A soundtrack for your summer. Illustration by Sarah Faulkner Jared Chesnut – Staff [email protected]: The sun is shining bright, humidity is in the top ten percentile, and the frost trolls have skulked away to their system of tunnels under Olympus Mons. Now is as good a time as any to let the top down, pour up a few Arnold Palmers and put some records on. We here at UAB’s radio show Red Planet put together a summer playlist. We felt like it’d be best to just chill a little, be cool and bestow some tunes that’ll be the SPF 50 you’ve…
Author: uabblazermedia
What is the true cost of the death penalty? Illustration by Corey Bright Erica Webb – Online [email protected] Last year, Dylann Roof walked into a church only to murder nine innocent African-Americans as they offered him sanctuary and kindness. He embodied an institutionalized evil in the United States—violent white supremacy upon which he felt the nation was losing its grip. Now, the federal government is calling for the death penalty in his case. The first time I heard this, I couldn’t help but immediately think, “Good. He deserves it.” Anger. Frustration. From one moral standpoint, an eye for an eye punishment…
Casey Marley – Managing [email protected] 13 called for rain. It’s April, and it’s “showers” are commonplace. However, at UAB April is not the first month of true spring, it’s a month filled with dread, hard work, and fear of failing: the last month of Spring classes, and final exam time. Sophomore USGA Senator Mugdha Mokashi knows first hand that finals bring intense uneasiness and stressful tension, and as a member of UAB’s Mental Health Advisory Board, she found the funds and organizations to create a “Mental Health Positivity Picnic” midweek in April, before dead week, when stress begins to creep into…
Details Published: April 12th, 2016 Wandering Fern The tree swayed above as crisp leaves crunched and scraped against one another. Fern let them fade to black and then return to vibrant green with the open-shut of her eyelids. With each blackened hue shot a scene of the night before: the scotch breath, arms wrapped over her bony shoulder, and the tension pulled tight as the shrill of a dissonant chord whenever he pulled his arm away from her skin. There, in the tension, lived feelings lingering between passion and fear. There was a breath…
DetailsPublished: April 12th, 2016 The Perfect Woman Macy’s Department Store: 1951 Richard took another long drag on his Lucky Strike. He closed his eyes, enjoying the taste of the stale smoke softly touching the back of his throat. As he exhaled, he was interrupted by a nagging cough, making a fist he softly pounded on his chest. He had smoked his lungs dry today. Reaching into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he wrapped his hand around the pack of cigarettes. There was only one left. He stuck his hand out and counted on…
Details Published: April 12th, 2016 Beauty of Sadness Last year, Pixar Studios released one of their, if not the most, insightful features, Inside Out. The movie told the tale of a young girl’s teenage life through the emotions inside her head. Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness all argued about which emotion the girl should be feeling in a particular situation, but the tension between Joy and Sadness was the most palpable. Joy’s incessant need to keep the girl happy kept Sadness weakly attempting to express her feelings as well, in turn, upsetting the girl even more. People tend to…
Sexual assault on campus is a hot button issue around the country. (Photo by Brandon Varner, design by Thomas Baldwin) Brandon Varner – [email protected] September of 2014, Emma Sulkowicz started carrying a 50-pound mattress with her at all times on Columbia University’s campus. The mattress, a 50-pound twin-sized extra long bed purchased online, was a near-perfect replica of the bed on which she was raped in the Columbia University dorms. Sulkowicz chose to carry the mattress as her senior thesis for her art degree, to call attention to an assault that she felt that her university was attempting to make invisible.…
Christian Ortiz Details Published: April 12th, 2016 Blaze viene de un planeta extremadamente lejos que nadie nunca ha escuchado o visto con sus propios ojos. Su planeta se llama Plutongo, un planeta bien similar a Plutón, la única diferencia es que se puede respirar como en el planeta Tierra. Plutongo está cerca de lo que nosotros llamamos el agujero negro donde el tiempo no existe y nadie se atreve a atravesarlo. En Plutongo habían dinosaurios, dragones, un mutante gigante llamado Godzilla y diferentes tipos de especies que ellos usaban para alimentarse. Blaze nació 100 años después de la era de…
BorderTRANS is a safe space for all students on the trans spectrum. (Illustration by Sarah Faulkner) Ashton Cook – Staff [email protected] UAB’s BorderTRANS support group has expanded to both the Student Health and Wellness Center and the Hill Student Center. Established in 2015, this organization aims to assist transgender students both academically and socially, giving them an outlet of their own through the group. “BorderTRANS is a safe place where Trans students can come with questions about their gender identity and other issues they may have,” said Kelli Lasseter, the co-developer of BorderTRANS. According to the group’s flyers, “BorderTRANS is a…
The March Quilt program, and its creators, covers a different topic every year Tessa Case – Staff [email protected] Inspired by a successful run in 2015, the Bib and Tucker Sew-Op decided to make the March Quilts an annual project. The 2016 theme is the gender wage gap. The gender wage gap refers to women, on average, earning less income than their male counterparts. A white female typically makes 79 cents for every dollar a man makes, black females earn around 64 cents and Latina women earn 55 cents. Lillis Taylor, co-founder of the Bib and Tucker Sew-Op, a Birmingham-based sewing cooperate…