On Dit Issue 80.3

ON DIT 80.3

contents. featured contributors

3

letters

4

wild horse

5

vox pop

6

president(s)

8

student services

10

anorexia

12

so you think you’re not racist

15

pap smears

16

bikes for refugees

18

jade monkey

20

open mic comedy

22

ethiopia

24

idiot box

29

a review (in pictures)

31

creative

34

how to: master march madness

38

stuff you like

40

open letter

42

columns

44

diversions

46

retrospective

48

Editors: Galen Cuthbertson, Seb Tonkin & Emma Jones Front cover artwork by Alex Weiland.

Inside front cover artwork by Chloe McGregor; Inside back cover artwork by Stephen Lang.

On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union Published 9/03/2012 Visit ondit.com.au, or hit us up on facebook.com/onditmagazine. Go on. You know you want to.

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(miscellany)

On March 7th, at 9:53pm, I got a Facebook message from a prospective contributor: ‘shotgun writing the kony article for on dit’. You won’t find that (apparently inescapable!) article in this issue – partly because there isn’t time or space to edit and lay one out before print, and partly because I laugh in the face of shotguns.

But the message highlighted, in its own casual way, On Dit’s limitations. There’s about a week, give or take, between us sending our finished .pdfs to the printers and the copies actually arriving. The content of the magazine is (ideally) finalised a couple of days before that. For a student magazine like On Dit, that’s usually a manageable annoyance. But the Kony Thing makes us feel pretty stone-age.

The Kony Thing, if you’ve been under a rock (or don’t spend your time ‘social networking’), stems from a half-hour video put online by non-profit organisation Invisible Children, about a Ugandan guerrilla leader named Joseph Kony, who has committed some genuine atrocities that we can safely add to the endless and essentially unrankable global list of genuine atrocities.

A week from now, when you’re reading this, I’ll bet you’ve at least heard of Kony 2012. I could be wrong. Right now, for me, the remarkable thing about the movement isn’t really the issue itself (though I by no means want to downplay its seriousness), or even the motives of Invisible Children (see visiblechildren.tumblr.com). What’s really

interesting, to me, is that the Kony Thing wasn’t confined to the people I’d normally expect to publicly express an interest in foreign human rights issues – student politicians were sharing this right alongside my V8-obsessed cousin.

A public Facebook search for ‘Kony’ revealed someone tagging Kim Kardashian for her opinion and a British underage club night promising to put the doco up on their projector. In just a few hours I went from being amazed that something ‘political’ was going so viral to being amazed that anything at all was going so viral. Last night, Emma saw three different people watching Kony on her bus. Rebecca Black could only dream.

Kony 2012 is a beast perfectly crafted to carve a swathe through the web. It doesn’t just implore you to share – its message is inseparable from the act of sharing, in the mess of banners and likes and $30 action kits and critical blog posts. But it feels like that’s the paradigm now. And I think the question we should be asking isn’t ‘should we all be caring about Kony?’ but ‘why haven’t we been caring this much about anything else?’

Anyway. Thanks for letting us fool around with this old gal for three issues. We’ll see you again after the mid-semester break, at which point you can, probably, expect The Kony Article.

Love, Seb (and Galen and Emma)

Photo: Chris Arblaster

featured contributors Ben Reichstein

Alex Weiland

Sam Prendergast

(bikes for refugees; p 18-19)

(cover)

(weighing in; p 12-14)

Ben is a 4th year Arts students (History Major), after 3 years on the Law/Arts treadmill. His past contributions to On Dit have been either about bikes or Occupy Wall Street, so all stereotype accusations: this way please. You can find him procrastinating in the Hub, arguing in the Exeter or trying to sleep in the On Dit office.

He wishes he’d had his vox popped so he could have said ‘always call a spade a spade / be like Chuck D, never be like Favor Flav’ to the first question.

Alex is in her third year of Architectural Engineering (and German). She recently completed work experience at a construction site and contrary to her mother’s claims that her testosterone levels would rise, she came away without a noticeable increase in facial hair and now even owns a pair of fuck-off steel caps. Alex was generally described onsite as ‘that ranga from down at the office’, who ‘has a handshake like a man’ and was ‘better looking than Sue’, so she guesses they liked her. Or at least more than Sue.

Sam likes bluegrass music, frozen bananas, and putting her fingers in hot candle wax when no one’s looking. She dislikes capsicum and unexpected noises. This is her fifth and final year as an undergrad.

She’s spending it completing her law degree and lamenting the loss of her arts degree, which she finished last year in Virginia, USA.

The On Dit editors would like to thank the following cool dudes for their help with Issue 3...

Sam, Ali, Max and Molly for distribution. Ben for making tea and popping voxes. Seb’s mum. Woolworths for having chocolate on special. Maxine from Beauty & The Bastard for the tix. All of our Fringe reviewers. Maxwell for the Macca’s. Joseph ‘2012’ Kony.

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correspondence PAGE

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in which ON DIT asks its facebook likers: ‘what do y’all think about this kony thing?’

Let’s talk about Syria. Or should we wait half a decade, and then start a Facebook group calling for Al Assad’s arrest?

Joshua Andrew Basford He is an evil evil man. The world will be just a bit better for him being imprisoned.

Matthew Mayo Boland I find the blind cries of ‘send in the US military’ a little bit disconcerting ... purely because I can’t think of any point in history where the US has done something noble without political or economic benefit.

I’m not being a naysayer - and I think raising awareness is definitely the right way to go - but AFTER we achieve awareness, then we need to ask HOW we are going to achieve this goal.

What happens when we execute Kony? Or even arrest him? Yay awareness, and yay Team America.

We can all pat ourselves on the back and continue watching Friends, while one, or multiple members of his army (and dozens of other dangerous movements) begin the cycle again.

Like I began, awareness is great. Be aware. Spread the word. But don’t think this is going to end. This fight never ends. These situations have roots 70 years deep on the surface.

Be aware. But also be aware that these things don’t go away, and you have to fight them everyday for the rest of your life.

If John De Jong really ‘respect[s] the awareness thing’ perhaps he should give it its fair due rather than skipping over it after a cursory glance. Arguably, the ‘awareness thing’ is the most important part of this initiative. In recent times we’ve seen hundreds of online youth attempts to get involved in spreading real issues and effect real outcomes in the world. In his blog he roundly slams these as “slacktivism”. Rather than blindly criticising the way it wants to effect a (in my mind) noble goal - bringing to justice someone who by his crimes has put himself against all humanity, perhaps we should be focussing on the inspiring part which is the so far successful attempts at transcending slacktivism, providing a template for harnessing online grassroots care to actually create an effect. ...

Throwing around terms like ‘Team America’ doesn’t help. It’s true that we lost great opportunities in failing to bring Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to the ICC and demonstrate what we claim to believe in - justice for all. We allowed extrajudicial (or pseudojudicial) killings instead of a true example of justice.

In reality we’re looking to Team Humanity. And as kitsch or cliché or whatever you might claim that sounds, we need to show what we really believe in through action. And we need a trailblazed and signposted way to guide us. Bringing IN (and not just down) one like Kony will be only a symbol. But how many symbols does it take before what you have is not symbolic any more, but rather cold hard fact?

Tom Keith Graham

John De Jong

Bursting to opine on something that’s in the magazine (or should be)? On Dit accepts your emails at ondit@adelaide.edu.au. Or join a conversation like the above on our facebook page: facebook.com/onditmagazine.

Correction: In Issue 1 we printed a sexual ShineSA. The web address we printed was shinesa.gov.org.au.

A web address that actually works is shinesa.org.au. Sorry! health awareness promotion from

(see page 46; word: voyeurism)

ANSWERS

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U R M Y E S

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E V Y U O M S I R

R S O I Y V M U E

M U I E S R Y O V

Y M R O V E I S U

S O U R M I V E Y

V I E S U Y R M O

wild horse

(miscellany)

5

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VOX POP

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(on-campus)

Jase, 1st year Engineering

Kathryn, 2nd year Arts

Rebecca, 1st year Psychology/Science

1.

1.

2.

1.

‘You’ve only got one shot, do not miss your chance to blow / This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo’.

2. Yes. 3. I’m not that creative – I’m an engineer!

4. Butthead.

5. The construction site.

6. No. My girlfriend always gets worried about it, but I don’t think she ever looks any different.

7. Kony? What’s that?

‘For shizzle my nizzle’.

They can, to a degree.

They’re not female, but they can uphold the beliefs of feminism.

3. I’d lower the price of chocolate.

4. I’m not really offended by swear words. In context, I’d probably say ‘cunt’.

5. Probably the bike sheds.

6. I’m a health freak – I think you have to be in proportion to your body, but as long as it’s not a health risk I guess not.

7. I’ve kind of seen it around, but I don’t know what it is.

‘I can’t tell you what it really is / I can only tell you what it feels like’.

2. To a certain degree. They’re not female, they’re not able to feel what we feel.

3. Get rid of uni on Mondays and Fridays!

4. The ‘C’ word.

5. Hub Central, in the beanbags.

6. If it hurts your health, then yeah, I guess it does.

7. People are a little ignorant.

This has been going on for years.

In which we ask six randomly selected students the following questions...

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

What’s the rap lyric that speaks most to your life?

Can a man be a feminist?

What’s the first thing you’d do if you were elected Prime Minister?

What’s the most offensive swear word you can think of?

Where do you think is the best place to have sex on campus?

Do you think it matters how much you weigh? Why? What do you think about this whole Kony 2012 thing?

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(on-campus)

Michael, 4th year Engineering/Economics

Matt, 1st year Law/Arts

Karmen, 1st year Law/Arts

1.

2.

3.

1.

1.

2.

I don’t listen to rap.

No. He’s a man.

I’d tell the truth and say ‘I’m gonna lie to people’.

4. C U Next Tuesday.

5. On the Barr Smith Lawns.

6. Nope. People are just made differently, I guess.

7. To be honest, I think it’s a phase, just a fad.

‘There ain’t no party like Grandma’s tea party’ from Flight of the Conchords.

2. Yes. 3. I’d reform the high school curriculum.

4. ‘Ambiguous’ – I don’t want to be defined.

5. One of the Skype Booths in the Hub. 6. Yes, for standard of living purposes.

7. I haven’t seen it. Don’t plan to. Don’t think it’s legit.

Kevin G’s rap from Mean Girls.

Yes. If a woman is and a man is arguing with her, it can change his views.

3. I’d support the Kony 2012 campaign financially, but I wouldn’t want to send troops.

4. C. I hate that one. That’s the one I can’t say, ever.

5. That little law room off the Image & Copy Centre.

6. Only when it’s unhealthy.

7. I think it’s really smart that he (Jason Russell of Invisible Children) went through Facebook, but I really hated the guy’s voice. Major issues should get on social media earlier, there’s a huge peer response.

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It’s worth noting that since the quota doubling occurred, course coordinators have increasingly required students to print out course readers and lecture notes themselves, where previously they had been provided by schools. I would suggest that because of this, the actual increase in printing in the University has not changed as dramatically as suggested above.

state of the union Photo: Chris Arblaster

(on-campus)

with CASEY BRIGGS, auu president.

In 2008, the SRC successfully campaigned for undergraduate student printing and internet quotas to be increased. Printing quotas were doubled for all undergraduate students, which meant that students were much less likely to run out of quota (and have to purchase more) for printing important documents like course guides, lecture notes and assignments.

Unfortunately, as of this semester that decision has been largely reversed, almost by stealth. Printing costs have risen by 60%, up to 8c for black and white pages.

Over the period 2008-2010, the amount of printing done by undergraduate students more than doubled (somewhat shockingly, over 14 million pieces of paper were printed by undergraduate students in 2010). The cost for all this extra printing has been taken on by Services and Resources, and the department is not happy.

I support the idea of working to reduce the amount of paper we consume. However, the idea that this change will actually lead to a reduction in paper use is doubtful. The best way to actually do this would be to reduce the need for printing to be happening at all, such as by allowing for assignments to be submitted online (approximately 20% of student printing is assignments).

It is incredibly disappointing that students were not consulted with on this change. I met with Jonathan Pheasant (the Director of Services and Resources) once in January, and he presented this proposal. I outlined some concerns and expressed a willingness to work with him to reduce the need for student printing rather than an arbitrary hike in prices. In response, he said this change was being made no matter what and there was no scope for negotiation.

To make matters worse, Jonathan Pheasant had no intention of informing students of this change (because students can’t complain if they know nothing). It was only when it came to other administrators within the University that the all-student email you received at the beginning of the semester was prepared.

It is important to note that this is not a decision that has been made centrally by the University. This decision was made by a division within Property Services without consultation with other departments.

Indeed, every other staff member that I have spoken with about this issue has shared my concerns.

Unfortunately it is too late to reverse this decision, but I am working on the issue and will try and get the University to commit to reducing the printing requirements on students. I will keep you up to date on any further developments on this issue.

Casey Briggs President, Adelaide University Union Email: casey.briggs@adelaide.edu.au Twitter: @CaseyBriggs

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In an age where you can buy an iPod on an American website that is being made in China and have it arrive in Adelaide within a week, it seems bizarre to me that providing lectures and course readers online or even submitting your assignments online is apparently such a difficult thing to do.

Photo: Shaylee Leach

student representative column

with IDRIS MARTIN, src president.

So hopefully after reading Casey’s column on student printing (if you haven’t, read that now) you were pissed off at the small sliver of what is otherwise an excellent part of the university bureaucracy.

But I’m not going to spend this column hating on the increase in printing costs, Casey’s already covered that.

Instead, I want to focus on what this can translate to for students at the University of Adelaide.

It means that maybe our learning can finally arrive in the 21st century, only 12 years after everyone else got here.

It should be pretty obvious what I’m talking about: online learning. Things like online recordings of lectures, course readers being available online for free and online submission of assignments.

Online is the buzzword for this year.

So, the university has upped printing costs by 60% in an attempt to create a more sustainable use of paper? Fair enough, I want to save the environment as well. If we’re going to be serious about reducing our paper usage, how about working towards eliminating 20% of the printing done by students? Namely, the printing off of assignments.

Hope is not lost for the online revolution however.

Our Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Pascale Quester, who only started last year as DVC(A), and her entire department is dedicated to recreating learning with students leading the charge on changes made.

This year, the focus of that recreation is incorporating technology into our learning. And they’ve even said they’re not looking at, in the words of Slavka Kovacevic the Communications Manager of the e-Experience Project, ‘replacing face-to-face interaction’, but rather ‘responding to students’ changing needs.’

This is a very promising start and we, as students, need to respond to this.

The SRC will be running petitions during the next few weeks on online learning and activities, trying to get as many names behind online submission of assignments, online lectures and online course readers being available.

Keep an eye out for us, online obviously as well as on the Barr Smith Lawns. Stop and have a chat to your student representatives.

Hopefully by the end of this year, we’ll have succeeded in getting online course readers, online submission of assignments and recorded online lectures.

Idris Martin President, Student Representative Council Email: idris.martin@student.adelaide.edu.au Twitter: @IdrisMartin

(on-campus)

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(on-campus)

r... u o y m fro p l e h ) of t o l a r (o e l t t i l a ith w y b t ge

s e c i v r e s t n e d stu emm words:

The words ‘student services’ are not usually associated with an increase in excitement among the student body of any educational institution. At my High School, ‘student services’ was something to regard with fear. If you weren’t sent to the student services office to see the Principal, you were sent there to convince the tyrannical woman running the office that you actually did have a headache and weren’t some sort of panadol junkie, or that the signature in your diary was your mum’s, and not a forged attempt to get yourself out of maths class.

Luckily for us, the University of Adelaide employees who staff the ridiculous amount of student services are (in my experience) a friendly and knowledgeable bunch.

Where are these helpful people though? And more importantly, what are the types of services available? Well, here are four services that are essential to helping you tackle life at Uni:

st a forre

Student Centre and Information Services

Transition and Advisory Service

Okay, so this one I’m sure you know about, but do you know how much they do? The Student Centre is located in the Wills building, just behind (or in front, depending on which way you’re coming from) the Hughes building. This is your first point of reference for EVERYTHING. You can also go to Information Services at HUB Central (Levels 3 and 4 of the Plaza building) for a similar service.

Basically, you can enquire about anything Uni-related (facilities, maps, enrolment, card services, online services etc) and they will know. They’re like the Yoda of Adelaide Uni, so be sure to visit them if you’re in need of some wisdom and support.

This service is particularly good for first year students who are struggling to adapt to Uni life. My first few weeks at Uni consisted of walking around campus lost, then going home and crying because I didn’t know how to start my essay (It was a dark time for first-year me). The Transition and Advisory Service is completely confidential and can give you program and faculty specific advice, grants of up to $2000 in cases of financial hardship, and practical assistance with issues affecting study.

E: advisoryservice@ adelaide.edu.au W: adelaide.edu.au/student/ firstyear/advisoryservice

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(on-campus)

Photo: Maxwellian Cooper

Writing Centre (previously the CLPD )

Counselling Service and University Health

Ignorant of this service as a first, second, and third year, I sat up many a night unnecessarily, damning the day that I chose essay-heavy courses. The Writing Centre can help you one-on-one or by group consultation with all types of assignment writing and (wait for it...) referencing. If only I had known! They also run study skills seminars on writing essays and reports.

If you head to the Horace Lamb building you can’t miss these two services. The free Counselling Service provides professional counselling for personal issues such as anxiety and depression. They offer a convenient daily 20-minute drop-in service between 1-4pm, or you can book an appointment for up to 50 minutes. There is an array of colourful brochures outside the centre too; some helpful, and some very, very amusing (I recommend reading ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’). Just around the corner from this is the University Health Centre.

The best thing about this is that you can walk in and get bulk-billed for medical consultations.

W: adelaide.edu.au/clpd/all E: clpd@adelaide.edu.au FB: facebook.com/ WritingCentreUofA

E: counselling.centre@ adelaide.edu.au W: adelaide.edu.au/ conselling_centre , adelaide. edu.au/student/health

Of course, these services are only the beginning of the extensive list that the Uni offers. If you want the full list of student services, contact the all-knowing people at the Student Centre or Information Services at HUB Central (above), or visit adelaide.edu.au/student/ enquiries. May the force be with you!

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(off-campus)

weighing in

anorexia: to fight or submit? words: samantha prendergast art: daisy freeburn

The first time someone told I was anorexic all I could think was: fucking duh. A lso, my hair is brown, would you like to make a note? me

I’d been living food-free for three months and kept a journal I literally called my ‘anorexia diary’.

There I recorded what I did not eat and what I did eat and how I’d gotten rid of what I did eat, etc. The ‘did not eat’ column was pretty lengthy. Hot cross buns, grapes, marmite sandwiches: all things I did not eat, but wished I could. The ‘did eat’ column isn’t worth mentioning. Anyway, the point is that I kind of already knew.

What I didn’t know was that once someone tells you you’re anorexic, things change. For one, people want to start reading your anorexia diary, and you have to hide it and replace it with a new one. In the new one you have to lie. The ‘did eat’ column swells with the weight of your deceit. People read it with raised eyebrows and you deny their accusations.

You ate a bowl of porridge this morning?

Yes. How big was the bowl?

Big, pretty big.

Hmm. This continues until one day something happens and when you come round your parents tell you they’re taking you to hospital.

At that point you have to choose to fight them or submit. Because you’re tired and you can’t think of exactly what fighting involves, you

‘She thinks you’re going to die and you feel bad for her, because that might be scary.’ sit on the couch and wait for them to pack your stuff.

You pretend to eat some dinner and when you get to the hospital your dad, who’s quite tired himself, tells the doctor what he thinks you ate. It’s not what you ate. The doctor gives your dad an understanding smile then looks at you blankly. She knows.

The first night is spent in the wrong ward. The children’s ward.

The nurses there monitor your heart rate and freak out. You hear them calling a doctor.

Her heart rate’s really low, like… Yeah but I’ve never… You can’t take her … Ok.

That night the same nurse sits with you all night. You think she thinks you’re going to die and you feel bad for her, because that might be scary.

In the right ward no one thinks you’re going to die but they tell you that you will if you don’t change. To help you change they attach you to some tubes. They watch you eat and write things on charts and don’t let you shower on your own. You’re not allowed to stand up and you have to pee behind a curtain into a chair they bring to your bed.

You haven’t pooed for a long time. They give you paraffin oil to make you poo and it doesn’t work. They find the soggy weetbix you hid in the pot plant. No more pot plants come. They give you more paraffin and this time you do poo. You poo behind the curtain into a chair they bring to your bed. People can smell the poo. Everyone can smell the poo.

You giggle a little bit then go back to bed. It’s busy in the ward and the chair with the poo sits there for an hour until one of the nurses takes it away.

Every couple of days you have a visitor. Sometimes the visitor looks sad. Other times the visitor says: you look soooooo much better! Those words feel grotesque

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(off-campus)

and when you hear them you make a mental note to eat less.

Eating less makes the doctors mad and they stand around your bed looking VERY SERIOUS. Do you know you could DIE? I guess.

Do you want to DIE? I don’t know. No. Ok then.

Once the doctors leave the nurse makes you a milkshake with chocolate sauce and ice cream.

When you see it you cry and pretend to be asleep. The nurse keeps making them. Two years later you have a dream that you are literally drowning in a river of chocolate milkshake (seriously).

You will hate milkshakes for the rest of your life.

Months later you return for one of your post-hospital check-ups and they weigh you with your clothes on. In the ward they always weighed you at 7am in a hospital gown and nothing else. It’s better with clothes. But even with clothes the doctor is unimpressed. You can’t understand why. You gained weight. 1 kilo. 1000 grams.

1,000,000 milligrams.

The doctor talks to you about your heart and how it’s shrunk

and you wish that for two minutes people would stop talking about your body. You wish you didn’t have a body. You wish that everyone was a vapour. If you were a vapour you would vaporise yourself right out of the stinking outpatients clinic and you would do something fun. You would play a guitar specially designed for use by vapour people. You would vaporise yourself up a mountain and watch mountain birds.

Instead you listen to the doctor talk about your body. At home your mum makes you eat a biscuit, and you do. And, afterwards, you don’t even go for a run, because you saw her face when the doctor

‘They find the soggy weet-bix you hid in the pot plant. No more pot plants come.’ talked about shrinking hearts and it made you feel bad.

Six years later my heart is fully un-shrunk. So is my brain. My body is normal-sized. I could not tell you my daily calorie-intake or how many grams of muesli I ate for breakfast (an admittedly recent development). But even

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(off-campus)

though I’m pretty healthy, I rarely go more than two days without asking my boyfriend whether I’m fat, or whether I’ve put on weight, or whether my thighs are ginormous. I stand in front of mirrors and squish my arm flab distastefully. I suspect that many of you can relate.

That doesn’t seem right.

I no longer wish we were all vapours, because bodies can do cool things, like ride bikes and touch each other. But I do wish that ‘weight’ – possibly the most insignificant and boring part of who we are – would lose its cultural prominence.

I wish that at least once, in all of the months I spent in hospital, someone had asked me why I care about how much I weigh. That is a question that would’ve made me think – because, seriously, how do you answer that? Even now, the only answer I can give is: I don’t really know.

The first time someone told me I was anorexic I felt a little bit proud, like I had made it into the club. I wanted to be called anorexic because I wanted to know that I was thin. I think that it was inevitable that I would have ‘issues’ during my adolescence, but it was not inevitable that I would starve myself. For me, anorexia required a social context in which ‘thinness’ was glorified. Society’s pretty excellent at maintaining that context and I wish it would stop. Because, honestly, weight is nothing. It is a non-thing. It is one of the least important non-things I can think of.

I don’t have a solution to this fairly enormous problem but, if Society was a person, I’d begin by asking the question I needed someone to ask 14 year-old me: this is your weight, why do you care?

If you’re interested in working towards a more body positive world (or at least a more body positive Adelaide), send Sam a message at samantha.prendergast@ student.adelaide.edu.au.

If you think that you or someone you know may be suffering from an eating disorder, contact The Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 or visit their website, thebutterflyfoundation.org.au. gh Adelaide University’s free Counselling & Disability Service is also equipped to offer confidential assistance to those suffering from eating disorders. Turn to Page 10 for more information.

so you think you’re not racist?

Today I want to focus on race.

It’s a tricky thing to talk about.

You can’t always tell the ethnicity of someone just by looking at them (though, this begs the question as to why it’s necessary to identify their ethnicity) and sometimes you say things you don’t realise are rude. That said, there are some pretty iffy things said to me—a gay, brown-skinned guy trying to get by in Adelaide—on a regular basis.

2. asking where I’m from

So let me share with you some of the shit white people say. Read, learn and do not repeat ever again.

‘No, but where are you really from?’ they ask again, ‘Like, your heritage?’

1. compliments on excellent english I cannot stress this enough because it happens all the time.

Don’t do it or, if you do decide you need to, make sure you compliment everyone on how good their English is even if they are white.

To paraphrase Aamer Rahman, white people (ridiculous generalisation of people based on skin colour – how does it feel?) react in the same way to me, with my brown skin, speaking good English in the same way they react to seeing gorillas and chimpanzees using sign language on the Discovery Channel.

I know I have pretty good English—it might have something to do with the fact that I’ve spoken it my entire life. Even if it was my second language, though, I wouldn’t want you pointing out that I have good English ‘for a brown guy’ as opposed to your impeccable English. Go away; half of you don’t even speak proper English anyway.

If you aren’t white and live in a predominantly pale community, you know what I’m talking about.

You’ll be in the middle of saying something about how the world will end on December 21, 2012 and the white person you’re talking to will stop you and ask where are you from.

‘I’m from Australia,’ you respond, slightly confused.

Again, you don’t ask other white people this question so why ask me (though if you do ask other white people this question, then good on you)? I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how being halfMalay is any more exciting than being Swedish or Dutch.

3. telling me where I’m (not) from ie. asia If you’re white and have an atlas nearby then please, grab it and circle Asia for me. Now, I can’t believe I need to say this, but everyone from within that circle can say they’re Asian. Funnily enough, not everyone from Asia is from China, North or South Korea or Japan. We’re also from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Mongolia, Cambodia and, yes, India. Telling me I’m not Asian because I’m from Malaysia is like telling someone from Melbourne, ‘you aren’t Australian, you’re Victorian’.

4. explaining an ethnic minority This is perhaps my favourite.

It happened to me the other

words: idris martin

night at the UniBar in fact. Some blonde haired, blue eyed white guy informed me how he was more of an ethnic minority than me.

Nonplussed, I expected all of my friends to jump in and explain how messed up that was. No, instead I got treated to being an explanation that this guy was using a literal definition of the word ‘minority’ and that he might actually be right, among a load of other bullshit that I’ve blocked out.

Being a minority brings a lot of serious political and social implications with it. No matter how you try to say it, it just ends up sounding like ‘Why are you so worried? You aren’t really a minority. Racism isn’t a thing.’

Really guys, I know what being a minority is. Don’t try to explain what being an ethnic minority is—I think I’ve got a pretty good understanding. Every time you try, I can practically hear Pauline Hanson celebrating because she managed to convince someone she was right.

I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, though, and say you aren’t racist. We all say offensive things without meaning to; it doesn’t mean you’re racist, sexist or homophobic. If we really want to make inroads towards equality though, then it’s these small things we also need to pick up on and change.

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pap smears for everyone! words: gemma beale

At the risk of immediately alienating everyone without a cervix, I thought it was best I let y’all know right from the beginning that this little article is going to be pretty Pap intensive.

In case you don’t know, Pap comes from Papanicolaou – as in Georgios Nicholas Papanicolaou – a GreekAmerican anatomist who has been featured on both a banknote and a stamp (so you know he’s legit). Georgios devoted his life to working out how to catch uterine cancer early and, before dying in the early 1960s, was kind enough to leave us the Pap smear.

Now, normally an article on a medical procedure like this might focus on what it is and why it’s important – try and scare-tactic you into making an appointment.

But I’m pretty willing to bet that ladies already know why Pap

smears are important, and that’s why things like Pap Awareness Week exist (first week of May if you want to start planning your parties). The problem is, us gals don’t want to make appointments (Ed: Pap-pointments?) because it’s an especially socially awkward and physically uncomfortable procedure. So, I’ve got a new tactic – I’m gonna out-awkward the Pap so, comparatively, your experience is gonna seem less invasive and more like a long bus ride with that primary school friend whose name you can’t remember.

Let’s get right on into it then.

A couple of years ago my housemates were wondering what a Pap smear actually involved.

As the only girl in the house they both turned to me expecting answers. But I had not yet crossed

that particular path of womanhood (though I certainly should have) and so we did what all 20-something nerds do when they don’t know the answer – we Googled it.

Now, a front-on video of a Pap smear is probably something you could live without seeing.

But watching a front-on video of a Pap smear with two male housemates is definitely something you should avoid at all costs. I’m yet to experience an awkward silence louder than the one that followed watching a doctor insert what looks like large metal tongs into a woman’s vagina while I was squished on a two seater couch with two dudes.

(Having said that, I think y’all should start sending clips of Pap smears to your friends when they’re

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being pricks. Made a rape joke?

Pap smear clip. Think faux-asian accents are funny? Pap smear clip.

Didn’t tell me my skirt was stuck in my underwear? You guessed it.)

Anyway, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that following that incident, I continued to put that shit off. And, in doing so, joined women all over the world who aren’t that psyched about a nearstranger putting what is essentially a big ol’ clip in their vagina. But don’t you go getting all worried about my cervical health because I bit the bullet a few weeks ago.

Every Hollywood reference to The Smear had led me to believe it was going to hurt and then the Man Of My Dreams was going to walk in and be disgusted.

Honestly though, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Before ‘The Procedure’ my GP told me she was looking for a housemate on Gumtree and proceeded to open her account and show me the bizarre replies anyone familiar with Gumtree knows to expect – a good start to any professional encounter.

Then she locked the door and did the deed and it was fine. It didn’t hurt and she was super lovely and accommodating. I mean I’m not gonna rush back there before my 24 months are up but, seriously, no big deal. Doctors see a whole bunch of gross stuff all the time.

Crotch rot? Gross. Ingrown toenails gone all green? Double gross. Vaginas? Not that gross. In fact, not gross at all.

So don’t be all shy about getting your GP to perform a procedure that they’ve probably done a hundred times and which

might, you know, SAVE YOUR LIFE. Plus, the nature of putting anything in your vagina means it’s always better if you’re feeling relaxed. Specifically, my GP said it’s better if you ‘spread ‘em wide’ – a phrase that is perhaps more graphic than I thought I’d be publicly attaching my name to.

But, life’s full of surprises.

Surprises like going to a plus one dinner party the following week with the GP who just administered your Pap smear. Yeah, really.

Pap smears can prevent up to 90% of cervical cancers.

Ladies, if you’re aged between 18 and 70 and have ever been sexually active, you should be having one every 24 months.

Contact your GP or visit cervixscreening.sa.gov.au for more information.

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bikes bikes bikes bikes words: ben reichstein photos: seb tonkin The Adelaide Community Bicycle workshop will fix your bike, give you access to their huge range of tools and teach you how to do it yourself next time. Currently only open 9-12 Saturday mornings, the workshop operates on a co-operative model and a paywhat-you-can philosophy. It’s also the new home of the long-running Bikes for Refugees program. Bikes for Refugees takes donated bicycles, fixes them up, and distributes them amongst South Australia’s refugee population providing many people with their only form of independent transport.

The workshop runs out of the Plympton Community Centre where it has a grease-stained room and a shipping container in the car park, filled with donated bikes.

There are five or six semi-regular volunteers who really know their stuff and each week there is a steady stream of locals, dropping in for a hand or rummaging for spare parts.

I caught up with one of the main people involved in the day-to-day running of the workshop and the

man who runs Bikes for Refugees, Mike Brisco, to talk about bikes, cultural-exchange and community.

Mike is the informal mechanicin-chief and has been there every week since the workshop opened last year, and he’s been involved in community bike repair since 2003 with Bikes for Refugees. He tells me about how, in 2003, a chance meeting between some Frenchspeaking African refugees and a relative of a BISA member lead to a call being put out for donated bikes for this family. They got more bikes than they needed so they did them up, took them to the Australian Refugee Association and the organisation was born.

The Bicycle Workshop has been growing, both in volunteers and users, and has generated a lot of enthusiasm and thought. This is partly because of the idea the workshop represents: more than just another council project with buzzwords about ‘community’, to Mike and others it suggests a different way of thinking. I put it to Mike that compared to our current model for consuming: working for money in a job, exchanging it for something and then consuming that in relative isolation, might be challenged by a

co-operative experience. He said it was something he had been thinking about a lot: ‘The idea that we work from and the idea sort of idea that the place sets up goes back… well, I can trace back loosely to the mutual and friendly societies that people in Britain set up in the 18th and 19th centuries. The starting point for those were that that people are social animals. They liked to meet for company to talk about things; it was a need they had. And also they liked to meet to work together for their mutual benefit and also the benefit of the community. So those are the ideas that really underlie this. They’re old ideas and we’ve almost forgotten how to talk about them it’s almost like we lose the words; we lose the way to think about them. But certainly some of that thinking would under-lie what the workshop does. So it’s where people can meet—so we meet the need for company. It’s a place where people have a common interest— they find other people just like them. They chat about bikes; they share experiences. They also work for their mutual benefit; today I might help you fix some gears, next Saturday you might help me put up

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some shelves, or help with bikes.’

to the shops and things like that.’

But why bikes? Bicycle culture has seen a resurgence that has been extensively discussed, but from the point of view of the workshop a key virtue of bikes is their role in social inclusion. For those with limited resources, limited access to transport can exclude one from connecting with the world. The bike workshop can overcome these financial obstacles, while at the same time having an inclusive function through the process of co-operative working.

Mike makes it clear that this is also an important role for the workshop:

I ask if some of these ideas are influenced by Mike’s work with refugee communities, reflecting particularly on the African communities to whom many of the bikes are given. He says they have been very influential on his thinking: ‘In our culture if you want some food you need to earn the money and go and buy it. In other cultures if you need food you turn up to someone’s house and they just give it to you… they don’t even ask. And that’s quite a different way of doing things. I wonder if that’s something we’ve lost in the last 30 years of free market modelling and emphasis on doing things in the business model… A larger thing I’ve wondered about is if the business way of doing things has crept into every part of our lives.’

‘There’s no other place that people can come and get their bikes fixed. It’s either buy all the tools and learn and do it yourself or you can pay a lot of money and go down to the bike shop, so there’s a need here. We’re also open people who need the bikes for transportation who can’t afford to pay the bike shop fees, who can’t afford to pay for tools.

So we’re working to build community, to build up a bit of social capital, if you can put it in those terms… If someone gets a bike they can get out and about, they’re seen, they can see the streets, they’re riding around, they can go

We discuss some of the less obvious benefits of bikes: how they alter one’s experience of one’s environment. He reflects, ‘if you’re a cyclist and you see an accident it is very easy to stop and help. There are a lot of fruit trees going on the roadside in the hills, if you’re on a bike it’s easy to stop your bike and help yourself to some apples, or

pears, or cherries, or whatever1. If you’re in a car, there’s nowhere to stop on these roads.’

The bike shop is growing and Mike tells me other councils have expressed interest in similar projects. The number of volunteers, donors and users are constantly growing and already a lot has been achieved. In my own experience, I’ve increased my knowledge of bike repair hugely—a benefit I’ve repaid in doing-up a number of bikes destined for the refugee community.

This ‘other way’ of doing things seems, in this small example, to be a remarkable success.

The Adelaide Bicycle Workshop was founded with the help of the Bicycle Institute of South Australia, The Adelaide Cyclists organisation, and Renew Adelaide.

Do you have a bike problem you would like help with? Do you have a bike to donate? Are you experienced in bike mechanics and want to lend a hand?

Come to 34 Long Street, Plympton between 9-12 on a Saturday or check out adlbicycleworkshop.posterous.com 1. Mike is quick to point out that these are wild trees on Department of Transport lands—he’s not a thief.

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i’ll huff and i’ll puff and i’ll knock the jade down The developer knocking down the Jade Monkey may seem like the big bad wolf, but according to the warnings of Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood, the Jade itself is at risk of becoming the wolf in grandma’s clothing.

words: cat davies In late February, Zac Coligan and Naomi Thompson, owners of the Twin Street live music venue the Jade Monkey, announced that that they would be forced to close in October due to the development of an adjacent hotel. It’s unclear what exactly the problem is. Coligan’s initial statement on Facebook suggested issues with noise restrictions, with the devastated owner commenting that ‘even though we aren’t on the exact spot, it seems that the owners don’t want a live music venue next to their shiny new hotel.’

Other sources are reporting that the hotel is destined to be built where the 131-year-old building currently stands. As the Jade’s lease on the property has expired, the landowner

is free to develop through a $65 million deal with Hines Property.

Whichever story is correct, thousands of music-lovers from Adelaide and interstate have reacted with outrage at the forced closure of a unique, much-loved venue. The Jade Monkey is known in particular for its small, intimate gigs and for its welcoming attitude towards young musicians and upcoming bands. The closure of the popular venue is seen by many as yet another blow to the under-supported Adelaide contemporary music scene, in which small, alternative venues struggle to survive and whose share of the state’s arts budget amounts to less than 0.5% (see Tammy Franks, link below). The reaction to the news

of this latest closure was swift. A petition posted on change.org after Coligan’s announcement on February 20 received over 2000 signatures in its first 24 hours, progressing to nearly 4500 by the first week of March. This petition, and the related Facebook group (with nearly 2000 likes), called for the Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood to intervene and ‘save’ the Jade Monkey.

Yarwood was quick to respond on his own Facebook. Although sympathetic, the Lord Mayor was ‘disappointed people think it is the council’s fault,’ explaining that as the building is not heritage listed and the deal is worth over $10 million, the development is beyond local council’s

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jurisdiction and within that of the State Government’s planning authority. Most interesting was Yarwood’s warning that the protests against the development could be more harmful than helpful for the Jade. Yarwood cautioned that ‘a community movement to stop the development is not good for Jade Monkey - if they want to relocate it is not a good look that the community want to stop the development of the land... Landowners would not be keen to lease to a tenant with a community that opposes their rights as a land owner.’

Given that moving the Jade Monkey to a new location seems to be the only option, as Coligan and Thompson themselves have since indicated, Yarwood’s point is worth keeping in mind. That’s not to say that community activism hasn’t proved itself a powerful and beneficial force for the Jade and its owners.

Despite Yarwood’s somewhat sweeping assertion that ‘any campaign to stop the development is counterproductive to the Jade Monkey Team

and live music in general’, he himself was very careful to inform us in his post that he had offered to assist Coligan in finding another location for the venue. The state’s Premier Jay Weatherill has also responded to the protests. Speaking to Triple J host The Doctor on February 23, just three days after Coligan’s initial Facebook post, Weatherill strove to demonstrate his understanding of the importance of the Jade. ‘We want to try and find a way of saving the Jade Monkey,’ he explained. ‘It’s just a fantastic entry-level institution, almost, for live bands in South Australia.’

Weatherill professed his readiness to help Coligan and Thompson navigate the red tape involved with opening a new venue, citing the State Government’s desire for more, not fewer, ‘laneway venues’. Clearly the petitions and groups formed to save the Jade have been successful in garnering the support of government authorities.

Yarwood’s caution not to damage the future opportunities of the Jade is still worth heeding, though. As Coligan and Thompson commented

on their Facebook: ‘it is important that there is always a space made for live music within our great city, and that should be the real fight.’

Want to know more?

Check out these links...

Ianto Ware, guru for all things Adelaide live music, talks about the practicalities of saving the Jade and sustaining an Adelaide music scene in general: http://renewadelaide. wordpress.com/ Greens member Tammy Franks analyses the state government’s attitude to live music: http://www. tammyfranks.org.au/2012/02/23/salive-music-on-death-bed-greens-urgeresuscitation/ The facebook group: http://www. facebook.com/saveadelaidelivemusic The petition: http://www.change. org/petitions/lord-mayor-save-thejade-monkey-and-live-music-inadelaide

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S L O L E H T R FO

Adelaide’s comedy scene doesn’t end with the Fringe. Aidan Jones chats with Rhino Room comedy master Michael Bowley

I’ve been doing comedy for two months now—well, I did it for two months last year (hiatus due to travelling) and just recently started again—Monday the fifth of March for those of you playing at home.

For the supremely baffled amongst you, by ‘comedy’ I mean stand-up comedy—the one where you get on stage with nothing but a microphone and talk at people until they either laugh or throw things. It’s pretty brilliant.

So anyway, the other day I went into town, to the home of local wizard-man Michael Bowley (pictured right), the man behind the open mic night that has allowed me to pursue this hidden passion. The night in question: One Mic Stand, every Monday at Rhino Room. The purpose of my visit: to talk about comedy. The air: windy, no dust, 24° C. Google says it’s mostly cloudy, I’m not looking up to check.

Bowley opened the door sans shirt and invited me into his house.

He offered to make me some tea and after the initial distraction of talking we sat down to the real business: talking. Bowley has been performing stand-up comedy since the 2004 Raw Comedy competition (8 years; if you have forgotten, it’s 2012 now) and has been running One Mic Stand at Rhino Room since its inception in the middle of last year. Basically, the primary idea

of the night is to get people who have always wanted to try comedy out there and onto a stage.

Comedy is a notoriously tough business famous for hecklers and hostile crowds. I asked Mister B what experiences he may have had at the hands of brutal rejection: Me: Have you ever been booed off stage, Bowley?

Bowley: No, actually.

COME ON! I thought I was going to get a good story out of that one, but no. No Bill Hicks-style freakouts at drunk audience members, no bottles thrown at faces and zero comedy-related injuries. It turns out that comedy crowds, especially in Adelaide, don’t actually come to shows to hate on people (WHAT!?!?) and really, truly want to laugh at the performer in front of them. Of course there will always be shows where comedy is not billed as top priority. My esteemed interviewee filled me in about the time the Queensland boxing team booed and heckled every act of the night at one particularly shitty gig. Such nastiness is only to be expected though, especially from an audience who make their living being punched in the face by other people who also enjoy being punched in the face. (Some jokes just write themselves huh?)

So what makes comedians

tick? And what in the world could compel someone to stand up in front of a room of complete strangers and talk about things that can be revealing, scary, strange, and terribly rude, in the hope that said strangers start chuckling? ‘The adrenaline,’ puts Bowley simply.

‘The only other thing I’ve done that creates that amount of adrenaline is bungee jumping.’ How could that be? He explains to me that, while other forms of art are not so tied up in immediate feedback, comedy is an almost instant give-receive deal.

Even with a musician the audience is still obliged to clap and stand there and maybe dance a little, but if you have a bad gig, it still probably isn’t that different to a Bjork concert. In comedy, you can tell if you’re doing well because, surprise surprise, people are laughing. It works both ways though, and if you’re not so good... well, hopefully people would let you know before that happens.

So there we were, my tea only tepid now after twenty minutes or so of chitsy-chatsy and I’m really feeling like getting back up on the stage. I’ve already broken through that barrier and lost my stage virginity, so to speak... and they say the first time is the hardest.

So what does Sensei Bowley have to say to those of you who may be reading this RIGHT NOW? Those

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I stepped out of Bowley’s house in the middle of town onto an unnamed city square and felt inspired and ready for action. Ready to get back into stand up—clear skies ahead. I looked up to check and it turns out Google was right, mostly cloudy. Fine, there goes that metaphor.

One Mic Stand runs every Monday from 8.30pm (comedians sign up at 8pm) at the Rhino Room on Pulteney Street, and you can catch Aidan there.

Photograph: Kelly L Photography

of you who harbour a possible, embarrassingly secret, half-hopeful, semi-admitted dream of one day getting up there... those closet comedians waiting in the wings?

Well, come all ye faithful and soak up these words of wisdom. Bowley recommends coming along and watching for a week. Take in some amateur comedy (not Dylan Moran/ David Cross/Bill Hicks/Demetri Martin/Louis CK/any other huge comedian’s tirelessly rehearsed, one hour comedy special), and then get to work. Once you’ve written a few jokes, get a bunch of friends together and just do it. Your friends are the best audience you will ever have, because they already know your sense of humour, but also because—get a load of this shit—they love you. (You hope.)

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ethiopia words and pictures: nic peterkin

writewithlight.com.au

Arrival at an Ethiopian bus station is chaos. Animals, heavy machinery, fruit, flies, heat, screams, the smell of shit and boys selling wooden toothbrushes wearing deflated soccer balls on their head.

There are no signs indicating where a van will go and I assume the driver decides on a whim. To successfully travel anywhere you have to engulf yourself in the chaos.

I started to scream my destination ‘Harar! Harar!’ Those around start shouting back at me ‘White man for Harar, Firengi Harari!’

After being pointed in every possible direction we finally walk over to a van, the driver explains he is going to Harar, but at present, is missing the two back wheels of his van, which funnily enough are somewhat important. He assures us it will be fixed soon. Whilst we wait every item imaginable is trying to be sold; mangoes, bananas, chat, sticks, flowers, camels, shoe shining, tours, donkeys, potential brides and raw meat. I politely decline several times until suddenly another van squeals past with a boy out the window screaming ‘Harar!’ I yell back ‘Harar?’ and he shouts back in acceptance.

At first the van is a sanctuary, you escape the chaos and sit in one of 12 empty seats. The empty seats fill very quickly and I am surprised

when we still haven’t departed. After a few more minutes, contraband items such as sugar and cooking oil are loaded into the van’s spare spaces. Spare space in Ethiopia includes your lap or the space where your feet are supposed to go. Milk is stacked on the roof and as I look out the window I see a live goat being strapped to the top of a similar van.

After every available space is filled with contraband they start squeezing even more people into the van.

After 40 minutes, we depart with 30 people, 100 liters of milk, 50kg of sugar and 200 liters of cooking oil, all in the 12-seater van. I have a box of sugar on my lap, cooking oil under my feet, an Ethiopian man on my knee and a woman breastfeeding her child opposite me.

We start driving and immediately all of the windows are shut. I asked the man sitting on my leg why, and he looks at me slightly confused. He explains, ‘the movement of air into a vehicle makes you sick.’

The temperature gradually increases and a young teen starts collecting our fare (fifty cents for an hour journey). There is a dispute about the fare. A tribal Ethiopian woman starts screaming at the teen, hitting him in the chest. The van stops, she continues to scream, and leaves with her items. Two minutes later the van pulls over

and picks up three more women to fill her place.

The driver puts his foot flat down. In the developing world there seems to be unwritten road rules, one of them being that indication is a sign of weakness.

Everyone knows there is always an imaginary third lane. If your vehicle is larger, you have the right of way, on either side of the road.

Honking is not rude, it’s how you say hello; an extended beep shows even more gratitude.

The driver swerves to miss a rogue camel and a 20 litre jug of milk flies off the roof splattering on the road. The driver slams on the brakes and the teen in charge of the money searches for the jug.

When he can’t find it the elderly women in the van start wailing and crying, shouting that the devil took the milk.

We leave the jug with the devil and finally arrive at Harar. After fighting my way through the touts, helpers and salesman I reach my 2 metre by 2 metre concrete room.

The shower doesn’t work; I throw a bucket of cold water over my head and breathe a sigh of relief. They say it’s not the destination but the journey that is important; it’s somewhat different when the main objective of the journey is to survive.

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Adelaide University’s Student Radio is Australia’s longest running student radio program. It’s written and recorded by students with original discussion, current affairs, music and culture.

Tune in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights from 11pm on Radio Adelaide 101.5FM or online at radio.adelaide.edu.au.

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idiot box words: nathan cole

Trashy gossip peddler Yumi Stynes found herself embroiled in controversy over the last few weeks, having opened a portal to her vacuous mind via her mouth— pots and kettles the world over ended their long-standing war regarding who was blacker after Ms. Stynes took it upon herself to paint a courageous Australian serviceman as a brainless moron.

The accompanying shit-storm left a sour taste in the mouth of the outraged public, many swearing that they’d continue to never watch The Circle ever again. This ‘power to the people’ movement mirrored that of the condemnation of Kyle ‘Vile Kyle’ Sandilands, whose seemingly neverending stream of hideous bile polluting our airwaves spilled over into controversy after his sexist and borderline life-threatening tirade against a female journalist resulted in heavy sponsoring losses to his employers.

The problem with sponsors dropping Kyle Sandilands is that they don’t appear to be doing it from high enough. But, I digress.

The problem lies not with these ignoramuses and their ridiculous comments, make no mistake. These pawns are simply mouthpieces for a conservative agenda by their employers—and herein lies the REAL problem.

In this age of social networking revolution, the bigwigs in charge of networked media in this country and around the world are serving up nothing but cultural blandness at every turn. It’s any wonder that piracy is costing film and television industries billions of dollars annually, when local programming serves up rubbish like ‘My Master

Kitchen Kids Chef Rules’ and ‘The Biggest Excess Baggage Loser Couples Singles’ and even the sure-to-be-a-resounding-success ‘Try Not To Cringe When This Guy’s Mum Sets Him Up With A Tramp’. Couple these gems with the seemingly neverending tickertape parade of glorified karaoke nights (think Australian Idol and all of its ugly step-brothers and sisters) and the local stable of television content leaves a fairly large brown stain on the underpants that are the TV Guide.

This hugely creative and dynamic local content is bolstered by cornerstones of the American bland market—add shows like ‘Two and a Half Ashton Kutcher or Charlie Sheen or Whatever’, ‘Nerdy Guys talking about Sex with a Hot Girl’ and ‘Doogie Howser and a bunch of Neurotic 30-Somethings Do Nothing’ into the mix and you can see why people are outraged.

Cultural constipation is making people angry, and justifiably so.

The problem isn’t these programs and presenters themselves, however, it’s the decision makers that tell us what to watch—then pound our eyes with advertising at regular intervals.

We simply need to not watch but is it that simple? These shows are designed to be so mildly, inoffensively beige in content that they intrigue the targeted market with what is essentially background music. These shows are elevator music for the eyes, and they exist only to shorten the distance between ad breaks. Enjoying that episode of ‘Suburban Couples Cook Crap in their Homes’? Why, here’s

the various Coles® products that you can use to replicate their shitty garlic mashed potato. Hungry after watching ‘Those Physicist Assholes’ debate their existence over a pizza?

Pizza Hut are now delivering the special Two and a Big Bang Half Pizza deal for only $19.99!

This profit-driven insanity is what keeps the gears of the mass media engine grinding, and will continue to do until it becomes unprofitable.

Money talks, and its always the faceless executives that listen.

With this in mind, I propose a media revolution. Storm the barricades! Burn effigies of that guy from Australian Idol that is now banging Paris Hilton or something in the streets! Hold protests against the killing off of clever productions like Bored To Death, How to Make it in America and Arrested Development! Demand Kyle Sandilands be rendered impotent!

Its time that this well publicised power of the masses is harnessed to make a difference at the top, not at the mouth-piece.

Let me know how it goes. I’ll be on the couch—I think Young Talent Time is on TV tonight.

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writer? illustrator? photographer? student?

ON DIT. On Dit magazine is seeking the above (and associated passionate and creative folk) to help fill its 48 fortnightly pages.

On Dit is Australia’s third-oldest student magazine, and in 2012 celebrates its 80th birthday. Famous Adelaide alumni like Colin Thiele, Shaun Micallef, and Julia Gillard (and Christopher Pyne!) have graced its pages. Now you can too.

If you’re interested in contributing, email us at ondit@adelaide.edu.au, slide something under our door, or check out ondit.com.au. We can’t wait to hear from you.

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the life and times of darren flemington PAGE

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#2: The Dentist by ben crisp The back of the chair lowered with an electric buzz and Darren felt himself gripping its vinyl sides involuntarily as the Dantesque mural of the ceiling lowered into view. It was guilt that kept him coming back to Dr Hunter; guilt and fear.

He would awaken in the middle of the night with the sudden realisation that he had forgotten once again to brush and floss. After several agonising minutes the desire for sleep would be infected by the sensation of plaque creeping across his teeth, fostering bacteria, burrowing through his enamel and down towards his gums, and he would fling the covers aside and rush to the bathroom for a scraping so fierce that streaks of red would spiral down the plughole when he spat.

Still, none of this seemed to impress Dr Hunter.

He would swivel the blinding angle-poise lamp into place above Darren’s face and stare down like a forensic pathologist – the career Dr Hunter frequently told Darren he had always desired over dentistry.

‘A corpse never flinches you see,’ he would say as he pulled on the latex gloves. ‘It never gags, or bites down on your fingers during a periodontal probe. Make a note, Angela, that Mr Flemngton is severe gagger.’

Angela nodded and made the note, pausing to brush a blonde lock out of her face. Dr Hunter was ever surrounded by his harem of pretty young dental hygienists who would move nervously around their balding employer, bringing him utensils and charts and watching intently as he demonstrated the spittle-soaked procedures they one day hoped to mimic.

Darren longed to speak, to defend his gag reflex as the normal reaction of a human being to the insertion of foreign digits into its mouth, but he could not. Two hooks like folded shoehorns held his lips open and apart, baring his teeth like a shrunken voodoo head, transforming his speech into a robotic echo free of fricatives and glottal

plosives. ‘I card eld id,’ coughed Darren.

‘Please don’t speak, Mr Flemington,’ instructed Dr Hunter.

Angela was beautiful, and Darren wished he hadn’t noticed it. Her pale blue smock was starched to rigidity, folding into sharp lines and angles that left any curves beneath entirely to Darren’s imagination.

When she leaned in to study his mouth with her big blue eyes the lock of blonde hair fell across them again, and he wondered, mesmerised, why it wasn’t tucked with the rest into her giant brown hairclip.

‘You haven’t been using your Remident gel, have you?’ sighed Dr Hunter accusingly.

‘Esh,’ protested Darren with a splutter that landed on the dentist’s apron.

‘Mr Flemington continues to neglect his gums, Angela,’ he said, wiping away the spittle distractedly as he inspected a flossing pick. ‘Don’t you, Mr Flemington?’

‘Esh,’ admitted Darren.

Angela moved behind Darren and leaned over him to adjust the lamp. Her soft chest pressed into the top of Darren’s head, and looking up from below her chin he realised her face was even more attractive upside-down.

He tried to imagine a world where he had the stomach to talk to a girl like her. As Dr Hunter reached in between his maxilla and mandible, Darren wondered what it would be like to make Angela smile. Or laugh, even. Did she cover her mouth and hide it, too shy to show the world her mirth, or did she throw her head back and let it loose for all to hear?

Darren pictured her sitting on a high-legged stool at a club after work, her fingers tracing the letters on a coaster as she waited for her drink. He tried to place himself in the picture, walking towards her with a

confident stride, not counting his steps like usual so that he would reach the bar on the correct side to lean and flash her a smile alluringly free of gingivitis.

As a trickle of saliva leaked from his lips and slid down his neck Darren dreamed he was speaking casually to her, ordering a drink with a nonchalant lift of a finger.

‘Do oo cud hee oven?’ his better self would say, though it would sound smoother without the hooks. She would shoot him a sultry look over her starched shoulder, and he would finally know what sultry meant.

‘See this, Angela?’ said Dr Hunter, suddenly appearing at Darren’s daydream bar.

Angela frowned and nodded, staring below Darren’s nose at something Darren could never see.

‘Other dentists call that early onset necrotizing periodontitis,’ said Dr Hunter, shining a grin brighter than the angle-poise lamp. ‘But I call it sloth.’

Angela frowned more intently and nodded even faster, and Dr Hunter sat on the barstool beside her as a waiter brought him a scotch so neat it made Darren’s eyes water like stainless steel on a molar nerve.

laughing without a care.

‘We see them all, here,’ said Hunter wrathfully, squinting as he poked. ‘Avarice drives men to their saccharine, gluttony chains them to it.’

Darren felt only envy as he imagined Angela lustfully running her fingers through the dentist’s thinning grey hair. Finally Hunter relented, withdrawing his fingers and peeling the gloves from them. Angela scribbled on her clipboard, and Darren was left to pull the hooks sloppily from his mouth as the chair buzzed beneath him, raising him back into reality.

‘Fortunately for you, there is always salvation. I can’t force you to floss, I can only show you the light,’ said Hunter as he ushered Angela to the door, watching her from behind as she exited. He turned back to Darren and raised a finger.

‘I’ll see you in six months,’ he warned, and left with a dramatic twirl.

‘One of the seven deadly sins: sloth,’ said the dentist as he worked.

‘Pretentious, for a dentist,’ said the bartender sympathetically, offering Darren a plastic cup filled with cold blue mouthwash. Darren swigged and spat, his blood trickling down the drain. He clenched his fist, and noticed he had crushed the cup in a way that filled him with, if just for a moment, pride.

Angela’s expression did not change, though inside Darren knew she was throwing her head back and

And that, Darren realised sullenly, was the best part of the whole fantasy.

e y b d n a e y b ire cla

ra mi

nd

e ob ar

r ts

With that we scraped back a hundred chairs; history papered into our notepads and forgotten.

We lounged by the heels of Buddha our favourite statue while the Eucalypts blistered in the four P.M heat.

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how to ... master march madness

words: lauren varo art: madeleine karutz

As mad March mixes amongst our midst, festivalgoers young and old will congregate around various Adelaide celebrations and galas, which despite the total 366 days of 2012 we stubbornly insist upon jamming into less than a month, as though we really were preparing for the doomsday apocalypse.

Despite the rainbow-like diversity of March, a subtle common etiquette underlies its events, which until now has remained uncharted in the way of journalistic interrogation.

In order to avoid the annual guaranteed mayhem, below is a guide to the quintessential do’s and don’ts of the festival world.

1. clothing Please, for the sake of your dignity and self-respect, attempt to wear event-appropriate clothing. High heels are always a no when trudging through the muddy ground of The Garden of Unearthly Delights (or running across the track of the Clipsal 500 before twenty-eight 1355kg V8 supercars race past at an average of 170km/h). Alternatively, no shoes is a must when rain-dancing to the considerably earthier sounds of Gurrumul, First Aid Kit and Blue King Brown at Botanic Park’s WOMADelaide.

2. crowd control If etiquette remains generally upheld security has an easy run, which is always good as security are never your friends. Do not attempt to stand anywhere remotely near the front of a music gig or festival if you’re not prepared to be pushed, pulled, tugged, tipped or tarnished in any way, shape or form. Kicking, punching and circle pits should all be anticipated (I’m looking at you Soundwave) and extremely intimate bodily contact with strangers is a must.

3. social networking As a general rule social networking before the show is acceptable as everyone loves a decent check-in. There are limits however. Consistently checking your phone for the latest like, tweet or update whilst the act is performing is just rude. Even if you are commending them on their excellent stage presence, you may just be missing the part where the funny man on a three-meter unicycle drops his

flamethrower from his juggling act of dangerous goods, in turn setting the surrounding grass area on fire. #hashtagthatshit. Besides, virtual fame means nothing in the way of physical interaction no matter how ‘sahhhh indie’ you are.

4. cameras Whilst I appreciate the art of photography, I’m of the firm belief that not everyone is a photographer. Don’t get me wrong - a few shots when the act arrives on stage is fine - but when digital SLR cameras with 15 gigawatts of blinding flash potential and a lens capable of taking out a small child are involved that I start to get concerned.

Likewise, videos are ok for a minute or two if they’re discreet and don’t block the view of others, however when you start hitting the 15 minute mark you know some serious YouTubing is going down.

Oh, and don’t even start me on taking and uploading pictures of yourself during a show.

5. singing If you’re at a gig and plan to sing along to your favourite song, please ensure you: a) are not tone deaf; and b) actually know the lyrics to the song at hand

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The last thing I want to hear while Ben Gibbard bleeds poetical heartbreak from his aorta during the acoustic ballad ‘I Will Follow You Into The Dark’ is the high pitched wails of lost teenage love coming from two rows behind me.

6. audience participation Audience participation, as we all know, has the potential to be disastrously embarrassing, but embracing it is quite possibly the easiest way to avoid future ridicule.

Comedians seem to target those with apprehensive body language such as crossed arms or hands in pockets (the latter of which begs for the classic ‘that-must-be-adifficult-position-to-clap-in’ line.)

If all of the above logic still finds you infallible, imagine working with uncooperative customers in retail.

‘May I help you Sir?’ ‘No.’ Well, this is awkward.

7. heckling

9. encore

Confucius say: he who heckle prepare to be ripped to shreds.

Take great heed when sailing into this unknown territory as performers usually have an arsenal full of witty comebacks for rogue audience members. Contrarily, some of the best comedy results from well-timed audience/ artist banter. Also noteworthy is choosing the right shows to heckle at. Classical theatre show – definite no. Comedy – only the brave may proceed. Burlesque performance – visible grey area.

No matter how planned and expected this absurd performance phenomenon may be you MUST clap, cheer, stomp and shout in order for the desired act to return to stage. Pleading and begging may be involved, but is always essential as very fragile and tender artistic egos are hanging on the line.

8. drinks If you insist upon leaving the front row position in the mosh (which you so desperately fought for after an hour of below-average support bands) in exchange for self-hydration at the bar, don’t expect this patch of prime real estate to be still up for grabs upon your return. Unless of course you leave to purchase two $10 jugs of pale ale, only to hold them in the air demanding the band play an encore, as was the case during Stonefield’s recent O’Live set.

10. respect Lastly, and potentially most importantly, have some respect for the artist. This rule particularly applies if you’ve just watched 20minutes of a busking show.

Walking away after they’ve entertained you is the equivalent of driving from a petrol station and not paying. Spare some change, a fiver if you’re feeling generous, because without all of buskers, comedians, musicians and performers who line our streets in March life would be a little less interesting.

Remember – artists are people too.

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stuff you like

(miscellany)

parks and recreation: kate secombe likes this.

pockets: casey briggs likes this.

If you don’t watch Parks and Recreation, you don’t know Ron Swanson. A man after my own heart, the only thing he loves more than bacon are other meats wrapped in bacon. So if you like bacon and mid-level bureaucrats in a small American town (who doesn’t?), watch this and TREAT YO SELF!

Pockets are surely the greatest innovation in clothing design since humans first thought to cover their loins with cloth. Like miniature backpacks for your pants, not a day goes by that I don’t praise pockets for their uncanny ability to be reliable, accessible and discreet.

Got some loose change after buying a coffee? Put it in your pocket! Need to carry exactly one pen with you? Use your pocket, my friend. Unnerved by the idea of carrying your credit card around in your hands all day?

POCKETS! Keep it up, pockets.

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(miscellany)

essence cosmetics: fiona coles likes this.

octodad: seb tonkin likes this.

your submissions: on dit likes this

A German brand seemingly sold exclusively at Target, ‘Essence Cosmetics’ can be found hidden far at the back of the Pulteney store. The most expensive thing is $7.50, and the eyeliners (their best product) start at $1.95. The eyeshadow above retails at $3.95.

Ridonkulously good. Except their mousse foundation (give it a miss). They don’t even test on animals. WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS? Go to Target!

Now!

The tagline for this free, independently produced computer game basically says it all: ‘Loving father. Caring husband. Secret octopus.’ You’re octodad – your mission: perform your dadly duties without your family discovering your true (and, let’s be honest, really quite obvious) identity.

The game is highly realistic, in the sense that it’s really difficult to do a lot of easy things when you’re a land-locked octopus. Mac, Windows, and Linux – so you’ve got no excuse. It’s a little rough around the edges, but keep an eye out for next year’s sequel, Octodad: Dadliest Catch.

Sharing is caring. If you like something, tell us about it here. Review anything at all, whether it sucked or blew your mind. You’ve got 50100 words and our email address is this: ondit@adelaide.edu.au.

KGO.

an open letter to... richard dawkins PAGE

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Dear Richard Dawkins (but also Atheism, you kind of suck as well), I am angry, yes.

I’ve thought it over and concluded that anger is appropriate.

The God Delusion was the book that rid me of whatever romanticised notion of souls and spirits that I, as a never-broughtup-religious 15 year old, had acquired from the convincing realms of American TV and every other 15 year old girl I’d ever met.

It shook me up, gave me opinions that I enjoyed antagonising people with, as if they were my own.

Gradually, they have become my own, in that I ditched some of the anger and the patronising tone that, while technically not a necessary result of reading Dawkins, was certainly an optional extra.

I sat in the sun and watched you speak once, at the Writers Week here in Adelaide. You were spruiking a book on evolution I was never going to buy; I got sunburnt and it seemed to be worth it. You seemed to be doing a capital ‘g’ Good Thing.

But anyway; that is my history as a Fan of You. I learnt some things from you. I

then went and learned some things from other people, and some of those things were called Feminism.

What happened next: You sat next to a woman at a conference.

This woman, Rebecca Watson, hailing from the blog Skepchick, spoke about sexism and difficulties for women in getting involved in atheist communities. And then, on her way back to her room at 4am, having expressing tiredness to the group, a man followed her into the lift, alone, and asked her if she would like to come back to his room for coffee. Because he found her ‘interesting’. She gave a response on video later; in which she commented: ‘Guys, don’t do that’.

And you, who should have known so much better, posted a comment on the post in the form of a fake letter to a Muslim woman, sarcastically advising her that her suffering as a result of religious misogyny was nothing to what American women have to face, and she, the illusory Muslim woman, should ‘grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin’. When this little nugget predictably blew up in your face, you replied with this: ‘If [Rebecca] felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege... Rebecca’s feeling that the man’s proposition was ‘creepy’

was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.’ [added emphasis] If you don’t get why that is so, so wrong, then you are also so, so wrong. Your idea that it is a privilege to be scared or creeped out implies that you can choose to experience sexism. That as long as the guy doesn’t touch you, it can’t be worse than having a dude chew gum near you. That concerns about safety, about rape, or just about the fact that you have yet again had your work ignored in favour of the potential that you might sleep with some dude; these just can’t tally to more that minor peeves.

Minor peeves THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE TO HAVE. Ironically, I am consciously choosing to be angry at this, and I’m doing that because the alternative is to accept it on some level. And there is no fucking way that I’m going to accept you telling me what it is acceptable for me to feel or talk about; you, a man whom I respected; a man who is rich, white and heterosexual.

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There is no fucking way you get to be the ultimate dictator as to what is sexism.

Rebecca Watson is free to travel, she’s educated, she’s white, sure. She gets to go to conferences and speak about oppression. There are so many who are too oppressed for that, I really do get that.

When she speaks about sexism, she should at least implicitly acknowledge that there are many that have it worse. So should I. You, sir, on the other hand, should probably just stop talking about sexism.

The horrible horrible irony of your use of the word ‘privilege’: honestly, that trumps even those terrible conversations I occasionally fail to avoid: when a male friend asks about why violence against women is so bad.

Or why feminists go on about rape. Guys: There’s a website nowadays, it’s actually called Feminism 101. Please read the relevant page before asking me the question. Privilege: the concept that some people, because of their place or status in society, will never be subjected to some kinds of behaviour. They have the privilege of dressing how they choose. They have the privilege of not fearing rape. They have the privilege of better education. Of no institutionalised discrimination.

There is, however, no privilege to experience discomfort.

You see, that kind of makes it my fault if you discriminate against me. Or my fault if you’re being creepy and I’m worried about my safety. And just for the record: it will never be my fault. A victim of rape is never ever responsible for their rape, and that goes all the way back to the most minor concerns about safety.

If you’re so busy saving people from stupidity or from damaging themselves, or hurting their women, that you cease to care about the fucked-up power structures in your own group, you have a problem. If you’re a predominately male group, it’s important to listen to the people on the outside saying; ‘This is why women don’t join’, because it’s an issue.

I’m angry; I’m angry at dudes who still think dude-liness is a sacred attribute, who still think being a dickhead is the way to prove that you’re clever. I’m angry at you, Richard, for failing so utterly at being a role model for women as well as men. I’m angry at you for leaving the women of your own culture out in the cold, devaluing their concerns about safety so you can make some fucked up point about our supremacy.

I’m angry that every successive time I type this phrase, this ‘I’m angry’, my credibility falls, and I lose, whatever happens. I’m angry that other people will read your quote and will not care quite enough to be angry.

And in the end, all I can say is this: Richard Dawkins, you have lost a fan.

With much righteous vitriol and absolutely no affection, Stella Crawford

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

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sex and the uni be cool advice from ROWAN ‘THE LOVE PUMP’ ROFF Oh man! I didn’t realise the can of beans I opened with my article last time. The response has been enormous! From the direct feedback I have received in the form of people writing in to thank me, to the joy I get from watching students all over campus having a crack; there was no way I was not going to write a follow-up article!

Last issue I focused on where to find love at University. This time will be more about preparation: how to dress and how to act.

Your Persona!

With Wrestlemania XXVIII fast approaching (as I’m sure we are all too aware of), I was dying to find a way to slip a decent wrestling parallel in… so buckle up! Here’s the deal: I don’t know who you are but in all likelihood you have a lot of quirks about you that make you ‘unique’. You know who else was unique?

Nikolai Volkoff – he was some Soviet Russian WWF wrestler who got pumped so hard and so often that many argue he was the main contributing factor for the Cold War . You don’t want to be Volkoff. You want to be John Cena.

The thing about Cena is that he actually sucks but no one can seem to see past his bad-boy I-canrap persona so he ends up doing heaps well. See what I’m saying? You need to pull a Cena. Obviously that

doesn’t mean coming to school shirtless wearing knee-pads (although…). But it does mean killing off everything that is unique about you in favour of giving the fans what they want.

Clothes!

Let me start by saying I by no means endorse the current ‘hip’ trends in fashion, but I do accept them. I also don’t have enough time or knowledge to explain the finer details of style, so I am going to give you a cheat. You know that American Apparel store that opened up on Rundle Street? You know, the one that seems to sell nothing but cardigans and sailing attire and you only ever see douchebags go into? Yeah, go in there. Now, this next part is going to hurt – both emotionally and (if you go the skinny pants route) physically, so I recommend getting fairly drunk. But don’t resist it. Just accept that somehow the 19-year old hair-dressing apprentice knows far more about this sort of thing than you do. I found it helpful to repeat the words ‘I’m still me on the inside. I’m still me on the inside.’

Mannerisms!

Cool! Now that you have rolled up pants and a mis-sized striped shirt, you need to act like a dick too! This is a lot easier than it looks. You know those witty observations you make occasionally that some people really seem to enjoy? Stop making them.

Instead start talking about shit bands that no one has ever heard of. If you want to just make up bands that don’t exist that’s cool too. When you talk to the opposite sex sometimes it’s difficult to work out how to be charming so another cheat that might help you is smoking. When you are smoking you always look busy and you never have to talk. If you are talking to a super hottie you might have to smoke two/three cigarettes/cigars at once so be prepared to enter Flavour County.

Basically your new identity should see you getting far more action than you would otherwise. And, with a bit of luck, one Smackdown soon you might be able to drop a corporate elbow off a ladder, onto the object of your desire, while they lay immobile on a table. Of love. (Possibly while fans watch).

this much hard work

stupid Pokémon is dragging my whole team down, and ‘Michelle Bagster’, to find out what stalkers are likely to learn about me. I did finally Google ‘Brain Slump’, though, and apparently there are five easy steps to get back on track. If you’re having trouble getting into things, too, give them a shot.

1. Ditch the routine Obviously this won’t work for me. The ditching of said routine is the reason I’m in this mess. You go ahead, though. Listen to birdsong every morning or something to shake things up.

2. Exercise Yeah. No.

3. Do a good deed MICHELLE BAGSTER kicks her brain’s ass Now that uni’s well and truly back in swing, I have the painful, thankless task of wrenching my brain back into gear. I spent yesterday acting as its personal trainer, trying to get the little flubbery thing to do crunches. But my wimpy-ass brain just sat there and whined; ‘I’m not a muscle!’ Pssh. What does it know?

The reason my brain is in this state is because I’ve had what I like to call a ‘creative holiday.’ During my ‘creative holiday’ I’ve taken up drawing junk, written the better half of a novel, tried unsuccessfully to flog my crafts online, and watched more episodes of My Little Pony than I’m comfortable sharing with you out of fear of being judged (but in all seriousness, Rainbow Dash FTW!).

This was all well and good when my only real commitments were my self-imposed Get Off Your Arse times, but now that I actually have to think, I’ve realised that my brain doesn’t have a switch to turn on ‘Thinking’ and turn off ‘My Little Pony Theme Tune’.

Of course, my brain whines ‘I’m not a light bulb’, but I suspect there’s more to it than that.

There must be something that can be done to speed up the process. Something that makes a lot less sense than hard work. For answers, I turned to the all-knowing Google. This is always a time-consuming thing, because I just waste time Googling random stuff like ‘Vullaby evolve what level’ because that

I can tick this one off my list so badly. Just smiling politely at the guy next door should earn me a halo, because he’s really scary. He frowns so often that his eyebrows have met in the middle and locked there, so he couldn’t change his face anymore even if he tried.

Which he wouldn’t. To compete with my good deed, you’d need to help at least eight old ladies to cross the road.

4. De-clutter your mind When I shake my head, it rattles. I’m pretty sure that means there’s enough space in my mind to spare me from assembling IKEA shelving units in there to house all my clutter. If clutter is your problem, though, I guess it’s time to break out that Alan Key and figure out how to use it in your brain. I’d suggest entering through the ear.

5. Completely change direction When I read this, it hit me. I’ve been doing the right thing this entire time. Knuckling down and forcing myself through pages of unforgiving, relevant text is just the wrong way to get my brain into gear.

Instead, I should go ahead and learn that stupid Vullaby won’t evolve until level 53, and watch ponies have friendship adventures on Youtube.

So now I guess all I have to do is sit here and wait for the amazing grades to start rolling in.

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(diversions)

DIVERSIONS mr squiggle: now in high definition widescreen format Show us your squiggly bits. Use the shapes below to draw a thing. Then label the thing and send the thing to us (scan it, or rip out this page and shove it under our door). What’s the prize? Our patent-pending, genuinely impressive, unironic ‘on dit prize pack’. Complete with goodies for you hand selected by your loving editors.

Cat-ption Contest Winner ‘After passing “Go” for the forty-third time, Mr. Whiskers realised he would never be a Wall Street Fat Cat.’ - Ben Rillo

Runners-Up...

‘I can has pass go?’ - Sia Duff ‘Yes! I landed on Paw Mall.’ - Casey Briggs ‘Damn it! I missed Free Parking by a whisker.’ - Fiona Coles

Ben Rillo wins a free 2-for1 pass to the Palace Nova.

Meowgnificent!

crystal bollocks with psychic psusan

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Aries: Have you ever questioned the fact that the longest relationship you’ve had with a man is with your pizza delivery guy? Think about that.

Scorpio: As the planets complete their cycle, your fertility is at an all-time high. I hear condoms are on special this week. Might want to check that out.

Taurus: Your worst fears may come to light today when you are shoved into a very small hole filled with sharks, spiders, insects, snakes and moths.

Sagittarius: You are forced to rethink your outlook on life when you fracture your scrolling finger and are no longer able to use Facebook and Tumblr.

Gemini: Take time to give your cat long, sensuous, loving massages. As a result your cat will live a richer, healthier and more fulfilled life.

Capricorn: You might awake one morning from troubled dreams to find yourself transformed in your bed into a monstrous insect/vermin/ungeziefer. It is no dream.

Cancer: Liking a viral video on Facebook will lead you to become passionately involved with an activist organisation. Did I say passionately? I meant fleetingly.

Leo: Cupid’s on annual leave this fortnight, and his replacement has shitty aim. That special someone isn’t special, man. You got hit by the wrong arrow.

Virgo: Did you know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is an accomplished bluegrass violinist?

Libra: Your next fortnight is going to be worse than the movie Bridesmaids. (Also, why the fuck were those bitches at the Oscars?)

Aquarius: Today you’ll find out that your pet rat betrayed your best friend and his whole family. Plus, you’re a ranga. And you have like, 400 brothers and sisters. Who are also rangas. And you break your leg.

Sucker.

Pisces: Decision time is approaching, but you’re struggling to make the right choice. Write a list of pros and cons, roll it into a joint and smoke it. Watch all three Back To The Future movies in a row (this is important). The answer will come in your dreams.

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).

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V O O Looking for answers? You and me both, my friend. You and me both. See the bottom of page 5 for all your existential-crisis- and diversion- related needs. No peeking, mind. That takes all the fun out of life.

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From Volume 4, Issue 9, August 1935

retrospective

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