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Navigating University Centre

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Navigating University Centre can be difficult for students, especially during the first few weeks in September. For anyone who has ever tried to find a room on the main floor of University Centre, this is not news. Although most offices do have a room number, sometimes they are not clearly visible, and there appears to be no real sequence to the numbers. Even more confusing, sometimes two offices have the exact same room number. For example, if you’re looking for say, 105 University Centre, you might be looking for either the Manitoban office, or the Gallery of Student Art.

In the hopes of making things a little easier, the following is a list of activities that you will likely need to do in University Centre during the first few weeks in September, with directions for how to get there.

Get your student card: This is something that all new students need to do. If you are a keener, you will have already picked up your card back in August, when the line at the Registrar’s office (400 University Centre) was pretty short. If you were not among the group of early birds and you would like to pick up your card in a more convenient location, between September 8 and 11, you will also have the option to wait in line at Room 112 University Centre. To find Room 112, go past GPA’s (the convenience store), then the flower shop, and turn left at the pharmacy. Walk a few steps and turn right just after the bank machines. If you arrive at a “fork in the road,” between Engineering and Architecture, you have gone too far.

Get some cash: Although most businesses in University Centre now have debit machines, if you still need cash and are looking for an ATM, you are in luck. If you were planning on picking up your student card at 112 University Centre, you are especially in luck, since the ATMs are directly beside Room 112. For directions, see “Get your student card.”

Pay your tuition fees: Paying your fees is probably one of the most important things you need to do during the first week back. On the U of M’s Fort Garry campus, you can pay for your tuition fees at the cashier’s office, located at 138 University Centre. The cashier’s office is at the far end of University Centre, past the bookstore. Just before you get to the set of glass doors, turn right and get into what will likely be a massive line to pay your fees.

Get financial aid: In these times of economic uncertainty, just finding the money for university can be a challenge. For those who may need some help covering costs, financial aid is available. The financial aid office is located at 422 University Centre, a short jaunt from the registrar’s office. Although there is more than one way to get up to the fourth floor, the elevators are easiest. However finding the elevators can be a bit of a struggle. Tucked away behind the soup kiosk, students often miss them. To get to the elevators from the main floor East entrance, walk straight ahead, past the UMSU office and Answers, and then angle right, down a few steps, turning left as you pass the soup kiosk. Alternatively, you can turn right from the main floor East entrance, at the hair salon, and turn left at the insurance office. The elevators should be directly ahead of you. This second option may be more beneficial to a new student because along the way you will also pass the U of M’s dental and doctor’s office, as well as Student Advocacy.

Buy Textbooks: There are actually two places to buy your textbooks at the U of M. Archives Used Book Store is located in 107 Helen Glass. If you’ve just come from paying your tuition fees, simply go through the set of glass doors, turn right, and you are in Helen Glass. From there, conveniently located signs should be able to direct you. If the idea of navigating yet another building is too much for you, The U of M BookStore is conveniently located at 140 University Centre, just past the food court and across from the pharmacy.

Opt out of health & dental insurance: If you already have suitable health insurance and wish to opt out of the university’s plan, or if you are wanting to find out what the U of M’s insurance covers, you should be paying a visit to the Health & Dental office at 110 University Centre. Located directly across from the UMSU office, Health & Dental should be an easy find. As you walk in through the main floor East entrance, Health and Dental is directly on your right, just past the hair salon.

Buy a bus pass: Post-secondary monthly bus passes are quite a bit cheaper than adult monthly passes, but unfortunately they are only available on university campuses and you will need a valid student card to purchase one. At the U of M there are two places to get your monthly bus pass. The first option is to go to Answers, which is located between the UMSU office and GPA’s. The second option is to head down to UMSU Living, which sells post-secondary monthly bus passes from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the school year. UMSU Living is located at 108A University Centre right across from the food court, and more specifically, the soup kiosk. To get there from the main floor East entrance, walk past UMSU Health & Dental, turn right down a few steps once you see Tim Hortons, and it will be on your right-hand side.

Find a place to live: In addition to selling bus passes, UMSU Living helps students find off-campus housing. To get there from the main floor East entrance, walk past UMSU Health & Dental, turn right down a few steps once you see Tim Hortons, and it will be on your right-hand side.

Pay for a parking ticket/get a parking pass: For all of your parking and shuttle needs, the Manitoban recommends Parking and Shuttle Services. Up until this year, Parking and Shuttle Services was located on the main floor of University Centre. They have now moved to a bigger, better, and potentially less convenient location — 423 University Crescent, just past the Frank Kennedy Centre, on the opposite side of the street. Unfortunately, that is just too far to navigate from the main floor of University Centre. You probably didn’t need to pay that parking ticket anyway.

Check out your student newspaper: If you have a passion for writing and you are interested in contributing to the Manitoban, or if you just want to see what we are all about, you can find us at 105 University Centre, behind the Gallery of Student Art. If you are coming from the main floor entrance, walk straight ahead, past GPAs and the Gallery of Student Art and turn left when you see a pit full of couches. Tucked behind the gallery you’ll find us.

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French Camp

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For most of us patriotic Canadians required to take French until the grade nine, French class sucks. I, too, am part of the majority that feels this way. After years of completing sheets of holiday vocabulary and the infamous DR. MRS. VANDERTRAMP passé composé verbs, I forgot them a week after the final exam, and I could barely say more that “Je m’appelle Sarah.”

Yet my love of the French language and culture was still deep, and I was eager to learn. My teacher mentioned a program called “J’explore,” an intensive summer immersion program famous for kicking you out for speaking in English (I learned much later this was simply not true in Quebec). Everyone knows someone who has done one of these programs; they are very easy to apply for and you are almost guaranteed a spot somewhere. They all seem to come back fluent and with that certain “je ne sais quoi”, and I was sure this was my ticket to bilingualism. (I learned much later that this was simply impossible).

I applied when I was 16 and was accepted to a school in Quebec City, but ended up declining a month before I was set to go. After a hectic year of family drama while moving to Winnipeg, my parents thought it would be best if I spent the summer at home relaxing with my friends. I had regretted it ever since, so this past December I decided to apply again, and was accepted to the École Internationale de Français at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières (UQTR.)

It seems ridiculous now how scared and anxious I was the day before I was set to embark on my adventure. It was my first time flying alone and would be the longest time spent apart from my family. I spent the night before going over every worst- case scenario in my mind. There was little to no information provided for me about how to get to the university and what to expect upon arrival, except a blurb on the UQTR website outlining the distance from airports in Montreal and Quebec City,. Wait, they didn’t even tell us where to catch the bus, just that we would be required to take the bus. I didn’t even have my official letter of acceptance yet. What if I showed up only to find myself stranded in Quebec? My neurotic little head almost exploded with anxiety. To my relief, the school neglected to tell me that a shuttle would be at the airport to take students upon arrival.

Being at UQTR was a little like being back in high school, except there was more booze and everything was in French, when the “animateurs” were in earshot anyway. The animateurs were students whose summer job was to babysit us and give us a “carte-rouge” if we were heard speaking in our native tongue. A couple of my friends got them by talking to each other at a urinal, when an overly eager animateur burst out of a stall and carded them). Not soon after arriving, cliques formed, relationships blossomed, and some good old-fashioned cat fighting began. This was not helped by the 6:1 guy-to-girl ratio, which caused the guys to go crazy and my sexual frustration to peak at an all-time high.

I hated these things about high school when I was there, and I was disappointed to see that some things never change. Yet as soon as I got there, something about me changed. I’ll admit, I can be a little tightly wound, but I ended up being the-girl-who goes-to-Montreal-with-someone-she-met-yesterday. That someone was my friend Derek. After discovering a mutual love of Woody Allen and hatred of Vancouver in our journalism “atelier,” we decided it wouldn’t be an awful idea to go to Montreal together to see an Animal Collective concert with some of our friends. That trip could’ve gone terribly wrong. We each had only a backpack with our wallets, cell phone, and a change of clothes, and no idea where we were going to spend the night. We ended up sneaking into a hostel and spent the next day wandering around Montreal.

After that I started to have a little more faith in my own ability to take risks and make things work out for myself. Derek became one of my closest friends, which led to me hanging out at his apartment a lot, which led to me becoming friends with his roommates, Christian, Ben and Greg too. By the end of the program, I felt like I had lived with them for years. I definitely became one of the guys, so much so they started talking about porn in front of me. I didn’t mind as long as they gave me piggyback rides home from the bar.

Oh, the bars. In Winnipeg, I live a 20-minute drive away from every bar worth spending an evening in. In Trois-Rivières, it was a 20-minute walk. I, along with 90 per cent of my peers, took full advantage of this opportunity to experience Quebec culture at its finest. I’m not sure what the “main street” was in Trois-Rivières, but I know the street we frequented had two patio bars for every shop, and those patio bars were full whether it was 2 p.m. or 2 a.m.. This provided us with ample time to practice our French on the locals, until our horrible accents gave us away and they started practicing their English on us.

By this point in the article, you may be wondering if I even learned any French. I’ll admit, I did not speak French all the time, and my hopes of becoming fluent in an extremely complicated language in five weeks were absolutely ridiculous. When the five weeks were up, I was torn. I was homesick, but didn’t feel like I had truly gotten enough out of the experience. I spent the majority of my time on campus, and when I ventured off campus it was in pairs or packs of other people trying to learn French, which usually led to everyone speaking English, and we avoided contact with the townspeople until we had to order drinks. This was especially true the first week when we were all just trying to get to know one another.

Five days before I was scheduled to go home, I was sitting at breakfast with Christian who was telling me about a language and work program he was staying an extra three weeks to do, where you get paid to work in a French environment. He mentioned that there happened to be a couple extra spots left. I don’t know what I was thinking, but as soon I was finished eating, I went and held a spot. I had till next morning to decide. My mom thought I was crazy; I never do things like this. I always plan. I always take time to make an informed decision. But I don’t always have opportunities to do things like this, and I figured as I get older, and responsibilities and commitments get bigger, those opportunities to do something spontaneous and maybe a bit crazy, will get fewer and further in between. I decided to stay, and those last three weeks spent in Quebec were an entirely different experience . . .

Everybody’s Focused

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This piece is intended to be spoken to the tune of Baz Luhrmann’s “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).”

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of 2009, read your textbooks. If I could offer you only one tip for your university life, textbooks would be it. The long term benefits of actually reading your textbooks have been proven by professors, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own wandering experiences. . . I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the stamina and flexibility of your youth; oh, never mind; you will not understand the stamina and flexibility of your youth until it has faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos, and envision in a way you can’t now how much possibility lay before you, and how incredible you really were . . . you are not as unattractive as you imagine.

When studying, don’t worry about your exams, because for you, worrying is about as effective as trying avoid rent by hiding under the bed. The real problems you will face are apt to be the things that never crossed your troubled mind, like the formulas explained in the middle of your third lecture. You know, while you were daydreaming.

Do one thing everyday that excites you.

Exercise.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s study time, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Shower.

Don’t waste your time on the hard problems; sometimes you get them, sometimes you don’t . . . the test is long, and in the end, it’s graded on a bell curve.

Remember assignments you are given, and develop the ability to complete them at least a week before they are due; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old lecture notes, throw away your old vegetables.

Shave.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your laundry soap . . . the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 18 how to properly iron clothes; some of the most interestingly dressed 25 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of sleep.

Be kind to your liver, you’ll miss that when it’s gone.

Maybe you’ll party, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll join a club, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll graduate at 21, maybe you’ll be doing the lawnmower at your 15th orientation ceremony . . . whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either — your choices are one in five, and so are everyone else’s. Enjoy your mind, use it every way you can . . . don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own . . .

Dance . . . even if you have nowhere to do it but on your own DDR pad.

Read the directions, but then don’t follow them.

Do not smash stuff, it will only make you look stupid.

Get to know your parents, you’ll never know what the future might bring.

Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to be a character witness for you in the future.

Understand that lovers come and go, but for the precious ones you should hold on to. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you’ll need the people you know you can count on.

Major in literature once, but switch before it makes you naive. Major in history once, but stop before it makes you cynical.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths; tuition will rise, jocks will party, you too will nap, and when you do, you’ll fantasize that tuition was reasonable, jocks were noble, and no one partied past 10 on a Wednesday.

Don’t party past 10 on a Wednesday.

Don’t expect anyone else to help you. Maybe you have a scholarship, maybe you have wealthy parents; but you never know when either one might stop supporting you.

Mess with your hair a lot, because when you’re 20, you don’t want to look 45.

Be careful whose advice you take, but be generous when you happen to supply it. Advice is a form of bonding, carrying an heirloom off your mantle, dusting it off, and passing it on to the next generation.

But trust me on the textbooks.

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Yore Lore:

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Whether in the form of Jedi Knights who wield their elegant lightsabers, or cartoon felines who deliver pizza and fight crime, the samurai has become a part of Western culture. With the exception of the Samurai Pizza Cats, the samurai is often a figure of discipline, swordsmanship and uncompromising honour. He is stoic and unwavering. Yet as compelling as the mythos of the samurai is, it is easy to forget that the samurai were a living, breathing warrior class that could not keep up with a changing world.

Towards the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ended in 1868 with the Meiji Restoration, the samurai had already moved away from their military status. They had taken on a more administrative role and acted as courtiers and aristocrats rather than warriors. They were at the top of the social structure. During the Tokugawa period, only samurai were permitted to carry swords. They typically carried the katana and the wakizashi, which were not only powerful weapons, but symbols of power in much the same way that sword ownership was in Elizabethan England.

However, as powerful as they were in their heyday, by 1868, the samurai had become less and less relevant as the strict isolationist policies of Japan were relaxed and Western trade became a reality. Japan was in a state of relative peace, and as superior foreign military technologies and ideas came flooding in, the samurai were becoming obsolete as warriors.

The beginning of the end of the samurai came in 1868 with the Meiji Restoration. With this political change came an ideological change that adopted more Western social structures, and the Japanese military was entirely reformed. The special privileges of the samurai were abolished and the samurai’s status as the only armed force in Japan was relinquished in favour of a more Western-style conscription-based army, open to all citizens. The Meiji regime adopted the idea of a meritocracy, as opposed to the hereditary privilege that the samurai enjoyed previously, according to Eiko Ikegami’s book, The Taming of the Samurai. By the end of the 19th century, the samurai had been phased out of existence.

Prominent Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa is best known for his samurai movies. While most depictions of samurai in popular culture are nostalgic, idealized and heroic, Kurosawa’s samurai films often deal, albeit indirectly, with the disgrace of the samurai, who were left powerless and without direction after the Meiji Resoration. His films often depict directionless rōnin, or master-less samurai wandering about the country trying to survive. The 1961 film Yojimbo is one of the most prominent examples. In the film, former samurai are bandits and shiftless warriors, and the invasion of foreign technologies is symbolized by the deadly revolver that the villain carries. The film opens with the nameless wandering protagonist who has so little direction that he must toss a stick in the air in order to determine which direction he will walk when he comes to a fork in the road. Kurosawa shows us that the samurai were a real economic and social class brought to ruin, not just a bunch of swordfighters with a katana fetish, as seen in Kill Bill, or wise-cracking warriors with a hairball problem.

Immortal Kombat

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Nothing pisses on our parade like “death.” It is responsible for countless awesome people like Socrates, MJ and my grandfather not being around to hang out anymore. It’s a huge bummer and it’s coming for everyone. Indeed, ecologists claim that absolutely every living creature gets the same finite amount of energy, the same 100 million or so heartbeats, and that’s that. Yes, it seems that “no one here gets out alive,” and there’s not much we can do about it. Or is there?

Some have claimed that we can attain a kind of immortality through our genes or our work. Or perhaps as an “idea” or a “meme.” Or even in “heaven,” all super-powered-up with nowhere to go. All manners of nonsense, be it rationale, ritual, or religion, have been erected to cope with the hard reality of death. But it takes an especially delusional thrust of thought to believe that we can live forever in the most literal sense. Here are five historical figures who didn’t worry about things like “entropy” or “common sense,” and took the whole “never say die” mentality to the next level.

Leonard “Live-Forever” Jones (1797–1868)

Jones believed that anyone could live forever if they just prayed hard enough. Okay, heard that before, but he upped the ante by being a total eccentric who made rad claims like having the ability to “melt diamonds” and “actually being literally immortal.” He also repeatedly ran for president of the United States solely on a platform of immortality. Incredibly, voters didn’t buy into the most awesome campaign promise of all time, possibly fearing the autocratic overtones of electing an “immortal” head-of-state.

Leonard Jones died on Aug. 30, 1868, after catching pneumonia and attempting to pray his way out of the illness.

Ted Williams (1918 – 2002)

We inherently trust that “the future,” that Valhalla of hover-boards and robocops, will have all the coolest answers for everything. Ted Williams, the storied Red Sox slugger, believed it so hard that he decided to be placed in cryonic suspension upon his death and chill until he could be revived by future technology. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona was happy to oblige his desire to, as their brochure states, “take a brief intermission before Act II.”

Ted Williams died on July 5, 2002. According to a 2003 Sports Illustrated report, his body is stored upside-down in a 9-foot-tall steel container at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. His decapitated head, drilled with holes and cracked during the freezing process, rests on a nearby shelf in a steel can.

Qin Shi Huangdi (259 BCE – 210 BCE)

The First Emperor of China harboured a life-long obsession with immortality, sending subjects to all corners of our non-cornered world in efforts to find an elixir of life. No one ever came back, so he had court doctors prescribe “immortality pills” of pure mercury in yet another example of classic “olden day stupidity.”

Qin Shi Huangdi died of mercury poisoning in 210 BC. Ironically, death did not completely stop him, as subjects continued to cart his corpse around Weekend at Bernie’s-style for a couple months afterward.

Raymond Roussel (1877 – 1933)

Roussel was a fin-du-siècle writer and crazier than a shithouse bear. Little-regarded today, his proto-Surreal fiction is rife with bizarre allusions to physical immortality. His masterwork Locus Solus, for instance, contains fevered passages about a mad scientist animating corpses with a “resurrectine” solution and placing them in a giant glass cage. Roussel himself hauled a coffin around with him everywhere he went, in which he rested periodically to “save up” his life, and which probably made for a pretty decent, if impractical, conversation piece.

Roussel died alone in squalid Paris hotel on July 14, 1933. He was not in his coffin at the time.

Alex Chiu (1971 – )

Chiu is an inventor who sings Alphaville’s “Forever Young” and sells “immortality devices” on his animated-GIF-heavy homepage. Dubbed “the most imporatnt (sic) invention in human history,” these plastic magnetic rings apparently add 30 days of life for each day of wear. In 2004, Chiu, of slight build and Asian descent, tried to trade some immortality rings in exchange for the titular role in the film Superman Returns. When producers declined, a jilted Chiu specifically refused to give any rings to a gravely ill Christopher Reeve, who then died later that year.

According to current UN life expectancy figures, Alex Chiu can expect to die in 2046.

In summary, attempts to live forever never disappoint, in that they always disappoint. But, hey, maybe dying isn’t such a terrible thing after all. Consider the philosophical implications of Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Immortal,” a story in which living forever just becomes mind-destroyingly boring because nobody ever gets around to doing anything. If we ever did somehow overcome death, lives divested of meaning might be the most likely result. Indeed, everything that is loved is loved by contrast. We love life, we cherish the moment, if only because we’re all too aware of the alternative.

Sex and the campus

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In this fast-paced age of 0.16 second Google searches and coffee that requires only
26 steps, the question often creeps up: to online-date, or not to online-date. That certainly is the question. With all of these sites asking us to join, an attempt to find someone by looking at a few photos and reading a blurb — which have all turned into generic statements about how no one has any idea what to write — the next question comes along: is romance dead?

With more dating sites looking for your attention than you have time to even think about trying, it quickly becomes apparent that love has become an industry to these sites, and they make it so easy to meet people with similar interests that it quickly becomes easy to forget that what you want is to actually meet someone.

Suddenly, hours are spent on the computer speaking to people whose voices you have never heard and whose appearance is based on three photos which have carefully been set up to show only their best side. Unknown is that on the other side, their nose is twice as big, and their eyebrows grown in since that photo was taken. The misrepresentation of a two-and-a-half year old photo is enough to make a person want to walk away when finally you do meet.

These sites are invading television with advertisements featuring testimonials from their “successful” couples. In some of these ads, people are claiming that going out on the town is a passive way to meet dateable people. Somehow going online, sitting in a dark room in your house with a computer is clearly a more active a way to meet people than going out, by these people’s logic. This type of ad is almost a call-out to the university student, who has come to realize that they have time for almost nothing, and when
they do manage to open up four hours on the weekend, it is spent at the bar having a
great time. This is passive, says the big dating dot-com; this is not how to meet people.

The fact is that such a method doesn’t take into account the natural chemistry
between two people. Two people can get along from reading a tiny piece of each other
on a website, and by talking through instant messages, even speaking on the phone, but when it comes to meeting, how two people behave face to face is very different from how they behave online. Body language, hand gestures, and so many other things can make two people incompatible. Countless forums and blogs go through, at length the signs given through body language which can even tell how attracted one person is to another. All a person needs for this wealth of information is to type “dating” and “body language” into any search engine. According to BBC.co.uk, when we are attracted to someone, we automatically raise our eyebrows; we may also subconsciously point our arms, legs, hands or feet at the object of our attraction. The wealth of information that can be found on the necessity of body language in human interaction only shows us what we already know: the Internet is all well and good, but you can’t get the entire picture without actually seeing the entire picture.

Romance is further killed by the lack of tone that we find in email and instant messaging. Something intended as a joke is taken as snide, and the other way around. Often times, what a person meant as a joke is taken as something terrible, and with three foul swoops of the mouse, all ties are severed, and neither party will ever hear from the other again because such care has been taken by each website to ensure you can prevent any and all attempts to salvage your relationship of 15 minutes.

I often ask myself, what ever happened to Victorian-era courtships? Why doesn’t anyone act in a way that impresses a person through honour and class rather than this era of taking pictures in a strangely-lit bathroom which just happens to have the right shadow to highlight your just-barely-there abdominal muscles. Have we all lost hope in our own abilities and must turn to computers to make all of our decisions for us?

All hope has not been lost. There still are couples who found each other without the assistance of modern technologies. There are still some people who act honourably to impress a person, and shocking as this may seem with current trends, there are still marriages that make it to, and past, a 10-year anniversary.

Maybe if we’re all so busy that we need a computer to find a someone for us, the sign wasn’t that we needed a third party to find a significant other for us, the sign was that we simply don’t have time for another person.

Owner’s manual

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As promised, with every new purchase of the Manitoban, we include this handy-dandy “User Guide” to help you along on the road forward. Once you’ve mastered the tricky business of the opening and the reading — which I see you’ve already managed to take a crack at — there’s really not much to it!

One of the other first questions we usually get here at the Manitoban office is about the fees. You have probably noticed all those extra dollars on your tuition bill and wondered “But I thought the Manitoban only costs $3 per term?” Yes, very good question. Good, good question.

In fact, the paper is only $3 per term. Those extra thousands are what you’re paying for your courses, a few light UMSU fees, and an assortment of administrative fees. Don’t worry; those classes are usually pretty good. They are a small price to pay for the opportunity you’ve given yourself by joining us here at the Manitoban. If you pay attention some of those courses might actually have their uses — particularly those science ones. In fact, one of our guys did a whole thing of science courses a few years back and now he does quite well for us.

Anyway, lets get on with the tutorial. Here are a few tips about how to make the most of you’re new campus paper.

Read

  • Connect hand-A (D10291) to corner-C3
    (45) Flex topside arm-motor (D4562)
    upwise 30 degrees Push forward till
    hinge A6 (54) is in line with
    trundle B9 (55) Push till you hear a
    “click”

If you read each issue of the Manitoban, you’ll learn what’s going on around the campus as well as about issues relevant to students from all walks of life. You’ll discover new movies and music, examine the soft underbelly of science, the hard overbelly of sports, the medium-strength middlebelly of culture, and you’ll get to discover the opinions of your fellow students, profs, alumni and even non-students.

Write

  • Using hand-B (D44455), establish
    firm grip on port B (16) Ensure
    stylus (98) is connected to hifi (5)
    Plug to topmost flood handle bulb
    (2)

Writing an article for us is as simple as sending an email. If you’re not very comfortable with writing, we can give you a story idea, we can give you tips on how to approach your idea, and work with you as you write. And if you’re already a confident writer, just write something and send it to us. Easy-peazy!

You’ll find that we’re open to your work, no matter how wild your ideas may be. We’ll work with you to produce anything, from a news report on a Board of Governors meeting, to a creative writing piece about a Board of Governors meeting . . . at the bottom of the sea!

Criticize

  • Attach part 56-b (23) to mouth-1
    (D33) Access bar 6 (D554A) must
    include 3 bars (44) of metre-peg
    (68) Collate registration mark
    processor joints (23-44)

If you read something in our paper that you disagree with, tell us how you feel. You can either write an article to provide your own perspective on a topic, or, if you’re strapped for time, you can send us a short letter to the editor (400 words or less) expressing your concerns. If you have the standards and the integrity to criticize the hard work that people put into the paper because it’s not what you believe or because it doesn’t interest you, why don’t you write something? Help us out here. At the very least, write us a letter.

The bottom line is that this paper is not like other papers. It’s not a closed-circuit feed of information that we dole out weekly. This paper is a forum for you to express your ideas and we invite volunteers to express themselves. If you’ve got something to say, say it.

Visit

  • Step foot-1 (77) beyond foot-2 (78)
    Motion body-A (1) to door-1 (122)

Want to find out how we put an issue together? Come to our story meetings Wednesdays at 3:30 p.m. Check our website for details regarding various section meeting times. We will soon have a guide to volunteering available on our volunteer page.

Feel free to also come by the office any time you like. We are located at 105 University Centre, across from Tim Hortons, behind the Gallery of Student Art (GOSA).

If these specifications have failed to describe how best to use your brand new “the Manitoban,” register your support request at 105 University Centre or with [email protected]. A service operator is standing by now to field your questions.

The softer, fuzzier side of campus media

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Here we are, right on the edge of the last winter and you can already sense there’s a new one creeping up ahead. It felt like summer was late to start this year anyway. Come to think of it, I can remember feeling like winter started early last year as well. Does it always feel that way? Whatever it is, there’s always an oppressive feeling that accompanies winter in this corner of the world. And now it’s starting to feel like summer is giving up on us. Winter’s just too big and strong.

So I bought a bunny.

If I’m to be a slave to our climate, I’m going to need to cage something more precious than myself. It’s not about spite or control. This desire is for responsibility — it’s for that certain satisfaction that comes from supporting something that needs you. For example, I bought nice puffy bedding yesterday and watched as the bunny stepped gingerly into his cage to explore the soft new linen. He made a few small hops and then ran in a circle. It was rewarding, until he pissed and shat all over the place.

At the same time that I try unsuccessfully to potty train this baby bunny, I prepare for the first issue of the Manitoban for the 2009-10 year. We are trying to prepare contests and events, train new staff, hire new staff (any graphic designers out there?), and generally settle in. With every challenge we learn a little more about the nature of campus media. And as time moves more and more quickly, I find my thoughts on campus media and young bunny life are mixing together in cute, fuzzy ways.

There are a few obvious links: bunny rabbits are relatively little critters like campus media is relatively small; bunnies are to their cages as campus media is to its community; we dress our bunnies’ cages and we are collectively responsible for creating the scenery that surrounds campus media. If these comparisons are stretching your imagination too far, then at least you can imagine this page soaking up urine in some critter’s litter box in the near future. But there’s more to it than that.

Naturally, I want my bunny to thrive; if I can create the right environment for him, he will one day become a happy, successful rabbit. Campus media provides this same milieu for budding designers, writers, broadcasters, and journalists.

Take the Manitoban as an example. In my short time with the paper I have seen staff move on from volunteer to editor and eventually start careers in journalism, communications, and design. The ability to function as a training ground is one of the most important and rewarding qualities that campus media has to offer.

As heartwarming as all of this sounds so far, it’s still potty training. As the baby bunny of the media world, it is to be expected that campus media will take a shit on the floor now and then. But, oh my goodness, you should see Champ — that’s my bunny — playing in his cage right now. He’s pulling his big floppy ears down with his tiny paws. It’s really just too cute. He honestly looks like a little stuffed animal. Yes you do, Champ! Hi bunny-bunny! Want a carrot?

Where was I? Oh yes, shitting ourselves. Yes, we do that sometimes.

People speak ill of media all the time, with good reason. For every good newspaper there are five bad ones. For every high quality magazine there are 10 bad ones. For every intelligent television program, there are 50 trashy ones. The difference with campus media is that, rather than tossing it aside, you can have an immediate individual impact on its quality. There are limitless volunteer opportunities; you can write emails that people will actually respond to; you can send a letter to the editor that will be printed; you can send artwork and become famous. You are not just an audience member; you own the cage.

Now that the year is starting for the Manitoban, we are looking for volunteers of all types. Stop by our office in University Centre to get all the info you could ever need about how to contribute to your paper. Don’t be scared. We are but tiny bunnies looking for carrots amongst the bustle of student life. Watch as we twitch our whiskers at you. Look, we can stand on our hind legs! Adorable, yes?

The point is: we want you to volunteer. We want your perspective to join our pages. If you don’t want to volunteer, write a letter. If you don’t want to write a letter, you can even write a comment on our website. We need an unlimited supply of your input to constantly munch on, or we’ll starve! You are our timothy hay.

Yes, I suppose you are our timothy hay and campus events and such are our condensed timothy hay nuggets. And volunteers are our apples and carrots — treats and stuff. Conferences are like when we wear harnesses and get to go outside and play. And I guess computers and dictionaries and all that are like our interactive rabbit toys. Champ doesn’t really ever play with his interactive rabbit toys though, so that doesn’t work. Well maybe other rabbits are different than Champ. Champ is pretty good though. Such soft fur he’s got.

If you’re interested in connecting with your campus media, send emails to [email protected], or stop by our office at 105 University Centre, across from Tim Hortons, behind the GoSA. We would like to thank you in advance for not biting our electrical cords.

Turn on, toon in, drop out

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9
Directed by Shane Acker
Opens Wednesday, Sept. 9th
* out of

Coraline
Directed by Henry Sellick
Released on DVD on July 21st
* ½ out of **

Since the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney has been comfortably at the forefront of the animated film business. The latest challenger for their title might be Focus Features (a sub-division of Universal Pictures), who decided to release not one, but two, animated films in 2009.

The latest, 9, is a post-apocalyptic tale that recalls Britain following the Second World War in setting and British science fiction novels of that era in sensibility. Based on a 2005 Academy Award-nominated animated short film of the same name (which I haven’t seen), Shane Acker’s 9 follows a series of “stitchpunks” (don’t ask) who are the only living representation of humans following their extermination at the hand of the “Great Machine.” Newsreel footage depicts the creation of an indestructible fighting machine originally created in an attempt to gain world domination over the nation’s enemies. Predictably, the artificial intelligence quickly outsmarts the humans and, predictably again, the machines turn evil and decide to eliminate humanity altogether.

As a way of retaliating, an old scientist (Alan Oppenheimer) has fabricated the “stitchpunks” to fight back against the remaining machines who roam the streets. The No. 9 (voiced by Elijah Wood) is a Christ-like figure who starts living just moments after the death of his creator. No. 9 might be the youngest stitchpunk, but he’s also the most knowledgeable. He integrates the stitchpunk group, including leader No. 1 (Christopher Plummer), frail No. 2 (Martin Landau), sensitive No. 5 (a distracting John C. Reilly) and rebellious No. 7 (Jennifer Connoly), eventually persuading them to fight back against the machines.

Not only is 9 dated, but it suffers a great deal from its erratic pacing. Clocking in at a mere 79 minutes, 9 doesn’t give itself time to develop its characters and their surroundings. The first action sequence takes place within the first four minutes of the film and, from then on, the film is basically a chase movie going from point A to point B. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself, but there is little connection with the characters, which should be pivotal in a film about survival.

9 fares even worse when compared with Focus Features’ first animated effort of 2009, Coraline, which was recently released on DVD. Whereas 9 is a futuristic fable about humanity’s seduction via greed, Coraline is a timeless fable about humanity’s seduction via the heart.

In the latter, a lonely little girl moves into an apartment house in Oregon. However, Coraline (Dakota Fanning) finds life there quite boorish, as both her mother (Teri Hatcher) and father (John Hodgman) are writers who have no time for her. One day Coraline finds a miniature door in their living room, which turns out to be a portal to an alternate reality where fun is just around every corner and, even more importantly, her other parents pay attention to her. After a succession of nights venturing off between realities, Coraline eventually realizes (spoiler alert!) that it’s a trap and that her other parents are only pretending to be kind in order to eat her. It is, essentially, a daydream which evolves into a nightmare.

Coraline is frequently vibrant, and its animation is equally dazzling, especially in the scenes where Coraline meets her alternative neighbors. I admired how the film’s designs shifted dramatically from majestic to sinister, to emphasize the disconnect between worlds. However, what really makes Coraline so refreshing is that it knows the psychology of its child protagonist, and it knows that in order to be scary, the film has to be cold, creepy and cruel. It’s so effective that it makes me wonder if director Henry Sellick might have been a bigger factor in The Nightmare Before Christmas‘ success than the usually-mistakenly-credited Tim Burton. The only real let down in Coraline is that the film’s final act is comparably simple and somewhat contrived.

Quintessentially both films, 9 and Caroline, deal with the faltering of utopias and the quest to return them to their original state. One does this poorly, the other does it effectively. So far Focus Features is literally hit-and-miss, and, as such, Disney shouldn’t have to worry about conceding its crown anytime soon.

Zoological Investigations II

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Ah, New Zealand. That dreamy cluster of islands that friends or maybe friends of friends of yours have burned up precious student loan dollars visiting during spring breaks and summer vacations. New Zealand has slowly drifted through millennia of isolation during which evolution ran amuck, creating a shocking array of birds and reptiles the likes of which we North Americans have only dreamed of through the months and months of cold winter nights alone — at least, this fine scribe has anyhow — but what I am really trying to write about is the ancient (and endangered) creature I hope to enthrall you with in this installment of zoological investigations: the tuatara.

Tuatara are reptiles, but not lizards. They belong to a related group, Sphenodontidae, which flourished during the Mesozoic period some 250 million years ago. Today, the only extant members of this group still in existence are the tuatara!

There are only two species, Sphenodon punctatus and S. guentheri, which once roamed gleefully throughout the North and South islands of New Zealand, but with the introduction of mammals, were wiped out on the mainland and now survive on just a handful of surrounding islands. With numbers as low as 400 adults, S. guentheri is currently facing extinction while S. punctatus is thought to boast only 50,000 individuals. 

Some of the features which make the tuatara such an interesting animal to learn about are also contributing to their current decline. For example, tuatara can live 60-100 years and do not reach sexual maturity until 15-20 years of age. Males do not have a penis but transmit sperm to the female by positioning the opening of the reproductive and excretory tracts, the cloaca, close to that of the female (most birds do it this way, too, except turkeys — they’re crazy). Females become sexually receptive every 2-5 years (bum luck, huh?) and once their eggs are laid, no care is provided for the young. The eggs take between 11 and 16 months to hatch, which means there is a lot of time for things to go wrong!

Adults are nocturnal and feed on almost anything they can find, including invertebrates, eggs, birds and young tuatara! For this reason, juveniles are active during the day. Tuatara are found in close association with nesting shore birds because they inhabit burrows made by the birds and because their guano, or feces, attracts delicious insects. Perhaps the neatest thing about tuatara is their third eye! Unlike the yogis of the East, the third eye of the tuatara is visible below the skin on top of the head and contains a lens, retina and nerve connections to the pineal gland (which influences sleep and hibernation). The function of this organ is debated but some scientists believe it is used to regulate behaviours based on light and temperature signals.

If you would like to see a tuatara in your lifetime, you can fly to New Zealand for less than $2,000 CAD. Don’t ask me how you’re going to get home, though!

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