On Dit Issue 80.11 by On Dit

ON DIT 80.11

VOL. 80 ISSUE 11

ON DIT

CONTENTS

featured contributors

letters

president(s)

wild horse!

drama Ă la referenda

cadavers

open letter: election candidates

thanks for smoking

chick in a chair

rejection

retrospective special:

famous faces

dit you remember?

hallmark holidays

holocaust denial

you said / they said

stuff you like

creative

columns

diversions

Editors: Galen Cuthbertson, Seb Tonkin & Emma Jones. Front cover artwork by too many people to name. Back cover by Saskia Scott; inside back cover comic by George Stamatescu and Darcy Holmes. On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union. Published 24/9/2012.

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The door’s locked. If we leave, we’re not getting back in. So says security; so says the doomsday preparation forum Galen’s been quietly reading all evening. We’ve got supplies. We’ve covered the windows with old election banners -- to stop the flashing from outside, and to keep our own lights from revealing our presence. They don’t stop the noise though. It pulses, one hundred and twenty times a minute, rattling the room. Outside, they’re faster than we are. Stronger. Higher, too. Their reflexes are dulled, but we still don’t fancy our chances against these near-perfect specimens of super-humanity. So yeah, there’s a Uni Games sport party on the Barr Smith lawns, and we weren’t invited. Threethousand fist-pumping, glowstick-toting, loud, drunken, elite athletes ... but not us. We’re sitting in our office, listening to the festivities on all sides, eating Easy Mac and flicking back through 80 years worth of On Dit. When the apocalypse really comes, it’ll be a pretty good way to go. If history’s anything to go by, though, the end won’t come for a while. On Dit’s survived a world war, a rigged election, the White Australia Policy, the occupation of Union House. When we started in 1932, you could get a pound of hamburger meat for ten cents, and this magazine was a four-page broadsheet.

Take a look at our 80th anniversary retrospective special on page 21. We’ve picked out some faces you might recognise, spoken with editors from previous years and taken a look at what was going on at Adelaide University when bigger things were happening elsewhere. Plus, there’s the usual collection of columns, fiction, puzzles, Holocaust deniers, Hallmark holidays and cadavers to keep you busy in your first week back. As we write this, though, the party’s still pumping. Someone just threw a can of beer at our office door. And there’s the drums. The drums. The drums. (And the bass.) It feels like the end times, but milestones often do. On Dit might outlive us yet. Love, The Eds (Em & Seb & Galen)

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Photo: Chris Arblaster

Tom Sheldrick

Naomi Traeger

Tom is a 4th year economics and finance student. His hobbies include moisturising his face and reading the comments on YouTube videos and AdelaideNow articles. His limited skill set consists of applying for jobs and then not receiving them; he has earned an astounding 14 rejection letters in the past month! Tom has a girlfriend who is far too good for him and he thinks that every time he is published by On Dit he buys himself 3 more months with her.

Naomi is a second year arts student. She was an English major, but then Gareth Pritchard happened, and now she studies history. Her favourite bits of history are the ones with all the guns and fascists. She’s too apathetic to be a punk, and much to cheerful to be a goth. She has no idea what ‘swag’ is supposed to be, but a working theory is that it is some sort of disease of the mind.

(rejection, p20)

(fredrick toben, p34)

Casey Briggs

(president, p6; stuff you like, p39) Casey Briggs is the most boring person I know. Casey Briggs wears t-shirts. Casey Briggs thinks the new iPhone screen might be unnecessarily big; he is satisfied with the screen on his current, previous-generation, iPhone. Casey Briggs is incapable of carrying out various everyday tasks. Casey Briggs is tough on crime and devoid of passion. I would give Casey Briggs a B for effort.

The On Dit editors would like to thank the following nerds for their help with Issue 11... Our freight manager, Angus. Woolworths, for failing to detect the physical differences between brown onions and mixed nuts. Quizmasters Ritson and Briggs. Holly for making coffee so hot the inside of my mouth is now a barren wasteland. Most importantly, though, 80 years worth of folks working for love, or maybe obligation, but certainly for little or no money. The folks who’ve been doing that this year: thank you from the bottom of our collective hearts.

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CORRESPONDENCE PAGE

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Dear Editors, While reading the latest On Dit (80.10) I was saddened to see that so many of today’s university students have been so absolutely brainwashed into conforming to the mainstream media. In his article ‘Handling Conspiracies’ Justin McArthur makes an unprovoked and unwarranted attack on my dear colleague Mindseye Mike. Whilst we have never talked in person, as Mike tells me he is prevented from leaving the USA by his government, Mike and I have exchanged numerous emails, and I think I know him, and his ideas, somewhat better than Mr McArthur. Mr McArthur merely needs to open his tightly closed mind and consider the broader truth that is right in front of him. Why do you think that we are allowed to talk so freely on the internet, when we can be so easily prevented from flying, by having our names put on a list? Why do you think that the government couldn’t care less about the conspiracy theorists? It’s because the reptilians are more powerful

than that. They control the media, and the media controls the public. If you think that I am wrong, I point to the evidence in your very own magazine. Of the six people asked the question ‘Do you Believe in any conspiracies?’ only Kaustubh was astute enough to point out that what we think is controlled by the media. The others simply followed the supposed gospel truths handed down to them by News Corp and it’s ilk. I leave you now, in the hope that you have been enlightened, and warn that you keep a close eye on your fellow editors. The Lizards are devious, and will not hesitate to take control of even a small magazine like On Dit. Be alert for any slight change of character, for it may be that your fellows are not what you think they are. In Solidarity against our Overlords, Annie

Hi, I am an ex-student, now high school teacher. Thought I’d bring a (undecided) student to campus to try and give a sense of the culture. The first building we tried was the Mitchell. I had no idea that now it is admin. It is a gated community. We were turned away and left seriously unimpressed. And is this the 2nd looting of the monasteries, or what? Thanks for reading, Jack Askew

CORRECTION/APOLOGY In Issue 9, we published ‘An Open Letter to Adelaide City Council’ by Nijole Naujokas. This title was not the title she originally submitted. As Nijole originally provided it, the letter was directed to ‘Increased Parking Costs’. We also edited a number of sentences within the letter, primarily for space reasons. These gave the impression that the letter was directed at the Council as an entity, rather than to the abstract fees. These changes were made at the last minute, without consulting Nijole. We apologise wholeheartedly for this.

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Dear Amelia, Regardless of us obviously disagreeing, I was very happy to see a reply to my article and am glad that it provoked a response at all. This was very much my aim and I’m stoked that someone was inspired to send through an email about it. While I can understand where you are coming from because, as you said, you are a fan of Bliss N Eso, they are a) not hip hop – they are, at best, hip pop, (their style may draw upon hip hop sounds but as a cultural movement they have nothing to do with hip hop) and b) their lyrics, while perhaps being what you might consider ‘relevant’ are simply uncontroversial and, at best, boring. The song, which I know of, and didn’t need to google search, as I would never have written about it not knowing about it, is, as all Bliss N Eso are, in my opinion, simply reinstating already widely agreed upon opinions about facts. Claiming that war is bad, that climate change is happening, and that religion is no good reason to discriminate is not in any way new, profound or anything that anyone with a brain can not figure out for themselves.

Thanks for the response, peace & love, Jodie Louise Guidolin. (J-Lo McGooglesmurf).

FOOD THING borscht

You might think that it’s good that they are discussing politics at all, but I don’t. I don’t think that it’s good enough to do something at all, I think that it is the role of someone who is releasing their art into the public sphere to at least be serving some purpose higher than the one that I have just stated that Bliss N Eso effectively meet. I do not in anyway discount this lyric because it is from a ‘hip hop’ song; I discount it because it is not very good. You might say that that is simply my opinion and we are each entitled to our own, but I think that Hume was onto something when he wrote Of the Standard of Taste (Four Dissertations 820.9 E582 83).

U L R T I

R I

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word: lecturing

TARGEDOKU

(see diversions on pg. 46)

ANSWERS

The lyrics of the said act are simply repeating the ideas that the listeners of them should already have, and therefore enjoyment of these lyrics is an enjoyment of your own pre-existing ideas. In addition to this, they do not present these ideas in a way that is

at all of the intellectual standard of some other, better hip hop (see Saul Williams, Public Enemy etc.), and they most definitely do not provide a mature person capable of assessing any kind of ideology of their own volition with any kind of, for lack of a better word, ‘juice’. Regardless of some rather juvenile and sexist (if not misogynistic) songs from their first album, Bliss N Eso are rather conservative by today’s standards, are not intellectually provocative, and, most of all, for the reasons I just stated, are sell outs.

Bursting to opine on something that’s in the magazine (or should be)? On Dit accepts your emails at ondit@adelaide.edu.au. Or get all social-media on our facebook page: facebook.com/onditmagazine.

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STATE OF THE UNION

After the Second World War, when politics and student activism covered the University, you weren’t afraid to take a stand. Your archives document the attitude of students at the time and provide a complete history of the era, giving a student written account of both the University and national current affairs.

Photo: Chris Arblaster

(on-campus)

with CASEY BRIGGS, auu president. Happy Birthday On Dit, you spring chicken! You’ve been around for 80 years, but sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. In your very first edition, in 1932, one of the writers talks about ‘the well known fact that undergraduates are not sufficiently interested in the fascinating squabbles of contemporary politics’, and ‘hopes were expressed for a brighter future.’ Fast-forward to 2012, and commentators everywhere spend their time lamenting the apathy of youth. How very familiar. From the beginning, you have been giving a voice to the needs and opinions of University of Adelaide students. In 1932 you were instrumental in influencing the University by supporting students in their demands to have the Barr Smith Library open at night time. Fast-forward to 2012, and students now spend their time complaining that Hub Central isn’t open overnight on the weekends. How very familiar.

In June 1968 you published an issue considering Australia’s obligations to the Aboriginal people, calling for a ‘crucial battle on a war against large commercial interests’ and advertising an All Night Vigil outside the Police Headquarters. Fast-forward to 2012, and the nation is debating whether or not we should have a debate about indigenous recognition in the Australian Constitution. How very familiar. Of course, not everything has remained the same. Over the years you’ve taken the form of a two-page broadsheet, a weekly newspaper, a half-tabloid newsprint magazine, and the fortnightly magazine format we have now. Many of your editors and contributors have gone on to big things. You can count the Hon Dr John Bannon (former Premier), David Penberthy (Editor of the Punch), Clementine Ford (writer), Sarah HansonYoung (Senator), Shaun Micallef (comedian), and Julia Gillard (Prime Minister, duh) amongst your alumni, as well as many others. You’ve also seen some controversy in your time, like the year that Senator Nick Xenophon (or Xenophou, as he was then known) edited you and then admitted the following year that the election had been rigged by his mates. He’s surprisingly candid about the whole affair now. You hold a special place in the history of the University, and the contribution you make to student life is immeasurable. It’s critically important that students have the opportunity to voice their opinions and have dialogues on University affairs and stories important to students. You provide that outlet. Once again, happy birthday, and keep it up old chum. Casey Briggs President, Adelaide University Union Email: casey.briggs@adelaide.edu.au Twitter: @CaseyBriggs

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STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COLUMN

they could mean for students. Not only will this be an opportunity for the SRC to share what it knows with students but it will also be an opportunity for us to gather wider feedback from students on their thoughts on things like the Honours Review, the recent changes to the undergraduate curriculum structure and so on.

Photo: Shaylee Leach

Folded into this will be a student forum with senior staff of the University (including the new ViceChancellor hopefully) on the Strategic Plan.

with IDRIS MARTIN, src president. At the most recent Humanities and Social Sciences student forum, I was forced to acknowledge a painful truth: not everyone picks up On Dit and flicks straight to this column to read what’s in it. Indeed, most people actively choose not to read it. Admittedly, this lends itself to the temptation to write something unintelligible and see if anyone notices, but I think I’ve pushed the editors far enough by submitting this late. The moral of the story of acknowledging that students don’t read the Student Representative Column (and probably the State of the Union as well) is this: I realise that a lot of you don’t know what’s happening to your education or what the big changes that I’ve written about will mean for you. As such, the SRC will be running workshops open to all students (and staff!) on what the significant changes are, how they will be implemented and what

If you’re interested in attending any of these events, keep an eye out for them by Liking our Facebook page www.facebook.com/adelaidesrc. Meanwhile, what else have we been up to? Well, our Postgraduate Officer Lewis Webb has been organising a couple of postgraduate events, including a luncheon and a movie screening of ‘PHD’ (I attended the movie screening – it was awkward. The postgraduate students kept on laughing at jokes I didn’t understand). If you’re a postgraduate student and interested in strengthening the postgraduate community at this university, flick Lewis an email at srcpostgrad@auu.org.au. Our Education Officer Benjamin Reichstein has been busy with the HumSS stuff but he hasn’t forgotten about the rest of the university. He’ll be running a campaign on the recent increase to student printing costs and, if you have a story you want to share or want to help out in this campaign, you can reach him at srceducation@auu.org.au. Finally, as always, I am here for any general questions, complaints or suggestions! As I said at the most recent HumSS forum: the hardest part about being a student representative is how hard it is to do your job when students don’t tell you if something is wrong. So please, email me or even Tweet at me. It will make my day. Idris Martin President, Student Representative Council Email: srcpresident@auu.org.au Twitter: @IdrisMartin

(on-campus)

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WILD HORSE wildhorsecomic.com

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THE GREAT REFERENDUM KERFUFFLE If you’re one of the 2,754 people that were persuaded or cajoled into exercising their sacred democratic right in the student elections, you might remember an extra piece of paper asking you to vote ‘for’ or ‘against’ an amendment to the constitution of the Adelaide University Union. The referendum, which we’ve mentioned earlier in the year, involved pretty significant changes to the student governance of the Union – reducing the number of student board directors from 16 to 10, increasing their terms to two years, and providing for the appointment of new non-student directors. The changes were recommended by an independent consultant in an effort to make the Board more manageable and improve institutional memory. Despite objections from the Liberals, Labor Right, and some candidates from other factions (arguing that it would reduce both student representation and accountability), the Board narrowly voted to approve the changes earlier this year. In election week, a majority of the candidates (and the mysterious Fresh Panda) were campaigning against the referendum (even including some who had voted in favour of it at Board). The Friday night after polls closed, the

counting began. Every year it’s an old-school affair. Ballot papers are physically sorted and stacked and walked around the room and preferentially redistributed by a gang of assistants, all under the watchful eye of scrutineers appointed by the candidates, who are texting the results up to those anxious and progressively more intoxicated candidates at the Unibar. It’s as boring as it sounds – the ‘Hare-Clark quota-preferential electoral system’ takes even longer to implement than to say. Under the AUU Constitution, a referendum is ‘passed if at least 10% of Students cast valid votes and the number of valid votes cast in favour exceeds the number against.’ The results for this year’s referendum were as follows: 1,435 ‘for’, 1,095 ‘against’. That only totals 2,530 votes – 20 votes less than 10% of the electoral roll of 25,497. Anti-referendum student pollies breathed a collective sigh of relief – for once, they had to thank the people who didn’t vote. With the referendum apparently failed, 16 Board directors were provisionally elected later that night. On Monday, everything changed. The Returning Officer, David Coluccio, sent out an email informing the candidates than an error had been discovered. The

electoral roll as provided by the university had listed everyone enrolled in a double degree twice – a total of about 3,200 duplicate entries. That reduced the electoral roll, meaning that the referendum actually needed only 2,230 votes to pass, and had been successful. That meant that the Board results needed to be recounted; since there were six fewer positions than initially thought, six of the previously elected candidates were now eliminated.

The Challenge The change only had immediate direct impact on the six Board candidates who found themselves ‘unelected’, but it left many student politicians from across the political spectrum curiously united in opposition. The power to review the student elections rests with the independent AUU Election Tribunal, made up of law professor Dr Paul Babie and two practicing lawyers. There were two submissions made to the Tribunal, one by a number of Liberals on Campus candidates, and one by many from the Fresh, Indygo, Activate, and Liberty tickets. Together, the complainants represent almost every group of student politicians. Their issues with the conduct of the referendum can be briefly

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(on-campus)

words: seb tonkin summarised as follows: •

•

RO: that the position of returning officer was advertised improperly. The RO’s job is basically to oversee the election process from start to finish – taking the nominations, supervising the count, and smacking the heads that get too far over the painted line on the Barr Smith lawns. Usually the position is advertised and filled externally. This year, there were no applicants, and the general manager of the AUU, David Coluccio (who is on the record as supporting the referendum), was automatically appointed to the position. It’s been alleged that the advertisement failed to mention that a paid honorarium was set aside. Prohibited enticements: that the 10% discount vouchers provided to students were an ‘enticement to vote’, which are prohibited by the election rules. Broadsheet: that the explanation of the referendum was favourably biased, and that other content requirements were not met. Double-voting: that given the duplications, it was potentially possible

for students to vote twice (Coluccio has since pointed out that students could already vote twice by going to both the Hub Central and Barr Smith lawns polling stations, though only two students actually did so in this election). • Examination of the roll: that the RO was obliged to examine the electoral role before counting began, and should have discovered the issues earlier. However, in their response, the Election Tribunal did not deal with any of these arguments directly. Instead, the Tribunal found, under a close reading of the AUU Election Rules, that they only had the power to review the election of candidates, and not the conduct of referenda. It’s a result that has frustrated the appellants – while the wording of the rules, interpreted narrowly, supports the Tribunal’s decision, it seems unlikely that anyone seriously intended to exclude any review of the conduct of referenda. Further questions have been met simply with the statement that the Tribunal’s response is final. There are unsubstantiated rumblings of further legal action, but nothing concrete as we go to print. Approached directly, General-

Manager-come-Returning-Officer David Coluccio declined to comment on the conduct of the elections, other than to say that ‘the Election Tribunal was satisfied that the elections were run according to the relevant Rules.’ Of course, the Election Tribunal were only ‘satisfied’ as far as they ruled their power extended. The fact is that nobody has seriously assessed the referendum appeals, because the Tribunal has denied having any power to do so.

iVote 2.0 Coluccio’s Returning Officer’s report suggests that we are likely to see an even stronger push from management at the AUU towards online elections – which he argues would be less disruptive, less expensive to run, and much less likely to involve complications like the ones we’ve seen here. Many of these thoughts were echoed in student comments posted to On Dit’s facebook page, arguing that online elections would help reduce the resentment many students feel for the entire process. The idea has yet to catch on with many on the AUU Board, however, who point to collapses in voter turnout at universities where online voting has been implemented. That debate’s still to come. ◊

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(on-campus)

HEADS & SHOULDERS, KNEES & TOES. words: michelle bagster art: daisy freeburn There are bodies in our University. I know, because I’m working on one. I have developed quite a fondness for the right-upperquarter of this man, the kind of fondness that can only really be gained though hours of scraping fat and pulling spidery fascia away from muscles. His other quarters are scattered around the lab, and he’s not the only body in the room; four others are enough for our class of forty. It’s two people per limb. I’m telling you this because I’m not sure you knew. About the bodies. I was talking to a friend on the bus, and she asked me ‘what do you actually dissect?’ I began to describe with my hands, drawing where I would have to be cut to provide a similar quarter. She cut me off:

‘wait, you’re dissecting a person?’ I was a little confused; I do want to be a people-doctor, so peopledissection seemed like the most logical type of dissection to learn anatomy. But I thought about it a bit more, and started to understand why the idea of being able to access and study human cadavers at our University might be a bit confronting. Certainly, spiritual people may be concerned about their body not remaining whole after death, and often religion can be a tricky issue. Closure for families can worry people about donation, given the body is taken shortly after death and potentially not returned for some time. And often, even the altruistic can be conflicted, because you can’t donate both your organs and your body. Just one or the other. It’s a tricky decision. There is a great history to

working with human cadavers (the first recorded dissection was 300 BCE), and great merit to it, too. Claudius Galen was widely respected in his day as one of the greatest physicians and surgeons of Ancient Rome. He lived from 129 until 200 CE, and during that time contributed a great deal of knowledge to medicine and philosophy. However, this being Ancient Rome and all, there was a ban on the use of deceased humans for research purposes, so writing his anatomy texts was a little challenging. His solution? Dissect macaques and assume the anatomy is same-same. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly same-same, but it took a good thousand or so years before the dissection of real deceased humans (not macaque-humans) was allowed, and these errors were finally fixed. Thankfully, surgery wasn’t a big thing back then, or the anatomy errors would have been a bit more of an issue.

But I’m not here to talk history. My charming anecdote is just there to emphasise that human dissection is important, both for understanding the body and passing that understanding to students. There’s only so much you can learn from pictures in textbooks, and from my experience, the pictures often look completely different to the real thing. So where do the bodies come from? Body donors generally learn about the South Australian scheme through friends or the Universities themselves, given the subject is not widely advertised - unlike organ donation, which is undergoing a whole lot of publicity from the media at the moment. There are about 6000 people registered in South Australia, which corresponds to about 80 bodies per year, spread out between all the Universities in the state.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a significant figure; SA is consistently blessed with one of the highest rates of donation per capita every year. But not all bodies are accepted. The reasons for not taking a body donation are pretty straightforward. If the body can’t be transferred within three days, tissue breakdown has already progressed too far. If the deceased was recently hospitalised, or has a communicable disease, those who preserve and work on the body are at risk. If the deceased has donated their organs, or an autopsy was performed, the embalming process is rendered unsuitable. However, ultimately about 85% of donated bodies are accepted, and the next of kin is notified ASAP if the body doesn’t qualify. So what actually happens to the bodies? Once the body is accepted,

decay needs to be prevented. This is done using a chemical cocktail (formaldehyde, a dash of phenol and a few other secret ingredients) drained into a major artery. Gravity does the work in spreading the preservative around. In the mean time, the body is stored in the fridge for about PAGE 13 three months so the formaldehyde (on-campus) can do its job without decay. After this, the University will use the body in whatever ways deemed most suitable, be this in education by dissection, or removal of organs or specimens for display or preservation for study. This means that parts of the body may never be returned. Fat, connective tissue and body fluids are usually disposed of as medical waste during dissection, and if a specimen is preserved in a pot, it is often kept indefinitely by the University. However the University endeavours to return the parts that have finished their use to the family, and this can

be cremated at the University’s expense, or processed at the family’s expense however they deem fit. If left to the University, the body can remain in use for about 5 years, and there is no guarantee that the remains will be released at all. Closure can be PAGE important, so if you’re not sure 14 how much of Grandpa’s ashes (on-campus) you’re going to get back - or even whether you will get any back at all - it can be a big factor for families when giving the OK to donate Grandpa’s body after his death. Religion is a difficult topic in terms of body donation. After all, it was the reason Claudius Galen had to practice on monkeys. The idea, in ancient Rome at least, was that the body should be whole (in the image of God) to pass to the next life. However, it is currently believed by many of the world’s prominent religions including Catholicism, Buddhism, Anglican Christianity, Islam and

Hinduism - that the altruistic gift of the body to research conforms with their teachings. There are some generally opposed, such as Romani, which believes the body needs to be whole for the soul to retrace its life after death, and Shinto, which believes the dead body to be powerful and dangerous unless treated properly. But talking about religion makes me itchy, so I’m going to stop here. The biggest issue I myself would have with body donation would be the fact that I can’t donate organs at the same time. I plan to keep my body in pretty good shape, and giving away my organs when I die would be pretty logical; help extend some lives without doing anything myself (except dying). But to remove my organs, blood vessels would need to be severed. So formaldehyde would leak out, and preservation just wouldn’t work, meaning the rest of me would be dangerous

to use. So giving back to the University to help students learn the way I did wouldn’t be possible. It’s a tricky issue, and I don’t even have my own answer yet, let alone someone else’s. With all these barriers, I think we’re pretty lucky here at Adelaide Uni to have bodies at all, and as first years we were reminded of this with a memorial service to all the donors. Family members attend, and it forces you to acknowledge not only the fact that the specimens on the lab tables lived real lives, but also the emotions families experience when they give a loved one away for research. There are bodies in our University, but those bodies are people. ◊

AN OPEN LETTER TO: CANDIDATES IN STUDENT ELECTIONS

Dear Candidates,

I’m a patient person. I listen to the scruffy guy on North Terrace as he explains that the $20 he wants is for a taxi, not another bottle of alcohol. Same goes for the environmental protester who doesn’t understand the words “I’m not twenty one for two more years,” even though I repeat them every day like a strange personal mantra. Usually these are just the morning interruptions on my way to class but recently I’ve come under fire from all sides while on campus. First it was the evangelical students whose “don’t buy the lie” campaign was based outside the science faculty student office and Union House. They tempted us with muffins and intrigued us with Jesus’ opinion of the Unibar (relax, he doesn’t want it closed). They weren’t too pushy, but they got very repetitive after a week. And they were nothing compared to the political shitstorm that was to come. I’m writing this on Tuesday of election week and I’ve got

plenty of war stories to tell. After a long chase from Mayo café to the student hub, I’ll be having nightmares about a certain critically endangered bamboo eater for the rest of the semester. I’ve seen candidates from rival parties trap innocent passers-by for 10 minutes while they argue over the SSAF. Even my headphones and metal music didn’t stop one candidate from chatting about the merits of their party whilst climbing the stairs near Unibooks. Friends have been developing and sharing routes to classes that avoid the hotspots of political activity. I’m sure by the end of the week there will be an app to help avoid these areas. I understand that you need to tell people about your party’s policies, but how about trying do so in a way that doesn’t make me feel like a trapped participant in the running of the bulls. Maybe you could write a hundred words on your policies for On Dit in the week before the election, so people can get an idea of what you’re about. This would mean that potential voters aren’t being

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hounded to the point of requesting restraining orders (you heard me panda). I used to enjoy wandering the campus with friends between lectures but thanks to you guys, during election week, I’m running for the voting area’s white line and the student hub like Usain Bolt. I know that once you get elected you’ll be selling out of your policies to increase your voter base and struggling to inspire continuing support from apathetic students like me. So I guess that means it’s my fault for being chased around the uni by student politicians... Fuck.

Sincerely, Mad as Hell Mell

Got an open letter you need to send? It could be printed right here on this page. Send your open letter to to us: ondit@ adelaide.edu.au. You vent that spleen. Vent it REAL GOOD.

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(off-campus)

THANK YOU FOR S M O K I N G words: sheldon patterson art: katie hamilton

While sleepily staggering through the grounds the other day, I noticed a particularly frustrated individual. Which was unusual because he had dreadlocks, and people with dreadlocks are rarely frustrated. One could assume that he had lost his weed and surfboard, but it seemed his anger was the result of a fellow student smoking on campus. With a look of contempt and a dramatic point of his finger, Dreadlock Man directed the smoker to leave the grounds and smoke somewhere else. Why can such vitriol be directed towards someone just for smoking? If we’ve learnt anything from US presidential candidate Mitt ‘Mittens’ Romney, it’s that the economy should always take precedence over social and environmental justice. So if we do accept the view that the economy is more important than social justice, for instance, it turns out that smoking is actually pretty rad. Smokers save the government millions of dollars every year and I’m almost certain smokers have indirectly lowered our student debt. How? Much like Japan, Australia has one of the most pronounced ageing populations in the world. You may have heard of this issue on the television or through the Internet machine. We have

too many old people that don’t contribute to society. They are a drain on the government that must be clogged with loose hair. The use of social services such as pensions, housing, and healthcare are all very expensive. So in terms of the economy, retirees may as well be thought of as Today Tonight or Andrew Bolt: useless and annoying. So should we give money to retirees? Our money doesn’t grow on trees like it does in the US (ours is made from plastic). And if we think like Mittens Romney for a second, they clearly don’t deserve that money. In a free market economy, when you have an oversupply of a particular commodity (which is also useless in this case) it should decrease in value. Therefore, because the retired population is in surplus, and there is no demand for it, investing money just doesn’t make economic sense. So why don’t we just kill the old people when they stop working, I hear you say? Surely that is a more economically sound plan? Well Adolf, this idea just never seems to be well received. Apparently the government murdering our loved ones for the sake of a slightly more healthy economy is ‘evil’. I completely agree with Mittens here; this is

a clear example of how people get caught on stupid sentimental nonsense like ‘not wanting granny and pop to be murdered by government agencies’. Until we move past these pathetic notions, all we are doing is illogically raising the value of a worthless and wrinkly commodity. So because of sentimental nonsense (as I’m sure Mittens would have put it), we need another solution... why doesn’t the government simply allow a conglomerate of private organisations to kill the retirees with something that gives people the illusion of choice? That way the government wouldn’t be held responsible for innumerable deaths. Welcome to Big Tobacco, a hero that Australia deserves: a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight. Thank you Big Tobacco for mirthlessly killing our loved ones—we just can’t thank you enough! Tobacco used to be such a good solution for the ageing population until the number of deaths caused by smoking began to decrease. We have foolish antismoking campaigns to thank for that (not to mention our ridiculous Labor government removing packaging from cigarettes to make smoking even less cool). Not only does the tobacco industry give the

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(off-campus)

government huge sums of money through corporate taxes, it also provides jobs through tobacco factories and through their forward and backward linkages (see packaging, shipping and retail companies). Therefore, lower unemployment and more economic growth for Australia. Economics! Furthermore, the smokers themselves pay more taxes than their non-smoking counterparts. 67.9% of the cost of cigarettes goes directly to the government in various forms of taxes. Therefore, a $16 pack of cigarettes gives the government $10.86; which in turn means a pack a day smoker gives the government $3965.36 per year. Unfortunately most smokers donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t actually contribute this much. A Canadian study in 2003 suggested that the average smoker only contributes $600 per annum, the bastards. But even $600 per annum can cover the health expenses of smokers, right? Well, as it turns out, smokers actually have lower health expenses anyway. Diseases such as emphysema, cancer, and heart ailments caused by smoking are surprisingly cheap to die from. Bonus! But the important factor here is that non-smokers live around 14 years longer than smokers. So sure,

there are expenses in treating smokers, but non-smokers eventually have more heath complications in the long run. A recent study done in Holland estimated that lifetime health care costs for smokers were $91,000 less than they were for non-smokers who were in good health (or not obese). But this early death also means that smokers conveniently die just before they have the opportunity to start drawing on social services from the government. Those 14 extra years of life are the most expensive. To be fair, smoking does have a lot of costs associated with it (e.g. fire damage to buildings, non-fatal health issues and lost productivity due to illness). But all of these factors were taken account of in yet another study presented to the government of the Czech Republic in 2000. The study estimated that in 1999, the Czech economy still saved $27 million from not supplying pensions, housing, and health care to smokers who had died. This equates to $1,227 per smoker. All things considered, I think it is a well-established truism

that smoking is good for the economy. And maybe there is a lot of environmental damage caused by the production and use of cigarettes what with the toxic chemicals being pumped into the air and the cigarette butts littering our waterways. But just think like Tony Abbott: who needs a healthy environment when you have a good economy? That God guy will probably step in when we really start to screw up the environment anyway. And as for smoking? Try not to think about the innumberable deaths and nonfatal health issues it leads to. Try not to think about the 126 million adults and children exposed to second-hand smoke. All that pain and suffering: try not to think about it, because smoking cures an economic problem. It should be encouraged, not perpetually attacked. This decrease in early death caused by smoking is an absolute travesty that must be reversed. Remember, if something is even slightly good for the economy, we should fully embrace it regardless of how abhorrent it is. Make Mittens proud, and next time you think of harassing a smoker on campus, try killing your grandparents instead. â&#x2014;&#x160;

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CHICK IN A CHAIR

(on-campus)

Three months ago I trashed my right foot. It’s a dull story. Instead of peeling off a Welsh crag, or having both feet blown off when I decided I had to cross the heavily-mined Zimbabwe/ Mozambique border ‘because it was there’, the real scoop lacks street cred. After spending most of my twenties avoiding selfinflicted death, and I found myself becoming a common household statistic. So, for posterity, my right foot was the victim of a naked tandem sky diving adventure that went pear shaped. Really. Spending two months alone in bed with your leg elevated is both tedious and character building. With no end in sight, I bought my way into freedom and became the proud owner of a lightweight wheelchair. In my excitement, I got a little ahead of myself. Hooning around a showroom is one thing, travelling 26 kilometres to campus via public transport on a chair in winter is something completely different. Why this didn’t dawn on me at the time beggars belief. Cabin fever must have won the day.

My usual five minute skip to the bus stop became a twenty minute major drama. Broken footpaths and a gently rising slope were the enemy, as was my usually compliant and oh so manoeuvrable chair – it had morphed into a Woolies shopping trolley. I quickly discovered that chairs like nice, flat, smooth surfaces, and lose the ability to continue in a straight line on anything less. Unable to gain any form of momentum without the risk of ending up in someone’s front yard,

I inched along at a snail’s pace.

The next drama was bus etiquette. How does one board a bus in a wheelchair? With Adelaide Metro being light on the details, I thankfully scored a fabulous bus drive. Throughout the course of the day I discovered that Adelaide Metro staff are AWESOME, as are a lot of the passengers. I became something of a minor celebrity, which I loved as I’d had limited opportunities to chat to anyone for several months and possess the skill of being able to talk under water with a mouthful of marbles. Since I had no desire to participate in the Guinness Book of Records’ ‘how many passengers can we stuff into a peak hour bus’ competition, I had to get creative with my public transport use. My day then resembled some mad scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. With the assistance of a vast array of people and by possessing a degree of chutzpah, I managed to arrive on campus via two buses, a train, and an elevator. No sane, chair-bound person would attempt being on campus without having undertaken the Big Tour with the legendary Annie and Karen from Disability Services. Annie got the short straw and was brilliant: watching and guiding but never taking over. Whilst it may seem blindingly obvious that the North Terrace campus is perched on a ridiculously steep slope, the subtle gradient changes and uneven paths people with wheels have to negotiate aren’t

so noticeable. One of the worst stretches is the path from the Hub down to Bragg Lecture theatre, where my little set of wheels morphed back into that Woolies shopping trolley. I was pathetic to behold. Even hands-off Annie volunteered to push me (I politely declined, making an arse of myself in the process). Annie’s best advice was reminding me that I had right of way. Whilst this also seems blindingly obvious, the reality is somewhat different. I am a former ED Nurse and have managed to make myself heard and my presence felt in large angry waiting rooms, yet getting a very small section of the (usually zoned out and texting) student population out of my way proves to more difficult than controlling a bunch of drunks on a Saturday night shift. Corridors aren’t that large, yet some students either assume that they will not feel pain when I run over their feet, or that my chair can do some magic Harry Potter bus manoeuvre. Pushing up a protracted gradient requires momentum: stopping for you means losing that and risking careening downhill. If you are a little curious as to how physically demanding propelling yourself around campus is, you are most welcome to deposit me on a bench and have a crack at the various ‘wheelchair friendly’ ramps. I don’t blame the University – they’re confined by the age of the campus

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words: t amara wi ar t: mo lly ayer lliams s-lawler infrastructure, space restrictions and legislation that defines surprisingly steep ramps as wheelchair accessible. Several of the ramps on campus are akin to a winter Olympics bobsleigh track; using them could be introduced as a future extreme Paralympics sport. Making it to the bottom without becoming a human catapult is a skill that I’m struggling to attain. Without Kurt Fearnley’s upper arm strength, ascending them ain’t much fun either, which is why you’ll spot me very inelegantly tackling those monsters with my wheelchair back-to-front, using my good foot as my propeller.

All this physicality has meant I have become less fashionista and more fashion victim. I’d describe my new style as ‘skanky trekking chic’. I wore my ski pants on a predicted wet and wild day, and the hiking boot that was last seen somewhere up the Khumbu is now my preferred foot wear. Fashion police, take pity. Peeing has become a three day event. I’ve learned not to park in front of an occupied disabled toilet like some hipster in a long line for a portaloo at a rock festival. Once you get inside those things, there’s no quick exit. The problem, however, is locating another one. So, considering that ‘what goes in must come out’, I spend my days in various stages of dehydration.

My locker and the Women’s Room are now a no-go zone. History provides for neither wheelchairs, nor pram-pushing breastfeeding mothers. The powers that be might want to rethink these locations. Just saying. However, all is not grim. I’ve discovered that humans are rather exceptional creatures. The vast majority of people that I’ve come into contact with have been kind, thoughtful and willing help when I’m really struggling, and also to step back and not take offense if their help is politely refused. I’ve been supported by a wonderful network of friends and neighbours, even getting a block of Cadbury’s finest in the post. Politics essays and chocolate are, after all, excellent bedfellows.

So, whilst you may think that all is peachy on campus with the lifts, the ramps and the loos, the reality is a little different. Spare a thought for those with mobility issues, and remember that it isn’t limited to people in chairs. I used crutches to get to my exam in Lower Napier and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. ◊

REJECTION.

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(off-campus)

words: tom sheldrick

Dear Mr Sheldrick, Thank you for your application and interest in the position of INVESTMENT BANKING SUMMER ANALYST at Bear Stearns. We have considered your application and regret to inform you that you have been unsuccessful on this occasion. Competition has been especially high this year and, due to the large volume of applications, we are generally unable to give out specific feedback. However, for you, we felt it necessary to make an exception. Your application was by far the most ridiculous and irreverent piece of correspondence we have ever received. Below is a summary of the problems with your farcical application: •

• •

•

You sent a 15 page resume – pages 6-13 being headshots – when we requested it be kept to 1 page. Your cover letter contained 3 incorrectly formatted haikus. Instead of attaching your academic transcript, you attached a Microsoft Word document with ‘P’s GET DEGREES’ written in rainbow coloured Comic Sans Word Art. You unnecessarily attached

•

a 45 minute video recording of yourself doing sit-ups. Furthermore, it was obvious that you had just filmed yourself doing 4 sit-ups and made that loop for the entirety. Instead of attaching a photocopy of your driver’s licence you attached a photograph of what appeared to be a man (presumably you) and a woman engaged in what appeared to be a form of sexual intercourse, both wearing what appeared to be horse heads. Under ‘Additional Documents’ you included a list of your top 20 most liked Facebook statuses; a hand written essay (dated February 2, 1999) about why you want to be a dog when you grow up; and a print-screen of your Farmville farm. In response to the question ‘Why do your skills make you suited for a career as an INVESTMENT BANKER’, you answered ‘I donno if they do cos most my skills are sports :/’ In response to the question ‘In your view, what are the main challenges the financial world faces today?’ you answered ‘Mo money, Mo Problems’ – The Notorious B.I.G.

•

In response to ‘Describe your greatest achievement’ you answered ‘Correctly guessing SAFM’s secret sound but I didn’t call up but I promise I guessed it you can ask mum!’ • In response to ‘How would you categorise yourself using the renowned Bear Stearns Personality Type model?’ you answered ‘I’m defs Fighting Type because I know that I’m super effective against Normal Types BOOM #pokehumour’ • In response to ‘List your 3 most relevant awards’ you wrote ‘receiving that tshirt you get when you eat that big schnitzel at the casino x3’ The flowers and chocolates you sent to the HR offices were a generous gesture however the chips, 3 cartons of beer, 2 strippers and a kilogram of what appeared to be an illegal substance were all completely inappropriate. However we will not contact the authorities if you promise to never contact Bear Stearns again. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest in Bear Stearns and wish you success in all of your future endeavours. Kind regards, The Bear Stearns Graduate Recruitment Team

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YEARS OF

ON DIT

(miscellany)

FAMOUS FACES

Shaun Micallef studied Law at the University of Adelaide from 1980-1983. In July 1982 he was elected to the Union Council. Here you can see his candidate interview (above right), his election result (below right) and On Dit on his Union Council meeting attendance rate (above). That might sound boring, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s definitely not. On Dit, Vol. 51, Issues 14, 17 and 19, 1982.

The Honourable John Bannon AO attended St. Peter’s College before studying Arts and Law here at the University of Adelaide. He co-edited On Dit in 1964 with Ken Scott and Jacqui Dibden and was elected president of the Australian Union of Students in 1968. Below is Bannon’s reflection on his editorship in the 1982 celebration of On Dit’s 50th year - also Bannon’s first year as South Australian premier. On Dit, Vol. 50, Issue 9, 1982.

Yep, our dear PM Julia Gillard, as a student and member of the Adelaide University Labor Club, used to contribute to this old rag. She was elected Education Officer at the University in 1981, and President of the SRC in 1982. The following year, Gillard transferred to Melbourne where she became the second female President of the Australian Union of Students. Here she is in her role as Education Officer in 1980 (right), at a meeting recommending that the University close in protest of education budget cuts. On Dit Vol. 48, Issues 7 and 19, 1980.

Nick Xenophon, or Xenophou during his student days, graduated from Prince Alfred College and completed a Bachelor of Laws at Adelaide University in 1981. He snagged the top job at On Dit at just 17 years old. Xenophou was elected On Dit editor for the year 1977 in an election that was rigged by some of his friends in the Young Liberals. A fake Labor candidate was run in an attempt to split the leftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vote. Xenophou sealed the deal by four votes - later found to be forged. He confessed and expressed his regret in On Dit the following year. Now an independent, Xenophou quit the oncampus Liberal Club in 1978 (left). On Dit Vol. 46, Issue 1, 1978.

Senator Natasha StottDespoja graduated from Pembroke School before studying her Bachelor of Arts at Adelaide University. In 1991 she was elected president of the Students’ Association of the University of Adelaide (SAUA) and create the first statewide Student Representitive Council. She awards the StottDespoja Scholarship annually to a financially disadvantaged, full-time female student of academic merit. Here’s her photo and column as SAUA president (below). On Dit Vol. 59, Issues 10 and 11.

Annabel Crabb of ABC fame was a contributor to Elle Dit in 1991 (Annabel ‘Shower Curtain Skirt’ Crabb, left). Here’s her first article as Women’s Officer in 1992 (above). On Dit Vol. 59 Issue 12, 1991 and Vol. 60 Issue 1, 1992.

DIT YOU REMEMBER We asked some of the old editors that we knew or could find and that weren’t too famous to talk to us and provide us with some memories or thoughts of their time. They did a good job; we barely had to edit them at all.

Alex Wheaton

Managing Editor, dB Magazine It’s very nearly 25 years since I wandered into the On Dit offices, located as they then were in On Dit Lane (the home of many a frantic laneway cricket match) and enquired about writing music reviews. In a time when music was measured against such luminaries as The Pixies, early U2, Patti Smith, and Australian bands like Died Pretty, Hoodoo Gurus and Midnight Oil it is a comfortable position to think of it as some kind of golden age. Within a semester I had become Music Editor, the major responsibility being to keep the best records for oneself and distribute the rest at raucous weekly meetings of the 15 or so ‘serious’ writers before getting down to the real business of the meeting, office soccer or cricket. One year later and my real job was freight master… in those far off days before desktop publishing, PDFs and digital downloads, when the words ‘bromide camera’ induced a shudder of fear amongst those in the know, the magazine was laboriously pasted up by hand on prepared layout sheets, which then had to be taken to the printers. Every Monday morning through semester I arrived at the On Dit offices at 7am, greeted the shell shocked editors who had worked and drunk through the weekend putting the paper together, working to that obscenely early deadline, usually

pulling ‘all nighters’. Firing up the Unions station wagon, my task was to drive a fast as possible (speed limits were optional in those days I’ve been told) to the printers in Murray Bridge, hand over the precious layouts and then wait two or three hours (pie with sauce, FU Iced Coffee, breakfast of champions) until the magic had been converted into a printed magazine, up to five thousand copies of which I then loaded into the back of the wagon and drove back down the freeway and delivered them all over campus (and the Waite Institute) by lunchtime. What’s the magic, you ask? Seeing your writing in print. Seeing people waiting for delivery, grabbing their copy, and scattered groups all over campus reading and thinking and discussing. You can’t beat it. PS: I never heard anyone who actually worked in publishing use the term ‘putting the paper to bed’. It’s a popular fiction whose origin I’ve never asked after.

Stan Mahoney

Published Author, Format Space Convenor, Applier For Grants I should preface this with an admission. I edited two volumes of On Dit in the heady days prior to Voluntary Unionism. We were paid a scandalous amount of money (something like three dollars an hour if you figure how long it took us to lay the thing out each week), with an additional printing budget in the region of $40,000. With all that money, the most memorable thing we did was print a letter from an evangelical crank on top of a full page picture of a labia that had been pierced and laced up with decorative pink ribbon. The union, in their wisdom, rounded up and pulped that edition the day it was circulated. Suffice to say that I was incredibly naive. The large sums of money at stake did nothing to soften my politics. Campus culture had reached a low ebb, music sucked, TV sucked, nightlife sucked and John Howard’s Australia seemed

to be getting meaner and stupider by the day. I saw student media as the last bastion of cultural foment. Pious student activists and politicians certainly weren’t going to change the world. They couldn’t save themselves from oblivion, let alone inspire others. Student media was, and probably still is, the last hope. A refuge for artists and musicians and wise guy pranksters who crowd around the idea that ‘a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.’ Now its my understanding that, with the exception of the On Dit office, nobody parties on campus. Adelaide nightlfe, despite state and local government lip service, sucks worse than it did ten years ago. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is a real possibility, and, with the possible exception of ‘Gangnam Style’ (GANGNAM STYLE!), there remains nothing like the R&B we blasted out of the office around the turn of the century. The current crop of editors (and radio directors, for that matter) seem to know this better than most. They know the crucial human need to party, they know how to dance and drink and fight, and - miracle of miracles - they know how to put together a decent magazine. Diplomatically put, the two volumes I helped produce were hit-and-miss. Sophomoric, naive punk bombast at the best of times - barely worth archiving at all. But at the time we laboured under a suspicion that it wasn’t so much the pages of On Dit that mattered, but the brash vitality of the office itself. It was thick and tangy and smelled like whiskey and sex, and it would regularly spill out onto the lawns and into the city where the saccharine smell of it still lingers in the few remaining artist run spaces around town. Happy Birthday On Dit; can’t imagine this dishwater town without you. Thanks for not hating me for the gross stuff I did in you all those years ago. Deep down you know it was probably worth it, or

at least that it would work out in the end, more or less.

Clementine Ford

Writer (The Drum, The Sunday Mail, Lonely Planet, etc, etc) It seems fitting that I should be filing this copy at the 11th hour. Many a night was it that I sat at the On Dit computers, the glow of the bulky old G4s illuminating the dull pallor of my monitor tan, furiously typing articles that needed to be laid out four hours ago and were at least 45 minutes away from being finished. It was 2001, and my friends Mel, Linley and Penny had wrestled the editorship away from the dynasty of the few years prior. Sunday nights were consumed with episodes of teasing Linley about his feet, brainstorming ways to humiliate the SAUA rats and occasionally ducking out for cigarettes on the Unibooks wall. They were joyous times, surrounded by friends, laughter and the encroaching exhaustion of six am. We’d emerge bleary eyed, heading home to sleep and further indulge the feeling that we’d been a part of something that, if not important, was certainly delightful. As an editor in 2005, that singular joy of being ‘part of it all’ had somewhat diminished. We lived in a post VSU world - the student politicians were dumber and less effective than even before, and the camaraderie of the office had shifted somewhat. But I still believed that what I was doing had some merit. Perhaps not to anyone else’s life, but certainly to mine. When people ask me now what I studied at university, I most often tell them that I majored in English and Gender Studies but my real education came from the bowels of the student media basement. It was there that I began to learn how to write, to think and to debate. I will forever be grateful to my time at On Dit, not just for the laughter and devotion but for the passion it instilled in me for journalism and the glory of print.

It’s no doubt a different time for student media now. The Internet has both liberated and shackled student journalists - I am horrified to hear tales of student journalists being lambasted by the general public, their words being retumbled, retweeted and posted with the sole intention of them being ridiculed and mocked. For where else should a young, aspiring journalist feel safe but in the bounds of a student press? This is where we learn, where we make our mistakes, where we are given the freedom to discover what kind of writer we want to be. It is an enormous privilege to have that kind of safety, and I believe it was more valuable to me than any degree I could have undertaken. Blessed were my days at On Dit, and I shall always remember it. Happy birthday to you dear newspaper, and to all the writers, editors and lovers who have passed time in your wonderful company and readers who have enjoyed you, remember to mind the balance of your lives doth sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.

Steph Walker On Dit Expert

Editing a magazine, and in particular editing On Dit, has informed nearly every professional and academic decision I’ve made since. There aren’t many people who can say they’ve been in charge of a magazine, especially not in the way you are with On Dit – you do a bit of everything. You lose more than half of your friends, you take a major academic hit if you try to study at the same time and you end up trying to use detergent to clean yourself at 5am. Then you get interrupted by the cleaner and have the most awkward conversation of your life. You are so consumed by your role that health, friends, relationships and money fall off your radar. You get a Vitamin D deficiency in summer because you don’t go outside, and your friends give you a cactus so that you have an excuse to sit in the sun.

But the people you have in that year, are the people you should have for the rest of your life. I can boast that I only cried three times during my year, once at the start, once in the middle, and finally at its conclusion. I edited On Dit in 2009. In 2011 I wrote and designed my honours thesis into a handbook on student media in Australia. I wrote the guide because when we started editing On Dit, we didn’t know anything. No one does. I’d written and subbed for On Dit since 2006 but really, we couldn’t have fathomed the lovely highs and the soul-shattering lows that awaited us. We printed porn and were threatened with legal action for the sexuality edition. One edition nearly got pulped due to an article on a sexual assault. The AUU refused to pay us a whopping $2.25 an hour (that was the second time I cried) - and it was the time of my fucking life. Not because I managed to do it, because I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my designer, marketer, sub-editors and writers - and Kim up at AUU, of course. I haven’t exactly let go – I can’t actually avoid my year, because I still get asked about incoming and outgoing editors by friends, and students and the occasional fully-fledge stranger. I still speak at conferences for student media, and I give out my thesis to all the 20 people who might be able to use it. And now I’m starting a website whose very concept was founded during the 26th hour binge of edition 8 2009. There’s nothing like On Dit and we’re all so happy to have been a tumultuous fragment in it’s 80 year saga.

Rory Kennett-Lister

Freelance Writer/Novellaist (see rorykennettlister.bkclb.co) I was an On Dit editor at the same time I did my Honours in Creative Writing. Though Honours is a time when one puts on a miners’ cap and descends into the bowels of the library, extracting precious pieces of

information in order to fashion them into some obtuse intellectual jewel, I learnt more from my time in an editor’s chair, talking shit with my co-editors. The sum of my Honours learning is this: I am self-involved enough to write 15,000 words of something I made up in the shower and expect an award from the University; I am narcissistic enough to think my work will be better than everyone else’s; and I am, at the same time, self-doubting enough to think that everything I’ve written is crap. The total of my On Dit learning cannot be calculated. This is merely one lesson. Another is that my maths skills haven’t improved since before I had armpit hair. Yet another is that when making confessions, it’s easier to write in the second person. That however bad your maths, 3,000 magazines is a lot to distribute and that you will come to detest distribution more than any other editorial task. That you can edit for hours the same piece of meandering dross written by someone with an aversion to necessary punctuation and you try and try to shoehorn it into your vision of how the article was meant to be while the hours evaporate under harsh light of the moon and it’s only when you’ve added 4000 commas and shortened sentences into comprehension that you finally realise that, maybe, you’ve made it worse. That sometimes someone will write something better than you could have imagined. You will feel humbled and spoiled that they gave you their time. You will also learn that it is possible to be proud of something you didn’t write. That no one is as impressed as you are that you’re an editor. They’re not even as impressed as you think they should be, except for your parents. That nearly-empty mugs of tea grow mould at the same rate that Sea Monkeys develop after being introduced to water. That you can

grow attached to mould. That arguably mould makes a better pet than Sea Monkeys because it continues to thrive and won’t leave you distraught at the sight of the tiny plankton floating absently at the top of their tiny tank.

is now preserved to eat away at your soul — you loved being an editor and will remember your time.

That university administrators are exactly the kind of arseholes you imagined them to be, and that though you thought you understood the meaning of ‘budget’, within the learned bureaucracy, the word doesn’t maintain the same certainty it had previously.

The University of Adelaide is different at night. Noone is lying on the lawns. Mayo is closed. Drunken confusedness sometimes walks its way down the stairs and towards Victoria Drive on its way to shout at the Torrens. There is a cat that sometimes pops by to stare aggressively at the studious Hubbound.

That comic sans is an appropriate method of retribution. That you will get over it — one day. That most student politicians aren’t as bad as you imagined to be. In fact, they can be really helpful, and you can, in your own reserved way, learn to like them — except for the young Liberals. You will never like them because you can’t understand how anyone under the age of 40, who spends most of their off time grinding on a strobed dance floor can ever justify supporting a conservative party. The only reason you can think of is that mummy and daddy told them – whether explicitly or implicitly – that they should vote for the big Ls and they haven’t done a whole lot of questioning since. That leftover curry can be left for months in the middle of the office, and will harden to the density of a diamond. You will discover that the only way to dispose of the petrified curry is to pitch the plate — with the gusto of a drunken grandparent at a Greek wedding — into a pilfered wheelie bin. That you can get on famously with your co-editors, despite the fact that you met under the sobering pall of an election, and continue to meet in front of oncoming deadlines. That even though you lost days of sleep, that you answered more emails than you thought existed on the internet, that you pissed away more time watching youtube clips than you did studying, that any error you made

Elizabeth Flux

Freelance Writer (Film Ink, The Punch, Subterranean Death Cult)

When I edited On Dit in 2011, I saw a lot of things I otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to. The first peek at the early work of young writers, illustrators and photographers, some of whom will go on to doing completely unrelated things, some of whom are looking for a creative outlet, and some of whom will go on to have their own Wikipedia page. I saw outrage at an article called ‘Leggings are not Pants’. I saw red after a virtual slap in the face regarding backpedalling on our budget. I also saw my co-editors with masking tape on their faces and bulldog clips in their hair as well as bright lights flashing and shadowy figures darting out of the corner of my eye – apparently hallucination from sleep deprivation is a real thing. I can’t sum up the year, and I definitely can’t explain the impact On Dit has had on my life. I can’t put in to words how lucky I feel to have had the opportunity to work with two men who I can’t imagine not being in my life from now on. I can’t understand how we managed to ruin so much crockery. I also can’t seem to stop starting all my sentences the same way - probably because I can’t edit my own work. Oh well, like last year, I’m tied to a computer as the deadline approaches. Guess that means it’s time to look at pictures of basset hounds running.

Throughout the year we’ve been featuring pieces from On Dit’s eighty years. Mostly they’ve been funny, or bizarre, or curious. Here’s one we found genuinely affecting: a series of cartoons by Jim Cain, in the Vietnam War supplement of Volume Volume 36, Issue 7, June 20, 1968.

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(off-campus)

MISSING THE (HALL)MARK words: holly ritson art: madeleine karutz My family is the type of family that has ‘birthday months’. You know, you get to celebrate ‘your birthday’ for the whole month leading up to the actual date. We’re all about breakfasts in bed (Coco-Pops come but once a year), family dinners, and being woken up at 7am to open presents before work. So I guess it seems kind of understandable that we also make a big deal about any other excuses for celebration throughout the year – Hallmark celebrations, if you will. But when this year’s Father’s Day fell on the same weekend as a South Australian rogaining event (google it), and some serious post-election recovery, a noticeable lack of ‘family time’ got me thinking about what the real significance of these apparently arbitrary events might be. Undermining the meaningfulness of familial observances, there are of course the usual comments about unnecessary commercialisation. Every year we groan about the fact that Mother’s Day cards come out on Easter Monday and that the passing of Father’s Day apparently gives shops permission to get into the Christmas spirit, in early September. It often seems that retailers capitalise on our desire to establish strong and meaningful bonds with those around us, encouraging spending as a way to demonstrate how much we care. But

when corporations deny creating holidays for commercial gain, how much truth is there in statements to the effect that they dictate who we appreciate, and when, and how much (we spend on them)? Hallmark, a self-proclaimed leader in the ‘personal expressions’ industry, believes that ‘life is a special occasion.’ Corny as. But we buy that shit up, big time. In 2007, Americans sent 2.2 billion Christmas cards, 187 million Valentine’s Day Cards,1 and 151 million and 104 million lucky mums and dads respectively received little cardboard rectangles professing varying degrees of love and gratitude. While ‘honoured’ that we associate them with holidays and big milestones in life – the ‘Hallmark’ Holidays – Hallmark claims it cannot ‘take credit’ for creating these holidays, and merely responds to the general public that accepts and give meanings to significant dates. Hallmark’s deferential comments of course allude to the ridiculousness of the whole ‘industry’, an industry that insists we take time to celebrate the little moments of ‘real life, not ideal life’. Because ‘real life’ surely involves spontaneous musical cards, puns 1. Not including your ‘and none for Gretchen Weiners’ variety of classroom Valentines.

and poetry, at $5 a pop. In determining which holidays to commemorate, Hallmark claims they pay attention to consumer trends, considering factors such as ‘sendability’: how likely it is that people will go to the effort of sending a card, and whether the size of the market justifies the production costs. They’ve recently realised the market potential in producing Spanish language Cinco de Mayo cards in America. So if corporations are merely responding to what people wish to wish to other people, how do these celebrations come about? Cultural practices, religious significance, and just simple efforts to make other people feel loved, dammit, all help Noun’s Days develop into meaningful events in our lives – events that are totally worth taking a Sunday off work to walk up Mt Lofty with mum.

Mother’s Day 2 On the ‘second Sunday in May’ we all are reminded, somewhat forcibly in my case, to take the time to recognise and appreciate the women in our lives who we call mum. And while mums may love the bounty that the 2. Yes, it’s singular possessive. Anna Jarvis wanted each family to honour their mother, not to have a plural possessive, commemorating all mothers in the world.

commercialised aspects of Mother’s Day bring, it’s worth considering how the date came about. While we might think a bunch of flowers or some fresh croissants show we care, our efforts don’t quite match up to those of Anna Jarvis. In 1907, Jarvis celebrated the first ‘Mother’s Day’ as a memorial to her late mother, a woman who established work clubs to improve public health and care for wounded soldiers. By 1914, after campaigning to government with various civil society organisations, the date became nationally recognised across America. The extraordinary efforts made by Jarvis to ensure the celebration of motherhood in general left little time for her to work on her own motherhood, meaning that a childless Jarvis never experienced the presumably life-affirming experience of being obliged to eat breakfast in bed made by the sneezed-on hands of her own children. Perhaps embittered by this, Jarvis spent most of her life campaigning against the celebration of Mother’s Day, apparently concerned by the rampant commercialisation of the date. Thankfully, Jarvis, who lamented the ‘petty sentiments’ of children lazily giving printed cards, died well before the age of e-cards and Facebook posts to the ‘Bestest Mum

In The WORLD!’ and the likes from friends hoping for an invite to the next catered-by-Mum party. For some local content, while most of the elements of Mother’s Day in our 911-dialling, trick-or-treating society stem from American customs, the tradition of gift-giving is true blue. In 1924, Janet Heyden, a Sydneysider, started a movement to collect gifts for lonely, aged mothers. Retailers quickly caught on to the universality of needing to buy gifts for mum, and the commercialisation of that unconditional bond between mother and child began. Around the world, the history of the celebration provides all kinds of commentary on social norms and expectations. In 20th century Germany and France the date was used as an opportunity to encourage childbearing: swanky medals were awarded annually to mothers with large families. Given that the policy didn’t necessarily work – France decided to appreciate all mothers, Germany to celebrate the nationalised ideal of motherhood – perhaps free childcare or massage vouchers might have been more encouraging. Throughout the Arab world, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the 21st of March, the first day of Spring

in the northern hemisphere, alluding to ideas about new life, change and cute, baby animals. Naww. And here I was thinking an Arab Spring was all political and such.

Father’s Day Considering the gender debates PAGE that flowed through the 20th 31 century, it’s understandable that (off-campus) Father’s Day followed soon after Mother’s. While there’s contention over who first had the progressive idea that both parents should be equally acknowledged, the most widely accepted story is that of Sonora Smart Dodd. In 1909, Dodd requested of her Arkansas church that Father’s Day be celebrated on June 5th, her single parent, veteran father’s birthday. By the 1930s, campaigns to achieve national recognition of the event, perhaps in acknowledgement of the role of fathers in a Depressed America, were recommenced. Unlike Jarvis, Dodd acknowledged the important role of commercial bodies in establishing a successful event. With the help of tie and tobacco pipe manufacturing companies, and the New York Associated Men’s Wear Retailers, Dodd was able to promote the celebration. Funnily enough, people weren’t so keen on the overt commercialisation of their family

relationships at this point, and social commentary targeted the 32 (off-campus) attempts to replicate the success of selling Mother’s Day. Eventually, as happens, retail won out, though it wasn’t until the 1970s that Nixon found the political impetus to declare a national holiday. Good on you, Nixon. PAGE

Evidently there’s more to these celebrations than what teams of copywriters and illustrators (who I assume are paid in warm fuzzies and good times) think mother/ fatherhood means. I mean, these are the kind of people who write Mother’s Day cards for cat owners (yes, I have received one of these cards, it was great). So while it’s easy enough to dismiss the whole spiel about celebrating real life as advertorial talk, maybe there is more substance to these dates than we suspect. After all, these celebrations were started by individuals who cared passionately enough about something, or someone, to encourage everyone to do the same. But while it appears that corporate entities have taken advantage of these situations, the fact that so many billions of people around the world now celebrate Mother’s and Father’s days is surely indicative how highly we value our relationships, and the meaning we attach to them. Ultimately, does it really matter why we celebrate the impact that people around us have on our lives? While I’ll be the first to decry statements such as ‘that’s just half

the story of Hallmark – because it’s not just about us. It’s about you’ as tear-jerking, card-selling, soppy bullshit, maybe big business isn’t totally off the mark. Despite the existential crisis that it sparked, first year anthropology taught me something pretty profound about how we create the society we live in. Put simply, things are meaningful because we give them meaning. The traditions that each family or community have are developed over years of shared experience, the small details adding importance and weight to the event. If it’s only one day a year that we take the time to cook dad’s favourite meal and for once make him a cup of tea just the way he likes it, and that’s important to us, then great. It doesn’t detract from how important the relationship is every other day of the year, nor does it become meaningless because you’ve chosen to celebrate dad on the same day as everyone else in the country. In fact, there’s something to be said for the communal celebration of relationships as a further development of social capital. But that’s probably enough anthropological theory for now. For what it’s worth, Valentine’s Day is only 5 months away now. I won’t be having any candlelit dates or buying red lacy lingerie. But if the ‘be mine’ heart shaped cards I send to my friends make at least one of them smile, then I’d say that’s cause for celebration. ◊

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(off-campus)

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(off-campus)

IN CONVERSATION: HOLOCAUST DENIER FREDRICK TOBEN words: naomi traeger

Gerald Fredrick Toben is a German-born Australian citizen, and the founder and former director of the ‘Adelaide Institute’. In 1999, in Germany, he was tried for ‘offending the memory of the dead’, and served a seven-month prison term. In 2009, he served three months in jail for contempt of court. Today, calls himself a ‘ holocaust questioner’. Naomi Traeger sat down to talk with him. If you saw Dr Fredrick Toben on the street, you would probably take him as a well-natured man in his late sixties, with a full head of white hair, a bulbous nose, and light blue eyes. I was forewarned of his character, and I saw an old man: a face knotted with wrinkles, deep with worry, and cold blue eyes. He saw me, with my blonde roots poking through my mahogany-dyed hair, pale skin, deep blue eyes. TOBEN: You have very German features. Very good. [Laughs] When he sat down for the interview, he quickly slipped into the role of teacher, as was his career for over twenty-five years. I was no longer the interviewer; I was his pupil. It was an exercise in futility to try and reaffirm my control, and a sheer feat of endurance to merely sit and listen. Mr Toben remarked that the German language was perfectly designed to plan things. English

seems to be a language in which to rant. Quite a good deal of this ranting was regarding his career, not as a teacher, but as a Holocaust denier – though he does not attest to this label. ‘You can’t deny something that never happened,’ says Dr Toben. Dr Toben seemed to want to focus on Auschwitz in particular, as that is acclaimed as the ‘main’ extermination camp. He claims that there is no documentation whatsoever that Auschwitz was used as an extermination camp during the Third Reich. According to this man, it was a mortuary, then a bomb shelter during the war, and then it was labelled a gas chamber. ‘A friend of mine went to Germany, and he went on a tour of Auschwitz—’ I was promptly interrupted, and Dr Toben explained as patiently as they could to me that the gas chamber on that tour was a post-war reconstruction. ‘That’s a fancy way of saying it’s a fake,’ said Dr Toben.

He then went through the various impracticalities that mark the ‘modern holocaust narrative’ as a complete fabrication. TOBEN: So the room is full of poisonous gas... how could they’ve safely removed the bodies from the gas chamber? ME: Wouldn’t they’ve had gas masks? [Pause] TOBEN No. He then went on to explain the fact that even with gas masks, the removalists would not be safe: TOBEN: The gas gets on the skin, and then it is absorbed. Dr Toben went through the mathematics for me, graciously assisting a curious but underperforming student. ‘1000 people were gassed at a time. Once the screaming had stopped... the bodies were burned in the furnaces... They could only burn 15 bodies at once... It takes 1.5

hours to completely incinerate one body.’ He put forward that, with these calculations, they would still be burning bodies now, if there were 6 million dead. To budding historians: this is the consequence of stacking assumptions. Dr Toben also claims that when you see a photograph inmate of one of these camps - walking skeletons with skin stretched over the bones - you are not witnessing the result of starvation. Typhoid fever, according to Dr Toben – a philosophy graduate – can within two weeks produce such a result. His revisionism is not restricted to the Holocaust. TOBEN: Now, the 911 attacks: was it an inside job? ME: No. TOBEN: [Laughs] Of course it was! The Bush administration, according to Dr Toben, meticulously planned and carried out a mass attack on their own people, slaughtering approximately 2800 people in one day. I wished to clarify with Dr Toben why the Bush administration would commit such an atrocity. ‘Because he wanted to go to war,’ he said. On the subject of diseases. Dr Toben believes that many of the most detrimental diseases that

plague our world today – namely cancer and AIDS – are also lies. These lies, he divulged, are perpetrated by the pharmaceutical industry, and that the victims are only just too ready to believe these lies. ‘The problem is,’ he said to me with authoritative vitriol, ‘that people play the victim. You win with your mind.’ He believes, for example, that chemotherapy is the killer, not the cancer, and that the only way to treat it is to fight it off yourself. Every single victim of this vile disease, according to Toben’s logic, has died because they had not thought positively enough, or because they were not strong enough; those who have survived have not done so due to the efforts of modern medical science. I tried to ask him what he thinks tumours are: manifestations of bad thoughts, perhaps? But I was cut off mid-sentence with his explanation of the ‘true’ nature of AIDS. He does not believe that HIV is a normal sexually transmitted disease – but that it can only be translated via anal penetration. TOBEN: Male semen, entered through the anus... into the bloodstream... is toxic. Homosexuality... is the plague of Africa. ‘Under the national socialists in Germany, women were treasured.’

He was referring to the state-run campaigns to convince women to stay at home and have as many babies as they could. ‘If a woman had four children, she would be given a prize.’ I then enquired, out of curiosity, whether women were celebrated for getting an education and developing skills PAGE 35 and having careers. His answer was (off-campus) simple: ‘You’re a fool if you’re going against your nature.’ He snuck a downwards glance. The interview lasted for one hour. I had asked only a handful questions in that time, none of which were ones I had planned. For ten minutes afterwards, I sat. He had shaken my hand when he left. My right hand grasped my mug of coffee as I tried to stop trembling. Accepted knowledge must be challenged, free speech should be encouraged, and the German National Socialists slaughtered millions of people. Mass graves are still being dug up, sifted through, catalogued and cleared. Those mass graves, those neglected bodies, those ghosts of suffering are undeniable, and sadly may never wholly be put to rest. History must not be denied, refused, rejected. It must be pinned down, catalogued, recorded. Lest we forget. ◊

YOU SAID/THEY SAID words: philip curran

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(off-campus)

So you think of yourself as the next Oscar Wilde? A fine wordsmith perhaps, providing nutritious morsels of literary genius to the masses on a daily basis? Perhaps you even write for On Dit (your mother must be proud!). Well, here is a small collection of quotes

from better people than you in order to prove that most of the things you say on a daily basis have already been said so much more profoundly, humorously or craftily than you could ever aspire to achieve. I’ve gone to all this effort to prove you’re nothing special.

you said... ‘I’m sorry. I’m not normally that quick in bed, I swear.’

they (fyodor dostoyevsky) said... ‘My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?’

you said... ‘Baaaaabe! I do so totally love you!’

they (jean-paul sartre) said... ‘It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not ‘one thing in my life’ - not even the most important - because my life no longer belongs to me because...you are always me.’

you said... ‘Twitter is bullshit. #Bullshit’

they (robert wilinsky) said... ‘We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.’

you said... ‘Fuck men!’

they (charlotte whitton) said... ‘Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.’

you said... ‘Fuck women!’

they (friedrich nietzsche) said... ‘Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.’

you said...

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(off-campus)

‘Bono is such a wanker!’

they (bono) said... ‘Look, I’m sick of Bono and I AM Bono.’

you said... ‘I’ll be baaacckk!’

they (everyone) said... ‘Oh come on, even you know you’re quoting The Terminator there.’

you said... ‘Those ‘shrooms were off the wall bro.’

they (winston churchill) said... ‘I had a feeling once about Mathematics — that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me — the Byss and Abyss. I saw — as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show — a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.’

you said... ‘I can’t believe they don’t serve chai latte here!?!?’

they (albert camus) said... ‘Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?’

I said: Suppose I’ve spoken too quickly? Maybe I haven’t been fair to the precious, unique and gifted snowflakes out there? Perhaps you are in fact the creator of a new order of letters that someday someone else would think to bother repeating in the exact same order? Surely there’s a quote to give those self-doubting superfluities out there some hope...

They said: (bonus points for knowing who!) ‘A thousand paths there are that have never yet been trodden; a thousand healths and hidden islands of life. Unexhausted and undiscovered are the human and the human earth even now.’

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STUFF YOU LIKE

(stuff you like)

jackie chan’s facebook: genevieve novak likes this.

opossum - opossum: walter marsh likes this.

Do you like jovial, unassuming middle-aged men who happen to be ex-movie stars? Do you like when they pose with golden retrievers, cats in handbags and drawings of themselves? Then you probably like Jackie Chan’s Facebook page at least half as much as I do.

Destitute fans of the Mint Chicks year sure have an abundance of sweet albums to mop their tears since the Kiwi band split. Barely a year after guitarist Ruben unleashed his falsetto on a bunch of crunchy hip hop beat samples as Unknown Mortal Orchestra in 2011, brother and ex-bandmate Cody Nielsen’s solo debut as Opossom paddles around a similarly funky patch of their musical gene pool. But while UMO was almost too cool for school with its washed out vocals and psychedelic jams, Opossom abounds with goofy energy like a pre-beer gut/death Keith Moon. Most entertainingly however, it features famed 90s singer Bic Runga sitting shotgun on keys and harmonies, confirming my suspicion that everyone in New Zealand is at most two degrees of separation from Neil Finn.

His cover photo is the happiest I’ve ever seen a 58-year-old man. It might be the happiest I’ve ever seen anyone. He does yoga, (‘Ahh!’ he says in a plank on top of a fitness ball), he works a Texan tuxedo with a loud and proud confidence, he rides segways with Chris Tucker, and I’m pretty sure he plays dress-up on a regular basis. If it surprises you that his page describes him as an international superstar, you need to educate yourself. Jackie Chan’s Facebook, like Jackie Chan himself, is probably the best thing to ever happen to planet earth.

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(stuff you like)

barbra streisand - a christmas album: fiona coles likes this. There was clearly no way this album could be bad. It’s Barbra. It’s Christmas music. These two things alone are awesome: together they’re the very definition of epic. Her version of Jingle Bells is bizarre - like someone slipped a toddler a litre of straight red cordial, but songs like ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ and ‘White Christmas’ kick everyone else’s covers right in the pants. Also, according to this album, My Favourite Things is a Christmas song. WHO KNEW? Clearly, it’s also educational. The album that just keeps giving!

lifehacking: casey briggs likes this. Put simply, lifehacking is the art of automating regularly performed work processes, with the goal of improving efficiency and twirling, Twirling, TWIRLING toward freedom. From manual tricks to avoid procrastinating to computer scripts that will shave valuable seconds off of the time it takes you to check your email, lifehacking has burst out from being a thing that nerds do, to a thing that nerds both do and then talk about. Plus it’s really sexy. The trick is to make sure that you’re actually saving yourself time, and not spending days slaving over that Perl script that will send you a text message every time there is a meteor shower on Jupiter.

the smashing pumpkins - oceania: oshadhaaluthwalalikesthis. The smorgasbord of musical genres found on this album, typical to The Smashing Pumpkin’s form, works a charm. This is the kind of music you’d listen to whilst lying on a sandy beach in the late afternoon, after an energetic splash around in the water. It manages to be eclectic and warm and true to the Pumpkins vibe. If you’ve never listened to their music before, this is an excellent stepping-stone; Oceania is like the calm older sister of a more emotional, angry, loving younger brother.

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(miscellany)

LAMENTING THE GOON TAX. by matilde weise

Gone shall be our Diamond Nights! Our Passion will Pop no more. The Golden Oaks will be ripped from the ground, Berri’s Estates blighted by war. Jovial Gossips will flee the town From which Bowlers have already Run. There’s not much hope left for us now; Old Stanley thinks we’re done. The Coolabah tree shall offer no shade; Nor will the Tangled Vine. Our Sunnyvale will surely be deserted If the pollies touch our wine.

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(miscellany)

APARTMENTS. by ryan schultz

Crumbling façade, bricks worn, smashed windows, smashed mirrors A couple fucking in time to the swing of a pendulum covered in viscera Addict exhales, places guitar against amplifier and fades out to the wail of feedback Man cradles his limp cock in one hand and stares absently at the ceiling Boy scared of the dark hides underneath the covers with his toy saviour Father stares at his dripping daughter in bed and can’t stop crying Girl jumps from the balcony and for a moment she’s flying.

TRASH

There are two old men that spend their days periodically searching for used bottles and cans in the garbage bins sparsely situated in the vicinity of my employment. Occasionally they will courageously venture inside and fossick through our garbage bins, ignoring masked looks of disdain from employees and customers. They take the bottles and cans to a recycling plant an indeterminate distance away. These men are not friends, are never seen together, and perhaps each does not even know of the other’s existence. They are rival bottle-collectors.

The first man is the older of the two, short in stature with wavy white hair that is sometimes parted to one side. He has a dark complexion with deep-set wrinkles, etched into his face from the overuse of only two facial expressions, the extremes of happiness and despair. He has a large nose and a gap between his two front teeth, which are yellow and appear unhealthy, probably due to gum disease. There are larger gaps where teeth have fallen out. He rides a large tricycle covered in dirt and rust and has made a stand that is attached behind the seat and between the dual back wheels where he keeps a stained hessian bag full of his findings for the day. He pedals effortlessly but with determination, like all the bottles will be his one day if he works hard enough. I often see him cycling towards me from a long distance away. Sometimes I just see his tricycle propped against a bench and know instantly that he’s around. Dark thoughts fester in my mind as I fantasize about moving his tricycle to a secluded area where there are no

words: ryan schultz photo: sam young

garbage bins, where it will never be found by him again, a critical loss to his bottle-collecting efforts.

dictators or racial slurs directed towards inhabitants of the Middle East, laughing to himself.

I’ve seen this man haphazardly over the last three years but have only recently ventured into conversation with him. By appearance he seems potentially suicidal but as soon as words are spoken between us his face brightens and he smiles and makes jokes that I don’t understand, laughing at them quietly. He squints his eyes when he laughs.

The second man is slightly younger, in his mid-forties. He is tall and thin with short brown hair that naturally stands on end. He wears large glasses with a thick lens causing his eyes to be magnified and appear freakishly large. They are permanently stricken with terror.

It’s the beginning of summer and an oppressively hot day when I ask him how he copes riding his tricycle in the heat. He delves briefly into his past, informing me that he was born and raised in a very cold country but that he had acclimatised to our weather. He has a vaguely European accent. He asks me questions about my occupation and I answer as succinctly as possible, knowing where the conversation is headed. He says he once used to be employed, but doesn’t explain the termination of his position. Sadly, with a gesture to his bag of bottles, he says I can’t keep doing this forever. He repeats lines of dialogue and observations like we’ve never spoken before, making it hard to learn anything more about him in the small amount of time allotted to our chance encounters. When the conversation strays to something new he often mumbles, and this gibberish combined with his accent means I can barely understand what he’s saying most of the time and I nod vacantly. He normally leaves me with a garbled joke concerning global corporations earning billions of dollars or historic Communist

This man is also deaf and refuses to wear hearing aids. He still manages to communicate with people but shouts the words, unable to gauge the volume of his speech. Witnessing his interactions with other people for the first time is frightening. Conversation is a last resort for this man. If he can make do with a hand gesture he will rely on this instead. He prefers a thumbs-up above all others. His bottle-collecting technique differs greatly from that of his rival. He will find an empty shopping trolley and fill it with bottles and cans, wheeling it around quickly with long strides. This can prove hazardous, almost colliding with customers on numerous occasions. There was one incident where he left his trolley to rummage through a bin, unaware that the trolley had rolled away, gathered momentum and toppled over in the midst of a busy parking lot, spraying rolling bottles and cans all over the bitumen. He turned back from the garbage bin to where he thought his trolley stood immobile and upon discovering the inadvertent carnage uttered a demonic noise from the back of his throat. He then held up cars while he filled the trolley for the second time. I have seen him on a few occasions

at a local bar with a pint of beer in his hand. Each time he has been leaning with his back against a wall, leering at the pretty young girls as they walk by. He is uncontrollably enamoured by them. Some have confided that they fear for their safety while in his presence. Aware that a carnal relationship with them is impossible he devises other ways to initiate physical contact with them. I know of at least three different stores, including our own, where he will choose the most attractive female employee and develop a complicated hand-shake complete with high-fives and obscure hand-positions, so that every time he sees the girl from that point onwards she will feel compelled to complete the hand-shake again, out of pity, out of fear. He seems oblivious to their diminishing enthusiasm after each repetition. I know almost nothing about his background and personal life other than that which I have already recounted; nobody wants to be shouted at by a strange deaf man. I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen him anywhere for weeks now and can come only to negative conclusions concerning his disappearance, the loss of hearing and poor eyesight offering multiple possibilities for an early demise. The man with the tricycle still works as hard as ever, but for what reason? I have had discussions with customers and employees about him and there is a strong rumour circulating that this man is incredibly wealthy and prefers to work in miserly conditions. He may possibly be an environmentalist. The futures of these men remain uncertain. â&#x2014;&#x160;

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(columns)

2-MINUTE HATE BIG BROTHER THOMAS A. MACKAY thinks ignorance is strength. Big Brother died. No, I’m not alluding to Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ nonsense. Nor am I alluding to any notions of a Post-Cold War obsolescence of Orwell (which should never be taken seriously – viva la Orwell!). I’m referring to the reality television program.1 But like a certain culturally significant two-thousand-year-old literary figure, Big Brother has been resurrected. Actually, rebooted. Rebranded. He/it is back and, if you believe the promo hype, bigger than ever. Reconfigured for the 21st Century’s teenage years. Like a fine wine, Big Brother has matured with age, and the televisual world will once again be graced with his omnipresence, in and outside the ‘house’. At least part of this is true. Big Brother is omnipresent in a sense. Channel Nine has saturated its advertising slots with promos for it. If you caught even a single televised Olympic event, you’d be very aware of this. You’d be well acquainted with the dancing and all that. Big Brother is back and you should know to care about it. It will be fun, exciting, jubilant. Yeah! Nah. I guarantee you that this is the same old shit and a fucking piece of garbage featuring Australia’s most vacuous and shallow. Like watching the ‘Fashion Club’ from Daria without the acerbic satire. Hooray. 1. You probably already figured as much, you filthy philistine.

If Nine really wanted to do something really interesting, they’d revise Big Brother to align with Nineteen-Eighty-Four and make the whole house a sort of Room 101. Or something like Bentham’s/ Foucault’s Panopticon. Or maybe recreate the ‘Stanford Experiment’. Contestants become subjects. Rather than a house full of 20-30 somethings talking about sex, turkey-slapping each other and concocting a ridiculous persona which might lead to a good 5 minutes of post-house fame (anyone remember SarahMarie?), something resembling the Hunger Games would be excellent and worth watching. Imagine it. Forcing society’s mindless to endure a mentally strenuous experiment for the sake of entertaining of the mindful. Putting the hamsters in the maze. This will have the extended effect of giving the psychology kids something worth analysing. Big Brother as a concept has a lot of potential, but that’s not why you buy Big Brother. You buy Big Brother because you want to milk a cash-cow. While I am, of course, being hyperbolic and would not actually like to watch an operating Room 101 or Hunger Games scenario, any interesting approach to Big Brother is hindered by having a market that really wouldn’t appreciate what would essentially become a behavioural science project. What frightens me the most is that Big Brother may actually represent a microcosm of Australia’s contemporary mainstream society. This isn’t topdown, but bottom-up. We’re turning into a society consisting of bimbos and mimbos totally fried by consumerism, which would only be encouraged by this program. Should this concern actually be true we’ve more than secured a dystopian society. Airstrip One and Oceania might actually be a preferable reality. ◊

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MIDNIGHT MUSINGS CHANGE OSHADHA ALUTHWALA is changing like the seasons, or a printer cartridge. When I was sixteen, my mum and I went on holiday to Sri Lanka. While over there, we spent a day at a fancy hotel – eating ridiculously overpriced meals, people watching, and flirting with the hotel staff (don’t worry guys, my mum’s single). As the sun began to set, we headed over to the beach. Separate from the enclosed area of the hotel, the beach had light-clay coloured sand and was filled with the noise of seagulls and local children. My mum wasn’t keen on the water, but I dove right in and swam out as far as I could. The year had been a long one; my grandmother was very ill in hospital, and I felt like my world was falling apart. But while I was out there, being gently tugged by the currents and with the sun on my face, it felt like regardless of what happened for the rest of my life, I’d have this moment of stability in a relatively unstable world. It’s very easy to forget these moments. Life is full of the hustle and bustle of cars and bad hair days and assignments and nasty people and loads of other things to focus on. It’s so easy to get caught up in life that you can miss out on it altogether. The past term in particular has been hard for everyone. We’re reaching the crux-points of our courses – practicals and assignments have piled up, and exams are looming on the horizon. It’s as though a cataclysmic event has been forecast, and only those at University are aware of it. You’ve probably noticed it too; more people

are scuttling about with piles of textbooks and heavily burdened backpacks than ever before. For me, this time has been tumultuous. Friendship circles have morphed, responsibilities have deepened, and I’ve experienced some form of minor heartache at every turn. As this is something that happens every year, I don’t think that enough emphasis (or any emphasis, really) is placed on personal growth during our degrees. I don’t mean religion. I’m sure that most people are able to maintain their faith and customs during this time. I’m referring to the importance of developing an inner, personal strength that can withstand whatever life throws your way. Change is the only invariable variable in our lives, and while we may make plans for our lives, ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans’ (love that John Lennon). And though it’s difficult to remember now, our degrees aren’t our lives. Obviously, I don’t recommend diving into the ocean to discover yourself, especially if you can’t actually swim. However, I think it’s important, as exams are on their way and some of you are graduating, to take some time out to just look internally and see how everything’s going. If you ever feel like there’s too much difficult stuff going on, don’t hesitate to seek help. You don’t want to lose yourself whilst taking your first steps in finding your career. In the end, would that be worth it? ◊

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DIVERSIONS

HORRIBLE SCOPE

(answers on page 5)

From Vol. 57, Issue 14, 1989

TARGEDOKU Find as many words as you can using the letters on the Sudoku grid (including a 9 letter word). Words must be four letters or more and include the highlighted letter. Use the letters to solve the Sudoku (normal sudoku rules apply).

I U

I G

Hint: non-sexual tongue lashing.

E T

G T

N R

IN SEARCH OF A GOOD MEAL

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Find all the ingredients in the word search below, then name the delicacy that they form. Hint: Preparation time 0:30, cooking time 4:20.

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