The Hack Magazine

In the first year of Creative Communications the students get placed into a group of four or five to create a magazine from scratch. We create the articles, ads, the layout and design, as well as the public relations and marketing campaign.

Somehow my group landed on doing a curling magazine called The Hack Magazine. Three of our four members have never thrown a curling rock, but that doesn't mean we can't create a magazine about it! I wrote already about my interview with Shannon Birchard, but here's a little sample of the other work I did.

I tried to show some photographs of curling athletes "taking over" other sports, like hockey, football, and rugby. They're laid out nicely in the magazine, I assure you, but in addition to this, there's loads of other fun content. Larissa Peck talks about curling after 90 versus curling before 10, Megan Redmond went to Morden to check up on their local curling club, and Matt Bedard shoved his face into three different curling club meals. He's so brave.

The Magazine Trade Fair is on Thursday, March 28, at noon, and our booth will be rocking! We will have lots of cool giveaways, some special guests, and hopefully some fun games for everyone to play.

Comes by and check us out, and make sure to Like us of Facebook because we are winning the magazine Like battle!

If you are truly my friend, you will Like the shit out of us on Facebook.

Reflections On A Large Number of Farewells

Nahlah Ayed is a foreign correspondent working for the CBC. She was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up in St. Boniface. As chronicled in her memoir A Thousand Farewells, she moves to a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan at age six, then back to Canada at thirteen. From there she gets a journalism degree, works the Canadian Press, and eventually moves on to CBC.

I have followed Israeli politics very closely, and when I realized this was a book by a Palestinian in Jordan, writing about her various coverage of various conflicts, big events, and "the myriad of ways in which ordinary Arabs have coped with oppression and loss," I knew right where I was going.

Operation Cast Lead. Israel versus Hezbollah.

Yes, I am a cheater. When I am reading a biography and I know of significant moments, I tend to skip right to them, and this case was no different. I lasted maybe three chapters until I decided to move on to that part, which came in chapter ten. Whatever, I'm the reader, and this is the most interesting aspect to me; sue me.

But this isn't a post about politics, this is about Ayed's prose, and I found her views on the conflict incredibly interesting. The small glimpses into the mind's of these Lebanese people, who were literally stuck in a warzone (as Israel had bombed the airport and major highways out of the country), were fascinating. The fourteen year old girl huddled in a parking lot with her family, talking about how her daughter (yes, the fourteen year old girl's daughter) will eventually be regaled with stories of Hezbollah's assured victory. And how no one would say anything negative about Hezbollah.

This focus on ordinary people is a major part of all the stories Ayed tells, and this is no different. It's a much more beneficial method for the reader to be shown the desperation of these people by showing a woman whose presumed-dead husband finally calls on her cell phone, causing her to erupt in "sobs of painful relief," then it is to take a grander approach. So Ayed's story ends up really being told by all the small personal stories of people that sometimes last just one paragraph, but can sometimes stretch on for pages.

I found her journalistic insight into Lebanon's supposed freedom of the press very interesting as well. She admits the country boasts more newspapers and TV networks than any other Middle Eastern country, but on closer examination, you can see how "virtually every paper or network is loyal to one side."

Christopher Hitchens wrote Hitch-22, his memoir, and though both of these authors are journalists, Hitch-22 has a completely different voice. I felt Ayed's book read a lot like a news story, or a documentary that you might see on PBS or the BBC. Hitch-22 gives off the feeling that you are sitting in a pub listening to Hitchens tell you a variety of stories about his life. It's funny, the more I think about it, the more the structure of the two books is actually quite similar. Both take a journalistic approach to various dangerous warzones in there lives, and we go along for the ride around the globe meeting people entrenched in conflict.

A difference though, would be that after finishing A Thousand Farewells, you get the (I assume quite accurate) feeling that all the stories she has told completely shaped how she views the world, and views her job as a journalist. Whereas with Hitchens, some stories seem like they could be passed over, but the happen to just have some interesting angle here or there, (oh yes, I was beaten up by IRA terrorists and nearly murdered, but now hear this...) or they involve a person that is dear to his heart. Hitchens book is amazing, and I don't mean this next part negatively, but I feel like you could have read most of his other work, or listened to his debates, and you would "know" him just as well as if you had read Hitch-22. I don't think you can say the same thing for A Thousand Farewells.

I think journalists can learn how important Ayed's impartiality is to her storytelling. Hitchens is a very opinionated writer, but Ayed's book works so well because it shows it's story through people that Ayed has no bias towards or against. As she says "people are not quotes or clips, used to illustrate stories about war and conflict. People are the story, always." Through these people, she can illuminate much bigger stories, like the 2006 Lebanon War, without pushing the reader in any one direction. This unbiased approach is a great lesson.

In Defence of Allison Bench ie. Shut The Fuck Up You Pathetic, Whiny Little Trolls

Allison Bench just came out with an article for the Winnipeg Free Press. And wow, it was the most divisive, contentious,  and frankly controversial article I've read in some time. What was it on? Well, it's kind of hard to explain how insanely polemic this subject matter is on, but I'll just cut right to the chase.

SHE TALKS ABOUT PLACES SHE LIKES IN OSBORNE VILLAGE!!!

The fucking arrogant nerve of this girl. Fuck this girl! Saying she likes shit... what an entitled bitch!

"I just want to say something nice about Winnipeg, is that so wrong?" Survey says... Yes!

Oh wait, those aren't my feelings. No, sorry, those are the feelings of the cousin-fucking dipshits who populate the Winnipeg Free Press comment section!

These grumbling troglodytes with sticks so far up their asses they can taste what type of soil was used, decided to shit all over the pettiest, most inane bullshit I've ever seen.

Now I, unlike these festering boils of a pig's ass, am not a complete moron. I know Internet commenters are a veritable landmine of asshole-ishness and douchebaggery, and are essentially the scum of the earth. But the difference between a bunch of people around the world telling Rebecca Black to go kill herself and this comment section, is the implied audience. These are Winnipeggers, bitching about a Winnipegger, who likes Winnipeg. I've heard of self-hating Jews, but this...

Are these really that contemptible? Let's see, this first comment from "happyasaclam."

Ms. Allison Bench...let me guess...you're writing this article from the comforts of your home...in Vancouver and are getting it confused with Gas Town...

What the fuck? This internet detective sure puts Poirot to fucking shame. I suppose he got Anonymous to figure this mystery out. What was the big giveaway? The picture of Allison literally standing on Osborne Street? I guess all those zero seconds of research was far too daunting for this clever asshole. I bet he can tell you whose really behind 9/11 too.

Someone is wrong on the Internet!

There's also:

i suspect that a lot of posters on here are young,untraveled and convinced that the "village" is our version of the sidewalk cafes of paris,soho,or the east village in new york......and i doubt that many of the squeegee/ex-punk/skater/panhandlers that frequent the area ans view the alleys as bathrooms will ever know the difference....

Yes, fuck this girl for saying Osborne Village is cool. It's not Paris or New York people! So you can't enjoy it! What a condescending shit-stain of a human being.

I can just picture this guy's kid coming up to him, trying to show him how well he's done at his piano lessons, or playing guitar, and this guy going "Well, it's not The Beatles! You ever heard Strawberry Fields Forever?! You are not my son you Philistine piece of shit."

And wow, panhandlers won't know the difference between Winnipeg and New York. Really? You're shitting on homeless people for being unrefined? The balls on this guy.

Ugh, New York panhandlers are just SO much more adept at their... ahem *craft.*

Finally, this gem:

Into the Music isn't in Osborne anymore. And how could she not mention Spicy Noodle House? Or talk about some of the other places that used to be in Osborne (i.e. Divine, Movie Village, Fair Trade Florist)? Too bad.

This dumb motherfucker was so far up his ass that he didn't even realize his second complaint completely negated his first! He complains that Into The Music (which was accidentally put instead of Music Trader and subsequently changed) isn't actually in Osborne Village anymore. But then he whines about how she doesn't mention places that used to be in the Village. YOU JUST BITCHED ABOUT HER MENTIONING INTO THE MUSIC! Do these people not read the bile that exudes out of them? This is the type of guy who walks into the same desk every day and blames the desk. He just can't process too many thoughts at the same time, or his tiny head will explode.

Whatever, it's not any of these are overly hateful, I saw a few comments were reported as abusive before I could see them. I just think it's so disheartening to see the trivial bullshit that these comments focus on. Honestly, if they were bitching about it being a badly written piece (which I would disagree with, but that's beside the point) then I'd be less angry because at least you could potentially defend your position.

But this insignificant shallow tripe is the just so fucking pathetic. Sadly, it makes me happy I decided to major in Public Relations instead of Journalism so I don't have to deal with this type of frivolous bullshit.

Happy Reading Week!

The Waiting Room Review

I love documentaries. Four years ago I took a documentary class at the University of Manitoba, where I met and subsequently "wooed" my girlfriend, and now we continue to watch docs together as it's one of our main common interests. Sometimes it's in theatre (last one we saw together was Searching For Sugar Man which we liked) or it's on Netflix (last one was Hungry For Change which we didn't). Suffice it to say, I have a special place in my heart for docs.


This week I went to Cinematheque and saw The Waiting Room. I had heard it was about the American health care system, but that was pretty much all I knew. In some ways it was actually about much less, and in some ways it was about way, way more.

The Waiting Room is about a "day in the life" of an emergency room in Oakland. This is the place that people go when they don't have insurance that will cover their costs at a private hospital, so they have to come here and wait for their emergency treatment. It's the safety net for the American health care system, and man is that net hanging low, and loose. While it shows an interesting glimpse into the bureaucracy side, what really makes this doc is the human side that's shown. This is as up close and personal as you can get.

The film is shot in a cinema verite style. For this film though, producer/director Peter Nicks takes this one step further than just a typical "fly on the wall." He really wants this to feel like you are literally there, waiting in the emergency room or meeting with the nurses or talking about payment. The way he does this is he has zero to-the-camera interviews. There's no point where anyone looks to the camera, or adresses the director, and breaks that fourth wall down. There are only voice overs, and they are all in the present tense. We get no references about "how crazy that day was," or  that "I had a bad ache that day." We get no title cards giving us follow ups on how the patients did later. Everything is happening right now. This technique gives everything an urgent, desperate feeling, while at the same time showing how typical it is, since it's all going to happen all over again tomorrow.

The film is all about showing over telling. There is no soft-voiced narrator telling us about the plight of any one person. We see the agitation on a woman's face as she asks why the man she came in with who is shot hasn't been seen yet. And we see the controlled, yet firm response from the nurse that they have to wait like everyone else. You can tell she's gone through this thousands of times before, not because some on-screen text tells us she's been working here for 23 years, but because we hear it in her voice, and see it on her face. It works the same way when a man who comes in with his daughter is told that she's finally getting better and they can go home: when they first came in he was anxious and stressed out, but you can hear the relief in his voice by the end. It's like he's a whole new person. We don't need any voice over for that.

The visuals get right up close to people for some shots. They really help in showing the depth of pain and anguish some people are in. Not necessarily for the ailment they've come to the emergency room for, but for the thoughts of how they are going to pay for this, like with the man who's been laying carpets all his life. Yes, he's in pain, but his real worry is when he deals with the lady over how much of a discount he's able to get for the visit.

But the most harrowing use of sounds is when a 15 year old kid comes in for a traumatic injury. This is when the emergency room looks the closest to how it tends to be portrayed on TV. The sounds of doctors providing CPR and squeezing air into the kid's lungs is just awful. It doesn't end up working, and the silence afterwards shows how even though they probably have to deal with this stuff every day, that doesn't make it any less of a human loss.

The film isn't trying to showcase a certain point of view; it's trying to portray real life stories. The only issue I had with it is the whole "one day" thing. The film never says what day this takes place on, but the film's poster says "1 community, 24 hours," so they're clearly trying to make it sound like this all happens in one day. And it is pretty obvious after watching it that there is no way this was all filmed in one day. No way. All of those stories being filmed simultaneously? Impossible. That's just not how film shoots work. Not to mention they put in many long time-lapse shots of the whole waiting room, and we never see any crew walking around. So clearly this was a carefully planned shoot that put the effort in to make sure they showcased the best stories possible.

And it's better for it. Nicks chose fantastic, gripping stories about interesting people. And it's the people that make this doc worth it. It reminds me of a French doc I saw called Babies, which was also shot in the cinema verite style. It was "one year in the life" of four newborn babies. It had no voice overs at all, but it's strength, much like The Waiting Room, was on how up close and personal these stories got. Where The Waiting Room is better is how there isn't any story that we don't care about (which can't be said for Babies).

The film also reminds me, of course, of Michael Moore's Sicko. This film was very up front about the how it viewed the differences between Canada and America's respective health care systems. As a proud Canadian, I'm very grateful to be a part of the Canadian health care system. Back in 2007 (in response to Sicko), the CEO of the University Health Network said:

Canadians spend about 55% of what Americans spend on health care and have longer life expectancy, and lower infant mortality rates. Many Americans have access to quality health care. All Canadians have access to similar care at a considerably lower cost. In "Sicko," Michael Moore has apparently exaggerated the performance of the Canadian health system -- there is no doubt that too many patients still stay in our emergency departments waiting for admission to scarce hospital beds. 

A Health Council of Canada survey showed that 42% of Canadians waited two hours of more in the emergency room, versus 29% in America. Clearly both systems have areas they can improve in, but I'm happy right where I am, with my socialized health care.

How To Lose A Girl In Ten Minutes, Or: How I Learned To Stop Being So Flirty And Love Myself

As a first year Creative Communications student, I, along with a group of three others, have to create an original magazine. The group I am a part of has gotten along incredibly well so far, and we have all decided that our magazine concept will be a curling magazine. A little strange, but I think a big benefit of this is that none of us really have a big interest in curling; three of us have never curled, and one has a bit of a connection to it. It means we are free to explore our own interests in the magazine, as long as we relate them back to curling.

When we pitched our story ideas to each other, I got to do the "celebrity" curler interview. We figured we'd find a young curler, which would fit in with our magazine demographic, who is female, because we didn't want to fall in the trap of a sports magazine being totally geared towards guys. Our main curling connection, Larissa, set me up with Shannon Birchard. She just won the provincial tournament to qualify for the Canadian Junior Curling Championships, so we thought she'd be perfect.

And she was.

But dear god I wasn't.

I emailed Shannon, and set the interview up at Stella's in the Village. I thought the interview went fine, but then when I listened to it as I tried to transcribe it, and I made a grave discovery.

I was really flirtatious.

And even worse: it was really bad flirting. Like Ross Geller bad.

Here are some examples:

SB: (after being asked how much thought she puts into how she looks for a curling game)
I don’t know, we’re there to curl, not to impress anyone with how we look. If we know we’re being potentially photographed, try to look a little better. In the end it doesn’t really matter, you’re there to curl.
ME: Because I saw photos on the Google-
SB: The Google, ha.
ME: And, well, you didn't look bad, so, I was just wondering.
SB: Oh. Thanks.

Note the really lame "the Google" joke. Seriously, Alan? The Google? I know you're an idiot, but you don't have to pretend to be stupider than you already are.

It should be clear that Shannon is being very nice and polite, answering all of my questions, and seemingly not being weirded out by my flirtatiousness. It continues...

SB: (after being asked about her training schedule)
Over the summer we’re set up with a trainer, and there’s workouts once a week, you can go twice a week but pay a little extra. Super intense, crazy workouts. You pretty much do everything. It’s not like a specific “just do cardio” thing. In the winter we just practice and your fitness is your own responsibility. I don’t really sweep, because I’m the skip, so I guess I have to stay fit on my own a little more. I don’t really, but...
ME: *five second pause as I try to say something*
SB: *awkward laughter*
ME: *awkward laughter* It's just that, yeah, it's like, you're not unfit, but whatever...

If you could hear that five second pause, wow. Next time you're in a conversation with someone, and they say something, instead of responding like a normal human being, try pausing for five seconds and see how awkward it gets. Just pause. Wait. Five long seconds.

And then what did I say? "You're not unfit." Not unfit. Wow.

Now for the worst offence:

(after asking Shannon a question, our server comes and gives us our drinks. Our server leaves, and Shannon begins to answer the question.)
SB: -yeah, so...
ME: (interrupting her answer to the interview question ie. the whole reason this meeting is taking place) She probably thinks I'm like asking you these strange questions, like it's some weird online date or something, haha...
SB: Haha, ya. So...

What are you doing?! What is wrong with you?! You are supposed to be listening to her answers, why do you keep talking?!

Anyway, the night ended up going fine, Shannon was great, and I don't think I embarrassed myself, or her, too much.

Here's the thing: I don't think I was consciously hitting on her or anything, it wasn't like that at all. It's that I naturally slipped into this aloof, pathetically flirtatious, thinks-he's-funny douche, when I should have just been normal. Is it an interview technique to try and get certain answers? Or is it a weird insecurity where I have to try and play up those aspects of my personality.

I'd say it's a little from column A... and a whole hell of a lot from column B.

I Don't Know How To Dress Myself

Dressing oneself is a basic skill that we all pick up as get older. Since we've always worn clothes, it obviously comes naturally that we begin to pay more and more attention to it. Some people get really invested in it and design a very particular wardrobe, and some just don't care that much and throw anything on.

I fall into a weird category. I care what I look like. But I have no idea what I am doing.

A year ago, my girlfriend made me throw out about 90% of the clothing I owned and start a new wardrobe. Apparently a (then) 24 year old man wearing the same clothes he wore when he was 17 shows signs of "immaturity" and "an unwillingness to grow up." So the great purge was enacted, and I went out and bought new clothes.

That's me at 23, pre-purge. Note the plaid shirt with striped shorts. Classy.

Now, I just stare at my clothes, and I don't understand how things match together. In fact, are clothes supposed to "match" together. Do certain shirts go better with certain pants? I have no clue.

It seems so arbitrary to me, but I see other people's outfits sometimes, and I think "that looks really good. It's clear they thought that out." But when it comes to me, I get completely lost.

This is my routine for dressing myself. I put on the pants that are closest to me when I wake up. Then I grab the nearest shirt. No synergy between the two, because I figure, how can I possibly have screwed up already. What t-shirt could not go with a pair of blue jeans?

From here, I have two and half options. I can put on a sweater, or a cardigan. Mainly, this is to hide my arms because I have no muscles, and I figure hiding my shameful non-biceps from the public is my best chance at obtaining the glances of women who are looking to settle.

The half comes from putting a button up shirt underneath the sweater or cardigan. That I assume is where the biggest trap for clashing styles can come from, and yet I put essentially zero thought into it.

"Why you so stupid Alan?" "I dunno..."

I can't even describe the awful things I do, because I don't even recognize how awful they are. I'm at this point where I'm so ignorant, that I don't even truly know how ignorant I am, but at least not too ignorant that I'm not aware that I am ignorant. Yeah.

So this is how I lead my life now. Wandering aimlessly in a closet of mystery, unaware of the dangers I tread, and too dim to learn to combat them.

It is a sad life. But it is mine.

Reddit: Hobby or Addiction? Oh wait, both of those are awful.

Reddit, for those of you who don't know, is a site where users post links, and users vote on which they would rank as the "best" or most "relevant" and really that's it. It's full of pictures of cats dressed up as people, and memes that were invented the week before, and will be played out within a few days (if they aren't over already).

And it's damn addicting.

When I first joined Reddit, I couldn't help but notice how many people would be saying cryptic things like "damn you for introducing me to Reddit!" or if they saw a new user saying "I'm so sorry." I'd see stuff like "I've been here a month and... damn you Reddit. I hate you."

Months went by, and I was still casually checking on the site, but it was nothing crazy, so I still had no idea what the big problem was.

Then I began posting.

You see, in addition to the links that are provided, each link has a comments section, where the comments follow the same rules of being voted upon. The more votes your comment gets, the higher and more visible it is. And all these votes are tracked.

My problem developed when I, after reading these for a while and making a few little one sentence comments here and there, made a long post about a personally embarrassing story that I thought was pretty funny. I forgot about it and went to sleep.

The next day, I had tons of replies to my story, heaps of "upvotes", and worst of all, a new desire for more. More!

So I began commenting more and more, in search of these upvotes. Some posts worked quite well, and got me upvotes. Some had the opposite effect, and I was given downvotes. I was reading so many comments, I hardly cared about the topic we were supposed to be commenting on.

This is why Reddit is so bad. The comments.

They are all the same.

The same things get voted to the top. The same lame jokes, the same stupid memes, or just the same boring ideas; they're never original. And the people who vote on it just want to see the same things over and over, so they upvote it. And the people who got upvoted, obviously figure they are doing something right, so they do more of those things to get those upvotes.

Here's an example: Someone's thread in AskReddit (a place where you ask people to comment on a topic you pose) asked women some advice on men that they found attractive. Something like "weird things guys do that you actually like," or in the same vein as that.

At the top of the post, there were a bunch of answers about specific things, with a bunch of guys replies being saying things like "I do that!" and "that's me, sweet!"

And buried far, far into the bottom of the post, was someone quite rightfully pointing out the ridiculousness of the whole affair. The answers that these guys were getting weren't great advice. These guys would see the answers that women gave. And once they see an answer that applies to them, of course they upvote it. Not because the answer is necessarily "true" or a good answer, but there confirmation bias is going off. So they upvoted them. Other people see these highly upvoted answers, and figure they must be true too. As well, the answers being given are just fishing for upvotes. So it's a vicious, vicious cycle the produces no discussion of merit and just feeds the ideas already implanted in our heads.

So it's that's you see those same discussion with those same answers getting the same amount of upvotes, and all the new ideas and interesting things that are said are never voted or read.

It's too bad. Because sometimes the site is pretty cool, and you read some intriguing stuff.

What has changed though? Not much. I still go to Reddit, and I still try to make interesting comments.

But really I should just be working on my homework.