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The Age of Apathy:A. Warren Johnson writes against apathy. Whatever.-Page 2

More Poetry:Megan Wall and Kael Walske proudly put forth poetry for your perusal -Page 10

March 2012

The Hunt:Danell Clay’s short story about greed and taxidermy -Page 7

Tuition Hike: Prepare to pay a little more for classes, starting soon.-Page 1

1 The Confluence

Contact and Submission Info:

The Confluence is looking for submissions of any type from students, alumni and staff.

The next deadline is:March 26th 2012

Send letters, opinions, questions, content and concerns to:

confluence.editor@gmail.com

Send classified ads to:

confluence.classifieds@gmail.com

Andy Johnson,Editor In Chief

Garett Svensen,Production Editor

Environment Canada 5-Day Weather Forecast:For Prince George, BC. 16-20 Mar 2012Friday, Mar 16. High of 7°C. Mix of sun and cloud. 40% POPSaturday, Mar 17. High of 5°C, Low of -6°C. Mix of sun and cloud 6Sunday, Mar 18. High of 7°C, Low of -4°C. Cloudy 60% POPMonday, Mar 19. High of 2°C, Low of -6°C. Cloudy w. Flurries. 40% POPTuesday, Mar 20. High of 6°C, Low of -6°C. Cloudy. 60% POP

Tuition to go up

Prepare to pay a little more starting next September. The CNC board of governors has approved a 2% hike to tuition for the 2012-2013 academic year. College president John Bowman said that the increase would be “about an additional $5 per course or about $50 per year for full-time students, depending upon their program of studies.”

The college is working to resolve “a potential $2.3 million bud-get shortfall for the 2012/13 fiscal year, due to rising costs and declin-ing income from tuition revenue and status quo government funding.” CNC was one of the few schools in BC not to raise tuition last year.

Garett SvensenProduction Editor

Job FairGarett SvensenProduction Editor

The atrium was crowded and noisy on March 6th as the annual Nortworks job fair was held for CNC students. A diverse array of companies were on display. There were opporunities for student work that ranged from volunteer experience and government positions to jobs with large businesses.

Labour seemed to be the name of the game this year, as multiple representatives claimed that a large percentage of their employees would be retiring within the next ten-to-fifteen years.

Statistics Canada recently reported that the national unemploy-ment rate is sitting at 7.4%, with the rate for youth nearly double that, at 14.7%. Hopefully the job fair was able to help young job-seekers find work.

The Northworks Job Fair

The Confluence 2

A. Warren JohnsonThe Age of Apathy “Anti-people, now you’ve gone too far—“-Marilyn Manson

The Empire began to collapse as early as the 1980s. Since then many corporations of the Empire (such as media moguls and entertain-ment industries) have been brought to their knees as we shift into a new age: The Age of Apathy. In this Post-Empire world it is the spread of apathy which has largely contributed to this systematic decline of the Em-pire. This shift into apathetic con-sciousness seems to stem from the aesthetics of the 1990s. Icons such as Marilyn Manson have always utilized aesthetic in order to promote the “sign of the times.” These signs have always suggested that we view the world in three distinct categories: Art, Society and the Individual.

In the Post-Empire world it is no longer us against them, rather it has become us against ourselves. This is due to the shifts the species as a whole is experiencing; technologi-cal, literary and ultimately ideologi-cal leaps have helped create the next generation of non-motivated cynics not content with simply destroying the establishment, but also infiltrat-ing it and becoming the establish-ment.

This model of assimilation only works with buy-in and organization, something this advanced apathetic generation seems to lack. Yet, it is this generation that seems to be the best suited for entering the public mind and holding viewer attention for an extended period of time. For all the shortcomings of the Occupy movement, they have managed to elevate from (for the most part) peaceful, public protest to the pub-lic consciousness. This elevation is rooted in the 1960s when protests against the Viet Nam war caught public attention via television, and to the more contemporary uprising in places such as Syria in early 2011. This created a more immediate pub-

lic response due to social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

This shift in immediacy of me-dia stems from not only technologi-cal advancements, but from ideology as well. While the majority of the 99% is working class and wanted to see some social change come from the Occupy movement, the old guard of the Empire world is still in control and is advanced in media manipula-tion: It is not enough to know how to work the camera; one also needs to know where to point it. During the failed movement, media moguls fo-cused in on the least credible sources for coverage and down played the most credible. It is from this contrast that one is able to see the differences in ideologies that seem to be the core problem.

In 1996 Marilyn Manson’s release of Antichrist Superstar captured the attention of teenagers around the world. The album man-aged much like Ellis in Less Than Zero, to isolate and breakdown the alienation and apathy of a society immersed in subversive corruption. In the song The Man That You Fear, Manson uses the line “the screen is us and we’re TV” to describe the rapidly closing gap between media and individual. While it is unlikely that Manson was talking about the means by which the gap was closing, he does describe a similar situation which we are seeing currently. In the Empire, media would reach the aver-age person in the form of newsprint, news broadcast, and news radio. For the Post-Empire, we are the news and have immediate access to the news.

It is fascinating that the notions introduced to teenagers in Antichrist Superstar have a dualistic effect. On

one hand there is the ideology that recognizes this discourse of media and do not take risk for fear of rejec-tion, and on the other the ideology which thrives on risk, regardless of consequence. However, both ide-ologies stem cynicism and apathy, albeit in different forms. In a liter-ary context, the ideology which is keen on not taking risk tend to reject anything which shows signs of au-thenticity, context and/or realism and instead tend to produce either over-work shopped pieces which lack the subjective vicarious experience, or incomprehensible pieces which hold no meaning for anyone save for the author. Those without regard to risk or consequence tend to reject what the former would call “Art”, and tend to produce uncomfortably authentic pieces which can alienate readers, especially if they are directly linked to the text in some way and tend disregard the feelings of others when doing so; however, this seems to be done for the specific purpose of facilitating dialogue and promoting the notion of inclusion, rather than exclusion.

It is this conflict of ideologies which promotes not only apathy, but the “us against ourselves” mentality in the Post-Empire world and even though they only seem to differ in execution, it is interesting to note that both ideologies arrive at similar conclusions, utilize the technological means available and display similar tactics in production of media.

While there is not enough distance from the shift and the age, it is too early to tell whether this is true apathetic cognition, or merely apathetic aesthetic. Yet it is perfectly clear that occasionally one is re-quired to face the mirror and not just hold it.

“In the Post-Empire world it is no longer us against them, rather it has become us against

ourselves.”

http://cncsu.cfs-services.ca/en/student-saver

3 The Confluence

Fun & GamesYou may have noticed the fake ads done in pen and pencil throughout The Confluence this week. They come courtesy of the first year students in the New Media Communications and Design program here at CNC.

NMCD is designed to guide students through the process of new media creation from concept to finished product.

The program attracts students who are interested in carrers involving the internet, and requires a high level of creativity.

New Media Ads:

1:What was the heroine's name in, 'Gone With the Wind'?2: Who was the female lead in The Philidelphia Story?3: Who was the famous singer in, 'Come September'?4: Who starred with Doris Day in, 'Pillow Talk'?5: What is the name of the Wilkes' plantation in Gone With the Wind?6: Though they never married, who did Spencer Tracy spend his final years with?7: Gregory Peck and Audrey Hep-burn starred in _________Holiday.8: "Carve Her Name With Passion" is about which person?9: Who directed La Dolce Vita?10> Who makes a cameo appearance in To Catch a Thief?11: The movie, 'Mogambo' with Clark Gable was a remake of which movie?12: Who was the unofficial leader of The Rat Pack?

Classic Movie Trivia:

1> Scarlett O'Hara 2> Katherine Hepburn 3> Bobby Darrin 4> Rock Hud-son 5> Twelve Oaks 6> Katherine Hepburn 7> Roman 8> Violet Szabo 9> Fellini 10> Alfred Hitchcock 11> Red Dust 12> Frank Sinatra

Classic Movie Trivia Answers:

The Confluence 4

Sudoku

CNC Confluence

Samurai - Puzzle 5 of 5 - Medium

5 4 7 3 52 7 3 7 4 1

6 9 1 31 4 8 6 8 7

1 2 8 7 55 7 5 4

3 7 6 3 82 9 6 9 5 3

8 2 41 2

5 62 8 9

9 8 6 54 9 6 7

8 5 3 7 89 5

4 7 1 1 8 2 94 7 1

6 7 5 7 1 9 42 9 1 8 6 88 2 6 3 4 1

www.sudoku-puzzles.net

Aries: The golden rule is in full effect as the week gets under way: Respond to others with the thought and care you’d like them to use with you. The good karma you accrue is priceless. Taurus: Feelings, situations, rela-tionships — they’re all intensified by the stars as the week gets under way. Things can get tricky — will it be in a getting fooled or an ‘oh, I get it!’ way? Gemini: It looks like you’re sticking to your guns as the week gets going, and you’ve got the smarts to make an insightful argument for your point of view, too. A logical approach works wonders. Cancer: Take a deep breath and another look as the week begins — if you don’t, you risk taking something personally when you shouldn’t. Also, be sure to pause before you make any agreements final.Leo: You might be getting lots of input as the week gets going, and, sure, you’ll want to consider it all. Just remember that the most im-portant feedback will likely come from within. Don’t neglect your best instincts! Virgo: Getting stuff done — and lots of it! — is likely priority-one for you as the week begins. Just make sure pertinent people are on board with your plans, or else conflicts are in the cards. Libra: Is life more about money and material stuff, or ideas and feelings as the week gets going? The stars call on you to check your priorities now. What’s most important? Scorpio: You’re ridiculously com-pelling as the week gets going. If you want something (or someone!), now’s the time to go for it! Sagittarius: Give yourself time to puzzle through something at the start of the week. Whether it’s a work is-sue or something more personal, you can come up with an unusual (and unusually good) solution. Capricorn: A little prep time is a big help as the week starts moving. Get

your work agenda and your social calendar all lined up, and choose a goal, hope or dream to keep at the forefront of your mind. Aquarius: Don’t let the little things get you down as the week gets un-derway — and do plot your next big advance!

Pisces: Know your own vast value as the week gets going. Confidence gets you recognized! Ask for more and you’ll be surprised. An open mind and a little caution don’t have to be mutually exclusive,

Horoscope!

5 The Confluence

CNC 2012Convocation

Saturday, May 12, 2012

2:00 pm CN Centre

Congratulations —you’ve done it!Now, celebrate yourachievements with familyand friends!

Apply to attend CNC’s 2012Convocation by filling in theonline form atcnc.bc.ca/Attending/Convocation

Deadline for applications is

Friday, March 16, 2012.

For more information,contact Lonnie or Lynn inCNC CommunicationServices, Room 2-354

The Confluence 6

Election SeasonStudents will be taking to

the polls once again next week as the CNC Student Union elections run from Monday March 19th to Wednesday March 21st.

The previous referendum on a $2.50 fee for “guaranteed access to: CNC’s gym, weight room, squash courts, exercise classes, basketball, floor hockey, volleyball and other sports.” passed 188-55 in favour of the fee with one spoiled ballot.

Garett Svensen,Production Editor

-10 am -3 pm

CampusKaraokeNight

ElectionsElections

/Elections

CampusSustainabilityShowcase

Upcoming Events

John Harris Fiction Awards-6:30 pm

Confluence Submission Deadline

From the CNCSU Zombie Walk, a fine event and as good a reason as any to support the SU

Aboriginal Health Initiative Gathering

5-8 pm

Super Hero/Villain Pub Night @ Riley’s Pub

Trades Town Hall

Trades Town Hall

12-1 pm 2:30-3:30 pm

7 The Confluence

Mollie’s grocery cart was a disappointment. It had contained a lot of Michelina’s frozen dinners. Oliver sighed. He really liked the ones who could cook.

He befriended one of the men as a way in to her coffee cadre, then started the pursuit. Mollie had been ripe for the catching.

“Your eyes are like star sap-

phires,” she gushed to Oliver. She was right; he had beautiful eyes, a cloudy blue with white frost-lines radiating from the pupil. About the same time, Mollie stopped wearing the baseball cap and the braid was replaced by a shoulder length mass of blond hair with little wisps fram-ing her face. Lately, her lips had acquired a pink gloss. Still, she kept everything wrapped tight in the log-ger’s jacket. It was time to peel off the rest of the cocoon and teach her how to fly.

The toughest part had been getting the invitation to her home. She’d put up more resistance than he thought.

Oliver turned his Ford F1-50 up the dirt driveway to her house. Mollie lived twenty-seven miles out of town, her home the only one on a lakeshore surrounded by pine forest. It was a spacious log building, the money finally showing through in

The HuntDanell ClayContributor

“He befriended one of the men as a way in to her coffee cadre, then

started the pursuit. Mollie had been ripe

for the catching.”

Money is the best aphrodi-siac. Good old filthy lucre, it gives a man the license to behave the way he really wants, whether satyr or saint. This was the first time Oliver had targeted a woman just for her wealth. He’d never hesitated to use all of a woman’s assets but usually he chased the physical and the fiscal was just an added benefit.

To begin the seduction of Mollie the multi-millionaire, Oliver tried to imagine her in a skimpy neg-ligee glued together from fifty dollar bills. He’d need all the visual stimuli he could manufacture. The woman dressed like a logger, in a plaid jack-et, steel-toed boots and a baseball cap with a bond braid hanging down the back. Every Saturday, she hung out at the local diner with a group of retired truck drivers and talked hunting, politics and the weather. Oliver watched closely from behind a newspaper, but if Mollie had any-thing in addition to a friendship with one of these guys, he hadn’t caught the look.

At the grocery store, Oliver arranged a pre-test, so he could cut and run if Mollie wasn’t into partners with testosterone. He bumped into her in the frozen food aisle.

“Entirely my fault and my pleasure,” he said and turned the wattage in his smile to ‘smoldering’. There it was -- the small intake of air and the downcast eyes. Oliver let her escape without further conversation. That’s right, Mollie, he thought tri-umphantly, I just made you remem-ber how it feels to be touched by a man. Don’t forget it.

the size of the house. Mollie met him at the front

door and he grabbed the collar of her jacket to pull her into a deep kiss. He let her feel his urgency and hunger as he leaned into her body but she pulled away from him.

“I want to share my collec-tion with you,” she said, “You‘re the first person I‘ve shown. I not only hunt but I do my own taxidermy.”

Oliver blinked back his sur-prise. He steeled himself to praise a motley exhibit of stuffed animals in stiff poses with leering snarls. Buck up, he told himself, it has to be better than a house full of cats. Once, he’d almost been unmanned by the critical stare of a trio of Siamese perched on a cabinet above a lady’s bed.

Mollie grasped his hand and pulled him inside. She had a grip strong enough to crush beer cans. She unlocked a sturdy door and dragged Oliver through.

Oliver found he was star-ing up at a Yeti. The creature was nine feet tall and covered with white fur hanging in thin cords like a tree planter’s dreadlocks. Its enormous bare hands hung limp and defeated by its sides. The face was unread-able, an enigmatic curl on simian lips.

“My first,” said Mollie, “Fol-lowed its tracks to a crevice in the ice. You’d a thought a creature this big would had some fight in him but he just looked up at me and stretched out his hands. I fired a couple of rounds. Wasn’t going to take any chances with a guy this size.”

Oliver almost believed her before he remembered she had enough money to have a creature

Arts & Entertainment

The Confluence 8

like this manufactured on a whim. She was either crazy or she was treating him to her idea of a practi-cal joke. He looked into her angular face, tilted now in the light so that it appeared slightly vulpine. His first mistake had been in forgetting that wealth also gave a woman the abil-ity to behave any way she wanted, whether siren or psycho.

Further into the room, an eighteen foot albino snake was posed on a fake piece of ice. It had two sets of levered jaws, fanged and open, ready to strike.

“A snow-snake,” said Mol-lie, “Same trip as the yeti. It got me with one fang as it was side wind-ing across a glacier. Now, I’m never warm.” She shivered in her jacket. “But tonight you’ll be my fire, won’t you?” She ran one hand lightly down his hip and across one buttock.

Oliver nodded distractedly, his eye already caught by a sea serpent with its sinuous body looped across a wall. It had a horse-like head and scales as black and irides-cent as a raven’s wing.

“They’re curious, you know,” said Mollie, “That’s what gets them. They’re nocturnal so you put on your heat-seekers and play a wind harp on the water‘s surface.”

From the corner of his eye, Oliver thought he saw the sea ser-pent writhe and undulate but when he turned to confront the beast it was still as death.

All around Oliver, feline-like creatures crouched to pounce from the corners; delicate-winged crea-tures were poised on tree branches.

“I‘m the only person who has seen them?” he asked.

“I don’t think they’d let me show many other people. They’d turn into common eels and polar

bears. But you see them as they re-ally are, don’t you?”

“I see them.” He just didn’t know if what he saw was a rich woman’s sick fantasy or a trick played on the gullible.

“Come into my workshop,” said Mollie, her voice a little raspy with excitement. Again, she grasped his arm, wrapping it around her shoulder like a stole.

In every corner of the taxi-dermy, face-less mannequins stood on all fours or reared on hind legs. A few looked humanoid. They were a uniform, paper-bag brown.

“Those are the resin molds. I tack the skins onto them,” said Mol-lie. She reached into a desk.

“I have a surprise for you. Look, I had copies of your eyes made.” She held two glass eyes in the palm of her hand. Oliver could see that they were exact imitations of his own. He started feeling a little queasy.

“How did you have them made?”

“I had someone take pictures of them because they are so beauti-ful and rare and special. I just had to have them.” Mollie cupped his face with her hand, her palm folding under his chin possessively.

“But when did you take pictures? Mollie, I never saw anyone taking…”

“Don’t you worry about it,” she said, gripping his wrist, pulling

him once again, “When you’re with me you‘re safe.” Oliver wondered what kind of people Mollie had on her payroll. Men who could take photos without being seen. What else would they do for her? For the money?

He allowed himself be led to the last door in the hallway. It was reinforced with metal bars. The frame was splintered and chewed. Claw marks were raked down the middle.

“What is this?” asked Oliver. “My bedroom,” said Mollie,

unlocking the door. “You’d think if you put sawdust in the place of its guts a creature would stay dead. I guess some things just don’t die easy. At nights, the howling drives me crazy but the quiet is even worse.” She shoved the metal bars firmly in place on the inside and locked the door.

The bedroom was dominated by a large bed with lacey canopy and bedcover. The walls contained two gun racks with seventeen rifles, three shotguns and two handguns. Oliver counted them. Many of the barrels had elaborate engraving. Mollie licked her lips and started unbutton-ing her jacket.

“Mollie?”“Uh-huh,”“What would happen if I

wanted to leave?”“It‘s getting dark. It really

isn‘t safe to leave now. I wouldn‘t try it.”

Outside the door, Oliver could hear the soft padding of foot-steps as someone or something prowled the hallway.

“You’d think if you put sawdust in the place of

its guts a creature would stay dead. I guess some

things just don’t die easy”

9 The Confluence

Aside from inroads from the Internet and on-line news services, newspaper journalism faces many problems and unfavourable trends, some of its own making.

The greatest concern is the continuing trend toward narrowing the scope and vocabulary of journal-ism, and the at best careless, and sometimes deliberate, inattention to quality and accuracy in writing. The advice to “dumb down” articles to attract readers assumed to have been lured away by TV news or on-line news services is particularly damag-ing.

If the scope of journalism is continually shrinking, and vocabu-lary and sentence structure are being progressively simplified, then the mainstream media may be short-changing readers and also contribut-ing to a progressive narrowing of public consciousness. Under these circumstances, journalists may be acquiescing in a strategy of making it harder for people to focus on the ultimate causes of issues that are of concern to the community.

I’m not suggesting journalists adopt the clotted prose of academic journals. The appropriate middle ground between the deliberately ob-scure prose of professional cliques, on one hand, and the oversimplifica-tion advocated by many newspaper editors, on the other, would seem to be writing for the educated lay pub-

TRENDS AND PROBLEMS IN JOURNALISMPaul Strickland,Contributor

lic. One should use the appropriate word, even if it is longer than aver-age. Even if the reader doesn’t know the word’s meaning precisely, he or she can gather the meaning from the context if the writer isn’t being deliberately pompous in the rest of the story.

Background and context are important. Too often a form of hit-and-run reporting is preferred, and the result is artificially short news stories leaving readers with little in-formation about the ultimate causes of an event. When a judge, during sentencing, makes a statement about social conditions leading to drug abuse, for example, or finds a gang to be a criminal organization as defined under the provisions of the Criminal Code, it’s important to quote that judge in some detail to try to educate the public. However, this is impos-sible when there are arbitrary limits to story length.

In general the press today too often represents the viewpoint, interests and the budgetary and legis-lative agenda of the corporate own-ers of media outlets, and not enough of the concerns of ordinary people. Also there seems to be a tendency to distract and divide.

The American robber baron Jay Gould once was quoted as say-ing that, in the event of too much pressure on capitalists, he could always hire half of the working class to shoot the other half. While the current situation does not seem as drastic as in the corrupt 1890s in the United States, it seems that many stories -- such as about how working couples, already working too many hours, scrap over the remaining bits of free time available to them -- make one or the other gender look like the villain. The same goes with stories about who works harder, or

calls in sick more often and acts like a baby when ill instead of soldiering through at work.

Instead of focusing on a corrupt corporatist economy that no longer serves people as it keeps the price of real estate and other essen-tial commodities in the stratosphere, forcing both partners in a relation-ship to put in 10- or 12-hour days just to keep up, corporate news-papers publish articles seemingly designed to promote resentments be-tween men and women and between members of different generations. To paraphrase Gould, if you can keep parts of the working class arguing with and resenting other workers, then you don’t have to reform and address real problems that affect the whole community.

At many newspapers real-es-tate agents and developers are treated like culture heroes. In articles about real estate, everlastingly increas-ing housing prices are always good news, etc. But Jane Jacobs, the noted writer about urban planning, said in one of her last books, Dark Age Ahead, that in too many cities it’s not possible for young couples of child-bearing age to buy a home. Why is it almost always treated as good news that housing price increases have been so great in some parts of the Lower Mainland that people refer to such a thing as a million-dollar starter home?

Political correctness also damages journalism. Thanks in part to the influence of a sometimes quite repressive academy, honest discus-sion of gender issues or accurate reli-gious history is almost impossible.

In future genuine journalism is likely to be practised only through small publications or in samizdat form.

“The advice to “dumb down” articles...is

particularly damaging.”

The Confluence 10

project these ghostly stepsof color there is shapethere was none before.fibrous and minute blotchesstained on the colorless expansethe tread is chosen to supplicate meaning

reflect these fingerprintsof shade there is nothingthere was some before.dark edges and vibrationsframed within the construct of misshapethe lines reveal pathos

Reflections

Kael WalskeContributor

DreamscapeMegan Wall,Contributor

Projections

my mind is full of photographs

imagined moments

between us

holding your hand

touching your face

while we dance

across a blank film reel

meaningless

without a background

JOHN HARRIS Fiction Awards

3March 30 2012

6:30 pmCNC Room 1-306