Red Team Vs. Blue Team

"Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates." - Magic Johnson

        Basketball, football; ask me which my favorite team is or my favorite player. Well my answer would be "which team is in New York"? I don't watch sports, physical ones atleast. If you ask me to support my team, the first thing in my head would be running to the front lines and give suppressing fire with the M60 .50 cal. It's all about perspective, face it, not everyone knows sports. Here we sit and occasionally chat about basketball or tennis. To the silent half of the class, its a blurry unknown xenolanguage. It's fine and I don't mind it, I just peer into my imagination and if you ask me for my favorite team, I would tell you the Nicks bu in my mind I would be tell you the red team. Just like physical sports where athletes compete for millions, there is a league of gamers that rally together and compete for millions in my unknown world.

-Rico

War

I believe in love, I believe in war. War's an interesting topic, and hopefully one that I will never need to explore. The closest thing to war that I have ever come across is one of words. Vicious battles where the winner is determined by the quiver of a lip or the free-falling water from the cliffs of one's pupils. Some may say that war holds no purpose. Others persist that it is the only purpose. Elimination and success. I believe in war. It has innate roots in the core of our human's being. Sure, words can solve things, but in the words of elderly grandmothers everywhere, "who the hell doesn't love to throw the fisticuffs around." That feeling. The one requiring sacrifice, blood, sweat, tears is in us. War is confrontation. And confrontation is human. We are engineered to fight for what is ours. We don't take shit. Well, if we do we take shit and give it right back. It's what we do. We kill shit for fun cause someone said something, or kill shit just to kill shit. War might be wrong or hateful, but it's there and there's no changing it. - All White Everything 

What if?

I'm not your average come-from-behind success story. I come from a nice family, a good neighbourhood, a home with food on the table, and in high school I was a nobody. I come from a place where success is attainable as long as you put the work in. A place where my competition was myself and the only enemy that I had was the person staring back at me in the mirror. I turned my life into a never-ending cycle of basketball training and information. My world turned into the hardest fitness camp of all time, and as I got healthier my game progressed. I was constantly researching. Watching the Lebrons, the Chris', the Carmelos. The only difference was, they weren't watching me. They had no idea what was coming, who was out there and how it could all change. By the end of senior year I had shattered the mirror, the opinions of my doubters, and then my own collarbone. I could never shoot again. I had a chance at the American Dream, and just like everything else, it shattered. - All White Everything

Gone

I can never meet my hero. He's dead. Gone with the wind like a child's balloon, drifting so very fluently into the stratosphere, equally as confusing and even more heartbreaking. My grandfather died before I was born, and from what I knew of him her was a great man. He was a hard worker, a government employee with the purpose of making the lives around him better. I've never known what it's like to have a grandfather. I've never had the experience of getting a $50 travellers cheque for my birthday or even a gas station miscellaneous gift for Christmas. Those really aren't the things that I would have wanted, though. What I want is a person. An extra father. The presence of a wise, rugged old man to be there for me when the times get tough. That first throw, first drink, first cigar. The moments that last a lifetime, the moments I'll never have. - All White Everything

Here

I'm from a place that says a thousand things in three syllables. It is iconic. Known. Respected. I'm from a place where the streets are filled with chance and choice and you always one step away from winning it all. Being from Vancouver means that I know my place. I know where I'm from and I'm proud of that. Being from Vancouver means that I know my hockey. I know that winning is everything. Forty-three years without a ring will teach you that. All that matters is putting the puck in the net. Being from here means that winning is rejoiced and failure is never an option. Here is sometimes falling, and getting right back up when you do. Being from Vancouver means that the city is behind you no matter what. We'll watch, we'll cheer, we'll boo, but we'll always love our Canucks. Here is repping the blue and green. And here is where the winners will rejoice, soon enough. - All White Everything

Belief, Believe

Belief isn't something that should have the ability to be controlled. Belief is something innate, it's the unjust, unedited, organic material that compiles a person's soul. Belief is unchanging. It isn't altered by someone else's opinions or thoughts because it doesn't offer the opportunity to succumb to change. Now, belief can be different for different people. Some keep their beliefs buried deep in the caves of their being, forever casting shadows on the thoughts they admire most. Others share their beliefs. Whether it is religion, opinion, or even crashing stages at award shows to display their admiration for their best friend's wife's dance moves, people have different ways of showing their beliefs. Beliefs are like lollipops, no matter how much you suck and dissolve the sugar, the stick stays the same. It may look disgusting to others, but you care for it all the same. Inedible and unchanged. - All White Everything

Call Me Maybe

Forever is an illusive statement. It's like hate or need. I don't think I could ever really hate someone or something and as far as needing something goes there are only a few select items that really fulfill that specificity. I feel that, like beauty, forever is in the eye of the beholder. The term can take the role of some hopeless romantic's favourite term, being used in the odd tweet and the abundance of love letters that they write in order to waste time and emotion. For those who believe in fate, forever takes a whole different role. This type of forever is stored way back in the depths of their brain cavity, fearing to appear until the time is right. These risk-takers proceed through life anticipating nothing and being truly happy when they finally strike gold. I guess, in using the term half-life, at least in love, it is used to generalize the beginning stages of the ever so attractive emotion. The good times. The times that Carly Rae-Jepsen sings about. These are the times where getting lost in each others eyes is a common theme and PDA is a constant one. If love really is forever, it is those times that are most fondly remembered. They get the lovers through the other times. The times that James Blunt sings about. Oh, how he must envy Carly Rae. I ever find love, I never want that half life to end, I'll be singing Call Me Maybe forever. - All White Everything 

Fictional Love

I am in a relationship. It's with a girl who I care very much about. We are separated at the moment. I'm in a different city, in a different country, in a different life. Leaving home has been the hardest thing that I have had to do in my short 18 year life. The tears that dropped, and the memories left behind were enough to disown my dreams and stay at home with the person who I truly love the most, the girl who I cared most deeply about. She hurt. We hurt. As I left her at dusk on the morning of my departure, I wanted my touch to remain ever lasting. I always wanted to be first. Not first in any sort of physical manner, but an emotional one. The manner that matters most. Someone's first. Her first. As she looked up at me when I stoked her vibrant brown hair away from her tear-filled eyes, everything seemed to be alright. As I whispered in her ear, "If I could keep two things alive it would be the smile on your face and your hands in mine, forever." I knew that everything would be alright. I grabbed her hands softly and held them. Slowly rubbing my thumbs back and forth. There was no kiss, nothing was needed but a simple touch to remind her of my love. This moment was a first. It was a goal in my mind, for me to be her's and for her to be mine.  - All White Everything 

Fashionably Covert Racism

This is a classic example of the kind of racism that isn't always obvious at first glance, but the kind that we see all around us. Here we see LeBron James with a basketball dropping from one hand and the other around the waist of Giselle. On the surface, the image is a tribute to the success of a strong black man in America, succeeding through his abilities and arm in arm with one of the top models in the world. But that facade is a ruse, The image is a direct rehash of the title poster of the movie King Kong, with Kong's face making the same expression as LeBron's and his arm likewise circled around his white female conquest. The notion of the physically imposing, powerful black man as a savage symbol is one that is locked into the mythos of institutionalized racism that exists in america. Here is another example that is hiding in plain view. 

-Will McKenzie

David Foster Wallace's to-the-point humanity

“The more important point here, though, is that the whole animal cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also uncomfortable.”

-D.F.W.

Wallace has such a knack, perhaps ironic due to his intimidating vocabulary and intelligence, of distilling from every situation the opinion of the common man. He boils issues down to say what can best be described as ‘what we’re all thinking.’ This quote is a perfect example. Wallace highlights the feeling that subtly floats around the bottom recesses of our mind, that idea that we push away when justifying the killing and feasting upon of other living creatures – complexity be damned, the issue just doesn’t feel good to talk about. We can rationalize and argue all we want, but that uncomfortable sensation persists nonetheless. Such is the praiseworthy perception of Wallace, such is merit of his art.

-Reid Williams

The Confines of Tyranny

“I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.” – George Orwell

The quote above brings to mind the reflexive power of our actions. I feel like the lesson Mr. Orwell is trying to convey is similar to the one a parent might try to impart on his or her child when saying ‘mind your own business;’ to try to control every aspect of someone else demands every aspect of yourself. In other words, both a prisoner and a guard spend all night in jail. In a sense, this idea is similar to that of the expression “the mind takes the shape of what it dwells upon.” Basically, we humans are largely shaped by what we do. Time spent angry or unhappy makes us unhappy people, time spent free and passionately, on the other hand, helps develop us. In today’s world of bureaucracy and big government, perhaps there is a lesson to be gleaned from this. Maybe our micromanaging, paranoid and fear-mongering governmental practices are self-fulfilling; perhaps we bring about the world we fear by constantly choosing to live in it.

-Reid Williams