1. Take your special someone out for a dinner to a beautiful French restaurant. It’s important to ensure that it’s French and not French-Canadian. Nothing says, “choose someone else” like gravy stains on your older brothers slacks, and an appearance by the infamous “cheese-curd breath” monster.
2. When selecting what to order keep in mind that when your date asks you if you’d like to have children, in 9 out of 10 cases she is discussing an arena beyond the meal and you should not respond that you’re a vegetarian.
3. If you’re new to dirty talk in the bedroom, stick to responding to whatever ejaculations (hawhaw) your partner makes with a casual moan, followed by “Me too!” As this Red Herring writer found out, it is very important not to panic, and to respond in this fashion blindly. When your partner proclaims to you, mid-cunnilinigus, that she is “tired and needs to be up for class”, using this response will side-step the awkwardness and leave you with, a good night’s rest and at worst, a pair of painfully blue testes in the morning.
Other statements on which to tread carefully when intending to use the fail proof James Beveridge Bedroom Response includes: “I have a headache.” In this instance the JBB Response will not have you and your partner sharing bodily fluids. In fact, best case scenario you’ll both be sucking on one of her expired children’s Tylenol pills that her mom sent her off with before starting the big first year of university. True story.
4. Don’t worry if your body has some flaws. Just show some confidence and don’t overcompensate. The last thing your partner wants to hear is “when God was handing out bodies he left out a couple inches on mine… But he made up for it with diabetes!”
5. As inspired by my recent trashy novel reading: when writing love poetry keep in mind who your audience is exactly.

“Alas you are married, to him that I despise,
Methinks that I shall be the source of his demise
So many nights every inch of me inside you
If ever someone knew, I’d rip out my eyes too

To think that I was fortunate to taste upon thy nipples
In this familial, nay political storm, we’re a sea of two ripples
By genetics we share incredibly long necks
Sorry about the Oedipus complex.”

I love you Mom…. Oh, right, and sorry Dad.

-James Beveridge

~Falcon Heene

DK: Welcome, [Mr. Bates]. I’m glad you could be here with me today.

Bates: It’s my pleasure, really. Just so we’re clear, though, you’re going to use a pseudonym or something for me, right? Something classy?

DK: Of course I will; I am a professional. I know what sort of white spot this could leave on your permanent record. I’d like to begin our interview by asking a journalistic question in the vein of Mike Wallace and Walter
Cronkite: How do you sleep at night, freak! You make sick! FREAAAAK!

Bates: I guess I had that coming.

DK: Tsk. ‘Cumming’? We have no time for filthy puns. Another question: Can I ask you what puts you in the mood while reading ancient texts? Can you dim those fluorescent bathroom lights?

Bates: I guess more than anything it’s the boredom from studying all day. It really helps my productivity to bust a nut or two on the face of Confucius.

DK: I bet that’s the most common phrase in the English language. How do you respond to critics who say that public masturbation is the number one warning trait of a developing psychopath?

Bates: I have critics? Also, I thought the main indication of a future psychopath was torturing animals as a child.

DK: No, you’re wrong. Do you think there are others like you out there; other confused, lonely souls touching themselves to the hushed murmurs of academia? Serial killers often belong to a kind of brotherhood of copycat killers. Can we see this type of camaraderie in your field?

Bates: Are you trying to set me up as a sociopath? That’s not cool. As to your question, I’ve definitely noticed other people standing in the stalls for extended periods of time, although I wouldn’t exactly say we meet up on weekends.

DK: I suppose you must spend too much time in the woods at night to make many friends. Are you afraid of getting caught or is that part of the thrill? What would happen if you got caught?

Bates: A slap on one of my unusually strong wrists? Listen, at least what I do isn’t out in the open, like all those videos of college couples hooking up in secluded spots on campus.

DK: That’s different; it’s respectable when you’re drunk. Next question: being a monster, yourself, what’s the strangest thing you’ve come across in the washroom?

Bates: I saw a guy washing his socks once in the sinks. I have never been so enraged. The lack of common decency it society really gets to me. I had a right mind to finish up and let him have it.

DK: In conclusion, the term ‘hero’ gets thrown around a lot these days. What do you have to say to those who claim you’ve changed their lives so that they, too, can come out of the stall?

Bates: Well, hero is a strong word. I do look up to someone like Rosa Parks though, who has the courage to stand up for herself by sitting down. I hope my courage gives Johnny Everyday the courage to sit on his own porcelain thrown in order to stand up for what he believes in.

DK: Some might say you’re changing the world one Kleenex box and first edition novel at a time.

Bates: Thank you.

DK: No, Mr. Bates, thank you.

~David “White Wine” MacLean

My fascination with the art of door-manning, or “bouncing” as it is known best, began on the first – and the last – day of my university education. Newly arrived in Montreal I headed into the party zone to have some fun. I was supposed to meet some friends at a place called Vol de Nuit, but instead I came face to face with destiny.
When I laid eyes on the Vol de Nuit bouncer my heart palpitated. He was just so strong. He demanded respect for no reason and people kind of gave it to him. Rather than call it quits and go back to rez (slang for “residence”), I decided to loiter in the shadows and watch the man at work. If it weren’t for that fateful decision, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. Well, I definitely wouldn’t be here, at my foster-parent’s house, in the cellar, I’d probably have a job and an apartment, but no regrets.
The next day I withdrew from all my courses and put my degree on hold. My religious studies, gender studies, and environmental sciences would have to wait. In order to be accepted as a bouncer, I had to free my mind of all tolerance.
Not really knowing where to begin, I asked the first guy I saw wearing a “Tapout” T-shirt. It turned out he was a bouncer and was willing to take me to his training facilities. His name was Bradley, Brad to his friends. Not being his friend, I called him Bradley. Bradley needed to make sure I was for real and that my desire to bounce was strong, so he took me into an alleyway and asked me three questions. To the question “are you angry” I did not reply vocally, instead, I picked up a filthy syringe and crushed it in between my teeth. I then spat the glass into my open palm, closed my fist, and began punching bricks until he stopped me. The second question was rhetorical, and thus, impossible to answer, and rather than a third question Bradley regaled me with a fight story. Feeling quite confident of being his protégé I suggested subway for dinner Bradley got the tuna sub, toasted. I got the cold cut trio, trio, with sun chips and lemonade. We spoke of hatred, aggression and mean-mugging until the clerks asked us to leave.
The training facility which I would spend much of the next 6 months in was extremely well protected from non-members. There was a guard on duty at all times, you needed a special card to enter, and you were kicked out if you didn’t have a towel. Bradley always had two towels in his back pack, so he loaned me one for the first visit. It was damp and smelled like male ass but, following an intense workout of what seemed to be endless bicep curls, I used it to dry my face off anyways.
Of course, the physical training was only one part of the rigorous preparation, the mental aspects and stamina challenges were to prove even more strenuous. Hours and hours of standing without talking, hours of holding a water bottle at belly height by both its base and its top, and God only knows how many times I had to practice shaking my head, even to things I agreed with.
Literacy is a non-essential part of being a bouncer so I actually had to un-practice my reading abilities. This was carried out by listening to club banger anthems on full blast while looking directly at the sun. I also memorized non-words and yelled them at mirrors. The only word we were allowed to know on paper was a strange three letter one, “V I P”, and we were obliged to satisfy the sexual needs of those who carried it.
I would soon come to realize that bouncing is not an art, but a religion, and these VIP persons were actually deified. They held rank among attractive bar staff, really lame bar staff, massively lame people that used to be bar staff and “regulars.” Regulars were to be treated as friends, but as soon as they had no money, were to be treated as scum, no better than people who wore sandals, or gang colours.
My first shift At Vol de Nuit remains the best day of my life. I worked alongside the very man who planted the bouncer’s seed within my empty womb. (Forgive me for getting carried away, since re-learning how to read and write I have found that all the energy which was once directed towards others in the form of brutality and irrational rudeness has transferred into articulated thought.)
Sadly, however, after that single beautiful shift, my life went on one of those rides which are like trains but at a theme park. It was all up and then down and then around a corner. I got addicted to energy drinks, which gave me severe stomach ulcers. My lack of health and twitchy demeanour lost me the spot at Vol, and I was soon destitute. For a time I lived in the vent behind Molson stadium, but eventually a wiry homeless woman with exceptional leg strength managed to take it away from me. So here I am now, In my foster parent’s cellar, weaning myself off energy drinks and ordering a pizza every week with the visa number and expiration date I transcribed from mother’s wallet some weeks ago, after I drugged her.

But no regrets. No regrets.

Anna Silman is a joint professor of Women’s Studies and Molecular Physics at the University of Toronto and two-time Canadian National ping-pong champion.

Well, I want to have a say in this. Call it selling out if you’d like, but I want the final tribute. So, grab some heavy duty bejeweled gloves (you’ll need two for this), a shovel, and your best grave robbing outfit and get ready to say goodbye.

1. Make all the entertainment reporters who covered his death eat bits of his corpse.

Jackson tried his own “Feed the World” back with USA for Africa. Now he can really put his money where his mouth is, or rather, where other people’s mouths are.  I know people can be a little apprehensive about cannibalism. They say, “If you eat your prom date, you’re going stag.”  Not to worry. Michael Jackson was hardly human to begin with; he was most likely a distant relative to Lord Voldemort or a piece of plastic.

2. Fill him with candy, hang him from a string and have the blindfolded youth of the world burst him open with a baseball bat.

I don’t want to make any allegations I can’t backup. However, just because there wasn’t anything proven in court, doesn’t mean people are going to start trusting a man who built his own ‘Neverland’. It’s just a bigger handful of candy in a bigger unmarked van. Naturally, the only way to cure this lingering animosity is to turn Jackson into a big ol’ pinata. Kids will love it. For them, candy and grotesque violence go together like peas and carrots. Just to be safe though, we should probably only use wrapped candy. Kettle corn and candy apples tend to make parents uncomfortable, especially when they’re doled out by a heavily made up man-child.

3. Convince [celebrity female of the moment] to start dating him.

I don’t really follow that Hollywood gossip garbage, but [celebrity female of the moment] hasn’t been in the news for a while, right? We can fix that. Convince her to date his corpse and sell the story to tabloid magazines. [Celebrity female] in a relationship with an older man, you say?  A deceased older man? All the better. The tabloids will eat it up. Nec-Romantic.

4. Have him resurrected to re-enact the Thriller music video.

Call it method acting. Brando did it, so did De Niro; now it’s Jackson’s chance. Nothing helps an actor get into the mindset of a zombie like a couple months in the grave. I won’t say much about this one. The thought of it alone gets me all hot and bothered.

5. Bury his body, forget all allegations, play Thriller at moderate intervals in clubs on Halloween, go about our business and never again do the moonwalk, even if you’re good at it.

This one might be a bit difficult but a good journalist considers all options.

~David Kuyek

Yeah, that was me.

I made this realization upon entering university and deciding that it was worth sacrificing my “individuality” in favor of a real a life. The first step was making new friends, which is the obvious choice when your own mother no longer believes that “Ted” ate all the cookies.

A whole week’s worth of orientation and frosh-related activities meant plenty of ultra-hammered guys and gals to take advantage of…platonically, of course. My first victims were my roomie and floormates, who I hoodwinked on the last day of move-in. We had gone to a bar to celebrate. After they were appropriately inebriated, I mentioned to them that I had, in fact, made friends in my lifetime. This didn’t seem to strike them as suspect, because we talked, laughed, and drank for quite a while. The next day, once everyone’s parents had left, we went en masse to eat dinner. En masse did, in this case, actually include me, and thus the plan was working perfectly.

Things only got better when frosh arrived. Cheery group members would all too willingly trade phone numbers, and if the cheer wasn’t enough, the prospect of finding oneself alone, pant-less, and without contacts in Mile-End definitely encourages group communication. Suckers. I could track them down anytime, anywhere. I was constantly meeting new people who thought I was funny and agreeable, most likely because the alcohol-fueled debauchery had a mandatory 10am start time. At the end of the first week, I had 16 new numbers in my cell and 12 more Facebook friends. I considered un-friending one after she vomited all over my lap, but then I realized that she’s indebted to me, so I didn’t. Life was great. People seemed to like me and I had friends, now all I had to do was keep it up. And then came Thursday, September 3.

I was joyfully minding my own business, off to dinner with my new best friends when I heard mention of a quidditch team. “Quidditch?” I thought, as in that crazy game with the brooms, and the flying, and the capes, and $798 million books? Most definitely, I was told. It was at precisely that moment that all my work was rendered moot.

Come Saturday morning I had a broom courtesy of the dollar store, and was traipsing off to lower field ready to live my childhood dream. By the afternoon I had repeatedly humiliated myself (I’m not a good seeker), and been the subject of countless cell phone photos. It must have been difficult to take those photos in between the laughing, pointing, and inviting of more gawkers, many of whom were froshies. In less than two weeks my veneer of normalcy had yielded to freakazoid me yet again. Damn you, J.K. Rowling. Damn you.

~Jennifer Looi

Dear first years,

1178. This figure was arrived at by the number of honey balls I eat per day squared and plotted as a function whose area under the curve is inversely proportional to the laminar flow of tubal nutritive across a Bernoulli distribution. It is also the projected number of days since I first stepped foot into my “cozy” dorm room during the first year of my studies at McGill. The building looked old, smelled like the Louisiana Superdome, and most of the water fountains didn’t even seem fit for Nicaraguan peasants to drink out of.

McGill has a nice cross-section of people from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, but just incase you have the vision of a cataract-stricken 80-year-old, I’ll tell you now that if you think this is going to be one of those schools where everybody has a Volvo or a BMW and wears clothes that cost more than your last paycheque, then you’re perfectly correct. If you’re a Goth or an Emo kid, or belong to any other social clique I consider sub-human, do yourself a favour, buy some Polo shirts and lose the black makeup and hair dye. You’ll be saving yourself four years of torment and physical pain by assimilating and blending in.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Joel Madden from Good Charlotte didn’t conform and he dated Hillary Duff!” Listen, Joel likely got thrown into a garbage can by the football players at his high school every day. Meanwhile, he has more money than you ever will, and that’s why he’s dating Hillary Duff.  Besides, her shoulders are as wide as an offensive lineman’s. Coincidence?  I think not.

McGill is filled with many interesting people, especially first-years—mainly because they’re all awkward and socially retarded.  Don’t worry, you’ll find a few good friends and inevitably form a pack. You may stick with them, you may not, but hey, that’s life. My suggestion: make yourself invaluable to the social cohesion of your group. Prevent anyone from getting anyone else’s phone number, bring tons of cheap hooch wherever you go, steal someone’s EpiPen—anything you can do to ensure that nothing gets done without you there.

To all you folks not in the math and science pool, stay on top of all academic shit.  I like reading school-related articles about as much as a Klansmen would like an Ethiopian Jew for a daughter-in-law, but you do what you gotta’ do.

And finally, I’m sorry to single you out, but freshman girls: Don’t do E or chug a whole mickey of Sour Puss raspberry liqueur in a back alley behind Lodge before ‘90s night (you know who you are) and then puke all over the dance floor, only to get carried away by the paramedics.  Chances are you already dress like a 2^nd-class whore working the corner, and have very little dignity or respect, so do yourself a favour and don’t lose your last shreds while getting your stomach pumped in front of your floor fellow.

Also try not to piss yourself.

Welcome to Canada’s highest ranking upholder of nepotism. Here’s to a prosperous and fun-filled year

~Eli Keshet, Esq.