Santa Barbara Bowl. I hadn’t heard the new album, Amnesiac, nor the one before that: I just wanted to see how they made those sounds on “Paranoid Android.” Unfortunately for my pre-pubescent self, the capacity crowd stood for the whole set. My dad left in full “I’ve seen a lot of concerts, but...” mode; I was just pissed that the guy in front of me was so tall. My high-school career, 2003-8, coincided with the longest gap between Radiohead albums and a whole lot of jumping between anti-conformity and anti-anti-conformity. The five guys from Oxford, whose “artisticness” didn’t keep them from selling out the Garden, got stranded in the crevice between these categories. (My grandpa’s asking about “the Radioheads” didn’t help.)

I did click, multiple times, on the other music videos clogging my newsfeed this past week: Tyler, The Creator’s “Yonkers” video and performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. There had been few pleasures greater, this fall, than the inevitable “WTF” face elicited from innocents exposed to videos of Tyler and his crew ingesting a smoothie of pills, cough syrup, and malt liquor. Tyler, who started his first album by dissing kingmaking hip-hop blogs, had just signed to Radiohead’s home, mega-indie XL Records.

Network TV should have further compromised his swag. But somehow, Tyler’s green ski mask supplied menace lacking from his bowdlerized lyrics (“Who the heck invited Mr. I Don’t Give A What?”); his manic leap onto Fallon’s shoulders showed that he found his fame just as weird as I did. As we went to press, @kanyewest -- whose “All of the Lights” clip invited countless digital snores—called “Yonkers” “the video of 2011.”

--JW

THE INDY IS:

News WEEK IN REVIEW

by Malcolm Burnley, Emily Gogolak, and Erica Schwiegershausen

TEMPLE AS SYMBOL

by Emma Whitford

CHANTS AND MURMURS

by Malcolm Burnley and Jonah Wolf

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Features SECOND AMENDMENT MOMENTUM

by Kate Welsh

by Jess Daniels

COVER ART Eli Schmitt

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Metro

HELLO MOMO: A GRAPHIC ESSAY

MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Adrian Randall • NEWS Emily Gogolak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford • METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley, Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf • FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate Welsh • ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto • LITERARY Kate Van Brocklin • SCIENCE Maggie Lange • SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg Berman • OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan• LIST Dayna Tortorici • CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipinsky • COVER/CREATIVE CONSULTANT Emily Martin • X Fraser Evans • ILLUSTRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson • DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis, Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Mckay, Liat Werber, Joanna Zhang • PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher • STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Drew Foster, Sarah Friedland, Annie Macdonald • SENIOR EDITORS Katie Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Erin Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex Verdolini

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FOR BETTER OR WORSE

by Belle Cushing

p.7 p.11 p.15

Arts RISD SHOWCASE

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OVERHAULING THE ART EXPERIENCE

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GOOGLE GIVETH. GOOGLE TAKETH AWAY.

by Maud Doyle and Olivia Fagon

Food

The College Hill Independent PO Box 1930 Brown University Providence, RI 02912

THE ART OF VEGAN MIMICRY

by Molly Cousins

Contact theindy@gmail.com for advertising information. // theindy.org Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The College Hill Independent is published weekly during the fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA

EPHEMERA:

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Literary MORE SIGNS

by Esther Nasty

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AS IF YOU CARE:

Dia Mustafa Barghouti, 2010, Palestine

Group Sex 101 The best way to not have a threesome is to ask your partner if they want to have a threesome with that other hot person you stare at sometimes. If you’re not sure if your partner is into the idea of threesomes & beyond, broach the subject gently: “Hey honey, have you ever been tempted to try _______? I think it might be kind of fun.” Then, if they find their curiosity is piqued or have always had a passion for ménage a trois, have them make a short list of people they might want to try such sexcapades with.

Go over the list together and approach mutually agreed upon individuals casually in a comfortable situation. If they’re interested as well its touch and go from there—but make sure you and your partner discuss how you will maintain open lines of communication before during and after your experience and what you are and are not comfortable with.

Bediquette: If you have enjoyed a couple’s bed, it is polite to leave it and go back to your own once things have wound down. It is polite to bring condoms to any situation that may involve salacious behavior, and to wear or have your partner wear a fresh one for discrete acts. It is extremely rude to complain about having to wear a condom; no matter how much you hate the feeling, you’ll hate herpes way worse. It is impolite to come to bed at all when you are intoxicated in ways that impair your ability to make choices you won’t regret; group sex is a thing of finesse and there is no finesse in sloppy.

If you have questions related to aspects of sexuality, relationships and sexual health that you want to see in print, please email them to sexanonymous1@gmail.com and someone will get back to you shortly. Have a fucking fantastic weekend.

NEWS| 2

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

WEEK IN REVIEW SO LONG MR. PRESIDENT? The Arab world was dealt yet another shock on Sunday, when Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, announced his impending retirement. “He has no will to be president again,” Rabie Abdelati, a senior government spokesman, told Reuters.

For anyone familiar with Bashir’s story, the announcement would have seemed impossible before revolt rocked the Arab world. Since winning power in a bloodless coup in 1989, Bashir has ruled Sudan with an iron fist. He is the only sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court—for his perpetration of the ongoing genocide in Darfur—and is vilified by the US for hosting Al Qaeda in the 1990s. Human rights violations, corruption, and large-scale neglect have been prominent characteristics of the Bashir regime.

As the region is exploding with calls for justice and democracy, Bashir’s move is seen as a direct response to the flux. Unconvincingly, however, the President denies any correlation. The same spokesman that announced Bashir’s decision affirmed that its timing had “nothing, nothing at all” to do with the wave of revolution sweeping the region—which inspired a small series of protests in Sudan. “In Egypt, there was a gap between the rulers

and the people, but not in our country,” Mr. Rabie said. “In Sudan,” he continued, “[the leaders] live with the people.” Most Sudanese would beg to differ. And most are now questioning Bashir’s real motives.

As Al-Tayeb Zein al-Abideen, a political science professor at the University of Khartoum, told the New York Times, “In the Arab world, we have become accustomed to rulers staying in power until they die.”

That Bashir himself did not make the announcement is considered highly suspect, and many question if he seriously intends to abdicate power. The news could simply be a tool to pacify a nation in protest, to feign a move toward democracy, and to pretend to care for a people who feel forgotten and abused by their government.

What will happen now remains unclear. In 2010, Bashir took the last round of elections—which outside observers deemed illegitimate—in a landslide. The next elections are scheduled for 2015, but some think that the opposition may force Bashir from office before the official change of guard. This could throw Sudan into the same all-out chaos of its Arab neighbors, setting the stage for another extraordinary outcome in a region where the only guarantee is the unpredictable.

–EG

by Malcolm Burnley, Emily Gogolak, and Erica Schwiegershausen

TECHED-OUT MONOPOLY MAN In the aftermath of Ken Jennings’s defeat on Jeopardy to Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, Hasbro has introduced its own “computer overlord” into its signature brand, Monopoly. This fall, slap down fifty bucks and you’ll get Monopoly Live, an updated version of the classic board game, complete with a ten-inch computer tower at the center of the game board.

Powered by 4 AA batteries, it threatens to displace, obliterate, and “make obsolete” all we love about Monopoly game-play: the multi-colored fake money, laundering that multi-colored fake money under the table, under-the-table deal-making with Grandma, fixing dice throws, and flat-out disobedience of the rulebook. In Monopoly Live, the infrared tower keeps a digital balance of each player’s funds, produces electronic dice throws, and speaks voice commands to ensure rules are adhered to.

Citing a 9 percent drop in 2010 sales of old-fashioned board games, Hasbro is trying to appeal to a new generation of adolescents, hoping the game will mesh with their chronic addictions of physical inactivity, energy drinks, and Xbox.

Unfortunately, as a result of the computer tower, Monopoly Live will deprive players from acquiring important life lessons instilled through the classic version of the game. In a recent New York Times article, Mary Flanagan, Professor of Digital Humanities at Dartmouth University, and Joey Lee, Assistant Professor of Technology and Education at Teachers College at Columbia’s Teacher’s College, reviewed Monopoly Live’s wisdom, and deemed it essentially worthless. Flanagan claims the newest iteration is “less and less about financial awareness” while Lee believes it is a shame to eliminate cheating, which is better than the “blind adherence to following orders,” built into Hasbro’s newest creation.

What happened to those character-building board games that really made you work? Nobody ran the gauntlet in Hungry Hungry Hippos without working up a good lather or leaving without a palm blister. Then again, maybe Hasbro is on to something. Had the government developed Monopoly Live’s technology four decades ago to run our real-life banks, railroads, and derivative real estate markets, we probably could have avoided half-a-dozen bailouts and trillions in debt. But it’s a lot more fun to roll the dice right? Come on, double sixes!

–MB

iPHONE A PRIEST Bad news for overscheduled Catholics: it turns out it isn’t possible to absolve your sins at the touch of a touch-screen. In response to the overwhelming popularity of the recently released “Confession: A Roman Catholic App,” an iPhone application designed to aid Catholics with the sacrament of confession, the Vatican found it necessary to issue a clarification on the nature of absolution. Although there was understandably some confusion, the fact of the matter is that the iPhone cannot forgive sins.

The Confession App, released this December by Little iApps, is designed for “those who frequent the sacrament and those who wish to return,” said developer Patrick Leinen in a recent press release.

The app aims to guide Catholics through the stresses of the Rite of Penance, all for the bargain price of $1.99. Though it has yet to reach Angry Birds’s status, the app has been highly successful, currently ranking in the top ten of iTunes’s Lifestyle apps.

The Confession App features a custom examination of conscience. Users sign in (logs of sin are password-protected of course) and are asked to enter their age, sex, and vocation. The app then takes you step-by-step through the Ten Commandments, providing questions designed to catch transgressions that may otherwise have been overlooked. Prompts vary according to user profile. A teenage girl is asked to consider the question, “Do I not treat my body or other people’s bodies with purity and respect?” under the Sixth Commandment, while a middle-aged married man reads “Have I been guilty of masturbation?”

Users can place a check mark next to standard offenses (lying, not praying, practicing superstitious activities) or choose to type in their own custom sins.

Once this stage of confession has been completed, the app offers seven acts of contrition to choose from. However, the Vatican Radio quoted Father Federico Lombardi reminding Catholics that “it is essential to understand that the sacrament of penance requires a personal dialogue between the penitent and the confessor in order for absolution to be given. This cannot be replaced by a computer application.” So, fear not clergymen: while a computer takeover by Watson and Co. may seem increasingly imminent, the church is determined to remain a place of solace and job security.

–ES

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

3 |NEWS

TEMPLE AS SYMBOL Cambodia and Thailand Clash to Divert Attention from Internal Issues

by Emma Whitford Illustration by Charis Loke

A

Hindu temple to Shiva—Preah Vihear to Cambodians and Khao Phra Viharn to Thais—overlooks a valley in the Dangrek mountain range along the long-disputed border between Cambodia and Thailand. A succession of Khmer Rulers built the temple in the first half of the 11th century—a time when Cambodia’s borders extended into much of the region that is now Thailand. The temple is currently occupied by Cambodian troops. It is a focal point in a nationalist tug-of-war that has been going since the early 1900s.

On February 4, Thai and Cambodian troops exchanged fire along the border, each side blaming the other for the outbreak of violence. A. Gaffar Peang-Meth of the Pacific Daily News reflects on the relationship between Cambodia and Thailand in an article from February 23, saying the two countries are “condemned by destiny to live side by side, sharing much history, similar culture and Buddhist beliefs, and both members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), yet generally unable to get along.” The violence this month comes only two years after a brief outbreak of fighting in the same region, also over border-establishment issues.

The focus of the current dispute is the 1.8 square miles of border territory that surround the temple. Possession of the temple is viewed as a symbolic triumph by the governments of both nations—proof of the possessor’s strength and influence in East Asia. The Pacific Daily News cites micro-level catalysts for the February violence. On January 25, in response to Thai protests, the Cambodian defense minister removed a stone signboard from the disputed region that read, ‘Here is the place where Thai troops invaded Cambodian territory on 15 July 2008.’ However, the sign was replaced with a more blunt message: “Here is Cambodia.” Thailand threatened to attack if the second tablet wasn’t removed. This second assertion of Cambodian sovereignty was also taken down, only to be replaced later by a Cambodian flag flying over the temple. Violence erupted shortly thereafter.

After two days of fighting, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry reported 3,000 civilian evacuees from the region, while deputy governor of Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province, Sar Thavy, reported that 1,000 families had been evacuated on the Cambodian side. Casualty counts on either side of the border don’t match up, but a recent report from Alert Net counts 11 deaths, including both soldiers and civilians. On both sides, Red Cross officials report that thousands of evacuees have been displaced to makeshift shelters and villages farther from the border. Food and water have been in short supply for families crammed into pagodas and school compounds.

HISTORICAL GRUDGES In 1953, Cambodia gained independence from France. However, Cambodia held on to French Colonial maps as a reference for determining its national borders. According to the French maps, Preah Vihear Temple lies well within the Cambodian border. That same year the Thai army hoisted a flag over the temple.

Thailand had just established a police post in the Dangrek Mountains in an effort to strengthen its border defenses. To justify their country’s actions, Thai officials cited a 1904 Franco-Thai convention that placed the national boundary along the cliff edge on which the temple stands, ensuring that the temple was in Thai territory.

The International Court of Justice assessed the border conflict in 1962 and ruled that the temple was rightly the property of Cambodia—a ruling that Thailand accepted begrudgingly. For years neither country put effort into the upkeep of the region, as a war in Cambodia between the Khmer Rouge and neighboring Vietnam made the region uninhabitable.

Since 1992, on-and-off occupation of the temple by Khmer Rouge forces has prevented public access to the temple for long stretches of time. In 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) accepted a Cambodian proposal to make the temple a World Heritage Site. Thai nationalists immediately protested, seeing the temple as Thai property. As a result, both governments reinforced troops along their borders. In periods of safety for tourists, access to the temple is primarily via Thailand. Visitors are welcomed in through Khao Phra Viharn National Park—a protected national area abutting the temple and contested border.

Kho Tararith is a Cambodian poet, and currently a visiting fellow with the International Writers Project at Brown University. Tararith explains the landscape of conflict: “The division [between the two countries] cuts through a valley. Thai side of the valley has a good street. You pay the Thai, easy to get to temple from the Thai side. During the civil war, the temple was controlled by the Khmer Rouge, not safe to visit.” The civil war, fought between the Khmer Rouge and the government forces in Cambodia, only lasted until 1975, but Cambodia remains tense and conflicted to this day. Tararith explains, “We need peace inside Cambodia and also with bordering countries.”

THE INFLUENCE OF NATIONALISM Sitting in his office on the third floor of the Watson Institute for International Studies, Tararith opens ki-media.blogspot. com—a blog maintained by the Khmer Intelligence of Cambodia, a dissident group promoting free speech in Cambodia. Due to state censorship laws, the blog can’t be accessed within Cambodia.

The bloggers who maintain the site are

part of an “Outside Party, [that] critiques everything, especially with the corruption,” explains Tararith. A post from February 18 is entitled “Why Now for Thai Cambodia Row?” Originally published in the Diplomat, a current affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region established in 2002, the post presents the border conflict between Cambodia and Thailand not as a dispute between two countries over contested land, but as an effort on the part of both countries to boost nationalist fervor.

Tararith agrees: “I think the issue is not really for the temple and for the land [surrounding it], because Thai want to move the issue from Bangkok to [the temple region].” The issue he refers to is the conflict in Thailand between the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and the current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

The PAD members are known as Yellow Shirts, and are primarily Bangkok’s royalist upper and middle-class. They are staunch nationalists, unsatisfied with Prime Minister Vejjajiva’s weak response to the border dispute. On February 5 the PAD stated publicly that the Prime Minister should step down, citing government corruption and his inability to protect Thailand’s borders and sovereignty.

Hundreds of Thai nationalists have been protesting near government offices for weeks, demanding that the government get tough with Cambodia.

Wanni Anderson is a Thai Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Brown University. She’s currently working on a comparative study of biracial Americans of Thai and American parents, who divide their time between the United States and Bangkok. As Professor Anderson explained in an e-mail to the Independent, “Religion is not part of the conflict, since both Thailand and Cambodia are predominantly Buddhist.” She describes a history of conflict that is primarily political.

Professor Anderson also stresses that the Thai people are not a homogenous front: “There is a nationalist group demonstrating. But not all Thai people agree with all the demands of this group. I don’t agree with this group’s demand to send Cambodian refugees who have settled around there back to Cambodia, unless they want to themselves.” She refers to some Thais’ insistence that any Cambodians settled in the disputed region are trespassing.

The Diplomat assesses the Cambodian government’s nationalist objective: “[T] he real aim of both Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is to strengthen their respective leadership credentials.” Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the Pacific Daily News, “For Hun Sen, the border dispute with Cambodia’s historical neighbor to the West is a blessing to draw domestic attention away from discontent [within Cambodia].” Hun Sen has been building up armed forces in recent years, increas-

ing his power and encroaching on free speech. In 2010, Cambodia imported dozens of Soviet-designed tanks from China and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the ruling Cambodia People’s Party is using its control of the Internet to prevent the Khmer Intelligence bloggers from getting out their message about governmental corruption and free speech violations.

On February 19, the Bangkok Post, which bills itself as the “World’s Window to Thailand,” assessed Cambodia’s desire to bring a third party, ASEAN, into the border dispute as a means to come to a settlement and end the violence: “Cambodia is […] aware that Thailand does not favor outsiders getting involved in the border row—which is perhaps why Phnom Penh is proposing a peace deal witness by other ASEAN member countries.” It also speculated that Thailand was unlikely to agree to such a meeting. “[N]o one knows the problems on the border better than those involved in the dispute: itself and Cambodia.”

However, despite Thailand’s initial unwillingness to negotiate with third party mediation, the foreign ministers of all ten ASEAN member nations met on February 22 to negotiate with representatives of Thailand and Cambodia. The decision reached was the establishment of an ‘unofficial ceasefire.’ Unarmed military and civilian observers from Indonesia, a neutral third party, will be dispatched to both sides of the disputed border, with permission to report any violence back to ASEAN. ASEAN chairman and Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa stated afterwards, “And so there will be further meeting between the two sides to try to really solidify the present situation […] As long as the guns are silent and the artillery is not making noises, I will be quite happy.”

While the ceasefire is a breakthrough, Cambodia and Thailand are just beginning the process of finding a permanent solution. Their lofty goal is to resolve a century’s worth of tension between countries that are dealing with their own internal issues. Tararith explains, “Seeing both sides [of this conflict] is good. I am Cambodian and I love my country, just like the Thais love theirs.”

National love runs deep in both Cambodia and Thailand, though neither country unanimously supports the violent border conflict. The question that remains is how this love will be manifested: through violent attempts to acquire symbols of national power, or through domestic efforts to stamp out government corruption and enforce free speech rights—approaches that have quelled national pride in the past.

EMMA WHITFORD B ’12 wonders why love is a battlefield.

NEWS| 4

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

Koh Tral

By Kho Tararith

Koh Tral remains ours in our minds, while its whole body melted away from Khmer land.

The Island ancestors took care of the territory and the island was the inheritance of the ancestors.

It is unfortunate that we have lost this resource, and this beautiful island is gone.

In history this island was Cambodia.

All generations of Khmer remember.

When the island will return to us the long suffering will end; our anger of the many years will be over.

We are waiting for that.

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

5 |METRO

CHANTS

by Mal

colm B

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and Jon

ah Wol

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AND

S UR

M UR

M

UNITED THEY STAND On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of Rhode Island workers filled the Providence Statehouse in a rally against a proposed bill that would deny bargaining rights to Wisconsin’s government workers; Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators have fled the state to delay voting, Across the nation, new Republican lawmakers hope to solve deficits by busting unions. As we went to press, Indiana’s State Democrats had decamped to Illinois to avoid voting on a similar bill; Ohio Democrats, outnumbered past the possibility of a filibuster, lacked such an option. While such extensive measures are unlikely to spread to Rhode Island, two recent developments in Providence have proven the importance of collective bargaining.

The same afternoon, Providence

mayor Angel Taveras mandated that all non-unionized city employees take a day non-unionized city employees take a day of unpaid furlough sometime before June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Taveras’s decision will affect an estimated 160 workers and shave an estimated $40,000 off the city’s $57 million deficit. In a statement, Taveras’s director of communications called the action “a way to signal that restoring fiscal stability in the city of Providence will require shared sacrifice from everyone.”

Later on Tuesday night, Providence school superintendent Tom Brady announced plans to dismiss the entire fleet of public school teachers at the end of the academic year. Brady’s move, which will allow him to re-hire a smaller number of

teachers under different terms, resembles a similar measure enacted a year ago by the superintendent of Central Falls, working non-unionized city employees take a day of unpaid furlough sometime before June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Taveras’s decision will affect an estimated 160 workers and shave an estimated $40,000 off the city’s $57 million deficit. In a statement, Taveras’s director of communications called the action “a way to signal that restoring fiscal stability in the city of Providence will require shared sacrifice from everyone.”

Later on Tuesday night, Providence school superintendent Tom Brady announced plans to dismiss the entire fleet of public school teachers at the end of the academic year. Brady’s move, which

will allow him to re-hire a smaller number of teachers under different terms, resembles a similar measure enacted a year ago by the superintendent of Central Falls, working(as Brady is) under state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, a strong supporter of non-unionized charter schools. But whereas only 88 teachers were fired from Central Falls High (all rehired in May under new terms, although many have since resigned), Brady’s action would affect 1,926 teachers in schools across the city. The school board will vote on the measure Thursday. At press time, Mayor Taveras announced plans to close several schools in the coming year. –JW

STRONG WORDS Rhode Islanders may not know State Representative Robert A. Watson yet (R-East Greenwich), but he’s having no trouble making a name for himself abroad. During a luncheon on February 9, Watson made an outrageous comment that resulted in political uproar: “I suppose if you’re a gay man from Guatemala who gambles and smokes pot, you probably think that we’re onto some good ideas here,” he said, referring to the legislative agenda of the Rhode Island Statehouse this year.

What began as an attempt at political sarcasm from Watson, the House Minority Leader, has escalated Rhode-Island-Guatemala tensions to their highest point in, well… ever.

Days later, Watson claimed his re-

mark was just a boisterous attempt to highlight misplaced priorities within the Statehouse in 2011; the body has primarily held hearings on social issues like gay marriage, medical marijuana, and illegal immigration—not financial policy, which Watson claims he’d prefer. While it’s no surprise that local groups have pounced on his remarks—the Guatemala-American Alliance of Rhode Island demanded an apology, which Watson refused—Watson also sent ripples as far as South America.

The Guatemalan Ministry of Affairs recently sent out a press release in Spanish, condemning the comments as “a direct insult to the entire Guatemalan community.”

It’s safe to say Watson drew few

laughs with his sarcasm, but far worse: his comments were illogical to begin with.

Suggesting that the Guatemalan community in Rhode Island consists mostly of illegal immigrants is false: according to the Latino Oral History Project of Rhode Island, the state’s largest influx of Guatemalan people occurred in the 1980s during a Civil War in the country, which means they settled in Rhode Island as legal refugees.

Not surprisingly, some people have actually defended the House Minority leader—like one Christopher Curran, who wrote in a letter to the Providence Journal that “Robert Watson’s specific choice of the grammatical device of alliteration at a Feb. 9 Chamber of Commerce luncheon

was unfortunate in our current ethnically hypersensitive society.” Following this logic, it’s okay to make derogatory remarks as long as they have literary merit.

If insults are excused when spoken in alliteration, then I’ll go ahead and call Mr. Watson a washed-up walrus-looking WASP, thank you very much. –MB

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

7 |FEATURES

SECOND AMENDMENT MOMENTUM A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

A

t a Washington rally last year on the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) declared, “Fellow patriots, we have a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution, and they’re right down the Mall, in the Congress of the United States—and right down Independence Avenue in the White House that belongs to us. It’s not about my ability to hunt, which I love to do. It’s not about the ability for me to protect my family and my property against criminals, which we have the right to do. But it’s all about protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government of the United States.”

In the wake of the Tucson shooting, aides to President Obama have said that he will address the issue of gun control in the coming weeks—after ignoring it for the entirety of his presidency. Former vice president Dick Cheney has also expressed a desire to ban high capacity clips, like the one used by Jared Loughner, last month’s Tucson shooter. But many Second Amendment supporters abhor any sort of restriction on gun ownership. The rhetoric employed by much of the political right equates gun control legislation with dictatorship; many politicians in state legislatures have continued—even in the aftermath of Tucson—to attempt not only to rescind current restrictions, but have also introduced some of the most enthusiastic right to bear arms bills to date.

In Florida, Rep. Jason Brodeur (R) wants to make it a felony for phy-

sicians—who often ask their patients about risky behavior, including drinking, smoking, and wearing a seatbelt—to ask if their patient keeps a gun at home.

Brodeur expressed his worry that “If the overreaching federal government actually takes over health care, we’re worried that Washington, D.C., is going to know whether or not they own a gun, and so this is really just a privacy protection.” Doctors who fail to comply with the proposed law could face up to five million dollars in fines—or jail time. In Michigan, State Sen. Mike Green (R-Mayville) introduced legislation that would allow people to carry concealed guns into churches, schools, day care centers, stadiums, bars, and hospitals. He told The Detroit News that he introduced the bill to prove that “there are no places that should be gun-free.” Nebraska State Sen. Mark Christensen also introduced legislation to allow employees at K-12 schools to carry guns. Wyoming and Nebraska both have bills up for consideration in their legislatures that would allow their citizens to carry concealed guns without state permits. And last year, Indiana lawmakers passed a bill allowing workers to keep guns in their cars while parked on company property. State Sen. Johnny Nugent (R-Lawrenceville) has filed legislation barring employers from asking their workers about any firearms that might be in their parking lots because, “there are things that trump those property rights, and one of them is the defense of my life.”

For a long time, liberals hoped that by convincing opponents of gun control that they harbored no hostility toward the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners— or to hunting or rural culture—that they might be able to forge a consensus and create pragmatic firearm laws to protect innocent civilians. But the real passion in the anything goes approach to guns has little to do with the culture of hunting, as evinced by the current bills floating around state legislatures, as well as the sentiments expressed by Rep. Broun. In 2006, Rep. Ron Paul put it: “The Second Amendment is not about hunting deer or keeping a pistol in your nightstand. It is not about protecting oneself against common criminals. It is about preventing tyranny. The Founders knew that unarmed citizens would never be able to overthrow a tyrannical government as they did… The muskets they used against the British army were the assault rifles of that time.” There is a growing acceptability in widening extremist circles to take the Second Amendment at its face value—that United States citizens have a right to guns in order to maintain militias with the firepower to overthrow a “tyrannical” government.

In the past three years, broad-based populist anger over political, demographic, and economic changes in America ignited an explosion of new extremist groups and activism across the nation. The vast majority of these groups are united by the belief that they should have absolute access to any and all types of firearms, and that any step towards gun regulation is a step towards tyranny. One indication of the power of this increasingly widespread belief is in the fate of the assault weapons ban. In September 1994, after a string of grisly shootings—the 1989 Stockton California elementary school attack, the 1991 Killeen massacre, the 1993 Waco siege—

Congress passed the assault weapons ban, which limited magazine capacity to ten rounds. But by 2000, the gun control movement had already started flagging.

After the passage of the assault weapons ban, the NRA—a powerful, and, for the gun industry, inexpensive lobbying arm that is funded mostly by gun-owner member—introduced a nationwide campaign in support of state laws that gave civilians the right to carry concealed handguns into public areas: shopping malls, Little League games, and almost anywhere else. Before 1987, only ten states had right-to-carry laws. In 1994 and 1995 alone, 11 states enacted such statutes, bringing the total to 28. Today, 48 states allow concealed carry, and Arizona, Alaska, and Vermont do not require any sort of permit in order to do so—which is why Jared Loughner was easily able to buy and carry a concealed gun in public, despite his documented history of mental illness.

Democrats collectively decided that gun control was a cursed issue in the aftermath of the closely contested presidential election of 2000, when Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee in large part because of NRA opposition. President George W. Bush suggested that he would extend the assault weapons ban and magazine limit, but when the NRA and Republicans on Capitol Hill resisted, he allowed the law to expire in September 2004. The Glock 19—Mr. Loughner’s weapon of choice—would not have been sold for civilian use under the assault weapons ban.

Rep. Giffords would probably still have been shot if he had brought a .22 pistol into that Safeway. But without the smooth-firing Glock’s 33 round ammunition magazine, he would not have murdered six people—including a nine year old girl—after shooting over 30 rounds before pausing to reload.

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

by Kate Welsh illustrations by Robert Sandler and Annika Finne

In the current political atmosphere, in which gun control is an untouchable issue, armed men have been attending President Obama’s speeches bearing signs that “the tree of liberty” needs to be “watered” with “the blood of tyrants.” The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration, 9/11, and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African-American president.

The militias, and what became known as the Patriot movement, first came to America’s attention in the mid 1990s, when they appeared as an angry reaction to what was seen as a tyrannical government bent on crushing all dissent. Sparked most dramatically by the death of 76 Branch Davidians during a 1993 law enforcement siege in Waco, TX, those who joined the militias also rallied against the Democratic Clinton Administration and initiatives like gun control and environmental regulation. Although the Patriot movement included people formerly associated with racially-based hate groups, it was above all animated by a view of the federal government as the primary enemy, along with a fondness for antigovernment conspiracy theories. By early this decade, the groups had largely disappeared from public view.

But last year, a dramatic resurgence in the Patriot movement and its paramilitary wing, the militias, began. According to a count by the Southern poverty law Center, 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009. Individuals associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead.

As the movement has exploded, so has the reach of its ideas, aided and abetted by commentators and politicians in the ostensible mainstream. While in the 1990s, the movement got good reviews from a few lawmakers and talk-radio hosts, some of its central ideas today are being plugged by people with far larger audiences like FOX News’ Glenn Beck and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (RMinn). In April 2009, a man armed with an AK-47, a .22 caliber rifle, and a handgun was charged with killing three cops in Pittsburgh. The accused killer had, as part of a pattern of activities involving far-

right conspiracy theories, posted a link on a neo-Nazi website to a video of Beck talking about the possibility that FEMA was operating concentration camps in Wyoming. The killings came after Beck told Fox viewers that he “can’t debunk” the notion that FEMA was operating such camps--but before he finally acknowledged that the conspiracy was not real. In a similar instance this August, a man was arrested with a car full of assault weapons after engaging in a shootout with police.

His mother told investigators that he was on his way to--in his words--”start a revolution” by shooting the executive director of the little known Tides Foundation, a non-profit that claims to support “sustainability, better education, solutions to the AIDS epidemic, and human rights.” Not coincidentally, the man had been watching Beck’s show in the months prior to his failed assassination attempt. According to the press watchdog Media Matters, Beck had ranted against Tide’s agenda to “seize power and destroy capitalism” 33 times in the 18 months before the shooting.

Media Matters said it was unable to find any other mention of Tides on any news broadcast by any network over that same period.

Most of Beck’s broadcasts have violent imagery: “The clock is ticking. . . .

The war is just beginning. . . . Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government. . . . You have to be prepared to take rocks to the head. . . . The other side is attacking. . . . There is a coup going on. . . . Grab a torch! . . . Drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers. . . . They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered. . . .

They are putting a gun to America’s head. . . . Hold these people responsible.”

Beck has prophesied darkly to his millions of followers that we are reaching “a point where the people will have exhausted all their options. When that happens, look out.”

There are 240 million guns in America, with more being manufactured and imported every day. The combination of easy access to weapons with extremist and violent rhetoric is a potent force. Leaders and citizens should reconsider the executive director of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre’s, assertion in 2009 that “the guys with the guns make the rules.”

KATE WELSH B’12 needs a byline.

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RISD STUDENT SHOWCASE design by Erik Font

1 Korakrit Arunanondchai ‘09 - Untitled (room) 2 Leif Gann-Matzen ‘11 - Untitled 3 Andy Pomykalski ‘10 - The Actor 4 Nick Corti ‘11 - Zebra Vegas Weekend Throne 5 Patrick Groth ‘10 - The Woolworth Buildings 6 Sonya Dissin ‘11 - Still from What’s Relle Good 7 Everett Williams ‘10 - Placing 8 Robert Dodd ‘11 - Always Thinking of You (detail) 9 Raffaella Hanley ‘11 - Untitled 10 Patrick Armstrong ‘10 - broken-ob-broken

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FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

13 |ARTS

OVERHAULING THE ART EXPERIENCE Timeless works through new-age Google eyes

by Maud Doyle

G

oogle’s Art Project took the art world and digital world by storm when it premiered on February 1. The project features Google street view virtual tours of rooms in 17 museums in Europe and on the United States’ eastern seaboard, including behemoths like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Versailles outside of Paris, and the State Hermitage Museum in Moscow.

As you wander through the rooms of the some of the world’s great art museums, you can get high-res and super highres images of over 1,000 works by over 400 different artists. The project has been hailed as a breakthrough educational tool, and as a democratizer of the art world, giving laptop owners worldwide access, from the comfort of their homes, to paintings that they may never have the opportunity to visit in person.

Art Project has also, perhaps inadvertently, created an international network of museums. After choosing a painting to study up close, the virtual visitor might check “more works by this artist,” a list which includes works from any of the 17 museums.

In addition to the high-res images, each museum has chosen one painting for mega-pixel treatment, allowing unbelievably detailed study of the canvases of works such as Bottecelli’s Venus (at the Uffizi) or Van Gough’s Starry Night (at MoMA).

VIRTUAL VIRTUOSOS There has been, for some time, a rapport between museums and technology. The relationship is apt—like Google, and like the internet generally, museums could be thought of as vast repositories of discoverable information. At any given time, only a tiny portion of any museum’s collection is on display.

In 2000, the Guggenheim was developing a Virtual Museum—to be treated as another established branch, on the same level as the Guggenheim in Bilbao or the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice— in which traditional works would “hang” alongside virtual artwork in a morphing, three-dimensional architectural space.

Now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s relatively new director, Thomas P. Campbell, is attempting to make the museum more accessible by overhauling and massively expanding the museum’s technological component, with the aim of enabling visitors to learn from handheld devices as well as from wall text. He also wants to have digital records of all—that is, over 1.6 million—of the museum’s objects.

Most of the museums featured in Art Project already have hefty online components with varying degrees of relationships to “real” exhibitions and collections.

Almost all include lectures, event listings, multimedia activities, and highlights from the collection. MoMA’s online exhibitions, meanwhile, are full-blown websites, with text, scroll bars, navigation bars, and links alongside images. The Hermitage’s

screenshots by Emily Martin

website includes a searchable “digital collection,” and the Museo Reina Sofia’s online collection is organized by room and comes with a floor plan of the museum.

Browsing through a gallery space—one might say the principal activity of museumgoing—as opposed to “searching” online collections differentiates the umbrella Art Project from the individual museums’ existing online features. The Guggenheim’s millennial idea of building a virtual space for virtual and traditional art has given way to virtual tours of traditional spaces and virtual close-study of traditional art.

THE BIG PICTURE Art Project’s real claim to breakout stardom lies in the much-touted super zoom technology. Google has moved from imaging the topography of the earth to imaging the topography of painted images. The reproduction of Chris Ofili’s No Woman, No Cry (the Tate’s “star” painting and the only one of the 17 mega-pixel paintings painted after 1914) even includes an Xray option.

“Zooming,” a technological marvel that’s seen applications ranging from telescopes to bombing raids, has grown mundane. Still, despite all of Art Project’s supposed novelties, commentators seem most turned on by the high-res imaging. Roberta Smith, writing for the New York Times, was thrilled to discover a group of women skinny dipping in the far background of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Harvesters, bathers whom she had never noticed while at the Met. The New

Yorker, writing about The Ambassadors by Han Holbein the Younger (at London’s National Gallery) raves, “Zoom in… and read every note in the scene’s open psalm book.”

The problem with the mega-pixel technology is that as much as Roberta Smith may be marveling at the brushstrokes that define the buttocks of a nude woman poking out of the water, most of us are marveling at the technology that enables to see that at the same time, as much as if not more than the “artwork” itself.

Hardly surprising––the computer user is far closer to the technology than to the art itself.

GRAND THEFT ARTWORK Arguably, museums are already virtual spaces, if not digital spaces. They are disconnected from the world around them, not subject to its time, its politics, or its history, but instead preserve art objects in a kind of vacuum.

The “white cube”—exemplified by MoMA in this collection of virtual museums—is the most supremely plastic space, and the atmosphere in MoMA’s galleries was unmistakably that of a Thomas Crown Affair video game. On the other hand, touring Versailles, preserved intact for hundreds of years, feels equally plastic via Art Project, though it doesn’t inspire instinctual video game comparisons to the same degree—it simply, perhaps because of the detail of furniture and texture that could only exist in actuality, looks far more real. Wandering through the Hall

of Mirrors and looking up at Charles Le Brun murals is a thoroughly awesome experience compared to wandering the burgundy corridors of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art. The relationship between the virtual museums and their real locations is an uncomfortable one, even in this digital universe, despite the helpful Google Map available on the sidebar. Before realizing that only one of MoMA’s galleries is open for viewing, the inexperienced virtual tourist will be ejected from the 5th floor galleries to 54th Street at least a few times.

Tellingly, this is a far more jarring experience than moving smoothly from MoMA in New York to the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid by clicking the “Next” arrow—despite their distance, the two institutions seem more closely related to one another than to their own “real” environments.

The feeling of disorientation is further exacerbated when plunging headlong into the paintings with incredible levels of zoom—you get lost. The feeling of seeing something forbidden—points of bare canvas, a hair that fell out of a brush, a lady’s bare buttocks—is at once exciting and terrifying. But I also had the vaguely illicit feeling that I was looking at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus as an objective machine rather than as a feeling human. Though the opportunity to study Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch at such a dangerously close range is thrilling, the virtual tourist still feels himself to be at a great mediated remove from the painting. A reproduction, no matter how many pixels, is still a reproduction.

The zoom is frightening because it’s addictive—the desire to get closer to the painting urges you to zoom farther and farther, down this rabbit hole in which pixels are confused with the artist’s brushstrokes. And it’s frightening because when you’re digital eye is right up against micrometers of canvas, you still feel unsatisfied.

MAUD DOYLE B’11 could be thought of as a vast repository of discoverable information.

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FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

GOOGLE GIVETH. GOOGLE TAKETH AWAY. Google baits public with super high-res seven billion pixel artistic masterpiece

I

n 1933, Walter Benjamin prophesized the death of art and its aura in the age of mechanical reproduction. So we can imagine the mental breakdown Benjamin would experience upon viewing Art Project, Google’s latest marriage of cultural material and digital online access.

Google’s newest venture has been met with almost unanimous praise and support by those both in and outside of the art world for its focus on accessibility, visibility, and education in a field more commonly associated with exclusion and selectivity.

While most of the discussion surrounding the project has focused on the danger of the virtual experience replacing the firsthand, concerns have been raised over Google’s growing and astonishing influence in today’s global online culture, and its effort at contracting the art world into its monopoly.

THE BENEVOLENT CORPORATION Google’s emergence as a corporate juggernaut over the past five years hasn’t incited the expected collective wariness or conspiracy theories. Google has managed to avoid the ‘evil corporation’ trope by carefully crafting its public image—one exemplified by, yes, its expertise and efficiency, but more importantly, by its neutrality and a certain invisibility despite its status as a multinational corporation.

With 127 different services, Google is becoming not just a monopoly of the web, but a standard. The Internet starts at Google, an almost unseen, worldwide port, with its all-white, clean homepage.

That invisibility is very much a part of the reason why Google’s Art Project has been framed as a technological intervention into the art world, rather than a corporate one.

by Olivia Jene Fagon GOOGLE GIVETH. GOOGLE TAKETH AWAY. Art Project is just the latest initiative in Google’s long-term effort at digitizing and uploading cultural material exclusively to their sites. Launched in 2004, Google Books—Art Project’s literary brother—offers online access to thousands of scanned books and essays. A research godsend for both students and professional scholars, its high usage rates and popularity contributed to panic about the relevancy of the modern day library, and posed a threat to the rates and profits of the very same publishing houses with which the project was launched in collaboration. Rather then be cut out of the site’s high visibility and popularity, publishers arranged a settlement in 2005 that allows Google to display between 20 to 40 percent of a participating book’s material, while they maintain a limited ownership over said material.

The issue demonstrates Google’s ability to gain control over copyrighted cultural materials, and how, in an increasingly Internet-based social order, Google’s colossus web status can give its ownership claims more clout.

INTERNET ACCESS Still, there’s no reason to assume that Google will eventually own Botticelli’s Venus or Van Gogh’s Starry Night. (Google has no copyrights to the high-resolution images of the artworks.) But in order to

remain relevant and active in an Internet digitized context, museums have to partner with corporations like Google. The company is banking on these museums’ and galleries’ need to evolve and keep up with technological advancements.

Whether or not Art Project’s technology is signaling the demise of the museum experience—a hypothesis most, including Google reps, seem to dismiss—its success does indicate at least the possible emergence of a virtual online museum as a space for artistic exhibition. This, coupled with the popularity of video- and lightbased art, could put Google and the rapidly expanding Art Project in a very opportune business position, as the gatekeepers of an online digitized space that art venues and works are now attempting to occupy.

THE MAKINGS OF MAINSTREAM CULTURE Art Project creator Amit Sood claims that the site’s technology “in no way supplants the work of curators, conservators or collectors,” but as we move further into the Internet age, Art Project and Google’s other cultural tools could transition from archives to a more active culture-making role. The combination of Google’s internet supremacy, the emergence of the internet as the place for cultural exhibition and production, and Google’s contracts with the art world through Art Project, the literary world through Google Books,

and soon the music world—there are rumors that Google Music will launch next summer—could allow Google to select which art, books, or music enjoy the exposure and visibility their tools and search rankings offer.

Putting aside the unnerving possibility of a Google. Inc Art Canon, it’s a little more problematic to consider how Google would operate as both corporation and cultural actor. In 2005, Google caught JC Penny manipulating search optimizations in order to have their webpage appear more frequently on users searches, and responded by manually dropping JC Penny’s search rankings, severely cutting the store’s online shopping profits.

If the direct implementation of this ‘Google Will’ were to extend to an artist’s work on Art Project, or a newly released album’s purchasing page on Google Music, with such immediate and extensive market response, Google could easily maintain quite a bit of cultural authority based on market maneuverings.

In any case, these are questions for the future. Right now, Art Project is what Google says it is: a resource for facilitating the public’s exposure to art, and one that could be used to preserve museums’ popularity and perhaps highlight unrecognized art and venues.

What complicates Google Art, and other Google cultural tools, is that their success promises the preservation and continual production of art and culture in the digital online age—but the opportunity requires participation in Google’s Internet monopoly, a position that could weaken the art institutions’ integrity as it sets Google up to be a potent cultural and artistic authority.

OLIVIA FAGON B’13 asks Jeeves.

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

15 |FEATURES

FOR BETTER OR WORSE

INTRODUCING… THE INDYS

Honoring pop culture achievements from the last year ** ****** *************** ************************* ************************************ ************************************ ************************* *************** ****** **

Lesser Known Award Shows to Reward the Overlooked

Best Hot Tub Time Machine the one at Alice’s house

by Belle Cushing illustration by Adela Wu

‘T

is the season for gaudy and excessive award shows: starting with the Golden Globes in January, all the way through our old friends Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and finally Tony in June. Award shows encourage quality work and reward genuine artistic achievements.

They also shamelessly promote public celebrity preening, raise viewership, and pile praise upon already famous artists. However, beyond the Academy Awards, there is a lot of achievement in America that goes unnoticed—as do the award shows that recognize it. Here’s to the award shows that represent both the niche successes and national failures of pop culture.

HASTY PUDDING THEATRICALS: MAN AND WOMAN OF THE YEAR

Harvard would have its own award. The student theater group, which began as an arts fraternity in 1785, annually honors the achievements of one man and one woman in the professional performing arts world, Harvard diploma not required. This year’s awards went to Julianne Moore and Jay Leno. The award, which has been granted annually since 1951, began in order to recognize female achievement, the first honoree being English stage actress Gertrude Lawrence. It first included a Man of the Year in 1968, when Paul Newman was honored along with Angela Lansbury. The recipients are invited to attend a ceremony at Harvard, with a celebratory roast and parade. Basically it’s a good excuse to get a national celebrity to come hang out at their club. But out of all the potential Hollywood stars to invite, why Jay Leno?

THE NAMMYS: THE NATIVE AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS

The Grammys have Justin Bieber, the Nammys have Wind Spirit Drum. The Nammys, founded in 1998, promote achievements by Native Americans in all genres of the music industry.

The ceremony, held at the Seneca Niagara Hotel and Casino in Niagara Falls, NY, honors artists in categories ranging from Artist of theYear to Best Country Song. It is an opportunity to spotlight work that might otherwise be overlooked in more mainstream awards. In the spirit of inclusion, even non-Native American artists can be considered; the Native Heart award recognizes those who are Native American ‘at heart,’ as long as their work promotes the artistic initiatives of the native peoples. 2010’s honorees included Joseph FireCrow (Artist of theYear) and The Boyz for Boys will be Boyz (Best Pow Wow recording).

Best Argument Against Plastic Surgery Barbara Hershey in Black Swan Best Black Swan Showgirls

BAD SEX IN FICTION AWARD

The London-based Literary Review grants this award annually, upholding the noble purpose: “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.” The award has been embraced in English literary circles—after all, in the words of one recent winner, “There’s nothing more English than bad sex.” Winners have their work ridiculed in front of an audience of writers and publishers, and are presented with a bottle of champagne and a prize that resembles a naked woman sprawled across an open book. In 2008, John Updike was given the Lifetime Achievement Award. Author already dead? No problem! The award is even given posthumously, as it was to Norman Mailer for his description of the male reproductive organ as a “coil of excrement” in The Castle in the Forest in 2007. Other notable honorees were Rowan Somerville, last year for The Shape of Her (narrowly beating out Jonathon Franzen) and Tom Wolfe for I Am Charlotte Simmons. The Review cited the following passage to justify Wolfe’s win: “Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns ...” Wolfe refused the award, and claimed that the tediousness of his erotica was, in fact, deliberate. Sure.

THE CHRISTOPHERS

If Tony is the artsy theater kid, Emmy is the successful over-achiever, and Oscar is the bespectacled film student, then Christopher is the good boy from Sunday School that your mom always wanted you to date. The eponymous award show, the Christophers, finds spiritual inspiration in popular books, film, and television. According to Mary Ellen Robinson, VP of the foundation, “The creativity recognized by the Christopher Awards presents views of reality and flights of imagination that heighten inspiration and engage the human soul.” Winners are seemingly arbitrarily chosen by panels of media professionals, members of The Christophers’ staff with expertise in film, TV and book publishing, and by children’s reading groups. Nominees do not have to have specifically religious themes, but must contribute to a general optimism about life. The Pixar film Up, worth not only two Oscars and forty other awards, also apparently “affirms the highest values of the human spirit,” the qualifications of the award as set forth by founder Father James Keller. Dogs that talk, houses that fly, boy scouts that eat ice cream with ornery old men—definitely the stuff that dreams are made of. As the awards enter their 62nd year, they continue to encourage non-denominational spirituality in an increasingly atheist and nihilistic world.

THE RAZZIES

Every year, the day before the Academy Awards, another golden statue is presented to Hollywood actors and filmmakers for memorable work—memorably horrible work, that is.

The Golden Raspberry awards, affectionately known as the Razzies, dis-honor the large percentage of Hollywood’s output that is embarrassingly bad. Paying members of a website submit their votes for the worst in nine categories, including Worst Picture and Worst Prequel, Rip-off, or Sequel. Past special interest awards have included Most Flatulent Teen-Targeted Movie (Jackass:The Movie) and Worst Excuse for an Actual Movie (Gigli). For all those actors that just won’t get off the big screen, despite never making anything good, their hard work might finally be rewarded. The 31st Razzies will see vampires and bling, diva supporting actresses, and nine nominations for Razzie veteran M. Night Shyamalan. Who will carry away the Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3-D, Cats and Dogs 2, or Saw VII? Will Miley Cyrus keep the Worst Actress award away from the entire cast of Sex and the City 2? The ultimate losers will be revealed Saturday, February 26 at the Barnsdale Theater in Hollywood.

WORST IN SHOW: WORLD’S UGLIEST DOG CONTEST

If the plucked, shaved, and paraded dogs in a normal dog show aren’t freaky enough for you, the Sonoma-Marin Fair in California offers an alternative contest, for the world’s ugliest dog, au natural. The competition, which has been going on for 22 years, draws unfortunatelooking canines from all over the world, their owners looking to capitalize on the fact that their pet is a real eye-sore—and the $1,000 prize. Chinese Cresteds are generally favored to win, although the 2008 winner’s lack of not only hair, but also a left eye and a fourth leg seemed to give him an unfair advantage over other more complete canines. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, and winners of the contest end up with talk shows, blinged out doggie toys, and even modeling contracts. Beyond indulging spectators’ fetish for mutant animals, the contest has a philanthropic side. Models present orphan animals up for adoption in an “Ugly is the new Beautiful” Fashion show, although the models used to sell the dogs would certainly have no chance in a similar contest for humans. So if your dog is missing limbs or looks mildly challenged, send it out to Cali. Its misfortune could be your fortune.

BELLE CUSHING B’13 might just take that $1,000 prize.

Best cunnilingus that isn’t in Black Swan or Blue Valentine The American Truest Grit Waka Flocka Flame Best Slonk Donkerson Best Winter’s Bone The NC-17 parts of Blue Valentine Best James Franco IFC’s “Freaks and Geeks” Christmas marathon Hottest Classicist Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2 Best Press Release ATLANTA, GA (June 17, 2010) – As part of Carvel’s 75th Anniversary celebration last year, we issued 75 Black Cards to celebrities. These cards were issued in the celebrity’s name and require the card holder to be present at the time of use. Many celebrities have enjoyed their cards at our Carvel Ice Cream shoppes and have shared their excitement with being included in the celebration.

Unfortunately, the Lohan family has been abusing the card. While the card was issued in Lindsay and Ali’s names only, their extended family has repeatedly used the card without either present. At first, we graciously honored their requests while explaining that the Black Card was not a carte blanche for unlimited Carvel Ice Cream for the extended Lohan family and friends. After more than six months of numerous and large orders for ice cream, we finally had to cut off the card and take it back.

Dina Lohan reacted badly and called the police to have her card returned. The police responded and did return the card to Dina with instructions not to use it again.

This is an unfortunate situation where certain people feel entitled to use a celebrity’s name for their own purposes. We regret that the Lohan family is upset and hope this matter is put behind us quickly.

--Ashley Swann, Carvel Public Relations Manager ** ****** *************** ************************* ************************************ ************************************ ************************* *************** ****** ** ****** *************** ************************* ************************************ ************************************ ************************* *************** ****** ** ****** *************** ************************* ************************************ ************************************ ************************* *************** ****** **

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FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

THE ART OF VEGAN MIMICRY The quest for alfredo

I’ve been exposed to a lot of atypical foods during my 21 years; I’ve eaten raw conch, chocolate-covered ant clusters, Rocky Mountain oysters, ostrich burgers, alligator bacon, and spam—a lot of spam, actually. Some of these are more easily explained than others: I’ve got a cousin in Utah who used to send my family an “exotic meat basket” every Christmas, and growing up I spent my summers snacking on mussels and quahogs with my grandparents. Like everyone else, my family has its favorite comfort foods; it’s just that ours is pan-fried spam sandwiches with pickles, mayonnaise, and Colby Jack cheese.

I started out as a carnivore, but for some unknown reason I have since lost my predilection for meat. Why, you ask?

Perhaps I got sucked up into the neo-hippie health-nut culture of Brown University and the East Side, or maybe it was for some grander moral purpose. Most of us know the environmental effects of raising flatulent ozone-butchering cows for food, the nefarious plots of food corporations, and the myriad of cruel practices inflicted on Wilbur and Bessie while they wait for the shredder. (If you’re not, pick up The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Fast Food Nation, Animal Liberation, or any one of those food manifestos out there.) Maybe one of these persuaded me, or maybe during puberty my taste buds simply did a 180. Either way, I’ve gone cold turkey on animal flesh.

Eating vegan can be just as culinarily adventurous as eating carnivorously— sometimes more so. The various flavors and textures I come across while eating vegan food never cease to fascinate. Some are an obvious attempt to mimic “regular” food while others are a clear stand-alone.

Frankly, most vegan mimicry is usually just plain disappointing. Soy yogurt is disgusting and scarily chunky, and vegan chicken nuggets taste like breaded sponge. Weird, seemingly contradictory concoctions with obnoxiously clever names like “fakin’ bacon” and “roast without the beef” have already found their grocery niche. Many of these meat-alternative products seem like an interesting thing to try out (maybe, just maybe, I’ll find something like the real thing). Some get the texture, some get the taste, but upon closer inspection most are sure to repulse any vegetarians/vegans who abstain from meat for reasons other than for self-punishment. Even the nutritional benefit to eating this stuff is tenuous at best – I can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, which to me signifies “Stay away!”

Ironically, the growing market for “alternative foods” disregards what is supposed to be the central idea of eating vegan—food that is better for you also tastes better. True, most of the vegans I know are in it for a combination of the health,

by Molly Cousins illustration by Annika Finne

environmental, and humane aspects, but that doesn’t mean that taste has to be secondary. We want to be able to satisfy cravings for ice cream and Ruebens when we need to, and some of these alternatives do a bang-up job of recreating the texture and taste we’re craving (see: Like No Udder, Providence’s purple vegan ice cream truck). Dying tempeh with beet juice so that it more closely resembles bacon, but isn’t full of additives, is an ingenious idea.

That said, we’re not going to eat fake ham and fake cheese sandwiches every day— it’s not satisfying and, as I see it, sort of defeats the point of veganism. For most people, a major selling point for veganism is that, at least until very recently, it eliminates most processed foods from the diet. Fresh foods do taste better, especially when done right. While the general perception is that vegans sacrifice taste for health, this isn’t the case. Only when unprepared—for example, out at a restaurant without vegan options—does it appear that vegans live lives full of bland boiled vegetables accompanied by brown rice and salads without dressing. Eating complex carbohydrates and fresh foods full of vitamins and nutrients is better for our dayto-day functioning and, if done right, can taste better than that grilled cheese that will leave you lethargic and craving more in just an hour. A well-executed vegan “alternative” to grilled cheese will satisfy your craving and fill you up with the right nutrients.

That having been said, vegan attempts at dairy products are my latest obsession.

I have yet to come across a cheese-alternative that could fool me, but I have to give credit for inventiveness. I also fully realize that I may never find something healthier than cheese that tastes, feels, and melts like cheese. That’s okay with me, as long as I have an option to satisfy cravings with a close approximation that tastes good and is good for me. I recently purchased a copy of the Un-Cheese Cookbook—which at times bears closer resemblance to a chemistry textbook than it does a cookbook. Some recipes require ingredients like agar (a gelatinous substance that comes from algae) or raw cashew milk, while others are simply a combination of mustard, vinegar, and spices. I’m a little frightened of agar, not to mention I have no idea where to purchase it, so for the time being I’m going to stick with what I know is affordable and what I’m likely to use again in the future.

MOLLY COUSINS B’11 cooks with baconnaise.

VEGAN ACORN SQUASH ALFREDO My latest challenge has been vegan alfredo sauce. Most of us have probably had alfredo—basically all it consists of is cream, butter, and parmesan cheese. Delicious, for sure, but it sounds sort of difficult to veganize, no?

After bookmarking and post-it-ing half a dozen recipes over the past few months, I finally found one that didn’t prominently feature any deal-breaking ingredients. I practically skipped all the way to the grocery store to pick up my acorn squash, which the recipe suggests as a means of achieving the creaminess we usually associate with alfredo. Soon thereafter I had a delicious, creamy sauce and a holiday weekend ahead of me. Life was good again.

The general concensus was that it was delicious, although we were split as to whether the texture mimicked that of non-vegan alfredo (the taste didn’t). It satisfied my craving, which was ultimately the most important part for me. Some of the less healthy recipes I’d found called for two sticks of margarine, a tub of vegan cream cheese, or gobs of soy yogurt to recreate the thick consistency of a real cream sauce, but I think that using squash instead was an effective solution, although it did lend an extra—albeit muted—flavor into the mix. As far as a non-dairy version of a dish composed entirely of dairy products goes, I’d recommend it. However, in the future, I’d be interested in experimenting with tahini or hummus in the sauce to make it even creamier. The competing flavors of the Dijon and apple cider vinegar added a surprising tang to the dish —I enjoyed it, but it might disconcert those looking for a true dairy doppelganger.

INSTRUMENTS AND INGREDIENTS +food processor +oven +stovetop +casserole pan +bottle opener

+1 medium acorn squash (5-6” diameter) +1/3 c nutritional yeast +3/4 c plain soy milk +1/2 c chopped parsley or basil +2 tbsp Dijon mustard +2 tbsp apple cider vinegar +2-3 cloves garlic +1 tbsp dried oregano +1 tsp thyme +2 tsp real maple syrup +1 tsp red pepper flakes +1 dash cayenne +salt-n-pepa +beer, barleywine, or wine of your choice (or all three)

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat your oven to 350F. Fill casserole dish with 1/2 inch of water. Slice your squash in half horizontally and scoop the seeds out. (This step will probably take a while—cutting those buggers up is difficult. This is why I always mash or purée my squash, as an attempt to salvage the appearance of my dish. Mangled squash cubes generally look less appetizing than a smooth pureé.)

Plunk your squash (or squash fragments) into the casserole dish cut-side down.

Roast for 60 minutes or until soft when poked at with a fork. Be very careful when taking the pan out of the oven, as that water is now extremely hot. Remove the squash parts carefully and let them cool for a few.

In the meantime, dump every other ingredient into your food processor. If you’re planning on serving the sauce with pasta, heat your water and get the pasta cooking. I recommend whole-wheat penne, although you could certainly serve over broccoli or cauliflower. (One of my housemates simply ate the sauce with a spoon, so I guess there’s that option as well.)

Once the squash is cool enough, scoop the flesh out and plop it into the food processor. Process it for a minute or so until it’s an even consistency. Taste and season with salt/pepper accordingly. Sneak a few spoonfuls. Once your sauce vehicle of choice is ready, combine, pour the wine, and chow.

17 |LITERARY

MORE SIGNS

by Esther Nasty illustration and design

by Alexandra Corrigan

FEBRUARY 24 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org

I just finished some exceedingly demanding work on signs for a certain Brown academic department, reminding the prospective viewer of his/her moral responsibility to turn off the lights upon exiting the room. They are pretty great signs, to be honest, and because of this it occurs to me that all laws or requests or generally understood social norms should be written on signs and taped places.

Already roads are kind of good at doing this, but not exactly. A lot could be improved. Stop signs should have clarificatory addendums pasted to them that are like “…cars! At this line!” because right now maybe people stop walking or breathing or kissing when they see that sign and that’s wrong. But everyone knows road laws don’t matter that much anyway, so this is not the main problem to be fixed.

I’m thinking more WAR ON DRUGS kinda things. Exempli gratia: in “economically destitute” (or whatever the current Latinate euphemism is) neighborhoods maybe we could post some signs that are like “Don’t Sell Drugs!! Under Pain of Sporadically Enforced Laws!!” And then when dudes are putting on black parkas to do the drop-off thing I saw them do on Notorious (the Biggie one not the Hitchcock one) they remember they should be making snow angels or selling Girl Scout cookies, which I’m pretty sure was the only thing I was ever allowed to do in my

parka when I was a kid. Then we could put some ones up in Italian restaurants that say “Killing is mean and also illegal!” so mafiosos will remember how they are supposed to stop doing this and just check their BlackBerrys under the tablecloth, like normal people do. Also of course our border with Mexico needs lots of signs.

Big signs, small signs, maybe even some people handing out flyers to anyone eating a taco. And everywhere there should be stuff written on the wall to remind people to check with the people they want to have sex with to make sure they also wanna have the sex.

Okay, I know God and Moses already kind of had this idea, but everyone except sort of small-minded people who want to limit the scope of the signage to ten kind of obvious-ish truisms (except for the weird one which restricts freedom of believing whatever cool stuff you want, which is kind of weird) forgot about it.

Also, my signs would include black and white cartoon drawings. On my PAY YOUR TAXES sign there would be a man in a fedora pointing a 1940s-style revolver at you. Another one could be a CNN-style eagle who’s also a girl eagle if in fact girl eagles do exist, tending to a nest that’s half eagle eggs and half eagle grenades.

And now that I am thinking more and more about this, I realize how I don’t even know that many laws beyond the

obvious ones. I mean, I know some for conversational-anecdote purposes (another example ex gratia: how in many places you gotta have fifty dollars on you, which considering that mostly I never do means I am constantly ON THE LAM), but I’m sure there are all kinds of laws that even I don’t know and it’d be neat to be filled in on, probably. Mergers and acquisitions and also fair mortgages are something I know nothing about, but about which I would like to learn. Also Farm Bill? Maybe there are things I could get paid subsidies for, besides corn.

Anyway, what with all the wall and road and television (duh) and pull-downair-plane-tray table space these law signs would be taking up, there would hardly be any room for ads. Which would be sad, so what I propose is that, because since now law books would be obsolete as well, we fill a bunch of leather-bound books with complexly numbered ads and have a select group of really ambitious people study them, and then so next time you need to buy toothpaste but you forget which brand is the most sagacious alternative, you go in for a consultation and the dude charges you by the hour and opens some books and tells you what’s up, and you leave cursing dude’s fee or attitude, but you know, whatever, life goes on.