The Wake

The Driven to Discover campaign that started in late September asks the public to enter their “single greatest question,” but it also allows University researchers to show off their research, and not really answer the questions. What a great “campaign,” huh?DTD easily allows those inside and outside of the University to see what our researchers have been up to, with University experts answering the questions being asked. It lets all those who are interested in the research being done at the U to easily access the information. I mean who wouldn’t be sucked in by the question, “What is my …

Read more →

Let’s face it. The American forces aren’t fighting the Nazis anymore. What one person might call the “good fight” isn’t exactly black and white. It’s more open to interpretation these days. Unfortunately for our armed forces, more people are realizing this fact every day. Each time someone turns on BBC instead of Fox for their daily news, or maybe when one remembers that Allah is really just another name for the same God, or that Jesus is of frequent crucial presence in the Qur’an, it gets a little harder for recruiters to do their job.Speaking of how our media treats …

Read more →

Minneapolis has over 30 theaters and 100 theater companies, second only to New York City in the number of seats per capita. And with the thriving arts community, the Twin Cities are home to a multitude of creative ventures. A group of students from Macalaster College started the Bedlam Theater Company 13 years ago, writing, rehearsing and producing plays together. In the spring of 1996 the Bedlam Studio opened on Cedar Avenue on the West Bank. The space was first used as rehearsal venue that the group used almost free of rent.Soon the bare floors and red walls were …

Read more →

Type “Matt and Kim” into Google, and an ultrasound picture taken in June of 2005 of Kim’s then-unborn baby pops up, next to an image of Matt drenched in what looks like blood. Type “Matt and Kim” into YouTube, and a possible explanation appears. (For the “blood,” not the baby.) In the video for “Yea Yeah,” the third song on their self-titled, 10-track album, keyboardist/singer Matt and drummer Kim wear white shirts in an all white kitchen. As Matt relays a chorus of “Yea yeahs,” Kim bounces to the infectious beat, and tomatoes, spaghetti, pizza, bananas, ketchup, and other edibles …

Read more →

Clever lyrics, engaging motifs and acoustic sound are just three elements that Jake Dilley’s The Color Pharmacy has to offer. The one-man-band incorporates as many as 101 instruments in one song, and never fewer than 20 throughout the CD, according to Anna Wiegenstein, reporter for The Daily.Iowan. The CD is just one half of Dilley’s creation. The music was made to complement the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” to which Dilley performs live in front of three large screens that broadcast scenes from the movie. Each note specifically enhances the actions that occur in the movie, from the …

Read more →

The war in Iraq, racism, placism, police brutality, the economy, prison, slavery, poverty, politics and the government all have at least one thing in common. They’re all garbage–at least according to one Minneapolis realist who deals with all that trash daily, in his front yard.“It all started out as an issue of rage,” explains Andrew Moore, gazing at the web of old toys, rusting car parts, cages and collages carefully intertwined on his front lawn at the corner of 33rd and Bloomington. Moore’s sculpture, “The Web of Deception,” lovingly weaves rummaged objects together, each representing an inner city injustice or …

Read more →

A cool fog spread across downtown as I walked along Washington Ave. in hopes of catching a quick 16. It was a fog you could feel, but it wasn’t accompanied by the unpleasantness of rain. It sequenced beautifully with the vivid, calming sounds of my iPod. Our skyline shrouded in this mysterious mist created a softening appearance of the usually definite bright city lights against the pitch black November night. As I stepped off the bus and into the city, I was accompanied by a sultry yet soothing female voice in my ear. The walking bass lines and vast array …

Read more →

We are the Fashionable Fascismo,
We type meaningless odes on Machina of MasochismoThe Macho Gestapo ate my spicy gazpacho,
So I made friends with a Rasta chick eating anti-pasto.

Fourteen degrees of winter,
the trees frozen in their stillness,
leaves still scattered upon the ground.
An atypical coldness,
one that smells like winter all the same.
This is a desert of homes, streets, shops and churches.
Its only color is the bright knit scarves
that adorn passers through.
Each body a small furnace
bundled to keep the warm in
exhaling exhaust in small clouds
that skim the shoulders and trail behind the body.
The sun erupts through an opening
shines down to defrost numb foreheads.
Your maroon mitten wipes your running nose,
as you look through the …

Read more →

Dive from the top
just don’t stop as it glints
with a tint of green hills
that now gray fading hintsof the young who cry out
although dumb still can shout
peeling chives that have dried
yes, and died from the droughtHow she climbs, no she leaps
lifting limbs past the cliff
where her feet seem to drift
in the midst of the deepSo the two do not eat
of the earth, of the air
No, they dare do not feed
for a wolf will not shareYet they stare and they …

Read more →

Want to jumpstart your career, meet new people, begin networking, boost your confidence, learn a new language or become familiar with a new culture? Those are only some of the benefits listed by those who have studied abroad. “The objective,” American Field Service President Tachi Cazal says, “is to look at the differences in the world, to appreciate [them], to learn to look at the world from a new perspective.” Cazal spoke at a discussion entitled “The Power of International Exchange” at Cowles Auditorium on November 29. “There are so many things that we learn, sometimes without noticing it,” says …

Read more →

“Energy may be the most important problem of the 21st century,” Regents Professor Lanny Schmidt says to an attentive audience in the Coffman Theater. The chemical engineer says that the United States is in a precarious situation. “We could choke our economy over energy.” “In your kids’ lifetime,” Schmidt goes on, “we got to have made the switch. We better make the switch.” The switch he’s referring to is renewable energy, informing his audience that oil is running out and now is the time to make the transition to realistic practices. “There’s no question about it. We’ve got to be …

Read more →

This fall, the Minnesota rugby team, which competes on the club level, tore through opponents. They ended their fall season 10-2. The two losses came against the Chicago Lions Men’s Club and the East Side Banshees. The loss to the East Side Banshees was a result of the U of M squad pulling its starters to rest for the Midwest Final Four the next weekend. At the Midwest Final Four, Minnesota beat Ohio State 47-0 before taking down Purdue in the championship game. At stake was a trip to nationals. The Wake had the opportunity to interview captain and treasurer, …

Read more →

Nervous from the thirty-some hits of marijuana, he had taken on the ride through the neighborhoods. Bryan McCoy resorted to sending text messages to his estranged girlfriend, a sixteen-year-old student at McCoy’s former private high school. According to the young man, he was “bowl-cruising to check the epic X-mas lights, lit up like fire like me man,” he reported, giggling like an asshole, careless and unaware of his forthcoming demise. McCoy, a hopelessly tragic nineteen-year-old and an unemployed hair-gel wearing stoner, insisted that he was neither a hipster nor a hippie, yet maintained a distinct anti-establishment air. …

Read more →

First-year, 17-year-old business student Michael Peterson of Hopkins succeeded in exacerbating his short-lived sex life early Saturday morning, when, after losing his virginity to Sophomore Kelly Thomson, he raised his right hand for a high-five following his early climax. The two met at an open-mic event held at the Whole music club in the basement of Coffman Union Friday night. According to Thomson’s friend, Meredith McKenzie, they were drinking shots of tequila before the show at Thomson’s dorm room in Bailey Hall, where, upon leaving, Thomson had a “hungry” look in her eye.Peterson, a resident of the Superblock, …

Read more →