On Dit Edition 81.6 by On Dit

Edition 81.6

INSIDE:

YOUR UNION BOARD UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

Volume 81 Edition 6 Editors: Casey Briggs, Stella Crawford and Holly Ritson. On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union.

EDITORIAL 2 ON THE WEBSITE

CORRESPONDENCE 4

On Dit is produced and printed on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land.

WILD HORSE!

STUDENT NEWS

FROM YOUR REPRESENTATIVES

VOX POP

lifeoncampus.org.au/ondit facebook.com/onditmagazine twitter.com/onditmagazine

WHAT’S ON

Published 28/5/2013.

ON HONESTY: MAX COOPER

UNIVERSITY BLUES: RHYS NIXON

BODILY CONFIDENT: MICHELLE BAGSTER

GAMERS ANONYMOUS: NICOLA DOWLAND

COLUMNS

FIRE!: SAM YOUNG

BOARD GAMES: STELLA CRAWFORD

PEELIN’ GOOD: SEB TONKIN

LEST WE SENTIMENTALISE: HEATHER MCNAB

THIS IS A LOVE STORY: LEAH BEILHART

VIDEO GAMES: GINA CHADDERTON

VISUAL REALITY: EMMA JONES

FINDING MR DARCY: EMILY PALMER

WHOSE TUBE?: SOPHIE BYRNE

THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD: PAUL YIALLOUROS

THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT: TOBY BARNFIELD

LOW COST LISTENING: ROSS JOBSON

AMAZING BOLOGNESING: ELEANOR LUDINGTON

DIVERSIONS 46 AN OPEN LETTER: GENEVIEVE NOVAK

Cover art by Jack Lowe. Back inside cover by Anthony Nocera. Thanks to Courtney, Angus and the ever amazing Daisy for distro; Michael from IT (I want to have your babies.); Max, Rhys, Sophie and Seb for copyedits and company; Alice for the brownies; sliced bread. Unthanks to Eurovision for being on a deadline weekend; people who spoiled Eurovision; the SRC for an inefficient meeting; our alarm clocks for not working; and our immune systems for failing us in our hour of need.

EDITORIAL

HELLO POSSUMS,

Earlier this year someone asked me why I was going to such lengths to make a magazine. ‘No one’s forcing you to do it, you know,’ they said.

Yes, sometimes this means that I get overworked and sleep deprived and maybe a little bit cranky (sorry family/housemates/co-editors/ friends/random strangers), but it also means I get to do some really incredible things, and I think that’s worth it.

They were right. No one is forcing me to miss watching my favourite Euro-themed musical event OF THE YEAR, stay on campus late enough to see the resident foxes, or rush into an SRC meeting, late, declaring my love for the wonderful folks in the university’s IT department.

Our writers this edition clearly feel the same way. Whether it’s flying across the world to meet someone you met in a chat room, commemorating fallen troops, dancing all weekend to remind the world that FORMAT ALWAYS WINS, telling the truth, spending hours on YouTube, or playing computer games, people get up to some awesome stuff when they do it for love.

But I don’t think it’s that simple. I can’t help but wonder – surely it’s okay to do things without someone forcing us to do them. In fact, surely we should do things we’re not forced to do. Somehow, I think it’s the things that we do of our own volition, the choices we make to do something because it makes us giddy happy or laugh or just feel good, are the most worthwhile ones.

I’ll hazard a guess that you, dear reader, also enjoy doing things just because you enjoy them. After all, unless you’re a member of my immediate family or a very close friend of mine, no one is forcing you to read this. If you’d like to tell the world about some things you love doing, get in touch with us at ondit@adelaide.edu.au.

I guess what I’m saying is this: if you spent your life only doing the things people forced you do, you’d probably have a pretty shit life. Not only that, but you’d probably never do anything as well as you’d really like to. Doing things for love means you’ll go the extra mile. You not only meet your KPIs (make a magazine: check), but you attend extra meetings, use social media like a pro to engage with people, and generally to go out of your way to make things better. So while the fact that I can’t get a coffee on campus on a Sunday afternoon is starting to get to me, at the half-way point of this volume of On Dit, I’m starting to realise the importance of doing what you love. And instant coffee. Study hard, enjoy the break, and we’ll see you in semester two. Love, as always, Holly (and Stella and Casey)

ON THE WEBSITE

SICK OF STUDYING? COLOUR ME FUN! TRYING TO PERFECT Ever wanted to go to Holi? Or participate in a with over 10,000 runners? Why not do YOUR PROCRASTINATION fun-run both? TECHNIQUES? LOOK lucky friends of On Dit were runners in NO FURTHER THAN Four the Colour Run this year. Did they come out LIFEONCAMPUS.ORG.AU/ unscathed by dyed cornflour? Unlikely. ONDIT. THERE’RE ENOUGH REVIEWS, COLUMNS, AND INTERVIEWS TO KEEP YOU INTERESTED FOR AT LEAST A WEEK OF SWOTVAC... ON YOUR BIKES

Puncture? Faulty breaks? Adelaide Bike Kitchen has a new venue, and is dishing up bike maintenence love on Wednesday nights. Check it.

DON’T BE BITTER

Well, not as a person. When it comes to your drinks, especially those mixed with lemon and lime, bitter is best. Jess Martin has shared her recipe for aromatic bitters. Smell ya later, we’re busy in the kitchen!

MUSIC TO YOUR EARS

Wanna know what Gatsby (the movie) sounds like? Renjie Du wants to tell you.

INTERVIEWS

Did you miss one of the interviews On Dit has conducted this year? Never fear, transcripts are here! David Sefton, Stereopublic, Ryan Fitzgibbon, Jane Sloane, and more.

CORRESPONDENCE

Dear On Dit,

I told you.

I’m writing this having just finished Live Below The Line. I fed myself for two dollars a day last week. I now know a little of the lack of choices, nutrition and flavour that comes with a limited income, and I found the experience to be extremely uncomfortable, even with every other comfort and privilege available to me. I do not presume to know what it’s like to live in extreme poverty. That’s why Oliver Morris’ article ‘Charity Show Offs’ (Edition 81.4) was bothering to me.

But no. Somebody didn’t listen. And now Look what they’ve Gone and done. I am Of course talking about the auu Board Meeting. Watching your Twitter feed was a nervous and concerning experience. Firstly, the Board have gone and given control of the Vote to a third party (Likely Lizard Person Controlled) organisation. Then we saw the Truth! The Lizard People are already within the Union! I expect that the Unfortunate Lucy Small-Pearce had an inkling of this, and the true reason that she was ‘Rolled’ was that she Was going to Expose the truth of Katsambis’ existence! Luckily, in this bungled attempt at controlling and manipulating, the evidence is All to clear. The Lizard People should be Ousted from the Union, before they take Control of Everything, and slowly but surely possess the Student Body. Failing that, I fear we have no further option but to Flee. In Fear and Solidarity, Annie Moose Dear NUS/SRC/whoever is responsible for all those ‘WALK OUT’ circles [posters] ‘round town! RE: Student Walkout day While being terminally bored, I have read one of them. I found that I agree with many of the sentiments*. However, that day has one assignment due, one of those once-in-a-blue-moon... sorry, I meant ‘fortnight’... tutorials and a mid-semester test. Missing any and all of them would be doing myself a disastrical of epic proportions. As far as me getting a Fail goes, it will be a waste of some hard semester’s work and hardly any help to your rally, so please accept my apologies instead of my attendance at the event. With you in spirit,

If Oliver had heeded his own advice and conducted some research, he’d find that participant blogs for Live Below the Line rarely embody the attitude he despises. Likewise, he’d find that The Oaktree Foundation and World Vision (behind LBL and 40HF respectively) are reputable and highly accountable organisations that spend funds effectively. Certainly both are good choices for someone who ‘takes charity seriously’. Any cause has its share of champions who are along for the ride or do so for ‘glory’. It’s unfortunate that Oliver feels shamed by that minority. However, it’s wrong to criticise Live Below the Line or 40 Hour Famine, because most people participate out of charity and a genuine desire to empathise with the less fortunate. Many participants make their efforts public because that is the most effective way to generate conversations and donations. These are both valuable weapons in the fight against extreme poverty. If you wish to criticise self righteous campaigners, you ought to take issue with slacktivists and clicktivists, who will gladly rally behind any cause, so long as the online petition spins sufficiently heart wrenching rhetoric. At least with Live Below the Line you have make an effort and reconsider your lifestyle, and the cause is a real and recognised issue. Regards, Jenna Holder (Third year Bachelor of Design Studies student)

WE’RE SO SORRY

In Edition 81.5, we incorrectly attributed the song STD Fury to Sex/Ed. The artist of that brilliant song is, in fact, Javelin.

One busy Maths student in an integral tree. * Once I’ve found them, that is. Only the ‘Beware of the Leopard’ notice was missing... You have a whole lot of posters, but not a tad of a link to information on what’s the protest about!

We like getting emails! Email us your thoughts with the subject line ‘Letter to the Editor’ to ondit@adelaide.edu.au and you might be printed on this page in a future edition.

WILD HORSE!

BY ROWAN ROFF

STUDENT NEWS

DRINK TO THAT

More information about the university’s new responsible alcohol policy has come to light. Union President Deanna Taylor and SRC President Catherine Story have been involved in discussions with University staff about the policy. After the initial draft policy was rejected by the University’s legal department, a new draft has been devised. As expected, the policy focuses on reducing the risks associated with drinking and encouraging more responsible consumption of alcohol. This will potentially prohibit things like advertising free alcohol at events, including drinks packages (without providing food) in the purchase price of tickets to events such as Law Ball, stricter requirements regarding the presence of responsible persons at events and obligations regarding the provision of free/reasonably priced food and soft drink at events where alcohol is served. The policy is still very much in the drafting stages, so all requirements are unconfirmed at this point. If you’d like to have a say in the process, contact your student representatives. For details see pages 8 and 9. For further background see ‘Boozing Gone Bad’ in Edition 81.4. Holly Ritson

NTEU BALLOT TO STRIKE

The NTEU have claimed success in their ballot for protected industrial action. As a result, NTEU members of

University staff are one step closer to strike action. The dispute over the negotiations for an updated Enterprise Bargaining Agreement has now stretched for some months (still pretty measly compared to the 2 years for the last round of negotiations). The NTEU claim the new result sends a strong signal to University to negotiate ‘more quickly and productively’. If you’ve been following our coverage of the ongoing stoush, this won’t sound like news. The University have previously accused the NTEU of prematurely rushing towards strike action, and failing to support ‘a logical sequence for addressing issues’ during negotiations. While the newest step doesn’t guarantee a strike in the coming weeks, it gives the option of industrial action to members if they so choose. The ballot was conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission after a successful application to Fair Work Australia. Stella Crawford

HIT THE BOOKS

For those of you who follow On Dit’s twitter feed like it’s going out of fashion (it’s not, by the way) you’ll already know that the future of the SRC’s co-op book shop that was run earlier this semester has been the topic of much debate recently. For those of you who weren’t aware, go follow @onditmagazine on Twitter, and read on. In week one of this semester, a second hand ‘Book Shop & Swap’ opened in the Hub. The store was

manned by student volunteers, funded by the SRC, and provided students with an opportunity to buy and sell second hand books. Overall, the project, coordinated by SRC General Councillor Lawrence Ben, was a success – approximately $2500 of second hand textbooks were sold, and over $2500 in revenue was generated. Given the success of the shop and ongoing demand for cheap textbooks, the SRC sought to establish a more permanent set up. Ben brought the proposal to the attention of the Union Board at at the meeting on May 15. When the agenda item came up, Dianne Janes, General Manager of the Union, effectively declared that the Union would not support any efforts made by the SRC to establish a permanent second hand book shop, and were the SRC to go ahead with plans to establish a shop in Fix, the Union would seek to evict the store from the Union owned premises. This statement was made on the grounds that such a book store would be in competition to Union owned Unibooks. Board Directors Wasim Saeed and Lucy Small-Pearce both expressed their understanding that Ben’s proposal would meet student needs, and so hoped a compromise could be reached. After further questioning from Ben, the Board moved in camera to further discuss his proposal. When visitors were permitted to return to the board room, Janes elaborated on her further statement to say that providing cheap textbooks to students is a priority for the union. As such, the Union has developed a strategy to provide textbooks to students at drastically reduced prices. Due to confidentiality and

corporate governance procedures, the Board was unable to discuss exactly what these plans entail. Frustrating as such a statement is, it appeared that the Union does have plans to provide cheap textbooks, and so cannot support what would be a competing business, albeit not for profit and staffed by volunteers. Ben aired his frustration at the SRC meeting on 17 May. The Directors present made the stance of the board clearer – the Board is not opposed to the sale of cheap books for students, but has a plan to do so that would be more efficient than Ben’s proposal. In the interim, the Board won’t prevent short term stalls similar to that held earlier this semester. How far Ben will take his commitment to providing cheap textbooks to students is yet to be seen, but he’ll have to do it without the backing of the Union. Holly Ritson

DUMB CUTS

On May 14, the NTEU held rallies nationwide as part of its Dumb Cuts campaign. In Adelaide, members and students gathered by North Terrace despite the rain to demonstrate their condemnation

of the federal government’s cuts to tertiary education funding. While listening to the words of Ron Slee, President of the South Australian branch of the NTEU, and the Hon. Tammy Franks at the rally, there was an almost singular mood that permeated throughout: persecution. Students and academics rallied together. Professor Greg McCarthy gave some perspective, and suggested an increase in HECS would likely be used to cover the cuts. SRC President Catherine Story called for a continuing fight up to the election, calling the cuts hypocritical of the free education enjoyed by the large percentage of currently elected politicians. Given the weather, the turnout of several hundred students and academics was encouraging. More encouraging were the people I spoke with at the rally – most were firmly behind the movement and not just looking for a free feed at the after-rally BBQ. This support indicates that maybe this campaign will receive enough attention to make a difference. Rowan Sanders Photography: Joseph McMillan

STATE OF THE UNION DEANNA TAYLOR

At this point in the semester, it’s important to remind yourself that studying should not be consuming your entire life. Keeping a good work-study-life balance is crucial to winning at work, studying, and life. This is obviously easier said than done when you’re up against deadline after deadline and trying to prepare for exams. But a good work/study/life balance is key if you want to successfully finish your semester without burning out or seriously impairing your mental and physical health. If you find yourself staring at a computer screen or textbook during all of your waking hours, schedule in set periods of time to catch up with friends for coffee or a movie. It’s important to give yourself breaks so that your brain has time to soak up and retain information, and what better way to spend those breaks than meeting up with people who can help you relax? Don’t forget that it’s generally recommended that full-time students avoid working more 10-15 hours a week. If you have to work more than that to afford rent/bills/food/living, and it’s affecting your studying, contact Student Care on 8313 5430, or visit their office on the ground floor of the Lady Symon building. They can provide loans and grants to students who are doing it tough financially. If Centrelink is screwing you over, you can also get Centrelink advice

through Student Care – they have direct access to a student advisor at Centrelink. Get plenty of exercise as well. You’re meant to get at least half an hour of exercise everyday to stay healthy, but that doesn’t mean you have to go for a 30 minute jog or anything. You might decide to go out for 10 minute short walks during your breaks – do it three times during the day, and there you go! Or, if you’re like me and are highly unmotivated to go for a run or go to the gym because it feels like a chore, do something fun. Incidental exercise, be it dancing around the house to your favourite album, walking the dog along the beach or even sex, counts too. Apart from the importance of a good work-study-life balance, it’s also vital to remember to seek help if you’re really struggling academically. Obviously see your lecturer or tutor for assistance, but also be sure to use services that the University provides like the Writing Centre and the Maths Learning Centre. They’re both located in Hub Central on the eastern side of Level 3, and both have drop-in sessions. No question is too stupid for them.

You can also find online resources provided by the Writing Centre and Maths Learning Centre by clicking the ‘Student’ tab on the University’s website and going to ‘Study Resources’. Student Care also provide online guides and advice on different issues such as plagiarism. Just visit the Student Care on the Union’s website at lifeoncampus.org.au/ student-care. Remember you can also see the Counselling Service if you’re struggling to cope with stress or if there are other issues affecting your mental health. They can give you advice and strategies to help you, as well as just lend a supportive ear. Don’t forget that it’s not too late to seek help if you need it, with either your studies or problems that might be affecting your studies. It’s never too late. Good luck with your final assessments, and see you next semester! Deanna Taylor Union President auupresident@auu.org.au Twitter: @auulifeoncampus facebook.com/auulifeoncampus

A GOOD WORK/STUDY/LIFE BALANCE IS KEY, AND IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO SEEK HELP

STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COLUMN CATHERINE STORY

On May 14, budget day, around three hundred university staff and students gathered by North Terrace to protest the $2.8 billion in higher education cuts. These staff and students joined thousands of staff and students all around the country to protest the cuts. It was heart-warming to see so many people come to the rally, and it is time for even more of us to come together and take on the ground action against these cuts. This election year it has become blindingly obvious that whether the ALP or the Liberal Party get elected – and one of them will get elected – that neither option is going to be good for our education. I’m really angry about these cuts. I’m angry that the government has chosen to put the most disadvantaged students in the most debt by converting Start Up Scholarships to loans. I’m angry that many students on Youth Allowance will have no choice but to take these loans to buy necessary textbooks and student living requirements. By converting student Start Up Scholarships to loans, the poorest students will be in the most debt coming into the workforce. At the moment it takes the average student eight years to pay off their HECS debt; in the future, the poorest students will be stuck in debt even longer. I’m angry that there is a nine hundred million dollar efficiency dividend that, from

THE MORE ANGRY I GET, THE MORE I QUESTION WHY WE AREN’T DEMANDING FREE TERTIARY EDUCATION the government’s perspective, is delightfully vague. But many of us know what ‘efficiency dividend’ really means in the context of underfunded universities that already have their own efficiency dividends in place. It means that in universities all over Australia staff will be cut, student services will dwindle, and the quality of our education will be eroded. Our Vice Chancellor Warren Bebbington has estimated that these cuts will mean the University of Adelaide will be twenty million dollars worse off. Bebbington has said ‘No university could make another efficiency dividend, we’ve got such lean operations now, we’re down to the bone and this will have to mean cutting something.’ But I’m not just angry about these cuts; the more angry I get, the more I question why we aren’t demanding free tertiary education. Education improves health, it improves the economy, and makes for a moreequal society. It seems bizarre that free education is conceptualised as unachievable, as something fanciful that happened once but could never happen again. I ask, why not? I don’t want to be a consumer in

the context of my education. I believe my education is making me into a better person – a person in touch with other people, society, and the world. I don’t believe we’re just consumers; we’re a society, a community, and we need to keep this sense of community that is building through anger at the injustice of these cuts. We need to build this up together. Come to our general student meeting on Wednesday 29 May at 12pm on the Barr Smith Lawns. We want you to get together with us, your representatives, and pass some motions condemning these cuts. We want to talk about what students are going to do to work together to demand a quality education. We need as many of you to come along as possible! Hope to see you there to build a movement with us. Catherine Story SRC President srcpresident@auu.org.au Twitter: @adelaidesrc facebook.com/adelaidesrc

VOX POP

EVERYONE KNOWS THE HUB ISN’T REALLY FOR STUDYING. WE DISTRACTED THESE STUDENTS WITH THESE QUESTIONS: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

How far would you go for true love? What does ANZAC Day mean to you? What’s your all time favourite YouTube video? In light of the Cherryville fire, should the fire danger season should be extended? Would you rather: have exams next week and holidays until the start of semester 2, or leave things as they are? 6. Winter, Summer, Autumn or Spring?

MAHI, ARTS (LINGUISTICS), 2ND YEAR 1. Not very. It’s not a huge priority for me. If [true love] isn’t here, then eh. 2. It has symbolic meaning – of our history. 3. That’s easy – the Dayum Song. 4. Yes, definitely. The danger of fires should be constantly on our minds considering the consequences. 5. Exams as normal – I like to structure my timetable and everything. At this point in time that would be too hard. 6. Winter – I like winter accessories.

TOM, ENGINEERING (MECHANICAL), 1ST YEAR (AGAIN) 1. This is a bit weird. I wasn’t expecting a question like that. 2. Nothing really, even though it’s a bit unpatriotic to say that. I often forget about it. 3. I don’t know, there’s too many. 4. No – I’m used to being around farm people who want to be able to burn off whenever. 5. Exams when they’re meant to be. I’m not ready yet. 6. Winter – I’m such an albino; the sun hurts.

BEN, ENGLISH LITERATURE, PHD 1. From Adelaide to Sydney. 2. Complexity. Hisotrial and cultural complexity. 3. Jimmy Barnes – Largs Pier Hotel music video, or Religion Conversion by Evid3nce. 4. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. 5. How they are – I never liked exams. 6. Summer – for true love!

THOMAS, LAW/INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, 3RD YEAR 1. I don’t want to sound cliché, but all the way. But I couldn’t give up tea. 2. Commemoration. But not commermorating war, commemorating soldiers. 3. What isn’t! [Gets out laptop to show me his bookmarks] It’s a toss up between Can’t Hug Every Cat and The Bed Intruder Song. 4. I’m not sure if extending the fire ban would be the only appropriate response in preventing incidents like this. 5. Have exams when they’re meant to be – I love uni life! 6. Autumn – I like the word autumnal.

CHLOE, ACCOUNTING, 1ST YEAR 1. My boyfriend is at Boston University, and I’m going to visit him in the holidays, so that far. 2. I’m not very aware of the holiday. I experienced it this year and noticed many people celebrate it. I like the cookies. 3. I watch videos to mostly study, such as videos made by MIT. 4. I think so. I was in Hahndorf that weekend and heard what was happening. 5. Exams next week – I’d be ready. 6. Summer – Adelaide in winter is always rainy.

RUEBEN, SCIENCES, 1ST YEAR 1. If I knew it was true love, pretty far. Only if I was sure. 2. Respect for the sacrifcies of other people and the Australian troops back then. 3. The Community Channel for vloggers, and cat videos. 4. Yeah, I think so. People need to be more aware of the risk, so maybe there should be advertising or something as well. 5. Exams as normal. I wouldn’t have time to study before next week, and the assignments would all pile up. 6. Spring – not too cold, not too hot.

GRACE, ENGINEERING (MINING), 2ND YEAR 1. I’d probably travel somewhere for it. 2. A public holiday. 3. Comedy videos. 4. Yeah, fires should be banned for longer. 5. Exams when they are. Three weeks of holidays are enough. 6. Winter – it’s not as hot.

WHAT’S ON. 12

OVERHEARD@ADELAIDE UNI

WELCOME,

Here’s where you’ll find information, gossip, shout-outs, news, events, bake sales, pub crawls and anything else you could possibly want to know about your university. Have something to add? Think you know what’s on? Let us know at ondit@adelaide.edu.au

M U LT I P LE MEDIUMS

A SALA Exhibition Featuring art by Liam Fleming, Haneen Martin, Ben McLaren, Tom Steele and Sam Howie, this one’s in our very own FIX Lounge (or the Old Union Bookshop, adjacent to the Barr Smith Lawns). Opening Night: August 1, 6pm (As a bonus, it’s free!). The exhibtion will be open to the public from August 2 – 25, 9am – 5pm.

3 Minute Thesis

Can you sell your thesis? PhD and Masters students compete to present their thesis topic in the most engaging way in only three minutes. The Adelaide Uni winner gets a travel grant and the chance to compete in the national final. At which point, presumably, there are more prizes. Registrations are now open. For more info on registering, head to adelaide.edu.au/ red/3mt/

CHOIR OF DELIGHTS

Adelaide University Choral Society are presenting Aeterna on Sunday June 2. It’s at 3pm, St Patrick’s Church, Grote Street, Adelaide. It’s a series of Capella works. Tickets $20/15 full price/ concession. Avilable at the door or from bookings@aucs.org.au.

Caruso talking about the Criminal Law exam: ‘It is hard. It is really hard. I mean really really hard. So hard that not even I would be able to finish it in the allotted time, and I wrote it and know the answers.’ Student: ‘Why did you make it so hard?’ Caruso: ‘It builds character...’ ‘We microwaved her socks....twice’ - guy exiting the Fix Lounge.

ROBOGALS

Want to hang with some Young Women in Technology? This year’s event is at good ol’ UofA, from June 12 to 13. Over 10 robotics sessions will be running (they’re seeking volunteers if you’re interested in helping out/free food for the day).For more info email adelaide-exec@robogals.org. au, or check out https://www.facebook.com/ RobogalsAdelaide.

DEWEY LIKE IT?

Samantha Prendergast reviews her favourite book in the Barr Smith Library. ‘If you believe it, then it is. That’s why I know Rhonda Byrne’s literary classic is in the BSL collection (even if it isn’t that easy to find). All I can say is: I am thankfulness, I am beauty, I am peace.

GOSSIP RECTANGLE: SRC GONE MAD

At the last SRC meeting, the Mature Age Officer’s report was rejected. Why? It contained this and very little else:

SEE THE REAL THING

To raise awareness about and fight the good fight against Hep C, Hepatitis Australia are running a film-making competition. You could win $10 000 cash! Visit www.seetherealthing.com. au for more details and T&Cs. Entries close May 31, so get filming!

They voted to reject it on the grounds that it questioned the integrity of the SRC.

DAYS UNTIL: Winter School:

49 Laundry Day: 50 Holidays:

LAW SCHOOL STUDY TOUR

The Law School’s offering you an international law experience. Travelling through Germany and the Netherlands, you’ll learn about the German legal system, visit The Hague, and, you know, be in Europe. Applications due 4pm, 7 June 2013. Tour dates: 24 November to 6 December 2013. More info at: law.adelaide. edu.au/students/ exchange/study-tour/

University of Adelaide’s eChallenge Want to win $10,000 in cash and a trip to Austin, Texas to compete in the Global Venture Labs Investment Competition? Enter your innovative business idea in this year’s eChallenge. For more info go to adelaide.edu.au/ echallenge.

AEROSPACE F U T U R E S CONFERENCE From July 10-12, the Aerospace Futures conference will feature networking, industry experts, and all the latest developments in the aerospace industry – and all in Adelaide. Applications open now at aerospacefutures. com.au or check out facebook.com/ AeroFutures for details. Applications for the conference close May 31.

GET INVOLVED IN YOUR UNI!

SRC and Union meetings are open for all students. SRC meetings are fortnightly with the next one on May 31. Union meetings are monthly; the next ones are June 19 and July 17.

PUB CRAWL WATCH

Education: Gotta teach em all! The AUES’s Pub Crawl is ready to go. It’s on Friday July 5, and allegedly, ‘it’s going to be like Pikachu... Electric!’ Get your Pub Crawl in On Dit – email ondit@adelaide.edu.au (Much better than getting it into the Sunday Mail, we promise!)

UNI GAMES!

The games will be on the Gold Coast this year. There’ll be 29 sports contested, over 6000 athletes, and all levels of ability. Sept 29 to Oct 4. More details at unione. theblacks.com.au.

PHOTO COMP

The photography club is having a photo competition with the theme ‘Blue’ (open to interpretation). Send entries to aupc. competition@gmail. com by June 10. Open to all students.

TALK/STALK/WALK:

Facebook: facebook.com/onditmagazine Twitter: @onditmagazine Snail Mail: On Dit, c/o Adelaide University Union, Level 4 Union House, University of Adelaide, 5005 In person: Pop into our office near the Barr Smith Lawns between 12-3pm, Tuesday – Thursday during term time.

CALENDAR: WEEKS 9 & 10 TUESDIT 28 WEDNESDIT 29 GENERAL STUDENT MEETING THURSDIT 30 FRIDIT 31 SRC MEETING SAT’DIT 1 BOWEL CANCER AWARENESS WEEK SUNDIT 2 CHORAL SOCIETY PERFORMANCE MONDIT 3 MABO DAY TUESDIT 4 HUG YOUR CAT DAY WEDNESDIT 5 THURSDIT 6 FRIDIT 7 CABARET FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT SAT’DIT 8 LAW BALL!! SUNDIT 9

ON HONESTY MAX COOPER LIKES TELLING THE TRUTH ART: STEPHEN GRACE

Let me start with a story (aka the inspiration for this article): A friend of mine was seeing a guy casually. They both had some ex baggage, and pretty busy lives. She did not want another relationship, and made that fairly clear. This worked pretty well for a while, until, all of a sudden, her not wanting a relationship was an issue for him. Not one that made him ‘upset’ of course, though he was somewhat ‘disappointed’ in her. What did this bring to my attention? People suck at honesty. Partly this goes back to a lesson from childhood: we need to use our words. It’s also about being honest with ourselves, as well as our partners, about how we feel. I’m not trying to look down at people here – my own track record here isn’t exactly unblemished.

Similarly, vulnerability? Scary as shit. I’m going to resist breaking into a wankfest about image culture and narcissism and whatnot, but people don’t like feeling vulnerable. This is for basically the same reason they don’t like touching hot stoves: it can hurt. Unfortunately, getting hurt is part of life. It’s also a part of relationships. It would be nice if they came without the hurt sometimes, but lots of nice things don’t happen. And quite frankly, lying about our feelings? Not really the best way to protect them. To return to the conceit of comparing adult relationships to early childhood: not talking about your feelings doesn’t protect them any more than someone covering their eyes in Peek-A-Boo makes a baby disappear. Of course, just talking your feelings at someone does no good if they’re not listening. If honesty is a two-way street, that’s a head-on collision. Metaphors aside, just listen to people. People aren’t as subtle as they think and a little attention can go a long way in understanding them.

I’ve said I was fiiiiiiiiiine (with exactly that many i’s) with keeping it casual when I was already in a TVschoolgirl level of crushing, and I’ve said yes to dates I knew would never head anywhere (except maybe bed if he was hot?). A part of me hopes that writing it down for all the world (well, the subset thereof that reads On Dit) to see will help me stick to it in the future. Because seriously, it’s not helping anyone. Personal story: in Year 12, I hooked up with a guy who was perhaps a touch older than me. In the same way that Gina Rinehart is a touch richer than me. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration. It was roughly 17 and 24. Not 17 and 24,000,000.) He said I was too young to date, and I suggested we could keep things casual. It’s fortunate I had no post-hookup poker face to speak of, because he was spot on in guessing I didn’t actually want to keep things casual. The rejection hurt, but with distance it just wasn’t going to end well. We probably wouldn’t still be friends if he hadn’t asked me to be honest then. I get some of the reasons we lie. Obviously subjective points, but whatever: liking people is scary as shit. Speaking as someone who occasionally has to remind himself his friends (on the whole) enjoy his company, realising I want to smoosh my face with someone else’s can feel like Thunderdome with emotions.

This isn’t going to ‘fix’ relationships. People are still going to lie, people are still going to ignore each other, and people are still going to get hurt. It will continue to suck, but invariably, the world will still be turning. Feel free to use your own cliché there, but just understand this: things keep going. If it ever looks like they won’t, just take a breath and do something with a friend. Your feelings will get better eventually.

Max Cooper feels Disney gave him unrealistic expectations of relationships. He was expecting much more impromptu singing.

UNIVERSITY BLUES RHYS NIXON WANTS YOU TO SURVIVE TOO ART: JACK LOWE

‘You don’t enter university with intelligence; you leave with it.’

This was what a PhD friend of mine told me, after I had complained about receiving a 55 per cent for my first English assignment. I was lamenting my own lack of intelligence, as apposed to those around me who appeared to be doing so well. I had no idea what to do, and frankly, I was scared. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told me, ‘the smartest people in university are usually the ones who need help.’ What the hell did that mean? If they need help then they aren’t intelligent, right? That’s what intelligence is, right? ‘You don’t understand,’ he told me, ‘they need help, but they also ask for it. They are smart because they ask for help.’ I had two thoughts: first, why didn’t you just say that, and secondly, isn’t asking for help a sign of weakness? I remember being told that I had to think for myself, the onus was on ME. I was at university after all. I feel that this is a common theme amongst university students: everyone is too afraid of the stigma of asking for help, instead of just knowing. How do you think your teacher got to their position? They took all the help they could get, and more. There is no shame in needing advice, asking why your grade was the way it was, or stating the fact that you just don’t understand. I’ve been in many tutorials where half the class tried to battle their way through a particular reading, before someone finally admits that they just ‘didn’t get it’. After that, the group relaxes . From that point on people start to actually learn; they get answers to the question they asked – why? So what is my point? It is that university can be a scary place, I know this. I was a first year too, and I still feel like that same person. The only difference is I am not afraid to ask for help, and believe me it makes a world of difference. Ignore the stigma attached to it, please. Because in how ever many years it takes for you to finish your degree (time is also not a factor, it isn’t a race, take your time), you want to have learnt something, not just turned up at the time the tutor told you to. So, for your sake, ask the teacher ‘But why?’ You’ll sound much smarter for it.

Here is a quick re-cap of what I have talked about:

THE UNIVERSITY SURVIVAL KIT

Ask for help, always. Nothing says ‘idiot’ like someone being too proud to admit they need help. The uni writers’ centre is a gold mine, and you would be surprised how much you can learn from them. My grade went up ten points after a few visits. Think about it. Don’t be afraid to admit that you don’t understand. If your friend/s scoff at you because you didn’t ‘get it’, it shows more about them than it does about you. The professor is not your enemy; they are your friend. They were you at one point in their lives, so you could think they know what they are talking about. (Take this one with a grain of salt.) Remember that you are here because you chose to be here; no one is forcing you to stay, and no one is forcing you to leave, so try and enjoy yourself every once in a while.

Rhys Nixon is a writer studying a Bachelor of Arts, and he is not a crook.

BODILY CONFIDENT MICHELLE BAGSTER IS SICK OF PLAYING SILLY GAMES ART: STEPHEN GRACE

I want to talk to you about confidence. I don’t have a lot to say on the topic of sexuality that hasn’t been said before, or that should be said by someone more qualified than myself. But I do know a lot about what I think should be the first step in sexuality, and that’s feeling comfortable in your own skin. I went through a phase in high school where I was sort of fat, quite tall and very spotty. I thought I stood out for all the wrong reasons. I was painfully single. Combine that with a very late puberty (and I mean, like, embarrassingly late) and you’re left with a girl who feels the absolute opposite of sexy. I thought I was uniquely unattractive. I mean, all these other girls couldn’t have felt as bad as I did! Sure, no one here is a supermodel but nobody feels as flawed and gross as I do just walking around in public. I’m really not sure what changed, I don’t have any constructive advice about how to combat a lack of confidence in your body. I guess I’m still on that

journey, but several years later and I feel good. It’s not just losing a bunch of weight or a lot of my spots, although that couldn’t have hurt. I think it’s more to do with playing ‘The Game Girls Play’ too many times. Although this is the official title, this game is not limited to females of a substantial

degree of girliness. You might even have played this game yourself. It goes like this: Player 1 makes a whimper like a sad puppy and says something along the lines of ‘Oh my god I’m so X’ where X is any given negative quality. Examples I have experienced include fat, unfit, zitty, short and horselike to name a few. The correct response from Player 2 is to heave a massive sigh (optional) and say ‘No, you are not X, not X at all’. After playing a few rounds as Player 2, I realised that I never thought about how ‘X’ Player 1 actually is. Not before they went and brought it up. Like, maybe she is X. But why would I care? Why would anyone care? I actually spend more time dwelling on how she is always moping about her flaws than any amount of X-ness she may or may not have. Now how many times have I been Player 1? Fuck. I’d like to be able to say that after this realisation I suddenly became comfortable with who I am and what I look like and immediately started to, say, paint my body and pose naked for YouTube films. But it was a step, and probably the most important one. Also important was the realisation that loads of people feel gross about their body. I mean, I had a really unhealthy relationship with what I ate. The kind of relationship that gets really complicated and you play mind games with each other and have heated arguments about how they ruined your life and how you used to have dreams, and meanwhile your children have locked their bedroom doors and are crying. But I know teenagers who developed anorexia. Which I had somehow managed to miss while locked in my inconsiderate, pre-pubescent bubble. And in comparison, I was in a great place. Michelle is so happy to have received correspondence for one of her articles, she would have plans to write more slightly opinionated pieces. If she had more opinions.

GAMERS ANONYMOUS NICOLA DOWLAND SHARES THE LATEST TRENDS IN GAMES ART: KATIE HAMILTON

Our generation is obsessed with discovering and cultivating the latest craze. In the last few years photography has seen the emergence of planking and polaroid filters. Robert Downey Jr has resuscitated his drug-addled reputation to become everyone’s favourite sassy superhero. Fashion assures us that we should display our metal zippers with pride. No trend is too strange or outrageous. Yet popular culture often limits our interests. Video games have also been gaining popularity in recent years, though to an extent they still remain a niche interest. Fashionistas will be surprised to learn that video game culture mirrors many of their beloved trends. We are not so different, after all. Every few months a new large budget game is released, similar to the staggered launch of blockbuster movies. Last May all my friends were playing Diablo III, while The Walking Dead provided a diversion later in the year. Recently, the flavour of the month was Bioshock Infinite. Dedicated gamers often withdraw into a cocoon during the first days of release, powering through an 18-hour game in one weekend. In part, this is to avoid spoilers. The internet is atwitter with walk through reviews, covertly worded spoilers and hints. Not to mention sleep-deprived friends who want to discuss the twist ending while you’re still struggling through the first quest. Do you remember the high tempers and distracted behaviour after the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Imagine that four times a year. Customarily, players revisit the game after their initial hurried play, exploring the painstakingly created world in depth and attaining all possible achievements. Such games take years for

a dedicated team of artists to create, and deserve to be appreciated…not unlike the couture fashion industry. Games enjoy seasonal popularity. During first year at uni, my friends surreptitiously installed the multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 in a certain computer suite. I couldn’t walk past without hearing the raucous sounds of game play (ahem, procrastination). Now in their final years, they have quieter tastes: Minecraft on their laptops during study breaks. Hipster gamers are similar in theory to the fashion breed, though not as annoying. They’re mostly dedicated to the classic console games Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda they played as children, or nostalgic for 8-bit games like Donkey Kong and Space Invader. If you’re feeling lost, consider Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which paid homage to classic arcade games of the 80s and 90s. I will always remain faithful to my childhood Gameboy Advance, despite the superior handheld consoles released in recent years. My young cousins will feel a similar devotion towards their Nintendo 3DS. Perhaps we are all destined to become hipsters. Indie gamers present a paradox, not unlike their musical counterparts. Indie defines smaller budget, detailed games that remain a labour of love for the developer and are generally task or exploration driven. Games such as Fez and Kerbal Space Program are these players’ bread and butter. Unless such games gain widespread popularity, players are afforded little respect from their peers. Once this occurs they are forced to abandon their beloved game for more obscure pastures, or adopt the insipid motto ‘I played it first’. This poignant turn of events will be all too familiar for original fans of bands such as Thirsty Merc or Rogue Traders. Geek and nerd culture continue to gain recognition and acceptance, thanks in no small part to shows like The Big Bang Theory. Though for the uninitiated, the gamer world can appear rather alien. I hope that my ramble can help you find games more relatable, perhaps less intimidating. There is a range of genres and gaming styles to suit everyone, regardless of taste. Just like sushi, yet another trend I don’t understand.

Nicola Dowland was raised on a healthy diet of Putt Putt and Math Blaster, but has since graduated to meatier games like Skyrim (her avatar is a werewolf-mage lizard who can breathe underwater).

FIRE!

WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM YOUNG I first heard about the fire on Thursday night. I wrote an excited Facebook post about how I was going on radio with my friends, and that everyone should listen in for what would surely be an uncomfortable and awkward hour. And whilst the radio show was awkward, a family friend commented on my status. They said that the show wasn’t as uncomfortable as a fire in Basket Range (where my family home is). It being May, and you know, almost winter, I wasn’t too worried. We did check the CFS site (cfs.sa.gov.au), and

there was an alert up with a media message, to be repeated verbatim every 30 minutes. I didn’t really think much more of it, and we went on with the show, bad kid jokes and all. ‘Why do dads fart a lot? They need a shower!’ Hilarious. I’d pretty much forgotten about the fire until Friday afternoon. I was at work, and I got a message from my mum, asking if I could get in touch with my brother, who didn’t seem to be in mobile reception, and could I come home to help protect the house? I told mum I’d come home as soon as I’d finished work, but I kept an eye on the CFS updates, and eventually had to apologise to my (very understanding) students. I couldn’t concentrate on the class, and I headed home early.

As I drove towards home, the roads were eerily empty. Just one car came past, going the other direction, and half the sky was full of dim brown-grey smoke. I got home and nobody was there, but our fire hose was out and the gutters has just been blocked and filled with water. Our house is halfway down a valley, and that valley is just about the only place in Adelaide that still doesn’t have mobile reception. When the power went out earlier in the day, there wasn’t any landline either. Without internet, reception, or really any connection to the outside world, it was somewhat difficult to find out what was going on. It turned out my brother Will and his friend had driven down the road, where they’d been turned around by a police officer, who

explained that the fire front was only a few hundred metres around the corner. Not long after he got back, bits of ash started falling on us. We were standing around outside, listening to the radio for CFS updates, and at first Will’s mate thought it was raining. A big plume of dark black smoke billowed into the sky just over the other side of the hill. One house was lost in the fire, and a couple of sheds. That plume of smoke might have been one of them. At 7pm, I went to a community meeting organised by the CFS, to provide more detailed updates on how the fire was progressing, and what they were doing about it. The community in the hills is pretty tight. So it wasn’t a surprise to see the Uraidla Community Hall completely packed by ten to

seven. Some seats had been set out in the middle of the hall but very soon it was standing room only. Even then, it was crowded. Maps showing the fire zone were handed around, and a CFS Captain addressed the community. He explained that there were two main fire-fronts: the big areas of concern. One to the east, towards Forest Range, and the other one racing up towards Marble Hill. Marble Hill already houses a relic of past bushfires. The ruin at the top was the Governor’s summer residence from 1880 until it was burnt down in the Black Sunday bushfires of 1955. At this point around 500ha had been burnt. The worst scenario fall-back lines were Lobethal Road, and Marble Hill Road. Our house is about 500m on the other side of Lobethal Road, so

I breathed a little easier. The hope was that the night wouldn’t be too difficult, because Saturday was going to be another difficult day with warm temperatures and a northerly wind. We all left quickly enough once it was done, but not before a lot of people clustered around those who were down in the valley – those who had been told they had to get out, and whose properties were most in danger. I talked to some old school friends, checking that they and their families were okay. We were pretty confident that the house would be alright too, and so I went back to my house in town for the night. Saturday didn’t bring quite as nasty weather as was expected, and as the day wore on, the reports gradually improved. By 2pm, the warning had been

reduced from ‘Crimson’ to ‘Amber’, meaning that the fire was, on the whole, under control. By 5pm, the wind had started to change and there was a hint of rain.

season ending, so they can burn off rubbish and vegetation before it gets too cold and wet. By May, people have started to relax. There’s not going to be a fire this year.

I’m writing on Monday night, and there are still roads blocked off to all but local traffic as crews clean up and deal with the final areas still burning. Altogether, over 620ha was burnt, mostly scrub. The cold weather and rain helped 250 strong ground crew and four water bombers to stop the fire.

To get several near 30 degree days, and a strong northerly at this time of year is practically unheard of. Of course, there hasn’t been a real bushfire since Ash Wednesday, in February 1983. Since then, the scrub has had 30 years to grow, and residents have had 30 years to forget the danger.

One house burned down. A friend of mine from primary school lost everything. His dad is the local postman. His mum is a teacher at the primary school. A fundraiser has already been created to help support the family to rebuild and in just two days the fundraiser had raised $3000.

Trees hang over rooves, the scrub comes right up to houses, and many of us live in hard-to-reach places. Even the fires in Victoria in 2009 didn’t lead to any changes in practice here, and we’ve essentially been sitting on a time bomb waiting to go off.

Not a lot when you’ve lost your home, sure, but I think it just goes to show how close the community is. If you want to get on board, go here: mycause.com.au/ page/60081 This fire started with a legal, CFS sanctioned, private burn-off, ten days after fire-ban season had finished. People look forwards to fire ban

There are a few lessons to take home. One of these is that this could happen again at any time. The scrub in Basket Range may have burnt out, but there’s an awful lot of dead wood throughout the rest of the hills. Stirling, Lobethal, Upper Sturt, Belair, Blackwood: none of these have had a fire in years, and in a lot of ways we’ve grown pretty lax.

Another thing we take for granted is that bushfires don’t normally happen in May. I’m not going to say that climate change caused the fire to happen when it did, or made it as bad as it did, because that’s not how science works. But I am going to point suggestively in that direction. If we get more extreme weather events, we may well see fires at any time of year. These are pretty scary things ahead, but right now, there are also a few things I’m thankful for. I’m thankful (perversely) that the fires were in May, when the temperature was 30 degrees, not 40. I’m thankful for the CFS, who did an incredible job. Not only fighting the fire, protecting lives and properties that were nigh inaccessible, but also for the way they communicated honestly and openly with the community, helping to protect their homes. I’m also thankful for the community I live in, which looks out for each other, and comes together so incredibly when there’s such a need. Sam Young spends as much time cycling as attending class. That’s a lot of one, and not much of the other.

BOARD GAMES WORDS: STELLA CRAWFORD ART: DAISY FREEBURN

Last year, changes were passed to the Constitution of the Adelaide University Union that were aimed at improving the functioning of the Union board.

run online elections, rather than holding a physical ballot. This would involve making further changes to the Union’s rules.

In the first half of this year, the oard has borne witness to a factional battle that one former board director described as the worst conduct they’d seen in the last three years.

It’s not easy to pass changes to the rules of the Union. To do so requires a motion to be passed twice by the Board, before being presented to and approved by University Council.

Ostensibly arguing over the issue of online elections, directors of the Board have displayed behaviour that their General Manager, Dianne Janes, described as ‘extremely disrespectful and unprofessional’. The President, Deanna Taylor, stated that she thought ‘the whole behaviour just generally was not in good faith’.

There’s also a deadline. If changes aren’t passed before May 8, they can’t come into effect until the following year. On April 17, the changes were passed the first time. On May 6, at a special general meeting called for that purpose, they were passed the second time. Later that week, they were submitted to Council.

For all this drama, you’d expect an achievement. Not so.

The response from University Council was surprising. The Union were advised that a new process, requiring the document to first pass the Vice Chancellor’s Executive, had been instituted. The changes hadn’t done so, and so wouldn’t even make it to Council. As Taylor said, ‘the Board wasn’t aware of that; I wasn’t aware of that; Michael Physick, our

DUE PROCESS

At last month’s board meeting, a coalition of directors, led by Robert Katsambis, attempted to change the method by which board directors are elected. They proposed that the Union should

The Board has ten voting directors. Organised by election ticket, they are: Activate (Labor Left): Taylor (President), Swan IndyGo (Independent Left): Small-Pearce, Story (SRC President) Fresh (Labor Right): Rillo*, Saeed* Liberty (Dry Liberal): Katsambis* Stop the Slug (Wet Liberal): Thomas* Multicultural: Hong*, Zheng* * supported the motions of online elections and the dismissal of Small-Pearce. The Executive: Has five members including President Taylor and VP Zheng. Three general members Small-Pearce, Swan and Hong. Small-Pearce was replaced with Thomas. Conducts urgent business between board meetings.

University representative on the Board, wasn’t aware of that’. As a result, online elections will not occur this year. This makes it sound like a relatively smooth process, with an unfortunate administrative error preventing its satisfactory resolution, but it wasn’t.

BEHAVIOURAL ISSUES

During the course of the two meetings in which the changes were discussed, tempers flared and factional ties were increasingly obvious.1 The proposed changes were tabled at the first meeting by Katsambis and supported by Vice President Yao Zheng, Charlotte Thomas, Ben Rillo, and Wasim Saeed. Sunghun Hong, who was absent at the first meeting, supported the changes at the second. Some of the board, including Taylor, raised strong objections at the first meeting about the viability and logistics of changes at such short notice. At the time, these were waved away as being solvable before the next meeting. In order to pass the changes at this meeting, Katsambis and his supporters relied on the finding that Catherine Story had a conflict of interest and so could not vote. The election changes passed four votes to three. Story’s conflict allegedly arose from her position as President of the Student Representative Council. The SRC had passed a vote registering opposition to online elections in the previous week, a vote from which Story had abstained. As Story wrote 1 Several directors were even told to mind their tone.

in a memo to the Board in the next meeting, she felt ‘convinced that this attempt to preclude me from voting was influenced by people’s personal agendas, with no regard to process, ethics, or good governance.’

lack of respect shown to the recommendations of the General Manager, and a picture of the board’s general ignorance of director responsibilities begins to emerge.

Between then and the next meeting, however, the issues were not solved. Janes came to the next meeting with a strong recommendation that the plans be made only for the 2014 elections. Nonetheless, the changes were passed the second time, six votes to four.

UPHILL FROM THERE

PROPER CONDUCT? Throughout this drama, questionable behaviour was frequently on display.

At the first meeting, Thomas, after having spent two hours debating the online election changes abstained from the vote to approve the 2012 accounts, on account of not having had time to read them. The responsibility of any board director is to ensure the financial and legal status of their company or organisation. By failing to read the accounts, Thomas was demonstrating what Janes termed ‘a big knowledge gap about board directors responsibilities’. Thomas, along with 5 other directors, missed the compulsory two-day training course the Union runs at the beginning of their term. The training covers, among other things, the role of the General Manager, acting in the Union’s interest and conflict of interest. Considered in light of this, the conduct surrounding Story’s alleged conflict of interest, Rillo’s (at the time unexplained) departure to ‘work’ at 8.30pm on a Wednesday, and the general

The apparent success of the online elections motion wasn’t the only issue raised at the board meeting of May 6. Immediately after the motion passed, Katsambis brought a motion to remove Small-Pearce (Activate) from the Executive. The majority of the Board, he claimed, had lost faith in the Executive. When pressed, he argued that he was no longer confident that the Executive would act on the will of the Board, presumably in the implementation of online elections. It was the consensus of the minority that Katsambis and other supporting directors were content to ignore the dictates of good practice. In order to bring and pass the motion for dismissal of Small-Pearce, Katsambis, along with his supporters, interpreted the standing orders of the Union (which govern the way in which a meeting is conducted) in a manner that Taylor suggested was not in good faith. ‘Good practice was not followed’, she said. ‘I don’t believe it demonstrated good governance practices.’ Small-Pearce commented that ‘The reasons that were given in the meeting by those that wanted to remove me were flimsy... and I believe that the real reasons were politically motivated… they acted to promote political self-interest. Ultimately it was a power play’. In fact, during the debate on the sacking of Small-Pearce from the

Executive, Katsambis commented that ‘we’re not governed by good practice, we’re governed by the rules of the Union’. It appeared that there was no way of preventing behaviour that contravened the standing orders. As Taylor explained, ‘with regard to the standing orders... the interpretation is open to me, as Chair’. Rillo concurred, saying he believed ‘the processes of the Union are a matter for the President.’ Despite this, Katsambis overruled Taylor’s decisions by registering procedural dissent motions. Katsambis’ motions were then voted on and approved by the majority of the Board, including Rillo. Rillo’s only comment was that this was ‘the democratic choice of the board’. Effectively, the Chair’s authority quickly became a non-entity. It’s not surprising that Taylor later spoke about an intended review of the standing orders, as she put it, ‘particularly in light of [these events].’

FLAWS IN THE SYSTEM

The changes that were passed by the Board has at least one serious flaw. If online elections couldn’t be organised in time, or guaranteed for accuracy, they would have to be carried out regardless. There was no clause that allowed the Union to revert to a paper ballot. This issue was raised by Janes in the meeting, and Katsambis, acknowledging the value in such a clause, claimed he was ‘ready to sit here all night’ in order to sort out the chinks in his rule changes. Less than half an hour later, and with the coincidental late arrival of Thomas, he and his supporters

voted to pass the unedited changes. The behaviour of the majority of the board was motivated, at least partly, by political gain. As Janes argued, ‘some board members think they’ve been elected to participate in a parliament style arena, whereby it’s about executing factional style directives, rather than working together.’

MIND YOUR REP

What is the result of all this? Well, the changes proposed by the President, reducing the unsustainable hours worked by Union staff during election week and aiding in the hiring of an external returning officer, were not passed. Moreover, the Union Board has arguably tarnished its reputation. The Board needs to be very wary of how it’s seen by the University. The University, ever since Voluntary Student Unionism was instated, has been paying the Union’s bills. So, it’s clearly not good news when the behaviour of the Board has, as Janes put it, ‘already reflected poorly on us’. This has ‘been reported to [her] from very senior levels of the University’. More importantly, the Union should avoid damage to its reputation in the eyes of students. Board directors are elected by students, with a mandate to provide services for students – the Union’s key stakeholders. During a meeting, Katsambis argued a very similar principle: that it was not the reputation of the Union with regard to the University that he cared about, but with the students. Online elections, in his opinion, would improve the Union’s reputation; student elections. As

to whether Katsambis himself has just personally damaged the Union’s reputation, well, that’s up to you to decide. The only certainty in this whole kerfuffle is that these people were elected to a board. Not a parliament, or a representative council. The changes passed last year were intended to reduce arguments, improve cohesiveness, and perhaps most importantly, result in a board that knew its own responsibilities. The 2013 board is not that board. And as it failed to change the method of elections, there’s very little hope for 2014 and beyond. We’ll leave you with the words of Janes: ‘A board should always be acting with very transparent protocols, and they should always be acting in a way that they’d be happy to have reported in the media’. Do you think they’ll be happy to read this? *

Director Robert Katsambis declined to comment. Directors Wasim Saeed, Charlotte Thomas, Yao Zheng, Sunghun Hong, Catherine Story and Sarah Swan did not respond to requests for comment.

Stella Crawford loves her dog, and mostly does okay.

All of the documents quoted here can be found online at lifeoncampus/ondit/article/ board_games_additional_ documents, including unedited transcripts of the interviews with Rillo, SmallPearce, Taylor and GM. Janes.

PEELIN’ GOOD 24A

WORDS: SEB TONKIN PHOTOGRAPHY: SIA DUFF & FIVETHOUSAND I’m sitting at a table at the Metro on Grote Street with Stan Mahoney, and we’re talking about Format – the arts and music space that’s been run by him and a bunch of other volunteers for a few years now – and why, last month, it was briefly the eye of a hurricane of debate and discussion around Adelaide’s proverbial ‘rosebud’: vibrancy. As Stan and I talk, bleary-eyed retirees occasionally shuffle past us from the pokies room to the change machine. The location seems appropriate. By day, the Metro doesn’t seem like a place for anyone under 35. By night, it’s a central venue in Adelaide’s independent music scene. The Metro books proven and unproven acts. They let musicians

charge entry, and they throw a few drinks their way. They don’t ‘do’ much, but they let the right things happen. The Metro demonstrates that the easiest way to create or attract a community isn’t through marketing or décor – it’s by creating the conditions which allow that community to do its thing. Format began back in 2008, an Adelaide response to festivals like Melbourne’s Next Wave or Newcastle’s This Is Not Art, which showcase youth arts and media that can’t find support in traditional institutions, despite (or due to) being challenging, smart, funny, and abrasive. In the following years and a series of hole-in-the-wall CBD locations, Format hosted festivals, a zine store, exhibitions, and workshops, before settling on their most recent permanent premises on Peel Street, off Hindley. The space worked well; a shopfront for zines and records opened out into a two-level gallery and venue which hosted local, interstate, and overseas bands with a ramshackle but totally exhilarating closeness.

Stan describes Format’s strengths as lying in ‘critically sound music and culture’ which might sound elitist but is basically demonstrable. Artists who exhibited at Format have gone onto international fellowships. Adelaide bands that have played and rehearsed there – Collarbones, Bitch Prefect, Swimming, Wild Oats – regularly garner more interstate and overseas critical acclaim than the industryrecognised bands playing larger clubs on Hindley. On Peel Street Format provided, in Stan’s words, ‘an autonomous, fertile environment in which certain “scenes” can develop and interact.’ The drinks were cheap, the PA was loud, the art was challenging/smart/

FOR A TIME, IT WAS GOOD. FOR A TIME.

funny/abrasive, and, for a time, it was Good. For a time. At some point in 2012, Format’s building on Peel Street was bought by the Ginos Group – the property company that owns most of Leigh Street. Format wasn’t even aware of the changeover until the new owners began renovating the previously vacant rooms in the building around them. The construction didn’t go well. Format found their internet dead; first intermittently, and then for good. Recording sessions and rehearsals had to deal with nearconstant construction noise, and giant piles of rubble would appear and disappear in their hallway overnight, sometimes rendering the bathroom inaccessible. There was never any talk of compensation or concessions for any of this – no negotiation or even notice of the works. It became apparent, Stan says, that the Ginos plans for Peel Street were to turn it into something like its neighbour Leigh – a hip and valuable piece of Rundle Street

style vibrancy in the west end. It also became apparent that Format wouldn’t figure in that vision. Finally, Ginos informed them that their rent was set to increase significantly at the end of March, essentially pricing them out of the street. Format talked to state government, who expressed their private support, but said they were unable to offer funding. And all of this was taken basically in stride. It was sad, but Format had had their longest run ever in a CBD location. They’d been lucky, and they could find another place – even if it was further away or a little less suitable. They announced the closure. And then, that same day, state government announced that occupying the space Ginos had been renovating (that had caused Format so much grief) would be ‘Hub Adelaide’ – a private-sector youth project space that would be bankrolled by BankSA, Microsoft, and a one million dollar state government grant. And Format’s community went ballistic.

For many, it seemed like a vast amount of money being given to a place to do things which Format had already been doing. Format, after all, had been a ‘hub’ before everyone else started calling things that. State government were barraged with outrage on social media, along with people who weren’t even involved, like Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood (Yarwood claimed he was upset himself and had no knowledge of Hub Adelaide until the announcement – a claim which, if true, indicates a somewhat stunning lack of communication between local and state government). Articles quickly appeared on outlets like Mess and Noise, Glam Adelaide, InDaily, and the Adelaide Review. One of those watching with curiosity was Dr Ianto Ware. Ianto co-founded Format back in 2008, before moving on to Renew Adelaide, and now, a role as the National Live Music Coordinator. ‘It was flattering to see so many people cared about something that

started as a dumb idea with Joel Catchlove and I several years ago,’ he says, ‘but also disappointing to see the sense of collegiality and communication in Adelaide had gone astray.’ Likewise, Stan says the public outrage was ‘terrifying, but also touching in its way’. It was tempting to see the series of events as a simple PR flub by out-of-touch public servants. But it’s worth analysing exactly what happened – why Hub Adelaide was funded, why Format wasn’t, and what public policy outcomes we actually want to see. Hub Adelaide represents the latest sortie in Adelaide’s efforts to close a ‘Hub Gap’ between us and cities like Berlin and San Francisco. That campaign has created such a bountiful harvest of hubs that the upcoming Hub Adelaide only makes the second page of a Google search for ‘Hub Adelaide’ – behind The Printing Hub, the Adelaide Business Hub, the Adelaide City Council’s Digital Hub, and our university’s very own Hub Central, Career Hub, Professions Student Hub, and Fitness Hub. Looking to get in on the ground floor of Hub Adelaide? They recently posted a job ad seeking ‘a HUB Adelaide Community Catalyst to co-manage our HUB Adelaide coworking clubhouse (with the Hub Sydney Space Host – a yin yang HUB Adelaide dynamo partnership hosting team)’ which may actually be the single worst piece of IT-startup guff ever written. Hub Adelaide describes itself first as a place where people can ‘drive innovation through collaboration across diverse sectors, disciplines and generations’, and then, more pragmatically, as a place where people can ‘get connected to wifi, power and printers’ – like a library, but there are no books and you

can use nouns like ‘leverage’ and ‘action’ as verbs. And you have to pay to get in. I’d be more inclined to criticise the Hub people themselves if they weren’t so inexplicably successful. The ‘co-working’ model is very much in vogue at the moment – and cross-disciplinary networking might a really useful thing in a place like Adelaide where young folks tend to spend most of their time in the same couple of square kilometres anyway. The ‘Hub’ brand (it’s actually a global franchise) has taken off elsewhere, and opened close to 40 dynamo yin-yang coworking clubhouses to date.

Nonetheless, when funding for something like Hub Adelaide is announced so close in time and location to the closure of a place like Format, it throws into stark relief the government support offered to different sectors in the name of urban ‘vibrancy’. Format, and places like it – Tooth and Nail, Fontanelle, and others – have already contributed markedly to Adelaide’s vibrancy, and they haven’t needed a million dollars to do it. In fact, they routinely live and die by four-figure sums. They view it as a success when a donation drive raises a couple thousand and allows them to pay the rent a while longer. Format are grateful for Council support they’ve received

FORMAT ROUTINELY LIVES AND DIES BY FOUR FIGURE SUMS Other than a mild suspicion of their ‘Scientology powers’, Stan has no issue with the Hub Adelaide Melbournites. If it wasn’t for the building they were moving into, and the timing of their announcement, nobody would have thought twice about the milliondollar grant they received. Ianto agrees. ‘It would have been hard to [foresee the backlash]. [State government] responded to a need amongst tech start-ups and similar enterprise for something akin to Hub Melbourne, so the dialogue around that would have been pretty different.’ Format and the Hub have different audiences. It’s unlikely that Format’s people would be fully comfortable in Hub Adelaide’s super-charged assemblage of Macbooks and haircuts, and the reverse is also true.

in sponsorship and road closures for street events. But in Adelaide’s climate, that’s not enough to keep them open. I ask Ianto why government assistance seems to fall down when it comes to independent spaces like Format. ‘I don’t know if it’s fallen down so much as never been tried before,’ he says. ‘We’ve never really seen a point at which government agencies have attempted to engage with the DIY sector or independent spaces. The kind of activity happening in those spaces is almost inherently innovative, and the nuance of innovation is it doesn’t look like things people are used to seeing, which makes it hard to fit into governance systems.’ In addition, Ianto says, the people running these spaces are highly risk-averse. Experience here and

interstate shows that if you get noticed by local government, you often get shut down, by the Council or by the cops. ‘It’s hard to overcome that “under the radar” mentality,’ he says. In South Australia, high profile can be a bad thing even for more traditional set-ups. The owners of the Jade Monkey, last year promised state government assistance in finding new premises, are yet to reopen – entangled in a liquorlicensing dispute that threatens to bankrupt them. And that’s the contradiction Format finds itself in. They’ve never really advocated. They’ve relied on small grants, donations, and drink and ticket sales, and they’ve stayed out of the broader dialogue, because, as far as Adelaide goes, they’ve had incredible luck as a small venue and wouldn’t want to push it. But that’s meant a shoestring existence, and one that, if continued, will ultimately see them pushed further and further out of the city. ‘The thing that happened with Format – and the Jade, for that matter – should be telling the government something about the how some real important, artist-run elements of the cultural landscape are being priced out of the CBD,’ says Stan. The good news is that maybe it has. Ianto, in particular, has been visiting Adelaide lately in his role as National Live Music Coordinator for positive talks with government departments about independent spaces. ‘It’s not a South Australian issue,’ he says. ‘Marrickville, Leichhardt, Wollongong and the City of Sydney are all looking at different ways of engaging with independent spaces, and that’s all been driven by community activism and advocates who are getting better

and better at working proactively with government agencies.’ ‘Correspondingly, there are increasing numbers of people within the government sector who understand and value this type of cultural activity. My impression is that state government is very willing to listen – or at least key people within key offices are – but it’ll need people running spaces, and the people who use it, to drive that dialogue forward. It’s a communication issue, not a real problem, and that’s not that hard to fix.’ Even after everything, Stan accepts the good intentions. ‘These are lovely people, who really do believe in making Adelaide ‘The Festival State’ – in that old cliché of Adelaide having a comparative advantage in culture,’ says Stan. ‘But they’re not actually involved in culture, because they’re too busy with their government jobs. They don’t have time to engage the community themselves. Nobody in the public service goes to artist-run galleries, and most of them haven’t heard of the best bands in Adelaide. They’re basically only guessing.’ And so, as government begins to understand the value of independent cultural initiatives like Format, those initiatives are forced to step up and meet government. In the wake of Format’s Peel Street closure, they’ve reconstituted their board, and are working on a new business plan to attract the start-up necessary to move their community across town. It’s a new way of doing things for them, and it might be working. They’ve been talking to the Department of Planning and the Department of Premier and Cabinet about seed funding for a new place. And they’ve got one lined up, at 130 King William Street, down near

South Terrace. Stan acknowledges that there’s risk in moving to the edge of town. ‘But the truth is,’ he says, ‘we’re kind of excited about the idea of “starting our own city”, removed from the culture of binge drinking, misogyny and violence that we used to deal with close to Hindley Street. For a lot of people Format is the antithesis of that kind of thing.’ It’s important to acknowledge that this isn’t an issue that starts and ends with Format. Format tries to be inclusive, but ultimately what they do isn’t to everybody’s tastes. They should be one of many. I asked state government for comment on a number of points in this article over a month ago, and whether they were considering any broader policy frameworks in this area. They let out the string for several weeks before finally nocommenting me pending a future announcement that would ‘better address’ my questions. Maybe that’s a revealing interaction, maybe not. Everyone I’ve spoken to characterises Planning as a perpetually overworked department, and this kind of subcultural engagement’s a new game for them. In any event, though, whatever they do needs to involve public consultation. They can’t be expected to know everything that goes on, sure, but they need to have an ear to the ground. Format hopes that their new digs will be open for business in midJuly.

Seb Tonkin is worth waiting for.

LEST WE SENTIMENTALISE

WORDS: HEATHER MCNAB PHOTOGRAPHY: LEAH BEILHART First of all, I must start with a confession: I am not a cynic. I never have been. Raised in a family where my mother would often tear-up as the welldeserving family finally got a break in an episode of Backyard Blitz, and my father would spend long hours listening to the mournful crooning of Ella Fitzgerald or John Lennon, unrestrained emotionalism was, while not exactly encouraged, at least accepted as a very normal way of life.

In this regard, I often find myself the first to accept facts at face value. I want to believe the best in people. I like espousing that 50 per cent less fat means something is genuinely good for you. I don’t enjoy Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil or ‘Cheaterzz’ (alright, I made that one up, but you get the idea) because I feel awful for all parties involved. ANZAC Day is no exception. Both my sets of grandparents fought or served in World War Two. I still remember struggling to deliver a speech in eighth grade about my Grandpa Neil, holding a faded picture of him in one hand and his service medals in the other whilst pretending my husky voice was simply early-developed allure. My first reaction when the Last Post plays is to drop my head so no one sees my tears. Which is why it came as a complete surprise to me that in

researching this article, I related to opinions expressed with gentle criticism, mistrust or even distaste of ANZAC Day. Or, to be more explicit, the way ANZAC Day is celebrated. The ongoing discussion about the legacy of ANZAC Day intensifies every year as April 25 draws near. That the national holiday itself would inspire controversy shouldn’t be a surprise. It has been used as a vehicle for campaigners since its inception, garnering criticism from a wide array of groups: from anti-war and anti-nuclear protestors to feminist critiques, from Maori and Indigenous Australian activism to radical socialists and pacifists staging sit-ins. As early as 1916, when the first commemoration of the landing at Gallipoli was held, members of the public expressed concerns about

the appropriateness of holding a ‘picnic o’er the dead’. But in the climate of contemporary ANZAC Day celebrations, there is none of this. Having been educated under the political environment fostered by the Howard government, I am one of the millions of my generation to have adopted a distinctly uncritical embrace of the ‘digger legend’: a historical myth from which has sprung a concrete sense of sentimental nationalism and pride. But there is a rich and complicated history behind ANZAC Day which is no longer obvious. The day inspires endless debate pertaining to ‘what being Australian really means’. But why is it ANZAC Day that motivates our nation to ask that question? We have Australia Day. As another national day of pride, we could choose to revere this day with the same vim and vigour. But for most people it involves a barbeque, a pool, Triple J’s Hottest 100 and imbibing whichever form of alcohol is most loyal to the state you live in. It doesn’t seem to

inspire the same philosophical musings about the abrasive sounding concept of ‘mateship’, or focus on such a small event in our history. So why is ANZAC Day the specific focus of such intense nationalistic sentiment? In 2008, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stated that the Gallipoli campaign is ‘part of our national consciousness, part of our national psyche, part of our national identity’. And I have to ask, why should a landing that was arguably a resultant failure of imperial folly be the inspiration for so many of our nation’s defining moral features? How did the men who were involved become so entwined in the way we see ourself as a nation? In many ways they were the best of their generation: hundreds of thousands of husbands who would never again see their wives, men who would never dance at their daughters’ weddings, boys who would never grow old. They were a great legion of the lost that, nearly 100 years on, still echoes in our language and identity. Our nation’s

collective memory is haunted by these forceful, articulate ghosts who request, unshakably and rightly, to be remembered. In 1918 the Returned Servicemen’s League (RSL) called for ANZAC Day to be made a national holiday – the next year, Western Australia led the way by recognizing it as a public service and bank holiday, and from 1920 shops were closed as well. By 1921 all states apart from New South Wales had declared ANZAC Day a public holiday. It garnered popular support from a vast array of Australians – despite some opposition from those in government who preferred days such as Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday as recognised in Britain. In one of the great paradoxes of ANZAC Day, as the commemorations began to wilt for lack of men to march (one journalist noted in 1968 that he had the ‘distinct impression [he] was witnessing the end of a ritual, the last gasps of a ceremony which had lost most of its meaning’), the

initial gatekeepers of the day gave way to descendants marching in their place. In creating a curious revival of those allowed to participate, such inclusivity broadened the appeal of the day, with the government extending invitations to those who served in other armed conflicts, to those who fought as part of our allies, to civilians of the Women’s Land Army and, eventually, to Indigenous soldiers. Though there are fewer actual returned servicemen and women, the size of the march has grown and Dawn Service attendances have flourished. It was only in 1990 that ANZAC Day first received patronage from the Federal Government, and just over 20 years later, the same government is set to spend $83 million commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Is this not remarkable? In the First World War, Australia was a nation of five million, from which 60, 000 died. Now, in a nation of twenty three million, less than 100 men and women have died serving in the armed forces in conflicts in our living memory. I say this not to take away from their sacrifice, but only to ask the question which it

seems to beg: why are we so interested in ANZAC Day? The recent deaths of these men and women, whilst tragic and certainly cause for sadness, are proportionately too small to sustain a national day of mourning on their immediate behalf. So it must be something else. It could seem that Australia is hungry for a founding mythology: a birth story, a modern genesis tale for the nation. We have no Independence Day, no history of revolution, no civil war. We had no vantage point from which to say, ‘There! That’s the day. We struggled and now the pieces of our country have become a whole’ (for some reason people choose to ignore Federation). That was, until the inception of ANZAC Day. That is not what the Gallipoli campaign was about, nor what Australian soldiers fought for. It is what an increasing number of Australians would like to think they fought for. It tells ‘The strange insidious lie,/ That nationhood is born where men/In bitter warfare die.’

ANZAC Day has been accused, especially during the anti-war movements of the 1970‘s, as being a day that glorified war and militarized our history. Our current prime minister Julia Gillard stated in her ANZAC Day address last year that ‘all of us inhabit the freedom the Anzacs won for us’- but this convenient attribution denies that truth that we were already a unified, democratic nation- or that the campaign in the Dardanelles was in actual fact a legitimised historical loss for Australia. What we are remembering is not our own grief for those we have lost, but the imagined beginnings of our nation. There has been a symbolic transformation from a time of mourning to a day celebrating the ‘digger tradition’, equating our modern nation with the best characteristics of those who served. So does the desire to make ANZAC Day emblematic of Australian values diminish the real humanity of those individuals we are meant to be remembering? Sentimentalised, militarised and commercialised, ANZAC Day seems to be becoming less about the men who fought and more

about us. It was not created to be a festival of nationhood, and as we hold sporting events which equate efforts on the football field with the struggles of the landing at Gallipoli, we are letting the day slide uncritically into celebration. Again, I say this not the belittle the day, or what it means to different Australians in so many ways, but to recognise the true nature of what it has become. However, even if all of this is true, why would this reflect on us? It could be easy to chalk up the resurgence in popularity and the shift in national thinking to our education, the focus of the ‘digger tradition’ during the Sydney Olympics in 2000, or the extensive ‘Australia Remembers’ ceremonies of the 1990’s. There have been numerous emotive speeches given from Gallipoli in recent years, and a clear boon in government funding. But maybe, just maybe, it’s us. Are we, as a generation, using ANZAC Day as a quick fix for our desire to be part of something larger than ourselves? Are we using it as a cathartic balm to soothe our existential itching? Are we seeking, as one editorial put it, the sacred in

the secular? By idolising a day that, in practice, has almost nothing to do with those being remembered in theory, are we actually looking for that golden thread that ties us together as a nation, and as humans? Are we cheapening the way we search for meaning and becoming complacent in asking the big questions about life and nationhood? Former Prime Minister John Keating said that from the diggers ‘we have gained a legend: a story of bravery and sacrifice and, with it, a deeper faith in ourselves’. Are we using this conveniently provided day to create a sense of some of the reverence we have lost in our modern society, to reclaim the faith we have scorned or forgotten, or to assuage a niggling doubt to the claim that we have everything in our confidently affluent society? I’m not sure myself. I will still go to the Dawn Services, rugged up at five o’clock in the morning. In all likelihood I will still close my eyes, listening to the haunting notes of the bugle. And I will still be trying to figure out what it all means. Why the day is worth more than beer and

rolled-oat biscuits, and how best to honour those whose memory it is truly acknowledging. I am not a cynic, but I am a questioner. Asking what ANZAC Day is about, or should be about, means that we cannot be accused as a generation of being complacent about our history, or what we want our country to be like. I want to remember why ANZAC Day was originally formed, and why, against the backdrop of a complex and coloured history, it still affects us so personally and unites us so uniquely. I want to remember. And we have, as a nation and as individuals, promised on oath each year since that now famous landing, that ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.’ And maybe the best way to do this is to start asking hard questions again. Lest we forget.

Heather McNab is a tea-loving final year media student who spends her spare time avoiding dairy products and colour coordinating her bookshelves.

THIS IS A L WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY: LEAH BEILHART Mostly, it’s just random porn links and immature remarks asking for my age, sex, and location, in other words: ASL. If I’m lucky they’ll end the conversation before I do, whoever they were. Yes, disappointingly I’m describing a chat room. A God forsaken place that I assume was created for 40 year old perverted men hoping to see the immature breasts of a developing young girl, only to be disappointed when they found themselves speaking to another pedophile in search of the same thing. I’ve always frowned upon these sites, especially after seeing movies like Hard Candy. I still do think of chat rooms negatively, as an easy gateway for a lot of trouble, but boredom got the best of me the summer of 2011. I called a good friend of mine complaining about how it’s been nauseating finding ways to entertain myself. Living in Germany and not speaking German made it difficult to make friends. He made the suggestion to go on this chat room: Omegle. I shot him down completely,

explaining to him how stupid that would be. He convinced me otherwise. ‘They don’t have your contact information unless you’re stupid enough to give them that. You can be whoever the hell you want if you’d like, and they’ll have no idea. All I suggest is don’t do video chat. There are so many penises.’ I didn’t log on to the site the day he suggested it, but I followed up on the idea the following morning. The first 30 minutes was frustrating as I tried to figure out the logistics and purpose of the site. Once I finally found myself having a decent conversation with someone I was hooked. I kept searching for another person to have a lengthy and intellectual or short and funny conversation with. But the majority of the ‘strangers’ I ran into were spam links and foreign teens and adults looking for an ‘arousing’ chat. *

July 19th, 2011 I did my usual log in to the site. I began a new conversation with: What kind of bees make milk? Surprisingly I got a response with the correct answer to my silly joke (boo-bees). From then I was completely engaged in this

conversation with my new stranger. I found myself sitting there for hours, until our chat ended with ‘Well, I’m from Australia so it’s bedtime at my end.’ We exchanged contact information, but this shouldn’t be misunderstood right away. I wasn’t wanting to speak with him because I was seeking a boyfriend or any kind of male companion;

OVE STORY I just wanted to get to know my foreign friend. We got to know the basics about one another through miniature Facebook essays. I felt awkward for the longest time; finally putting a face to our conversations made me feel like my decision was a bit silly. It wasn’t until a month later that we finally had our first ‘face to face’ conversation on Skype. This was

the first of many lengthy chats, which exhausted us both, as there were 17 hours between us. We did everything we could to try and replicate a normal ‘friendship’. We would find movies together and play them at the same time, or order pizza to pretend we were having a meal together. I would awkwardly carry my laptop around my room and he would do the same, introducing his family members and pets to me. It didn’t take very long for us to realize that we were falling for each other; it just took us forever to admit it. I remember when I finally brought it up to him, we both kind of sat there shyly asking ‘Now what?’ We weren’t too sure how we could ever meet, seeing as he lived in Adelaide, South Australia, and I was in the boonies of Altoona, Pennsylvania. I just thought it would be a hopeless love story. But I remember he said to me, ‘Leah, go ahead and be a pessimist, but allow me to pretend something wonderful is going to happen.’ After a few months of questions and lists, he bought a ticket to fly over to the States. For his first time in America, he would spend a month with me. It’s one thing to care for someone over the computer, but it’s quite another to actually be with

them and experience them fully for who they are. Seeing the itinerary made everything that much more real. We both started questioning if this was the right idea, but it was hard to step back once the ticket was bought. There was this underlying curiosity to meet each other, to travel on the other side of the world to potentially have something more than our cyber relationship So long story short, I’m now here in Australia seven months after he’s visited me. It has been a long journey indeed. We waited a year to meet, then spent a month together traveling the States, only to have to fly away from each other again to endure another half year apart. But we finally had memories and experiences together to take back home with us. We spent a week in Wisconsin, a few days in Chicago, and travelled back to Pennsylvania on a train, which took a day, but gave us an opportunity to see the Eastern countryside. Once we got back, my parents arrived from Germany, so he got the whole meet the family shebang and proper introductions.

After a week with my parents, we left for our last trip was New York. It was a defining moment for the both of us. It showed us how much more we wanted from this. It was our first time away from friends and family, which really tested our team work and support for each other. Granted, we’d travelled together a few weeks prior to our Big Apple

Study Abroad program, saved as much money as I could, budged my way through the baggage line, zipped through security, and pranced out the arrival gate only to see nobody waiting for me at the exit. It was my first time in Australia and no one was there to pick me up on time. I had no phone or a clue to where I was. But half an hour

food, as well as juggling everything with my partner. Transitioning from cyberspace to physically being around each other was a new experience, but with time we figured it out. Sadly my time here is running out and we’ll soon have to be an ocean apart from each other again. We know the drill now, seeing as our long distance relationship is nearly two years old.

departure, but it wasn’t as long as our time spent in a city we didn’t know and without familiar faces guiding us. We had an absolute blast doing everything from strolling down Rockefeller Center, going to Broadway shows and eating expensive pizza. Nothing meant more to us than that summer together. The reason why I’m here, in Adelaide, now is the month we had in America. Moving over here to Australia was one of the hardest things I’ve ever pulled together, from visas to University approvals, let alone having to make a really intimidating decision. It was my turn to travel to the other side of the world, but this time I would be here for seven months, attending uni and working. But I trucked my way through the

later, I saw a familiar face smiling at me going down the escalator. I remember feeling a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and a bit of awkwardness. The awkwardness came from standing there expecting for him to run down to me and sweep me in his arms – too much of a movie expectation. Instead I made angry faces at him from across the airport because he was taking his time on the steps. His brother and friend were recording our meeting. It was weird having not seen him for 7 months and having him right in front of me again. Seeing his face on the computer wasn’t anything compared to the smile I received in person along with the warmth of his hug once we finally reached each other. I definitely endured a culture shock – the lingo, the people and

What started out to be a stranger on a chat room has become my long lost friend and adventure filled companion. We both get the opportunity to travel and see each other’s worlds, where we meet strangers and share our story. I’m not sure of our plan once I return to the United States, but I know my heart still belongs in Australia, at least until my partner in crime and I decide to take a different path on our journey. I’m not looking forward to the 32 hour flight home, but I’m anxious to see how life will pan out in the next few years.

Leah Beilhart has an unfortunate American accent: she says caw-fee instead of Coffee. She’s a passionate photographer and frequent flyer. And no, she not Mexican, she just likes wearing a sombrero.

BY GINA CHADDERTON

WORDS: EMMA JONES ART: KELLY ARTHUR-SMITH I have a confession to make: I’m addicted to playing The Sims. I’ve been playing it since I was in Year 7 and a school friend burned her disc for me so I could play it at home. My brother and I created a fatherson duo called Homer and Bart Dumfart, and because we didn’t know any cheats, they lived in a shanty near the rubbish tip and didn’t have enough money for beds. They died in a house fire when their cheap oven exploded and swallowed up their tiny timber house. I learnt about mortality that day. It was a hard lesson. Things are different now. I don’t play for the challenge of my honest Sim’s bumpy climb up the

employment ladder, saving my hard-earned Simoleons for the most comfortable and luxurious furniture and the biggest TV. I use cheats for endless money and play The Sims as a twisted, vicarious escape from my boring, vanilla life. My current Sim lives in a huge mansion with her Oscar-winning actor boyfriend, Federline Baxter. They have a fluffy dog and three kind of ugly children who, all blessed with the ‘genius’, ‘good sense of humour’ and ‘artistic’ traits, are on the honour roll at their schools. They have a swimming pool and a hot tub and an Audi and a home cinema and they eat lobster and salmon every night for dinner. They host fancy soirées most weekends, with the coolest DJs and most talented mixologists poolside, and are friends with the most influential

painters, rappers, politicians and inventors in their city. It looks like a pretty sweet life. I’m obviously not the only person who gets a kick out of having simulated wealth, success and celebrity, either. The Sims 3 has a massive active online community, sharing user-created playable content from furniture to clothes to hairstyles to tattoos, all free and available to download for your Sim. I won’t lie; I’ve downloaded almost a gigabyte of skinny jeans and cardigans and Miró prints and sofa beds to make my game a little snazzier. During my hunt for a Kate Middleton wedding dress or a pair of jelly sandals I’ve come across blogging communities where users share screenshots from their own games. It’s not just big moments like Sim birthdays or weddings,

either: these users are genuinely interested in each other’s Sim’s first kisses, promotions, new babies and everyday social interactions. This struck me as bizarre for a number of reasons. First, the very basis for these bloggers’ real-life social interactions is a series of simulated social interactions. Screenshot images of Sims with highly customised bone structure doing mundane things like building snowmen or baking Key Lime Pie are enough to spur huge discussions. I can’t figure out if this is an escapist brand of wish-fulfilment or a legitimate social plane. It’s one thing to escape into a simulated reality, to live vicariously through it and even create and experience your own ideal life. Why wouldn’t you, when you can create a Sim who looks exactly like you and another Sim who looks exactly like Jon Snow and WooHoo with him and then see what your hypothetical babies look like? When you can choose to set out on the painter or poet or actor career path but still have a really sweet apartment and an endless wardrobe? When you can send your kid to boarding school if it

annoys you or develops shitty traits like ‘anti-social’, ‘dislikes art’ or ‘no sense of humour’? This all seems fine. I’ve been doing this for like 13 years. But does it get weird when sharing these simulated experiences replaces sharing your real life experiences? Can these simulated experiences replace your real life experiences? Can The Sims eat you alive? The second reason why this open fanfare for The Sims 3 struck me as bizarre was that, as a 25-year-old semi-functioning adult, I usually try to keep my Sims addiction as shamefully secret as possible. I’m not sure why. Is it because at my age you’re supposed to be too busy milking the most out of your own existence to create, feed and enjoy an entirely vicarious one? Is it because of the assumption that I’m using a computer game to play out my deepest, darkest fantasies? (I can assure you, Federline Baxter is hardly my type.) Is it because telling people when you meet them that you’re addicted to controlling the life of a physically optimised avatar can make you sound like a little bit of a sociopath? Or maybe it’s because

the surrogate nature of the game’s pleasure makes you wonder if you’re enjoying it so much because something’s missing in your own life???? Cue existential crisis. But I still can’t stop. I’ve grown attached to Federline Baxter and his little family. His oldest daughter’s prom is coming up, his middle daughter is learning how to tie knots in her Girl Scouts meetings, and his son is a toddler and has just learnt to talk. His girlfriend, a sculptor who I started out playing in a leaky studio apartment, is becoming a real estate mogul and rakes in §10,000 a week with the shitty science fiction novels she writes on the side. Even their little dog is beginning to go white around the snout. I guess I just like escaping from my real life of unpaid bills and overdue assignments and deathly hangovers to a world where there’s a 0 per cent unemployment rate, where artists and musicians and writers make more money than CEOs, where Command + Shift + C is a gateway to endless wealth and eternal youth. Don’t judge me. Emma Jones’ spirit animal is part bottle of cheap vodka, part grumpy cat.

FINDING 38

MR DARCY WORDS: EMILY PALMER ART: MADELEINE KARUTZ ‘Oh Fitzwilliam, oh Fitzwilliam! Please don’t stop!’ Yeah, I can’t imagine crying that out in the middle of sex either. For one thing, it’s far too much of a mouthful. It’s also a frankly ridiculous first name.

More importantly, it is the name of a fictional character, first devised in the clever little head of Jane Austen and has since resided in the hearts and imaginations of most women. Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Deep down, every girl wants a Mr. Darcy. Don’t you? Admit it. He’s dashing, handsome and rich.

And everyone knows men like that are taken. Or live in Victorian England. So who wouldn’t lust after one? But the problem is this: how to find one in the modern day? These days, gentlemen aren’t so obviously picked out by the cut of their waistcoat or their large mansions, and society is more into casual hook ups and groping on the dance floor than chaste, chaperoned conversations and thrillingly daring hand contact. Where oh where are you, Mr. Darcy? Oh course, being a ‘let’s Google this shit’ junkie, I decided to type that exact question into the aforementioned search engine. Rookie move, Emily. Rookie move. Wikihow was one of the first helpful sites that popped up with the article ‘How to Find a Modern Day Mr. Darcy’ (how considerate! how perfect! I shall soon be in love!). So here, in short, is how you can find him for yourself:

1. LOOK FOR ATTAINABLE TRAITS.

Suggested here, alongside wit, loyalty and affection (all of which are excellent qualities to look for in a man, I have to say), was ‘independent wealth’, or at least a man who is hardworking and

understands what his money can help him achieve. So please, ladies, go ahead and be shallow. Choose a man who is either already rolling in it (so probably for our age bracket, this means he either comes from a wealthy family like Austen’s original Darcy, or he’s won the lottery, yay him), or is going to slave away every day so he has lots of it in the end. Quick, go and haunt the law or medical buildings (as an Arts student, I don’t personally know where the latter is).

2. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU REJECT

Pretty sound advice really. Don’t love an ideal (they don’t exist) as everyone has their annoying quirks or flaws. Please feel free to reject anyone who is racist, sexist, or can’t use grammar correctly. Reject them straight away. They should be cut out of the gene pool.

3. DATE GENTLEMEN ONLY

Above rules apply. Although Mr. Darcy probably was sexist and racist, he did, however, open doors for you, so that obviously makes up for it.

4. CHECK HIS ROMANCE CREDENTIALS

They suggest finding a man who starts reading Pride and Prejudice or Twilight because they know it’s your favourite book. This criterion has many flaws. One, did you really just say Pride and Prejudice and Twilight in the same sentence, as if they were similar to one another? Shame on you, Wikihow.

Secondly, I don’t really give a flying fuck if a man starts reading a book because he knows I like it. Also, how does that have anything to do with Mr. Darcy? I hope he wouldn’t have read Twilight even if Elizabeth had loved it. Although she wouldn’t have, as she was an intelligent woman.

5. BE CAREFUL WHO YOU FALL FOR

It’s apparently dreamy to yearn after men like Mr. Darcy, but be careful! You could fall for someone unobtainable, moody, tortured and repressed. Oh, you say, so someone like Christian Grey? I guess E.L James didn’t read this helpful Wikihow post before she wrote that terrible novel. There you have it. Now you can find yourself the perfect man, the modern day Mr. Darcy, all with the help of Wikihow (and, modestly, my own genius at finding the article and sharing it with you here). Good luck!

Emily is an English major with a compulsive book hoarding disorder, who makes a habit of falling up the stairs after a night out

WHOSE TUBE?

I am not afraid to admit this to the general public, to have these words written down in indelible ink: My name is Sophie Byrne and I am addicted to YouTube vloggers.

Why am I not that scared to admit my obsession with the VlogBrothers, Nerimon and the other 20 subscriptions that I won’t list here to save words? Because I am (fairly) confident that there’s more of you out there. I am not alone in this obsession anymore. I definitely was in 2007, when I first discovered the YouTubing vlogging community and fell in love (albeit a clandestine love at the time). I’ve been a voyeur to the growth of the YouTube world for the past 5 years, and know that these days it’s the website that we young’uns spend more time on than Facebook. No longer do I harbour fears that people will see my subscription list and think I’m a complete weirdo.

The demographic that are really into the YouTube community, who are subscribing to the YouTube vlogging channels and clocking up those billions of views, are girls aged 13-17. But what are these girls watching? In terms of finding meaningful role models, or nuanced ideas of what it might mean to be a woman in the 21st century, what’s on offer? When you start looking, you notice that the views and thoughts of girls themselves aren’t being seen in any sort of nuanced or meaningful way. There is an enormous gender divide amongst the

WORDS: SOPHIE BYRNE ART: ARIANE JACCARINI most popular YouTube vloggers. Of the top 50 most subscribed YouTube channels, those with at least over two million subscribers, only three are made by women. The social dominance of men (aka the patriarchy) seems to be clearly reflected in the comedy and entertainment industries, even in the world of YouTube. This is kind of surprising – you would think that YouTube couldn’t have a ‘glass ceiling’. Anyone with a camera and internet connection can upload a video, and there are plenty of girls creating content online. But YouTube is, in many ways, merely a reflection of ourselves and our society. The dominant successful female YouTubers are the so-called Beauty Gurus who stick to traditional gender roles and apparently ‘female’ interests with a vengeance. From the sleek professionalism of the actual grown up make up artists like Lisa Eldridge or Michelle Phan (with 3subscribers), to the ridiculousness of spoilt little rich girl Blair Fowler and her older, equally spoilt but slightly less irritating sister Elle Fowler, these girls have their market cornered. I’ll admit that I spend hours watching ‘haul videos’ (videos of girls showing you what they bought that day), ‘what’s in my bag videos’ (seemingly dull but inexplicably fascinating), and monthly make up and hair style videos.

I can tell you all about the best primers, the high end products to avoid, the hottest ‘drug-store’ buys, how to do the perfect cat eye eyeliner, and other tips and tricks that have literally no application in my real life. I hardly even wear make up and my hair is too short to curl or style or braid. But somehow they have this power over me, and clearly over millions of other girls. How bad is this? These videos promote such a consumerist vision of the world. The majority of these gurus are white middle/upper class girls. The videos place unreasonable amounts of pressure on the relationship between beauty and success (with boys, at school, at work) and how important it is that you have enough money you can blow on a facial rejuvenating mist. And there is a LOT of pink. The flipside to this is the mega star YouTuber Jenna Marbles. If you haven’t seen her video ‘How to trick people into thinking you’re good looking’ you should. Right now! She is the anti-Beauty Guru and has cracked the code of YouTube vlogging success for women. Hers is the second most subscribed channel on YouTube with over 8.7 million subscribers. That means that the equivalent of the entire population of Sydney is watching her videos every week. All up her videos have been seen over 1.1 billion times. One seventh of the entire population of the WHOLE WORLD has seen a Jenna Marbles video. Absolutely bonkers. Her closest ally in the female YouTubing world is the incredible and amazing Daily Grace, on whom I have a huge crush. She’s got over 1.2 million subscribers and uploads a vlog every weekday. She’s hilarious and her awkward hand movements are mesmerising.

But they are both American. The real dominance of the men in YouTube world is from the most dangerous threat of them all. The British boy vloggers. Maybe it’s not surprising than in this era of intense fangirling and fan-fiction writing the most popular vloggers are hot boys with Justin Bieber-esque emo fringes. They’re taking over, like a virus of boring content and sexy accents. The best of the crop is the longstanding hero of the YouTube world Charlieissocoollike, who makes cute videos about science and sings songs about loving yourself even if you feel like a dorky teenager. Cute. The worst is this awful Marcus Butler person who starts every video with a super annoying ‘Hellllllooooo’! and then proceeds to list 10 things he finds annoying about waking up. Awesome. Somehow this racks up hundreds of thousands of views while brilliant vlogger Booksandquills struggles to get 10 000 views on her videos about writing and travel and actually interesting stuff. It appears YouTube is the new frontier for propagating sexism in our society, where cute British/ American male vloggers reign supreme while cute, female Beauty Gurus play Queen to the Vlogger Kings. More frighteningly, female vloggers who step out of the Beauty realm are often either slammed with misogynistic comments if they become popular, or receive no views whatsoever. It’s also no real revelation that women on the internet are forced to deal with an astounding amount of hate from anonymous trolls who seem to have nothing better to do than insult or comment on a female vloggers hair, body or voice, or simply shut their intellect down.

Just look at the video game vlogger Feminist Frequency for startling evidence of that. Following from the ‘Geek Girls’ meme that revelled in ‘calling girls out’ on their supposedly fake interest in geek culture, young girls online choices are limited. It’s either watching cute boys for the swoons, and beauty vloggers for lessons on how to be a perfect girl in the modern world, rather than creating their own content and engaging in the new Interwebby world with full agency and opportunity. Recently the YouTube series ‘Becoming YouTube’ did a half an hour episode on the lack of girls on YouTube. The main message it seemed to convey was: ‘No one knows why girls don’t do well on YouTube; more girls should make videos! But for heaven’s sake, make sure they’re good.’ Not exactly an empowering message for girls to get involved in the community. A better message would be: go discover the girls making videos and doing amazing things. Start with The Community Channel, Emma Blackery, RoseEllenDix, MyHarto, YouDeserveADrink – all incredible ‘content makers’, Girls have much more to offer to the world than make up tips, and once it’s actually produced, it’s powerful stuff. So go forth and vlog! Who knows, maybe I’ll stop being a viewer and start being a YouTuber myself…

Sophie Byrne will probably not start making videos because of her crippling fear that her OTP DailyGrace will see them and think that they’re bad.

42 WORDS: PAUL YIALLOUROS So often do we refer to arbitrary inventions and innovation as the greatest thing since sliced bread that it is hard to imagine a time when sliced bread was not a thing. We can pretty much look at its creation as the single event that dragged us from the dark ages into the modern world. Stuff the French Revolution and the Industrialisation of the Western world; this one event proved that we as a species were truly evolved, that we had made it. 1928 was when Otto Frederick Rohwedder from Iowa had the first bread slicing machine built and released into the market. It would have come sooner, but his prototype was tragically destroyed in a fire in 1912, delaying the progression of history by 14 years. So what the flip did we do before 1928? Were we merely heathens and savages who, when we encountered a loaf of bread frolicking in a field, would club it with whatever inanimate object we could get our filthy talons on, before dragging the loaf back to whatever cave or hovel we happened to be inhabiting that night, where we would rip and tear the once innocent loaf to smithereens and feast on its crumbly innards? In short: yes. Was there no sophistication in the pre-1928 society? And where does the great Johann Sebastian Bach fit into all of this? Obviously he was far more accomplished than his barbarian contemporaries. He was a celebrated inventor in his time: for instance, it is now just common knowledge that he discovered fire when rubbing two harpsichords together vigorously. In the chronology of the history of bread, this meant that bread could be roasted to form a crusty crust, though Bach is decidedly given less credit than Rohwedder. Today in our shameful ignorance, we acknowledge only his achievements as a musician. Let me explain why Bach was the greatest thing humanity had to offer before Rohwedder saved us from our primitive selves.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/editor/

THE BEST THING BEFORE SLICED BREAD

He was a hugely selfless man. At the end of all of his compositions he would initial the work S.D.G. This was an abbreviation of the Latin Soli Deo gloria, roughly translating to glory to God alone. Through modern eyes, Bach’s selflessness would be characterised as blind faith, but this was entirely consistent with the ethos of the period. His logic: I have a great mind that produces amazeballz music; God created my mind; therefore God makes amazeballz music. Just think what he’d be like today! He’d probably host a dinner for a dozen people, sculpting a massive swan from an ice block hewn and imported from the glaciers of Switzerland, then choose a bottle of wine for each individual guest based on the personality of the lobster about to be consumed, AND THEN he’d totally be all GO TEAM! What a guy. He was a sexy beast. How else could he have had 20 children with two wives? He must have been an ace in bed. I wouldn’t usually describe myself as a necrophile, but I would consider making an exception for Bach. His powdered wig. His allure. (Swoons). Who could resist? He could drop a badass bass. Okay, I’ll write (briefly) about his actual music, by contrasting his incredible bass lines with the substandard and pithy ones of the post-sliced-bread era. That’s not to say that I can’t enjoy an uninteresting yet inexplicably addictive bass. Why, only last month I had a dance-off during Ginuwine’s Pony that I won when I smooshed cream cake into my competitor’s face. But think of how delicious and triumphant that victory would have been if the bass line were more akin to Bach’s 21st Goldberg Variation. She would have been covered in food in a matter of seconds.

WORDS AND IMAGE: TOBY BARNFIELD THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT

The aesthetic movement was an artistic movement of great influence in the 1800s whose followers created ‘l’art pour l’art’ – ‘art for art’s sake’. They believed that art did not need to have a moral or a thematic meaning. It did not need to have utility: its purpose was pleasure. How was Art to be pleasurable then? It was to be beautiful. As Théophile Gautier put it: ‘There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly’. So beauty was what the aesthetes pursued. The pursuit, however, was not restricted to their artwork. One had to live beauty. One had to be beauty. So one became a dandy. One dressed immaculately, spoke with eloquence (‘My good man!’, ‘My dear fellow!’) and honed unparalleled manners (‘No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you sir; but I bite my thumb, sir’). Now, being beauty was one thing, but staying beautiful was another. In the words of Charles Baudelaire, the dandy was ‘to live and die before a mirror’. Luckily, however, the dandies of Aestheticism all had brilliant minds. Walter Pater, Arthur Symons, Dante Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, Gautier, Baudelaire, and, of course, Oscar Wilde, wrote poems, plays, novels, painted portraits, gave lectures and smoked ‘innumerable cigarettes’. Nowadays, years later, only Oscar Wilde endures; his fellow aesthetes are largely unknown. But maybe that is to their credit, as according to Wilde ‘[t]o reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim’. Perhaps their art is just concealing them. You’d better take a look!

THE AESTHETIC CREW

Aesthetics was reborn in 2011! Albeit slightly changed. The Aesthetics Crew is a group of bodybuilders formed by renowned YouTube ‘celebrity’ Zyzz. Zyzz’s artistic philosophy was simple: ‘disregard women, acquire aesthetics’. He and his fellow crewmembers – Turtle, Philrayho, Chestbrah, Vlado, Gonzalez and Supaturk – dedicated themselves to ‘getting shredded’. The quest for a cut physique was no walk-in-thepark or writing-a-novel. Zyzz described the arduous lifestyle of the modern aesthete: Partying, massive music festivals, chillin with friends, uni lifestyle of only going to classes for a few hours a day, looking forward to going gym and catchin up with mates having epic workouts talking about the next event we can put on to display our aesthetic beauty. Somehow overcoming all of this, The Aesthetics Crew honed their ideology through their YouTube channel, focusing largely on the polymathic Zyzz. Amidst intelligent discourse on healthy dieting (food + steroids - water = RIPPED) and witty and memorable humour, Zyzz proclaimed ‘Bodybuilding is an art, and a lifestyle. And this is the artwork which I have created. U Mirin’?’ Zyzz later consolidated his ideas on aesthetics in his only book: Zyzz’s Bodybuilding Bible, prescribing a neo-macho-narcissist-Adonis image. As for The Aesthetics Crew... well, they managed to subvert the Aesthetic idea of art by being both ugly and useless at the same time.

LOW COST LISTENING ROSS JOBSON SHARES HIS INEXPENSIVE TASTE

FIGURE – 44 FATHER CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR LOSS

I discovered this album close to six months ago, when I was on a binge of math-rock, math-pop and proggy jazz. Suffice to say, this album ticked all my boxes and tickled all my fancies. First and foremost, it is an experimental instrumental jazz album. But.when you peel things back, it is much, much more than just jazz. Describing themselves as a ‘Jazz/Prog instrumental fusion’, the band are doing something I doubt many people would have been exposed to before. The opening track ‘Yearning For Slime’ has a really funky chromatic hook that sets the listener up to be immersed in its jangling rhythms and fast-paced drums. This is a prime example of that Jazz/Prog/ Funk that seems to be defining this release. My favourite track is ‘Arithmetickle’. The main hooks in this song all find themselves accompanied by an interesting phrasing or an odd time signature, and this appears to be where the song attained its title (Math – Arithmetic – Arithmetickle). The riffs have a really staccato feel and delayed palm mutes find themselves jumping up and down all over the track. The drums go from being jazzy and subdued to flamboyantly chaotic and back at the drop of a hat; this adds to the sporadic yet contained feel that this song presents. ‘First Pube Theme Song’ starts with a really groovy bass hook and is followed up by delayed/flanged/ reverbed guitars, and the drums lay down a really laid back beat. ‘Splitting Euphoria’ and ‘Echoing Truth’ round out the album, and take the listener on a more psychedelic ride than the rest, leaving you wondering what exactly you just listened to. This is a hugely varied album that should be heard by everyone at least once. There are no vocals, but to be honest, they would just get in the way of awesome musicianship. Listen if you like: Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Minus The Bear. fatherfigure.bandcamp.com/

PILE – JERK ROUTINE AND MAGIC ISN’T REAL

Over the course of the last couple of months, this band has been on ultra-high rotation in my every day listening, so I’m going to start the review by saying if you have ever liked any grunge, post-punk or alt-rock album, go and download anything by ‘Pile’ you can get your hands on. The review will encapsulate two releases, ‘Jerk Routine’ and ‘Magic Isn’t real’. ‘Jerk Routine’ starts on a really strong foot with the song ‘pervert’. The dwelling and surging grungy sounds start building as soon as you press play, and are soon joined by some clean vocals. As everything gets more intense, the vocals start distorting, as do the accompanying guitars. Every time I hear this song, I end up wanting to jump out of my seat and start accomplishing things. ‘Jerk Routine’ is interspersed with several slower, more sedate tracks, such as ‘raised by ghosts’, ‘white knuckles’, ‘the moon’ and ‘purse and fares’, which do well to break up the angsty undertones that come along with grunge and post grunge music. In fact, tracks with more dirgey and post rock influenced tones crop up throughout this album which, I think, is the feature of the music of Pile that has captured my mind. They seem to have the perfect mix of post-rock, punk and grunge. ‘Magic Isn’t Real’ kicks off with the song ‘Uncle Jill’, which has that similar grungy dirge that was present on ‘Jerk Routine’, before launching straight into a song called ‘Came as a Glow’. This second track brings a new side of Pile that, since I first heard it, has infected my mind. This album explores a slightly heavier sound with tracks like ‘Levee’ and the anthemic ‘Number One Hit Single’, but still has those more sedate and relaxed (I use the word lightly) tracks to keep the album from getting too one sided. Listen if you like: Nirvana, At The Drive-In. pile.bandcamp.com/album/jerk-routine

AMAZING BOLOGNESING ELEANOR LUDINGTON COOKS UP VEGETARIAN LENTIL BOLOGNESE PHOTOGRAPH: ELEANOR LUDINGTON

I don’t need to tell you that holidays are on the horizon, which means SWOT-vac and exams are looming just around the corner.

Method:

Cortisol levels are running high as you anticipate the emotional distress and anguish that’s soon to come. If you’re anything like me, right now you need some love, support, a hell of a lot more time than you have, and a good feed. Wise people, my Aussie-born EasternEuropean mother included, are always stressing the importance of eating well. ‘Make sure you eat a good breakfast, oats are best – full of fibre and low GI!’

2. Add other fresh vegetables and continue to cook over low heat until softened.

Solid advice, though I find oats never actually keep me going (if you’re wondering, I’m a peanut butter on toast girl). But shoving breakfast aside (don’t actually do this), lunch and dinner are also very important.

5. Take the lid off and allow to simmer for a further 5 – 10 minutes to thicken if desired.

In times like these, I always turn to my favourite quick, healthy and hearty dish: Lentil Bolognese. Don’t let the name deter you, it’s versatile, delicious, full of protein and veggies, and can be stored in a freezer near you! Ingredients: Olive oil to fry onion, garlic and vegetables 1 onion, chopped finely 1 carrot, diced small or grated (optional) 1 or 2 sticks of celery, diced small (optional) 1 zucchini, grated (optional) Half a red capsicum, diced small (optional) 1 clove of garlic, chopped finely (or crushed) 1 large tin, or 2 small tins of chopped tomatoes 500mL – 1L of vegetable stock (you can probably use water instead if you don’t have stock, but it definitely adds flavour) 1 – 2 generous tbsp of tomato paste 1 bayleaf 1 or 2 cans of lentils (you can decide based on how much you like lentils, I normally go with 2 cans) Salt and pepper

Eleanor studies medicine. More than anything she loves her dog, Trixie. She pretends to have ‘runner’ status, and enjoys baking chocolate-chip biscuits in her spare time.

1. Fry onion over low heat for 5 minutes in oil until quite soft (be careful, make sure onion does not burn!).

3. Add garlic and cook for a further minute. 4. Add tomatoes, vegetable stock, tomato paste and bayleaf. Stir everything together and bring to the boil. Add lentils and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes with the lid on.

6. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed. 7. Serve with pasta of choice. This sauce can also be used in a pasta bake with a béchamel sauce, or piled on toast or in a toasty for breakfast or a snack. It keeps well in the fridge for a few days, or in the freezer, probably for a few months.

DIVERSIONS

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

HOROSCOPES

GEMINI You will find yourself inexorably drawn to that girl with the dolphin neck tattoo and the obnoxiously loud Evanescence playlist on the bus. Don’t make any sudden movements. CANCER Seeking enlightenment, you will spend hours on mamamia.com. You will learn about the joys of water births and the ‘top ten engagement party nightmares’. Should’ve youtubed sloths again. LEO I don’t care what all the haters say, those tartan golfing pants you got at

BY CLARE VOYANT Savers look hot. Keep up the good work, soldier. VIRGO On a search for reading material, you will stumble across your mum’s Woman’s Day collection, inspiring a newfound dedication to ‘provincial decoupage’ and slow-cooking. LIBRA You will mount a one-person protest against the $1 increase of Tuaca at the Uni Bar. Your dedication to the cause will draw parallels to that resistance bit in Les Mis, only sans singing.

SEXDECTARGEDAWKU Find as many words as you can using the letters on the Sudoku grid. Words must be four letters or more and include the highlighted letter. Use the letters to solve the Sudoku, hence finding this edition’s Awkword (normal Sudoku rules apply).

WHY THE AWKWORD IS AWKWARD:

Imagine claiming legal rights on something you had no legal rights over in the first place. OMG SO AWKS. N T N

A S

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CAPRICORN Your propensity for using Arrested Development quotes with audiences that haven’t seen the show has

C O

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SAGITTARIUS You will be midway through a bout of casual sex when confronted with a real-life version of ‘deal-breakers’how much climax weeping is too much climax weeping? You decide.

SCORPIO In a bid to raise cash to fund your online shopping problem, you will turn to phone sex. Try a huskier tone of voice and occasional sound effects, the punters will love it.

H C

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reached crisis point - better just switch to Seinfeld. Douche chillllll. AQUARIUS This week you seriously consider drafting an RSVP.com profile. Consider instead joining a salsa class. You won’t pick up, but you will achieve your goal of being a horrifying cliché. PISCES In an act of charity, you’ll share your leftover cheese toastie with the pigeons out the front of the State Library. Sensing weakness, they’ll swoop. Recuperation may take several weeks.

L H

ARIES A particularly intense nightmare about porridge will result in a life-long aversion to oats and oatproducts. Your Uncle ‘Toby’ Tobias will be hurt that you no longer answer his chain emails. TAURUS You will read your horoscope in the Advertiser and see that it differs dramatically to this one. You will voice your displeasure at On Dit’s laxness through an angry Letter to the Editors.

AN OPEN LETTER TO... ART: CHLOE CASTLE

48 To the love of my life, I write this with a heavy heart. It aches behind my ribcage, and I don’t need to look far to figure out why. You are gone. I think about you constantly. Don’t you ever think about me? There are nights when I lay awake and listen to the second hand tick on, and you aren’t there. You were there once; I remember. I remember the way you smelled, and how soft to the touch you were. I remember nights on the couch, just the two of us. I remember double dates, and sneaking into the movies. I remember being too impatient to wait, and having you right there in the front seat of the car. I remember how good it felt to be with you. I remember how quickly I fell in love with you. One taste and I was hooked. You changed me. You were there when I needed you, and even when I didn’t. You supported me, and I cradled you. You were mine, and I was yours. Some people go their whole lives without a love like this, but we were lucky. We found each other as if by magic. One drunken night on a busy street, we locked eyes. You might be done with me now, but I will never look back. But then you were gone, and I don’t know why, or what I could have done to make you stay, or when you’re coming back. There is an emptiness inside me now: a you-sized cavity. I can try to

fill it with something else, but why set myself up for disappointment? You have ruined me for everybody else. Here I sit: alone and lonely, left hungry and wanting in your absence. I will never be whole again. Evenings once spent together are now spent in tears. I pick at my food, but can’t bring myself to eat it. Don’t you see that I’m wasting away without you? Don’t you care? Did you ever care? After that first night we spent together, when I rolled over and found you in my bed and knew you were the only cure to my every poison – did that mean nothing to you? Was I a means to an end? Is this how you treat all the silly, drunk, insecure girls you come across? Get in and get out, like we’re nothing to you? I want to hate you. I want to scream and shout and never speak your name again. I wish I had never met you. I just miss you so fucking much! Should I run to you? Get in my car now, and drive until I find you? I can picture it now: pulling into your driveway, feeling set alight by your very nearness. Hot anticipation drips somewhere within, and I know, just from looking at you, that all I need to do is ask. I want you, I’d say, and you would come to me. We could pick up where we left off. It would be as though not a minute had passed. We could be together again. Oh cheeseburger, I would say I love you. I will always love you.

Love, Genevieve Novak