debate issue 8, 2010

Issue 8 2010

issue 8 may 2010

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Inside

Issue 8 2010

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On the cover Illustration by Dipika Patel

editor

Samantha McQueen samantha.mcqueen@aut.ac.nz

publisher

AuSM – Auckland Student Movement @ AUT (Inc)

design

Nonavee Dale nonavee.dale@aut.ac.nz

printer

PMP Print

sub editor

all rights reserved

Jared Van Huenen

debate intern Jess Cann

contributors Victor Abbott | Lisa Arthur | Mike Atkins | Jo Barker | Imogen Crispe | Jessie Colquhoun | Alicia Crocket | Vinny Francesco | Tenani French | Celeste Gorell Anstiss | Ben Hope | Judy Ingham | Sarah Knowles | Brad Lewis | Anna Loren | Sasha Molloy | Katie Montgomerie | Scott Moyes | Veronica Ng Lam | Dipika Patel | Michelle Pollock | John K Probert | Heather Rutherford | Kat Saunders | Danielle Schofield | Catherine Selfe | Mystery Shopper | Tamsyn Solomon | Hannah Spyksma

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Kate Campbell kate.campbell@aut.ac.nz

issue 8 may 2010

This publication is entitled to the full protection given by the Copyright Act 1994 (“the Act”) to the holders of the copyright, being AUCKLAND STUDENT MOVEMENT AT AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED (“AuSM”). Reproduction, storage or display of any part of this publication by any process, electronic or otherwise (except for the educational purposes specified in the Act) without express permission is a break of the copyright of the publisher and will be prosecuted accordingly. Inquiries seeking permission to reproduce should be addressed to AuSM.

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Material contained in this publication does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of AuSM, its advertisers, contributors, PMP Print or its subsidiaries.

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his week, I’m not going to talk about any of the current affairs that have been in our media for the past week. There will be no rants about the NRL or the Rugby World Cup (because honestly, I have no idea about either), there will be no ponderings on the damage Iceland’s volcano has done to the travellers of New Zealand and airlines around the world, there will be no fandemonium about Justin Bieber’s fleeting visit in New Zealand and no opinions on Sir Peter Jackson and his knighthood.

Instead, I’m going to remind you about a very important date. This Sunday – for those of you who need reminding – is Mother’s Day. I can hear the collective curses and the frantic diary shuffling now.

For some of you, this day doesn’t have any significance to you. Perhaps you don’t have a mother, for whatever reason, or you’ve become estranged from her at some point in your relatively short life. For a small percentage of you, you are mothers that hope this Sunday you’ll be celebrated with a gift, a card or even a decent sleep in and a day off cooking and cleaning. For some of you, you would have organised someone special for your mum so that she knows you think she’s awesome. For the rest of you who don’t fall into these categories and forgot – shame on you. Go out and buy/make a card for her now!

I’m not ashamed to say I love my mum. I’ve long since passed the stage you have as an adolescent when you refuse to associate with your mum outside the confines of your house. You know the stage. You act out, refuse to clean your room, talk back, and throw tantrums and call her names because she won’t let you go to an unsupervised party when you’re 15-years-old because there’ll be booze and boys there and you’re the ONLY ONE NOT GOING (note: if there are any 15-year-olds reading this, you’re not the only one not going). I no longer think a call from my mum when I’m out with friends is “like, totally the most embarrassing thing ever” and every Mother’s Day I make sure we go out for lunch, manicures and have sappy music as our soundtrack for the day (viva la Westlife).

Like most newbie students, I was told many university clichés when I was packing my life up to move to the bright, glaring lights of Auckland. Among the stories of falling in love with Briscoes, the real cost of power, and the freshman fifteen, I was told once you leave home you learn to appreciate your mum. These days, my mum and I chat three/four times a week. I use the term “chat” loosely, because some days our conversations escalate into gossip sessions about who’s dating who, pregnancy scandals and any family dramas. Like I said in a previous issue, we’re like a non-teenage pregnancy, Kiwi version of Gilmore Girls.

As the more observant of you would have noticed, I blew out a significant number of candles last week, which was celebrated with friends and family. After the festivities, I received various texts, tweets and Facebook messages commending me on a fabulous soiree. There were two comments that stood out from the rest. The first: everyone loved the food (particularly the curly fries). The second: my mum is – quote – “amazing”.

So I dedicate this editorial to you, and to all the mothers around New Zealand who deserve to be celebrated. Happy Mother’s Day.

Sam

RECEPTION City Campus Level 2, WC Building 921 9805 8am-5 pm Mon-Thurs 8am-3.30pm Fri North Shore Campus Level 2, AS Building 921 9949 8.30am-3pm Mon-Fri Manukau Campus MB107 921 9999 ext 6672 9am-3:30pm Mon-Thurs MANAGEMENT Sue Higgins General Manager 921 9999 ext 5111 sue.higgins@aut.ac.nz REPRESENTATION Veronica Ng Lam AuSM Student President 921 9999 ext 8571 vnglam@aut.ac.nz ADVOCACY Nick Buckby Liaison Manager 921 9999 ext 8379 nick.buckby@aut.ac.nz MARKETING Rebecca Williams Marketing Manager 921 9999 ext 8909 rebecca.williams@aut.ac.nz EVENTS Barry Smith Events Team Leader 921 9999 ext 8931 barry.smith@aut.ac.nz MEDIA Samantha McQueen Publications Co-ordinator 921 9999 ext 8774 samantha.mcqueen@aut.ac.nz SPORTS Melita Martorana Sports Team Leader 921 9999 ext 7259 melita.martorana@aut.ac.nz CLUBS Ryan Waite Clubs Development Officer 921 9999 ext 8911 ryan.waite@aut.ac.nz VESBAR Zane Chase Vesbar Manager 921 9999 ext 8378 zane.chase@aut.ac.nz For a full list of contact details plus profiles of AuSM staff and student executive visit: www.ausm.org.nz

issue 8 may 2010

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Yay, we got mail! But we want more! Send us your thoughts on the magazine. What is grinding your gears at university?

What do you want to see more of? Tell us your thoughts! Letter of the week will win two movie tickets for Skycity Cinemas! debate letters policy: Letters longer than 250 words may be subject to editing. Letters are printed as they are received – spelling and grammar will not be corrected. The editor reserves the right to decline letters without explanation. The views contained on the letters page do not necessarily represent the views of AuSM. Send your letters to PO Box 6116, Wellesley St or debate@aut.ac.nz

letter of the week

Dear Editor.

Whoever the hell wrote in a couple of weeks back complaining about the lack of serious content within Debate can go buy a f**king newspaper.

I read Debate because it’s light hearted & humorous, and because it’s not so serious articles provide me with some kind of smile during lectures & train rides. Sure, include a couple of things for us almost-adults to get serious about; but please don’t go and make it like a magazine version of the NZ Herald that I do my best to dodge all the way up Queen Street. Growing up is stupid, and though it has to be done - I’d rather it happened in small baby steps and didn’t just throw me in the deep end by overwhelming me with real life issues in every publication I get my hands on. So please Debate, keep on keeping it fun? KTHXBAI. Anon.

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Hi Sam, I just read a debate issue today and I loved the whole magazine.

I really love the way you write your column & your lovely pictures.

Wish you a very Happy Birthday! and kudos to your entire team for doin an ausm job.

Best Wishes, Cyriac John

Are you a creative person?

Do you consider yourself a bit of an artist?

Do you want to get your work out there for everyone to see?

Well now you can! Don’t worry if words are your paintbrush, short stories/poems and literary masterpieces are also eligible. We welcome anything and everything (as long as it’s not offensive or inappropriate) so use these holidays to get creating! email your works of art to debate@aut.ac.nz

Just One Illustration by Tamsyn Solomon

Ex-AUT student does the big shave

by Jess Cann

An ex-AUT student is now sporting a smooth head after shaving her hair off in support of Shave for a Cure week.

Courtney Sit, who graduated from AUT last year with a conjoint degree in business and science, shaved her hair off on Saturday, April 24, hoping to raise money for the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation (LBFNZ).

AUT gyms being educated in eating disorders

by Anna Loren Both AUT’s city and North Shore campus gyms are developing new policies aimed at preventing and identifying eating disorders after a workshop with the Eating Difficulties Education Network (EDEN).

The idea is the brainchild of AUT City Fitness’ assistant manager Amy Reeves, who says that the main focus of the policies is to move from a weight-based model of health to a “holistic” model that centres more on overall wellbeing.

“The gym culture can be very numbers-focussed and we’re trying to move away from that. The way that you look is important, but other factors, such as lifestyle, are important too.”

Gaayaghri Mair, Youth Services Co-ordinator at EDEN, says she is delighted with the staff members’ willingness to re-examine the emphasis that gyms often place on weight.

The workshop involved a discussion on preventing eating difficulties such as crash dieting, as well as creating a policy for when staff believe one of their clients has an eating disorder, she said.

Trainers from both gyms were present at the workshop, as were reception staff.

“We thought it was important for reception staff to attend as they often hear a lot of chit-chat and notice things that the trainers don’t,” Reeves says.

Staff at City Fitness gym had identified one of their clients as suffering from an eating disorder in the past, but were unsure of how to approach them about it.

“Nine times out of 10, someone in that situation is going to be very defensive,” says Reeves.

However, she says that after the workshop with EDEN, staff are feeling far more confident in that regard.

Staff from the two gyms have also met with dieticians and the AUT counsellors. They are now in the process of writing their new policies, which they will send to EDEN for approval before implementation.

issue 8 may 2010

“I did it to remind myself, and others, that some people don’t get a choice when losing their hair.”

Sit raised approximately $1600 both online, on her Shave campaign page, and in cash pledges.

Executive director of LBFNZ Pru Etcheverry says Sit is a good ambassador for the organisation because of her use of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Etcheverry also says the crowd’s reaction to Sit’s shave event was unexpected, with a nurse from Waitakere hospital spontaneously volunteering to shave her head.

“We didn’t know what to expect. What’s been very nice is people we didn’t know about who have popped in, particularly women, and had a shave, that’s just absolutely unbelievable.”

Other AUT students plan to shave their head as well, such as third year Bachelor of Communication Studies student Hayley Jacobsen.

Even though Hayley had no immediate personal experience with cancer, she says it is still an important thing to do to raise money and awareness for children with cancer.

“If I can make a whole lot of money for charity out of something simple as shaving my head, why not?”

Hayley has created a Facebook group called Cutting for Cancer, where she has already raised more than $400 but is hoping to make over $1000.

She is also holding an auction for her friends as to who gets to shave her head.

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Drinking law changes stalled for at least a year

by Judy Ingham Changes in liquor law, including bumping up the age for buying alcohol and imposing earlier closing times on bars, clubs and liquor shops, aren’t likely to happen for at least another year, says the Law Commission office.

The commission’s report was “keenly awaited” but the process for considering the recommendations takes about a year, says Rachael Bruce, press secretary to Justice Minister Simon Power.

The Government has already ruled out increasing tax on alcohol but will consider raising the age for buying alcohol to 20 years.

It will also consider imposing a blanket closingtime of 10pm for off-licence sales, and 4am for bars and clubs, with no new entries into venues after 2am.

Area Commander for Auckland City Central Police, Inspector Andrew Coster, supports both moves, saying “nothing good happens in the city

after 3am”.

“Yes, we want to provide people with an entertainment experience, but there comes a tipping point and that’s when the harm that’s happening outweighs the benefits,” he says.

Jordan Smith, a student at Music and Audio Institute of New Zealand, will be 19 when any new laws are likely to be passed.

“I’d have a year without buying piss? That’s bullshit,” he says, “I’m angry already. I’ve had a year to buy what I want.”

Twenty-one-year-old University of Auckland student Gareth Brown says on the one hand “it would do something beneficial for youth alcoholism”, but on the other “it’s a rite of passage, but it’d just postpone it”.

“A lot of the older people above 20 would still go out and happily binge and that and drive home so people would still be doing it,” says Smith.

He emphasises the need for a wider approach,

Classrooms getting bigger, but staff getting smaller

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Students feel unsafe after flat robbed

by Hannah Spyksma

by Kat Saunders AUT has more students and fewer academic staff members than ever before, prompting one senior lecturer to call the university’s purported small class sizes “a bit of a joke”.

The number of full time students enrolled is up by over 10 per cent, while the number of full time academic staff has dropped by 2.8 per cent, leaving the ratio of students to academic staff members at 18.8:1, up from 16.9:1 in 2008.

The university had a record financial year despite the economic climate and was 8 per cent over budget, with a surplus of $8 million.

Julie Douglas of the School of Business says that classrooms in the WF building have had extra tables put in allowing a further six students in each class, with some classes having up to 38 students.

She says having larger classes means an increased workload for lecturers, along with less time to spend getting to know students.

However, John Williams, general manager of services & operations at AUT, defends AUT’s position and claims that AUT still has a favourable staff/ student ratio compared with other universities.

He says: “maintaining financial performance has not been at the expense of AUT’s investment in staff,” and that 100 per cent of the budget surplus is re-invested back into the university.

including education, which Inspector Coster agrees with.

“I think there’s a real desire to change the culture around the way we drink,” says Coster.

“No one is saying we should ban alcohol but the public is saying the way we drink presently is not acceptable. The harm that comes from alcohol extends well beyond the law.”

He recognises “there’s no quick fix”, but is sure the proposed changes “would have a significant impact”.

The police proposal for a split drinking age, which would allow 18 to 20-year-olds to buy alcohol in restaurants and bars, was thrown out by the Law Commission.

The report also recommends imposing a $250 fine for people who have to be taken home or kept under supervision because they’re too drunk.

Williams says universities are under pressure from the Government to retain a 3 per cent surplus annually, and says that other government funds have been removed.

Tertiary Education Union branch president John Prince says the Government’s EFTS cap and a lack of an increase in funding for universities are why AUT has increased class sizes.

“They dealt with it by putting more students in classes and not hiring new staff.”

He says a number of lecturers have to come to him with concerns about lecture sizes.

“Having more students with fewer lecturers has got to affect student’s learning.

The tradition at AUT has been of smaller class sizes for a long time and I still think that’s a very important thing to consider.”

Prince says the TEU would like to see a period of stabilisation, so lecturers can make “what we’ve ended up with work properly”.

Douglas agrees the number should not increase any more until there is an open debate about what AUT is trying to achieve.

“Adding more students is a stop-gap measure. AUT needs to acknowledge the impact of [large classes] on students, the impact on staff and the impact on the university.”

Students living at AUT’s halls of residences have a strong message that trust and friendship alone is not enough to keep the thieves away.

The words of warning come after a flat at Wellesley Student Apartments was recently burgled. Two laptops and an iPod were taken out of the lounge while the students were sleeping.

“It’s kind of a worry that people can do this so freely,” says flatmate Justin Scott. “If someone can get away with doing this, can you imagine what else they are capable of?”

Mak Tongia was up until 2am studying the night his flat was robbed, meaning that someone had come into the apartment between then and 7am, when he woke up for class.

The students, who all realise it was a mistake to have left their front door unlocked, believed they were safe and could trust their neighbours.

Mak was tipped off by another resident as to where he might find everything.

He discovered the stash wedged into a cupboard in the hallway directly outside their apartment a few days after it went missing.

WSA Director Joanna Scarbrough says the items were thought to be stolen by an “unaccompanied guest” at the party happening on the floor below.

Scarbrough believes stealing is no bigger issue at AUT’s halls of residence than any other high-density, residential environment.

“While we take every practicable step to provide a safe and secure community, residents also have an individual responsibility for their own personal safety and security.”

She reiterates that security requires the co-operation of students.

Students also believe this is an issue of learning how to live with other people.

Megan Grayson, who had her laptop and iPod taken, says: “In one way it makes me feel naïve, to trust and assume that the people you live with are decent.”

Mak adds: “We all live under the same roof. It just comes down to respect for other people’s property.”

WSA will hold a forum today where students can provide feedback on incidents such as stealing, and how effectively management is dealing with these issues.

Cycling services around campus cut by council

by Sacha Molloy An innovative bicycle hire company is being forced to reduce its services by 40 per cent to comply with Auckland City Council restrictions about where bicycles can be parked.

Nextbike director Julian Hulls says the bike hire operation provides a low cost, valuable service for the city and that the council has made a “colossal oversight”.

Until now, Nextbike has parked much of its 170-strong bicycle fleet against “street furniture” such as metal gates and posts.

Hulls says the council seems to be concerned about the bicycles obstructing public pathways.

However, Nextbike has taken precautions to ensure there is plenty of foot room around the bicycles, he says.

The council resource consent means people can now only pick up and drop off the bicycles at designated bike racks.

Hulls says the racks are very poorly spread out, particularly around the popular areas of AUT University and the University of Auckland, where there are only eight bicycle racks for 60,000 students.

“It is changing from a neat network to a very restricted service,” he says.

AUT business student Thabitha Singh, 19, has used the Nextbike system several times to ride around the domain and visit friends.

She says she is disappointed by the council’s decision.

“I feel like it goes against what the council stands for. They are taking away a very innovative form of public transport. It’s ludicrous,” Singh says.

AUT communications student Shannon Swainston has used a similar public utility bicycle scheme in Denmark and believes Auckland is taking a big step backwards by restricting the service.

“Pollution is a significant problem in Auckland and the bikes are not only a way to reduce pollution, they are a good drawing card for tourism,” she says.

Nextbike is currently formulating a business plan in the hope that the council will expand the operation to 250 bikes and install an additional 149 bike racks around the city.

Mulls says it costs around $1000 to install each bike rack; a pittance compared to the $92 million Auckland bus companies have received in subsidies from ratepayers and taxpayers.

Green Party Auckland Transport spokesperson Keith Locke said in a media release last week that providing bicycle parking facilities was a core responsibility of the Auckland City Council.

“A big increase in the number of public bicycle racks will save the city and the community millions in parking road maintenance and congestion costs,” he said.

The Auckland City Council could not be reached for a comment.

Auckland cyclists turn to Google in an effort to get home safer

Racist typo cost publisher $24,000

by Sarah Knowles

by Celeste Gorrell Anstiss

Nervous Auckland cyclists can now search online to find a safer way home. The maps are part of a partnership between Google and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA), using bike crash statistics from the Ministry of Transport.

Maxx.co.nz – usually used for searching bus timetables – has collaborated with the cycling community to create maps which chart Auckland’s cycling facilities and infrastructure.

The cycle maps also provide safety information by pinpointing where there have been recent cycle incidents.

Peter Clark, ARTA general manager of strategy and planning, says, “the online maps depict useful information that will help Aucklanders plan effective cycle routes around the region.

“It gives people the tools to plan the best way to get where they want to go by bicycle,” he says.

The “cycle crash map” shows the 200 most recent crashes in an area.

“For example, if you’re a relatively inexperienced cyclist you may wish to avoid a particularly busy junction,” he says.

Auckland City has been identified as a problem area as there have been 200 crashes since June 2008.

This is compared to East Auckland which has taken more than 13 years to get to this figure.

There were eight incidents in Queen St

alone, including two that were serious.

Clark thinks the interactive nature of the map will help to keep the information up to date for cyclists.

“The paper-based maps have been enormously successful but as everything changes they can quickly become out-dated.

The online maps allow cyclists to input information directly onto the maps helping to keep the details current and accurate for all”.

AUT communications student and avid cyclist Adrian Evans is excited about this development.

He admitted that he deliberately avoids Queen Street because he wants to avoid traffic lights and buses.

“I take a pretty rugged route but I always try to look for a safer way down. I will definitely check out this map from now on,” says Evans.

AUT journalism tutor and regular cyclist Allan Lee thinks that it is important cyclists are aware of where the danger spots are.

“However, it would be useful for the map to flag where the cycle lanes are. Maybe the council could collaborate with the website as well,” Lee says.

The maps can be found on www.maxx.co.nz/cycling-walking.html.

What’s the secret to a great spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto?

According to Penguin Australia, simply throw in some basil, add a dash of olive oil, and then season with “salt and freshly ground black people”.

The Pasta Bible recipe was supposed to call for black pepper, and now the publishers face a $24,000 reprint.

Penguin’s Australian head of publishing Bob Sessions is calling the typo “nothing more than a silly mistake”.

“We’re mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don’t know,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr Sessions says copies of the book already in stores will not be recalled.

But bookstores have been told that if anyone is “small-minded” enough to make a complaint, Penguin will replace the book with the revised version, he adds.

No heads will roll in the proofreading department, according to Mr Sessions, “Proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find it quite forgivable.”

Random House publishing director Nicola Legat says books go through at least eight “reads” during the proofreading process.

“Pepper and people is just not something you often get mixed up,” she says.

“It’s strange Penguin didn’t pick this mistake up.

But the human eye is a strange thing. Sometimes you can’t see for the looking.”

Ms Legat says Penguin owes the public an apology.

9

Sports Mixed martial arts (MMA) has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon in the last four years, and is now picking up in New Zealand, with gyms all around the country and monthly pay per view shows on television.

The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) in particular has exploded onto the world sporting stage with marketable stars such as Tito Ortiz, Brock Lesner and Georges St – Pierre. I thought as a huge UFC/MMA fan, I would take this opportunity to introduce a few more people to the sport. Any of you who has ever enjoyed a big boxing event or tuned into WWE’s latest offering should give MMA a go.

Sunday May 9 (4pm New Zealand time) is the date for the next UFC event, UFC 113, and it will feature a huge rematch for the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship as champion Lyoto Machida defends against Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. Machida won a debatable decision victory over Shogun at UFC 104 in October last year, and the UFC thus granted Shogun an immediate rematch.

Machida has tremendous accuracy in his striking and will look to naturalise shoguns vicious leg kicks with counter punching and quick movement – something he didn’t do in the first fight. Shogun has tremendous power with his hands and feet and showed great cardio in their October clash to finish the fight stronger than Machida. If the fight goes to the ground this is where I see Machida having an advantage with his slick Brazilian ju-jitsu skills taking effect over Shogun’s grappling. However, my prediction is that Shogun will once again neutralise Machida’s striking ability, prevent the fight from going to the ground and pull out a decision win. Hopefully this time the three judges see the fight as they should.

The co-main event will see a welterweight fight between top contenders Josh Koscheck and Paul Daley. This fight has huge title implications as the winner should cement their position as the next challenger for George St – Pierre’s championship (who only happens to be the best MMA fighter on the planet).

The very brash Koscheck will have a distinct wrestling advantage in this fight and should take the fight to the ground and beat up the more effective striker in

Daley, however Koscheck has a tendency to want to stand and engage in a war with most of his opponents and if he does this he is in big trouble. Daley’s standup is brutal, and Koscheck has a being knocked out as recently as January 2009, so there is the stigma hanging over Koscheck of a week chin. I can see Koscheck taking this to the ground though as Daley is not that flash off his feet and The Kos should be able to get a submission or TKO victory.

Diego Sanchez will make his return to the welterweight division when he takes on the highly touted John Hathaway in what could end up being the fight of the night. Hathaway has a crisp striking game and with a three inch reach advantage he could give Diego a hard time. Diego has much to prove after being completely outclassed by former lightweight champion, BJ Penn in his last outing. I think we will see a focused and aggressive Diego and I’m not sure Hathaway has the tools to stop him. For this one, it’s Diego by TKO. Lightweight sluggers Sam Stout and Jeremy Stephens will meet in what will be a stand-up war. Stout has tremendous kickboxing (former Canadian champion) and speed to match, Stephens loves to strike but has often come up short against superior strikers. I’m going to go with Stout on this one; he is on a three fight win streak and seems to be coming into his prime.

Now we get to the fight that a lot of internet geeks are looking forward too.

Former street fighting internet sensation, Kimbo Slice make’s his UFC PPV debut against ex – NFL player, Matt Mittrione. Kimbo competed on the 10th season of the reality programme The Ultimate fighter, and although lost his first round battle with eventual winner, Roy Nelson, he put up a strong enough performance to earn a contract with the UFC. Mittrione is undefeated in MMA and will be a tough test for Kimbo; this fight could be a battle of who hits who first. This is a really tough fight to call as I haven’t seen enough of either guy, but if I had to pick a winner I would say Kimbo by knock out in the first.

You can check UFC 113 out on Sky Channel 200 for only $20 or you can check it out at the Sin Bin in Takapuna, they show each event on the big screen.

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WEEK 17 21 MAY

Monday - Arts, Education, Engineering Tuesday - Business, Law, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries Wednesday - Science, Education, Medical and Health Sciences Throughout the week - National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries showcasing special exhibitions, concerts and presentations

Sports

Imagine the NRL is a giant game of Monopoly. Each club starts with $1500; no more. For a blissful first half hour, everyone waltzes around the board investing strategically and enjoying the ‘Free Parking’ square that is the bye round. Eventually discontent grows as the Warriors negotiate with the Bulldogs as to how much they should be paying for the Angel Islington. Meanwhile, the Sharks and half the other clubs verge on bankruptcy because crowds aren’t turning up to pay rent on Trafalgar Square and the Melbourne Storm snag a sneaky 500 from the banker. Unbeknown to everyone, the Storm throw their dollars at Mayfair, Park Lane, Regent Street and the four railroads, leaving everyone else with Old Kent Road and the Water Works. The banker eventually catches them, the Storm are sent straight to jail without passing go and their property is auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Way to kill a Sunday afternoon.

In many ways, the Storm’s salary cap shenanigans come as no surprise, a relief almost. Whenever a club holds an unhealthy amount of superstars under their wing there is always speculation. Despite letting go of a number of decent fringe players, the Storm still managed to keep the nucleus of their premiership winning team together; no mean feat.

It would seem the only way around the restrictions of the salary cap is for the more prominent players to take pay cuts out of an intense loyalty to the club and the presence of a legendary coach.

I look to the Brisbane Broncos of past seasons, so ridden with Origin stars that the weekend in their absence labels them the ‘Baby Broncos’. It cannot be coincidence that the instant their much respected coach of 21 years, Wayne Bennett, departs for the Dragons, ex students such as Luke Priddis, Wendell Sailor and Neville Costigan flock to the club.

Many would have pondered how the same principles could apply to the Melbourne club. Though the Storm’s Craig Bellamy is no apprentice at the coaching gig, he runs a league team in a city dominated by Aussie Rules. Tucked up in the state of Victoria, he is not backed by the Queensland passion that put the Broncos up on a mantle reminiscent of Kings. It would also seem strange that an intense loyalty to the club could grow so quickly; the team has only been in existence since 1998.

Yet there is something about the Melbourne Storm which all those who pull on the purple jersey seem to cherish. I tend to think the isolation from the Sydney spotlight helps the players focus on their football as opposed to their fame. In my opinion, Melbourne is the sporting capital of the world. Apart from AFL, there’s the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the

issue 8 may 2010

Australian Open tennis, it recently hosted the Commonwealth games and is about to welcome the Rebels as its Super 15 franchise. I think the Storm players revel in hiding behind all that glitz and glamour, forming a close bond within the squad.

While their cheating was wrong, unsportsmanlike and another stab in the back in the public’s growing discontent for off-field dramas, they were essentially attempting to keep a good thing going. It’s not like the IPL, where they summoned the sports leading names with Benjamin Franklins, they simply tried to keep a winning formula intact with the players they personally bred. Surely the tragedy here is how such a beautifully orchestrated team has been forced to oust its own flesh and blood to meet the requirement of a payment limit.

They made sacrifices in an attempt for this to happen but at some stage someone within the administration recognised the need to make a largely unsupported team a successful team to retain the fans they did have.

It is this close squad, this dedicated legion of fans, this ‘us against the world’ mentality I think that will see the Melbourne Storm survive the ordeal. Heart-wrenching as it may be, the loss of premiership titles are a thing of the past; you cannot take back memories. The 1.6 million dollars in fines is pocket change for owner News Limited, which incidentally owns half of the NRL. The denial to progress any further in the 2010 season will only unite the club, as shown by Craig Bellamy’s responding press statement, backed by each member of his proud squad. Once again they will lose players, but there will also be those that take the pay cut and soldier on like the Stormtroopers they have become.

This is because the Melbourne Storm are the annoying little brother of the competition; they won’t go away. They’ll wrestle in the ruck, have a go at your bout of depression, and give you the odd grapple tackle. The speculation will only drive them, and for a team already fuelled by the motivation of success, this is a scary thought. Stripped of the pressure to succeed this season, they could reshape the sport entirely, devising new ways to penetrate defences and withstand assault. They demonstrated this determination in their 40-6 destruction of the Warriors and whoever claims this year’s title will be questioned as the year’s supreme. The Storm have a great nursery and will continue to produce quality footballers and depleted as we may deem them next season, never under-estimate the damage a hotel can do on Old Kent Road.

11

reetings Fellow AUT Titans, Now that you are in your third week back at university, most of you would have settled quickly back into the pace of life here and the ticking clock of the assignments and assessments continues to tick. I urge you all to continue doing your best and if there are areas where you feel you need our help, you only have to ask as we are an email or phone call away.

I understand that there are some concerns around the fee structure that has caused a lot of confusion and distress for our international students. Fee setting at any university will always set off alarm bells for any student association and with the new policy that has been introduced I would like to suggest that we meet each other half way to try find the best solution for all of us. We are here to make sure that we support you through issues such as this and ask that you contact me on email prez@ausm.org.nz. No matter the problem or issue AuSM is always here to either provide the relevant information, assist with finding the right solution or support you through your time here at AUT. I would like to say hi to all our Manukau students as they are a fantastic bunch! Don’t forget that we provide free feeds for you all every second Wednesday at lunch time. So make sure you are there!

I am also based there every Wednesday so if you want to catch up, have a chat or share your lunch I am based MB107 (where the ping pong table is). Pop in and say hi and let us know how we can help or improve what we are doing for you. There are also a lot of social sports that are available for you all to participate in on your campus. AuSM is proud to provide the tennis courts that have now officially opened so that you can use it your free time and leisure. If you want to have a fun game during lunch time, come see us at the office and ask for the key to the courts! Don’t forget, I will be there every Wednesday and would love to get to know you all.

AuSM’s website is absolutely AWESOME!!! Check out the website for all the crazy and fun things that your student association puts on you!

Some of you might already have your tickets to the free screening that we are putting on for you on May 12. The movie The Losers will be complimented with free snacks! Make sure you keep an eye out on the website, our Facebook page and Twitter accounts for all the cool events we put on. There is also a laptop up for grabs for those of you who use Mates Rates!

Finally I encourage you to persevere through the final half of this semester. Try your best, don’t be afraid to ask for help and always remember that AuSM is here for YOU! No matter how big or small the problem is we are in this journey together!

Wishing you all a fantastic week ma Ia Manuia (blessings) You fellow president signing off for the week…

Veronica

Welcome back

to your 8th to last week before the end of Semester! I hope you are all settling back in okay and coping with the influx of assignments that I’m sure are taking over your lives right now. My name is Danielle Schofield and I am the Business and Law Faculty Rep for AuSM for 2010, as well as one of two student reps on the AUT Council and most importantly, a student just like you!

I know what it’s like to be a student and I know exactly what you’re going through, so if you ever want to talk, whether it is asking for help, sharing your new ideas or just having a chat, please be in contact with me!

The year seems to be flying by so fast; the pressure is on and the assignments and life pressures seem to be coming in thick and fast. At times like this, don’t forget to take a breather every now and again and don’t forget that if you need assistance or someone to talk to that there are many services available to you through AUT and AuSM, all FREE of charge. If you’re having difficulties with an assignment, visit Te Tari Awhina. If you need legal support, visit the advocacy and liaison team at AuSM. If you’re running low on funds, visit student financial services and if you’re really stuck, just visit a student advisor. There are so many services out there and so many wonderful people willing to help you so don’t be afraid to ask!

On a much sadder note, many of you may have already heard, but over the break we very sadly lost the Dean of the Business and Law Faculty, Professor Des Graydon; an extremely valued and now very missed, lecturer, colleague and friend to many. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Des on behalf of all the past, present and future students of AUT, for all the hard work, passion and many hours that he put into the AUT Business School and to making the learning experience and environment much better for all of us. My love and thoughts very much go out to Des’s family and friends and to his partner Jenny. Des will be greatly missed!

With this I would like to remind you that life is too short, make the most of it! I wish you all the best of luck for the remainder of the semester.

Not too long to go now, so put in the hard yards and it will all be over in no time!

Danielle

12

Key questions about healthier eating answered

P

eople have become obsessed with “healthy eating”. You only have to watch Campbell Live or check out the ads on Facebook to see how much information (often contradictory) there is about so called healthier diets. So today I’m going to answer some of those key questions about healthier eating. Who am I you ask to talk about healthier eating? Well I’m a New Zealand registered dietician and I’m also a PhD student at AUT working on a project to change the eating environment on campus so healthier choices are easier for you guys.

Why is food important?

Because it profoundly affects how you live your life. And not just your physical health: just think for a second how many social events you have had over the past month where food has been a key part? Food is everywhere and people are just beginning to realise that the crap we’ve been greedily shoving into our mouths is reducing our ability to live satisfying lives. Well duh! How can you expect to get everything you want out of life if you’re not giving your body the right kind of fuel? Take carrots for example, they help your night vision, so if you want to pick the hottie in the gloomy club you’d better start eating your carrots!

What is healthy eating?

Healthier eating means variety, balance, and minimal fat and sugar.

Variety means that you eat from all the four food groups: breads and cereals, fruit and vegetables, meat and meat alternatives and milk and milk products. Yes folks you heard it here, bread and pasta are an important part of a healthier diet; they’re not the baddies that Mr Atkins has made them out to be! But remember, the less refined and processed

the better. A balanced diet should not be all about having or not having certain food groups or types of food. There is no magical silver food bullet as much as the marketers try to tell you there is. Don’t believe them! Aim to eat minimal added fat and sugar. It’s not just the oil you cook in or the sugar you add to your coffee, it’s the highly processed foods which have lots of fat and sugar in them, so aim for less processed foods most of the time.

How to start changing?

It’s all very good talking about what a healthier diet is, but how do you start making changes? A good way to start and maintain change is to focus on one thing at a time. Start with something small, like reducing or cutting out sugar in your coffee, changing to diet soft drink or water, wholemeal bread instead of white, eating fruit as a snack, adding vegetables to every dinner or start eating something at breakfast! All these things are really positive dietary changes that if you can maintain will put you well on your way to eating a healthier diet and make you feel better and more energetic.

Some other tips I’d recommend are to start keeping a food diary of when and what you eat. You might be surprised how often you eat when you’re not hungry or don’t even realise you’re eating. Something that has worked really well for me is using smaller plates so you don’t serve yourself as much. Doing one or two small things at a time makes it much more achievable, realistic and therefore easier. So give it a go, take another step towards a positive and satisfying life.

Sausage Goulash Serves 6 – 8. Dairy free. Gluten free if made with GF sausages and GF stock.

This is another Ray McVinnie recipe that he wrote years ago for the Sunday Star Times. It’s an awesome recipe as the weather starts to get colder; it’s incredibly comforting, tasty, easy and of course cheap! It’s definitely one for a crowd, but it also freezes OK if you’re only cooking for yourself. Enjoy.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil 2 onions, chopped 2 carrots, diced 2 capsicums, sliced 4 cloves OR 4 teaspoons garlic 1 teaspoon minced chilli or ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper or chilli powder 800g sausages sliced into 4cm slices (slice them raw, they’ll look a bit odd but it’s a good time saver and they still taste good) 1 tablespoon paprika 1 can chopped tomatoes 500ml stock 4 medium potatoes cut into 4cm chunks Salt and pepper to taste

issue 8 may 2010

Directions

1 Heat the oil in a large pan 2 Add onion, carrot, garlic, chilli, capsicum and cook until

onion starts going soft.

3 Remove and put to one side while you cook the sausages for about 10 minutes until brown 4 Add the vegetables back into the pan, add all remaining ingredients and bring to the boil.

5 6

Simmer for 20 minutes until the potato is cooked Serve with toast or by itself

13

is auckland’s public transport system sufficient?

By Samantha McQueen One of the big things Aucklanders like to bitch about is the city’s transport system.

Everyone can rattle off a story about their bus being late, the trains regularly breaking down or the fare being too expensive. Coming from a smaller city, and having lived in Auckland for three years now, I’ve seen that Auckland’s transport system, although flawed, is certainly holding its own in a city that is widespread and holding 33 per cent of the country’s population.

As students, a lot of you have to rely on public transport or your own two legs to get around in this city.

Parking in Auckland is nearly impossible, and if you are lucky enough to snag a park, you have to fork out big money to stay there. The average parking around the city campus is $4 per hour, which a maximum stay of one hour. The parking building on St Paul’s St charges $16 for a full day of parking. That’s the same price as a return trip on the train from Papakura, not including petrol for the 30 kilometre journey into the city. Wouldn’t people rather not worry about the stress of driving in Auckland and have someone (say, Auckland’s rail system) do it for them?

People complain that buses are always late, but your odds of getting their faster in a car are slim. Figures released in March showed morning traffic delays during peak times (7.30am-9.30am) have increased from 79 seconds per kilometre in 2008 to 85 seconds in 2009. That’s almost a minute and a half. The reason buses are late is because people are using their vehicles and clogging up the road. A lot of bus routes now have dedicated bus lanes, with plans for lots more, and the North Shore has the Northern busway, which kicks in after the harbour bridge. This has lead to more patronage over a longer distance because people are fed up with idly in traffic, watching their fuel gauge slowly drop.

But buses and trains are expensive too, I hear you cry out. As students, we are heavy users of public transport and Maxx recognises that, which is why full time students get 40 per cent of all Maxx bus and train services.

If you are travelling in a one stage vicinity, such as from Mt Eden, Grey Lynn or Parnell, it only costs you $1 each journey after your discount.

The further out you go, the cheaper it gets. Compare that to Wellington, where the price is $1.50 for one zone, or Christchurch, where a single trip is $2.10 (with concession). I have lived in all three of the above Auckland suburbs, and on average it only takes 15 minutes to catch a bus into town.

Dominion Road, one of the busiest streets in the Auckland fringe area, carries more than 175,000 vehicles and 50,000 bus passengers a week and has its own dedicated bus lane.

Of course, this number is going to explode next year when visitors descend for the Rugby World Cup but the Auckland Regional Transport Authority is doing what it can to accommodate the bigger numbers. In the last six months alone, Newmarket train station has undergone a makeover and the new Grafton Station opened a couple of weeks ago. It was part of a $154 million redevelopment of the rail network through Newmarket. Next up is the new Onehunga railway station, which was given the big tick less than a month ago. They’re also investing huge money into the Kingsland station, which is located across the road from Eden Park, and will make Auckland’s rail system electric. During the World Cup there will be nearly 2km of roadside parking around Eden Park which will be dedicated to 130 buses which will transport supporters, as well as 38 trains.

Sure, the public transport system isn’t at World Cup level at the moment, but the government is investing big time and money into making sure it will be able to cope with the extra 60,000 guests.

As it stands, Auckland carried 43.1 million passengers on buses last year, as well as 7.6 million train passengers, up 97 per cent. Those are big numbers for a city that is constantly complaining about its public transport system. Perhaps that’s because, secretly, we think it’s alright.

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By Jared Van Huenen The public transport in Auckland is renowned for being shit. Ask any student for a story about the train system and they’ll give you ten – the same goes for buses. While there are a number of reasons for these inadequacies, can we really tolerate such poor service? Should we have to?

Auckland City is, by far, the biggest in the country – both in area and population. We’ve got more people than Christchurch, Wellington and Hamilton put together, and considering our city is over 1,000km² that works out about right for us.

The problem with that, however, is that most of the world’s big cities are smaller than that, and have about 30 times more people. New York City is only 780km², it has more than eight million people and, for the purpose of this article, a brilliant public transport system.

The issue here is that with less people the Government gets less tax, and with a bigger city the system has to travel further, hence it costs more.

Just because we know why something is crap doesn’t mean its okay to just leave it. As well as being our biggest city, Auckland is also our flagship. It’s the city that most people judge us by when coming here. It’s also the city where most major events are staged and in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got one of those coming up.

John Banks expects that international rugby fans will walk around our hilly city, from rugby games to town, to hotels and back. Reality is, nobody wants to walk from Mt Eden to Queen Street for a pint and considering there’s a train station (literally) right next to Eden Park, they’ll probably be looking at that for a time-efficient alternative.

The new stadium at Eden Park will hold 60,000 people.

Last week during peak hour, there was about 100 people waiting for a train at Britomart and we had trouble. I very seriously doubt that our transport system will be able to cope with the amount of people we’d like it to.

It’s not just the World Cup that matters though, what about everyday Aucklanders who have to wait for 20 minutes for a train or bus. Or wait for 40 minutes to be told that your train isn’t coming.

At best, the system is adequate. At worst, it’s a joke.

I personally don’t think that Auckland is a joke. It’s probably the most serious place in the country. We’ve got a massive percentage of the economy up here and most successful New Zealand business people look to Auckland before moving offshore. They’re the ones who make the decisions in a capitalist democracy like ours and we’re making ourselves look stupid to pretty much everyone overseas.

In Copenhagen they’ve got two rail systems, an in-depth eco-friendly bus system and a genius idea where you can pick up a bike for a dollar, ride it anywhere around the city and as long as you park it in another designated bike zone, you get your dollar back. How brilliant is that?

Of course, with our city being built on a massive hill (speaking of genius ideas) that bike idea isn’t really feasible, but it’s that kind of original thinking we need. As the population increases (it should be more than two million by 2040) we’ll have more money to throw around. I don’t see it going toward public transport though, and I think that’s where the problem is. I blame the Labour Government for spending nine years doing 2/5ths of fuck all and putting us in this predicament. Until we actually make some sacrifices and do something about it, we’re never going to get anywhere and Australians will still have an easy reason to laugh at us.

It’s easy to sit here and complain about public transport, and we’ve all done it before. To be honest I don’t like bagging on Auckland, it feels unpatriotic. When it comes to our transport system though, it’s kind of hard not to.

by Vinny Francesco

At first appearance, female chauvinism may seem oxymoronic. Chauvinism is popularly considered the males domain, a domain of prejudice and discrimination. Actually, the latter is true.

Chauvinism is a department of prejudice and discrimination, but to say this is a quality or activity belonging exclusively to males [men] is essentially a lie. Historically, we are told, the female has been the “victim”, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the meek and the objectified. Of course, there is an essential truth to this, but there is also exaggeration regarding accountability; who or what is to blame.

Chauvinism is a broad term with regards to a blind or exaggerated viewpoint, incorporating bias or polarity. In this case we are dealing with bias of the sexes. Actually the term female chauvinism was in part coined by the infamous and now deceased feminist Betty Friedan. Hence the term female chauvinism is a backlash regarding the ridiculous and prejudiced generalisations as to the nature of men; that we are essentially wife-beating, poor parenting, beer drinking [alcoholic] rapists.

Now given the somewhat tragic nature of history, it is understandable that some females, and even males, would take to radical feminism with invigoration upon this illumination. That is understandable, however it is not justified. The tragedy of history, that is, any tragedy to be found within history is not a male phenomenon, it is a human phenomenon.

“Oh, but take a look, all the misery and suffering of humanity has been [ultimately] at the hands of the powerful, and the powerful have traditionally been of the male sex”.

This is not an uncommon argument. The centre of this argument applies to those who make the argument from equality/potential/ similarity. In a nutshell, the statement is that both male and female sex share fundamental similarity, and that masculinity and femininity are social constructs pertaining to both groups of men and women. This is a common argument cited amongst popular culture, and it is perfectly valid. Yet it is hypocritical to hold such a view and consider males largely accountable for the tragedy of [selected] history. Granted males are generally involved, but this in no way translates to accountability.

Granted again, there can be different levels of accountability. At the extreme end we can see its unreasonable nature. To hold the men of today accountable for the actions of our forefathers is both pretentious and conceited. Actually it is more reasonable that we as a people are accountable to any and every historical or modern injustice, rather than men being solely accountable for the works of men. In this way all varieties of chauvinism is to be considered an inauthentic form of misanthropy.

It is at this stage we come to the contemporary platform of affirmative action, specifically the potential dangers of affirmative action.

Affirmative action basically means making right of wrong doing, it is a form of redemption and reconciliation; however it also has the potential to be revengeful in nature. I must stress, there is warrant for affirmative action and that fundamentally it is a positive social movement. A classic and prominent example which most will be somewhat familiar with is affirmative action in the context of Maori culture, most notably the occurrences of the Waitangi Tribunal or the Maori Land Court. Similarly we find instances of affirmative action pertaining to women.

There are perhaps innumerable instances of affirmative action pertaining to women, some you may be familiar with, but ask yourself; what movements are working for the protection and betterment of men.

Women can take refuge from wife-beaters at Women’s Refuge, lodge complaints against “perennial rapists” at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

issue 8 may 2010

Women can even receive a widow’s benefit when their husband dies. No such benefit is offered to men in their time of bereavement.

Perhaps it is the selfish nature within myself that is within all of us; “what about me?”. From the raw quantitative perspective, male and female are to humanity as two sides are to the coin; flip the coin and get a 50-50 result. Yet amongst the social atmosphere, the presence of zealous social movements regarding gender is rather skewed. Actually from the vantage point of affirmative action and work being “actively” done, it seems as though women have virtually all the power. As stated earlier there is a need for this affirmative action; however affirmative action by its very nature is designed to be temporal.

What happens when our problems resolve, but we are still left with “problem solvers”? What happens when equanimity and equal opportunity is embraced, yet there is still equalising going on? What happens when action is adequately and amply is affirmed, but we still have affirmative action?

We can turn our attention to our very own university for possible answers. The ratio of female to male university students is about 60:40.

Many even purport the females do better academically than males, though this is a speculation on my behalf. Despite this, within the upper echelons of professorship and senior lecturing it is said that it is still largely a male domain (though from personal experience the ratio has been about 70 per cent female, 30 per cent male).

Another argument also set forth is that quantity is not the same as quality. Therefore in measuring the accessibility to upper tiers of education numbers alone will not suffice. To speak symbolically, the traditional problem is not that there are too many male priests; it is that females cannot become priests if for whatever reason that is their desire.

It is difficult to grasp when equality has been reached in a qualitative manner; quality cannot be averaged and given standard deviation.

Affirmative action largely concerns itself with the economic, the material, and the financial. Though this concerns the realm of historical injustice, it needs to be said that the ultimate end should be cognizance, which means ontological or spiritual; present within the mind. Affirmative action is ripe for offence; however that is not a problem as long as it does not lose sight of its philosophical foundation. What affirmative action really needs to be weary of is boxing and compartmentalizing people, most notably “people of the status quo”, through associating historical occurrences as natural fact or synonymous with current reality. This reigns particularly true when it comes to gender and its associations, which are largely socially constructed and hence ever malleable.

The fundamental issue is accessibility. There is a need for weariness and watchfulness and mindfulness in future, to make sure affirmative action’s agenda of redemption and reconciliation does not lose focus and blur into a retributive occurrence resting within the realms of prejudice.

Ultimately we need to ask, “How long can a grudge be held? Affirmative actions cast its roots within truth and justice, but what of mercy and forgiveness? The existential fact of the moment and the ability to change must be taken into account. If we become exorbitantly legalistic in our approach, and are taken aback by the inertia of history, it is quite possible to lose sight of what is here and now. That is the potential danger that affirmative action regarding sex and gender possesses; that is female chauvinism.

15

Steve Wrigley: The Man Behind the Laughs Interview by Jess Cann

Wrigley, who you may recognise from the Comedy Festival or even that show called 7 Days, started out in Palmerston North, of all places, with a stand-up opportunity which would change the direction of his entire career. Now, after touring the country on the Uni Comedy Tour, he’s wound up back in Auckland, preparing his new show Wrigglemania for the annual Crunchie Comedy Festival. Jess Cann sat down with him after recording a two-show comedy CD, to ponder television shows, comedy in New Zealand and life in general.

So why did you decide to get into comedy?

I didn’t decide to, it just kind of happened. I had always been into performing and been into theatre sports and improv, which is where I started out and it just seemed like something I was good at, something I enjoyed. Then one night I accidentally wound up hosting a stand-up comedy night because the host hadn’t shown up. So I was like “yeah give us a go”, jumped on stage and told jokes, had a really good time and really enjoyed it. Because I had been doing improv with other people but now I had the spotlight to myself and really enjoyed that [laughs].

So from there you just thought it could be a good thing?

Yeah, and I just kept doing it. I had a couple of good mates, Ben Hurley’s a really good friend of mine and we met 10 years ago and me and him, as well as a couple of our other mates, were dudes who wanted to get stand up out of Wellington and there was really no one to do it so we were like “there are six of us, we’ll just do a show, one of us will MC it and the other five will do a spot”. We started doing that every Wednesday and went from there. More people started coming and so we built our little team.

You incorporate a lot of stories about your life into your stand up, how much of your material is true and how much is exaggerated?

It’s all true but chronologically, not always. There’s a story about a flat I used to live in with a bunch of guys, but it’s actually stories from about four different parties but it’s much easier to tell in one. It’s all true but you only tell the bit you have to in order to keep it funny.

Do you try to stay away from politics in your stand up?

There are other guys I know who are better at it. I just talk honestly about how I feel about anything. I mean if I ever had a strong opinion about politics, I would talk about them but I don’t so I’m not going to create an opinion just to be a comedian that talks about politics. I care a lot about political correctness and how we view things. If I care about something, I’ll talk about it. If I don’t, then I won’t.

What has been your career highlight so far?

To be honest, it was probably…recording my CD and finally getting everything put down. Just having 150 people show up at five days notice and sit through two hours of comedy.

What was your motivation to record a comedy CD? I realised there was not much New Zealand comedy out there and Dai [Henwood], who has been a really good friend of mine for a while, put his DVD and CD out last year and the reason I never put anything out is because I didn’t think it would do quite well in New Zealand, but Dai’s DVD did really well and I was like “wow, people actually want to buy our stuff and see what New Zealand comics are doing”.

So do you think comedy is becoming a lot more prominent in New Zealand as a result of the comedy festival or television shows, such as 7 Days?

I think one influenced the other. I think 7 Days came about because of the comedy festival and then because of the success of 7 Days, the comedy festival gets bigger and one can feed the other.

Do you think you’ll be venturing into television a bit more because of the success of 7 Days?

I worked in radio for a while and why that didn’t work out is because I couldn’t stay away from the live comedy scene. Live comedy is always going to come first; I want to get to the stage where I can do really big shows in theatres.

Where do you hope to be in the future with comedy?

I’d really like to still be doing live stuff, and still be writing. I don’t want to get complacent. I try and write a new one hour show every year, I’d just like to still be doing gigs. I’ve been doing it for 10 years now and I’m still not sick of it, I’m still having a good time.

Steve Wrigley will be performing at this year’s Crunchie Comedy Festival from May 4-8 at The Basement.

Check out www.comedyfestival.co.nz for more information.

Avenue Q is the new smash hit musical coming to Auckland on May 13, 2010. It tells the story of Princeton, a recent college graduate who travels to New York with massive dreams and a tiny bank balance. However this is not your ordinary musical: think Team America crossed with Sesame St and you start to get my gist. With musical numbers titled; Everyone’s a little bit racist and If you were gay, Avenue Q is a complete send up of political correctness.

Princeton, the hero of the story, moves to the run-down neighbourhood of Avenue Q (the only one that he can afford) and meets interesting characters such as; renowned night club singer, Lucy the Slut, an internet addict called Trekkie Monster, cute kindergarten assistant, Kate Monster and many more, including out of work comedian Brian. Brian is played by Australian actor David James [central photo] and I was lucky enough to ask him about what it is like to play Brian on “The Q”.

David, when did you first get bitten by the acting bug?

I was 11 years old and about to play the lead role in the junior school play when I injured my ankle on the library stairs. When the doctor mentioned the words “plaster”, “crutches” and “no play” in the same sentence, my reaction left no one (myself included) in any doubt that I had been bitten by the acting bug. Thirty years later, the ankle still gives me grief!

What made you decide to go to drama school at NIDA and have a go at acting professionally?

I continued acting through school, a gap year in the UK and at Monash University in Melbourne where I was fortunate to be influenced by a great English Literature professor who was also a very fine theatre director. After a production of King Lear in which I played Edgar, he sat me down and said “What about drama school?” Within six months, I had deferred my arts/law degree and was off to NIDA in Sydney.

Have you ever had to do other part time jobs to support your acting career?

I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been able to carve (or should that be scratch?) out a living as an actor for 20 years. That’s not including the eight months in 1992 when I hosted the “Steinlager Starmaker Karaoke Show”. It left me with a deep and abiding love of Steinlager and a deep and abiding hatred of karaoke.

immediately think “kids show”. This is definitely NOT a kid’s show! If you bring your four year old expecting Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall and instead you get The Internet is for Porn then Houston, we have a problem.

What other acting experience have you had that NZ audiences will recognise you from?

I shot an ad for Countrywide Bank in Auckland some years ago with the film company that made Once were Warriors! Very memorable I’m sure. I’m not overly familiar with Australian content on New Zealand TV, but I’ve been on all the usual Aussie TV dramas from City Homicide to All Saints. I’ve also been a presenter on the kids show Playshool. You guys might also be familiar with the Bell Shakespeare Company, with whom I’ve done many productions.

What is your favourite scene in the show and why?

Probably the last song For Now because it means a cold beer in the bar isn’t far away! Seriously though, it is such a great song that wraps up everything the show has been about in a neat bow and sends the audience out of the theatre tapping their toes with a huge smile on their faces.

Tell us a little bit about your character Brian.

A lovable guy with a big heart and big dreams that haven’t yet come true...he’s a bit lost. Brian is what one might call a little unmotivated and tends to be a procrastinator; “Why do it today when it can wait till tomorrow?” He has always dreamed of being a stand up comedian with his own TV show but the fact that he’s not that funny probably gets in the way. He lives with his Japanese therapist fiancée Christmas Eve whom he adores and he probably spends a little too much time with Trekkie Monster drinking beer and looking at... The internet.

You were a presenter on the children’s television show Playschool; how does it feel to be doing such a politically incorrect puppet show with that as your background?

I’d never even thought about it in those terms before. I think variety is one of the greatest aspects of the actor’s life; just because one has worked in children’s entertainment doesn’t mean that’s all you do. However the question raises a very relevant point about Avenue Q. People see that Avenue Q has puppets and they issue 8 may 2010

Your character of Brian doesn’t have to operate the puppets... But what was it like for the other actors to learn to operate puppets convincingly?

I’m still in awe of the others and their puppeteering. There are three of us in the show who are “human” characters and therefore don’t have to operate a puppet.

The biggest challenge for us when working opposite the puppets is to look into the puppets eyes and not those of the actor manipulating them. As for the guys operating the puppets, it was a near vertical learning curve as none of them came to the show as puppeteers.

How long did it take them to learn how to operate the puppets?

Well it’s not exactly an everyday sort of skill so it was a very individual thing. Some took to it like a duck to water and for others it took longer. Certainly the full five weeks of rehearsal and then some. And even now, after over 250 performances they still work on things like eye lines and vocal sync. I dips me lid to ‘em all!

Who is your favourite character in the show?

Brian, of course. But if I was being really truthful, I’d have to say Trekkie Monster.

There’s just something about that puppet! He seems so “alive” sometimes it’s scary. You’ll all know what I mean when you see Avenue Q... Trekkie is the rock star of the show. (Luke who plays him told me to say that.)

What would make Avenue Q appealing to NZ students?

It has black and irreverent humour, it has great songs that you’ll be humming for weeks after [and] it has messages of belonging, of finding your purpose in life and of tolerance. It is so different to any other musical you’ve ever seen. The puppets give the show the licence to be naughtier and go further than we could without them. In fact, everything about it will appeal. Avenue Q is one of a kind.

Just see it; you’d be bloody mad if you didn’t!

Avenue Q is on at the Civic theatre from the May 13-30. Tickets can be booked online at www.the-edge.co.nz and you can also call The Edge on 0800 BUY TICKETS. It will be a hilariously awesome show and with special $25 student price tickets, what’s there to lose? I’ll see ya there!

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Rest in Peace?

The first thing you notice about Alison Davis is her frailty. She sits slightly hunched in her wheelchair, pale-skinned and

Alison Davis had a relatively normal childhood and married at 20, while still at university. In 1985, her life changed when her husband left her suddenly and unexpectedly. Alison had to become completely with an out of control mop of blonde hair. Her hand is cold to the touch, like an electric shock. When she begins to speak, a hush draws over the independent, hard when she relied on her husband in every aspect of her daily life. When he left, so did her disability benefit and she became crowded room. Her voice is almost squeaky and her arms shake as she reaches for her water bottle. From the first moment you see Alison Davis, broke. She calls this the “most difficult period of my life”.

“In 1985, when I was at my lowest ebb ever, I made the decision that I you can tell. This woman is sick. There is something wrong with her. no longer wanted to live,” she says.

Alison is 54 years old and lives in Dorset, England. She has five Doctors thought she was at death’s door and Alison was severely different disabilities. The most obvious of them is spina bifida and the depressed.

Over the next 10 years she told doctors and friends that she spinal conditions lordosis and kyphoscoliosis, which twist and bend her wanted to die and tried to commit suicide several times. She would go to spine in the most impossible ways. She also has arthritis, osteoporosis, emphysema (a breathing problem) and hydrocephalus (excessive cerebo- bed at night and wish not to wake up in the morning and her friends had spinal fluid around the brain). These illnesses have confined her to a to remove all the sharp objects from her house. The most serious suicide attempt involved two bottles – martini and painkillers. wheelchair since she was 14 years old and she has to take morphine daily Fortunately, one of her friends arrived at her house and called an to manage the chronic pain.

“When the pain is at its worst I can’t move or think or speak,” she ambulance. When she arrived at the hospital, Alison was treated against her will. She told doctors she wanted no help, but they just waited until says.

Euthanasia is promoted for someone like Alison, to put people like her she was unconscious to treat her. Colin Harte relays the story: “The doctors told her she was going to die, and she just laughed. She wanted “out of their misery”. But here’s the to die.” If euthanasia was legal catch. Alison is against euthanasia. in the United Kingdom during She is doing everything in her It’s easy to understand why most people would those years, Alison would not power to make sure it remains say yes to euthanasia. When you’re young, be alive today. She fits all the illegal. criteria of someone wanting to The Oxford dictionary of English healthy, mobile and happy, stories of being stuck be euthanized and would have defines euthanasia as “the painless in a wheelchair and losing your independence done it if she had the chance. killing of a patient suffering from During these 10 years of an incurable and painful death seem like the worst possible outcome in life. turmoil, Alison met Colin. He or in an irreversible coma”. It is had just graduated university also known as physician-assisted at the time and volunteered to suicide or assisted suicide. In New come and help her at home for Zealand it is illegal, but remains a hot topic, something almost everyone two weeks.

Those two weeks have turned into 20 years and Colin is still has an opinion on. High profile euthanasia advocates like Lesley Martin and Dr Philip Nitschke are constantly brought to the media’s attention. her full-time carer. He is her support, her confidante and her best friend.

However, Alison is not well known. Colin Harte, her carer for the last 20 His job is harder than most and he does it without complaint.

“I don’t think of it as a job to be honest. I let her be as individual as years, has a simple reason why: “Alison is never a news story in herself, she can be,” he says. When Colin came into Alison’s life in 1989, she was because wanting to live is not a news story.”

It’s easy to understand why most people would say yes to euthanasia. depressed. “I remember the desperation of wanting to die that she would When you’re young, healthy, mobile and happy, stories of being stuck in express.”A visit to India in 1995 saw everything change. Alison had been a wheelchair and losing your independence seem like the worst possible supporting a project for disabled children and they wrote, asking her to outcome in life. Stories of pain make us wince, cringe and hide our eyes visit. Colin says after that visit she turned to him and said, “I think I want as our imagination runs wild, thinking of how awful that must feel. And as to live.”

“It was the first time she’d thought that, let alone said that in 10 we mull this over, we decide death must be the better option. years,” he says.

Lesley Martin was jailed in 2004 for the attempted murder of her Euthanasia is currently legal in Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, terminally ill mother. Since then she has been an advocate of euthanasia.

Switzerland and the American states of Oregon and Washington. But She says euthanasia should be legal in New Zealand, to stop what she calls a “euthanasia underground” developing. “In the absence of legally people living outside these countries and desperately wanting to die governed assistance in dying, a disturbing number of people enact what can do so in Switzerland. This is the only place in the world where nonthey believe to be their fundamental right to choose the timing and residents can go to a clinic, Dignitas, and be legally killed. People from manner of their dying, often with botched attempts or legal consequences all over Europe make the one-way trip to Dignitas to take advantage of for anyone assisting them.” Such a case came about in March this year their lenient rules.

Passive euthanasia has been legal for some time now, in the form of when Margaret Page starved herself for 16 days because she wanted a “Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)” order at a hospital. It is legal for them to to die. Page was terminally ill and disabled after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage 20 years ago. Her decision to end her life sparked a media refuse treatment and so essentially give permission for the hospital to stand back and let them die. There are also “living will” laws, used in a debate which involved Lesley Martin.

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similar way for terminally ill patients to refuse treatment. In September, The Telegraph in Britain reported a 26-year-old woman used a living will to help her commit suicide. She drank poison at home, called an ambulance and then handed them a letter saying she didn’t want them to save her life. Doctors couldn’t treat her in fear of being charged with assault.

Alison Davis is in a unique position in that she knows how it feels to want to be euthanized and then later change her mind. She says someone who is mentally sick or depressed and wanting to die should be no different to someone who is physically sick and wanting to die. When someone tries to kill themselves, there are suicide prevention organisations who try to stop them and help them. If that person is disabled or in pain, society seems to welcome their choice. How is it any different?

Colin says Alison would have been treated differently in the time she was depressed if she wasn’t disabled. “If she had been able bodied, people would have been willing to help. They automatically say ‘life is precious, you should live’. There should be no different reason or approach to someone who is disabled and sick.” He says of those people who are very old or have disabilities like Alison, the vast majority are not asking to be killed. Having those conditions doesn’t mean you have the right to expect to want to die. In fact, most disabled people asking to be euthanized are doing so because of depression rather than being in pain. He gives this example: If two people have multiple sclorosis and only one of them wants to die, there must be something beyond this disability that is making this person want to die. In that case, we should be helping them, not giving them a push and a shove. “The condition itself should not be a reason in itself to think death is the best or only option,” he says.

Jean Cartmell is a member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New Zealand. She acknowledges that euthanasia is in a way like suicide. “But suicide is almost always irrational and voluntary euthanasia is almost always rational.

“Why do we keep people alive who have been asked to be released, wasting taxpayers’ money and their money?” she asks. “The ridiculous thing is that you won’t let your dog suffer, but you don’t mind letting your granny suffer. Well you might mind, but you can’t do anything about it.”

The organisation has been in New Zealand for 25 years and has more than 1000 members. Its aim is to get legislation passed to allow a doctor to end a patient’s life when they have a terminal illness. It is are also trying to get the Government to set up a register of people’s living wills, which can state the type of treatment they don’t want and their do not resuscitate request. This register will be sent to hospitals and ambulance stations, so that if someone is in an accident and doesn’t want to be saved, they won’t be.

To date, there have been two attempts to introduce a euthanasia bill in New Zealand. In 2003 the Death With Dignity Bill was rejected at its first reading 60 votes to 58. A similar bill in 1995 was defeated with 69 votes for and 21 against.

Lesley Martin has recently approached a politician and is working with them to submit a proposal to the Private Member’s ballot box. “Our proposal requires that applications for assistance in dying be made to coroners, as they are the professionals who investigate a death after the event,” she says. “This process would also ensure that a slippery slope would not develop, as any person not eligible under the law would not be assisted. Therefore, all deaths attributed to legalised [euthanasia] would have met legal requirements.” Once the bill has been submitted to the

issue 8 may 2010

ballot box, there is a random draw and then goes to first reading. If this is successful, the bill will go to select commit and all New Zealanders will be able to have their say on the issue.

Labour Party MP Steve Chadwick was previously asked by Lesley to get a group of MPs together, but told her she needs to lobby MPs individually to get support for any proposed legislation. She supported the 2003 bill, sponsored by ex New Zealand First MP Peter Brown. “I do not really believe that we need a law change at this stage,” she says. “I think MPs need to understand the laws as applied in New Zealand. I do believe that individuals have a right to choose their withdrawal from treatment, and believe in the concept of a living will.”

Alison’s biggest concern in legalising euthanasia is that it will create a divide in society between those who deserve to live and those who don’t. Already in countries where it is legal, euthanasia is being used as a treatment option. ABC News in the United States reported a woman in Oregon with terminal lung cancer was prescribed a new chemotherapy drug that would help prolong her life. She received a letter saying she couldn’t be covered by the Oregon state health plan, but instead mentioned euthanasia as an option. The drugs to keep her living cost $4000, the drugs to kill her, $50.

Now Alison travels the world, speaking out against euthanasia. It is what brought her to New Zealand last year, speaking at a conference about the issue. She has given evidence to committees and houses of parliament that are investigating legalising euthanasia. Wherever Alison is in the world, her message remains the same. “I encourage people who get so desperate, to see why life is worth living and to see beyond their disabilities,” she says.

“Often all desperate people, disabled or not, need to be given is hope.

What they definitely don’t need is to be told they are right to feel so unhappy and that they would be better off dead.

“This is simply the equivalent of seeing a person about to jump off a high bridge and giving them a push.”

Alison’s story is not a fairytale – not something you would read in a tabloid magazine with a headline: “I wanted to die, and now I couldn’t be more alive.” She is still sick and won’t get any better. Her pain is continually getting worse and will do so for the rest of her life. But that’s okay with her.

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I met Clap Clap Riot guitarist Dave Rowlands at the Shaky Isles cafe in Kingsland. I almost missed him because I didn’t know who to expect and I was expecting more than one band member. But this was better because if I’d gotten more than one band member I’d have forgotten which was which, and I’d had to have referred to them collectively as CCR, then you would have thought I was talking to John Fogerty. Besides Dave Rowlands easily talks enough as much as four men would and I sincerely hope that I get to do more interviews that involve the phrase “Just shit-loads of shredded porno magazines”. Clap Clap Riot played at Real Groovy’s record store day on Saturday, April 17 and it is Rowlands’ dislike of downloading that kicks this interview off.

Do you have something morally against downloading, or do you just dislike not having something physical?

I just dislike not having something physical. If you’re in a band, fuck trying to stop people from downloading your stuff. They’re still getting it, and that’s the main thing. I just think it would be a sad day if that were lost – the art work and stuff like that.

Then again, you’ve also got people that are moving with the times, like the Mint Chicks with their Bad Buzz EP. They still made a big effort to make the USB look great, and they’ve put the artwork on it. If a band like that didn’t do something like that it would be an absolute shame because Reuben is a fantastic artist.

Do you have any sympathy for the point of view that what’s important is that people get the music, and that downloading is actually helping musicians in that way?

I think that my worry is how it’s going to be for younger kids slowly growing out of physical music. The other thing that makes us sad is MP3’s are shit quality in comparison to CDs; no one seems to know that, and no one seems to give a shit about it. But it makes a big difference. You can’t control the way that the medium is out there for people to swap. But the last thing you want is to be criticized for something not sounding very good when the reason is that someone’s got a shit-arse quality MP3 that they’ve transferred god-knows how many times and put on their iPod. You guys are recording something now aren’t you?

We’ve recorded a couple of tracks; but we’re yet to go in and do an album.

We’re doing an album in one stint, and it’s a case of just sorting out some bits and bobs and then we’re going to get everything ready, and go in, and nut it all out, and do it in one go. Because going into a studio is so expensive, you want to be so ready before you go in to do these things so that you can just go in, and do it quickly, and not spend time fucking around. It’s only people like The Rolling Stones that can go in and make a residence in a studio.

I suppose in a way that could be a positive. Is it?

My mentality would be that any time a label is putting money towards something; you’re in debt to them for that. You have to sell so many records before you get your money back. So, no matter how big you get, you’re still going to want to spend time rehearsing and that sort of stuff.

Get ready before you go in there. But I suppose if you have a label, you wouldn’t really give a fuck after that.

So, what exactly are you recording now?

We’ve done two songs, and we’ve done a video for one of those songs. We did two in one go at York St. studio. And they’re just singles that will come out prior to the album. We’re just getting everything ready.

The Rock’s website, of all places, was pretty hyped about Yoko.

They had some weird description of it being an “abstract... something” [“abstract take on failed relationships and popcorn” is what it actually says]. What is it all about?

It’s kind of like a love story. I don’t want to go too much into it because I like people to make up their own minds about what a song’s about. It’s a love story, relatively close to home for the band. Lyric-wise, quite often Steve [lead singer Stephen Heard] does the lyrics, and he does a great job of that, but this one was primarily me that did it. Steve and I are the ones that are more active about writing. It was interesting because when we first did it, it was a little more upbeat sounding than a lot of our other ones. -a lot of the new stuff has a slightly different flavour, while still maintaining the energy and the band feel of it.

What’s the video like?

It’s really cool man. The idea behind it is that it’s just a performance based video to start with, but it’s incredibly textural the way that Tim [director Tim Van Dammen] shot it. Tim was really, really happy with it when he finished it. Midway through the video, shredded paper comes raining down, and the shredded paper is actually pornos. Just shit-loads of shredded porno magazines. And that was just a subtle undertone that we knew no one else would know about, but that the background people, Tim’s crew had organized as a bit of a bit of a joke - this mass of pornos from like NZ Girls and stuff like that.

But as it goes through, you have to watch it carefully to understand what’s going on. We’re all playing in time to the entire song, but it starts off in slow motion, and really gradually it speeds up to where we’re playing at triple the speed of what it’s supposed to be. So if you’re actually filming that video, the way that you do that is to do it the opposite way around.

So, when we did it, we were playing along to the track as it was playing

issue 8 may 2010

four times as fast, and gradually as it goes through, it starts to go super super slow. It’s quite a cool concept, and it was cool to see Tim excited about it as well.

On your blog there was an entry about song titles. You have a thing for song titles don’t you?

When you start a song, for us, it usually starts with a chord idea, or a riff idea, we have no lyrics behind it. But we have to think up a title to start a session. Before you start a session, you have to think up a name for the session...[he sees the print-out I’ve made of that blog post, which includes the song titles What Up Oww, Fuzz Factory, and Tits Dick] ...There’ve been way worse than that. They do eventually change; they don’t stay as that name. It’s pretty funny looking back through our songs, seeing what they originally started as. We’ve had songs sometimes where we’ve had so much difficulty mentally telling ourselves that it’s actually called its proper name, and we’ll be sitting here playing live, and someone will be like “what song’s next”, and someone will yell out the actual title, and we’ll just stand there going “what is that, we don’t know what that is”. I think out of the ones we have listed there, about half have real names now.

I think one day, one of those titles will end up in the mix somehow, Tits Dick, or Shit Jizz, or something.

Did you take that same approach to picking a band name?

Johnny Rotten’s applause machine? [Clap Clap Riot was the name that John Lydon gave the Applause machine on Top of the Pops, when he appeared on the show in the ‘80s] What happened is that we started off as a band called Band Theft Auto.

And we got some advice that we should change our name because it didn’t really relate to how our sound was. Personally we wouldn’t really give a fuck about that, but the fact that it didn’t really match our sound was quite relevant to us because people would look at our posters and assume that we were a pop-punk type outfit, and we weren’t, obviously.

So that was the reason for us changing in the first place.

And the reason we went with Clap Clap Riot is that we felt that it invoked a mental image of a bit of rawness, and a bit of attitude, and also has a bit of a live feel to it. There’s no depth to that name as such, it’s not like a mother’s daughter’s grandchild’s maiden name or something.

Where did the name come from?

Literally, I think it was just like we had one name that was “Clap Something”, and another name that was “Something Riot”, so we just went “Clap Clap Riot”. We were lucky in a sense to already have a band name, because usually the band name is a huge stress, trying to figure one out, and get it in time. And because we already had one, we could look at it more subjectively, and actually not stress about naming ourselves.

We were like “at least if we don’t find a name, at least we have got a name”.

It’s not like when we come to do a show, we’re going to be fucked.

You’ve been compared to a bunch of international bands... Franz Ferdinand and The Hives. I always thought that kind of thing would be incredibly surreal...

It’s wicked. When we first started out, we were big fans of The Hives. We’ve always been really big fans of really good live bands. We started of being strongly influenced by The Datsuns, and the D4 and to be compared to bands like that that has been great, because it shows that your influences are coming through. But at the same time, we’re starting to find our own flavour a little bit, so that we’ll be less comparable to those specific bands that we’ve previously gone with. But we still really retain the parts that we love about those bands, the energy and that sort of stuff. If you were doing anything, poetry, or art, or anything like that, I imagine it would be the same; it’s always an honour to have comparisons like that pinned on you. Besides, if you were to be compared to something that you didn’t want to be compared to you’d be mortified, you’d think that the writer was a complete muppet, or you would think “fuck, do we actually sound like that? What part of us actually sounds like that?” We had this one song where there was one little part of it that got compared to Blink-182, and everyone in the band was crying for like a week over that. But that was a tiny little guitar line that made it sound that way, so we were able to get on top of that, and sort it out. And get rid of it.

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Their bird fascination Unless your mum is a keen bird watcher, this isn’t meant in the literal sense.

Rather, mums often use birds as reference points when they’re talking. Some of us are told we came from the stork, who drops babies off on doorsteps when mummy and daddy are ready to start a family. Seriously, how messed up is it that they told us a bird delivered us? Gross. Also, there’s the old saying “a little birdie told me”, when they somehow figure out some mind-blowing secret that isn’t actually very secretive at all.

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

This gem of a line is usually used as an explanation when your mum stopped you from doing something everyone else is doing. It usually comes after the tantrum, the sulk, the bad lanuage and the begging. Example: Kid: Why won’t you let me go to [insert band/artist/party]? Mum: You’ll understand when you’ll older. Note: another alternative to this is the more aggressive “why?

Because I said so”.

Keeping every plastic bag and container Growing up, our house had a plastic bag holder. It was a long tube made out of cloth which you hung up in your kitchen. You put plastic bags in the top hole, and pulled them out the bottom hole. It was never anything less than overflowing. Those of you who weren’t blessed with this plastic bag dispenser, I’m sure you had a designated drawer that just housed plastic bags, as well as a similar drawer for takeaway containers. If you ever need a plastic container, chances are you will use one of these rather than Tupperware. Mums are all about reusing.

“Don’t sit too close to the television, you’ll get square eyes.”

This quote is the stuff nightmares are made of. Children watching TV have a magnetic pull to sit inches away from the screen, leaning in to get among the action. Mums will spot this “bad” behaviour and whip out this quote and automatically, bums will scoot back across the carpet to the couch.

Washing dishes before they go in the dishwasher The purpose of a dishwasher is to wash dishes, yet mums always have to give everything a “rinse” before it can go in. By rinse, I mean washing every bit of evidence it’s ever been used right off the plate. As a side note, there’s also usually a specific way dishes go into a dishwasher. You can’t just shove them in; there’s an art that provides optimal cleaning ability.

Specific food – not genetics – can change your appearance “If you don’t eat your crusts, your hair won’t go curly.” There is no scientific evidence that if you eat bread you will wake up one day with a head full of ringlets. I ate mine in hope of this but I do not have Taylor Swift-like curls.

There is also the popular “if you eat your carrots you can see in the dark” quote but this one actually has truth in it. Still, it’s a mum-ism none the less.

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The weather has the power to change your face Children have tendencies to pull faces, such as trying to touch their nose with their tongue and going cross eyed. Apparently this isn’t acceptable behaviour when out in public, so mums say, “the wind will change and your face will stay like that”. I’ve been stuck in some pretty intense wind (I’ve been to Wellington), but my face still has the same general appearance. This is one of many “mum lies”.

“If you’re too full to finish your dinner, you’re too full for dessert.”

This quote was designed to teach us stamina. If we could endure the evilness of vegetables, mashed potatoes and meat, we got to have ice-cream, fruit salad (with cherries!) or other such awesome dessert. It’s so unfair though, because dinner is twice as big as dessert and not even half as nice. Rage.

“As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do as I say.”

This quote says it all really, but be warned: mothers will still tell you what to do long after you leave home, and most of the time, you’ll do what they say.

Why? Because mum knows best.

“Do you think I’m made of money?” or “Money doesn’t grow on trees”.

Why yes mum, I do think you are made of cash because I am a child and don’t understand the concept of money and the difference between poor and rich people. At seven I believe everyone should have the latest toys and will cry if you say no. But don’t worry, when I am older and wiser I will realise there is no magical money tree and you are not a never-ending ATM. I will also know that despite this, most of your hard-earned money went towards me anyway.

PDA “Back in my day we didn’t so steadfastly flaunt such disrespect for the rules of etiquette.”

“Yes Gran.”

“I mean honestly, displaying physical affections so readily in public.

How vulgar.”

F

or once Gran your ramblings have hit the mark. Excess use of PDA (public displays of affection) really grinds my gears.

I’m not a prude and I’ve got my very own PDA regrets list but I think that we’ve hit an all time low for what people believe is acceptable conduct in this area. Holding hands, hugging, and a kiss here and there are completely fine in my books, but when you’re dry humping on the street you’ve gone too far. This isn’t a gross exaggeration on my behalf as I have actually witnessed this on a main street during the early hours of the morning.

Life on campus is no exception to PDA. A few weeks back I found myself sitting in the plaza square with a few mates only to see one couple having a wild snog with some heavy petting. True, I could’ve looked away but it’s somewhat like a car crash; something makes you look. It wasn’t like I was alone in this matter as it took only a matter of seconds for me to scan the area and to establish that a good majority of people were

watching this couple with raised eyebrows, discussing it (I’m assuming it was about his technique based on some of the gesturing), and having a good giggle. I returned my attention to the people I was sitting with who I now realised were also watching our live entertainment too.

I’m not so full of pride that I won’t admit to my own failings on this subject (also I could expect a good grilling from mates if I conveniently left out my own indiscretions), I’ve been party to a public smooch that exceeded the acceptable limit on more than one occasion. However, I like to think (and hope) that I have turned a corner on this matter and these are all just moments in history.

They call it a private life for a reason. It should be kept private. What goes on behind closed doors is your business and is completely up to you but it’s not right to subject us to what should only be a private screening.

The days of having the excuse (although it’s not a very good one) of being a teenager freshly jacked up on hormones are gone. Too much time has passed between puberty and now for this to be a valid reason.

It may seem that when the two of you are together it feels like you’re the only ones around but you need to remember you’re not. Or you may want to make some sort of statement to others like, “Dude, check out the hot chick I’ve got”, in which case is it really fair to make others jealous?

So if anyone ever catches you in a certain embrace and says “Get a room!” my advice to you would be to take theirs.

driving Although I’m an avid user of public transport, there are times when driving yourself is either preferable or necessary. I love driving, but Auckland is frustrating enough with high traffic density without halfwit road users clogging up the roads and demonstrating to the world their (in)capabilities. These people really grind my gears.

Like I said, I’m all for public transport and cutting CO2 emissions, this is why I’m not opposed to road cyclists, on one condition: that they follow the road rules just like everyone else. I’m happy to be patient until I can get around cyclists whilst also allowing them the 1.5 metres of space they’re entitled to. However, they are not entitled to cycle more than two abreast but they so often do. It aggravates me when I come up to a pack of middle aged men in fluro lycra (which gents, you should really reconsider as well as the leg shaving) who are cycling three in a row and with chauvinistic arrogance believe it is their right to do so. But it is clearly stated by the New Zealand Transport Agency on their website that “if you’re riding with other cyclists, don’t ride more than two abreast.

Ride in single file when you’re passing other vehicles - including parked vehicles, or when you’re impeding traffic behind you”.

Auckland is a network of on and off ramps onto motorways in high congestion areas. The rule we’re taught from day one to apply when joining the main body of traffic from an on ramp is to “merge like a zip”.

I get really infuriated when myself and the majority of others follow this rule while some slimy git drives right up to where the merging lane ends and forces his way in. They said merge like a zip, not merge like a zip that has a penis caught in it.

On the odd chance when I get to escape the hustle and bustle of Auckland the open road calls to me. I want the wind to be whipping through my hair as I drive with my window down. But the biggest air flow I’m going to get is from my car’s air conditioning when I get stuck

issue 8 may 2010

behind the person doing well below 100kph. I bide my time, staying a safe distance and waiting for the upcoming passing lane. With the passing lane now in my sights I ready myself to accelerate and when the time comes I press down on the pedal only to have the driver in front of me do the same. Why do these people to inflict their “Driving Miss Daisy” speed on everyone else? I was patient waiting for the passing lane but because you obstructed me from passing you safely I feel road rage creeping over me and will now be tempted to tail gate you until the next passing lane before I floor it past you.

Despite my grievances, I’m not a bad or aggressive driver and will resist the temptation to react to people’s unskilled road using abilities but it’s situations such as the ones I’ve described that push some people over the edge towards risky and dangerous driving that can lead to accidents.

So when using our roads, aim to be as considerate as possible - not only to stop others getting annoyed at you but to also diminish the risk that comes with road rage.

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by Victor Abbott

But hey! That’s just what I think

So, you all obviously know by now that I

I reckon I am above average intelligence. On a

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genius scale I’d be “annoying smart kid in class”. I couldn’t say I am wise because wisdom and knowledge are different. “Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

I’m a typical nerd, I enjoy non-fiction literature, chess is fun, I am a level 32 Halmuthin Warlock and like all geniuses never admit when I am wrong.

I consider it an integral part of the human condition to expand your knowledge and that wisdom should follow (sort of). It is privilege to wonder, dream and question. It is finding the answers to those questions that I enjoy most. I dislike essay but enjoy the research, finding books alternation opinions, reading all sources and coming to an opinion based on empirical evidence coupled with personal opinion that sits pleasantly within your mind.

Little kids question why and how and why again all the time, but it seems that at a certain age we just think “meh, I don’t need to know how or why, just so long as it is”. This can’t be healthy. Teachers always say if you never ask, you’ll never know (this is not an excuse to ask a question at the end of a lecture – tutorials are for questions) and I agree. Being inquisitive to the world in which we live means you can always marvel at how a mass of 78 trillion cells, composed of 60,000 miles of blood vessels, with a nose that can identify 50,000 scents is able to function so well for so long.

A story my dad once told me was about a king of Persia who wanted his son to know everything about the world. He sent 65 scholars to gather all the information in the world. The scholars took 10 years and wrote 65 volumes, the king said it was too much and to make it smaller.

The scholars condensed the information to 10 volumes, which the king said was still too big. One scholar took a piece of paper, wrote 4 words and handed it to the king. The king passed it to his son, and on the paper it read “This too shall pass”.

The way the world receives information is by people questioning, by not accepting the previous answer and thinking they can do it more justice. Now we know the world isn’t flat or that the sun revolves around us, and people have to admit they are wrong (think of the guy who called Pluto a planet - idiot).

I am not on the academic high horse this makes me out to be; I don’t live in a library and my parents aren’t world famous scientists. I’m fairly normal, and even know a joke. Rene Descartes walks into a bar; the barman says “will you have a brandy?” Rene says, “I think not” and disappears.

Ask why more often, who knows where it’ll take you.

consider myself to be an avid gamer. But there’s always been one genre that has stuck out for me, and that is First Person Shooters (FPS). Now, the reason these stick out for me is basically because of the fact that you’re running around shooting people in the face, which I happen to find fun (don’t judge me).

Now, the reason I’m talking about my history with FPS games is because I’m known as a first person kinda guy. But recently I’ve been branching out into other areas which I find completely new and exciting.

Places like when you first roll up to high school where people other than the staff have facial hair. One of these new areas is an RPG/MMO known as Heroes of Newerth (HoN). Now, if I am going to compare this game to something it is going to be DotA. And I’m willing to bet most of you will have heard of DotA even if you are not fully aware of it. I don’t know if you guys have heard of this guy, apparently he makes good music, but his name is Basshunter? Well, he released a song entitled DotA. And if any of you ever wondered what the song was about now you know; it was about a game called Defence of the Ancients. And if any of you have seen the original video clip for the song then you’ll know how excited it can make people *wink wink*.

Anywho, the reason I wanted to bring this up is because HoN is fucking epic. Now, I know that may sound a little over the top to some of you, but it’s my first experience with a game like this, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. Now, of course since it’s my first time playing this type of game, I have been running around not knowing what to do getting yelled at by 10 year olds from across the globe with such insults as “Stupid kid doesn’t know how to play HoN” and “STOP FEEDING OR FUCK OFF”. But, I am pleased to report my skills in the world of Newerth have increased and for the past two or three games these insults have decreased to lesser more understandable phrases such as “noob”.

I have also gained a newfound respect for those who play games such as this and Warcraft as these aren’t simple games where you have one clear path to take and one objective that needs undertaking. No, no, no son, this is far from it. There are terms players use which have me looking at the screen wondering what the fuck they are talking about for example: “b” (which I only figure out today after building up the courage to ask my mate, yes I was mocked), “Gank” and “Push Bot”, items which increase certain stats that EVERYONE seems to know off-by-heart (except me, of course) and the amount of micro skills needed to dominate at a game like this is just insane. Especially for someone like me whose main objective in gaming for the past four years has been to point my gun at someone and shoot.

Anyway, if any of you wanted to check out the game, then head on over to heroesofnewerth.com where they are currently giving away free Beta codes. So all you gotta do is download the game itself which is about 350MB with additional space needed for regular updates to the game (which are never that big). And hopefully I’ll be seeing and hearing more people from New Zealand on that game as time goes on.

Oh, but before I forget I wanted to ask something to everyone reading this. What I want to know is, how many of you guys at AUT are gamers, what games are you playing, and would any of you be interested in starting a gaming club at AUT? I have e-mailed in about it a while back but never followed up on it simply because I didn’t know if there would be enough support behind it, and basically because I didn’t want to be known as the “guy who tried to make a group but failed”. Like people walking around saying “Hey, remember that guy who tried to make a group but failed!?” “Yup”. Then realising they would be talking about me.

BUT ANYWAY, if anyone wants to start/become part of a gaming club e-mail me abbott_man@hotmail.com and let me know. We could have LAN’s and eat boiled goose on a cool summer’s day… I dunno, if it gets off the ground, we could sort something out.

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Cycling in Copenhagen

by Michelle Pollock

HOW MUCH DO WE VALUE AND ACKNOWLEDGE OUR ACADEMIC STAFF? I want to pose this question to each of you as at the same time I ask it of myself. Any tertiary institution nationally and internationally stands very significantly on the shoulders of the quality of its academic staff.

Those who have attained Doctoral and Professorial status have done so through commitment and discipline which in itself should inspire and encourage us - be we first year students or somewhat further along the academic learning curve.

Added to academic status, lecturers have to possess a passion for passing on knowledge and for encouraging debate and enquiry.

They are a guide and mentor to students who do not always exhibit self discipline in respect to a subject, or do not show sufficient respect to those who tutor and lecture them.

I want to suggest to you that AUT though young in terms of university status, stands on the shoulders of its past with pride. Its history as a technical college and institute is worth reading again as a section accessed from the AUT website home page.

I also want to argue strongly that AUT has among its academic staff people from around the world, and our own home grown, who bring immense prestige to this institution in a range of disciplines and specialist fields.

Again it is worth reading something of the biography provided on-line for staff of your faculty. These are people of significant quality and we have the opportunity to sit at their feet regularly and benefit from whom and what they are and what they bring to us of their specific subject.

This is a column which had to be written! Initially, because I believe in what I am writing with a sense of passion. The academics that I encounter represent a benchmark to me and a goal to strive towards. I do hope that most of you can say the same?

More importantly in issue six there was the obituary to Professor Des Graydon. Sensitively articulated it portrayed his contribution to AUT and its earlier configurations over 20 years. I do hope you also read the thoughtful comments about this special man that were written by Veronica Ng Lam. He was not known to me personally but the faculty of Business and Law and AUT is the poorer for his passing.

Now I turn to an academic whose impact on my life and learning will always be with me. Students for whom Dr Heather Devere had been and is still a lecturer within Social Sciences, had mixed emotions when we learnt recently that she is to take up a prestigious appointment with Otago University from July.

We were delighted for Dr Devere and acknowledge this opportunity afforded her.

Personally we were gutted as we know what her loss means to us, to the faculty and to AUT. One friend of mine on hearing the news ahead of us through working on a special project with Dr Devere, could only exclaim, “What will John do?” What indeed!

My challenge is to ensure that I continue to strive for a level of attainment that makes me worthy of having Heather as a valued lecturer who brought scholarship and passion to her subject material. Can I encourage you to do the same in whatever your field of study is?

Two academics who, in differing ways and differing fields, have left their impact and footprint here at AUT. This column acknowledges them and I can do no better than to conclude with words of Sir Isaac Newton as he acknowledged those who have been his teachers and mentors.

In 2005, a series of cartoons published in a Danish newspaper caused outrage around the world. The cartoons were said to racist and offensive to those of Islamic faith, yet the artist protested he was simply making comments on the debate over Islam in Denmark. This raised issues of free speech and further increased tension in a nation known for being rather homogenous culturally. Without going into the political issues and debate that followed, it was not a comfortable time for “non-ethnic” Danes. At the time there was a lack of understanding between different groups in Danish society. The situation since then has improved, but some that are considered foreigners still face difficulties in Denmark. Just in the past week two mosques have been approved to be built within Copenhagen, showing that they may be moving forward. Part of the Danish culture that surprised me to begin with was how direct they are, often to the point of bluntness. This makes for some interesting comments and does mean that some things can be taken the wrong way – possibly making things sound worse than they are.

The suburb of Copenhagen, Nørrebro, is considered the “ethnic” area of the city. Recognised as a place where a number of immigrants to Copenhagen live, it has sadly been the base of much racial, gang and religious tensions in previous years. This has become so bad that some public facilitates, like libraries and cultural centres have had their opening hours reduced as it was considered too dangerous for staff at night. A number of shootings, assaults, riots and police clashes have further confirmed stereotypes of this area; in fact this is the one area that I am cautious of going into. Despite this, I know a number of people who live there who feel it is no different to any other place. It has seemed to calm down in the past year, but the fact that their hospital has put bulletproof glass into its emergency room suggests they are concerned about what could happen.

Part of my decision to study in Europe, rather than in Asia, was based on culture. Not because I don’t want to experience Asia (I’m actually spending some time in Japan on my way back to New Zealand!), but because I felt I would be able to assimilate more into a country where I didn’t look completely different. Sadly, I feel that in Denmark this is more of an issue than I would have thought. With light hair and blue eyes, I am frequently mistaken for being Scandinavian, while friends who look different are sometimes not treated so nicely.

Of course as soon as they see the deer-in-headlights look of confusion on my face when they attempt to talk to me in Danish, they realise I’m not Scandinavian at all.

While on the metro last weekend, an American friend of mine was told to “stop being so American” by someone. At the time, we were simply talking and laughing about our day. I felt really bad on her behalf and it made me think about those I know in Copenhagen from various countries around the world. There have been a few incidents where people have been quite confronting when they realise that we are not from Denmark – but then again there the great times when people are really excited to hear about where we are from, and tell us how they see Denmark. I still love Copenhagen and Denmark, and now that the sun is coming out the Danes seem like different people. Despite this, when I hear about racial and religious tensions here I consider how comparatively lucky New Zealand is to manage to operate in such a multicultural nation.

“If I have seen further than others It is because I have stood On the shoulders of giants.”

issue 8 may 2010

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Dear Agony Aunt I am a 20 year old female student and I’m really worried about my hair. My hairbrush seems to have accumulated heaps of hair over the past few months, as well as hair falling out when having a shower, and also strands of hair falling out during class. Is this normal? What’s the cause for it, because it feels like I am losing a lot of hair?

From hair loser

Dear hair loser, On average we lose between 70 and 100 hairs per day. This does seem quite a lot, but is apparently normal. This is because your hair grows in cycles and whilst 90 per cent of your hair on your scalp is growing the other 10 per cent is in a resting phase. After about 3-4 months the resting hair falls out and new hair grows in its place. If you think that you are losing more than usual, and especially if your hair is looking thinner and or you can see your scalp through your hair, then it is worth checking with your doctor.

The medical term for hair loss is called alopecia (al o pee sha) and there are a number of different reasons why alopecia occurs. These can include stress related illnesses or stress following an illness or surgery, fungal infections, hormonal problems or as a side effect from certain medicines. It is not uncommon for women who have recently given birth to experience some hair loss. The good news is that most often hair loss is temporary and will grow back in time.

There is also a condition called traction alopecia that you may be interested to know. This occurs when you regularly pull on your hair (like wearing your hair in a pony tail, pigtail or cornrows.) This causes scarring of the scalp and can cause permanent hair loss. If the pulling is stopped before scarring of the scalp develops your hair will grow back normally.

I would recommend that you go and see a doctor to determine if there is a problem and if there is, what can be done about it.

You can make an appointment at Health Counselling and Wellbeing by calling 921 9992 for City Campus and 921 9998 for North Shore Campus.

website of the week

overheard innewyork. com

by Samantha McQueen I first came across this webiste in my 7th form year when I was reading a magazine that had websites to check out before heading to New York. Ever since I clicked on overheardinnewyork.com I’ve been wanting to live in this amazing city so I too can experience the magic. The site’s domain name says it all: it’s a website where people post quirky/random/outrageous quotes that they overheard on the streets of New York city. For purposes of this column (of course) I logged on again after a long break to find the content is still amazing. Most entries come with witty headlines, and I’m crying with laughter by the time I click onto the second page. That’s another thing with this website, you can’t just stop at one page. There’s a load of spin off sites, such as overheard at the beach, overheard by celebrities, overheard at the office…but nothing trumps New York.

Girl, handing boy an iPhone with sleeping screen: Look at this.

Boy #1, tapping all over screen: How do you get this to work?

Girl: Press the button. (boy continues tapping screen) The round button. Press it. (boy continues tapping all over screen) The only button! (boy continues tapping all over screen everywhere except the button) Boy #2: Wow, dude, you must be awesome with vaginas.

Disgusted girl to friend: Are you drinking Jägermeister and Red Bull?

Friend: Hell yeah!

Disgusted girl to friend: Don’t say it like you are proud!

Cop: Come on, let’s go. Where did you go to the bathroom?

Hobo: On the stairsss!

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Word Reference iphone app

by Imogen Crispe Wordreference.com was my key website while studying French at uni. Now the iPhone app means I can have this handy multi-lingual dictionary with me all the time. It is useful not just for translations from or into about six languages, but also for looking up English word definitions.

It is hardly reduced in content compared to the website. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is a good thing in that you get all the information – all the variations of translations, examples of sentences using the word you are looking up, and access to the forums discussing translation. It is a bad thing in that you might as well just go to the website in Safari, because it is barely different from the actual website.

With iPhone applications that are based on a website, I expect them to be simpler, more user-friendly, and more suitable to look at on a small screen than the site. With Wordreference, it is none of these things. Yes you get all the information that you get on the website, but it is not really needed. If I wanted that much information, I would just go to the website.

with Tenani French

Horoscopes ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Love it!

This week, at some stage, you’re going to seriously regret not meeting Justin Bieber.

Sequels

As much as I love an amazing and original movie, there’s just something really fun about seeing a whole new story in the same world as the original that attracts us to movie sequels. While some are terrible, compared to their predecessors (Batman & Robin, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd), quite a lot of sequels are awesome! Think Toy Story 2... and with Toy Story 3 just one of the many new sequels coming out this year, hop off your critical high ground and enjoy ‘em.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) There is nothing funny about your horoscope this week. But belated or advanced Happy Birthdays for all your Taureans. Feel the love.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21)

Get it!

Smart phone It seems everyone’s got them these days, iPhones, Blackberries, fancy touch-screen Nokia thingies. I was sceptical at first about why you would need to check Facebook on the bus, or watch YouTube in class, but when I bought my iPhone it was the beginning of a love affair that would not only increase my presence in the online social world, but offline as well. It’s convenient, it’s fun and no matter what you might think, the ability to Google anything anywhere is more valuable than I think anyone would like to admit.

I don’t get it!

Bieber Fever

Following on from last week’s little rant about everyone’s obsession with Justin Bieber I feel compelled to again question the interest in the kid. As well as that, I’d like to heap a load of “shame on you, New Zealand” on you for practically mugging him at the airport last week. What strikes me as stranger than the level of obsession his fans display is the level of hatred and need to voice it that his haters have. Bieber haters are almost more obsessed with him than his fans. Give it a break guys.

They want you to get it!

The stars want to remind you to make a back up copy of that mammoth assignment you’ve been slaving over all week. You can thank them when your computer crashes.

CANCER (June 22-July 22) Students love to bargain hunt, so shop around your local fast food joints until you get the most grease for your dollar.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) This week, you will realise that jungle fever is in fact, not the correct term for describing your irritability at being stuck inside all day. The correct term is cabin fever. Google it.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) It may not seem like it but this is actually the last month of autumn. Make sure you head over to Albert Park and roll in the leaves. Trust me, no one will think you’re weird.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) Socialising with the homeless man on Queen Street does not qualify as making friends at university.

Avatar on DVD/Blu-ray

Avatar is the biggest movie of all time. We all know that by now, you probably still realise too that the bloody thing is STILL playing at the movies, but now it’s out on DVD and Blu-ray for us all to enjoy, right? Not being one to follow convention, the people behind Avatar are sort of using this release as a stop-gap measure to silence fans. The current DVD/Blu-ray release doesn’t have ANY special features, or even a menu, it’s designed to extend Avatarfever as long as possible. I say that because in a matter of months they will be releasing an extended (really?) edition of the movie back to theatres, followed by another DVD/Blu-ray release in November (this time with special features and a MENU!) followed

by ANOTHER Blu-ray release a few months later, but this time in 3D. They’re milking it for all it’s worth, now it’s up to you to decide which version to wait for.

Rediscover it!

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21) Scorpions often get the short end of the stick in horoscope land but this week is your lucky week! Take your course related costs to the casino and see the magic unfold.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Like Tony Stark, you too will be indestructible this week. Chuck on your Iron Man suit and strut around campus.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Despite what some people believe, getting shit on by a bird will not bring you good luck.

Classic movies

SKYCITY Cinemas are running an awesome series of classic movies brought back to the big screen. I don’t know why they never thought of doing it before but it sure is an awesome way to rediscover old movies and see movies on the big screen that might not have ever been release during your lifetime. Some of the titles include: Grease, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Gremlins and The Goonies. It’s a series not to be missed! I strongly recommend you experience these movies as they were intended. For a limited time only.

If there’s something you think the student masses of AUT need to know about, send us an email to debate@aut.ac.nz with Suggestions in the subject line. issue 8 may 2010

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) You’ll earn extra brownie points (and probably some actual brownies) if you send your mum a handmade Mother’s Day card this week.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Make sure you check out some comedy this week. Laughter is the best medicine, although it won’t cure that suspicious bodily fluid you discovered last week.

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Winter Catwalk Trends 2010

For me the fall 2010 catwalk shows in Paris, New York, London, Milan came like a breath of fresh air. This season fashion is taking on a very distinct relaxed “70s French” mood, as fashion blogger Tommy Ton from www.jakandjil.com so correctly described it. The first difference I noticed between this season, and last year is the silhouette of pants. Designers have been trying for seasons now to bring back the wide leg trousers, but I think this year is the year. With trend setting designers such as Marc Jacobs and Karen Walker pioneering the wide leg look it is sure likely to take off in the main stream as well. As well as the pants loosening up, the silhouette as a whole has a more relaxed, casual feel to it. Stella McCartney, in particular, kept her collection minimalist and tidy, but relaxed at the same time. On the contrary, Alexander Wang, the king of the relaxed jersey look has shown his versatility with a creative dissection of the traditional jacket. There always has to be one renegade on the fashion scene!

Heels have taken a slash in stature this season. When it comes to heels, the stiletto will always reign supreme. But after seasons of models falling on the catwalk, knee problems and twisted ankles I do welcome the four centimetre heel backlash. How fast this catwalk trend takes to emerge in New Zealand fashion will be interesting to watch. For a population that usually takes awhile to embrace anything too different, I am hoping the lower heel will work its way in fast. For example, the other day I was sitting outside the university library and I saw a girl wearing ridiculously high heels in a ridiculous 10 minute struggle to get across the courtyard.

I was meant to go to the comedy club that night but cancelled because there is only so much comedy I can handle in one day.

When it comes to colour this season, one thing was clear. The need to embrace Camel. I am talking about the colour of course; do not attempt to embrace the actual animal. Well you can if you really want to. Camel, beiges and greys were very popular, true to typical winter fashion. This could be seen in the fall 2010 runway shows for Michael Kors, Marc Jacobs, Celine and Karen Walker. Chloe used a lot of tonal brown and

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greys, adding a contrast of turquoise here and there. Brilliant contrasting reds made a lot of appearances, for example in Ann Demeulemeester as well as Givenchy.

Fur was anywhere and everywhere on the catwalk. It was mostly used around collars and cuff, sometimes in accessories such as shoes and handbags. But no one took it to the extreme that Chanel did. The show began with a full body suit of what I hope was not polar bear fur dyed in crème and shades of brown. Then came the classic Chanel suits in shaggy fur, It was all very cave man slash big foot but I think it is brilliant. Shearling (that is sheep skin and wool) made a few appearances as well, mostly in combination with brown leather RAF inspired jackets.

One in particular that stood out was a complete shearling jacket with an exaggerated Antarctic explorer-looking collar and many buckles. Oh if only I had the money.

Even though this season has barely begun in New Zealand I have already seen the “relaxed French 70s” look beginning to take form. Mostly in the shape of slightly oversized blazers, horizontal nautical striped shirts and even a few wide leg pants. One trend I am pleasantly surprised to see gaining in popularity in New Zealand is clogs as footwear. I have even ordered myself a pair from Topshop. This surprises me because of the general dislike most people seem to have for Crocs, the fabulous rubber clog. When I first saw clogs clomping their way onto the Chanel catwalk (Summer 2010) I thought “oh hello what have we got here?”, but no, I have seen a few clogs around Auckland (and not just Crocs). New Zealand fashion always seems to be a watered down mix of European and American catwalk trends from this season, combined with a few leftovers from last season, and a dash of our own dark moody aesthetic. While this is all fine and dandy for the most part, I think a fashionable step towards the future is at hand. This season everyone should embrace a more chic, classical look as opposed to trashy, flash in the pan trends. Go out and buy a blazer and some beautifully cut pants. Maybe even buy some clogs.

Go on, I dare you.

with heather rutherford Mary Winnington, Fashion Technology 2nd year Top and shoes: Topshop | Skirt: Karen Walker Scarf: H & M | Bag: Urban Outfitters Favourite place to shop?

Topshop

Hin Chan, Fashion Design 2nd year Jeans: Ksubi Everything else: Hong Kong Favourite item of clothing?

Shoes, I don’t know where they’re from.

David Grrr, Business Student 2nd year Sunglasses and accessories: Karen Walker Everything else: Thrift.

Favourite item of clothing?

Victoria Park skull necklace.

Mr Vintage 302B Great North Rd, Auckland City Mon – Fri 9am-5pm; Sat & Sunday 10-4pm. www.mrvintage.co.nz Ok, so by now you know that I’m obsessed with t-shirts.

I don’t know what it is. I just love them. I mean, they go with everything and you don’t have to really think about what you’re wearing when you put one on.

Team them with jeans and a pair of converse’s and you’re good to go really. So, anyway, back to the review. We’ve established my love of t-shirts, so I thought I would review my favourite t-shirt provider this week – Mr Vintage. Back in the day when I first found out about them, you could only buy them online or from their office in Parnell which was in a back street and kind of weird to go into. Thank God they opened up a proper retail store on Great North Rd. Mr Vintage are the people that have brought the rights to most of the coolest retro designs around, and they also do one offs for topical issues. I went in there the day after the Tua vs Cameron fight and they already had tees celebrating Tua’s win. They are the only place you can get the old school designs like the one with the giraffe from the milk shake cup saying “the longest drink in town”. They have a range for most of the bigger cities in New Zealand. My favourite reads “Gore, it’s not that gay” and “What happens in Rotovegas, stays in Rotovegas” (unless the pictures make their way onto Facebook). There are some great ones from TV, like one featuring Doug from the instant kiwi ads saying “Get a Perm” and from one of the drink driving ads issue 8 may 2010

saying “Good Afterble Consternoon”. Talking of police, they have one with a cop on it and the best piece of advice ever: “You must always blow on the pie”.

I still love watching that clip on YouTube.

They also have bags, some jewellery, and hoodies. There are some great tins featuring brand icons like bluebird chips, ready and waiting for you to fill with cookies or take to uni with your lunch in it (you know you want to!).

I must warn you though; the variety of designs when you go to the store is overwhelming. I recommend you take a look at their website beforehand to suss everything out, or leave yourself plenty of time to make your decision.

You will definitely need to take a friend with you to reminisce and laugh over the designs. Great as presents too (I swear, I gave them to my family last year at Christmas and they loved them!). Over and out.

This review was written by a graduate in Retailing. If you are interested in retail and why people buy, take a look at papers in the Retail major in the Business School. You don’t have to be a business student to take the papers, so check out the website today!

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Hole

Hannah Gadsby – The Cliff Young Shuffle

Nobody’s Daughter Music Review by Mike Atkins

Comedy Cellar at The Elliott Stables Comedy review by Lisa Arthur

What does it take to write a good review of a Courtney Love album? That’s the question I find myself asking as the record is on its sixth consecutive spin, and I’m not yet sick of it; a fact which honestly surprises me. I did come into this wanting to write a positive review. Not out of any sort of fandom, or affection – just my contradictory nature. So you might want to take this with a pinch of salt, but this is a good album.

So, let’s first dispense with the obvious, and inevitable criticism: it’s not terribly original. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been made 10 or 20 years ago, and it never strays from the strict post-grunge template.

But there are certainly worse crimes. Not to dismiss originality or experimentation as virtues, but if you can appreciate FM-radio staples like Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles, you can appreciate this in the same way.

Something smooth, and accomplished, and akin to 70s soft rock is the last thing you’d expect from Courtney Love, but the absence of the Courtney Love we’ve come to know and “love” is the album’s strength.

Saying something “lacks personality” is usually a derogatory remark, but would you really want something that reflected Courtney Love’s personality?

Of course confessional songs are obligatory for a musician as, ahem, “well travelled” as Love. But here, those are told with a sense of remove, like she’s telling an eye-of-god narrative. Without the personal touch, In the hands of a lesser songwriter these would just be invocations of rock ‘n’ roll cliches; but they’re so well drawn that that’s moot. That’s because that sense of remove doesn’t result in a lack of emotion, just authentic emotion. Love sounds like an actor. There’s moments where she screams, or is close to tears, but never moments where it doesn’t seem like she’ll turn into a well-adjusted human being as soon as the tape stops rolling.

Perhaps that’s the album’s greatest achievement/illusion.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in that regard is the closer Never Go Hungry, which is basically Fleetwood Mac’s Gold Dust Woman, in the first person, and in the coda of Barry McGuire’s Eve Of Destruction. The comparison compliments her. Like those songs, it’s cheesy, but it works.

Surprisingly those are the songs on which I could find no co-writing credit. Love seems to be solely responsible for the preceding two paragraphs of praise! Most of these songs do have heavy-hitting cowriters like Billy Corgan, and Pink’s hit-maker Linda Perry, and it’s true that those are the songs that are easier to like. They’re conventional little grunge grunters like Samantha, and Loser Dust, with their gloriously R16 singalong choruses. But it’s the 1-2-1-2 alternation between the two kinds of songs that keeps things just on the right side of interesting.

The difference between this and her last solo album is night and day.

That album was exhilarating in places (OK, I am a bit of a fan), but it was also a mess. It was easy to see why it was such a famous flop. Will this rehabilitate her image where her former attempt didn’t? I doubt it, but stranger things have happened; and if anything can, it’s this.

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Hannah Gadsby’s show was entitled The Cliff Young Shuffle.

Sounded like another style of dance until I came across the comedy festival website, which informed me that Cliff Young was a 61-year-old who won an extreme marathon in Australia. I set out on Saturday night with trepidation, not sure how this would work into a comedy routine.

She started her routine with a very Dick van Dyke entrance: walking in and tripping over the stairs and landing on the ground, which then required a second entrance, one not marred by an “accident”. She had set the stage for her routine, establishing that she was a) unco, and b) not the sporting type.

She started off with explaining who Cliff Young was, and why he was her hero. To be honest, he does sound pretty amazing. First of all, he was a potato farmer. Sounds like a pretty decent guy already. Anyway, there was an ultra-marathon from Sydney to Melbourne, which is a distance of 875 kilometres. And this guy won it. How? While the other contestants were doing a sissy couple of marathons a day then getting some sleep, this guy kept on going. That’s right, this guy ran non-stop for five days and won the ultra-marathon by a large margin while the other contestants choked on their disbelief and cursed their weakness for sleep.

She then moved on to England, and started on all the bad things about England. Fair enough, I thought, but this could take a while. Hannah is Australian, FYI, but she moved to England when she was in her mid-20s.

She decided to walk across England for reasons that were unknown to her, and which are probably still unknown, because she didn’t sound that enthused about the whole experience.

To walk across England is a some 10 day tramp, and having been on several multi-day tramps myself, I could relate to what she was saying.

About how a black raincoat is the worst colour for tramping, how new boots equal death to your feet, how you meet other groups on the tramp and send them the long way around on purpose because you dislike them intensely… Wait, what? Well Hannah gave nicknames to all the groups she met on this hike. There was Captain Camouflage, perhaps the only person she did like, the Smug Bastard, and then there were The Wallies. This dad and his two daughters were doing the tramp for charity, and every time they took a photo they put a little ‘Where’s Wally?’ figurine in the middle.

Creepy and destined for the awkward family photos website, yes, but Hannah did not like them at all. When she saw them take a wrong turn that meant and extra six miles onto the route, she kept her mouth shut and kept trudging along.

She told the audience about how she wasn’t a nice person, the voice in her head that continually told her she was a dick, and the crushing depression that made her cry in front of the tuna at the supermarket.

While I didn’t appreciate the self-deprecation, and winced at the many times she made fun of herself, there were genuinely funny moments in there which had my head back laughing. No-one ever accused comedians of being well-adjusted.

Kick Ass

Erykah Badu

Directed by Matthew Vaughn Film review by Tenani French

New Amerykah Part 2: Return Of The Ankh CD Review by Mike Atkins

If you’re a fan of comic book movies you’re probably used to the conventions and basic copy-cat storylines of the long long line of films we’ve had to endure enjoy over the past few years. Boy discovers he has powers, boy struggles with new found responsibility, boy meets girl, blah blah blah.

If you’re looking for a little something different, it might pay to check out Kick Ass, possibly one of the strangest entries into the genre in ages.

The basic plot involves a geeky kid deciding to become a super hero, who gets his ass kicked on YouTube, which leads to instant world fame. He meets other, arguably more skilled “super heroes” and they get muddled up in some bad business to do with drugs. It’s a pretty classic idea, with a totally new execution. There’s a few strange subplots inevitably involving secondary characters trying to get laid (duh, it’s a teen/superhero crossover) but there are some interesting twists on the usual storylines, including a rather painfully funny subplot where our hero pretends to be gay to hang out with the hot girl.

Director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Layer Cake) sends the story rolling through a hilarious and engaging adventure which shoves the typical superhero idea of self-discovery aside for a more interesting look at how everyone else reacts to the idea of superheroes. And with just enough action, humour, and WTF moments to get us through to the totally over the top finale, the film never really slows down.

Props must be given to the cast who have taken the script to the next level and made it feel genuine. Any number of actors could have screwed this up spectacularly but a raft of newcomers and cult favourites (and Nicolas Cage) deliver a pitch perfect performance. Standout and newbie Aaron Johnston (who is also in the currently playing John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy) is a strong lead and plays the geek to chic super hero perfectly. He’s backed up by Cage, who looks like he’s having fun for the first time in about a decade and Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin’) who finally breaks free from his typecast superdork character.

But the role most likely to be talked about for years to come is played by little Chloë Grace Moretz as Hit-Girl. Possibly one of the most bad ass and controversial female characters in years, 11-year-old Hit-Girl is a sure fire audience pleaser if for nothing more than the countless shocking things she does and says.

Kick Ass is violent, confrontational, enjoyable and bloody funny (pun). While the violence and potty mouths of its characters might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s certainly accessible enough for those who usually wouldn’t be able to sit through a film with a little girl dropping the c-bomb. It’s style on the back of a solid script and convincing performances. Highly bloody recommended.

issue 8 may 2010

It’s always a bit of a left-field decision when an artist decides to release album as a series. Albums rarely, if ever, tell stories in the literal sense. So, what does it mean for one to be a sequel?

For now we’re going to have to go with the answer that Jay-Z, and Meatloaf gave us (cash-ins), because Erykah Badu doesn’t seem very interested in answering it. New Amerykah Part 1 was a strange album that didn’t entirely gel. It was an avant-garde experiment in making a sample-based album using only analog technology. The result often felt like it was better for you than it was to you. It was often exhilarating, but had a tendency to leave the listener behind. Part 2, on the other hand, is warm, funky R’n’B made with live instruments and a sexy coo.

That is the other main difference between this and Part 1. Part 1 was stridently a political polemic, but apart from some flirtations with gender-politics, this is free of politics (and even the gender-politics songs are pretty damn sexy). These are love songs. They’re love songs with lyrics so personal that some of them are conspicuously missing from the lyrics’ sheet. The back of the CD case says that Love is one and a half minutes long where it’s in fact six minutes. Yet it’s a testament that this is endearing rather than cringe-inducing. Come to think of it, Part 1, had a similar piece of coyness where the love song Honey was a hidden track. I suppose that was like a trailer for this – a little piece of connective tissue.

There is a further through-line though, and it’s one I would have missed were I not writing about them, and therefore listening to them while writing. Concentrating on anything else (like a blank word document) while they are playing is damn-near impossible. Badu demands your attention. On Part 1 this was a tiring distraction, but here it’s more subtle and seductive. The album makes for such a pretty little sound scape, that there’s a genuine concern that you may miss something beautiful if you turn your attention away, like sweet little synthesizer glissandi, or a sample of children laughing. Where Part 1 had a jittery ominousness to it, and sounded like the work of a person with not much faith in humanity, Part 2 is a celebration of being alive.

Perhaps that’s the point of the series. Part 1, and 2 are a binary. After The 4th World War (the sub-title of Part 1), The Return Of The Ankh is the redemption of mankind through funk. These are the kind of stoner ruminations that the album leaves you with. There’s little references to scifi mysticism popping up all over the place, so it’s not exactly discouraged.

And the way it demands attention, it hardly leaves you with the option of thinking about much else. But there wouldn’t be much of a discussion to be had if the music of this album weren’t such a pleasure to listen to.

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the t o Spfference

di

Correctly identify the FIVE differences in the two photos then drop your entry into your nearest AuSM Office, or the box on the side of the red debate stands, or post to debate PO Box 6116 Wellesley St before 12pm Thursday.

What's up for grabs? A $10 voucher for The Counter cafe. Nom nom nom!

Name Phone Email Campus Answer?

Tuesday 4 May 10am - 4pm Wednesday 5 May 10am - 4pm

AUT Conference Room WA224 A and B Wellesley Street

Please bring your donor card or a photo ID e.g. D/Lic. Or Passport.

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AUT SPORTS CALENDAR FREE SOCIAL SPORTS

City

Box Fit Wednesdays 7:45-8:45am City Football Tuesdays and Thursdays 4-6pm Auckland Domain

North Shore

Turbo Touch Wednesdays 12-2pm Pilates Thursdays 12:30-1:30pm Dodgeball Competition Thursdays 12:30-1:30pm

Manukau

Touch Mondays 12-2pm Netball Tuesdays 2-4pm Utimate Frisbee, Tuesdays 2-4pm

AUT FOOTBALL CLUB Club training is every week on Tuesdays & Thursdays from 4 to 6pm at Auckland Domain and everybody are invited to join and kick the ball around.

Auckland Sunday Football League Round 2. 18 April, AUT FC vs. Los Halcones 5-0 Round 3. 25 April, AUT FC vs. Goot FC 6-1 Round 4. 2 May, Khukuri FC vs. AUT FC, War Memorial Park 5 at 3 pm Round 5. 9 May, AUT FC vs. Howick Huckies, Auckland Domain 5 at 11 am Round 6. 23 May, Harimau Malaya FC vs AUT FC, Auckland Domain 5 at 3pm For more info on the club please contact Club President Chris at cautfootball@gmail.com

Men and Women’s Single

Friday, May 21 2010 Takapuna Tennis Club

TO ENTER EMAIL melita.martorana@aut.ac.nz

Inter-Tertiary League (ITL)

Entries Close May 5, 2010

Mixed volleyball, mixed touch, men’s touch, men’s footbal, netball, man’s basketball. Four games a semester at Unitec and Trust Stadium!

Email Kate for more details: k.lowden@aut.ac.nz

Indoor Bowls Open 2010

Singles and Doubles Tournament

To be played throughout

May 2010

ENTRIES CLOSE

July 27

on AUT City Campus, WC202

$2 per person entry Entries close on Wednesday 28th April.

To enter, email: melita.martorana@aut.ac.nz

AuSM Sport Team Leader Melita Martorana melita.martorana@aut.ac.nz 021 813 428

AUT Sport & Fitness Centre North Shore Campus

August 10 2010 October 14 2010 MAX 16 TEAMS

KICK OFF FINALS

WEBSITE: www.ausm.org.nz/recreation for more on Sport @ AUT FACEBOOK: become a fan of the “AUT Titans @ NZ Uni Games 2010 – Invercargill” FACEBOOK: join our group “AuSM Sport”

AuSM Sport Co-ordinator Kate Lowden kate.lowden@aut.ac.nz 021 288 2586

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micro-celebs City Campus

Eric JLK

Accounting

Will you be buying tickets to any Rugby World Cup games?

Yes Do you have Bieber Fever?

Um... no!

One celebrity you’d date if you had the chance: Kim Kardashian & Beyonce What is your favourite wintertime activity?

Eating, watching movies

Ronald Chand Engineering

Will you be buying tickets to any Rugby World Cup games?

Yes, to see New Zealand and Fiji play Do you have Bieber Fever?

Never One celebrity you’d date if you had the chance: Angelina Jolie What do you think of public transport?

It’s good

Anna Loren Journalism

Will you be buying tickets to any Rugby World Cup games?

No Do you have Bieber Fever?

No! One celebrity you’d date if you had the chance: David Bowie Favourite wintertime activity?

Does snuggling count?

This could be YOU!

Watch out for debate around campus – you could be the next microceleb!

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The crew at AuSM events want to know your thoughts on how we can improve our event services.

Fill out the brief questionnaire online at

www.bit.ly/subwaysurvey ...and go in the draw to win 1 of 2 Subway Subcards with $50 worth of credit. (Prize kindly donated by Subway at AUT North Shore Campus, and Subway on Symonds St.)

Pool Competition

STARTS TUESDAY MAY 4!

HEAT 1 - 12 PM at

( HEAT 2 - May 11 ) sign up at www.ausm.org.nz issue 8 may 2010

35

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action.

Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

Witness the birth of a heroine in Dawn of the Dreadfuls - a thrilling prequel set four years before the horrific events of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

This comic-horror novel is an all-new work of fiction from acclaimed novelist, Steve Hockensmith.

Now only

$26.99 each

Student / Staff price*

RRP $29.99 each

In store this week only!

See in store for details. All prices NETT - no further discounts apply.

*

AUT City Campus AUT Akoranga Campus 55 Wellesley Street East, Auckland City 90 Akoranga Drive, Northcote Tel: 366 4550 Fax: 366 4570 Tel: 489 6105 Fax: 489 7453 Email: aut.city@ubsbooks.co.nz Email: aut.akoranga@ubsbooks.co.nz Web: www.ubsbooks.co.nz Open Monday to Friday or shop securely online 24/7 36