The Climax

New & Improved

APRIL 1, 2013

Finding Love in a (Semi)Hopeless Place: A Valentine to Carrie Bradshaw, Hampshire College, and Gin

I’ve always been happy being single, but valentines day seems to find a way to make even the most securely unhitched feel woefully inadequate.  Not wanting to spend another February 14^th drowning my sorrows with wine and bad television, I decided to make plans with other single friends to get a drink on the loneliest night of the year.  Sitting at Amherst Coffee amidst couples casually sipping fine whiskey and students in committed relationships with their laptops, we joked about Samatha Jones, lamented Div life, and debated whether fifteen year olds can actually be called writers.  But each was—in a sense—a topical avoidance of the deeper collective thought lingering at the very back of our minds: why don’t we have someone?

“It’s not like I would even wanna make a big deal out of it” my friend Lisa said, “but getting takeout, watching a movie and having sex would be nice.”  Usually I would balk at such comments, remarking that I can do all those things without dating someone, but the sentimentality was getting to me and as I sipped warm gin and ginger I thought how nice, how comfortable, something like that could be.

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Single Girl Loves Valentine’s Day… Wait, really?

By Elyssa Czynski, News Editor

Maybe it all started when I was in first grade and a boy in my class (Vincent) gave me a heart shaped box of chocolates with Taz from the Looney Tunes on it. Regardless, I love Valentine’s Day. I have also been single for every Valentine’s Day of my life.

Most people shit on Valentine’s Day because it just reminds them of how alone they are, and that feeling of loneliness is heightened by the plethora of hearts, red, cards and flowers flooding every corner of the “Seasonal” section of CVS.

I do like browsing all the pink, chocolate and cute things that can be given for Valentine’s Day, but what’s the point of all of that stuff existing if you don’t have people to give it to?

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Braving the Blizzard at Hampshire College

By Elyssa Czynski, News Editor

As of Thursday February 7, Hampshire College prepared to close for the coming winter storm, “Nemo”. Unlike the fish, Nemo the storm was massive, causing power outages to tens of thousands of homes in the state of Massachusetts. Hampshire’s campus remained closed through both Friday and Saturday. Hampshire prepared generators that would provide power to mods, residence halls and dining commons in the event of an outage.

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Valentine’s Day, love, and dinner for one

By Alana de Hinojosa, Features Editor

I decided it would be appropriate to wear red lipstick for my Valentine’s date alone. Maybe I decided it was fitting because I wasn’t wearing red that day (or pink for that matter, or anything that could be considered remotely romantic), or maybe it was because I was feeling confident in my loneliness…or, perhaps I was simply trying to make up for my lack of confidence. Regardless of the reasoning, I wore red lipstick from the only lipstick container I own: a second hand Benefit container with smushed red lipstick. This, too, I think, was rather fitting.

I phoned Zen, the sushi and Asian cuisine restaurant right across from my apartment, and asked them if they had room for one. The hostess sounded rather confused and explained to me that the restaurant would be “full with dates” until nine o’clock.

 “No, no,” I said, “Is there room for a dinner for one?”

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Opinions: Piercing the Cloak of Complexity, Seeing Gaza

For many, the escalation of airstrikes on Gaza in recent weeks has ignited questions as to how we view and comprehend the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an American vantage point. The New York Times told us that “Israel and Hamas brushed aside international calls for restraint on Thursday [November 15] and escalated their lethal conflict over Gaza.”[1] NPR handed the mic over to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren who calmly explained the “immense precautions” that Israel was taking to minimize civilian casualties in its military “response” to Hamas’ rocket fire.[2]  As missiles continued to rain down on Gaza and bodies piled up, nearly every mainstream US news outlet took care to balance each sentence in their coverage. Israeli military attacks were tethered to Hamas’ “terrorism.”

As usual, the tit for tat portrayal of violence on “both sides” excluded the possibility of a thorough analysis of the politics of occupation and resistance, leaving Americans with a false but comforting sense of equivalence. It was just another “war” in the Middle East, probably too complicated for us to understand anyway.

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Opinions: Open Minds, Open Doors

There’s been much discussion about Israel and Palestine during the last few weeks on campus. As members of SPICI (Students Promoting Israeli Culture and Information), we wanted to take this opportunity to address the various reactions and responses that we’ve encountered on the matter. In no way, shape, or form is this meant to offend anyone or single anyone or any student group out. We simply hope to bring another perspective to the ongoing conversation at large.

On November 14^th, 2012, one of the most prominent military leaders of Hamas was assassinated by the Israeli military. In a recent CNN article, Hamas was described as “a militant fundamentalist Islamic organization operating in the West Bank and Gaza…Hamas has sections dedicated to religious, military, political and security activities. It runs a social welfare program, and operates a number of schools, hospitals and religious institutions.” (CNN Q&A) Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, Hamas’ military leader, was involved in numerous terrorist activities, including the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was held captive for five years; Shalit was released in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners (al Jazeera). Jabari’s death is what is believed to be what instigated the most recent escalations between Israel and Gaza.

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Opinions: Assisted Suicide*

*Trigger Warning: for (non-personal or narrative) discussion of suicide.

On November 6th, beyond the Presidential elections, those of us voting in the state of Massachusetts were posed with four ballot questions. Question number two asked voters to legalize physician-assisted suicide; defined as a doctor issuing a prescription for lethal medication to those diagnosed illness that will cause death within six months. A slim margin of fifty-one percent voted against allowing physician-assisted suicide. While I regret that this did not increase agency for disabled and elderly people wanting to carry out a personal decision, I am glad the vote turned out the way it did. I will spare you attempting to moralize or wax philosophical about the ethics of allowing someone to choose suicide- instead I aim to consider whether our current medical system allows for such a choice free of coercion and control.

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A&E: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Review

Proper casting can make or break a movie.  Independence Day wouldn’t have been nearly as popular without Will Smith, Men in Black would have suffered without Will Smith, and I, Robot would have been much worse were it not for a strong performance by Will Smith’s shirtless torso.  But the Peter Jackson/Tolkien match-up has had absolutely flawless casting.  Sir Ian McKellen is the perfect Gandalf, and the same can be said for Elijah Wood’s Frodo, Christopher Lee’s Sauruman, and Hugo Weaving’s Elrond.  Now we have Martin Freeman turning in a stellar performance as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

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