The Wake

This was it, the final day of the smoker study. A plain jane waiting room, in one of the university medical facilities, Marnie sat. A wide array of people were there, fatties, skinny bitches, and people well on their way to either. It was a comfort to see that other than being present, there was no way to tell they were smokers. Well, most of them did twitch, or fiddle, or squeam, but there was really no way to tell.

It was important that she get past this final round. There were 500 beautiful bucks waiting for her once it was …

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Unfortunately, my interview with Toki Wright yielded far more points of interest than my 500 word limit would allow. Not wanting to just lose all the great things we talked about, I decided to post the rest of the interview here. Enjoy!

Toki Wright on Obama:

“[The economic crisis] has always been there in the urban community, and now its an issue for the entire country to have to deal with. Food shortages, the prison system, violence… Unless these conversations happen, unless we work together …

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There’s a good chance you missed something on Dec. 2. It was a small but important event on campus. There were stickers, coffee and chocolate, eager students and community members, and handcrafted goods from around the world. Yes, you probably missed it—the Fair Trade Bazaar.

It was held surreptitiously in the Mississippi Lounge of Coffman Memorial Union, and was put on by the University’s MPIRG chapter. Allison Suhan is the co-task force leader for the MPIRG Fair Trade Project, and she — along with many other MPIRG members …

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“We’re all a little bit odd and a little bit quirky.” It’s an astute observation of a decidedly original campus organization founded just last March.

The Campus People Watchers have three main goals, according to Secretary Ted Hagmann. As a non-profit, non-creepy organization, the group watches people and enjoys learning about humanity and society. Second, they hold events in which others can watch them do things outside the social norm. Finally, Campus People Watchers aim to create a database of every club on campus so others can get a third-party review of organizations.

David …

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Sitting down with Mike Michel from the Bill Mike Band, I knew I was interviewing a blessing to worlds both musical and otherwise. In fact, it isn’t difficult to know Mike after seeing Bill Mike Band shows. The band’s recent Truce CD release show at the Cedar beautifully testifies to why. The energy with which Mike (guitar, gizmos), Chris (bass), and Steve (drums) played their unusual musical creations, clearly improvising some of the individual particulars according to each musician’s spontaneous emotional whim, forced hapless listeners into a prison of musical engagement for a few hours. Listeners couldn’t complain: although they …

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Amidst brightly colored advertisements and various important-sounding leaflets, is a simple flier with a sorry-looking scraggly gopher. The flier, hidden in the mess of student group information on almost every bulletin board on the Minneapolis campus, shows an interestingly simple equation:

Pay – Fees = Poverty

The flier and the equation are the brainchild of the Emaciated Gopher, a group (or a network, as they like to call it) of mainly graduate students. Their mission is to improve education at the University of Minnesota, starting with grad student issues that tie into most …

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Above the chirping of dead birds,
Where no one seems to go,
Under low lights like Thomas Kincaid
Sits the Mermaid skull
As well as a shell,
A bench,
A fur and a
Pinecone.

Past the last photo of The Man Who Walks With Bears
Lies the stand with the giant clam
And a tiny unborn egg.
Nothing stands at its right height,
Like one-tenth of a story,
Except a sideways mummy pigeon
Cool as fuck.

“Oddities and Curiosities of Nature” can be seen at the Bell Museum until January 4.

I think it’s safe to say that everyone, or at least every Minnesotan has a memory from childhood that revolves around fishing. My memory is of the day my cousin caught about 25 sunfish and stacked them to the brim of a three-gallon bucket of lake water. She enlisted every member of our family for the mission until she had could no longer cram another fish in the bucket; there simply wasn’t any room! Then, in true borderline psychotic behavior that only small children get away with–one …

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Toki Wright has been a presence in the Minnesota hip-hop world for some time. As a rapper, he’s performed all over the country and overseas, toured with Brother Ali, appeared on Atmosphere’s crew cut Crewed Up, hosted numerous hip-hop events and rocked mics as a solo artist and with groups The C.O.R.E., Aphrill and The Chosen Few. After steadily releasing material on his Low Budget High Quality series, Wright is gearing up for the release of his official debut album, A Different Mirror. I caught up with Toki to talk about the album.

“The whole concept …

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The night has yet to give way to morning. The sky is still black, the air freezing, meanwhile thousands of people around the state line up to get what they consider once in a lifetime deals. These “door busters” are what the eager shoppers think the Friday after Thanksgiving is all about. They will fight, hurt, run, lose sleep, and throw money away just because the advertisers tell them to. This is where society in an economic depression has been led.

The ludicrous and ridiculous rite of passage known as Black Friday has become a …

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As I prepare to stand in the cold air this Sunday and hurl my sneakers into that tree on the west bank, I can’t help but look back rather than forward. People are asking me a lot these days how graduating feels: frightening, exciting, inevitable. The thing is I’m not too sure how to feel about it. I suppose my emotion was something that I thought would just spill out, but it hasn’t yet and I don’t expect it to. The idea that homework is about to become a thing of the past is comforting, obviously, but the feelings are …

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Ah, the college years. The time in our lives where we’re encouraged to ask questions, be selfishly introspective and grasp at what we want to get out of life. Sounds pretty hackneyed, but query any liberal arts student as to the top five things they hope to get out of the college experience, and chances are something derivative of the phrase “finding out who I am” will make the cut. And, by golly, being memorable and quirky could very well help forge connections that could springboard you into the …

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Yo-

What’s your favorite music to study to?
Mine is the two disc collection of Bach Cello Suites from Pablo Casals
Thanks!

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From: Sage Dahlan [managing editor]
Subject: Staff Favorites

Spaghetti Western’s Do Right By People or The Kasai Allstars in the 7th moon, the chief turned into a swimming fish and ate the head of his enemy by magic (yes, that is the album title. Or, Eric Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1” on repeat.

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From: Matt Miranda [photographer]
Subject: Staff Favorites

Instrumental Jazz baby…

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From: Trey Mewes [staff writer]
Subject: Staff Favorites

When studying, I listen to piano renditions of Final Fantasy tunes. When I’m writing articles, I crank …

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