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Issue #8
The Instability of Capitalism (p. 2)
Self-Publishing (p.6) Ben`s Best-of Cinema (p. 28)
Interview with The Danks (p.11) Political Corruption (p. 14)
Not Another Canadian Short Story (p.24)
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PROBLEMS WITH CAPITALISM
The Instability of Capitalism
(Above: The building collapse in Savar, Bangladesh that killed 1127 workers and subsequently caused a stir in the media over worker rights and the responcibilities of the companies whose products were produced in this building.) By Nicholas Marlatte POLITICAL ANALYST
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Only a few weeks ago 1127 workers died and approximately 2500 others were injured in the city of Savar in what was Bangladesh’s worst ever industrial disaster. The collapse of an eight story building that housed a garment factory, among a number of shops and offices, ignited an international discussion on the state of safety and working conditions within Bangladesh and throughout the industrialized world that we in the first world depend upon for our consumer goods. Most disturbingly, the disaster occurred only days after large cracks had been noticed near the ground floors in the building, inciting many of the street level businesses to evacuate the
building while thousands of garment makers were forced by their management to come into work, raising major questions over how the lives of workers are actually valued. This incident is of particularly great concern given the incredible frequency in which dangerous infrastructure causes deaths and injuries within Bangladesh. Third party investigators have found that over a thousand occupational death occur in the country each year, despite official numbers being much more modest.1 Despite the pressure from both consumers across the world and the workers and their families themselves, it seems as if meaningful legislation protecting workers will not come to be. In early June this year, protests within the city of Savar that were criticizing the working conditions and
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lack of safety regulations within the country were quelled by gunfire. Furthermore, the formal proposal put in place to address these problems has largely been rejected by companies invested in these factories— such as Walmart, which has been linked to this particular factory. These companies show little sign of changing their minds unless the penalties and legal consequences that would dissuade companies from infringing upon these restrictions are reduced or removed from the proposal altogether. Essentially these companies are asking for both the safety regulations to exist in form alone and that these regulations hold no coercive power to ensure the companies’ adherence. Such flimsy regulations would undoubtedly give the companies the ability to continue to profit off of deplorable working conditions while selling an appearance of accountability. This avoidance of accountability would be done of course to lower their costs of production by ensuring that money is not spent on allowing the workers safe conditions to work within or even a sustainable wage. As a testament to this, it was recently reported that the workers in this factory were paid as little as 38 American Dollars per month.2
“ Such flimsy regulations would undoubtedly give the companies the ability to continue to profit off of deplorable working conditions while selling an appearance of accountability.”
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Such contempt for working people within the unregulated, industrialized world is no secret, but the incredible intensity in which exploitation of workers functions within these countries shows how truly unstable unfettered capitalism is. Poor maintenance of factories ultimately destroys the labour necessary to continue producing by over-exploiting that labour. This fact calls to mind the now infamous example of Chinese factories that produce Apple products having to put up safety nets around their multi-storey facilities to prevent employees from committing suicide, largely as a result of these workers’ barely liveable wages being revoked as a convention for not achieving quotas. It is evident that, even when looking beyond the humane response of valuing life over money, the intensity of the recent preventable disaster in Bangladesh will have a great impact on the companies involved and undermine their own ability to achieve their financial goals. In Marx’s seminal work Capital, he describes the destabilizing nature of capitalism, and this natural drive to undermine its own ability to sustain itself—an idea ultimately counter to the old free market argument that the economy is self-regulating and doesn’t need to be perfected through legislation. Marx argued that the instability of capitalism arose out of what he considered to be a coercive law of competition, which necessitated companies to seek ever more efficient manners of production and exploitation. Whether a CEO wants to protect the environment or is indifferent to the damage that their company is responsible for, she will necessarily be forced by competition to the limit of what is most profitable out of the necessity to exist within a market framework. Whether this requires reduction of safety measures, overwork
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ing employees to the point of death, or the gutting of environmental oversight programs—as Walmart was recently convicted of in California—the result can lead to the destruction of resources and lives that are valuable to people beyond the indifferent filter of money. It can also directly undermine the ability for companies to acquire capital in the future by destroying necessary resources and labour for production. This shows a short-sightedness in the companies’ own evaluation of the world as well as the inherent problem with their focus on profits and advancing capital. This problematic sort of thinking is best described by the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of partial nihilism. Whereas nihilism is normally a denial that anything is valuable in the world,
PROBLEMS WITH CAPITALISM partial nihilism more popularly exists as a value system that only upholds a limited number of things as important within the diverse landscape of human society. So much like the passionate lover or drug addict who will destroy their most fundamental relationships to seek out their pathological goal, the spirit of modern industry through competition ultimately leads to a focusing of all of one’s caring or effort towards achieving that which is being competed for: money. Though much like an addict, the direction of industry, led by corporations and their ability to pull the strings of government, has turned to means of acquiring capital that will inevitably destroy the environment around us and the ability of billions of people to sustain themselves within the foreseeable future.
(Below: Manufacturing factories run by Foxconn which assembles goods for companies like Apple, have installed safety nets after 18 employees attempted suicide by jumping off the buildings.)
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The pending ecological crisis is estimated to displace a quarter of the Earth’s human population and will undoubtedly disrupt industry and economic development. Despite this, the economic interests and the lobbying of large corporations that are dependent on its continuation of burning fossil fuels simply trump our other motivations as a society. As the Slovenian philosopher and social critique Slavoj Zizek explains as the thesis of his book Living in the End Times, we as a species are going through the steps of grief in an attempt to deal with the coming disaster: climate change denial remains a major aspect of political culture as industry commercially promotes its legitimacy despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary; anger is a common response among younger generations in which people blame others to distance themselves from responsibility and even deny their own ability to make change; while bargaining seems to be the common response of progressive politics, through which relatively meaningless acts of recycling, increasing power efficiency of one’s home and pressure for minor legislative restraints of industry through carbon taxes offer a sense of absolution with little real impact given the gravity of the situation; and true grief sets in once that immensity is internalized and we prepare ourselves to accept an unbiased perspective on why it has happened and what is necessary to protect what we can into the future. This requires the conclusion that: our economic institutions need to fundamentally be changed by the people to support both the concerns of the population and security interests in the future, and that the interests of corporations cannot continue to dictate policy if we are going to survive. This undoubtedly is a problem given the
June 14, 2013
“the interests of corporations cannot continue to dictate policy if we are going to survive.” success in which Neoliberalism has virally spread itself through the world since its initial implementation through Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney, and through which deregulation and dismantling safety nets have been implemented throughout the world. Missions of liberating countries, such as Iraq, or supporting dictatorial coups have long been the means of the capitalist world to attain deregulated havens of market freedom in which corporations can exploit and profit from local. Often times this behaviour is accepted, as it offers cheap products to the developed world. But given the need for us to actualize reasonable legislation to prevent the markets’ natural inefficiencies and obviously destructive actions, we have no option but to accept the grief that things need to be changed. If not, the question then is “how much will policies of globalized deregulation harm us before they kill us?” Works Cited 1. Khanom, Farida, Ms. Occupational Accident Statistics in Bangladesh: Reality, Problems and Challenges. Rep. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.amrc.org.hk/system/ files/OSH%20Status%20report%20-Bangledesh.pdf>. 2. “Life Terms Urged in Bangladesh Building Collapse.” Inter Press Service News Agency. N.p., 23 May 2013. Web. <http:// www.ipsnews.net/2013/05/life-termsurged-in-bangladesh-building-collapse/>.
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THE WRITING PROCESS
Self-Publishing and Writing About People You Know
‘A Masque of Infamy’ author Kelly Dessaint gives the MC Press an inside look at the world of independent publishing By Michael Cuthbertson EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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I’ve heard people say that they don’t think they could write because it takes really opening oneself to the world. Author Kelly Dessaint—whose latest novel A Masque of Infamy is a deeply intimate and surprisingly funny account of his growing up in an abusive household—agrees writing about the life of oneself and of those close to oneself can be daunting. “I understand that fear completely,” Dessaint admits. “It’s what kept me from pursuing the story [of A Masque of Infamy] for so long. I used to really kick myself about it, thinking that if I were a better writer I could tell the story in some kind of twisted allegorical way, where I could be 100 per cent honest, but not have to face a backlash. But anybody who thinks they can write about the people in their life honestly and not face consequences is a fool.” Dessaint explains that giving the people in his debut novel pseudonyms, and consulting beforehand with the individuals who appear in his story, only mildly settled the complex emotional issues his novel brought to the surface. “[Writing as Louis
(Above: Writer Kelly Dessaint) Baudrey] gave me the freedom to write the story I wanted to tell. It didn’t release me from the responsibility of how it would affect my family.” Elaborating on the tension he encountered with the people he wrote about, Dessaint explains that, “My
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little brother, who is the most prominent family member in the novel, has gone back and forth about it, alternately giving me his blessing and threatening to sue me. Which is a shame because I think I did his suffering justice in the book.”
“My little brother, who is the most prominent family member in the novel, has gone back and forth about it, alternately giving me his blessing and threatening to sue me.” Indeed, Dessaint does an terrific job of putting you in the place of his characters and helping you empathize with what they are going through. One of the greatest virtues of Dessaint’s writing in A Masque of Infamy is how he fills the reader with a deep sense that the experiences they are reading about are presented precisely the way they looked and felt to the real human beings that the novel is based on. Sometimes this realness is tragic: as when we witness the protagonist Louis Baudrey and his younger brother dragged into a system of psychiatric institutions and group homes that seem so convoluted and oddly managed that you know you are reading about something from the real world. But the novel is also filled with moments of Louis and those dear to him triumphing in little ways. Most prominently, Louis Baudrey—the character based on Dessaint himself—has a special way of resisting authority and navi-
June 14, 2013 gating uncomfortable environments that even a strong-willed adult would hardly be expected to navigate as smoothly as the adolescent Baudrey does. Uncovering the magic in a world as troubling as the young Baudrey’s was something Dessaint evidently had in mind from the early stages of writing his debut novel. Dessaint explains, “When I started writing I had to approach it from all sorts of angles. I knew I wanted it to be funny and to keep the abuse in the background, where it was at the time, as I was living through it, because I didn’t even see the way I was treated as ‘abuse’ or anything really significant until the social workers came around and made a big deal about it.” Dessaint explains though that over the years it became more clear that the story of A Masque of Infamy was something he, as a writer, simply had to tell. “Around 36, I realized that if I didn’t write something worth a damn, I’d have to give up the dream and move on to . . . What? I didn’t and still don’t know. The logical thing to write about was the one subject that was haunting me, the one I’d always avoided telling, the story of when I was fifteen and moved to Alabama, had my father arrested and ended up in a mental hospital. It wasn’t easy to face the dark recesses of my childhood and find some literary worth in the experience.” Picking such personal material to write about took a long time for Dessaint to come to terms with. As he puts it, “For most of my adult life, I kept my past a secret because I thought telling people would only bum them out and/ or they would perceive me differently if they knew I’d been abused as a child.” Even once Dessaint did decide to begin writing about this period of his
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THE WRITING PROCESS
(Left: The cover of Kelly Dessain’t debut novel A Masque of Infamy, featuring pictures of the young Dessaint himself. While Dessaint wrote under pseduonyms, he says the writing and publication of the novel still impacted the individuals whom the story is based on.) Dessaint’s novel is currently available in both paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon. life, he still had a lengthy writing process ahead of him that took over four years and entailed countless rewriting. “My first draft was 850 pages, written in third person. I wanted to see the story from everybody’s perspective,” Dessaint notes. “I was able to talk to my dad about what happened, and I interviewed my other family members . . . I even tried to get as many records as I could from the court case and the newspaper articles that were written during the time. This approach helped me understand
the experience and put the story together, as factually as possible; so when I started the second draft, this time written in the first person, I knew what was going on with everybody else and was free to just focus on my own experience.” Asked what was most surprised him about the process of writing and publishing his first novel, Dessaint candidly replies, “Oh, I thought I would be able to sell the manuscript. Ha! I had some connections in the publishing world and figured I’d get published for sure. So the
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massive amount of rejection was a bit shocking. But then, when you’re in the midst of writing and editing and then rewriting and editing again and again, you have to think of yourself as a rock star, otherwise what’s the point, right?”
“...when you’re in the midst of writing and editing and then rewriting and editing again and again, you have to think of yourself as a rock star, otherwise what’s the point, right?” As Dessaint can definitely attest to, trying to publish a novel in 2013 has its ups and downs: offering both new avenues for publishing, but also definitely not making the attempt to sell one’s manuscript to a publisher any easier or more pleasant than in the past. As Dessaint says, “Everything is online now. So I was able to get responses via email rather quickly. Immediate rejection, there is nothing quite like it! So many were stock responses, obviously. My favorite ones were addressed to ‘Ms. Dessaint’ and began, ‘After careful consideration…’” On the plus side of this modern publishing world, Dessaint was able to publish his book both online and in print by taking the matter into his own hands. “I decided to revive my old press, Phony Lid Books, since I knew what I wanted to do, how I wanted to present it and it’s a punk rock book, so why wouldn’t I put it out myself?” Dessaint’s truly enterprising, D.I.Y at-
June 14, 2013 titude, which ensured A Masque of Infamy became published, is also what makes Dessaint’s autobiographical protagonist Louis Baudrey such an engaging character to follow. Baudrey is a teenager filled with charisma, rebellion and an ability to take situations into his own hands. Not surprisingly, all of these traits are exuded by Dessaint himself in both his charming writing style and, more broadly, his ability to take personal control over his publishing endeavours. Like so much great art, Dessaint’s novel was crafted with an intensity that consumed much of his energy and personal life for years while working on it. As Dessaint puts it, he simply could not wait for major publishers to pick the book up any longer, saying, “ I needed to get this book out—out of my computer, out of my head, out of my fucking living room— OUT!—in order to preserve my sanity as well as my wife’s sanity.” Dessaint, not being one to sugarcoat a trying experience admits that, “Writing this book was hard and it took a lot out of me. I just about lost my marriage. No joke. My wife had to deal with me during the entire experience, which wasn’t easy for her. So having the book in print was a catharsis; we needed to move on with our lives.” In hearing of all these challenges, currently unpublished writers may feel sceptical of their own abilities to see their work through to the end, but Dessaint is careful to also mention the sense of accomplishment that comes from getting your book published, regardless of what publishing means a writer has to do pursue to achieve this. When asked what advice he could give unpublished authors, Dessaint says, “The most important part is finishing the book. That’s the greatest feeling in
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the world. It’s like graduating from school and getting a degree. You have this . . . thing that is yours. No matter what, you have that. The other part—selling it, getting it published—that can be even harder than writing the damn thing. It’s like finding a job; it can be very humbling and heartbreaking and excruciating.”
22, so it’s seven years later. After the foster homes and college, I’d lost most of the precocious qualities I had as a teenager. Being a ward of the state forced me to neutralize my personality in order to survive. So I guess that’s what the book will be about: finding the spirit of that kid who was squashed by the system.” Picking up a copy of A Masque of Infamy is something literary enthusiasts, particularly those of a more countercultural bent, will be happy they did. The story of Louis Baudrey is one that offers much entertainment and encouragement to any independent thinkers and artists out there who, despite possessing unique talents, do not quite find the adult world to be all one in their youth thinks it might be. In a way Dessaint reads like an authority on being shafted by the powers that be. Likewise, the difficulty of writing and selling something raw, uncompromising and non-commercial is a challenge he knows well. As Dessaint puts it, whether you’re looking to sell your manuscript or self-publish it, “Either way, you still gotta fight to get your voice heard . . . but that’s what being a writer is all about.”
“The most important part is finishing the book. That’s the greatest feeling in the world. It’s like graduating from school and getting a degree. You have this . . . thing that is yours. No matter what, you have that.” Fortunately, Dessaint is already back in action and working on his second autobiographical novel using the name Louis Baudrey. He says, however, that the character is quite different than in A Masque of Infamy. “It’s set in 1994, when I was
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CANADIAN ROCK MUSIC
June 14, 2013
The Danks continue to dazzle the ears on Gank The sophomore release of Canadian power pop champions the Danks is well worth the wait
(Above: Left to right, The Danks are: Alec O’Hanley on guitar, Phil MacIsaac on drums, Brohan Moore on lead vocals and Brian Murphy on bass. Photo by Julia Schill.) By Michael Cuthbertson EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
- Buzzcocks and the Strokes. There was a lot of energy around that style of music at that time and that was Back in 2005, old-school, guitar-driv- also the time when we were forming.” en rock music was still very much on Eight years later, Moore says he and the radar of the indie world. Bands his bandmates still love these bands, returning to older punk and rock in- but he adds that the Danks have acfluences abounded. As The Danks’ cumulated new influences and new lead singer Brohan Moore recalls, “At songwriting approaches since then. the time we were in university and As Moore puts it, “You try not to tread listening to a lot of the Unicorns, the where you’ve already tread, without tak
The MC Press ing too big of a departure.” For returning Danks fans, you will find they accomplish this mission well on their new album which is being released June 11. Their upcoming sophomore release Gank still has a lot of the classic Danks sound: featuring dynamic rhythm guitars, warm vocals and, true to the power pop ethos, it showcases the Danks all playing tightly in time with each other. Having heard Gank numerous times, this record, like its predecessor Are You Afraid of the Danks?, stands out to me as being such a non-stop, good vibes, rocker of an album that it seems hard to label certain songs “the hits,” and other ones “the B-sides.” All of the tracks on Gank resonated with me as fresh, energetic, dopamine releasing songs. Still, a few tracks in particular do sound like the sort of dancey, fist-pumping songs that would get a crowd excited. “Not News” and “Sharpshooter,” for example, could rightly be released as singles (if bands still did that in 2013). Also, “Big Picture” is outstanding and I see it as a follow-up to their blistering track “374” off their debut album. I say this because both “374” and “Big Picture” prominently feature Alec O’Hanley’s speedy rhythm guitar filling the air with glorious and purely rockin’ amplified goodness. “Experimental Fiction” also shows the band’s songwriting depth, seeing them venture into more shoegazey territory and doing a fantastic job of exploring that sonic realm. Though it has been four years since the Danks released their debut power-pop gem Are You Afraid of the Danks?, Moore says the band never really went on hiatus. In between the two
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albums—while Danks co-founder Alec O’Hanley was busy with Two Hours Traffic, and Moore himself left to do a Master’s Degree at Western University—the two continued to send each other demos on the computer from abroad. When it came time to record Gank, the Danks returned to their hometown of Charlottetown, P.E.I where they recorded demos with an engineer in O’Hanley’s parent’s cottage. However, the album was later re-recorded in Kensington Market in Toronto. Asked about initially recording amidst the backdrop of the East Coast, Moore describes the environment much as someone like myself, who has never been to the Maritimes, stereotypically imagines the place to be. “Charlottetown has a relaxed vibe and you can eat a lot of great seafood out there,” Moore explains. “There’s people golfing . . . It’s just like Anne of Green Gables.” But considering all the old-timey
“‘Charlottetown has a relaxed vibe and you can eat a lot of great seafood out there. There’s people golfing . . . It’s just like Anne of Green Gables.” - Brohan Moore influences surrounding Gank, both musically and environmentally, the album carves out a sound that is surpris
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(Above: The Danks’ second LP, Gank) ingly new, showcasing more modern guitar tones and experimental production techniques than their debut album offered. Nevertheless, Moore expressed agreement with the popular sentiment among music-lovers that when the bands a person likes progress really far away from their original sound, they often start to suck. Fortunately, Gank does an upstanding job of changing its sound just enough to still demonstrate the vintage sounding guitar-heavy, pop-rock style the Danks already mastered while also not being ashamed of revealing that this album was made with equipment idiosyncratic to the 21st century. “Octagonal” and “Genre Tourism” in particular are decidedly modern sounding songs: with drums like beat machines, prominent synths and, on “Octogonal,” guitars that have a highly punchy and somewhat digital quality. Putting all these factors together, Gank often feel more like a work of the 2010s than an album
June 14, 2013 indebted to the Sixties or Seventies. For me, The Danks have achieved a special and exalted place in my music library, being one of the few bands where, if I’m picking music to listen to for the day, and I’m in the right mood, I find almost no other band’s albums seem quite as tempting to pop in as their’s do. There is a unique mood the Danks’ albums create. This seems partly to do with the fact that there are so few bands who have both as much energy and as good of vibes as the Danks’ music does. Many bands go for one or the other: with heavy bands seeking high energy while baring a darker emotional quality, while indie bands meanwhile will often showcase their good-spirited, youthful-sounding vocals but overall lack in energy. Asked if there was a formula behind the Danks’ writing style, Moore says he or Alec will usually have the bare bones of the song and get together with the other one to write the lyrics together and drink. “We usually try to write drunk,” says Moore, adding that they want to keep the writing process as fun as possible. Indeed, the band has brought their good-times sound into 2013, a year that is already proving to be an exciting one for the Danks. Following the June 11 release of Gank, the band is planning a nationwide tour. Also, having already had Gank essentially completed for about eight months, Moore says they are already working on new material. Fortunuately, Gank will be made available on both CD and vinyl and let me assure you rock fans out there that this is an album with enough replay value to make purchasing it totally worth your while.
The MC Press
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SOCIAL ACTIVISM
Awakening Our Democracy Things are not that good… our leaders can’t be trusted, our democracy is being dismantled by the Government and industry, poverty rates are increasing, services and safety nets are being cut, the environment is being destroyed, and the feasibility of maintaining the prosperity that exists in many parts of the world is ultimately collapsing. All in a period in which humanity has achieved the greatest and most efficient productivity as well as the broadest understanding of the world around us that we have ever possessed. By Nicholas Marlatte (POLITICAL ANALYST) and Michael Cuthbertson (EDITOR-IN-CHIEF) In Canada we all know that the Conservative government is distinguished for its remarkable ability to show prudence in spending. For example, we witnessed their frugal use of the public’s money on Mike Duffy’s housing expenses. And the Government especially showed responsible financial planning skills in their ability to carefully allocate 12.9 billion dollars of taxpayer money to Public Security and Anti-Terrorism. They can even proudly tell Canada that they’ve accounted for 9.8 billion dollars of that spending. And as a testament to the legitimacy of the Conservative government, even after the Supreme Court ruled that several ridings in the 2011 federal election had experienced voter fraud working to the favour of the Conservative party, the judges still found the Conservatives’ victory to be valid. This fraud, which occurred even in ridings so closely contested as the local Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar riding, wherein the Conservatives achieved victory by only 500 votes, shows the Canadian public that they should have every reason to believe the Conservatives won fair and square.
(Above: Mike Duffy and the Conservatives have been permitted to act unaccountable for too long.) And the fine government operating behind the venerable Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also done a tremendous job of being transparent and showing the public how their dollars are being spent for the betterment of Canadian society. The Conservatives have done this especially well through their Action Plan advertisements, wherein they disclose to the public how the government’s budget is really be
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ing spent and, as an artistic aside, the ads also depict very realistically the social reality of living in Canada. All of this of course would not be possible if they had not taken the initiative to double the advertising budget of the federal government since 2006. At least these images of a thriving and democratic Canada are the images we are presented with in the rhetoric of the Conservatives. But the real picture is more complicated... Political Corruption The Mike Duffy Scandal and his Government’s bad record in accounting for their own spending happens to run fatally counter to the ridiculous notion that conservative parties ensure economically sustainable policies for working people. This is an all too commonly held notion, as the Conservatives only pay lip service to average Canadians when they really seek to promote the richest and most detached from normal workings in our society. It is more than obvious that the excesses of Mike Duffy have led him to attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the public that funds him. Meanwhile his absolution as a result of the Prime Minister’s own office funding him to simply pay back his illegitimate tax claims, unscathed from the legal precedent, shows that the prevailing belief in Ottawa is that those that are rich and in power are better than everyone and don’t deserve the same response from the law. The problem being that the rich and powerful can believe it because most of them do tend to get away with their violations of the law. There is a large contingent of politicians who do not hold themselves up to the standard that we expect from our representatives. And in picking bad representatives we can do nothing but take
April 30, 2013 responsibility from them as quickly as possible and not trust them with it again. The great concern at hand is that we don’t respect our democratic system enough to uphold its integrity when it has definitely been meddled with in a manner that undermines the entire basis for our society. Instead of taking people out of office that prove to be bad leaders or people that got into office by cheating we just sit back. It spits in the face of the values that we as hard working, community promoting Canadians all possess. This is partly revealing of our electoral system’s inability to effectively represent the public, but idleness is not the answer. The only reasonable response is to be emotional towards the assault upon us, to take back what we deserve and to stand up together against those that used us to take it from us.
“The great concern at hand is that we don’t respect our democratic system enough to uphold its integrity when it has definitely been meddled with in a manner that undermines the entire basis for our society.” Irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars In 2006, when the Conservatives came to power, they inherited a federal advertising budget of $41.3 million. They have doubled this total, and in one instance tripled it, every year since they’ve been in power.1 This is largely due to the “economic ac
The MC Press tion plan” ads they have been running. In fact, since 2009 the Conservatives have spent more the $100 million on these ads. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has shamelessly defended this lavish spending by saying that, “Canadians are entitled to know what their government is doing.” Of course these ads are quite explicitly not intended to keep the Conservative government accountable but rather to win over voters by creating a wholly sunny image of the government’s economic behaviour. This sort of heavily biased self-promotion is known as propaganda in layman’s terms. Attesting to these ulterior motives is how the Harper government—which is now looking for a creative contractor to continue producing their “economic action plan” ads for three more years—is explicitly describing their aims for these ads to the ad agencies who may win the contract. The government’s statement of works declares that creating consumer confidence and confidence in the direction of the country is a major objective of the campaign.2
“These [‘economic action plan’] ads are quite explicitly not intended to keep the Conservative government accountable but rather to win over voters by creating a wholly sunny image of the government’s economic behaviour. Confidence in the country is, of course,
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SOCIAL ACTIVISM
another way of saying confidence in the government currently in power. Indeed, a 2012 analysis by the Privy Council Office, the bureaucracy that supports the prime minister, found that individuals who saw the “economic action plan” ads were more likely to approve of the overall performance of the government.3 These ads deserve complete condemnation from the Canadian public not only because they are being used as tools of propaganda by the Conservatives who seek to win voter confidence; they are also deeply troubling simply because of the amount of money being wasted on them, particularly at a time when the Conservative government is proudly touting its alleged economic austerity and financial belt-tightening. Of course, while funding cuts of $2 million annually to the Experimental Lakes Area and $5.5 million to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy were swiftly carried out by the Conservatives, their advertising budget remains completely bloated. Specifically, in this most recent financial quarter alone, the Conservatives have approved spending of: $5 million for a “better jobs” ad campaign, $8 million to convince Canadians of the virtue of their cuts to old age security and $5 million to advertise “responsible resource development.”4 Additionally the Conservatives have approved $4.5 million for advertising the War of 1812 this year. All put together, the Conservatives have already approved spending more than $64 million dollars on ads this year, a figure which is already closing in on the $83.3 million they spent in 2010-2011, the last year for which complete financial figures have been made available to the public. It is worth restating that all of this has come at a time of alleged economic austerity and
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come from a government who many Canadians may support largely out of the perception that their finances will be protected and their tax dollars managed responsibly and economically by the Conservatives moreso than it would be by other parties. It seems to go without saying that the “economic action plan” ads should be completely discontinued, as they provide no content to inform and mobilize the work force but rather simply aim to glorify and tout the egos of the Conservative government that is funding them. Furthermore, these ads—along with other government ads such as the responsible resource development ones, which seek only to spin public opinion—must be discontinued because they waste taxpayer money that could be spent on countless more valuable services to the Canadian public.
April 30, 2013 efficacy in making governments accountable for abuses of their power, the collective power of our citizenry is the only force we can rely on to fix these problem. If we as a society did in fact exercise our democratic power through both elections as well as pressuring the institutions of government to responsibly represent us, surely our government would be aware they were under scrutiny from the public and as such that their illegitimate practices would not be allowed to persist. “The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you’ll get action.” - Malcolm X Works Cited
How we can make things better All of these things are assaults on our freedom and our rights as Canadian citizens and voters. They are simply unacceptable and an insult to the notion of democracy and the principles of both freedom and an empowered citizenry that our society is founded on. Ideally, we wouldn’t have these problems: electoral fraud would be dealt with by the courts, and government funds would be accounted for and proven to be used legitimately out of consideration for the public. But since this has recently proven not to be case, ideally our population will demand the justice of penalizing the parties in power for their wrongdoing. People have the power to hold governments accountable when and where the institutions put in place to do this fail our society. As it has been shown that the institutions in power have indeed not shown
1. “Tories Commit Millions to ‘Action Plan’ Ads While Cutting Programs.” The Globe and Mail n.d.: n. pag. 10 Oct. 2012. Web. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ news/politics/tories-commit-millions-toaction-plan-ads-while-cutting-programs/ article4602326/>. 2. Press, The Canadian. “3 More Years of Economic Action Plan Ads on the Way?” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 03 May 2013. Web. <http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/05/03/pol-cp-economicaction-plan-ads.html>. 3. Ibid. 4. “Tories Commit Millions to ‘Action Plan’ Ads While Cutting Programs.” The Globe and Mail n.d.: n. pag. 10 Oct. 2012.
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SEVENTIES ROCK MUSIC
An Introduction to Progressive Rock or: “Everything You Wanted to Know About Prog But Were Too Afraid to Ask.” By Michael Cuthbertson EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Telling someone you like prog is like telling someone you like metal in that your admission can be met with either a sense of camaraderie (when you meet a fellow fan) or with a sense of wariness about what kind of strange person you might be, on account of the rather technical and showy kind of music you like (this reaction is typical when you meet someone who likes their music far less ostentatious). But quite uniquely, saying you like prog, unlike saying you like metal, is often met with the question, “What is that?” This is a fair question, given the music genre severely waned in popularity in the late Seventies and has never really made a full revival since then. But between the years of 1969 and 1977 (these dates are not official barriers), progressive rock was a highly distinct genre that filled huge stadiums, with progressive acts such as the profoundly classically influenced power-trio Emerson, Lake and Palmer as well as the highly psychedelic and at times Beatles-esque prog quintet Yes. At its heart prog-rock, and much like
(Above: Rick Wakeman, the keyboard genius behind Yes, often seen wearing glittery capes and wizard hats.) the punk-rock that followed it, prog was a reaction to rock music. Ironically, punk rock, which is commonly understood to have helped kill prog-rock itself around 1977, was, compared to prog, far more complacent to the worn
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formulas of rock ’n’ roll. Punk placed an emphasis on attitude over composition skills and perpetrated a sentiment that the musicians one likes should be charismatic people as much or moreso than they should be outstanding musicians. Prog opposed these views strongly. A common narrative about the downfall of prog often cites the expensive, elaborate stage shows of bands like Genesis and Yes, as well as the increasingly lengthy and progressive pieces of music these bands wrote, as being the cause for prog’s loss of popularity. This may be true, but it also didn’t help that both Genesis and Yes (as well as Pink Floyd with their album The Wall) willingly shifted to a more new-wavey sound, all but announcing to the world that even they thought prog wasn’t cool anymore. But prog is cool, and has stood the test of time (at least among a few nerds in record stores and on the Internet) because of the purely musical ethos the progressive bands pursued. As numerous bands note in BBC’s comprehensive documentary Prog-Rock Britannia, not having groupies, as well as being awkward around girls, was not uncommon for prog bands and consequently it seems safe to say that starting a prog band usually wasn’t so much about getting laid. And while drugs, particularly psychedelics, were very much in the background (and hinted at on the album covers) of most Seventies prog bands’ careers, the image of indulgence and hedonism was not so central to the prog bands’ images the way it was, say, to their more rock ’n’ roll contemporaries like Led Zeppelin. Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll was surely happening
June 14, 2013 with the prog bands but ultimately it was prog enthusiasts came to hear. This progressive music was essentially a fusion of the craft involved with classical symphonic composing and musicianship, alongside the gritty tones an instrumentation more typical of Sixties rock bands. The result is something glorious and for those uninitiated to prog I would direct your attention to Yes’ Close to the Edge, ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery, King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King and any number of the Mellotron heavy albums by the Moody Blues to see what prog is all about. Of course it would diminish the intricate wonder of the prog-rock genre to say classical composing and musical virtuosity is all that makes this genre something magical. Part of what I adore when I hear these Seventies albums comes from the sonic qualities of the albums. Analog synthesizers, mellotrons, weird guitar tones and highly elaborate multitracking (especially on vocal parts) all serve to make prog-rock something quite idiosyncratic (and I mean that in a good way).
“Analog synthesizers, mellotrons, weird guitar tones and highly elaborate multitracking (especially on vocal parts) all serve to make prog-rock something quite idiosyncratic.”
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(Above: Keith Emerson, Carl Palmer and Greg lake practicing with an impressive amount of gear. In their heyday, they purchased an abandoned theatre to use as their own private jam space.) For the real hard-core fans thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also something wonderful about the unique spirit of the times one can see manifest in the lyrics, performances and album covers of Seventies prog rock. These bands favoured the overtly trippy: both in sound and visuals. Keyboardists like Rick Wakeman wore glittery wizard capes and hats, album covers featured detailed psychedelic art and the songs themselves were packed to the brim with off-beat sonic experimentation. And, partly owing to these bandsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; classic and baroque influences, lyrics and especially melodies in Seventies prog often sound like something that could have been written hundreds of years ago. But with all this wonderful stuff going on in prog, people may ask why the genre is practically non-existent today. Surely a few bands, like Rush for example, still write albums that are quite popular and may rightly be labelled prog. Certainly it seems metal at some
point eclipsed the popularity of prog and, I believe, took many of the sorts of fans and musicians that would have kept patronized prog, and turned them on to metal instead. And while I love both metal and prog, the two genres are very disparate. Prog has no driving rhythm that you can rock out to, and is meant more to leave audiences stupefied rather than get them moving around (which itself, I understand, is another reason prog may have lost popularity, especially given it faded when disco and punk, two audience participation heavy genres, took off). Also I think prog has fallen off the map of the modern musical landscape simply because it is hard to write and perform truly progressive music very well. Being rooted in musical virtuosity, prog requires lots of practice and musical training (something that may be an increasingly hard-sell in a modern world populated by innumerable pedals and music
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programs that let aspiring musicians create cool sounds almost instantly).
“Prog requires lots of practice and musical training (something that may be an increasingly hard-sell in a modern world populated by innumerable pedals and music programs that let aspiring musicians create cool sounds almost instantly).” Then there is the lyrics problem, something which critics in the Seventies were quick to point out. Prog, maybe more than any other genre, tends to include some pretty inaccessible lyrics (being both too academic and too obscure for many listeners to get excited about). All these things aside however, I think prog could, and definitely should, make a come back in the modern music world. The time is right for its revival, as indie music at times seems to have become so heavily about emphasizing sonic elements over songwriting elements while metal has become increasingly extreme in guitar and vocal tones as to leave the sweet, stonery vibes created by a Jon Anderson, Greg Lake or Justin Hayworth vocal seemingly incompatible with the metal genre. And, to an extent, popular music seems to go in cycles. New wave has had a revival manifest in many indie bands,
June 14, 2013 as has rock and roll in the early 2000’s with the so-called garage rock revival. But prog—save for a few bands like Dream Theatre that purport to be prog but I would definitely call more metal than prog (at least in the specific Seventies prog sense I have just described)— has not really made a comeback. But should the vocal harmony heavy, orchestra-like, lush sounds of Seventies prog never resurface, fans can still rest assured that whole stacks of prog albums are resting in the record shops, and online, waiting to be listened to again.
(Below: Robert Fripp of King Crimson was known for sitting rather than standing during performances.)
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22
VIDEO GAME DESIGN
Becoming a Game Developer
Teaching yourself how to develop video games is a lot like pushing a car out of the snow.
(Above: For Joel Hill, learning how to design video games was a process of self-education, trial-and-error and patience.) By Joel Hill GRAPHIC AND WEB DESIGNER In the summer of 2012 I was completely fixated on a set of numbers: Active installs, total installs, and Average rating. I had programmed and published a game to Google Play and my sense of self-worth was now measured on a scale of one to five little yellow stars. For as long as I could remember, making and publishing a game had seemed like such a far-fetched, unattainable dream that I never took the time to buckle down and try to make a project happ-
en. Sure, there were a few attempts when I was a kid with software packages like “RPG Maker 95” or “Coldstone Game Maker,” but they were the computer equivalent of trying to make an authentic replica of a modern fighter jet with an off the shelf lego set. Fun and satisfying in their own ways, but ultimately not the tools to get the job done. The idea that I would never have the skill set to make an “actual” video game with “actual” developer software stuck with me for a long time. I had grown up with an artificial barrier in front of me; the thought that being
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able to program was a skill other people had. I couldn’t do it, and so making a game just wasn’t going to happen. Hell, I even took a computer science class in my first year of university in hopes that it would enlighten me in some way and pave the road to the secret and exclusive inner-world of software development. It actually did the opposite, as it was super hard and I barely passed the course. I walked away from that experience thinking that if a first year comp-sci course was that tough I didn’t stand a chance making anything as complex as a game. I wish I could remember the exact moment I hit the tipping point from thinking “I can’t” to “I can.” I suspect I can’t remember because such a moment doesn’t actually exist; I thought I couldn’t right up to the moment I did. I suppose it’s a bit like pushing your car from out of the snow. You make progress inch by inch while still being technically “stuck.” When the moment comes where the vehicle can finally move under it’s own power, it’s not because of that time you pushed hard enough, it’s simply the result of working tirelessly with the reward residing in some abstract moment in the future. In many ways that’s what I had been doing for years with my game development pursuits: every time I played with a game development package or tried to learn programming was a small push forward, and eventually out of nowhere I got unstuck. I found a software development kit (SDK) called “Gideros” that looked accessible to someone with minimal programming experience, and since I had
June 14, 2013 just finished reading “Java for Dummies,” I felt qualified to play around with it for a few hours. After a single half-hearted attempt to get through a tutorial on how to program a crate to fall under gravity in 2D space, I realized that the programming wasn’t going to be a barrier at all. In fact, now that I didn’t have a deadline and the effort was going into something I had passion for, programming was fun. Even when it was frustrating, it was still really fun. Everything that came after just kind of fell into place. I had a very, very simple idea for a game, and in about a week I had a prototype. I spent the next two months fine tuning, creating art, and I got a friend to record a song for the background music. I probably could have kept working on the project for another 2 months, but like any other creative endeavor you eventually just have to decide it’s done. I released “Leyenda” in late June of 2012, and even though it was just a silly little game, clicking the publish button felt like sending my kid to his first day of school. Or I assume it did . . . I don’t have kids. Luckily for me, the critical reception for Leyenda was fairly positive and I was able to walk away from the experience with my ego intact. I learnt that not knowing how to program was never actually a barrier at all. The only thing holding me back was my unwillingness to put myself out there and actually try. If you’re stuck in the snow, the only thing you can do is start pushing and hope for the best. Oh, and don’t spin your tires. That’s an important part of the metaphor too I guess.
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CANADIAN LITERATURE
Not Another Canadian Short Story
Episode 1: Youth is like a prairie sky. By Michael Cuthbertson EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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It was a Saturday afternoon like any other in my childhood. Father and mother and I piled into the family station wagon to go visit my Babushka Olena. I cherished these weekend drives through the country out to Babushka’s farm on the outskirts of Smuts, Saskatchewan. Along the way my father always played the country stations while I gazed at the cows and windblown barns sailing by my window. I can still remember the country singers’ voices on the radio, but mostly I remember father’s voice singing over them. He loved Stompin’ Tom Connors and Stan Rogers especially. “Ah for just one time I would take the Northwest passage,” father would wail these words and moth
er would tease his bad singing voice and I would laugh, going, “Sing it again, papa!” Of course, this was back when the Northwest passage was still hard to navigate and the developed world’s exploitation of natural resources had yet to lead to the melting of arctic sea ice, causing an unnatural opening of Canada’s northern waters. But that is another story, and one that does not reflect so fuzzily on the Canadian image, so I will set it aside for now. When my parents and I pulled up to Babushka’s farm house, I could see her pruney face looking out the living room window, where she sat in her rocking chair, awaiting our arrival. As we entered, Babushka kissed me and gave me a motley-coloured wool-knit sweater she made and I treasured this greatly. For the rest of the afternoon I sat anxiously
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June 14, 2013
at the table while my parents and Babushka discussed adult things. They kept talking about this guy Lester B. Pearson and something called a pension plan. I didn’t listen too closely. My mind was already on my parting gift from Babushka. On these Saturday visits she always gave me a dime which I would then spend down at the Eaton’s department store on Sunday. With these ten cents I could buy: bus fare, a chocolate milk shake and still have money left to spend at the five and dime later that week. When she handed me the coin, she looked thoughtfully at me, saying, “Now make this money last and don’t squander your days. Youth is like a prairie sky, always remember that.” “Okay, Babushka,” I said, beaming with joy at my new financial windfall. When we got back to Saskatoon those Saturday evenings I would call up my bestest school chums Walter Busey and Randall Stephens to see if they wanted to play. Walter always got us into mischief, like the one time he convinced me to play knockknock ginger on Miss Mavens door. She lived alone in an old Victorian two-story by the river. I remember that day, approaching her porch with trepidation, then sauntering up her steps. I knocked on her door and bolted like lightning, scurrying away in my PF flyers, seeking cover behind her bushes with my two school chums. Miss Mavens opened the door and looked upset by the disruption but Randall and Walter were struggling to keep their laughter quiet. I felt bad. She was our teacher, the woman who gave us all those hard exams, but still I knew it was wrong. It was not the sort of thing father, who fought for my freedom and the freedom of all Canadians, would have wanted me to do. Of course, there were other pranks, like
the day Walter poured maple syrup over all the door knobs of the school. You see, Walter’s uncle Bernie Thiessen used to extract maple syrup from a stand of maple trees on his farm and sometimes Walter was allowed to come along. Everyone at school knew this and that’s how Walter got busted for the prank. It’s also the reason everyone tried to get invited to Walter’s house for breakfast on the weekends, because there was always a towering stack of flapjacks with copious amounts of maple syrup at the table. Multiple mason jars of the sweet nectar. So much maple syrup you didn’t know what to do with it all!
“There was always a towering stack of flapjacks with copious amounts of maple syrup at the table. Multiple mason jars of the sweet nectar. So much maple syrup you didn’t know what to do with it all!” Most of the time, Walter, Randall and I were good Canadian kids though. We played hockey in the winter and helped with harvest in the summer. Randall Stephens was the best hockey player in my grade and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stephens, would often fight over how much of a priority Randall’s hockey playing should take. Mrs. Stephens always tried to make Randall skip team practices for other things like his Lutheran confirmation and his schoolwork. But Mr. Stephens would always argue, “The boy’s
The MC Press got talent! He’ll be the next Gordie Howe so long as you stop stifling the child!” Mrs. Stephens would then counter, “But I won’t have him putting his hockey before his God or his school!” Of course, Mr. Stephens always won these battles. After all, he was the man of the house. And Randall truly was bound for greatness. I remember in January, even when school shut down because of the windchill warnings, ol’ Randall would still be out on the pond, practising his slapshot on an empty net where he’d attached metal pails to the crossbar for target practice. Clink! Clink! you’d hear the puck hit the pails as you walked by the pond any time of the night on any given winter day.
“I remember in January, even when school shut down because of the windchill warnings, ol’ Randall would still be out on the pond, practicing his slapshot on an empty net . . .” Naturally, all us guys liked hockey. Every Christmas, Randall and Walter and I would play on the pond all day till our toes were numb and our parents brought us home for turkey dinner. Usually me and the guys would all have a new stick or pair of skates or gloves that we’d got as gifts that Christmas morning. Sometimes we had even got the same ones, since we all ordered from the same Sears catalogue. I loved that catalogue. I asked papa how we Canadians could afford to buy so many different and wonderful things and Papa
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told me, “It’s because of the railway son. The Canadian Pacific Railway.” Father sat me on his lap and went on to explain how Canada had been united under thousands of miles of steel, laid by hardworking Canadians just like himself. He told me that the skates I had, the bacon I ate and the parka I wore were all made possible by the railroad. I’d been out wandering along the CP tracks many times with my buddies. Sometimes we’d put a penny on the tracks and watch it get crushed by the big steel wheels rolling by. And sometimes we’d just stand and watch the cars roll by, cars with words painted on their sides detailing their contents: mostly wheat and lumber. I sure thought it was a wondrous thing how the wheat from papa’s fields was being shuttled across our mighty nation in this click-clacking vessel and I wished that I too could hop on board, for to see the vastness of Canada. But I never had the guts to hop the train. For I knew nature was a fierce thing. Like papa always told me, “We are a hardy people my son. We can weather the elements but only be revering them. Canada: she is a lovely woman, but she is also a cunning temptress, prepared to stab you in the back with her lethal blade she calls winter.” My father would tell me these stories while I went to bed. I remember papa often telling me a bedtime story about the great Saskatchewan blizzard of ’47. Papa lived through that storm himself. He still lived on Babushka’s farm back then, and he told me he was out in the barn when the storm really came on hard that day. He said walking outside he could only see white. Even holding up his arm to his face he still couldn’t even see the red-checkered pattern of his plaid shirt! Papa says he was lucky to have found his way back to the house from the barn that day.
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June 14, 2013
And, call it a sweeping generalization, but I believe the character of every Canadian and all their experiences living in this country are completely and perfectly exemplified in papa’s story about the blizzard: for we are all just trying to make our way back to our shelter and our chesterfields by the fire hearth. We’re all just trying to brave the elements. This is all that really matters up here in Canada. We don’t send lots of people into space or do well in the Olympics but that’s just because we’re all too busy trying to survive the cold. Still, growing up, I cherished the harshness of Canada, and felt I must honour my Babushka, who told
me that youth is like a prairie sky. So . . . I guess, putting all this symbolism together, being a young person in Canada is sort of like a prairie sky and trying to survive a blizzard, at the very same time. I mean all this symbolically of course. That’s why I used “like” instead of just saying “youth is a prairie sky” cause that would be nonsense. But if you’re Canadian and you’re reading this then you will have no trouble in appreciating and comprehending the symbolism of my story. And if you don’t get it then somewhere along the way you obviously failed to become a real Canadian and I have nothing more to say to you.
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CLASSIC CINEMA
Benjamin’s Lists of Bodacious Cinema AKA “Benjamin’s Barrel of Bemuseument” I’ve been told that people like movies. It’s been brought to my attention that people also enjoy lists. Are you one of these people? If you’re not, I apologize. You should leave this place, for it will bring you nothing but pain, Roland. By Benjamin FILM COLMNIST
Turnbull
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(Above: Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997) Top 5 Documentaries for the Whole Family 5. Lessons of Darkness (1992) 4. Fata Morgana (1971) 3. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father (2008) 2. Lake of Fire (2006) 1. Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)
(Above: The Piano (1993) The Wonders (“Wonders Lisa….Or Blunders?”) Of Colonialism 5. The Piano (1993) 4. The Battle of Algiers (1966) 3. The Man Who Would Be King (1975) 2. Chocolat (1988) 1. Caché (2005)
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June 14, 2013 Top 5 Directors I Can’t Discuss Because I Haven’t Seen a Single One of Their Films Because I’m an Awful Person But Don’t Worry About It, I’m Working On It 5.Robert Bresson 4. Wong Kar-wai 3.Krzysztof Kieślowski 2.Satyajit Ray 1.YasujirōOzu
(Above: Pumping Iron (1979) Top 5 Movies to Watch on June 25th at 2:19pm 5. The Bridge (2006) 4. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) 3. Let There Be Light (1946) 2. Kazaam (1991) 1. Pumping Iron (1979)
(Above: Space Jam (1996) Top 5 Movies For To Drugs 5. Brain Damage (1988) 4. Space Jam (1996) 3. Enter the Void (2009) 2. Fantastic Voyage (1973) 1. Space Jam (1996)
(Above: Director Robert Bresson
(Above: Enter the Void (2009)
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CLASSIC CINEMA
(Above: Come and See (1980) Top 5 Movies to Watch If You’re In Too Good of a Mood and Need to Be Knocked Down a Few Pegs 5. Dead Ringers (1988, Canada) 4. Angst (1983, Germany) 3.Titicut Follies (1967, USA) 2. Irreversible (2003, France) 1. Come and See (1980, Russia) (Above: American Jesus: The Tom hanks Story (2086) Top 5 Movies of the Year 2086
(Above: Leviathan (2013) Top 5 Best Movies of 2013 So Far (I Still Haven’t Seen “Upstream Color” or “Mud”, Calm Down) 5. The Place Beyond the Pines 4. Wrong 3. Arrested Development Season 4 2. Spring Breakers 1. Leviathan
5.Fast & Furious 6 (After the 31st “Fast & Furious” the studio decided to begin remaking the original films instead of producing new content. Starring reanimated corpse copies of Vin Diesel in every role) 4.Foxx Searchlight Presents “Tim Eating a Couple Bagels and Some Organic Steamed Egglets 3D” 3. Not in MY Anus (First virtual reality erotic opera to win 10 Oscars and a Space Tony) 2. Koch Futureworks Presents “American Jesus: The Tom Hanks Story” 1. PepsiCo-Pfizer Presents “Film #2488130: The Ride: The Snackfood: The Film: The Suppository: The Film”
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June 14, 2013
(Above: Phase IV (1974)
(Above: Warriors of Virtue (1997)
Top 5 ’70s Sci-Fi 5. Soylent Green (1973) 4. THX 1138 (1971) 3. The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976) 2. Phase IV (1974) 1. Stalker (1979)
Top 5 Stupid Movies From My Childhood That I’ve Strongly Considered Revisiting Before Ultimately Deciding To Just Watch Space Jam Again 5. The Indian in the Cupboard (1995) 4. We’re Back! (1993) 3. The Phantom (1996) 2. Double Dragon (1994) 1. Warriors of Virtue (1997)
(Above: 300 (2006) Mmmmmmm…..That’s Some Sweet Orientalism 5. 300 (2006) 4. True Lies (1994) 3. Prince of Persia (2010)/Eat, Pray, Love (2010)/Sex and the City 2 (2010) (I couldn’t sit through these) 2. Aladdin (1992) 1. The Indiana Jones films
(Above: Jurassic Park (1993) Top 5 Movies about a Jurassic Park 5. Jurassic Park III (2001) 4. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) 3. Elvis Stojko’s Jurassic Park on Ice (2000) 2. Jurassic Park (1993) 1. A Very Jurassic Hanukkah (1995)
The Back Page Cab driver accidentally drives passengers in complete opposite direction of destination Saskatoon, SK - Despite years of service as a cab driver in the City of Saskatoon, a job where perhaps the most essential requirement is an understanding of the layout of the city, last Wednesday night cab driver Sam Rutherford drove his passengers in the complete opposite direction of where they were supposed to be going for at least a good five minutes. “People make mistakes,” explained Sam to the three incredulous college students sitting in the back seat of the car, en route to the moderately upscale restaurant “The Keg” where Gabriel Walters, one of the students, purportedly had gift cards he received from his aunt which he intended to use up by purchasing drinks for him and his friends. “Okay,” Mitchell O’Hanley, one of the three students, suspiciously replied to Rutherford. “But if you drove us outside the city by accident would we be expected to pay for that?” O’Hanley reportedly grew more emotional as the ride progressed, noting the meter in the cab already read $9.50 despite their having travelled through the suburbs in a near perfect loop and wound up back to within two blocks of their starting point. Fellow passengers James Fairbanks and Gabriel Walters confirm that, as the ride carried on, they too made efforts to show the cabbie that his route was rather absurd. Fairbanks claims to have at one point taken out his smartphone and brought up Google maps to provide a visual aid to the cabbie of how utterly inefficient the route he took was. In retrospect though, general agreement among the friends is that
Mitchell O’Hanley could have been more diplomatic in his efforts to establish they were being overcharged. Tiffany Anderson, a waitress at the Keg, confirms that Fairbanks suggested to O’Hanley that he may have been “a bit pushy” to the cab driver while meanwhile O’Hanley, sipping his beers which were covered by Gabriel’s aunt’s gift cards, continued to suggest that it was entirely possible the cab driver chose the route to profiteer, hoping the students were not paying attention to the meter. The drama within the cab reportedly reached a fever pitch as the vehicle drew to within a few miles of the restaurant, with Sam Rutherford suggesting that he “didn’t have to drive them and could drop them off at the side of the road,” to which O’Hanley retorted, “You could, but it wouldn’t look very good for you.” Shortly before the cab arrived at the destination, the students and cab driver reached an agreement of paying five less dollars than what the cab meter read, and following this agreement Rutherford tried to save face by insisting his detour was merely a small human mistake and, according to at least one passenger, Rutherford also went on to speak as though he was being extremely accommodating to the presumably harsh demands O’Hanley made for the cab fee to be lessened. Pulling up at the Keg, the students left the cab and Sam Rutherford drove away, accidentally going in the opposite direction of where he was supposed to pick up his next set of passengers.