Brain Stew, 21-22, Issue 9

n i ra

B

w e t S

IDEB U G AL I T N PUS E M S A S C RE YOU - I MEAN E OF H

INCLUDES: PROFANITY SATANISM THE NUMBERS 69 AND 420 KILLS, CHILLS, AND THRILLS SCHOOL SURVIVAL AND SO MUCH MORE!!!

TO OOK

TH

RN U T E ER

Please enter your BS username and password to continue: User name

iluvstew6969

Assword By proceeding further, you release everyone associated with Brain Stew from all liability in perpetuity for offending you and waive your rights to proceed with complaints, protests, legal action, or commenting negatively on Brain Stew in anyway to anyone. You are still allowed to use a sarcastic tone and eye roll when saying “I love Brain Stew,” but that is all.

I acknowledge and will abide by these terms and conditions.

ARE YOU A ROBOT? Select all of the squares with…

SOMETHING DEAN ED MUNN SANCHEZ RECEIVED FOR CHRISTMAS. If there are none, click skip

Congratulations. You are a human or smart robot. You may proceed to the rest of BS.

A Review of Mirrored in Evergreen Mirrored in Evergreen is a LGBTQ+ indie novel by B. Pigeon about Rosemary, who becomes an apprentice to a mysterious wizard. The story starts the second to last week of his apprenticeship, where, after several foreshadowing dreams about the wizard, Rosemary becomes cursed in a way where everyone he ever knew, including his partner, Rowan, is also cursed to forget him. The book follows Rosemary’s strange relationships with the partner he used to know, as well as a new cast of characters who may or may not be helping Rosemary figure out his curse.

Let’s get into the review. I’m going to be real: the beginning of the book is a little slow. The first chapter helps us familiarize ourselves with what Rosemary has been doing in his apprenticeship, which is, frankly, nothing but gardening and studying in the library. Even though he’s at the wizard’s house to learn magic, the wizard has forbidden him from performing magic. So the first two chapters are of Rosemary being bored, and also fretting about his partner Rowan and why they haven’t answered any of his letters. Because I didn’t understand Rosemary or any of his motives from the beginning of the book, it was a little hard to relate to them as a character. But as the book moves on and things start happening to Rosemary, his reactions really draw you into the story and you start to want the same answers he does as he explores his relationship with the wizard and his curse.

This book has a lot of LGBT+ representation, but I love that it is not the main part of the story. The main plot of the book is the curse and the way magic works in this, as I understand it, urban fantasy world, but Pigeon also writes convincing personal relationships between all of the characters, both good and bad.

Rosemary and Rowan’s romance and the gravity of their relationship become more apparent as Rosemary pines to reveal to Rowan that he knows everything about them. Additionally, the myriad of relationships we experience through Siobahn, the mediocre healer, is, frankly, a whirlwind. The girl is messy.

I also want to draw attention that this is the first book I’ve read with nonbinary representation, and I just love the continued unfolding about Rowan’s appearance and mannerisms as we get to know him for the first time. I really loved the descriptions and interactions of all the characters, and hopefully in the future I will be drawing how I interpreted them as I read.

Along with writing excellent relationships and LGBTQ+ representation, I really love how Pigeon writes the individual characters themselves. They’re complex in a way where their emotions are human and their motives are constantly unclear and I loved it. Again, I want to point out Siobahn, who never did what I expected or wanted her to. My initial impression is that possibly, she would be a mother figure to Rosemary, or, eventually she would soften and start to care for both Rowan and Rosemary, and they would become friends. This did not happen, and to be honest? I’m really glad that didn’t happen.

It made for a more interesting relationship and constantly kept me guessing about what Siobahn wanted and how she was helping or hindering Rosemary.

Speaking of things going a way that you don’t expect them to, a lot of questions Rosemary has about the wizard go unanswered.

This may be unsatisfying for some readers who like when every loose end gets wrapped up, and sometimes I’m on that boat. But actually I really liked that some questions went unanswered in this story, because now I have room to create theories about what’s going on, and boy do I have several.

First of all - everyone tells Rosemary, and Rosemary tells himself all throughout the book that he’s a shit wizard. However, I think they’re all gaslighting him, to the point where it’s ingrained in him to gaslight themselves about their own magic capabilities.

In the couple of instances where he does do magic, it seems like he scares everyone, and I just get the feeling that he and Rowan both have an immense amount of power that nobody expected. I think the wizard prevents him from doing magic for that reason, aside from the possible theory Rowan comes up with. I also think that Rosemary’s power is why Rowan doesn't think he’s a shit wizard, and that it's bullshit. Even when they’ve forgotten Rosemary, they can sense a lot about him, and I really think that Rosemary and Rowan could become super powerful magicians together.

Second, after reading the entire book and weaving in and out of Rosemary’s dreams, memories, and real-life fears, I’m going to make a leap at this point and say that Celestin, the wizard, and Rosemary’s nightmares about being trapped by him are a parallel and direct metaphor of his issues with his father and what his father thinks is best for him. It becomes apparent that Rosemary’s father has been an antagonist in Rosemary’s life for a while, and that Rosemary wishes very much to be in control of his own life, whether that means practicing magic or not. What’s stopping him is the fear of returning to his father with his apprenticeship unfinished, actually proving that he’s incompetent at magic, and therefore not receiving the aid he needs in order to be his own person. And, y’know, it doesn’t help that his dad is friends with an asshole who just randomly traumatizes and curses his students. Actually, an interesting fact is that Rowan had a theory that Celestin abuses students into reaching their full, magical potential, but actually it may be the opposite, and that anything he deems unworthy of magic he traumatizes into never practicing again.

Though not large enough to be their own theories, Celestin’s past students and the potential with Siobahn’s relationships and her intentions throughout the entire book have so many different ways they could have gone or could continue to go. I’m just constantly thinking about what could have happened between Siobahn and Alexis, Caspian, and Mariela, or what more we could’ve found out about why Siobahn wants revenge on Celestin, or more details about what happened to his former students and their curses. Overall, Siobahn was such a wildcard that I think about what if she had done things differently, as there’s just a myriad of decisions she could’ve made and so many outcomes she could have landed on.

Overall, this book had the perfect amount of imagery, interesting and realistic character interactions, and emotion for me. I did really enjoy my read and all the different theories about Rosemary’s curse made me want to figure it out with them. And I really felt satisfied with the rekindling of the romance and the heady climax of this book. Everything just came together really well, and I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of Pigeon’s books. My one question at the end of the book is - does Rosemary get the money he’s owed from his father somehow in the end? Not by confrontation but maybe just like, accessing the will through the law? I would have loved an epilogue about Rosemary and Rowan having run away, dealing with the aftermath of their experience together, while still traumatized and puzzling over the curse and Celestin’s house. I think they would be continuously watching for signs of Celestin or even Siobahn coming back to curse them, and it would be interesting to see if Rosemary would choose to do magic, and continue to get stronger with Rowan, studying with each other and teaching each other, or if Rosemary would decide to abandon magic altogether.

If you liked this review, please check B. Pigeon out! I was able to buy a paperback of this book from Amazon, but it is also available on Kindle. I hope you all got some cool books for the holiday of your choice and you enjoy these reviews. I’m looking forward to sharing more books with you all this semester! ~Aimee Pieper

Do you think that Mary had the ability to truly consent of her own free will?

Bob the Cat Nope! I mean setting aside whatever her undoubtedly very young age was (particularly in comparison with someone whose existence precedes the creation of time), let’s just think about the other power dynamics. Is there any greater imbalance than between deity and mortal? Plus, what about the supervisor-supervisee dynamic here? I mean the dude controlled her end-of-life performance evaluation. Last, and this is kinda important, right? I don’t think she was even asked. If I have the entire scriptural canons of all the world’s religions memorized, and I do, I’m pretty sure it went down like this: “You will conceive and give birth to a son…” Not “would you like to conceive and give birth to a son?”

Ann the Fox I really don’t think we know, do we? It’s doesn’t seem to say. I mean, if Joseph was like “hey honey, I have these fantasies… and you see, um, I think I’m a cuck.” And then if she was like “Joseph, sweetie, it’s so awesome that we can be so open and honest with each other about what we need to be satisfied. I think I’m interested in this. Let’s talk. First the safe word is ‘myrrh’…” then yeah, she freely consented. And was a bitchin’, GGG chick, if you ask me. But we don’t really know how all this stuff went down.

Also, if Ed brings up St. Augustine, then MYRRH! MYRRH! MYRRH! For God’s sake MYRRH!

Ed the “Philosopher” Not if she wanted to keep that three picture deal she had with Miramax! Okay, okay, I’m just kidding. This is actually an interesting philosophical question. It’s basically the same as how St. Augustine reconciled free will with God’s irrefutable grace.

PART OF THIS ANSWER IS REDACTED BECAUSE WE FOUND IT BORING Anyway, it’s important that all religions be equally offended, uh, I mean answer this question for themselves. So please be sure to read…

The Koran 66:12 Luke 1:27-38 (King James) Luke: 1:26-38 (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) And don’t forget jewsforjesus.org.

Cool Shit About Costa Rica Heyo, I’m Kenny, you might know me because I’ve been pumping word vomit into this publication for like two years. I got to study abroad in Costa Rica for two weeks during the winter break, so firstly fuck St. Louis with all the cold there, and secondly I’ve nothing better to discuss than miscellaneous cool shit I learned while here.

Me on a hot ass boat on way back from the 1) Free health care bitches: long as you’re employed the beach, not wearing a mask because how else your taxes cover free healthcare, exceptions being will I represent my homeland. Not sure if aesthetic operations. Also your coverage can extend to this was before or after I your children, your parents if you’re taking care of paid for an 8$ mojito where they stole an extra them, and even your partner/ spouse if they’re dollar and they put fucking Splenda in the unemployed. Nobody would answer me when I asked if drink instead of simple syrup. it covered dick pills or not.

2) Free Education (mostly): Standard education is obligatory and free for all students, meaning basically up through high school. It was explained to me that home schooling is a very very rare concept here, like only people who live in cult adjacent compounds be on that type of life. Which when I look at America, it scans.

College is mostly free, there are public and private universities, and about 80% of students get to attend public university for free based on financial need. One thing I really respect about the employment culture in Costa Rica is that employers will give preference to students who graduate from public university over those from private universities, despite a private school student having better experience, knowledge of foreign languages, and etc.

3)The free health care is extended to sex workers, as prostitution is legal here. Yet some aspects surrounding it are illegal, like pimping, brothels, and prostitution rings. Sex workers used to be really frowned upon, but as tourism makes up a significant part of Costa Rica’s GDP, so does sex tourism. For example my professor here told me she’s had several students come here just for the legal prostitution. The free health care was eventually extended to the sex workers despite the stigmas of their profession in an effort to stem the spread of STD’s that were running rampant. So now those who register with the government get a free health check every 15 days and are able to receive other forms of assistance.

4) Uber is cheap as dicks here, at least in San Jose. In general most things are a bit cheaper here than back in the states, like I saw Spiderman No Way Home and the ticket price for two people was about 12$, but Uber here is so much cheaper. A trip in St. Louis that would easily cost about 20$ in Costa Rica costs about 5 or 6$.

Yet while it is cheaper and quicker than utilizing local taxi’s there is also a lot of strife from taxi drivers as it directly threatens their livelihood. In my taxi from the airport to my host family my taxi driver told me Uber was illegal, which is not 100% not true. In 2018 the transportation ministry declared ride share apps, specifically Uber, illegal, but as it is popular with tourists the government has been slow to actually block Uber in the country. Sometimes cops will call in rides from Uber, because entrapment, and basically tell them to stop being Uber drivers, or in some cases detain them and impound their cars. Taxi drivers also harass Uber drivers pretty frequently, like when they deadass made a blockade with their taxis to block access to the airport. I also found out that the international airport is an anti-Uber zone. Their wifi blocks it completely.

5) They don’t have a standing military: They abolished their military in 1948 after realizing its really hard to have a military coup if you don’t have a military. Between March 12th and April 24th, 1948, Costa Rica had their last Civil War which came as the result of the ruling political party annulling the results of the presidential election because their candidate didn’t win. They alleged that the one who legitimately won the election had done so via fraud. Doesn’t sound familiar at all… Without a military the country found they could invest a lot of that into education, hence Costa Rica having so much free education and one of the highest literacy rates in the world.

6) Addresses are Fucked here: If you don’t have a local, or a really good GPS (Apple Maps is ass here) then navigation is a nightmare. There are very few actual street signs (the government only started to implement them in 2012) and there are barely any actual house addresses. The format for an address is usually “City, Province, Municipality, main street/ local landmark, maybe number of street, description of your destination.” One teacher from the Costa Rican language academy told us that his address ends with “across the street from the mango tree.” For example the official address for a government office where one would go to get a fishing license is, “Oficina INCOPESCA – Cenada Barreal de Heredia, en las oficinas de mantenimiento del PIMA, detrás de los puestos de Papaya-Sandía-Melón” which ends with literally “behind the watermelon & papaya stand.” It is another reason why I prefer to use Uber while here because their GPS tracking and routing system is a god send.

7). They had a civil war between their cities to decide on where the capitol should be: Remembered today as the League War, before the conflict broke out in 1835, Costa Rica had the “Ambulance Law” which kept the capitol city moving every year between the cities of San Jose, Cartago, Heredia, and Alajuela. Originally the cities were on some catty girl type shenanigans, as politics goes. Cartago wanted to be the capital city but like didn’t want to be the capitol city and make the other cities mad, so they planned to use the Ambulance Law and abolish it once the capitol was set to them. In 1834 the capitol moved to Alajuela and surprise surprise it’s hard and inefficient to move all of your government documents and resources between cities. When they realized this was a shit idea they decided they should just build an entirely new capitol city in a neutral space between Heredia and San José, and during construction the Executive and Judicial peoples stayed in San José, while the Parliament stayed in Heredia. But the capitol was still technically Alajuela.

This pissed off Cartago and the people of Alajuela protested to get the capitol out of their city. So Cartago said yeet what if we just choose a new head of state, Alajuela said sure as long as you get the capitol to be gone from our city, then Heredia joined because fuck it why not. So they all attacked San José. In the Battle of Cuesta de Moras the San José militia kicked the Cartagonese soldiers’ asses until they took the city of Cartago. Then 8 days later a group of about 1,000 San José soldiers kicked the asses of the Heredians and Alajuelans until they gave up. From there on San José has been the capitol city of Costa Rica. I just really want to start a war with St. Charles…

The Honors College Proudly Presents…

PIERRE LACLEDE DATING SERVICE WHAT IS PIERRE LACLEDE DATING SERVICE? We’re so glad you asked! We’re tired of seeing our good little Honors students frolic around with fish boys, frat boys, Discord moderators, TikTok dancers, Instagram models who average forty likes per post, people who don’t like vanilla wafer cookies, pro-capitalist men who start every morning by sucking off Jordan Belfort on Twitter, NFT bros, white golfers, college football fanatics, and any other sort of degenerate normie who have no business corrupting the gene pool of our good alumni! We need their kids to have brains so we can recruit them using alumni scholarships eighteen years later! Pierre Laclede Dating Service utilizes the fact that good for nothing, general population students can’t read to match fellow Honors students up for *controlled* breeding! (We say controlled because we only want PLANNED pregnancies! Don’t be silly, wrap your willy! Or get a vasectomy, because women shouldn’t be solely responsible in preventing their unwanted pregnancy!)

HOW DOES IT WORK? It works similarly to Tinder and Bumble, except for our users can read!

We utilize state of the art “red flag spotter” software, because CLEARLY if our students were able to do so, they would not breed with mouthbreathing troglodytes that bring shame to the name of Pierre Laclede! Any users who attempt to upload fishing, hunting, golfing, or otherwise gross upper middle class white male activities are immediately banned and doxxed, with their addresses uploaded on random radical subreddits, usually belonging to a radical feminist group that would blow up cars to fight the man. It’s for their own good. “wHaT aBoUt ThE wOmEn?” First off, what about you get some bitches? Second off, we have software that can spot the pick-mes, and the “I’m not like other girls”. If the misogyny comes from inside the house, our software can spot it!

WHAT OTHER FEATURES ARE THERE? While professors can’t violate FERPA, we sure as hell can! We release the full transcripts of all our users to any potential partners so that you can determine whether or not someone is good enough to do the dance of Punnett Squares with. If he said some whack shit during a lecture three years ago, we know about it! If she tried to equate socialism to a pre-dated writing so that she could spread a capitalist agenda, we know about that, too! We are like Big Brother in this bitch, and this allows for us to weed out what we like to call the “margin of error” within our PLHC. Sometimes, they slip through. We also have state of the art matching percentages. They work similarly to Netflix’s, except for ours are accurate and get you Netflix and Chilling, if you catch my drift.

WHERE CAN I SIGN UP? On your phone, dumbass. You’re the margin of error described as above.

SIGN UP FOR THE PIERRE LACLEDE DATING SERVICE APP HERE:

p l d s.

P i e r r e L a c l e d e D a t i n g S e r v i c e.

Louie,

Name’s Louie, whole lotta gang shit. I am looking for young hot single women to bang while I go through a messy divorce. My wife cheated with Kermit the Frog and now she’s having mixed species heathen babies like the donkey-dragons in Shrek. I’m like Drake, I’m a lesbian so big tiddy gay emo girls hit my line. I’ll give you anything I’m an alpha like that frl. Girl you need a dog? I can bark. Woof, babygirl.

Don’t dip your triton in the plain old sea.

Hook up within the PLHC!

Is He Hot, Or Should You Go to Therapy?

Hockey Players Edition If you haven’t figured it out yet, my most toxic trait is being attracted to white men. Some people are addicted to heroin, but not me. White men. What is something I like more than skinny white men? Sports invented BY the white man, FOR the white man! One of my hobbies includes being enthralled with hockey, and one of those benefits include getting to watch semi-attractive white men beat the shit out of each other on ice. Here are some of the hockey players that are typically thirsted over, and why I might need to attend therapy because of said attraction.

PLAYER #1: SIDNEY CROSBY Sidney Crosby is easily in the top five of the NHL’s greatest. Elite goal scorer, great defensively, and can score. He’s an all-around player, and a great leader.

He’s captained three cup wins and was named captain of the Pens before he was 21. He’s also huge into charity and does a lot of work in Pittsburgh and in Nova Scotia, where he’s from. Now that we got that out of the way, THIS MAN HAS THE FATTEST ASS IN THE LEAGUE. COMPLETE DUMPTRUCK. HE ALSO HAS TREE TRUNK THIGHS. Enough said.

HOT OR THERAPY? Hot. Sidney is attractive, a good player, and a good guy. He’s the perfect Canadian boy.

PLAYER #2: TYLER SEGUIN Tyler Seguin is… well, he’s a lot. When I searched his name to get a picture for his part of this compilation, at least ten Tumblr fanfictions popped up with him as the titular character. He’s the token hot boy of the NHL for sure. However, he’s a little shit. He literally got traded from the Bruins to the Stars because he hooked up with his teammate’s wife. That, and he took more than just slapshots, if you get my drift. He hasn’t been good in a solid three or four seasons, but he won a cup his first season in the league, so he sure can’t complain.

HOT OR THERAPY? The Jared Leto of the NHL. Just look at him. That’s enough said.

PLAYER #3: MARCO SCANDELLA Also known as one of the biggest defensive liabilities in the entire league. The Blues traded for him in 2020 to fill Bouwmeester’s role. To his credit, he did fill the role… for an entire twenty goddamn games. He’s been traded quite a bit since he’s not good enough to ensure that he can consistently fill a roster role, but good enough to get you picks and room in your lineup for a prospect with a higher ceiling. He’s pretty, don’t get me wrong. But there is not a single thought in that head, and you can certainly tell every time he touches the puck.

HOT OR THERAPY? Hot...but just barely. There’s an old saying that the three things that women want in a man is kindness, attractiveness, and intelligence; but you can only have two at the same time. Marco sure as fuck doesn’t have intelligence.

PLAYER #4: MAT BARZAL I don’t know why his name is spelled like that, either.

It’s a red flag in itself. Mat Barzal is extremely talented and playing for the second worst team in New York that is either dog water all season, or cup favorites that choke in the ECF. It’s really funny, honestly. He shits on the Blues every time we play the Islanders, which is not that funny. But he is talented, a fast skater, and he has that puppy dog thing going for him. Also, he follows out of pocket Instagram accounts, so he has a good sense of humor.

HOT OR THERAPY? Hot. He doesn’t do much, but he’s cute and can make you laugh. That is definitely something. More than what your man can do for you right now, eh?

How long until I stop finding men to write weird reviews of? Don’t know! Go watch a hockey game and see if you think anyone is hot.

Then ask, “Is he hot, or does he just play hockey?” Then unpack those issues!

NEXT ISSUE: I Should Have Been an 80s Groupie Edition

Kenny’s Memes

EEERN: ROBOT DETECTED!!!

You have been reading Brain Stew!

Though that’s suspicious since robots can’t read What is Brain Stew? Bitch, you’re looking at it! Our mission is to skate fast, kick ass, and provide the Pierre Laclede Honors College student body (plus Dan, Jen, Kate, Ed’s wife, and other “adults” with no hobbies) a forum for uncensored free thought, commentary, and creativity, as well as news and event listings from PLHCSA and other campus organizations. PLHCSA, are you ever going to submit again?

Where did you go? Baby, come back. We miss you! We can change …

We’ve been publishing for a long ass time. 1990 something. We’re the proud 2012 and 2017 Best Sustained Program award holder, given to us by the Office of Student Involvement. We also won Best Cultural Awareness Program in 2018, and program of the year in 2020. We promise we did not bribe anyone with drugs to get these awards. We’ve got awards from the National Collegiate Honors Council in 2017, 2018, and now 2020! We’ve also won awards for our wide variety of toe funguses.

Disclaimer: We issue no content guidelines beyond those of state, local, and federal law. All content is the responsibility of the creator. UMSL, PLHCSA, PLHC, and the Brain Stew Staff are in no way liable for whatever ugly content you goblins create. Just because we’re uncensored doesn’t mean we’re obligated to print everything. It is rumored that some editors will publish your more questionable submissions in exchange for shiny pennies though.

HOW CAN I CONTRIBUTE TO BRAIN STEW? Send in your editorials, articles, poems, stories, reviews, plays, drawings, photography, fart jokes, personal ads, particularly shiny pennies, and whatever else you make to brainstew@umsl.edu