Baby Teeth

BUZZSAW the baby teeth issue

open wide

october 2018

buzzsaw’s baby teeth As your tongue explores the newly empty spot in your mouth, carefully tracing the gummy territory and feeling for the poke of the new tooth—eager and ready to break through the surface—you can’t help but feel like the loss of what was makes way for what will be.

Baby teeth are lost, but this is really no loss at all. Baby teeth are outgrown after they have already taught us how to bite, chew, and swallow what life gives us. Baby teeth are what lead us to our adult teeth, help us develop and grow, and use our mouth for other, more important activities—gritting teeth, biting our tongues, speaking out. This issue is for all of the above: allowing us to digest topics we may not give a second thought to otherwise, speaking out about what we believe, and no longer biting our tongues in regards to things that are hard to talk about. Open wide...

News & Views Upfront Ministry of Cool Prose & Cons Sawdust Layout Art Website Social Media Production Advisor Founders

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Anna Lamb Owen Walsh Alexis Morillo Audra Joiner Alex Coburn Kimberly Morgan Will Cohan Brianna Pulver Rachael Geary Christine McKinnie Emma Rothschild Mateo Flores Anna Ferrari Carlos Figueroa Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick Cole Louison

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Write Us! Our magazine exists to inspire thoughtful debate and open up the channels through which information is shared. Your comments and feedback are all a part of this process. Reach the editors by email at: buzzsawmag@gmail.com.

News & Views

Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront

Selected dis-education of the month.

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Ministry of Cool

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Prose & Cons

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Sawdust

Threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

“Get Out and Vote”

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“Coming of Age: It’s Not Just for Straight Dudes Anymore”

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“Too Cool For Traditional School”

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news& views 4

Get Out and Vote You have the power to change this country

By Isabel Brooke

You hate politics, right?

Me too. But let’s iron out what that means, because politics has a few different definitions. When we say we hate politics, we usually mean that we don’t like the politics of politics. We don’t like the power-hungry manipulation, the self-interested calculations, or the elitist stuffiness of it all.

Pew Research reports that while in 1964 public trust in Washington was at 77 percent, by the end of 2017 it was at a mere 18 percent.

Today we have a government with no connection or feeling of duty toward most of the electorate. The relationship has become unnaturally inverted, so that the people feel that they have to buy or earn the ear of their representatives.

Stripped bare, politics about creating and realizing systems that work for its people. It forms the foundation of the rules and norms of society — which isn’t necessarily bad, except when those who control the rules and norms are power-hungry and self-serving.

The solution to our issue of dysfunctional government is a streamlined, decorrupted voting process through which the voices and votes of the people are valued rather than selectively suppressed, coupled with an engaged, active and educated electorate.

This is where you come in.

We elect our government, and we give them their power. They depend on us, but our apathy has allowed them to forget it.

We’re now told that our votes don’t matter. But if you don’t vote, then it’s left up to everyone who does… and unfortunately, that’s not an entirely representative sample size of our country.

Before the 2006 midterm elections, Pew Research Center conducted comprehensive research on who votes and how often.

Most notable from the report was the fact that when you look at nonregistered Americans, 40 percent were between ages 18 and 29. That’s way more than any other age group by a huge margin — the next age group in line was 30 to 49. While this age range

is twice as large, it accounts for half as many unregistered voters.

Young people have to live with the consequences of elections the longest, and are therefore affected by elections the most, but they are the most disengaged in the voting process.

A June poll from the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic reported that only 28 percent of young adults between 18 and 29 say they are “absolutely certain” they will vote in the 2018 midterms, compared to 74 percent of seniors. Why are we letting seniors determine our future? If just half of the unregistered young demographic voted, the political landscape would change, period. We have that power.

But that doesn’t mean this will be easy. Voter restriction has been orchestrated. The U.S. consistently has one of the lowest voter turnout rates among developed countries, partly because we have complicated the process and introduced unnecessary and often racist red tape in order to suppress voters. Instead of focusing on increasing voter turnout, legislators dedicate an absurd amount of time to creating and passing restrictive Voter ID laws, which address the non-existent issue of voter impersonation. In reality there are only a handful of documented voter fraud cases.

These laws, which are passed under the guise of addressing voter fraud, disproportionately affect black and Latinx voters. That’s no accident.

To highlight one such instance, Pennsylvania’s state legislature was controlled by Republicans in the run-up to the 2012 general election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The Republican-controlled legislature, led by then-House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, introduced and passed strict Voter ID laws, arguing that it would combat voter fraud, even though a 2012 court filing by the state of Pennsylvania explicitly acknowledged that there “have been no investigations or prosecutions of inperson voter fraud in Pennsylvania.” It’s a laughably weak disguise. Voter ID laws address a non-existent problem.

Mike Turzai leaves no room for doubt about his true intentions. As he

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Art by Rachael Geary

rattled off his l e g i s l a t u r e ’s accomplishments at a Republican State Committee meeting in 2012, he listed his voter ID law, which he claimed would allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. “Done.” He explicitly stated that the law would serve the Republican agenda by preventing Democratic voters from casting their votes.

This isn’t an isolated slip of the tongue. In 2013, North Carolina GOP precinct chairman Don Yelton admitted that he wouldn’t be bothered if these voter ID laws prevented “a bunch of lazy blacks” from voting.

Voting is difficult, and turnout is low because legislators and politicians have fought for it to be that way. A healthy democracy with the right representatives would encourage and simplify the voting process.

If our democracy valued our voices, and if we exercised our right to vote, then our representatives would begin to serve our interests rather than their own. Our faith in the system would be restored, because we would see ourselves as a valued and essential part of it. Instead of our government being the enemy to fight, we would see ourselves reflected in it, and it would become the solution.

Don’t separate the country from yourself as a separate entity. You are the country. In a democracy, you are given political power, and you have a voice.

Will you ignore it, or will you use it?

Isabel Brooke is a third-year politics and philosophy/religion double major who is sick of watching old white men voting old white men into office. You can reach them at ibrooke@ithaca.edu.

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Gentrification Express

How the rich are taking advantage of disenfranchised neighborhoods

By Calissa Brown

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entrification is real, and it’s affecting a lot of people — especially people of color. Their voices need to be heard instead of developers, who decide where the next strip of condos are going to be built. They have been here and so have their stories.

Signs you know gentrification is approaching your area are a new Starbucks on the street, Whole Foods on the corner and maybe a new boutique, where everything is one of a kind. Upscale businesses are moving in, and a lot of old are moving out. Neighborhoods are no longer recognizable.

Gentrification is happening in big cities such as New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Minneapolis and maybe yours is next. You may have the luxury of not realizing it because you don’t have that lens of, “How will it affect me?” But maybe it is affecting you, but you just don’t realize it.

Legal housing discrimination has affected people of color since the Roosevelt Administration and the era of redlining. Redlining, the discriminatory practice by the federal government that led to the systematic creation of segregated neighborhoods, affected many of the places where we see gentrification today.

These maps were color-coded by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the colors on the maps would indicate where it was “safe” to live. People of color were barred against buying into neighborhoods that white families were able to inhabit. Words like “detrimental” and phrases like “undesirable population” were pinned to the redlined areas.

According to Alexis Madrigle of the Atlantic, “Some mortgage lenders may refuse to make loans in these neighborhoods and other will lend only on a conservative basis.”

People of color were forced into

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red neighborhoods through the denial of loan application, solely on the basis of their skin color. If that applies to you, you could have your education and health affected for decades.

You may never understand the deep connections people of color have with these areas because their homes have been there for generations. We can see the role government has played in institutional practices of racism still affecting communities today.

The research shows that people of color that were displaced ended up in more dangerous and polluted areas and didn’t have equal access to health care. Like many people who have difficulty getting access to health care, people of color who are displaced are in an intersection of race and class. This displacement can affect their mental state, education and economic mobility.

In The Forces Driving Gentrification in Oakland by Kathleen Richards, the Associate Director of the Urban Displacement Project, Anna Cash is quoted as saying, “So low-income households are often displaced to even more low-income neighborhoods than they were previously living in.

Displacement can lead to longer commute times, as well as stress and depression. Children suffer academically and from behavioral and emotional issues.”

So what’s changed to make these redlined neighborhoods attractive to developers?

The cause of gentrification is the influx of affluent residents who push out the old to make room for upper-class luxuries. If you can relate to that, you are considered a gentrifier. If you can’t LIVE without your Starbucks at the end of every street, you are considered a gentrifier. When was the last time you thought, “Who lived in this space and how was it occupied before me?”

Looking at gentrification as a person of color and someone who has seen

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the effects in real life, gentrification is hurting people I care about. In Buffalo’s Fruit Belt, soaring property values are forcing people who can’t afford them to move out due to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Some of these tenets pay $1,400 for rent, a price that is too steep for many former residents. These are low-income people of color who are once again being taking advantage of by the system because they have no choice but to move. And where do they go?

So, for people who say, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps,” how can you do this if you were never given the chance?

There have always been obstacles in front of us. The wealth gap is increasing, and public education is failing. If major metropolitan areas are being gentrified and residential exclusion persists, how do we not know the next place they reside won’t be another stop on the gentrification express?

Calissa Brown is a third year anthropology major who doesn’t even like Starbucks.

Baby’s First Vandalism Looking at graffiti’s reach and influence

By Leo Baumbach

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hen was the first time you saw graffiti? Maybe you were on a drive with your parents and saw a tag on a concrete column in an underpass.

Maybe you were on a subway or a bus and saw drippy indecipherable letters on the seat in front of you. Graffiti is an artform stretching across the globe and deep into history, but its true origins can be hard to pin down.

Some argue the first graffiti was created around 15,000 BCE, on the inside walls of caves in Lascaux, France.

Primitive artists used flowers and other plants with dyed mud to paint. Others argue that graffiti is more modern and that urban graffiti as we know it began around 100 BCE in the Roman Empire with etchings and scratches on walls of the city’s structures. Some say graffiti as we know it today was invented much later — during the 1960s in Philadelphia, when a man nicknamed Cornbread wrote his name on the walls at the middle school he was attending and then later on the whole city.

Regardless of the origins, we all have our own first experiences with the artform. The first tag I ever saw was on the highway going to my grandparent’s house. In cobalt blue, the tag read “SPOK.” I later learned that this was probably a reference to Spock from Star Trek, which I found confusing: Why didn’t they write their own name instead? Who was this person? What message should I have interpreted from this strange message?

The American graffiti landscape, like any cultural phenomenon, is wildly varied. Depending on where you first saw graffiti, your feelings toward it can be as diverse as the art form itself.

Dora from Catskill, NY said there were “graffiti clans” that would tag the name of their clan and the members’ names in spray-paint. Her first instance of seeing street art was in New York City when she was about 14. She said she saw all kinds of graffiti and murals which was a radical departure from the gangrelated vandalism she saw at home.

Many argue the American graffiti scene began with gangs primarily, who would use tags to mark territory and attack rival gangs verbally. In Catskill, she said

the street artists were mostly young people engaging in rebellious behavior.

Little did these young rebels know they were taking part in one of the precursors to modern graffiti as we know it. While gang-related graffiti has faded from the public eye, it still stands out as an artifact of a different era for graffiti in America.

Emily, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

they left behind had their names, the direction they were headed and whether or not they found employment in a particular place. Other symbols indicated things like halfway houses and bars. Modern graffiti on trains is now less practical and more aesthetically oriented in its purpose.

The last interview I did was with a

Photo by Erin Penderson

said that her city was populated by murals and that illegal graffiti had no real presence in public places. One instance that stood out to her was a large painting of Dr. Zoidberg from the animated show Futurama that was on the side of the highway. She also said that a lot of trains pass through Milwaukee and these trains carry graffiti with them as they travel from coast to coast. She said this is probably where her first graffiti experience was and where the majority of illegal graffiti can be found in Milwaukee, although it isn’t done by local vandals.

Modern train graffiti is a remnant of the near dead art form called “hobo writing,” which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th century when migrant workers were riding freight trains across the country looking for agricultural and industrial employment.

They would mark trains with industrial crayons (now known as streakers) and with other implements. The markings

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young woman named Scout, from the island of Manhattan, and she had little to say on the subject. She said she was raised in a graffiti-saturated area and hence paid it no mind. She suggested that it was just a part of living in New York City and you had to get used to it.

She didn’t say if she could pin down a first true graffiti experience because she had been raised around it her whole life.

Graffiti often becomes a part of the landscape it occupies and has real cultural value that cannot be replaced. Graffiti has come to symbolize gentrification, the urban sprawl, crime, gang violence, and rebellion. Our first experience with graffiti shapes the way we see it for the rest of our lives, and consequently how we see issues like gang violence, gentrification and urban sprawl playing out in our cities.

Leo Baumbach is a first-year English major and he’s the real Banksy. You can email them at lbaumbach@ithaca.edu.

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Won’t You Hold My Trust?

Don’t let fear control your life

By Dylan D’Arezzo

There are only two feelings.

Love and fear.

There are only two languages.

Love and fear.

—Michael Leunig, “Love and Fear” When we seek to connect with others, there are only two approaches available to us. We can choose to let love be the force that drives our actions or we can allow fear to control us.

My mother raised me to look at things with love in my mind and to only act out of kindness. She told me that my thoughts and words would influence the quality of my life and the way I viewed the meaning of my days. If I was upset about how someone was treating me, rather than thinking about how they were treating me, I would think about how others’ actions have nothing to do with me, and that I now know more about who they are. When I failed, she reminded me not to think about how I’ve failed but rather that I just know what not to do next time I try.

The school of love is one of positivethinking and openness. And that which we think, we possess. According to Aristotle, “The energy of the mind is the essence of life.” Sounds simple?

Well, it’s much easier said than done.

Controlling our own thoughts is not as simple as we wish it to be. Wishing to have positive thoughts will not necessarily grant us the ability to do so.

Fear can cloud our vision, and much more than many people tend to realize.

When I talked to some of my close family and friends about having trust issues, there were many overlapping themes.

During one of those conversations, a friend told me, “The more people you trust, the more likely you are to get hurt.” Many other responses were similar. While I myself can definitely attest to this feeling, I can’t shake the hope that there is another way to go about living.

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So many people allow fear to run their lives, and I’m certainly not excluded from that group, but lately, I’ve come to realize that fear only exists as an outlet for negativity in my mind, and vulnerability has proved to be worth it in the long run. We can tell ourselves that the fear is just so strong that we can’t open up to people, but the truth is that we are choosing to be weaker than the fear, even when we really are not.

When we approach things with love in our hearts, there is undoubtedly a difference in the outcomes that we are given. When referring to being dissatisfied with you life, William Shakespeare, in his play Hamlet, writes, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” There are things in life we can’t change, and we have no control over that. We cannot control the actions of anyone or anything but ourselves. Our happiness or lack thereof, all depends on our perspective of things that have happened to us, and how we act in response.

We can choose to learn a lesson or simply get hurt and continue to live life the same way. Many people believe that by putting your trust in another so easily, you are simply setting yourself up for failure—setting yourself up to be hurt, all because of your naive trust. I’ll be honest and say I can look at it like that, too. It’s true that loving can lead to hurting, but the goal in life is not to allow fear to lead to the lack of love. Try to keep in mind that if we have been hurt, it means we have loved and been loved.

Allowing yourself to be vulnerable with others opens up so many opportunities to feel joy in your life.

When people see the raw version of you, connections are made. We are able to bond with others, when we are able to have people in our lives we know just as well as ourselves. People who will hold us while we’re falling apart and

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who will gleefully admire and appreciate the beauty of the lives we have created for ourselves.

It’s human nature to thrive off the connection to others. We do ourselves an incredible disservice by letting worry get in the way of feeling love of any kind, whether it be friendship, familial or romantic. Having close relationships with people makes life much less of a weight on our shoulders. If we have people to share our struggles and joy with, we endure the ups-and-downs with others to catch us when we fall.

I’m not here to teach you how to be vulnerable. Vulnerability means something new to each person, and I can’t tell you how to live your life. What I can tell you is that there is an endless amount of love in the world, and it would be a shame if only some of us humans took the opportunity to experience just how meaningful that can be. Is being hurt so scary that you won’t even open up to the possibility of knowing what it’s like to be happy?

Dylan D’Arezzo is a first-year writing major who isn’t afraid of anything… except the dark. You can reach them at ddarezzo@ithaca.edu.

The Problem with Head-ucation How sex-ed is failing our youth

By Carly Weckel

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ur society is obsessed with sex. Advertisements use sex appeal to sell us products all the time and yet we aren’t discussing one of the main aspects of many sex lives--oral sex. It seems as if our sex education programs are lacking when it comes to students learning about this topic. Even if the topic is uncomfortable to discuss, it’s still apart of sexuality, and people should be educated about it.

Instructors aren’t talking about oral sex because the topic is seemingly taboo but this may lead to risky sexual behavior when people believe that oral sex is a “safe” alternative. More and more young people are engaging in oral sex, but they may not be aware of how to keep themselves, and their partners comfortable and healthy.

Am I the only one who realizes that this is absurd? Sex education needs to change. Engaging in oral sex can still lead to the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases. In my opinion, abstinence can no longer be the main safe-sex practice taught in schools. If young people are going to have sex without proper education there can be dangerous consequences to that.

Brighton Victoria, a licensed life coach, offers counseling for subjects related to sex. Victoria believes that there is a sort of stigma surrounding the topic of oral sex.

“I think most people are more conservative when it comes to their sex lives and don’t like discussing nittygritty details, especially something in regards to oral sex, because oral sex is considered to be a bigger deal than ‘regular sex’ since the person performing is literally up close and personal with another person’s genitalia,” she said.

She believes that teens would benefit more from the system if all

aspects of sex were discussed Art by Sarah Kane r e a l i s t i c a l l y, from regular sex to oral sex to contraceptives.

“Teaching teens abstinence is absolutely ludicrous, and that’s why we have so many teen pregnancies or STDs—because no one is educated on the reality of being sexually active,” Victoria said.

Not only is oral sex not talked about, but the education system also excludes the LGBTQ community. It seems as if heterosexual sex is the only thing taught.

Brighton stated that the main reason all other aspects of sex are left out is because heterosexual penetrative sex is what causes pregnancy. The educational system seems solely concerned with the reproductive function of intercourse.

Only thirteen states require sex education to be medically correct— thirteen out of fifty states—let that sink in.

“I think all aspects of sex should be discussed, not just the reproductive side. Not to mention, this excludes the LGBTQ community, since only hetero sex is taught because that’s what causes pregnancy. Gay sex should be discussed as well as oral sex, alongside an explanation that the majority of the time people have sex is not for making a baby, but for pleasure,” Victoria said.

Teens who are part of the LGBTQ comunity have a chance of being at higher risk for STDs. This issue may come from from some states not allowing sexual orientation to be spoken about in class.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, “a large majority of states have developed curricula or guidelines to provide program guidance to local school districts in implementing sexuality education programs. Many of these guides exclude such topics as abortion,

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homosexuality and masturbation because they are considered too controversial.”

I believe that the sex education system needs to be fixed. The truth is, you cannot stop people from having sex. All the aspects of sex should be discussed. Teaching everything is the only way to really help teens stay safe.

STDs, pregnancy, and even a broken heart are all consequences of a lack of sexual education.

Not only should sex education happen at school, but that conversation should continue at home. A child should be able to confide in their parent if they feel awkward during puberty, or if they are not understanding their body. They should be able to talk to their parent, and their parent should be open about the situation. Parents should give “the talk” at a young age even if they just explain the basics, that way children won’t feel stigmatized about discussing sex, as they navigate their way through young adulthood, a part of which may be engaging in oral sex. The best strategy is to start the conversation young and continue as the child gets older.

The more children are exposed to provocative topics before they have “the talk” the more they are likely to succumb to sexual behavior. But, if our children are taught truthful and correct information about sex then they are more likely to be safer.

Learning or teaching about sex should not be shameful. It should not be awkward. Sex is a part of our lives so people should be educated and educated well on the topic in its entirety for the sake of their health.

Carly Weckel is a third year writing major who got an A in high school health class.

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UPFRONT 10

Too Cool for Traditional School The misconceptions of homeschooling and Montessori teaching methods

By Kristen Gregg

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s I sat at my assigned desk in the classroom after a year of sitting at the table with my mother, I couldn’t help but feel as though there was a difference between me and my classmates. Even years later, I always felt that my one year of homeschooling affected how I looked at education and possibly even how I socialized. This feeling I had isn’t completely misconceived. Research even suggests that varied approaches to education can lead to some developmental disparities in students.

Although I do have my own homeschooling experience, it is important to point out that my homeschooling experience diverged from the idea that usually comes to mind. Instead of being taught in my house, I lived on a boat with my family for a year sailing down the East Coast of America to the Bahamas.

Therefore, unlike the majority of home-educated students, I did not attend clubs or organizations, the common groups homeschooled children participate to receive the socializing part of their education.

Homeschooling, on the other hand, has numerous structures depending on the specific program chosen or if the family decides to create a curriculum of their own. A few examples of programs are Abeka, Christian Liberty Academy, and Sonlight. My curriculum was Calvert Education, with this program, a prepackaged set of materials like books and writing supplies are sent to the family.

As of spring 2016, there are 2.3 million students in the United States that are homeschooled, and the number continues to climb, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. Less traditional forms of education are becoming more mainstream, with the popularity of Montessori schools also increasing since the 1970s. There are an estimated 300 new public Montessori schools since 2000.

The homeschooling and the Montessori approach are both considered alternative options to traditional education and have a reputation of affecting a students’ ability to socialize.

Reviews by Dr. Richard Medlin from Stetson University on a number of studies of homeschooled students and adults dating back to the early 2000s suggest that children who are homeschooled have adequate to exceptional interpersonal skills. These studies included interviews and surveys of homeschooled students, public school students, and their parents. Middle school children appeared above the norm for social skills in areas including empathy and cooperation.

Although it’s important to note that this experiment assessed fifth and sixth graders, it may not accurately represent the total population of homeschooled students.

I believe this research accurately represented how I felt I acted after my year of homeschooling. There seemed to be a pattern in the awards I won at my middle school, which were awards for cooperation. Even throughout high school, I felt as

though my strongest traits were my ability to empathize and collaborate.

The quality of homeschooled individuals’ socializing skills stays steady throughout life, according to Medlin’s study. The only time it may waver is in college where self confidence seems to decline a small amount. However, homeschooled individuals appear to be intellectually curious and openminded to new experiences. Even past college, the study found that homeschooled adults appear to function as well as anyone with a different educational background. But it is important to emphasize the fact that these results are based off of only a few studies.

Brian Ray, founder and president of the National Home Education Research Institute, found that home-educated adults have a tendency to be more independent and entrepreneurial. “Often times by age 12 or so many are doing independent study and expl++oring things on their own,” he said, meaning homeschooled students have a selfdirected education. Naturally, this can lead to independent adults because they have grown up that way. Ray also states that it is common in homeschool circles to encourage entrepreneurship.

While my parents did not provide any opinion or push relating to entrepreneurship, the independence for learning what I wanted was certainly cultivated during our year of travelling. I taught myself how to write stories and pursued workshops and opportunities outside of school to improve my craft. I believe homeschooling allowed me to realize I can take charge of my own interests or at least gave me a small confidence boost in that I can pursue what interests me.

On the other hand, the Montessori method is a type of schooling that has three main components different from a public school. First is that the classrooms are comprised of students of different ages, allowing them to learn from others that are not the same age as them. Second, it is structured in a way that the time to work is not broken up by class periods, instead they are uninterrupted. Lastly, the students are given a guided choice on the work activities they will engage in.

Montessori schools tend to have their learning materials placed in an aesthetic arrangement rather than the usual institutional appearance of a traditional school.

The Montessori method separates the curriculum into two sections: cultural and development of skills. The cultural subjects consist of subjects like biology, history, and geography, while the development of skills are topics like mathematics, arts and crafts, and reading. This fosters an experience-driven education rather than absorbing facts, according to the Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca’s website.

The Montessori approach also includes socialization

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in its curriculum. Laura Gottfried, principal of the Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca, said that working collaboratively as well as learning to relate to other people is built into the Montessori curriculum. This leads the students Art by Rachael Geary to grow up to be “way more able to negotiate positive in terms of learning to socialize. “No one conflict than regular adults.” was telling you to hush,” she said. “It made me Classrooms are comprised of students of different ages, which lets the older students act as a role open to engaging with other people.” Even now she feels as model for the younger ones. Gottfried also said that children if her confidence continues to carry into adulthood.

After a review of these two alternative types of education, are taught to take responsibility for their actions starting at age three, allowing them to be aware of their strengths and it is clear that students with these backgrounds are perfectly weaknesses. Once they are aware of these qualities, the next able to socialize and, in some cases, are able to do so more step is to pair them with another child who has the opposite confidently than students who come from traditional schools. abilities. As a result, students learn from one another and So perhaps my suspicions of a connection between my ability to socialize and my education are correct. learn how to interact.

The Montessori approach generates adults who are justice-minded and articulate and they are also able to look Kristen Gregg is a first-year journalism student who pretty at authority as approachable. At the Elizabeth Ann Clune much lived her own version of Disney Channel’s hit series The Montessori School of Ithaca, this trait of working out an Suite Life on Deck. You can reach them at kgregg@ithaca. agreement is highlighted in their mission to create a more edu. peaceful world.

Maia Shenker, an 18-year-old undergraduate at Eckerd College, was a Montessori student from preschool to second grade. She found her time as a Montessori student to be

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From Playgrounds to Social Media Platforms The evolution of bullying in an internet-driven world

By Julia Batista

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eople most often talk about the good aspects of the internet rather than the bad. We’re able to reach others through the virtual screen that we sit in front of for most of our lifetimes. Although humans are wired for socialization, digital media allow quick and easy access to others. With this, those that have an issue with interacting with people in person don’t have to face the fear of physically interacting with one another. Members of marginalized groups can also connect with others who are not as often able to express themselves outside of the virtual world. We can easily observe the strength in these groups, such as the LGBTQ and mental health communities forming over an online platform.

Yet people have difficulty talking about the dark side of the web, where adolescents are attacked and harassed on their own profiles or feeds. Just as if a socially awkward person finds the courage to easily connect with others, bullies or those with bad intentions can easily access victims, too.

A social worker that’s worked at Fallsburg Central School District for 22 years knows what it’s like upfront and personal how kids interact with social media and how it affects them.

“I do believe that the mental health of adolescents has declined overall, social media being one of the reasons how…

kids perceive themselves in relation to other kids and adults too. On social media we see the perfect person, the perfect life, but clearly that’s not always the case behind the screen.” “…they’re missing out on a lot of social skills and then come into the school environment and show that they have difficulty socializing with others or adults … Now, they can post something nasty on Instagram or Snapchat and this starts problems. The internet never sleeps, and it doesn’t forget either; and I think that’s something kids need to be educated

“social media is used in so many ways, giving us the opportunity to see into other people’s lives” on.”

Even though a lot of the cyberbullying cases are hidden in the depths of the online world, there are still parameters to be followed if these issues are unveiled. Each state deals with online bullying differently. All states have laws against cyberbullying, and most of them have policies and laws in place for fighting against it too. However, victims can choose a few routes to seek justice through the legal system, whether it be civilly or criminally. Unfortunately, even if you plan on pursuing justice, many cases are expensive and invasive of your information, most often not offering the justice that many

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victims are seeking.

In New York, the legislation is applied the same for both bullying and cyberbullying. The key terms used in its legislation include harassment, bullying, intimidation, taunting and discrimination. These are outlined specifically to describe some actions that count as threatening another person through bullying and social media. Subgroups who are most often threatened over social media include race, ethnic groups, disability, gender, sex and sexual orientation.

First and second degrees of harassment both have similar classifications, such as threatening victims with physical injury, and annoying or alarming them for no legitimate reason. The first degree is only a class B misdemeanor, resulting in a punishment of a fine up to $1,000 or facing a maximum of three months in prison. The second degree of harassment is a violation that results in a fine but no jail time.

Most threats that are targeted at online subgroups are considered aggravated harassment in the first degree. This includes harassment, annoyance, threats and alarming anyone of a specific color, race, national origin, gender, age and disability.

According to the i-SAFE foundation, even though over half of adolescents have been bullied online and about the same have engaged in harassment, justice is not served as often as victims would like. This is because some comments that are directed at the victim may be protected under the First Amendment, freedom of speech. Some of the threats that are received or sent online are most often not verifiable and cannot be proven dangerous unless there’s a suggested time, place and location given by the perpetrator. Various police departments are also sometimes unfamiliar with online platforms, where the cyberbullying is taking place. This can then mean that they’re not adequately trained enough to deal with cyberbullying situations due to their lack of knowledge regarding social media. The victim may also be reluctant about pursuing a case because it costs a lot of money and time consummation.

The harmful effects of social media are made manifest in other ways than just cyberbullying.

Sophie McGrath, a 17-year-old from Vassar College, speaks about her experience with social media, explaining how it’s affected her mental health.

“I don’t think it’s beneficial for adolescents. It’s a huge cause of anxiety and it also most often leads into depression.

The ‘fear of missing out’ is something that really affects me the most. I’ll see a picture on Instagram about how other people and my friends are having so much fun, which in turn makes me feel worse about myself,” she said.

Coming from Fairfield, Connecticut and moving to Warmouth, Maine, Sophie describes how social media affects her new life in high school.

“I’ve deleted Instagram from my phone so that I don’t feel obligated to look at it and see how much fun other people are having. During the summer, I was obsessed with seeing what other people were doing and I felt like I couldn’t control myself,” she continued.

“When I moved to Maine I got Snapchat and Instagram

just so that I could stay in touch with those back at home from Connecticut. This only made me feel worse because… I was noticing what I was missing out on back at home. It made it harder to make new friends just because I saw that my old friends were having fun back at home and comparing that to myself.”

In another form, social media can act as a bridge, a place for people that feel different to connect with others that are in the same predicament.

Josue Chavez, an 18-year-old that attends SUNY Oneonta recalls a time in which he’s struggled with being comfortable because of the time he came out as gay to his peers and family. When coming out at the age of 14, and coming from a Christian Hispanic family, it was hard for people surrounding him to fully accept the person that he is. His parents were raised in Latin America with conservative and traditional ideas, making it hard for them to accept Chavez’s sexuality.

By connecting with other people over social media, it helped fill the gap of support that he needed for a difficult transition like this.

“The online community welcomed me with open arms, helping me rationalize my feelings and understand that taking my life wasn’t the answer. I felt included when I came out as gay because I didn’t have other people to talk to about it, I

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only wanted to speak to people that could relate to me,” he explained. “Online, I was able to talk to other people about their situations, how they coped and handled things. This made it easy for me because these people actually knew what I was going through… giving me the empathy that I needed.

It helped with my mental health and coming to terms with myself, and I will always be grateful for that.”

Today, social media is used in so many ways, giving us the opportunity to see into other people’s lives, allowing us to keep up with news in a more concise manner and connecting with people that actually understand us. Although it can be deeply flawed in many ways, social media also grants us the power to connect and learn from others in a way that revolutionizes the world around us.

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Photo by Chris Lamb

What’s the Deal HOW SOCIAL MEDIA DISPLAYS FURTHER A CULTURAL DICHOTOMY

BY RAE HARRIS

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with Gender Reveals?

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If you’ve ever scrolled through Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, you’ve probably stumbled upon the popular “gender reveal,” in which expectant parents cut into cakes, shoot paint out of water guns, set off smoke bombs, and solve riddles to reveal if they’re having a boy or a girl.

Even celebrities like Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, and Beyonce, revealed their baby’s gender in displays on social media with photoshoots and videos.

The gender reveal is a relatively new ritual that expecting families are adding to their pregnancy experience, according to Dr. Laura Tropp, author of A Womb With a View: America’s Growing Public Interest in Pregnancy and professor at Marymount Manhattan.

“Instead of finding out the sex of a baby at the birth, as was done in the past, or privately at an ultrasound, as was done more recently, parents are choosing to find out or reveal the sex with a larger group,” said Tropp.

The popularity of these gender reveals represents a shift in pregnancy from being a private experience to a more public one.

Carly Gieseler, a professor of Speech and Communication at York College, believes that this is reminiscent of our social media culture of sharing.

“Gender reveals elevate the traditional pinkand-blue baby shower to compete on the stage of social media. From skydives to balloon drops to hair dye – the more public and visible parentsto-be can make the gender reveal, the more loudly they can articulate their child’s gender,” Gieseler said.

One reason gender reveals have skyrocketed in popularity, Gieseler believes, is that despite a culture of oversharing, many people feel disconnected from each other. The ritual can be a moment of belonging, loyalty and commitment, and a way for long-distance family and friends to feel involved in these special moments.

On the other hand, the very public nature of gender reveals can also create an immense pressure of expectant parents to prove their worthiness as parents through displays on social media. Gieseler points to the competitive element of social media to earn “likes” and “views”.

Experts point to strict gender binaries as a problematic element of the gender reveal. When the baby’s babies’ gendered identities gender identities are publicly celebrated with pink and blue balloons before they’re born, a rigid, binary view of gender is reaffirmed.

“Many of the party favors, gifts, and games involve very antiquated ideas of gender – cakes that read ‘Bows or Badges’

featuring pretty pink bows or blue sheriff’s badges reiterate traditional and limited constructs of gender,” Gieseler said.

Dr. Daniel L. Carlson, a professor of family and

consumer studies at the University of Utah, believes that the preoccupation with gender is because as a society we are obsessed with sex.

“This obsession flows from the fact that sex and gender structure so much of our daily lives. We have constructed an

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ministry of cool 19

Coming of Age: It’s Not Just for White Boys Anymore Holden Caulfield does not represent all of us.

By Mateo Flores, Staff Writer

B

oyhood sucks. There I said it.

I think Boyhood’s perpetual issue is that a majority of its largely forgettable protagonist’s issues are incredibly inconsequential. There’s nothing about his life that’s particularly relatable or noteworthy. Or maybe instead, that’s what the problem is–that his life is too relatable to the point where the film is just boring. What does he learn? How does he take his childhood into his adulthood? The only growth we see onscreen is physical, and maybe that’s why director Richard Linklater decided to film it over the course of 12 years—so at least we could see the change.

Maybe we need to see stories that are equally like our own and unlike our own to learn more about others experiences and to then use that information as we go out into the world. Coming-of-age is a crucial aspect of life, and it’s justifiably represented across art and culture. However, while literature seems to represent a spectrum of identities in coming-of-age fiction and memoirs, the same cannot be said for film and television. We’ve been universally taught the experiences of white, straight, cisgender men; yet the majority of the country does not fall under that identity. Think of a comingof-age movie or television show. Who’s the lead? A likeable young white guy that charms his way to the end of the movie, in the process learning life’s great mysteries about high school, adulthood,

alcohol, pot, and sex?

That isn’t to say the experiences of white, straight, cis-gender men aren’t valid, but we are oversaturated with these narratives. A story like Boyhood can only exist in a collection of films that are all told from the same perspective. For what purpose, too?

As underrepresented groups know and understand, our identities crucially and fundamentally shape the way that we come-of-age, so why can’t we see stories that we actually relate to?

Googling “coming of age films” will present you with many titles, all of which are overwhelmingly white. A majority of these films are also led by men, almost all of whom are straight and cis-gendered. So what is causing this divide, especially when coming of age films about straight white cis men seem to be incredibly formulaic?

They’re also very situational; the coming-of-age genre almost entirely involves a situation or event that changes the character’s life. They either meet someone incredibly unique that disrupts the way they currently live their life, or some twist of fate occurs that dramatically alters their future, or sometimes even both. The general message usually being, don’t take life for granted, or live life to the fullest.

The coming of age genre in film/TV thrives on this bland and trite message, one that doesn’t tell us anything new or interesting.

Sure, we’re starting to see a bit of a shift now. As our screens diversify and performers with various identities take the center stage, we’re starting to see a bit of much needed change.

Barry Jenkins’ phenomenal Moonlight might be the most Art by Rachael Geary

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important coming-of-age film in years because it shows an intersectionality of identities in our protagonist Chiron.

Chiron embodies what it means to come from a single-parent household, a low socioeconomic status, to be black, and to be queer. Many can identify with his cacophony of identities, and its clear to see how they intersect in his day-to-day life.

Perhaps that’s important for us now; if we can find common ground to connect on and uncommon ground to learn from we teach and learn from one another. Film and television show us the world through others’ eyes and if we had the stories to match, we could understand an intersectionality of diverse identities and perspectives.

And the tides are already starting to shift. On My Block is an excellent show that displays the intersectionality of Afro-Latinx identities in an innercity context. Its power comes from its ability to show us how its core cast unite on common grounds despite their differences in culture and identity. And it doesn’t do sp in a way that’s cheesy either; their identities are a crucial part of their storylines and endeavours.

We’re seeing film and TV start to change. Our favorite shows aren’t just led by the majority anymore, and tokenized characters are becoming less and less of an overall concern in the media (on certain networks). We need diversity not just in appearance but also in ideas.

Mateo Flores is a sophomore Writing for Film, TV, and Emerging Media major who thinks Boyhood sucks. You can reach them at mflores3@ithaca.edu.

The Greats were Never Really Great From Weinstein to Picasso, powerful men’s art should not negate their actions.

By Mackenzie Brackett, Contributing Writer

O

ne year ago, the hashtag #MeToo went viral – sparking a movement for victims of sexual assault to come forward with their stories and raise awareness on behalf of the one in six women who experience this trauma in their lifetime. The movement gained even more traction when it started to expose big names in Hollywood, like producer Harvey Weinstein and actors Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman, as perpetrators of sexual harassment and/or rape, and reintroduced the allegations made against Donald Trump during the 2016 election. Since then, there have been mixed reactions to the Me Too movement, none of which have stopped women from sharing their stories.

But not all allegations have led to such aggressive reactions as those against men like Weinstein and Cosby. So why do some accusations blow over like a bad storm, allowing men to continue to win awards for their work and be considered the greatest in their field or become president of the United States?

On Netflix, there is a comedy special by Hannah Gadsby entitled Nanette. Among her anecdotes about lesbianism and jabs at the patriarchy, Gadsby also openly attacks Pablo Picasso – bringing to light the cubist’s misogyny and his affair with 17 year old Marie-Thérèse Walter (he was 45 at the time.) The comedian does this to highlight what happens to horrible people when they produce great work. Picasso is and probably will always be seen as a visionary in the art world, despite his actions. This happens all the time.

Take Sigmund Freud for example. While his teachings are slowly being phased out by more progressive psychology professors, for a long time, Freud was considered a brilliant

neurologist and the go-to when trying to understand how the human mind functions. Never mind the fact that he changed recorded outcomes of his research to correspond with his theories; believed that everything infants do, from breastfeeding to excreting was sexual; that masturbation caused mental illness; that he psychoanalyzed his own daughter; believed that women had penis envy; blindly accepted that his idol’s heinous practices; told a virgin patient of his that her cough was because of her unconscious desire to give her father a blowjob; that sexuality could be determined by how someone’s parents raised them; and more. Because Freud was a man, and because women at the time were second-class citizens, his research was taken into practice and became the basis for what most psychologists were taught about human cognitive function.

This pattern of accepting a famous man’s major flaws and wrongdoings because he is considered “great” is precisely why Casey Affleck is still employed after being accused of sexual harassment and why Drake’s predatory “friendship” with Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown has been brushed under the rug until now. And let’s not forget the marriages of dozens of famous male musicians to their teenage wives, or the fact that a man accused of sexual harassment by four women is the newest Supreme Court Justice.

When a woman publicly accuses a man of sexual misconduct, there are widespread calls for evidence to be brought forth and for the victim to produce a detailed, accurate account of what happened. These requests seem simple enough, but what happens when the assault was decades ago and there is no evidence? Or what if the victim cannot recall key details from the attack that others deem too crucial to forget? There is an increased burden of proof placed on women who accuse otherwise upstanding men because our patriarchal society is more focused on what the allegation might do to the man’s career than the effect it had on the woman’s life. They want to be absolutely sure that what the victim is claiming is true, despite the fact that trauma causes memory lapses as a defense mechanism and that the last thing a young woman is thinking after she’s been assaulted is, “I better save these clothes for evidence in the future.”

Weinstein and Cosby were both formally charged 21 because there were numerous accusations, many with

evidence, while these other high-profile men in entertainment get a pass because no one believes women unless they somehow provide evidence that isn’t there.

But wait, there was just as little evidence to accompany the allegations against Kevin Spacey, so why did he get blacklisted so quickly? Even when it comes to sexual assault, women are still lesser to men. Spacey’s offenses were against young white men, and our homophobic society is already programmed to vilify non-heterosexual intercourse. Young white men’s lives are seen as the most valuable, and because they suffered sexual assault at the hands of a man, their stories were accepted. Note that when young men are assaulted by older women, their claims are rarely taken as seriously—a result of that same heteronormativity. And look what happens when a black man accuses a white man of sexual assault. Terry Crews, a former NFL player turned actor, came out during the heat of the movement last year with his own assault story.

But instead of being embraced by the same people that immediately turned around and burned their copies of The Usual Suspects and removed House of Cards from their Netflix watchlists, Crews found himself being chastised by others for not “just fighting back.”

Because Crews is black and a former linebacker, he is expected by most people in this society to defend himself if he is attacked by anyone and is therefore seen by most as weak for “letting somebody assault him.”

Nobody allows themselves to be sexually assaulted. Most are paralyzed by shock and fear, and don’t fight back because they literally can’t, or don’t want to be killed for trying. But the same toxic masculinity that causes people to associate gay men with child molesters is the same prejudice that tells men they cannot be sexually assaulted and still be considered men. Kevin Spacey’s victims and Terry Crews all deserve justice and support but the operative word is all.

The same society that blacklists Kevin Spacey should not be able to turn around and bully Terry Crews.

And in the case of many famous musicians and actors, they entered into relationships with their longtime girlfriends or wives when they were just teenagers, making any sexual contact they had with these young women effectively rape – even if they consented. Statutory rape is the act of an adult having sexual relations with an individual under the legal age of consent. Individuals under the age of consent cannot give it in the eyes of the law. No matter what.

Even if these girls were fully aware of what they were doing and what was being done to them, and they said yes, because they were underage, those men are rapists. But they wrote great music and made great movies, so who really cares what

happened back then, right? Wrong.

Sexual abuse or assault at a young age has a lasting effect on a person, conditioning them to accept violent sexual behavior as the norm for the rest of their lives. Sexualizing young girls as young as elementary school – pushing them to wear makeup and dress to look “older” as part of “selfdiscovery” and “expression” is perpetuating the age-old stigmas surrounding sexual assault: that how a woman dresses determines if she was “asking for it,” that wearing any amount of makeup, even to feel pretty, is “lying” to men. This culture of sexualization to please men is precisely what allows celebrities to get away with sexual assault. And on the other side of the coin lies Terry Crews, who was mocked and bullied because he came out about the sexual assault he experienced at the hands of Harvey Weinstein. All of these perpetrators are and were predators for what they did, but our culture with its sexism, toxic masculinity, and racism will tell you to ignore that in favor of continuing to appreciate art that was never good enough to warrant ignoring rape.

Art by Rachael Geary Mackenzie Brackett is a freshman writing major who wonders why the fuck we’re still talking about Freud’s writing. You can reach them at mbrackett@ithaca.edu.

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Music Saved My Life—Actually Sugar, we’re goin’ down swingin’

By Gabrielle Ferro, Contributing Writer

“M

usic saved my life” is a phrase that, when uttered in seemingly any circumstance, elicits simultaneous grimaces from anyone who’s ever been a teenager, including myself. Such a reaction out of people stems from an overuse of the bold hyperbole, and the association of it with a particular time in their lives: a forgotten time, long ago, filled with dyed hair, sweeping bangs, lip piercings, and so much eyeliner. That’s right—the dreaded emo phase. If you experienced such a time in your life, like so many struggling youths, you probably don’t remember much beyond loud music, regrettable fashion choices, and a lot of emotional turmoil. But while you may look back on that time in your life or the lives of other sad, outcasted teens as one full of tears and regret and wildly over-exaggerated feelings, it’s surprising to think that there are people out there whose embarrassing phase actually had a significant influence on the rest of their lives.

Emocore, more commonly known as emo, is a genre of edgy punk or rock music with lyrics that heavily focus on emotions, which therefore attracts an audience of confused teens suffering from intense emotional distress. A big aspect of being emo is following the style and fashion choices, including tight, dark clothes, brightly colored hair with distinctly styled bangs and, as previously mentioned, too much eyeliner. Additionally, being emo requires a specific attitude; one where you’re supposed to make clear to the world your suffering, isolation and hatred for life. On account of the heavy focus on emotional lyrics and confused youth following, the emo genre is frequently associated with made-up emotions and whiny hormonal teenagers.

If emo culture had a slogan or motto, it would likely be, “Music saved my life.” Suffering teens tend to pour all their passion into this music, feeling they relate to the lyrics, making it all they care about in life. The expression is regarded as a dramatized and unhealthy exaggeration, or as unfair to students or professional musicians whose lives really do revolve around

music as their life’s work. This type of investment can be a way for teens to feel like they fit in somewhere, or an emotional outlet. However, adults and more well-adjusted youths find it hard to believe that these feeling are valid.

Personally, I’ve experienced such a connection to music in the past, and while I was never a picture-perfect style icon of emo, I certainly had the attitude and attachment to popular emo bands of the early 2000s. However, even I couldn’t say that music saved my life. It had a significant impact on me when I was younger, and it helped me through a lot of hard times, but I could never first-hand say that I would be dead without music.

However, despite all the stigma, painful memories, and embarrassing behavior, there are some people whose emo experience goes deeper than the cutout depressed teenager act. For a lot of young adults who are more mature now than their past emo selves, that time in their life did more than influence who they are now; in some of these cases, music really did save their lives.

A friend of mine who I’ve known for a very long time is a flawless example of how being emo, while embarrassing and upsetting to reflect on, had a huge effect on who she is today as a young adult emerging from a difficult youth. In an interview with Lauren over the phone, we discussed her relationship with music throughout her life and how it has evolved and shaped her as a person.

When Lauren was very young, her music taste was widely varied and influenced significantly by what her dad listened to, anywhere from the Beatles, to opera, to alternative radio. She claims, “Through that radio station, I found out about My Chemical Romance before Fall Out Boy.” In the eighth grade, Lauren’s father passed away, marking the peak of the most difficult time in her life. At this point, she was feeling depressed and had no motivation to go on with her life. She found no purpose to get out of bed in the morning and was essentially consumed by sadness for a long time. This led to frightening and dangerous thoughts; she was contemplating suicide, feeling

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as though that was her only option to escape the tunnel of depression. Lauren eventually discovered, though, that she could find solace in only one thing: the pop punk emo band, Fall Out Boy. Lauren claims that their music gave her a purpose in life. Their lyrics about their own experiences with sadness and depression gave her hope and made her feel like somebody out there understood her. In particular, the song “Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown On a Bad Bet” off the album Folie A Deux spoke to her, literally. “It felt like the lyrics, especially the one line, ‘darling, I know what you’re going through,’ was actually written for me. It felt like fate.”

As her love for Fall Out Boy increased and Lauren began to get help for her depression, she poured her passion into the type of music for which Fall Out Boy opened the door.

She became invested in emo culture; she began dressing the part and, due to her emotional struggles, acted the part, too. Lauren was full-on emo at the end of middle school and some of high school, and she reflects upon it as many previously emo kids do. “I’m definitely embarrassed now about having been emo, about fitting the mold.” However, Lauren had something unusually deeper to say about the matter when further prompted. “But I’m not embarrassed about the music, or how much I loved it.

I even enjoy thinking about it, about how much they helped me. It’s bittersweet.

Fall Out Boy filled a void for me.”

Nowadays, Lauren listens to eighties rock and show tunes. Music is still a huge influence in her life. Despite having changed and grown in her tastes and improved mental health, however, she still listens to Fall Out Boy and other emo bands from that difficult time in her life. Music has always been a huge part of Lauren’s life, and she’ll forever acknowledge all that Fall Out Boy has done for her. “Music saved my life,” she says, with truth and conviction.

Gabrielle Ferro, Contributing Writer, is a freshman Integrated Marketing and Communication major who panics at the disco. You can reach them at gferro@ithaca.edu.

WTF is BDE? The rise of big dick energy

By Alexis Morillo, Upfront Editor

T

hrough the ebbs and flows of viral meme culture, sometimes the internet strikes gold. And so goes the story of “big dick energy,” a term I will now never be able to remove from my vocabulary.

The true definition of “big dick energy” is not as explicit as the name might suggest. To have BDE is a sort of confidence without the cockiness (pun kind of intended). Big dick energy is an essence one gives off effortlessly and honestly and has nothing to do with what’s going on between someone’s legs — you don’t even need a penis to exude BDE. Alex Abad-Santos and Constance Grady published a piece for Vox in June outlining the timeline of BDE and explained, that contrary to what the name suggests, when it comes to BDE, size doesn’t matter.

“BDE is not about brandishing large, flapping genitalia when someone insults you, or constantly proving to people that you possess a BD. BDE is the complete opposite. It’s the self-confidence to know that a colossal endowment isn’t a measurement of one’s value. BDE might stem from having a literal BD, but it’s not dependent upon any sort of genitalia,” wrote Abad-Santos and Grady.

The entire trend started with a Twitter meme, as do many of the lasting cultural milestones we’ve been seeing more and more these days. So much of our language has originated through its exposure on social media. Terms like “that’s the tea, sis” that started as phrases used just in POC and queer communities have become a larger part of popular culture throughout the years due to online circulation. Twitter is the perfect breeding grounds for funny, trending phrases, which is how BDE came to be.

For those well versed in the history of big dick energy, they’d attribute the saying to none other than Pete Davidson.

Unless you live under a rock, you know that Davidson is engaged to Ariana Grande… a relationship that left the entertainment industry shocked and celebrity news media outlets with evergreen content. The couple has become notorious for their overt affection on social media.

One day, when Grande was answering fan questions after the release of her Sweetener album tracklist, a fan asked an

innocuous question about the length of the album’s interlude which just so happens to be named “pete davidson.”

The fan tweeted her asking “How long is pete?” and then clarified this question with a second tweet: “OH AS IN THE INTERLUDE NOT AS IN… ANYWAY.” Grande took this as her chance to joke around with her fans as she often does during these Twitter sprees. She responded: “like 10 inches ? ….oh fuck…. i mean ….like a lil over a minute,” in the now deleted tweet. This started not only as an enthusiastic uproar in her fandom of “Arianators” but also started one of the biggest trends of the summer.

People found themselves analyzing Pete Davidson’s aesthetic and behavior to justify this (probably exaggerated) factoid Grande chose to share. One Twitter user, @ babyvietcong posted, “Pete davidson is 6’3 with dark circles, exudes big dick energy, looks evil but apparently is an angel, and loves his girl publicly the only thing wrong w him is that he’s a scorpio but anyway.....id married him within a month too,” a tweet that gained immense traction across the platform. Davidson’s self-deprecating humor, laid back style, and the shameless love for Grande are all aspects that allude to his own essence of BDE, although his astrological sign psychoanalysis is a conversation for another day.

There’s no way to know who exactly first coined the term “big dick energy,” but what I do know is that I can’t stop saying it. I find that this trend doesn’t discriminate, and even though the term itself could lead some to think otherwise, BDE redefines the meaning of masculinity. A term that seems like it relates an anatomical feature to power is actually proving that power comes in the way one carries themself. What I love most about this term is the surprising inclusivity that exists within it. Women, men, and humans of any gender can have big dick energy. BDE all goes back to confidence and selfawareness, qualities that everyone from all backgrounds and identities can benefit from and should be praised for.

Alexis Morillo is a senior Journalism major who, according to a Buzzfeed quiz she took during her 8 a.m., has 85% big dick energy. You can reach them at amorillo@ithaca.edu.

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Their Teeth in our Necks Guts and gore galore

By Jordan Szymanski, Contributing Writer

I

f it bleeds, it will bring green. The splatter film, one of American horror cinema’s defining genres, rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year off of cheaply produced films made to make us shriek, cringe and hopefully throw up.

This October, we should prepare to see lots of guts and gore, not unfamiliar to Hollywood’s fall-friendly formula: cheap + huge box office pay off = Splatter Film franchises galore.

When we think of splatter films, we might point to Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Human Centipede, each film having a budget of under 10 million dollars, and grossing a profit of over 100 million, and giving us famous gut-wrenching and torso twisting scenes. Except when we dig deeper into American horror film exploitation genres, we find that the impetus of splatter films are their preoccupation with gore as an artform.

George A. Romero first coined the term, “splatter cinema” when describing his own film, Dawn of the Dead. Except Romero fought back against the critiques of needless exploitation for his film and insisted on social commentary as a defining element of his film and in retrospect, the genre. So, what if this spooky season, we take a step back and examine: what do splatter films say about American society? This could get messy.

Splatter film, by definition, is a subgenre—it is a type of horror film that

capitalizes on graphic violence.

It is o f t e n t h r o u g h special effects a n d visual elements that we fascinate ourselves with the mutilation a n d vulnerability of the h u m a n body.

As t h e genre grew, it began to b e described as “torture porn” or “gor no” by mainly film critics that were pointing out the incessant need to Art by Anna Ferrari

draw fear (and pleasure) out of audiences by pushing destruction of selves and the pain that accompanies. The popularity of these techniques center around two key elements to Hollywood industry: audience and profit. These films do not cost much to produce, these stories are easy to understand and replicate and the profits are astronomical—most of the times grossing ten times the budgets.

It is no surprise that Hollywood is targeting stereotypes of adolescent masculinity by marketing overtly graphic, torturous “gore porn.” Many of these films have a sort of masochism embedded in the seams. There is a level of enjoyment an audience experiences in watching such grotesque displays on screen. Coupled with a few formulalic devices of the subgenre like eroticism, sex, drinking, or drug use, splatter films rightly and intentionally earn their name as torture porn. People fuck their way to death, and we as viewers derive pleasure from the on-screen destruction.

Except we must not pretend that exploitation does not cost someone something.

Putting violence on screen and reinforcing guts and gore for cinematic effect can be harmful to viewers. Needless and merciless glorified mutilation is unforgettable (and this is often the exact reason why filmmakers cram movies with gory scenes), but searing our consciousness with these images doesn’t stop after the blood-splatter. An article “This is Your Brain On Gore” detailed the findings of psychologists at Vanderbilt University. “Gore—and even erotic images—cause temporary ‘blindness’ in the moments following the scene.” This can explain why scenes can infiltrate our subconscious and haunt us weeks or years after we’ve seen something particularly repugnant, yet we are unable to recall anything directly after that part of the movie. This sort of erasure can link to a coping mechanism for stressful or traumatic situations in which we “forget,” or our brains wipe our memory of it.

Splatter films also show synthetic portrayals of characters and situations that perpetuate unfair and

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decontextualized stereotypes. A few infamous horror movie cliches are especially true when discussing splatter films, such as racialized characters like the token racial minority of the cast always dying (and dying rather quickly).

And of course there’s the most heavily employed stereotype of horror movies: the gender politics of murder. It is often assumed that sex will get you killed.

Moments like the woods scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre reinforce the idea of promiscuous women getting taken out (and taken out brutally). This idea bounces off of the “Final Girl” trope that normally gives the “morally pure” virginal girl the final confrontation with the killer, however it ends (she kills him or is saved by some outside force). Carol J. Clover first coined this concept in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, where she explains the assumed “privilege” of this morally sound woman who has refused to engage in “risky” behavior like sex and drinking, unlike her unfortunate (and now, dead) friends.

These expectations of splatter films and the discussion around their place in American Cinema stem back to why we may settle into our cozy dorm rooms, turn on our ghost-themed string lights and watch 135 minutes of mutilation, danger and blood. Maybe because it causes an adrenaline rush and enforces the tactic that all cinema relies on, a suspension of disbelief that allows us to be simultaneously scared and comforted by our distance from this awful circumstance. Or maybe in the our dark moments, we buy into the masochism of it all, finding solace in our escapism in this pain we see as beautiful and terrifying all at once. Overarchingly, gore tends to reinforce the idea that good triumphs evil—at least that is our hope in watching splatter films.

The extremes tend to pull us to center: we tolerate (even enjoy) watching someone or something get completely obliterated, so long as something is built back up in the end.

Hickeys buzzsex

By Mara Batt, Contributing Writer

C

an you count off the top of your head how many hickeys you saw on campus today? Chances are you can’t, either because there were too many to keep track of or because you barely thought anything of them. Hickeys are so normalized within the college culture that it’s easy to forget they weren’t always that way.

In most environments, hickeys are ranked within the realm of taboo. I remember getting a lot of looks one time when I had a hickey in high school. It wasn’t my first one, but, to this day, it was definitely still the worst. I literally experienced movie-esque moment of kids whispering and pointing at me.

And sure, it was dark purple and the size of a golf ball. And I mean, yeah, it was on the back of my neck, causing questions like “How did that even happen, bruh?” But honestly, can’t we all just be mature? Sex is natural. As long as you’re being safe, whatever you choose to do in your sex life shouldn’t be controversial. So why are they such a big deal to some people?

My mom always told me that hickeys are trashy. The few times she saw me with one—which wasn’t often because I would almost always find a way to hide them—she would ask me why I was letting my boyfriends disrespect me, or why that was really the way I wanted to be viewed at school. I wasn’t really thinking about what people would think or the power dynamics in my relationships. Hickeys just kind of… happen.

They’re an exchange between two people, so they shouldn’t be anyone else’s business, right? That sounds simple enough, but it neglects the fact that hickeys are prominent, bright marks bound to draw the eyes of the public. If something is left out on display, is it really no one else’s business?

Typically, when I spot someone with a hickey, my impulse is to quickly look away–not because I feel scandalized or abashed, but more because I’ve just gained access to a piece of someone’s personal life I wouldn’t otherwise be aware of.

It feels like I’m intruding, especially when I don’t even know that person. And before anybody gets skeptical about the impact I’m claiming to have over these encounters, I’d like to argue that you can infer a lot by looking at a hickey. Shape, size, intensity, location… it all combines to paint an image of exactly what went down. I’ll even wager that if someone

really trained themselves and honed in on the art, it would be possible to determine pieces of a person’s, or maybe more so their partner’s, psychology just by examining their hickeys.

While most of us aren’t precisely trained in the field of hickiology, I think that on some level, we all gain unnecessary insights when we spot a hickey. So it’s understandable that some people get uncomfortable or view them as taboo.

And I definitely get why a parent would cringe to see one on their child. In college, though, knowing way too much about your peers at all times is just reality. Communal bathrooms, publicly crying to your mom on the phone, breaking up with your boyfriend in the middle of Campus Center dining hall…

Basically, if I can hear my neighbors fucking through the thin Terrace 8 walls, glimpsing a hickey the next day is really no trip. But when we step outside the bubble of college, it makes sense that some people might view hickeys as scandalous.

Especially parents who grew up in a time when people were less open about their sex lives.

Generational gaps aside, I think I understand a piece of my mom’s concern. Some hickeys are more innocent than others, or perhaps I should say, some are more intentional than others. There’s the light, smattered type that usually occur due to a genuine attempt at pleasuring a partner. And then there are the dark purple, golf ball sized type that are placed, almost certainly, to make heads turn. I believe this is also referred to as a “claiming” hickey. I’m not trying to say that everyone sporting a dark hickey has just had an unpleasant experience. If you’re into that, there is nothing inherently wrong about it. However, I do think it’s a good idea, in any situation, to be aware of the intent behind your actions.

Before you leave a dark hickey, make sure your partner is comfortable both receiving it and dealing with it after the fact.

If you’re a person who enjoys receiving hickeys, keep in mind that while few people will bat an eye in a progressive college atmosphere, that reaction will not be the case everywhere you go. Sexuality can be complex and confusing, so it’s important that we all take the time to consider the significance of our own desires, as well as the impact they can have when we interact with others.

26

RAW SAW FROM THE

Love, Gilda

By Julia LaCava, Contributing Writer

L

ove, Gilda provides its viewers with a personal, nuanced look at its titular subject. While documentaries tend to stick to the format of interviews with added footage, Love, Gilda uses archived audio, notes, letters, and diary entries to let Gilda Radner tell her story in her own words. The film is laced with interviews from people she inspired, such as SNL cast members Amy Poehler and Bill Hader, who pour through Gilda’s writing with amazement.

Radner was more than just the first cast member of SNL and more than the hilarious characters she created: she was a human being. She struggled with universal issues such as mental health, including battles she fought with eating disorders. She loved being in love and when it left, she didn’t know what to do. Her relationship with fame was one filled with doubt and occasional anger. In 1986, she was diagnosed

with “the most unfunny thing in the world,” ovarian cancer.

Throughout everything, Gilda used her comedy as a coping mechanism, turning her pain into jokes. Gilda remained a beam of light to every life she touched, from friend Martin Short to husband Gene Wilder.

Unlike other documentaries that show a life from beginning to end, the last part of Gilda’s life shown on-screen is her second relapse with cancer, rather than her death which occurred soon after. The film instead decides to go out on a high moment of Gilda — a clip of her performing on Broadway doing what she loved: making people laugh. I think Gilda, herself, would have loved this choice, almost as much as she loved life. By the time the credits rolled, I felt as if I knew Gilda myself and was sorry to see her go.

Saturday Night Live, Season 44

By Daniel Martin, Contributing Writer

T

he 44th season of Saturday Night Live kicked off last weekend. Hosted by Star Wars and Girls actor Adam Driver and overshadowed by the antics of musical guest Kanye West, it was a really solid season premiere. The SNL premiere isn’t always a good litmus test of the season to come. New writers and cast members are finding their footing so the show often needs a week or two to get in its groove, but the season 44 premiere was a very solid outing opener.

Driver acquitted himself well, especially in the post Weekend Update “Career Day” skit which saw him in heavy make-up playing an elderly and shout-happy oil baron explaining his job to his son’s class. However, the highlight of the night was Matt Damon’s tour-de-force performance in his cameo of the show’s impressive 13 minute cold open.

The current makeup of the cast is talented if a bit anonymous. Kate McKinnon, with her versatility and character skills ever present, is still the star in what may be her final season on the show, while Kenan Thompson, who had an unfortunately light show but is now entering his record 16th season, remains the glue that holds the show together.

Going forward these two can be counted on as a constant presence. Cecily Strong, whose “Coffee Shop” skit was one of the better ones of the premiere, is another heavily relied

upon cast member, though her characters can be very hit or miss. The frequently used, versatile featured players of the past two seasons, Alex Moffat and Mikey Day, have both been promoted to the main cast and will likely be relied upon more, with good reason. Only one new cast member, Ego Nwodim, joins the cast, though the season premiere didn’t see her doing much.

However, as good as the cast or the sketches are, SNL undoubtedly make headlines this year for its political comedy, especially its handling of President Donald Trump, still played

by SNL’s most frequent host, Alec Baldwin. While Baldwin’s Trump impression lacks the edge and excitement it had in 2016, it’s still capable of generating laughs when given the right material and situations. Often those situations involve shifting focus from Trump and letting Trump be a supporting feature in a sketch, like the show did so well last year with Ben Stiller’s cameos as Michael Cohen. The show has also been able to find political laughs about Trump without showing Trump himself, as Moffat and Days impressions of Eric and Don Jr. have become one of the most reliably funny recurring characters on the show. Overall, the Driver-hosted premiere was a solid way to kickoff an SNL season that has a lot of eyes on it.

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Assassination Nation

By Mateo Flores, Staff Writer

“W

hat?” That was the first thing I said when the screen cut to black and the credits started to roll on Assassination Nation. How could you honestly say anything else?

It’s very hard to watch Assassination Nation. Outside of its possible triggering content (which it warns at the beginning of the film), it’s just a really jarring film. Yes, it all makes sense in terms of what happens, and it’s a well-made, stylish, modern exploitation film, but it’s also very confusing.

We begin with Lily, a young high school student whose life revolves around fashionably flashy clothes, social media, and her friends surviving the daily grind of secondary education. In a fictionalized Salem, Lily and her friends suddenly face anarchy when half of their town is hacked and mayhem arises in the streets. In a nutshell, that’s what this film is about: how information can lead to insurrection. At the end of the day I tried to boil this movie down to being about victimization and marginalization since it certainly does have a lot to say about that. We see marginalized groups become victims of the hacks first, and then we see how the young girls become another part of an unseeable system that has no care for what disastrous situations it causes. Who’s the hacker too?

The film is less concerned with this and more concerned with what consequences the hacker causes.

Writer-director Sam Levinson does an exceptional job on both fronts. His script at times is genuinely hilarious but also deeply unnerving. He pushes the themes and horrors of his concept to their extreme but weaves realistic dialogue throughout, which points out that in our conversations we make light of a lot of darkness.

His direction is intentional and impactful. Our protagonist is almost constantly illuminated with fluorescent pink light, and he ditches realism at times to focus on making a visually powerful shot. Toward the beginning of the film, when the girls go to a party, he uses a split screen effect to make the screen look like a Snapchat or Instagram post. These characters’ lives are entirely superficial, and Levinson constantly brings attention to that—albeit to varying effectiveness. His film is still visually captivating; his attention to how the scenes are lit is meticulous and incredibly well-done.

What struck me the most about this film is that I couldn’t tell if it was gratuitous to make a point or if it goes too far and loses sense of the mentality that it was trying to critique in the first place. Many call it a “modern day retelling of the Salem witch trials,” but it seems to be much more than that. To simplify the film like that doesn’t really do it justice for all of the heavy-lifting it does on other fronts. It’s also a deconstruction of the social norms and expectations that we have as a socialmedia driven culture. While many stories seem to falter in their critique of this new system of communication, Assassination Nation unabashedly lives in it, and it shows how those who are perpetually victimized in society are also victimized online.

Perhaps Assassination Nation is a bit too dramatic for its own good, but it seems to speak to a fear of the great unknown about the internet and social media. Is social media helping us in the long-run, or are we just letting ourselves be consumed by it? Levinson doesn’t know, nor does he pretend to, but he rightfully feeds a lot of anxiety around it. With this film, he begs us to examine the ways we behave with these new systems in place.

Bojack Horseman, Season 5

By Tessa More, Staff Writer

B

ojack Horseman gets back into the television world in season five as he stars on his first show since Horsin’ Around (a very famous tv show in the 90s). His new tv show, Philbert, directly parallels his actual life; Philbert is a character who does terrible things played by Bojack, a character who also does terrible things, and yet they’re both portrayed as deserving empathy. After an on-set accident, Bojack combines his alcoholism with prescription painkillers, and he begins to confuse being on Philbert with his real life, to the point where the two become one. Arguably the darkest season yet, it references current trends and movements as it toes a precarious line between too real and way too real.

If you can make it past the first few episodes of Bojack Horseman, you will discover a “comedy” that is one of the smartest and deepest available for streaming. As an animated show, it could easily be put into a category with The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, or Rick and Morty, but the only similarity is that they are all animated shows. Bojack is as real as it gets, with

some truly hilarious comedy sprinkled throughout.

At first glance, Bojack Horseman does not have a lot of “likeable” characters, they’re all flawed in their own ways. But while the characters might not be prototypically likeable, they somehow are still relatable. One main theme in the season is: how far does forgiveness go? In the trailer for the season Diane is telling Bojack, “You say you want to get better but you don’t know how.” As the season progresses, characters fuck up in increasingly worse ways, while the viewer wonders if they will ever be forgiven and grow as a person (or horse or dog)?

It’s hard to binge season five of Bojack. I found myself having to pause to digest the heavy introspection, whether it’s about the aforementioned forgiveness, depression, selfsabotage, trauma, fear of being alone, stagnation in life and career. That all seems heavy, and it is, but then a minute later I find myself laughing to the point where I have to pause to appreciate its incredibly clever dialogue.

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The show follows the format of a drama more than it does a comedy, and somehow it’s still hilarious. There is a clear story being told each season and throughout the show as a whole.

But in the fifth season it takes this to the extreme, telling the larger story while breaking from the show’s typical formula.

Two episodes stand out. Episode six, “Free Churro,” is told entirely as Bojack monologues, and episode seven, “INT. SUB,” is told from new characters’ points of view. It includes a therapist and her girlfriend, who is a a mediator, telling the story of each of their days, altering the characters slightly so

they aren’t breaking confidentiality.

Sometimes Bojack is too real. It portrays addiction and depression better than any other show I’ve ever seen, frequently to a scary degree. Season six will probably air next September, and the showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg said he will continue making the show as long as Netflix lets him.

Let’s hope it does, because Bojack wouldn’t translate well to any other platform without being a watered down version of itself.

American Vandal, Season 2

By Mateo Flores, Staff Writer

A

s this new season of American Vandal starts up, we move away from Hanover High to St. Bernardine, a private Catholic school in Washington. The writers cleverly break the fourth wall by pointing out that the “original series” that was produced by Peter Maldonaldo and Sam Ecklund was posted on Vimeo before being picked up and redesigned by Netflix (some fans of the “original” say it lost its gritty appeal).

With this exposure, our two documentarians use their senior trip to explore the incident of the Turd Burglar—a madman who put laxatives in the cafeteria’s llemonade, causing half of the students to experience explosive diarrhea all over the building. But that’s not all. The Turd Burglar also tagged all of the shitting students on social media, making a video of them shitting their pants just one click away. This time around, our falsely accused student is Kevin McClane, an awkward, pretentious tea drinker who argues that he was coerced into making a false confession.

I don’t by any means think that this season of American Vandal was bad. I still do think that the show has a lot going for it, and it manages to hit a lot of the beats that made it great in the first place. But in some regards, it just sadly misses the mark. What I really admired about the first season is that it treated normal high school events like they were the most twisted crime we have ever seen. There was a certain beauty in its realism; it was funny how unnecessarily dramatic everything was, and the reason a lot of the cast came across as so real is because the situation felt so real. While I admit it is humorous to go from dick jokes to poop jokes, the situation is a bit too much. It’s funny, but it detracts from the realism that American Vandal used so eloquently in its first season.

The cast of characters this time around is also not as memorable as last season’s. For one, most of the young performers are recognizable actors; former Vine star Melvin Gregg and even DeRon Horton of Dear White People play pretty big roles in the plot. The St. Bernardine students are played well and do deliver quite a few laughs, but they’re just not as memorable as the students from Hanover High.

Who can forget greasy Alex Trimboli and snake in the grass Mrs. Shapiro? Not to mention the marvelously played Dylan Maxwell?

The only two returning characters are Peter and Sam (not

even a cameo from Jimmy Tatro unfortunately). While they are onscreen for a majority of the series, they get no further development. I believe this was because they are not students of St. Bernardine and are not that attached to the events taking place on screen. It feels like a huge oversight on the writers’ part to include characters from the original story and not do anything with them. They might as well have had two filmoriented students from St. Bernardine investigate the crime; at least this way they could engage with what was going on.

What I think I found the most frustrating about this season though was its conclusion. This mystery did not feel as carefully weaved as the first season; while the first season ended with a compelling message about how a person’s reputation can haunt them in ways unseen, this season goes for a pretty lame message about social media and the internet. Last season had a cleverly interwoven message about social media and how it can only contribute to building false narratives, but this time the show instead decides to beat us over the head with just how dangerous these narratives can be. Some much more interesting and yet very understated messages about classism and racism within a predominantly white institution aren’t explored as much as they should be. It feels like any real chance it gets to explore these much more dynamic themes gets substituted with a heavy handed social media message.

There’s a lot to enjoy with this show– its parody of true crime with frivolous and silly storylines is very enjoyable.

Unfortunately, it seems like the showrunners have forgotten what made this show so compelling and interesting to begin with. It was incredibly multi-faceted and seemed to be developed with special and specific attention to detail in many areas. This season rides a very excited head-train but in the process it forgets what made it so great in the first place.

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Million Dollars to Kill Me

By Brianna Pulver, Layout Editor

J

oyce Manor used to have this rough, rugged, slammy tone to them that brought out something innately human in its listening. They were an unapologetic, emo indiepunk group of guys that wanted to put it all out there in every song they wrote. But as of late, they’ve hit a standstill. They’re recycling themes from their past albums, and it sounds mechanical and washed-out.

Their self titled LP came out in 2012, Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired in 2012, and Never Hungover Again in 2014. They were on a good run, and it seemed as though they found their sound quickly. Heavy riffs and messy plucking kept coming up, and it made them sound confident in what they were doing. We figured Joyce Manor was soft punk and that they were sticking to that. But when their last album Cody was released in 2016, they fell short. They weren’t the same.

Joyce Manor was slower, more cleaned up, more enunciated.

It was a hard tug from their upset noise.

With Cody, they acquired a new drummer—not a huge deal, but it definitely changed up the way they played together. What really ruined them, though, was Rob Schnapf.

He was the producer for Cody, who’s also produced artists like Elliot Smith and Dr. Dog. Schnapf is a big guy in the industry (which isn’t always a good thing), but even with all the experience he’s had with musicians, he didn’t let them trust their gut on getting music out in their normal disorderly, manic rage. He made them sit there and think and think and tweak and change. It wasn’t Joyce Manor coming out with music anymore. It was Schnapf.

Having an organized, systematic way of doing things is

great. This isn’t a dig at how Schnapf produces. It’s a dig at his character for assuming that everyone works better under the same circumstances, for believing you can blanket music and art as having a one-way system of producing “good quality” sounds. Joyce Manor isn’t clean. They aren’t pop. But Schnapf must have changed something big in the way they see themselves and it must have stuck pretty well because they had Converge’s guitarist, Kurt Ballou, produce Million Dollars to Kill Me, and they’re still off. It’s monotone, sappy, self-deprecating, and soulless. There’s a shift in strumming or drum stroke every three songs or so, but ultimately it’s anything and everything less than exciting or enjoyable.

Their second song “Think I’m Still in Love with You” may be the worst version of this song I could have predicted. It’s poppy and upbeat and it sort of reminds me of a bad prom movie from the 80s. If nothing more, it’s redundant with lines like “Doesn’t really make a difference to me /Take a bunch of pills and crash into me / Do it again for old time sake / Look at me now there’s nothing else left to break” It’s as similar as their lyrics in “Falling in Love Again” from Never Hungover Again: “Hope you don’t think I don’t care /because I do I just don’t know if I should feel this bad about you / after finishing your birthday drugs look at a yearbook unprepared” On top of their lacking lyricism and less than exciting instrumentals, it’s an eight-track, twenty two-minute album. It’s like if surf-rock smacked heads with the lyrics of Morrissey and spat out an album. It doesn’t work, and, further, it’s disappointing coming from a band like Joyce Manor.

alona chemerys

R

ecently, Spotify has become the most popular music streaming service. A huge reason is its vast variety of playlists: easy to compose, huge in number, and easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, even in the most obscure searches. I myself don’t use Spotify much, as I’ve been mooching off a friend’s premium account, but even with infrequent visitations to the app, I’ve still managed to hone in on a playlist so wonderful that it’s about all I’ve been listening to. The songs are so unique and bizarre that I’m constantly surprised and pleased. I stumbled across Spotify’s alona chemerys playlist as a result of discovering the YouTube channel while in search of new music (classic rock is great, but there’s only so much of it to listen to in eighteen years of existence). I’m not even entirely sure what alona chemerys is; the channel lacks a description or explanation beyond “sugar and cream are mainstream.” It is as mysterious and enigmatic as its songs.

The playlist is composed of most of the same songs as the YouTube channel, including genres anywhere from alternative, to indie, dreampop, low-fi, and psychedelic, featuring an eclectic mix of obscure artists, such as Brad Stank, Mustard Service, spookyghostboy, and many more.

A lot of these musicians and groups have their debut tracks and experimental styles featured on this playlist, hence their

By Gabrielle Ferro, Contributing Writer

unpopularity. The Spotify playlist contains a good amount of more well-known bands in the mix as well, such as The Velvet Underground, The Lumineers, Yung Heazy, and my current favorite, Houndsmouth.

While the flow of songs on the playlist is nice, it isn’t the best part, and it can easily be listened to on shuffle with the same pleasant effects. It’s difficult to describe the way this combination of songs makes me feel, but in a few general adjectives: surreal, hazy, relaxed, high, sensual, and confused, in all the best possible ways. Each song evokes its own spiral of unique thoughts and sensations based on its lyrics and instrumentals.

The alona chemerys playlist on Spotify may be one of the strangest collections of musicians and songs in history— and if you still don’t believe me after all this, go listen to Cocaine Jesus by Rainbow Kitten Surprise. It’s a great playlist for its uniqueness, diversity and the way it all makes you feel.

Additionally, it’s a great way for upcoming artists to express their creativity in experimental ways and to get their names recognized next to already popular and established artists. If you’re looking for new music, a soundtrack for when you’re high, or even a good laugh at some song titles (Toilet Boy, What the Heck, salvia plath), I highly recommend alona chemerys.

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prose & cons 31

Consider, if you will, baby teeth. They could be seen as precursors to growth and revitalization, but more realistically are motile, sharp bones that shiver into place inside malleable, pink, pulsing gums. Baby teeth are white shell-like children that shudder through oral birth canals, excited to breathe air only to be recycled. Baby teeth are unwittingly born to know death.

We too are born unwittingly, screaming into the ripe and stinking air, and then mistakenly think this air is our own. To think that we have control and ownership over our accidental lives is a great ignorance. We are great in number—of value only to our mothers and sometimes to our fathers and generally highly replaceable. I also venture to say that if we were used as currency, we too would be worth only cents.

The reality I am hinting at is that we do not matter, or we matter very little. In order to venture further into this train or, rather, tunnel of thought, we must abandon this misconception. Do not fret, I do not matter either. It is difficult to release this notion because for some reason we are told from very early ages that we do, in fact, matter, and that our lives somehow do carry meaning, although again this idea is ludicrous, and we know this instinctually in those moments when we feel “blue” or “in a funk.”

Our guardians lovingly take our shiny, rubbery cheeks between their hands and inflate us with impossible visions of grandeur, verbally painting versions of ourselves we search to construct and attain all our lives. But then we look into the mirror around the age of twelve and see a pudgy, shimmering, vaguely smelly child-in-transition caked in unoriginal ideas that an uneducated, uncultured tween society has picked out for us. During these important moments when we stand naked, foldy, slouching, and farty before a mirror, we are at last old enough to feel sad without direct reason.

Hark! This is the surfacing of that fundamental truth that our guardians so often fail to teach us in their well-meaning but misguided quest to paint the world as a kindly cradle. This is reality knocking upon our door, trying to show us through grayscale and frustratingly inexpressible emotions the truth of this life. These moments of disconnect from the earth, these instances of discomfort when we occupy spaces of stillness and non-life are indeed reality.

It may be a difficult truth to swallow. The objective of this exercise is not to provoke anger or frustration but to better understand ourselves and the spaces we occupy. But, indeed, how do we cope now that we know, perhaps with a shock, we are nothing? What can we do with our inch of space atop this squishy, warm, smelling gum and with our striking closeup view of the wrinkly lip?

The better question is what can’t we do? Well, of course, there are many things. (That question was rhetorical.) But now we know our reality. We know the truth.

And so I ask with bated breath, can you feel it? Can you see and hear both everything and nothing all at once? Now that we know the truth, it is possible for us to experience things for what they are…we can push open the ugly beige doors and feel the cold metal against our palms like a strange embrace. We can feel the crisp night air sweeping against the skin that will one day die, knowing that in the night’s chimes and whistles there could be something greater than us. We can sit by fires on occasion, close our eyes, and hear water sealed up inside the light, roaring and cascading within the flames that burn just as we sometimes do; we can open our eyes and be pleasantly surprised by ashes that seek to climb higher and then taper off into the deepest blue. In any space, we can suck in the fullness of emptiness or feel like a hot knife the emptiness of fullness; we are to know that all of this is nothing, and that this understanding is everything.

On Being Dispensable

by Mae McDermott 32

seaside

by Madison R. Barlow

Reminiscing

by Dariene Seifert Several summers ago we rode our bikes around the cul-de-sac Our wheels would jump off the cracked pavement For a moment, we were gloriously airborne

i don’t feel God when i go to church. i don’t feel spirits rise and sink within the marrow of my bones and blood of my veins the way the priest says i should. sometimes, though, when i’m being blanketed in salty sheets of ocean that cuts out the coast of my home, the sinking sun paints the sky with the pureness of pastels.

There was a girl in pink ribbon pigtails that matched the flying tassels on her trike A boy with bandages on his bruised knees and then there was me and you You wanted to race around the entire cul-de-sac Whoever won got the candy bar sitting in your icebox a cool reward for this grueling day

i allow the tide to move me the waves carry me. and sometimes they carry me to God.

Determined, you got the head start I was close with Pigtails and Bandages not too far behind But the race came to an unfortunate stop Next thing I knew, your tire snagged on an elevated crack You flew face first into the boiling pavement, and your mouth bloomed red Your front tooth emerged free After that, you did not smile that much anymore Your bike grew dusty in the garage I have not heard from Pigtails or Bandages And still no one has bothered to fix the pavement in the cul-de-sac

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Home in Three Acts

by Julia LaCava

I. You expect to go to college and leave it behind. You think it will always be there for you, like a book

you can pick right back up. But it changes. Someone has moved your bed. Your bookshelf is filled with another person’s collection. Everything is different. You wonder how you spent eighteen years here, roaming halls that now feel like a museum.

II.

One thousand miles away at college, you decorate a closet of a room. Cover the cinder block walls with posters and pictures. Cover the walls with something, anything, to remind yourself that this space is yours. Though you still don’t feel it, the contentment promised. Instead, you feel a pushing and pulling deep in your gut. You crawl into your twin bed. Pull the sheets over you. You feel as if you’re floating from point A to B. You belong here, don’t you? If not here, then where?

III. It changes slowly, like the color of leaves. It does not make itself known until those leaves are gone

and replaced with bare branches. You find a spot in the library where light pours in despite the cold.

You feel…something. Not a push or pull, but warmth. The knots once there begin to loosen. You realize you’ve felt it before. Something that was gone is now everywhere. In nights spent adventuring with new friends. In the arms of a person you’ve come to love. It has always been there, right? Maybe it was lost among the seasons. You begin to smile. You’re home.

I am my mother’s child

by Calissa Brown I am Africa Listen to me yearn for my brothers and sisters of the past and present With the rhythm running and beating through my veins I ask you, Mother, why am I not accepted at home? Why was I ripped from your nipple before I was old enough to suck? Why do I not feel the same love in return from my people?

I’ve seen my people be miseducated about who we are I’ve seen my people be either team light skin or team dark skin I’ve seen my people develop a deep hatred for who we are I’ve seen my people murdered because of who we are But I’ve seen us rise and rise and rise and rise I want to feel that warm embrace from you, Mother To know I am still loved no matter how far I am from your rich and prosperous resources I am still you, and you are still me I am Black Soy negra Eu sou negra We are brothers and sisters With the rhythm running and beating through our veins I still call you home even though you might not be

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A Message To Society

by Lytiek Gethers

How would you like it if someone attributed you to another person who shares your skin tone? You would feel horrible, right?

I wonder why Black men are looked at as scary? Please explain to me how we make you feel intimidated? Everyone needs to understand that Black people are down to earth. If we confront people, it is because we want to resolve our issues in the moment and tell people what they are doing is wrong. Putting someone in harm’s way is never our intention when we want to make things right. Other groups calling the cops on Black people bothers me because I have to do whatever it takes to prevent myself from getting into that situation, even though I haven’t dealt with it yet. I have to be timid around other groups, just to not be seen as a threat. I have to hide how I feel so I am not looked at as the aggressor when clearly I am not. I should not have to put up with someone provoking me and then making me the bad guy when I’ve had enough.

When you treat Black people like criminals just because we happen to be in your presence, you make us feel more uncomfortable. When you clutch your purse, or try to find an excuse to move away, you create an awkward situation. The Black person standing near you is not worried about harming you. We already know the consequences of attempting to. So why create an awkward situation for an innocent bystander who happens to have colored skin?

Whenever you encounter a Black individual alone anywhere, just smile and greet them. Make their day. It never fails to put a smile on a person’s face.

Why is it when we disagree with something, people get intimidated? It puts us in a position where we cannot have a honest dialogue. If other groups are quick to perceive danger because the person disagrees with them, they are not looking to have dialogue. That is direct bullying: being the aggressor while playing the victim, projecting flaws onto someone who is trying to get their feelings across.

When others say they feel intimidated, they are invalidating those who are trying to peacefully get their perspective across. It is fair to be intimidated when the person verbally attacks you or objects. Other than that, I don’t think it is right to label us as intimidating when we disagree with things. When you do that, you subtly come across as being prejudiced because you are validating stereotypes toward a person.

Every group have to stop listening to the media. It does nothing but instigate racial tensions. What we see in the media is different than what we experience first-hand. We have to hold every group accountable when they do wrong. Everyone has to held to the same standard.

If everyone is equally and fairly criticized for their bad behavior, maybe race baiting might be reduced and all groups might get along.

I had to get my point across because I am tired of Black people being stereotyped and punished for being black. I need people to understand that we have feelings and emotions like everyone else. You don’t have to like certain people, but you have to respect them and treat them how you would like to be treated.

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Iridia was astonished, frankly, that she had been invited in to sit at the governor’s table. Her usual procedure was to sneak in. The man himself sat at the far end, eating roast turkey with no regard for the infuriating sound of his open-mouth chewing. Iridia resisted the urge to clench her jaw. She had to keep up appearances.

According to the papers she had presented, she was Daih Byern, a representative of the queen. Byern was a charity case, having been adopted from an orphanage on the front lines by a high-ranking duke who had gotten her the job as ambassador for Queen Voss. Like all cover stories, it was a lie. This time though, at least had some truth to it. She had lived in an orphanage for many years, though no duke had ever saved her. Her job had done that, transforming her from a parentless child into a deadly chameleon.

She let her gaze wander around the room. The ceiling was a mighty three stories high. Tapestries covering one wall depicted what the governor liked to call war, glory, and lights coming from the sky to illuminate him. There were glass windows on the other. She grimaced.

“How are you enjoying the food, dear?” the governor asked through a mouthful.

“It’s lovely, thank you,” Iridia said, gritting her teeth at the affectionate ‘dear’ but keeping a smile. She couldn’t stop herself and asked, “Quite extravagant. And…” Iridia looked around at the plates and plates of tarts, fruits, meat, and more. “Expensive.”

“Please, this?” He waved a hand. “This is nothing. You should see my table when I have more than one guest.”

“Indeed.” She leaned forward, reaching for her glass and taking a long, slow sip of wine. “How goes the war, governor?”

“Oh no, you brought it up. That’s all anyone wants to talk about these days.” He waved a hand holding a chicken thigh. “Not that the matter affects us here. Life goes on as usual.”

Iridia drew some of her many dark braids forward, fiddling them with a hand. “How do your subjects fare?”

“Subjects?” he laughed. “More like ants. They live in these tiny little hovels. Have you seen them? They don’t even have the decency for proper tableware. Now this manor, on the other hand,” he said, holding up his wine, “has the most excellent, well…everything. Take the wine for example.” He sniffed the glass, swirling the crimson liquid.

“Beautiful. From my finest vineyard only a few miles north of here. Aged ten years.”

“Indeed,” she said. “You mentioned your subjects…how poor are they, exactly?”

“Dreadfully poor, I’m afraid.” He shook his head with a shameless chuckle. “But pay them no mind, my dear.

Soon as the war’s over, all will be back to normal. Not that it will, any time soon. See…” The man winked. “There’s a trick to these things, dear. Give those bastards over the border something to complain about, this war will go on for a century yet.”

Iridia froze. “What do you mean?”

“Well you know, all those bodies dumped over the border. That’s why they attacked in the first place. Said we were killing any of theirs who traveled here to spite them. Such a…tragedy.” He drew out the word enough for her to catch his meaning. He took another bite.

Her body burned with an inner fire and she resisted the urge to march over and strangle him herself. These were his people he was leaving to suffer. To cry over dead parents’ bodies. To watch cottages burn and families burn with them. To listen to their screams and still hear them in your nightmares, though you were only a girl when it happened. And the governor was helping the war on.

She raised her glass, “How about a toast?”

He smiled and reached for his own cup. “I do love a toast. What shall we drink to, darling?”

She swirled her wine for a moment. It was so red. “How about…to your people?” She smiled, pretty as a shedevil. The man shrugged and leaned forward. Iridia’s blood pumped in her veins, louder than a drum as he drank. She looked away.

The sound of glass shattering filled the hall, echoing in Iridia’s ears. This was soon followed by the thud of a body. Iridia watched the spilled wine stain the floor red with a contented sigh.

Her smile became genuine. “To your people indeed, governor. I do love justice, don’t you?”

Orphan’s Justice

by Katherine Langford 36

i think that i saw you. through the closing doors of the metro i just missed by a minute i think that i saw you. from the corner of my eye asking the bartender for a refill crowded in the wednesday bar

i only got one good poem out of you by alexis morillo

i think that i saw you. waiting on a bench — our bench — outside my school looking away i thought that i saw him. but i didn’t look too hard because disappointment burns optimistic eyes, and i didn’t want to be hurt all over again

i think that i saw you. on the beach with a spot saved outside the club smoking a camel to get away from it all i think that i saw you. booking a ticket to somewhere i should be going too

i thought that i saw him. somewhere in the sky of the place i left after getting everything i needed from it

i think that i saw you be who you are — were — looking out from under your glasses at everything we once were — could have been

i hope that you see him. when you’re packing your things from the apartment i never saw and from the bed others slept in and all of the clothes i told you to buy

i think that i saw him come back to the top of your throat but then i saw you swallow him down push him aside again because it wasn’t time yet

i hope that you look in the mirror and he seeps from your pores again and i hope it hurts like a bitch

i think that i saw him. in the questions you asked in the sad i could see in your huge, stupid eyes

i hope that you take off and look down at that beautiful city and realize it made you so ugly

i think that i felt him in the habitual arm grab i do only to the people i care about

i hope that you see him again one day. i hope when you do it’s not too late. somehow, i already know it will be.

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The pounding. The slow, rhythmic beat invites an ugly, industrial breakage of sense. Reality melts around me, suffocating the seizures of intense imagination that now twitch with a lilac burn and succumb to the conquest of the atmosphere. I sit here silent and sad.

But in such instances of cerebral pollution, the visions of silver vanilla sing to me, dictate delicate ends, lead me back into the memories of my former joys.

A single star—divine in its isolation—floated in the air, allowing me to leave the pull of the soul and join the music of my own beautiful hell. I then lived on the eternal plane of pleasure, whispering of love and jealousy as I recognized my royal ramblings. I sat there loud and content.

But I forgot to breathe.

Eyes opened to static. Overlord voices. Lips chilled. An unnerving drip of separation from life’s true pain became the true pain. I was only a mother gripping children without skin, mistaking my lack of gravity for freedom. I won’t be able to handle these dreams, just as I cannot handle reality. I return to the pounding, and I still sit here silent and sad.

Dad? “Wassup.” Do you ever feel like the world is choking you? “No.” Cool.

by Adam Dee

Psychoactive Demon Lips Marked

by Meredith Nash Some say the worst way to die is drowning. With drowning, the pain is slow. As you languidly submerge, miniscule air bubbles disappear from your lungs. They feel like they’re deflating, but really they never will. Your lungs will fill with water; they’ll burn, they’ll sting, and you’ll want to fight for the surface. Any inch of air would be your savior, but you can’t reach the surface. Maybe at that point death seems like a little piece of serenity.

Others say heartache is an undeniable winner. To leave, to miss someone, to be deceived. Each one a little slit to the throat, not big enough to kill but strong enough to take hostage. Heartache is never being able to breathe again without the weighing water. Heartache is craving a little inch of happiness when really, that feeling is only temporary. Because when a person is gone, you’re already marked.

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sawdust

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How to Take Care of Your Teeth

Use Dr. Sparkle’s Tooth Clippers

By Sydney Joyce

H

i kids! My name is Doctor Sparkle, and I’m here to teach you all about how to keep your teeth clean and healthy. I’m sure you all know that you should floss your teeth every day and make sure to brush your teeth twice a day. That way the evil plaque monsters will be scrubbed off your teeth, and they will be so clean that they sparkle!

Something you may not know is that it is important to trim your teeth about every two weeks. Everyone’s teeth grow differently, so you may have to trim your teeth more or less often than other people you know. Remember what makes us different is what makes each of us so special!

You may have heard of people grinding their teeth against a tree or a hard food like carrots to trim their teeth, or maybe with toe nail clippers, but the best way to do it is with Sparkle brand tooth clippers. Once you have your tooth clippers be careful with them because they are sharp on the end. Don’t run with them like you wouldn’t run with scissors!

Once you have your tooth clippers, you want to find a mirror to trim your teeth in front of. Make sure you can see your mouth and show the mirror a big wide smile! Then put your Sparkle brand clippers perpendicular to your teeth, so the clippers are going the same direction as your nose.

Put one tooth in between the two sides of the clippers and then squeeze them together. I know it might be scary, but I

promise it hurts barely more than a pinch. After you get used to trimming your teeth, you’ll barely feel it. Make sure you clip each tooth one at a time until your whole mouth is done.

Once you trim all of your teeth, you can look in the mirror and see how strong they look!

If you want to have some fun while clipping your teeth, there are multiple fun designs you can cut them into using your Sparkle brand clippers! You could try making a zig-zag pattern or try rounding out each tooth. Whatever design makes you feel most comfortable and the most like you is the one you should make. Your teeth should reflect the beautiful and unique personality that shines through you!

You’ll probably know if you need to trim your teeth if it hurts to bite into food or if your top and bottom teeth overlap each other when you smile. If your teeth grow too long, they can break, or they can hurt your gums, so it is important you do trim them using Sparkle brand tooth clippers. This will keep your teeth strong, so that you can chew your food, and the rest of your body will grow up strong too!

Sydney Joyce is a second year writing major who prefers using a small pickaxe for tooth care. You can reach them at sjoyce@ithaca.edu.

Scholars Discover Mary Shelley’s Long Lost Notebook

Turns out the monster’s name actually is Frankenstein

By Sarah Diggins

T

he phrase, “Actually, Frankenstein is the name of the doctor, not the monster,” has been proudly uttered by bibliophiles everywhere, as well as that one kid in your fifth-grade class who dressed up as both Jekyll and Hyde for Halloween. Since Frankenstein was published in 1818, this simple fact has allowed those with even the most basic knowledge of classic literature to have the opportunity to receive a mere half-second of satisfaction. However, due to a recent discovery made by a teen in a Portland thrift shop, all need for this phrase has seemingly died.

“I, like, don’t even normally look in the book section,” the Portland teen, Caroline Morris, tells us. “Normally, I just come here to buy $2 t-shirts to resell on Instagram for $40 each, but I needed a new notebook to write my slam poetry in. Wanna hear some of it?” To this offer, we respectfully declined.

However, what she found in the notebook was already finger-snapping. Upon discovery, Morris took the notebook to her English teacher, who immediately resigned upon what was inside. After careful dissection by a team of 19th-century horror literature experts, it was confirmed that this notebook was, in fact, that of Mary Shelley. Within the tattered pages, many of Shelley’s personal thoughts were revealed, such as her two-hundred-year-old preemptive predictions that “the dress was black and blue” and “it’s Yanny, not Laurel.” But

of these revelations, perhaps the most shocking was a simple character outline of the monster at the center of her claimto-fame novel Frankenstein. Within the character outline, it is revealed that the monster’s full name is actually Frankenstein Shelley Zipperneck, thus making the name of the monster Frankenstein.

“I’m not sure what to make of this monstrosity,” Sheldon Merriweather, a former (as of recently) Columbia British Literature professor, says of the heartbreaking news. “I feel like I’ve lost an integral part of my personality.”

Merriweather is not the only scholar up in arms over this.

We interviewed hundreds of academics before ultimately not including any of their quotes, mostly due to the fact that interviewing so many bland old men named John and David with the same opinion got too difficult to keep track of after a while.

This week, many of these academics have been organizing marches in 37 different states to protest the death of basic intellect. Many of these academics created signs and chanted, “Not my monster! Not my monster!” all while wearing platform shoes.

“Personally, I am delighted by this news,” says Lillian Knottley in the card aisle of a local Dollar Tree. “My son won’t yell at me for sending my grandkids historically incorrect

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Halloween cards anymore.” She holds up the card for us. It reads, “What did Frankenstein eat for lunch? Nuts and Bolts!”

Personally, based on our experience in the card aisle of Dollar Tree, we think the real monster here is the direction comedy has gone in 2018.

Art by Rachael Geary

Sarah Diggins is a second year writing major who is plotting to destroy Mary Shelley’s notes and erase the monster’s real name from history. You can reach them at sdiggins@ithaca. edu.

Scientists Discover Proof of Existence After Death Just a lot of sad, bored ghosts

By Isabel Murray

A

breakthrough happened at a local haunted motel this Saturday afternoon when scientists finally made contact with the beyond.

Human nature has always led us to wonder about the meaning of life in the universe, and furthermore, what happens to that meaning, our consciousnesses, when we die.

At Overtly Spooky Motel in Ithaca, NY, a scientific team led by Fredrick Dedrik has now developed a system through which we can now both speak to and see the dead. In fact, it seems all that separates our world from theirs has been a thin atmospheric barrier. Between global warming, protoplasmic energy exchange, and recent advancements in paranormal science, it was only a matter of time before we broke this barrier down.

Surprisingly, scientists are urging those who wish to contact their loved ones to be patient, as ghosts have no identifiable addresses, phone books, or afterlife census data. In fact, it’s difficult to tell if they have any form of society at all.

“Without the need to maintain life, there is no need to maintain jobs, government, or other normal societal necessities,” says Dedrik. “These ghosts are just floating through death, with no discernable purpose at all.”

“This can be devastating for many spirits,” explains Dedrik, “because the possibility of a lack of meaning that stretches on forever without an end is even more harrowing than the thought of a meaningless life.”

“It just doesn’t get any easier after

you die,” Dedrik stresses. Luckily, there have been several support groups created by ghosts for ghosts in an attempt to remedy both those with situational post-departing depression and those with generalized depression.

“Once you get over the hump of realizing there’s no inherent purpose to life after death, it becomes easier to deal with, at least for me,” booed an 867-year-old crone who attends one of these therapy groups regularly.

“We call them HAUNTINGS. Helping Apparitions Undertake New Therapy In Ghoul Society. It’s just a lot of ghosts getting together to talk things through.

It’s a great support resource.

Dedrik wants readers to take comfort in the fact that, despite being trapped in an alternate dimension with no purpose and despite having no professional resources available, ghosts are still banding together to work through their crippling depression.

“It would be nice to see a real psychologist,” creaked the stairs of the old motel, which are haunted by the late bookkeeper, James Eidolon. “But none of the dead psychologists are handling this well either, so we really just have each other. No one leads the sessions.

We all just meet up, and somebody always gets the protoplasmic ball rolling.”

We reached out to the ghosts at the hotel and told them to get in contact with us if they had anything they needed. The responses came to us via eerie messages through the wind, blood written on our mirrors, maggots arranged in certain configurations across

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dining tables, etc. The biggest problem we’re hearing from the ghosts, apart from the lack of professional psychiatric help and wi-fi access, is exorcisms. As one ghost writes in what we believe to be the blood of one of our neighbor’s chickens, “There is no need to kick us out of your home for minor wailing, booing, or accidentally knocking over a few precious family heirlooms.”

Often, ghosts feel unsafe going to HAUNTINGS because of the human stigma against ghost congregation. The parallel world of the undead demands the right to gather safely without the chance of being exorcised in the middle of group therapy.

Please, we urge you to abstain from doing anything to make ghosts feel unwelcome in your space. We all have something that makes our lives difficult, but ghosts have to deal with the neverending and meaningless expanse of time and space every day for the rest of eternity, so perhaps it’s time we gave them a break.

Please abstain from burning sage, praying spirits (good or evil) out of your home, or mending holes in white sheets.

If you would like to set up your space as a friendly one for HAUNTINGS, consider leaving a jack-o-lantern burning on your porch year-round or leaving self-help books on local gravestones.

Isabel Murray is a third-year writing major who strives to make their home into a safe space for ghosts. You can reach them at imurray@ithaca.edu.

Pilot Accidentally Flies into Outerspace He got distracted by the latest hot romance novel

By Maddy Martin

P

assengers aboard commercial flight IC0712 from LA to Sidney were mildly flabbergasted to find themselves in Earth’s thermosphere last weekend.

“I was really confused,” said Amber Rockland, a passenger aboard the plane. “I took a nap and was woken up by people screaming. It was so rude.

I hate it when people scream in terror when you’re trying to sleep. I also saw Mars outside the window.”

According to radar signal from a nearby satellite, the plane flown by pilot Ace Baron never stopped inclining after it left the airport until it was pulled into orbit. This impressive feat has left engineers and scientist all over the globe frozen in a state of intermediate awe (with the exception of one scientist in the Arctic Ocean who is actually frozen).

As it turns out, this feat was achieved entirely by accident. While the flight attendants were tending to the passengers, Baron spied a copy of C.C. Skillet’s latest bestseller The Cutlery Crucible in on of the flight attendants bags and started reading it. Baron got so into the book that he forgot to take it out of incline.

“I get really bored sometimes,” Baron said. “Like really, really, bored.

People think it’s bad having to fly from LA to Sidney once but they don’t think about us pilots who have to do it all the time. That book called to me like a message from God to pull me out of my insanity and show me the light.”

For the uncultured swine who have yet to hear of it, The Cutlery Crucible is a steamy romance novel about the young princess of Spoon, Seraphina, and the daring knife assassin, Kuterson, who sweeps her off her feet right before she is due to marry the Duke of Forks, thus starting the infamous Civil Ware War. “This book changed my life,” Baron said. “I use to just be a less than mediocre commercial pilot. Now I’m a less than mediocre commercial pilot who defied the laws of physics. I learned so much from that spunky spoon princess.

You have to do what you want, damn

it—not what society expects you to do, even if that means neglecting your duties to read a romance novel about a spoon and a knife. I’ve reached nirvana because of this book.”

As of right now, flight IC0712 and its passengers are still orbiting the earth and will continue to do so until NASA finds a way to fix this disaster.

Unfortunately for Barron, the sequel to The Cutlery Crucible, Pride and Pottery, came out yesterday and he won’t be able to read it until he gets back to earth.

“I was actually pretty okay with floating out in space,” said stewardess Jenny Cook. “No screaming children or whiney husband. But Ace has been a crying mess since he realized he wouldn’t be able to read the next book.

Every time I try to talk to him he starts to cry and locks himself in the cockpit. The book wasn’t even that good.”

NASA is currently at a loss for how to retrieve the plane from orbit, but they have come up with several ideas on how to deliver Pride and Potter to Baron in hopes that getting the book to him will drastically improve the life of everyone aboard IC0712. The more promising of these ideas is to create a genetically engineered talking dog that is capable of withstanding the pressures of space to bring the book to Barron.

NASA has been researching the creation of space-resistant animals for the past decade in hopes of using them for test flights. Recently a group of biologists lead by Christina Brainly successfully created a mouse that could survive without air for ten minutes.

Brainly and her team believe they are ready to move on to a more complex organism and see delivering the book to be the perfect test for their experiment.

“I’ll be honest, there is absolutely no reason for the dog to talk,” Brainly said. “We just thought it would be really cool and we figured that if we’re going to genetically modify a dog we might as well make it talk. Once we get him out into space we can breed him and make big bucks off of people interested in owning a talking dog.”

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Brainly and her team have decided to go for a “real life Scooby Doo” approach to the project. They’ve selected a Great Dane to begin experimentation on and are planning on playing with the genetic code of the dog’s vocal cords to give it a voice reminiscent of the famed cartoon character.

“I always wanted my very own Scooby Doo,” Brainly said. “And I’ve always wanted to see an episode where Scooby Doo goes to space. Now with a million dollars and twenty slaves—I mean grad students—to do my bidding, I can make my girlhood dream a reality.”

Project Scooby Doo is already underway with plans to have a talking dog launched into space by next week, however, the project has come under scrutiny by animal rights activists who are against sending a sentient being into the cold vacuum of space.

“Everyone needs to calm down, Scooby can take it,” Brainly said.

“People are losing touch with what really matters here: getting a smutty romance novel about silverware to a man stuck floating in the atmosphere.”

Maddy Martin is a first-year writing major and is pretty jealous that some random pilot is getting a free copy of Pride and Pottery. You can reach them at mmartin5@ithaca.edu.

Elon Musk Discreetly Throws Trash on Sidewalk

Calls press to record him heroically picking up said trash

By Tessa More

O

n October 12th, a cellphone was shattered along the edge of the 405 in Bel Air California, across from the Westridge-Cayonback Wilderness Park. The cellphone allegedly belongs to an unknown personal assistant to Elon Musk. The following is thought to be an authentic conversation with Elon Musk. It was found in the voice memo app on his phone. Musk has 48 personal assistants, and there is an ongoing investigation to find out whose phone it is. For clarity, Elon Musk does not use the personal assistant’s name. He simply refers to them all as Pa (maybe PA as in personal assistant, or Pa as in Papa because he has severe daddy issues and needs constant validation from a father figure.)

Musk: Hey Pa, what should an average billionaire in the middle of a scandal do to get positive press again?

So what if I said I’d take my company private and then didn’t? I think stepping down as chairman for three years and paying a $20 million dollar fine is a bit over the top. But the money doesn’t really bother me. I’m way too rich for that to matter all that much. Ok, so I don’t have as much money as Jeff Bezos, but what I lack in money, I make up for in my presence on Twitter. So what if tweeting that I was considering taking Tesla private got me in trouble to begin with? That’s what my followers want! They want newsworthy content, and I’m giving it to them.

PA: I think— Musk: I need the media on my side again. I need to do something big to gain their trust and be likeable to human beings. Lately my actions have had consequences, and as a rich white male, I’m not used to being held accountable.

PA: What if— Musk: Wait, I’ve got it! A few years ago I accidentally dropped a $100 bill on the ground. I didn’t bother picking it up, ya know since I get paid more per second than it would be worth to pick it up. But the public loved me. They called

me a hero since a homeless heathen picked it up and bought themselves higher quality shoes than the Kmart shit he had on. I assumed someone would find it and buy a bunch of bananas with it, but it turns out you could buy multiple bunches of bananas with $100! Who knew? Anyways, the media labeled me a “Saint” who “deliberately helps the less fortunate.” And I was not about to correct the Times and say, “Hey, I didn’t actually do that on purpose.”

PA: That was actu— Musk: But what’s better than donating to poor unfortunate souls?

Mother Nature always needs my help. After all that’s why I make Tesla cars because they’re better for the environment than anyone else’s. I am what God intended when he made Adam. My cars are the wave of the future. I am single-handedly making the Earth more sustainable and stopping natural disasters from happening.

But I don’t need to make another car to help Mother Nature. Actually, hold on, who can I contact about changing the term “Mother Nature” to “Musk Nature,” or wait— do you like “Elon Nature” better? Write that down, I’ll come back to it. That’s priority numero dos. But priority numero uno is the press thing.

PA: Yes, sir.

Musk: So I’m thinking, what if I take some trash, maybe a wadded up napkin or something, and throw it on the ground. But then before I pick it back up, you call a press conference to get some good footage of me being a relatable environmentalist. I’ll take a few questions, then bada bing bada boom, the press loves me again. I can see the headlines now: “Musk Ends Littering”. *11:28 am, October 1, the PA alerted the press. We can only assume that as Musk waited he practiced how he will pick up the trash* PA: I sent out an alert. But sir, did you feel that?

Musk: *snapping sound* Pay attention to me Pa. Should I grab it in

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a closed fist? What if you can’t see the napkin in my hand? In the photos, it needs to be obvious that I’m doing a good thing here. Okay, so no closed fist. Should I delicately pinch it with my pointer finger and thumb? I don’t want to come across too snobbish, as if I can’t bear to touch a piece of trash. I want to look as impressive and humble as possible here, which is hard line to toe.

Okay, okay. I think I figured it out: I’ll pick it up with my thumb and middle finger.

That’ll make me look common enough.

But what should I do after I pick it up? Should I pocket it? ….. No, that will look like I’m trying to keep the piece of trash, and that’s not the vibe I’m going for. Hmmm, what if I just toss it into the nearest trash can? But then that would require being close to a trashcan in the first place, and that would mean having a trashcan in the background of the pictures, and I wouldn’t want to detract from me in the foreground. So no… first, I need to hold it triumphantly in the air! Ya, I’ll pick up the napkin, hoist it in the air like this, hold it there for a few seconds so that every news outlet gets me from my best angles. What’s taking them so long?

PA: Sir! Apparently that shaking was a 9.7 magnitude Earthquake in San Diego! The press is heading there, along with all emergency personnel.

Musk: What??? That’s the bullshit fake news for you, won’t even cover the important stuff. You fucked up big time Pa. -END VOICE MEMOIf you have any information about the identity of the PA you can contact Buzzsaw via email or match by matching with Buzzsaw on Tinder.

Tessa More is a fourth-year journalism major who is a proud owner of one of Elon Musk’s stupid flamethrowers. You can reach them at tmore@ithaca.edu.

Catholic Priest Under Heavy Criticism Admits to only reading the sparknotes of the Bible

By Tommy Gonzalez

T

he Catholic Church has once again found itself under fire, but not for what you’re thinking. In Ashtabula, Ohio, Father Michael O’Flaherty, priest of the flock of Saint Jerome Church, has been discovered to have never read the Bible in its entirety and has relied on Sparknotes summaries for all of his sermons. This discovery, after 37 years with the church, has sent shockwaves across the community for Ashtabulans and Ohio Catholics alike.

Father O’Flaherty issued a written statement last Tuesday regarding the recent revelations.

“It is true,” he admitted, “I have not read the Bible in its entirety, and it’s true; I have been using Sparknotes, but I think I got the gist of it.”

I had a chance to speak with Father O’Flaherty concerning this matter.

“I have read some of the Bible,” he explained to me, “but after the flood narrative and Noah, I have to admit the story gets a little dry.” O’Flaherty also stated, “I have used a physical Bible during my sermons, but when I tell the congregation to turn to a certain passage, I usually just make it up and riff from there.”

Father O’Flaherty explained that he developed this skill at Fordham when he was getting his doctorate in theology.

“A few of the other guys I was studying with had an improv troupe I joined, so I really worked on my chops there.” He continued, “The Bible is pretty vague and some people can interpret it literally or metaphorically. I just use whatever is convenient for the moment. I like to get things off my chest and this is a good way to do it.”

O’Flaherty then described to me how he had been disappointed by the Cleveland Indians World Series loss in 2016 and spent twenty minutes trying to connect it to the story of David and Goliath. “The only time I thought I was in trouble,” he said, “was when I told the flock to turn to the fourth Epistle of John, which, of course, doesn’t exist. I had to play it off like I meant to do it and was making a point about something or other.”

Father O’Flaherty has also claimed to have made up biblical quotations

from time to time. “I want to make it clear that I have skimmed the Bible, but a lot of the book is a whole lot of ‘Thou art’ this and ‘Thy was’ that, so it’s really easy to fudge a quote or two. If I’m gonna make up a quote, I usually take one from the Old Testament because nobody reads those anyway. Psalms are reliable to use because nobody remembers what number you said, so they can’t check you on it.”

A class action lawsuit in 2015 was the first time Father O’Flaherty had gotten into trouble. Several of his followers had an allergic reaction to the wafers he served during the eucharist.

From that, investigators were able to obtain recordings of O’Flaherty’s sermons and the transcripts are quite shocking.

Father O’Flaherty begins, “Good morning everybody. How are we doing today?”

The crowd responds with a general, “good.”

“Well lemmie tell you something,” O’Flaherty said, “I’ve read this here Bible numerous, incalculable times, and no one has ever questioned that, ever!

Cover to cover both testaments. Now having read this Bible, I was thinking about the scene where Paul is on the road from Damascus, that long road.

He had to walk the whole way, you remember? And Jesus shows up—yeah, on the road to Jericho, and Paul sees Jesus like a big billboard, saying that he oughta convert now.”

The crowd was silent.

“Well, picture yourself on the road of life, right the road to Damascus, and say you get off at an exit for Bellevue, what kind of life is that?”

He was known by some in the Church to have cut corners since 2002 when a traveling Jesuit, George Greenhouse, wrote a letter to the Diocese in Youngstown about Father O’Flaherty’s activities. However, the revelations were made public by noted ninth-grader Lucy Speck, who at confession told Father O’Flaherty she had used Sparknotes for her English paper on Romeo and Juliet, to which O’Flaherty is said to have responded, “Eh, that might be worth like half of an Our Father, but I do that

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all the time. Do you think I’ve actually read the Bible?” Speck stated in an interview with The Star Beacon that she saw it as her “religious duty” to report her Priest. Ms. Speck has also reported that this breech in her faith has caused her to convert to Islam.

The Catholic Church has always been proprietary over how the sacred texts have been read. Until the late 1960s, any summary of the Bible had to be written in the Latin vulgate and could not be substituted for the scriptures completely. Some church historians may remember John of Scandicci, who in 1483 simultaneously invented the bullet pointed list and was burned for heresy for using it to summarize the Gospels.

While it’s unlikely Father O’Flaherty will be burned at the stake, there is question as to his future with the church.

With his apparent lack of concern and reverence toward the Bible and its teachings becoming ever more apparent, a new damning allegation has emerged. The Sparknotes addition of the Bible Father O’Flaherty had used was derived from the King James Version, which isn’t even used by Catholics.

Tommy Gonzalez is a second-year cinema and photography major who wouldn’t be caught dead with a King James Bible. You can reach them at tgonzalez2@ithaca.edu.

Adult Man Still has Baby Teeth He refuses to part with them

By Phoebe Harms

A

s a dental hygienist for many years, I’ve had my fair share of cases of edentulism, or toothlessness, but I’ve made a discovery that completely changes the concept as a whole. Recently, I had an interaction with a patient unlike any other in my career. I have come to believe that toothlessness can be the result of an inability to lose one’s primary teeth, or “baby teeth,’’ and that the inability to do so may be influenced by one’s own mental state.

A few weeks ago, I had an appointment with a young man who, for the sake of his own privacy, I will refer to as “Greg.” When Greg made his appointment over the phone, he claimed his health record was normal, and that his visit was standard– primarily for cosmetic reasons. I figured I would give him a general examination and refer him to an orthodontist if he needed.

When Greg came in for his appointment, he was seemingly a fairly normal patient. What struck me as a little out of the ordinary was the fact that Greg wasn’t alone when he came in. An older woman, maybe late fifties, was on his arm. Or rather, HE was hanging on to HER arm. Intrigued, I watched them from behind my receptionist’s desk.

Greg’s demeanor was incredibly nervous. He was hanging onto the woman’s arm as if he didn’t have a choice. It became clear that she was his mother, accompanying her son to the dentist. I made eye contact with Greg

in attempt to get a read on him, but he quickly dodged my gaze and buried his face into his mother’s shoulder.

I was a bit put off, but I was prepared to continue with Greg’s visit as I would with any other patient. I walked around to the lobby area and called him back to the examination room to begin his inspection.

When Greg finally opened his mouth, I saw nothing. No teeth, that is.

I only saw gums. Huge gums– biggest I’ve ever seen– almost like his full smile was just pink. I was confused as to why Greg hadn’t just tried to order dentures or go through me to schedule an appointment for fake teeth to be put in. These are the routes those who suffer from his condition typically take.

I looked closer at Greg’s mouth, and saw that toothlessness wasn’t the issue at all. There were small, pointed, white knobs sticking out from his gums.

The knobs were spaced far apart from each other, like tiny little tic-tacs. Like the teeth of a three-year-old.

I asked Greg when he had last received dental work. He said that his visit with me was his first. Of course, this was both incredibly flattering and unsettling. I then asked Greg if his teeth caused him day-to-day trouble, a question that provoked Greg to immediately get defensive of his teeth, nearly driven to tears.

Greg said he liked his teeth, and the sole reason he was at a dentist

was to make his mother happy. She was tired of having to prepare softer meals specifically to suit his needs. My initial suggestion was to have Greg’s primary teeth removed, see if his adult teeth grew in, and go from there. I was starting to explain options for false teeth when Greg became red in the face and began to shake.

He pulled a teething ring out his pocket and began violently chewing on it. I was taken aback by this behavior, as I’d never seen such a connection between one’s dental and mental state.

I began to take hint of how to approach Greg’s issue, and asked if he would like me to inform his mother of this behavior.

After this proposal, Greg was ready to participate. We took X-rays of his teeth and learned that he did indeed have adult teeth above his primaries, which meant it was safe remove them.

But I came to another dilemma.

Since I had not experienced such a condition, I had no idea how to treat it.

My first thought was traditional—pulling out each tooth, but this suggestion only resulted in violent kicking and screaming from Greg.

Seemingly nothing worked.

Through each attempt to numb Greg, he would throw a fit. The only method Greg could get behind was my politely asking his teeth to please come out.

It sounds preposterous, but I genuinely think we saw slight results from this method. Regardless, it was incredibly slow moving, and that’s all I was left with.

Greg and I have another appointment scheduled for next week, but I have yet to come up with a solution that fixes his issue while meeting his needs.

This is in part why I’m writing this.

If any dental experts have ever heard of a similar case and have potential solutions, please, please contact me as soon as possible. Truly, I will be taking any suggestions.

Phoebe Harms is a second-year journalism major who still keeps their back molar to remind them of childhood.

You can reach them at pharms@ithaca. edu.

45 Photo by Will Cohan

Post Malone Reveals his New Grill It’s made out of baby teeth

By Ryan Ingerson

P

ost Malone has been turning some heads with his new set of teeth. A detour from his iconic Skittles-esque grills, his grin has gotten a lot “toothier” with a smile featuring 32 baby teeth sealed together and worn over his actual pearly yellows.

In a special interview Malone revealed how he collected his teeth. “The first two are mine from when I was kid,” he adds, “they make everything taste sweeter. Mainly ‘cuz I ate a lot of candy and never brushed my teeth. This pointy one I got from a middle school boxing club. These two [molars], are from an Orphanage in Syracuse. It’s sort of like a teeth farm. Like the kids are there, and really all they do is eat, sleep, and lose teeth. I bought a bunch on Amazon Prime, like at least five. I mean I sort of lost track for a while. Everyone does it. You go to the store hungry and come back with like $200 in groceries, I go online and spend $20k on baby teeth. My favorite though is this one.” He points to a black and misshapen canine. “I just found this one on the ground. It’s like my lucky charm.”

He then expanded on why he needs so many. “My mans, I tear through teeth. I have, like, a very specific diet I designed myself. First a whole bar of iron vitamins are, like, important so those pills and shit ain’t gonna do the trick. Next, I drink a whole thing of sunblock. I saw online that zinc is healthy, and the bonus is I never get sunburnt. I also like to chew on nail files. There’s no health reason for that; I just like the way it feels.”

Malone described an image of a shark-like mouth, with up to ten layers of teeth at a time. “Sharks are pretty savage, like, they are powerful but also beautiful. That’s how I want my rap to be,” Malone stated, adding, “It ain’t just the look though. I’ll go to the beach and hunt seals. There is no better way for me to become like nature, and it doesn’t hurt that I like the taste.”

He expanded on how his new style affects his music.

“This only makes my music better. Anyone can sound like just a person, but I can sound like 20 people. 20 sets of teeth, 20 voices. Combine that with my shark-like essence and you got

20 shark voices. You can’t get more intense than that.” He ended our interview by sharing a preview to his new untitled song. While he seemed very proud sharing it, the sample sounded like someone trying to rap with a mouth full of rocks and spit.

Ryan Ingerson is a first-year business administration major who has been stockpiling teeth to make their own jewelry.

You can reach them at ringerson@ithaca.edu.

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buzzsaw asks why... do teeth exist?

Art by Rachael Geary

As a wise MOC editor once said, “I know we have to chew. But at what cost?” Teeth are weird and gross and probably shouldn’t exist. Let’s unpack what exactly teeth are. They’re literally a part of your skeleton that needs to poke through the inside of your mouth to even function. It’s an unspoken fact of life that underneath everyone’s skin is a spooky skeleton hiding within. That being said, I’d rather not be constantly reminded of my own mortality whenever someone smiles at me.

Moving on, not only do teeth exist. At some point during childhood, they fall out. I’m sorry, but what? Right as someone is getting settled into elementary school, casually keeping up with the drama of first grade, their teeth are like, “Nope! We’re actually not gonna do this anymore.” Losing their teeth is apparently so traumatic for kids that parents invented the Tooth Fairy, an eldritch being that collects lost teeth in exchange for money, to help children cope with their own decaying mouths and the impermanence of all things. After this existential crisis, new teeth start to grow in. But this time, they’re bigger. Maybe the body should’ve just gotten teeth right the first time and not have to play trial and error. Teeth are already an abomination just by being visible; they should at least be consistent.

I’d like to propose some alternatives to having teeth. First, humans should probably just get their energy through photosynthesis. That would eliminate the need for teeth and probably mouths as a whole. If we must have mouths, maybe we can just have maximum overdrive digestive systems to break down food more thoroughly. Last, and this might be a stretch, maybe we could just ascend to a higher plane of existence where food and energy are irrelevant.

Your editor in improving humanity, Will Cohan

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show us your baby teeth @buzzsawmagazine

buzzsawmag@gmail.com

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