The Wake

While as far as I can tell there is no shortage of shortages (I’m here all night, folks) in this country, I am much more concerned with the qualities we seem to lack as a society than how much oil we’ve sucked out of the corpses of so much endangered Alaskan wildlife.There’s a shortage on truth out there, my fine-feathered friends. No one is honest with anyone else anymore. Not just bad lies like, “I’m not cheating on you,” or “Cut the blue wire or we all die,” but white lies too. I personally have gone entire weeks with food …

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I’ve seen games of hopscotch that were manlier than football. God, with those constant interruptions of play, coaches, apparently having seen Seinfeld, covering their faces while barking out orders–and pause now for station identification. It’s amazing to me how anyone has ever watched, played in, or admired an entire game of football. Seriously, why is it that, in our boring country, football is held as the shining pinnacle of masculinity? The players are draped head to toe in protective padding–why don’t they just wear bubble-boy suits for when they bump into each other?Now the real football, what we Americans call …

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Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Panda Bear, whose real name is Noah Lennox, recently lost his father. The result was Young Prayer an album of soft clapping and wailing mourning, as he fights through his loss with music. “Where are you?” are some of the only discernable words, but if you listen closely, you can put together the phrase, “This is how I’ll talk to you.” The result is an album that is like dark magic, a musical limbo and oddly soothing sound …

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Matt Jennings, sibling of acclaimed singer/songwriter Mason Jennings, moved from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis in high school to play in his brother’s band. His stint as the bassist, and then drummer, didn’t last long. He opted instead to go back to school; upon graduation, he found himself traveling the world. He studied Spanish in Mexico, and then spent some time teaching English in South China and Thailand. When he returned home, he assembled a band and self-released his debut, Two Become One, in the summer of 2005. Having spent time playing in the different areas of his travel, Jennings’ guitar playing …

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Same old story, right? Behind a whirlwind of hype and accolades (recently named NME’s Best New Band), these four blokes from the U.K. released their debut album (Myths of the Near Future) on January 29th and are already off on world tours. They’ve even been assigned to and/or accredited with their own genre of music, “new rave.” Having only heard a handful of songs, and though I enjoyed them all thoroughly, I was unsure of what to expect. Would they be as good as advertised (ala Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, The Libertines, and Kasabian) or were they merely another over-hyped …

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Even with all of our intricately pompous systems of government and technological advancements, certain aspects of human nature remain stubbornly primitive. Take, for example, our fear of and disdain for the unknown. The Wiccan Church of Minnesota is in every way as valid a religious organization as Hillel or Bethlehem Covenant; however, because most people know little about the Pagan tradition, they assume paganism to be something funny at best, or something very dangerous at worst. On April 14th I attended WiC-CoN, an event hosted by The Wiccan Church of Minnesota, and had the privilege to gain a small amount …

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A decade after Spice World, Girl Power is raised from its glittery grave.Blonde Redhead, a unique three piece from New York City, may have been the big name on the bill April 15th at First Avenue, but the evening’s success was due in larger part to a wisely selected opener in Midnight Movies. Their equally intransient sounds set a relaxed mood which held strong for the duration of the evening. Another common ground was found in female front women. As captivating as Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino was Midnight Movies’ Gena Olivier. Either way, I’d score this as one successful evening …

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The last time I rode a bicycle before today, I remember,
this was a summer ago, as I remember it,
a summer ago as I remember, I rode a bicycle through photographs
in the Northrop Mall, as I remember it,
riding through photographs on Northrop Mall
posing motion for brochure catalogues, as I remember it,
while I ride, as I remember the contrasts
of the overcast today to the picaresque under the Boynton Clock Tower
to the skin grafts beside the Stone Arch
and the mad dash to the Alumni Center
for fake …

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Concerning String Cheese
Sweat has made my hair coarse and wiry. The ink-stained 100% cotton t-shirt feels like a burlap sack on my exhausted body. I just returned from a day working at an industrial screen printing factory. Between stacking empty bottles inside boxes and resisting the thought that, through a horrible series of events, this could end up being my life, my entire being is tired. I need to take a shower, but I don’t have the energy. Instead I shamble over to the couch and shift my weight so that I fall into …

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Communication in the U.S. today is a problem. Groups of people have trouble communicating with other groups that they work with. One student group is changing that. “Through this group, students learn to break down preconceived notions of other professions and can even become friends,” says Tracy Hanson, student president of CLARION.The student group CLARION was formed in 2002 by two students who wanted a way for medical students and students in public health, pharmacy and nursing to connect. They believed that if students from different fields could find a way to come together, it would make it …

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Living in a dorm feels like being stuck on a huge ocean liner. You’re confined to a stuffy cabin, the winds sound like dogs fighting against your window and since the kitchens already got your money, the food gets increasingly more apathetic. It’s similar to staying at an all-inclusive hotel, where the drinks are watered-down and the fried ice cream is simply a scoop of vanilla stuck in a defrosted puff pastry. By the end, your family is sick and you’re surviving on sugary cereal. All students who are living in University housing without a kitchen in their room are …

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Today I rushed toward Cooke Hall 308 where the University of Minnesota Vo Lam Kung Fu workout takes place on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. Knowing nothing about the true nature of Vietnamese Vo Lam kung fu, I envisioned bloody boxing matches and street brawls that looked like screenshots from my two favorite fighting video game series, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. In point and actual fact, many of the philosophies that I have encountered in books on Shotokan karate and Shaolin kung fu highlighted the importance of harmony and self-defense. Until chatting with Josh, the instructor, about the …

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So good-ol’ George W. ain’t so good-ol’ no more. Not too popular, as it happens. The public’s general distaste for the war-monger-in-chief has spawned a mega-glorification of the most recent non-Bush Republican president, who happens to be Ronald Reagan. Been following politics? Ever since presidential campaigns started kicking off 30 years in advance, there’s been a wave of Reagan idolatry.“I’m a Ronald Reagan conservative,” says John McCain, over and over again, and again and again. He’s not the only one. A few weeks ago at the CPAC, a political conference for right-wingers, a whopping 79% of poll respondents identified themselves …

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There have been few symbols throughout the course of history that have become as universally recognizable as the American flag. Though the number of stars on the flag has changed over the last two and a quarter centuries, the message that it conveys has remained unchanged, and the flag itself has become almost synonymous with freedom and liberty. For the past few decades, the issue of flag desecration has become increasingly controversial and has been the focal point of many debates within the United States Congress. These disputes mainly revolve around the constitutionality of the burning of the American flag …

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“Everything is bigger in Texas;” a cliché that could not be better demonstrated than by the explosive instrumental quartet known as Explosions in the Sky. From ripping apart melodies drowned in droning feedback to quietly plucking a single string, Explosions have mastered a tension that makes for easy and enjoyable listening, even for the lyrically inclined. Starting off barely audible, the band slowly builds up the rhythm, adding guitar after guitar until the song seems like it’s going to burst. It’s no wonder that the name Explosions in the Sky fits these four Texans like a tight …

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