84.12 My Last by On Dit

INSIDE:

CRYING

S TA L E N H O E F AND

RUBY

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G R AT E F U L

DIVULGES AND

CLANCY

EDITORS

HIS

PERSONAL

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UOFA STUDENT MAGAZINE

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FAREWELL,

HISTORY OF

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BISCUITS

- ISSUE 84.12 - MY LAST

P.K.

LOVE, EVER.

Editorial Thank You Correspondence Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Report Vox Pop Articles Artist Profile Snacks Creative Diversions

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On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union. We recognise that the Kaurna people are the landowners and custodians of the Adelaide Plains. Ngaldu tampinthi Kaurna miyurna yarta mathanya Wama Tarntanyaku. Editors: Lur Alghurabi, Natalie Carfora, and Celia Clennett Sub-Editors: Karolinka Dawidziak-Pacek, Grace Denney, Brydie Kosmina, and Seamus Mullins Designers: Chelsea Allen, Anna Bailes, Daniel Bonato, and Georgia Diment Social Media: Nicole Wedding Front Cover: Jack Lowe Inside Back Cover: Anzelle de Kok

EDITORIAL

Hello there!

Hello all,

Hello friends,

When I was a kid I wanted to be a lot of things. First I wanted to be a dancer like Britney Spears, but then I realized I had the grace of a gazelle that had absolutely no grace. Then I wanted to become an actress, but I giggled through each reading I had to do in front of people. I bought Loyal to the Game and I wanted to be a social activist, but then all my favourite activists kept getting killed and I wanted to live. My parents suggested medicine and I really wanted to be cool like George Clooney in ER, but that show was discontinued and he was no longer cool to me. I turned 18 and I enrolled in an Engineering degree, but I skipped all my classes to read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and I failed all my tests and felt really dumb.

Before you read any further, let’s all accept that my editorial is going to be a soppy mess and full of clichés. Okay? Good.

Wow. This is the end. To think this all started from the 2015 editor that said my pitch was great, from submitting my first article for On Dit, to Lur to texting me if I wanted to be editor, to holding myself back from saying ‘new phone, who dis?’ Now I can say I’ve had a year’s worth of experience with On Dit, going through tears and heartbreak, but laughs and love along the way. Every end to an experience brings forth a new beginning.

Then I met On Dit, I wrote a story for them once, and everyone read it and thought it was great. Luca even took a picture with me holding up my story’s page. I could finally be called a ‘published writer’, and that was the first time I felt like I did something. I then learned what I wanted to be, and that was to make other people feel as good as On Dit has made me feel, and publish as many good writers as I can. This year, I am what I wanted to be.

I can’t believe that this year has come to an end. It’s not just that I can’t believe it, but I almost refuse it accept it. How will I ever revert to my former plebeian life of not having a permanent undercover bike park/ library book storage/nap couch on campus? On Dit has been one of the best things that I have ever done. I have loved being an editor and I have loved the joy/terror in churning out magazine after magazine. I am so grateful for Lur, for asking me to run in the elections with her what feels like eons ago, and for Celia, for agreeing to run with us. What naive little babies we were. On Dit is bigger than all of us and it will be here when we are all long gone. I think of On Dit like a kind, anthropomorphic, god-like figure, smiling down over us and making us read/write. I would like to thank On Dit for producing my first three white hairs, for the early mornings spent at uni when I could have been sleeping, for introducing me to so many excellent people, and for teaching me more about group work than any Small Group Discovery Experience could ever hope to.

There have been hurdles due to my dyspraxia, for a long time I assumed that I was slow, from my bad handwriting, poor speech and wearing velcro shoes (they were comfy). With growing conf idence it gets easier (I only know one knot) especially when I realised that having a learning diff iculty is never to be ashamed of or an excuse to hit a brick wall, it only means there are bigger obstacles that make you stronger once you overcome them. I am very proud of this last issue and what it means for many. Remember, Amy Nancarrow’s last article (p.14) says it all, you have the same right and opportunity as any other student to contribute to this magazine. Or just read it, we love it when we catch you pick up or hold one of the mags or leave food stains on them – multitasking is great.

I hope On Dit has been as great to you as it has been to me,

I’m not crying, you are,

Would you like a Tim Tam?

Lur

Nat

Celia

THANK YOU Our contributors for creating a magazine we’re proud to be a part of. Your work has been picked up, read, and admired by thousands, and there’d be no On Dit without you. Our designers for helping us create a design that’s been praised as professional, crisp and artsy. Did I tell you my boss once said it looked like a magazine you’d pay for? Our sub-editors for showing up at 9 am on Sundays just so we wouldn’t print a typo, and for letting us exploit them like the unethical capitalist overlords that we are, while eating all of their cheese. Nicole Wedding for helping keep our Insta page pretty, and helping us launch On Dit TV, one of the biggest steps forward this magazine has taken in a while. Dianne, Kearin, Vivien, and Kim for being wonderful and supportive and answering all of our questions always. Graphic Print Group for being patient with us each time we sent the wrong file, always being on schedule, and helping us make our favourite magazine. Daisy Freeburn and Sharmonie Cockayne for showing us the ropes when we first started, teaching us InDesign, and letting us know we’re not in this alone. Leighton McDonald-Stuart for supporting us through two elections, explaining Stupol to us, and holding our hand through the most painful two weeks of our lives. What a champ. Justin McArthur for emailing us as soon as you became a student again, and going on to write the most clicked-on and well-researched stories of the past few years. We’re lucky to have published your work. Masya Zabidi for being the ultimate best friend. There’s not enough room here, or anywhere, for all the things you’ve done for us. We wouldn’t be where we are today without you. Our friends and family for listening to us talk about nothing but On Dit at the dinner table and still allowing us to live with you. Thank you for loving us unconditionally.

CHELSEA ALLEN ROSALYNA AMES NAVAR AMICI KATE ANDRINOPOULOS CATIE ANTOINE LUIS ARAUJO FAITH ANNABEL-MAY BLAKE MARA BLAZIC GENEVIEVE BRANDENBERG ZAC BRANDON-SMITH SEÁN BRANDT ANDRE BEMMER MATILDA BRISTOW COURTNEY BRISTOW JAKE BROWN KRYSTAL BUCKLEY RACHEL CAINES RILEY CALABY ANGELICA CARAVAJAL BENJAMIN CARR TOM CERNEV STEPHANIE CHEAH WILL CHEFFIRS CIANA CHIN DELIA CHIN MAX COOPER LAUREN COPLAND JACK CRAWFORD ANGUS CROUCH GEORGINA CUNNINGHAM JORDAN CURTIS HILARY D’ANGELO HARRY DAVIES KAROLINKA DAWIDZIAKPACEK ANZELLE DE KOCK HARRIET DE KOK GRACE DENNEY TIN DO CLANCY DOW RUBY DOW MEREDITH DOWLING INGMAR DULDIG

REEM ERNST BEN FELIX EMMA FERRARO JAMES FINNIS ALICIA FRANCESCHINI FI FRASER PADG FYFE NICK GENCARELLI TOM GILCHRIST NICK GOGGIN CLAIRE HALE JOHN HARGREAVES RILEY HARRIS EMILY HART CARLY HARVY LAUREN HAYNES ERIN HEFFERNAN EMMA HEYEN JACK HODGES LEWIS HODKINSON STEPHEN HOK CHRIS HUGHES RACHAEL INGLETON KALI IVANCEVIC WAN AMIRUL IZAT ANN JACKSON HANA JACOB APOORV JAISWAL SKYE JENNER JACQUELINE JOHNS CHRISTY JONES LARA JUNGHARDT MIKE KOENIG BRYDIE KOSMINA ANDREW LANG STEPHEN LANG CAI LANGFORD ROB LAWRY THUY-ANH LE AMELIA LEE-HAMMAT ELLIOT LEWIS MILLIE LEWIS MANDY LI

BROOKE LLOYD JACK LOWE ELENA LUKINA RYAN MAC RICHARD MATTHEWS JUSTIN MCARTHUR JUSTIN-FREE MCCULLOCH LEIGHTON MCDONALDSTUART GABRIELLA MCEVOY MICHAELA MCGRATH ELISHA MCGRATH LAUREN MCKECHNIE DANIEL MCLEAN JARAD MCLOUGHLIN ANDREW MCNAMARA CASEY MICHELL-TONKIN TESS MILFORD-BEHN HAYLEY MOHACSY SEBASTIAN MOORE GRACE MORGAN-COCKS JOSH MORROW DARCY MOUNKLEY CRISTINA MUFFATTI SEAMUS MULLINS NICK MUNDAY GALINA MURINA AMY NANCARROW JACK NEWTON HOLLY NICHOLLS ANTHONY NOCERA SEAN NOTTLE EMMA Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;CONNELLDOHERTY JON OVAN NADINA PAINE JESSIE PANAZZOLO MELANIE PERRE MILAN PODNAR AZADEH FERIDOUN POUR KENDRA PRATT BENJAMIN QUIRK ADI RAI

WINSTON REED LUCA RICCI KATE RIGGS ASHLEIGH ROBERTS JESSICA ROSELLO DYLAN ROWEN JAMES RUDD MITCHELL SALT IRAN SANADZADEH KATE SANSOME ZAKIA SAYMONTREE REBECCA SCHNEIDER ELLEN SCHULZ JASMIN SEARLE JAI SEIFERT MADDY SEXTON KATIE SKEEN MATTHEW SMITH SAMANTHA SMITH ALI SOULIO P.K. STALENHOEF CARINA STATHIS TAHLIA SVINGOS JOHN SWAN CLARY TERRELL CHRISTEN TORMAY CONNIE TRAN STEPHANIE TRENTMANN EWAN TURNER DEANNA VARKANIS BILLY VAWSER SOPHIE WALKER SAMUEL WALL DANNY WARDLE ANDREW WATSON NICOLE WEDDING TIM WHIFFEN DANE WILDEN MATTHEW WILLIAMS RACHEL WONG MAX WURM MASYA ZABIDI KUNI ZHAO

CORRESPONDENCE Dear Editors, Congratulations on what has been a fantastic year for On Dit. You may recall that I sent you a letter at the start of your tenure offering a few small words of advice. It seems though that you werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t in need of any advice after all. You (and your team) have managed to steer On Dit in a wonderful new direction and create what can only be described as one of the best volumes in recent memory. My hope, as a past editor, is that next yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; team embraces the fact that On Dit is a magazine for all students, and not for some cultural elite, and that all those who are willing to spend precious time putting pen to paper are welcomed into the fold. Enjoy life after On Dit, Leighton McDonald-Stuart

SRC PRESIDENT

As the academic calendar comes to a close, so too does the calendar of student politics. There will be a flurry of excitement as the 2017 president of the AUU is elected by the new board, and for the SRC it’s out with the old and in with the new come December 1st. I’d particularly like to welcome my fellow Student Voice activists who have been elected: social justice officer and kick-ass anti-racist Leila Clendon, education officer and hero of the campaign against faculty mergers Daniel Neser, environment officer and first revolutionary socialist on the AUU board Jack Crawford, mature age officer and vice-president of the Mature Students Association Irene Dillon, and general councillor and all-round radical Leigh Zilm. Welcome also to the new SRC president Mark Pace. This isn’t just my last column for On Dit this year. After several years of rabble-rousing (and studying) at Adelaide Uni I’m off to rabblerouse elsewhere. North Terrace has been where I got started protesting against education cuts, became involved with Students for Palestine, stormed the fences around a lecture by then Prime Minister Tony Abbott, campaigned successfully for a scholarship for refugees and

copped flack for supporting Safe Schools. Over the years I’ve fought with management, Labor and the Liberals, through it all forging connections with activists and building a radical socialist current on campus. Now as my degree ticks to an end I’m committed to organising around those same Marxist politics and fighting for that same radical vision of liberation wherever I end up in life. Before I go, however, I’ve got at least one more campaign to run here (perhaps my last!). One of the longest sustained campaigns in Australia has been the fight for marriage equality. No other campaign has drawn in such large numbers and so many new protesters year after year. The overwhelming majority of Australians now support full equality on this issue. If there was a free vote even the dinosaurs in parliament would pass it. So of course the reactionaries in the Liberal party have a new way to hold it off. Instead of making equality law they have the delay tactic of the plebiscite. This is a vote that our side would absolutely smash, and scorched-earth dry Liberals like Cory Bernardi would be put back in their place. But it isn’t a plebiscite

we need to have. The support is clear, and we should be demanding marriage equality now, no excuses! Unfortunately this isn’t a campaign we’re likely to see the current Young Liberal queer officer run. The Liberals are the party that has torn up Safe Schools and continue to hold off on our equality. But that hasn’t stopped me and other socialists on the SRC from campaigning. Some LGBTI activists have called a rally in the mall at 4:30pm on November 11, and the lefties on the SRC will be there demanding equality and justice, just as we’ve done all of this year and just as those newly elected will do next year. It’s a fighting spirit that has found support amongst the student body in the latest elections, and it is one I will take with me in my future journeys. Until then, this is me, for my last time, signing out: Tom Gilchrist Socialist Alternative member SRC President

VOX POP

RACHEL

ROB

JORDAN

4TH YR, MEDIA

2ND YR, ARTS/EDUCATION

1. It was a Pink Lady apple (I’m surprised too). Points given for freshness but overall nothing to write home about.

1. I had lollies at Radio Adelaide to help me get through Breakfast News. It was delicious.

1. Some dried dates, very healthy! I’d rate them 6/10.

2. Port Pirie for placement: lovely weather and they have a Barnacle Bills that runs out of a church. These are spiritual people.

2. I don’t remember the last time I left Adelaide. I can’t get out.

3. ‘Sorry mate, employees only.’ 4. I actually can’t name a single thing I’ve done or learned. But pretty good though. 5. These ‘Peasant Recipe’ flavoured Lays chips I tried in Spain a few years back. Amazingly delicious. Think ‘Light and Tangy’ without the tang.

3. People are generally nice to me, I have one of those faces. 4. The least amount of sleep I have ever gotten in my life. 5. Milk bottle lollies. Eds: NO.

2. I went to Japan. It was amazing,it was summer, it was great weather. Amazing. 3. I’ve had a client yell at me because the doctor was late, and that’s obviously my fault. 4. Hectic, but really fun. 5. Hot chips, easy.

1. WHAT IS THE L AST SNACK THAT YOU ATE AND HOW DO YOU R ATE IT? 2. WHERE IS THE L AST PL ACE YOU TR AVELLED AND WHAT WAS IT LIKE? 3. WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT SOMEONE’S SAID TO YOU AT WORK? 4. HOW WOULD YOU SUMMARISE YOUR L AST SEMESTER AT UNI? 5. IF YOU COULD ONLY HAVE ONE SNACK FORE VER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

SAMUEL MASTERS, ARCHITECTURE

SEAMUS

PAT T Y

4TH YR, MEDIA

MASTERS, ARCHITECTURE

1. Potato chips, it was good. I loved it.

1. I had a Cup of Noodles with a pea or two and it was actually amazing. It made my night.

1. An apple! It was pretty good, quite sweet. 6/10.

2. I travelled to Europe, in Paris. The City of Lovers, it was good. 3. ‘Could you please be more professional?’ 4. Kind of stressful, but it was fun because we had friends around us. 5. Strawberry Pokis!

2. I went back home to Millicent to watch the Grand Final with my dad. It was insane. 3. ‘Hey Clark Kent, get me a beer.’ 4. I am pretending that my relationship with uni is still going, but in reality it finished weeks ago. 5. Coca Cola lollipops.

2. I went to Melbourne for a friend’s 21st. I haven’t been there before, but because I was there for a weekend I didn’t get to do much else. It was pretty, but I didn’t get to explore it much. 3. A customer blamed me for something that I didn’t do. They got really angry and started swearing at me and I had to call my manager. 4. Very very hard. Quite stressful, but I got through it. 5. Banana bread, so good.

SEVEN YEARS IN A LEAKY BOAT WORDS BY: AMELIA LEE-HAMMAT ART WORK BY: R ACHEL WONG

Finally. After seven years, two degrees, probably at least a million essays, and way more caffeine than is necessary, I am completely done with uni. This is my last semester ever. When I tell people this they ask if I’m going to the graduation ceremony, if I know how hard the job market is for graduates, if I’m going on to postgrad – you know, all the questions you’re all already sick of hearing. This is especially awkward for me, because then I have to explain to them that I’m not graduating at all. I’m quitting. Over the last seven years I have thought I wanted to be so many different things. I picked an Arts degree the first time around, because at the time I wanted to be an actor. Somewhere in there I picked up a Social Sciences course and figured I’d go into politics. That was a dark time in my life. We don’t talk about it.

When I graduated and any sort of well-paid job failed to materialise, I floundered a little. I thought about veterinary sciences, because I wanted to be a vet at age nine, and it seemed like a solid choice. After some brief googling, I realised two things concurrently: firstly, that vets need to be much better at maths than I am, and secondly that vet nurses were a thing and the maths requirements were non-existent. I was sold. What I’d failed to comprehend was that jobs in the animal care industry are like hens’ teeth (pun intended). You’ve got to know someone who knows someone to get a foot in the door, and once you do you’ll still be making less than your average barista. So it was back to floundering, trying to work out what exactly it was I wanted to do. The answer I settled on, eventually, was “help people”. I like it, and I’m good at it. My mum likes to say our family has a gene that kicks in during

a crisis situation; when the ship starts sinking, we stay calm and get everyone to the lifeboats. Her father was the king of this, and I like to think I’m alright in a storm. I thought briefly about nursing, then thought about paramedics, and decided that my skillset lay more in the “helping people indirectly” area – which is to say, journalism. I don’t know if I’m just too old for uni now, or if the prospect of working for the neo-conservative wank tank that is the majority of the Australian media industry was just too much to bear, but I hated every second of the Media degree I started in 2014. This is probably not the fault of Media degrees, before Bebz reads this and tries to cut them from the program. This is probably the fault of an overly idealistic twenty-something who keeps spinning the academic wheel and coming up short. In my Great Identity Crisis of

2015, I had a long hard think about what I wanted to do and decided on something that to my great frustration you don’t even need a degree for. But for once, it doesn’t feel like launching myself into something because I think I have to. It feels like I’ve actually hit on what I’ve been trying to do all along. I’m writing this article not to be the wet blanket that tells you all your degrees are useless and studying is a load of crap because that’s not true. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing, you’re going to have a great time, and maybe you’ll even find a job doing something you really love. I’m writing this article because it took me seven years to realise that maybe the reason I still wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be was that I kept hitting my head against the same brick wall. I’m not saying you should immediately quit your day job and spend all your time roaming the woods collecting junk to make

jewellery from. Jobs are hard to come by! You’re making a very risky decision! What I’m saying is that it’s okay to not know what you want as a young person. None of us do. It’s totally fine. We muddle through, and even if it takes you the better part of a decade, you’ll work it out eventually. I’m probably flattering myself here, but if reading this article has made you come to terms with some crushing truths about your direction in life, the best advice I can offer you is not to panic. Take a deep breath, have a bit of a cry if you like, and the rest will sort itself out.

Amelia wants you to know she never has to write another essay ever again, and she’ll catch you on the flip side.

MY LAST SHIFT IN A NIGHTCLUB WORDS AND ART WORK BY: JORDAN CURTIS

I’ve been working as a glassy in one of Adelaide’s most iconic nightclubs for just over a year now, and it’s been interesting to say the least. I’m not going to say which nightclub specifically, but it’s infamously bogan and has a bovine themed robotic feature. The general reaction to people finding out I work there is usually ‘Oh shit, you poor thing,’ followed instantly by ‘So what’s the grossest thing you’ve had to do?’. There’s been so much that’s happened to me there that has made me question if money is even worth the hassle. So, as I reach my last shift, I’ve compiled a list of stuff, which I’m still surprised I’ve managed to deal with, and thought I’d create a reference for people who ask instead of having to repeat myself all the time. So here goes, the grossest things I’ve ever done at work: Within the first 20 minutes of my first ever shift at this club, I had a very sudden and crude awakening, to what I was going to have to deal with while I worked there. When I first checked the toilets for cups and whatnot, I walked in on my fellow glassy who had pulled toilet duty that night about to pick up a pile of toilet paper off the floor. The look on his face when he saw me was one of relief, because as the newbie he was more than happy to really jump-

start my experience at the club. He pulled back the layers of toilet paper to reveal the shit that somebody had nicely left for staff on the floor NEXT to the toilet. With what was only really just a taste of what was to come for the rest of my time in this industry, I dropped that shitty start to my night in the toilet, flushed, and cried in the shower when I got home. All the vomit I’ve had to deal with, while very gross, has been nothing since that incident, and so I thought that was going to be the grossest thing I’d have to do at work, and for a long time it was. I was naïve though, and it wasn’t until just over half a year later that my limits were tested, once again. One night I was innocently stacking the dishwasher with another round of cups when a security guard came up to me with some bad news. He seemed sympathetic, so I knew it must be pretty shocking when he said ‘Yeah, you may want to check out one of the cubicles. It’s looking pretty bad.’ Not sure of what to face, I grabbed my mop and bucket and dragged my feet to the bathroom. When I got there, I saw a toilet filled to the brim with water, and what looked like vomit floating on the surface. I assumed this meant a glass was stuck down the bottom, which is fine. I’ve dealt with that before, just

stick on a glove and reach in and grab it. So that’s what I did. It wasn’t until I made contact with the cup that I realised that it wasn’t a cup, but in fact my hand poked (while wearing the glove, I need to make sure you know that there was definitely a glove on), what Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park would call, one big pile of shit. Decided that this was definitely a job for a plunger as I did not want my hand anywhere near it. After a couple minutes of violently plunging the literal shit out of that toilet, and dry heaving through the assault of disgusting smells, I managed to clear that toilet for future use. Once again, cried in the shower when I got home. A runner up to that moment was the time I pulled a can covered in poop, out of the toilet. I dropped it down the can chute, which left a poo smear all the way down it. You can still smell how much of a mistake that was when the chute gets wet. (Sorry everyone who works in that bar). And of course, honourable mentions to having to pick up a used pad off of the women’s bathroom floor. And getting kicked repeatedly in the guts and crotch by a flailing drunk woman on the ground, who thought I threw a drink in her face. These have all been stellar moments I won’t be able to forget for the rest of my life.

In the end, there is so much I’ve put up with at this club. Between stuffups with my pay or having to work until 7 in the morning, it does feel like it has taken years off my life. The people I work with are great, and I do appreciate all the free time working only on Saturday nights gives me, but those benefits aren’t always enough to make up for everything that I’ve had to do. Jordan is currently recovering from the horrors of his glassy past.

MY LAST ARTICLE

WORDS BY: AMY NANCARROW ART WORK BY: STEPHEN L ANG

After giving up my full time wage and heading back to the books, I find myself careening towards the end of the year, the end of my thesis, graduation, and heading back to the real world. My return to university has been interesting, insightful, and incredibly fun. One thing that has made it incredibly worthwhile, is doing something that I didn’t have the confidence to do as a shy 18-year-old: write for On Dit and contribute to Adelaide University’s student media. I remember first reading On Dit in 2009 and wishing, that I had the courage to voice my opinions to the rest of the student population. Coming back this year, slightly older and wiser, I decided this was my chance. I have mused about The Bachelor’s blatant sexism, played the role of hard-hitting journalist reporting on the future of Radio Adelaide, and spoken candidly about the need for a more open sexual dialogue. I have had the chance to research and share my opinions on a vast range of topics, and have learned more about professional writing than ever before. It has been one of the best parts of my year back at university, and I have absolutely no regrets about taking the time to send Lur, Nat, and Celia an inquisitive email at the beginning of the year. Student media is a vital part of every student’s experience at university; whether reading it, writing it, editing it, or broadcasting it over the airwaves, it’s a chance for your voice to be heard. No topic is off limits, which means that you – yes, you reading this – have every right, opportunity, and reason to apply to be a contributor. More to the point, your contribution is vital. Student media is a vital part of the university experience – and so it should be. Not just to humanities students, but medical, engineering, science, psychology, and

music students. We need a variety of voices, a variety of viewpoints. Want to speak about a day in the life of a med student? Send in a pitch. Have something to say about the state of Adelaide University’s chemistry department? Contact Student Radio and see what they can do for you. In the end, that’s the whole point of this. Student media exists to tell your stories. It exists to tell all of our stories. It exists as a platform and a chance for all of us to debate and discuss a variety of opinions. It also exists to make us laugh, cry, consider different perspectives, and to learn through a dialogue that doesn’t consist solely of dense, academic phrasing. It’s a way to speak to one another plainly, succinctly, elegantly. Therefore, I want to use my last article as a chance to speak directly to you – the plucky first year who has read On Dit in 2016 and wants to get involved. The third year engineering student who wants to give their opinion on anything ranging from the mining boom to the Kardashians. The student doing their PhD in Microbiology and wants to encourage (or perhaps warn off ) potential candidates to continue research. Get involved in student media. Get involved, share your opinions, and keep the excellent standard of the University of Adelaide’s student media at an all-time high. We need your voice, your thoughts, your stories. It’s one of the most exciting and vital parts of the university experience, so grab it with both hands and go along for the ride. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Amy is excited to finish her thesis, but sad to go back to reality and leave Adelaide Uni once again.

MY LAST DESTINATION WORDS BY: TIM WHIFFEN ART WORK BY: JOSH MORROW

Each of us await an imminent and real end… a lonesome, chilling, conclusion. If I could rewind my life, I would take it back to when I was f ive years old, a young man, ready to leave his mark on the world. I’m leaving for school, bags ready, scrumptious breakfast of two Weetabix in my stomach, but nothing could prepare me for what was about to happen that fateful day. Something didn’t feel right, I had a premonition of death, as if going to school would kill me somehow. Images of despair f lashed through my mind, there was only one thing for it. I wet my palms, splashed water in my eyes, and pretended to be sick. I had managed to convince my mother that I was unwell, defying fate to enjoy the f iner pleasures in life; a glass of grape juice by a warm f ire

Since then life has been a game of ‘chasey’, and death is ‘it’. Death is after me to f inish what was started. I have had to be so cautious of every threat. So many times I was nearly caught not wearing my hat at lunch time, or loitering in the ‘Out of Bounds’ areas – death is almost omnipresent.

them, thinking I would starve to death. I would be famished at the thought of no dessert after dinner. So many threats to my existence, I’m running in fear of what could happen next. This one premonition of being stranded to die in an assembly has been a gift, and a curse. I have managed to survive Death’s attempts to f inish the job, but I live in fear, maybe being ignorant and dying that day could have been a blissful ending. As I have aged into the wise old man I am today, I’ve faced far more menacing attacks. As I matured into adulthood, age ten, I was faced with household chores, which I would have to avoid like a metaphorical (but very real) plague.

I still get anxiety at the thought of not being able to get take away foods when I wanted

It’s been a hard life, it’s hard to relate to other people - to gain friends - when you’re faced

watching playschool. I played with fate that day, and now, 16 years on, I’m still paying for it. My premonitions came true; I would have died had I gone to class. It was the day of a school assembly and we were required to sit still for a full f ifty minutes. The Angel of Death had plans for me to sit through this, I wouldn’t have survived.

with such dangers. No one can understand my struggles, the struggles of having to go clothes shopping with my matriarchal birth giver, seemingly taken over by death itself to reap what she had given in the f irst place. No one could understand the social pressure I experienced, I nearly died of embarrassment when I was found still using MySpace in 2010. Death follows me in every facet of my being. My entire education has been a connection of one near-death experience after another, so many late nights spent avoiding death by assignments. Even exams have risen my blood pressure to points that should have killed me. There’s something I need to confess in all this. Every time I’m faced with a threatening disaster, and

escape it, someone beloved by the world dies. Try not to hate me for the names I’m about to drop, but when this f irst happened, George Harrison died the next day. I almost died the day before Steve Irwin passed. I am uncertain if I was the cause, but the day before I was almost made to drink water instead of my preferred carbonated beverage… I know you must think I am some sort of monster, ‘how can your life be any more important than those who are beloved by millions,’ you may ask. However, I’ve since learned that this phenomenon doesn’t just apply to famous people, but also infamous people. With the experience I’ve gained constantly being on edge about my own death, I’ve managed to hone my premonition skills to see the potential death of others. Now I

can target specif ic public f igures. You’ll have to trust me on the fact that most celebrity deaths of this year so far have been for a greater good, and I’ve had my eye out for an opportunity to take away Mr. Trump. But this is my f inal letter. I’ve had the premonition that tomorrow Trent (from Punchy) may pass away. I’m not going to stand by and let that happen. So I’ve decided to start my f inal assessment for this semester, I will surely die. I’m doing this for the good of the world, please appreciate every second of Trent’s existence, for I have given my life for him, and for you. This is my legacy.

Tim Whiffen stands out in a crowd of freaks.

THAT’S THE LAST TIME I... WORDS BY: TAHLIA SVINGOS

How many times have you said ‘that’s the last time I...’ Usually, for me, the words that follow ‘that’s the last time I,’ are a string of broken promises – a collection of things I would love to stop, but seemingly can’t. *Wakes at the crack of midday* That’s the last time I ever drink again, this poison has no right to ruin my Sunday and I swear I’m cutting it out right NOW. *Furiously typing at 4am* That’s the last time I ever leave an assignment to the night before – where’s that diary I bought four months ago? *Hand in a bag of Doritos* That’s the last time I ever eat that many chips in one sitting. From now on this body is a temple of health and fitness – only to be nourished with the finest grains and veggies. Laughable. But, today something happened that made me think about those five words, and I think that I owe it to myself to try to make this one work. This morning as I was getting ready for work, my boyfriend rolled over and spewed some sickeningly beautiful compliment at me. The minute the words were airborne I quickly shook my head and turned away. ‘I wish you weren’t so hard on yourself,’ he said. I wish I wasn’t so hard on myself as well. You see, from the moment that

looking good became ‘important,’ it’s consumed a lot of my energy. Particularly when I was younger – any day that involved getting ready would also involve scrutinizing my face, my hair, my makeup, my clothes and alarmingly my body. Thankfully the older I get, the quieter the criticisms are, but even at 21 – I struggle to take a compliment. There was a time when I thought accepting a compliment made you selfobsessed. But, taking a compliment isn’t cocky at all, and I now wince when people view it so. To be able to stand tall and agree when someone gives you the love you deserve – to me that’s admirable, not annoying. I remember meeting a girl last year at one of my favourite bars. She was funny and interesting as she told stories of her days circumnavigating Australia. As we sat sipping cheap alcohol, she jumped up and thrust her phone at her friend, ‘take my photo!’ As her friend lined up the perfect shot she declared, ‘you are so hot,’ to which the other girl smiled and said, ‘I know!’ Everyone laughed and I’m sure most people thought nothing of it, but it’s a moment that stuck with me. I was jealous. Not because of how ‘traditionally’ attractive she was, but because of how she carried herself. She was sexy, because she owned it. Now this plight for self love isn’t just about feeling at ease with what’s in the mirror – this is about the many areas of my life that are affected by my inability to own my merits.

Writing is a massive passion of mine, but I never used to share it. You know those scenes in movies where a writer angrily screws their piece of paper into a ball and throws it across the room? That was me, just instead of screwing my laptop into a ball I would calmly delete the story and pretend it didn’t exist. If I did muster up the strength to let someone have a look – and they liked it – I was 100% certain they were lying. Just like my battle with self image, this fear has begun to subside – but disappointingly still exists. Cue example: A few weeks ago I wrote a piece on anxiety. I took, for me, a big step and posted a photo of the title on my (newly mastered) Instagram story. After hitting post, an old school friend messaged me asking where he could read a copy. Instantly I responded with, ‘it’s nothing spesh.’ His next message popped up and read, ‘don’t talk it down.’ Don’t. Talk. It. Down. Great advice. So, that is what I’m pledging to do. No more ‘no I’m not’ or ‘no it’s not,’ no more shuffling my feet or staring at the ground. The next time someone throws a compliment my way, I’m going to push my shoulders back and deliver the word thanks with eye contact and gusto. *This morning* That’s the last time I talk myself down. Tahlia is a third year media student, if you liked her article, she says thanks.

MY LAST ROLL OF FILM PHOTOGR APHY BY DYL AN ROWEN

MY LAST PANIC ATTACK WORDS BY: SKYE JENNER ART WORK BY: KALI IVANCEVIC

I’ve had anxiety and panic attacks for as long as I can remember. They’ve been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and trying to minimise the chance of having one is now just a part of my daily life. For me, anxiety attacks are, at the very minimum, a weekly occurrence, and panic attacks happen when I don’t get the anxiety under control (or I unexpectedly see a snake, but that’s a whole new topic). So, it came as a bit of a shock when I realised that I haven’t had a severe panic attack in almost two years. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my moments where I just have to find a quiet little corner and get my breathing under control. But, I haven’t had to hide away for an hour while my vision goes grey and my breathing becomes incredibly short. It’s such a pleasant change in my life, and a great reminder that I’ve learnt to deal with my issues and the triggers that can cause such a crappy, awkward moment. It’s also been a really nice way through which to help other friends who have experienced similar emotions.

I was at the university when I had my last attack. I can’t even remember exactly what bought it on, other than the fact that having to get some immunisation was the final straw that sent me spiralling out of control. Without even realising it, I managed to work myself into such a state that I started hyperventilating, my vision went blurry, and tears flooded down my cheeks uncontrollably. Luckily for me, I was in a small office, so I was able to lock myself away while I slowly got my speeding heart under control. And I do mean slowly. I was locked in that tiny room for almost an hour before the tears stopped. Two hours until I managed to maintain a semblance of control. It took me the rest of the day to stop feeling jumpy and twitchy at absolutely everything. I have by no means got the worst case of anxiety that I have ever seen. I get to leave the house and can generally find a way to negotiate with my reactions so that they are not as severe. Most people that I am friends with now don’t even realise that I battle against my anxious reactions on a daily basis. A fact

that I take as a compliment, being constantly anxious isn’t a badge of honour to be worn around. Quite frankly, it sucks big time. Which is why when I think of something that is My Last, my last panic attack is a nice reminder of how far I’ve come. Mental illness is difficult and something that I have always struggled with. The fact that it has been two years since I have had a serious episode where the whole world false away to a haze of tears and fear is something that I am immensely proud of.

Skye burrows into her study den with her beautiful fur baby when the stress gets too much.

THE MAN LAST SEEN AT SOMERTON BEACH

WORDS BY: CELIA CLENNET T

November 30, 1948. Glenelg, South Australia. A well-dressed man carried another on his shoulders along the Somerton Beach. 7:00 p.m. Couples walked along Somerton Beach, the night warm. Curious onlookers witnessed a man lying in the sand, head against the seawall, legs extended and feet crossed, appeared unmoving. He then extended his right arm to its fullest extent, then dropped it limply. They continued walking. A woman looked on nervously as a man stood still at the top of the steps that led to the beach, looking down at the sleeping man. 7:30 p.m. The streetlights had come on, illuminating the sleeping man. A couple came to a stop when they saw him, he did not not react to the mosquitoes. He was a fit man in his mid-40s dressed in a white shirt, red and blue tie, brown trousers, a brown knitted pullover, and fashionable grey and brown double-breasted jacket, a cigarette unlit on the collar of his coat. He didn’t appear hurt or anything, the only thing unusual was that he wasn’t wearing a hat; he must be drunk or asleep. Inside the fob pocket sewn within the pants of the mans trouser pocket, was a tiny piece of rolled up paper, with the words ‘Tamam Shud.’ December 1, 1948, 6:30 a.m. The man was declared dead.

His body was clean shaven, no identification found. Speculation by confused authorities that he had showered and shaved at the City Baths in Adelaide before heading down south. No record was found. His ticket from Adelaide to Glenelg unused, shoes clean, unmarked by travel. Labels removed from the clothes he wore but not from what could damage the material. His identity stripped away by meticulous hands. The air was thick with the climate of the Cold War, Adelaide was at close proximity to a military site recently infiltrated by Soviet spies. Police investigated the cryptic paper ‘Tamam Shud’ to find out it was Persian meaning ‘ended’ or ‘finished.’ 1949, January 14 at the Adelaide Railway Station a staff member discovered a brown suitcase, its label removed and filled with some clothes. They looked back at the record, it was checked in November 30th at 11am. Nothing out of the ordinary was discovered, other than all identification marks were removed from most clothes, aside from the name T. Keane. Within were strangely sharpened tools, a spool of orange thread the same colour sewn found on the fob pocket of the unknown man. An unlocked car parked in Jetty Road, Glenelg, in the back was a book with the words encrusted in gold Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. A book poetry about how one should live life to the full and have no regrets

when it ends. At the end a page was missing with the words, ‘Tamam Shud.’ The indentations made in the back of the book revealed a nurse’s unlisted telephone number and a mysterious code. 1948, Moseley St, Glenelg, about 400 metres north of the location where the body was found, a knock came from a nurse’s door Jessica Ellen “Jo” Thomson did not answer. The stranger knocked on her neigbours door and asked about her. After the event, Detective Sergeant Leane investigated Thomson, he the revealed plaster cast of the man’s head and shoulder, her eyes widened, she looked away and refused to look back. In the brink of fainting, she insisted she did not know the man. She also used to own a copy of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. 1949, June 14th, the burial of the Somerton Man. The Salvation Army conducted the funeral service, reporters and police stood by, heads down in complete silence as the Captain Em Webb led the prayers for the man they never knew. The unknown man was laid to rest.

women, room key in hand, ready to check out. His luggage was light, a single black case not unlike one a musician or a doctor may carry, something about the man seemed unusual. Later an employee leaned to her, he saw something peculiar in said bag, it looked like a needle. The professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide, Thomas Erskine Cleland, was the coroner. Thomas hypothesised that the death was by glucoside poison that could not have been accidentally administered, whether is was done by the victim or by another person, was left undecided. Since then, the University of Adelaide has been involved in investigating the identity of the Unknown Man. Professor Derek Abbott captivated by the mystery, with the help of engineering Honours students. Each year, they revisit the case, designing and implementing software in order to decipher the code. One day the investigation may be concluded and the mystery may reach its end. Or else he will forever be known as the Unknown Man.

Years later, a woman stood over the grave, f lowers laid along the words ‘Here Lies The Unknown Man Who Was Found At Somerton Beach.’ As she left the cemetery, police approached her. She shook her head, she knew nothing of the man. Back to 30th November, 1948, opposite the Adelaide Railway Station, a receptionist stood at the front desk of the Strathmore Hotel. A man approached the

Celia Clennett has a curious mind that might get her kidnapped by Soviet spies one day.

ARTIST PROFILE JACK LOWE My name’s Jack Lowe. I’m currently studying a double degree of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. However, in my spare time I love to draw. There’s usually a level of meaning in my artwork. I source inspiration from anything that provokes some sort of response. It may be listening to a song, an interesting quote or simply attempting to see something dull from a different perspective. Anything can help generate a concept. As a student, I don’t have time to make a great deal of images. But slowly producing artworks over the year is an important creative outlet for me. At the moment I really enjoy working with Indian ink, often with some watercolour thrown in. However since I’ve been focusing on more illustrative work, I’ve started digitally colouring traditionally inked images. All my lines are done by hand with a brush or pen. I love the tactile nature of working with paper; I feel more connected with the process and it’s a more intuitive experience. Unfortunately, scanned watercolour artworks can appear washed-out. In contrast, digital colouring allows me to confidently reproduce artwork in print. The act of drawing can be really refreshing. There’s a certain sort of satisfaction I get when I’ve followed an idea from its conception through to a fully realised product. Furthermore, the combination of intense concentration repetitive brush strokes has a meditative quality to it. This allows me to forget about everything for a few hours while I work; it’s great for stress. Many of my drawings have an element of narrative backing them up; it’s an important part of my creative process. As a result I’ve become much more interested in illustration over the past few years in addition to producing standalone artworks. Working on something such as a comic allows you to more directly

communicate the message of a work, even if it has no text. Consequently I’ve recently learnt the importance of planning through drafting. It’s a more regimented approach that’s enabled me to both better craft images as well as helping me complete more complex projects. I’ve written a few short comic scripts for after exams; it’s my ideal way to end the year. It’s something that gives me a distinct sense of freedom.

A DAMAGING PERSONAL HISTORY OF NARRATIVISING LOVE

WORDS BY: P.K. STALENHOEF

Recently, an ex-girlfriend made a comment about me that I found troubling in its perceptiveness. ‘You were always a romantic’, she said – off hand, like the words weren’t lacerating, with the careless thought process of a person waving away a fly. She was right. I long for love. And I have repeated the same negative behaviours over and over in my twenties, turning my relationships into stories and my partners into legendary figures. This is a terrible thing, I now realise, to turn people into characters. It denies them personhood and agency. In love, we covet the fall, turn it into narratives of loss, sacrifice and the ultimately doomed soul of humanity. I have done it in my own life. I have made my relationships into narratives, my partners into characters and my proclivity to fall in love as a personal hamartia: a mistake I was doomed to make time and time again. Through turning my relationships into stories, I have given them too much importance, which paradoxically completely devalued their place in my life. Love is, like all social things, complex and escapes simple explanation. GIRLFRIEND X: THE POINT OF COMPARISON I went to Brisbane recently to see an old friend. Well, that’s how I described it to anyone who asked.

The truth is that I went to see an exgirlfriend, who moved to Queensland one year ago. Why did I go see her? I’m not sure. After a few troubled years, I found myself single when she was too. A few close friends asked if sex with her was a possibility. I’d thought about it, as one always does, but I admit that it wasn’t particularly on my mind. It simply felt like a good time to catch up with someone from the past: girlfriend X. In many ways girlfriend X became the mould that all my future partners would have to fit. Our relationship was certainly a story – or it could have easily been translated into one. It was defined first through forbidden love. We liked each other in high school, but I had another partner. When I was finally single, instead of pursuing her, I played around and hurt her immensely. Yet, things worked out: on a drunken night I confessed my feelings and somehow we had a shot at the whole young-love-thing. Years passed and we stumbled through it all together, until the stakes of life were suddenly raised. She developed a tumour in her pituitary gland, which came to directly impact her hormones and her emotional state. Forget the fact that the diagnosis of the tumour alone caused emotional distress, but the affliction also attacked her at the source of emotional regulation. At eighteen she had her first operation.

A dangerous procedure, performed through the nasal cavity, and close to the optic nerve. Blindness was a possibility, albeit an unlikely one. After a time, it came to be a disease of constant exhaustion, of crippling migraines and a wedge not only between herself and I, but I also believe – a wedge between herself and herself. Living with pain like that is to become distant from everything. We were eighteen; we remained together: through strange years. Later on, at twenty-one, we found ourselves together still. We were due for some chaos. After a lifetime of near perfect physical health, I began feeling exhausted for no obvious explanation. I turned pale, and started dropping weight. Soon enough I was hospitalised. Things deteriorated. It turned out I had a common autoimmune disease that had manifested in an uncommonly severe way. The details aren’t relevant here. But I didn’t return to normal life for a year, and not until I had suffered through many personal and public traumas and the loss of the affected organs. X broke up with me three months into the illness, a few days before New Year’s Eve of my twenty-first year. See, there are elements here to form a story: I know because I’ve tried to craft a novel out of them.

It had everything: forbidden love, terminally ill teenagers, trauma. A story of uncontrollable forces tearing two people apart. We even had illnesses that reflected our weakness of character: her disease an affliction of the mind’s incapacity to feel and mine of the body turning against itself. But on close examination all these wild and chaotic experiences – when viewed through the lens of a narrative – break down into boring clichés. Any truly sick person knows that diseases are always tormentors of the mind and the body, and the soul too, if you believe in that sort of thing... I found myself disgusted when I re-examined what I had done to that relationship. I had mythologised us, taken away the choices we made in real-time – confused them with hindsight. In trying to make us great I stopped us from ever being alive. On the last day of my recent trip, a decade after we separated, we held each other through a particularly bad hangover. She said ‘I love you’, and I repeated ‘I love you too’. After a thoughtful moment, she turned to me and said ‘But it so doesn’t matter, does it?’ I realised then that she was right. We had always loved each other, but love was the least important thing. I boarded the plane to Adelaide and flew across seasons, from summer to winter back home. GIRLFRIEND Y: THE REAL DEAL My next relationship was the ‘mature’ attempt at love. It was my

longest and also probably my most realistic. It was a response to my last relationship. Everything that Y was, X wasn’t. We met in a club – a random encounter that seems so tenuous now, considering the fact that everything hinged on that moment. We had the same interests and similarly neurotic personalities. Eventually, we lived together and our relationship came to be defined through the day to day dramas of life: bills, responsibilities, the burden of passing time. We shared the burden of illnesses too, but her epilepsy manifested as constant forgetting, whereas my disease has always been of traumatic remembering. Our diseases bonded us in mutual sympathy. We travelled and not only passed that test, but fell more in love. I don’t have much to say about us, and that’s probably good, because it really was so bereft of drama. Most contemporary novels are about relationships like the one I was lucky enough to have with Y. Relationships of beautiful compromise, like in Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety. Ones defined through small sacrifices made daily that reap long term benefits. Little Wins: the stuff that makes up a good life. Y is the only ex I don’t speak to, or who doesn’t speak to me. There is probably something to be said in that. We had the most realistic relationship and a mature manifestation of love, favouring pragmatism over romanticism. However, reading my words back I can see a disturbing tendency to

still narrativise my memories, which undoubtedly worsens the grief of losing people I love. GIRLFRIEND Z: THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY If this were a story it would be the most cliché of all. It’s a masculine fable, known as ‘The One Who Got Away.’ I say masculine because this story is about a failure of action, commonly seen as failure in men. In stereotypical and quite problematic narratives of gender, a man ‘lets a woman get away’ whereas a woman ‘has a man leave her’. Think Tom in 500 Days of Summer, and Holly in P.S. I Love You. Tom is a clingy albeit likeable figure and Holly is a boring, grieving widow – almost archetypal figures in the history of love. My failure to keep Z was my failure as a man. After I had caught her, I should have held on to her. It is a story of the archetypal male-loser – of not being good enough. I fell in love with girlfriend Z in a way that reflects Y. When I met her I had that moment of recognition, although I can’t remember now whether or not I retroactively imposed it on the memory. We were working together. She wore this shirt with flowing, webbed fabric underneath her armpits, sort of like what you see on Spiderman’s costume, and my hand got tangled in it reaching for a glass. I’m sure now that in the moment I thought nothing of it. But my mind decided that was the frisson, and only recently I realised that I imposed

that after as the definite beginning of a new love narrative. I considered myself brave at times, for going along with the falling, rather than holding back. In many ways it was easy because we worked; we had that chemistry, the ‘it’ factor that other people feel. We were opposites: she lived entirely present tense, inhabiting the physical world as a rush of oncoming events; whereas I tend to live the reflective life of a troubled mind, enhanced through the months of confinement within my broken and immovable twentyone-year-old body. But really, I went along with the fall, because I had nothing else. Over time I loved her so much I wanted to become her. Was that brave to let go that much? It was something like worship, and when it becomes like that, it also becomes resentment. I could never be like her – our lives had already seen to that. She was better than me: healthier, happier, younger, and riding the wave of professional momentum. Z was on this great upswing where the good choices she made in her good life were then starting to come together to propel her into her future. A future that – as much as we wanted it to – never included me. I suspect that she loved me so much she wanted to fix me; to repair the damage the illness wreaked on my body and mind. Again, we have archetypes: the nurse and the patient. Z tried so hard to fix the

things that are impossible to repair because they were never broken, but lost. You can cut out the disease, but you cannot return the lost years. At my most demonic, I took pride in the fact that Z was powerless; Z could have everything in her own life but she would never have the privilege of helping me. To love someone so much you want to destroy them: this is a terrible thing. I am ashamed. The worst part is that it was the most damaging of my stories, I know because I wrote it. I play the best victim. The final story concludes with her leaving, as it has to. Time passes and grief turns to shame, then to disbelief. Disbelief not at how the story ended but at what I became. This all occurs in epilogue. CYCLES, REFLECTIONS, X AGAIN On the way back from my visit with X it hit me just how much of this pain I could have avoided if I didn’t turn those relationships into stories and turn myself into an eternal victim of failed love. What is the point of all this? Some late-twenties High Fidelity type reassessment of my past relationships? Creating meaning through insisting there was never any in the first place? I guess I’m just trying to warn off any fellow narcissists from the danger of turning your relationships into narratives. They aren’t: they’re life. Maybe this is why I can’t write good fiction...

Am I suggesting that we stop making narratives of all our memories? That it’s all inherently meaningless anyway because life is unfathomable? No, I’m not nihilistic. It all comes down to what we think the purpose of storytelling is. I think that ultimately stories are there to improve us, to give meaning to our lives. The danger is when we construct ourselves as the victim within those stories, like I have. It stops us from changing behaviours that may actually be problematic. And what are the saddest stories for if we don’t learn something from them? Perhaps the answer lies in constructing healthier personal narratives and staying vigilant when our relationships really do seem to echo those clichéd storylines. I think we should also covet the bravery to fall in love in such a cynical age. There is something almost subversive about it: it felt that way for me with Z. Love is the falling. Love is the story we create afterwards to impose meaning on chaos; and love is the respect we show to ourselves and to our old partners in remembering it was real-life we were living all along.

P.K. Stalenhoef wrote this in an attempt to salvage something from the mess of his first novel.

HOW TO MAKE SOMEONE’S CHRISTMAS

WORDS BY: FI FR ASER

Stick with me here, even if you don’t have a uterus. You’ll understand why I’m writing this by the end. I can’t say for sure when my last period was. This doesn’t fill me with the sort of panic you might expect. Since I hit puberty, controlling my menstrual cycle has been the dream. There’s nothing quite like finding the aftermath of an impromptu massacre in your underwear when you aren’t expecting it. Hormonal contraception was revolutionary because of the reproductive control it offered women. However, many in my generation aren’t only taking it to avoid pregnancy; we’re trying to exercise control over something that is unpleasant, inconvenient, and continues to be a source of sexism and stigma. Not to mention, it’s expensive. A pack of regular tampons from Woolies can run for about $5 (10% of which is GST. Thanks, government. Choosing not to bleed through my clothing is a luxury). But you’re probably going to want different absorbencies, plus maybe some liners for security, and night time pads because you’re not meant to leave tampons in that long (the Toxic Shock Syndrome fear is real). Now repeat those expenses several times a year, for the next forty years. Yay! I’m ridiculously lucky. Pads and

tampons have been regular staples on the family shopping list my entire life – I have two sisters – and the drawer in the bathroom has always been kept stocked. I’ve had the money to experiment with birth control methods until I found the perfect balance between ‘no blood’ and ‘no side-effects’. Even when I was getting my period, I rarely had anything bigger to worry about. I was safe.

period they’re asking Australians to donate a handbag filled with gifts to make a vulnerable woman’s Christmas special.

I cannot even begin to imagine how much worse it must be when you’re homeless.

You can go to their website, sharethedignity.com.au for more information.

There are a number of factors working against women (and others who menstruate) who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. I don’t mean this as a criticism, but many individuals who donate to charity simply don’t think to provide pads and tampons. Mixed with the expensiveness of these products, those who can’t afford them may feel their only choice is to steal them.

THE TL;DR

We’re students, nobody has a lot of spare cash – but why not go in as a group? It only takes a little from each person to fill a bag with gifts ranging from practical (pads, deodorant, toothpaste, shower products) to fun (a scarf, jewellery, Christmas cards).

WHO: Share the Dignity WHO FOR: Homeless women WHEN: 19th November to 3rd December WHAT: A donated handbag filled with sanitary goods and other products

But let’s cut to the chase. WHAT CAN YOU DO? From the 19th of November to the 3rd of December (right after exams!) Australian organisation Share the Dignity will be running their ‘It’s in the Bag’ Christmas campaign. Share the Dignity aims to provide sanitary products to those who need them year round, but for this two-week

WHERE: Check out their website, http://www.sharethedignity.com.au for collection locations WHY: Because y’all are some lovely people and it’s Christmas

Fi has thirteen things due before the end of the year. You can find her curled up in a ball, crying.’

2016 MUSIC WRAP UP WORDS BY: ANDREW L ANG

Andrew Lang gives some of his best and worst of music in 2016. Yes, he knows it’s only October. FAVOURITES

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Fingertips – Vera Blue

Will – Julianna Barwick

Never did I, music snob, think I’d be putting a former The Voice contestant in my top releases for the year. Yet here we are. After placing 3rd on spinny chair karaoke in 2013, Celia Pavey put out a couple of folk records under her own name, before releasing Fingertips this year under her new Vera Blue moniker. The EP blends the styles of of folk, electronic, and pop music, creating incredible sounds powered by Pavey’s incredible vocal range. Very excited to hear more from her soon.

Barwick attempts to give her vocal loop-based ambient sound more depth with the addition of modular synthesisers. It’s not a bad album by any means, just incredibly distracted and without the dynamism of her previous efforts. Nepenthe was such a promising step in the right direction, adding a greater diversity to her sound with the addition of a wider array of instruments while still remaining true to her earlier work; Will, on the other hand, feels like a sidestep at best.

Radial – Benoit Pioulard

The Wilderness – Explosions in the Sky

Drone/ambient extraordinaire Benoit Pioulard released a pay-what-you-want EP this year in reaction to the medical bills resulting from a fractured wrist. The result is three tracks of incredible, sublime beauty; sounds that are eerie in tone, uncertain in origin, and breathtaking with every listen. This was the release that hooked me onto Pioulard’s work, and since then I’ve jumped headfirst into his back catalogue. Highly, highly recommended.

Explosions in the Sky’s 2003 record The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place will continue to stand as one of the great works in post-rock, but almost everything since has felt clinical, cold, and overthought. Sadly, despite the further introduction of electronic elements to their sound, The Wilderness falls into this category too. A couple of kooky synths here and there isn’t enough to save EITS from what is ultimately a frigid sound that feels stuck in yesteryear. There’s a couple of noteworthy moments, but for the most part it’s little more than decent background listening.

Formless – The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die Emo revivalists The World Is A Beautiful Place’s debut 2010 EP saw a rerelease this year, but the band have taken it a step further than a quick remaster of the original songs. While the first half of the album is indeed a remaster of the EP (cleaner, yet retaining the raw and rough feeling of the original), the second half is a complete re-recording made by the band this year. It’s a fascinating look into the development of their sound in the intervening years, whilst still remaining true to the original where appropriate. Oh, and it’s free.

Andrew is also a musician, podcaster, and cashew addict. Further reviews and musings from him can be found at langandrew.tumblr.com.

SNACK SPECIAL

RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT WORDS BY: RUBY AND CL ANCY DOW ART WORK BY: EMILY HART

The shame that we felt after walking out of Foodland with a bulging plastic bag filled with $46 of biscuits, and then returning minutes later because we forgot the milk, can only be compared to ripping your trousers in front of the entire year 12 class – something Clancy has also done. We consider ourselves to be experts in the field of biscuits, which is why we set ourselves this challenge. One might say it runs in the family. Our mother, in our not-so-humble opinion, is the best cook this side of wherever it is that Gordon Ramsay lives. When we moved out of home, mum gave us both a big Tupperware container filled with cookies of all varieties, promising to re-fill it every time we come home for uni holidays. And that she has done, even taking special requests for our favourites. It’s also worth mentioning that our father named one of our brothers after his favourite biscuit, the Tim Tam…or at least that’s what he says. We love biscuits. It’s in our genes! Basically, we are the dream team for the job. We’ll be judging 8 different varieties of bickies, in the name of science.

ARNOTT’S YOYO BISCUITS

ARNOTT’S SHORTBREAD CREAM, TWISTED FAVES, STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM

Bang for your buck: $2.80 for 28 biscuits, which somewhat pleased me because the price worked out an even 10 cents per biscuit.

Bang for your buck: $2.50 for 15 minutes

Initial thoughts: Particularly keen for these, as they happen to be one of my childhood favourites. Was especially impressed that each biscuit had a different pattern. Taste: Well, as they say, ‘…the bees make the honey for the Arnott’s YoYo biscuits…’ and that was one of the predominant flavours. These sweet crunchy biscuits were a hit, and one of my particular favourites. Rating: 4/5 Best served: With a slice of cheese. Offsets the sweetness perfectly, and really makes the biscuit shine. Trust me on this, do it.

Initial thoughts: Smells like strawberries. Which I guess is kinda the point. Taste: Nice crumbly shortbread, creamy strawberry filling. A little too sweet (to be expected after your thirteenth biscuit), but generally pretty nice. Rating: 3/5 Best served: Dunked in coffee. Or on their own. We’re not here to tell you what to do.

BLACK AND GOLD CREAM WAFERS VANILLA FLAVOURED

SNACK RIGHT SULTANA CHOC FRUIT SLICE

OREO THINS LEMON CHEESECAKE

Bang for your buck: 16 wafers for $ 3.75, which wasn’t too shabby. 60 cents per biscuit making it the uni student’s dream bickie.

Bang for your buck: $4.61 for 10 serves. Good luck getting 10 willing participants to try these healthy looking treats though…

Bang for your buck: $1.79 for sixteen thins. Could probably eat the box in a sitting though.

Initial thoughts: The packaging was underwhelming. Says Black and Gold but mostly consisted of white and yellow. Frankly quite disappointing.

Initial thoughts: The biscuits are fucking huge. Instead of lots of little biscuits, there was 4 biscuit slabs. Hopefully the chocolate overpowers the 40% of real fruit that these contain.

Taste: I think all wafer biscuits taste like stale cardboard, so I was pleasantly surprised when these were tolerable. They weren’t great, but they weren’t terrible either. I did have to supress several memories of receiving communion at a conservative Anglican church, but I’d probably still buy these again.

Taste: THE CHOCOLATE DID NOT OVERPOWER THE SULTANAS. YUCK YUCK YUCK. HOW CAN SOMETHING THAT LOOKS SO BEAUTIFUL ON THE PACKET TASTE SO DISGUSTING IN REAL LIFE. Rating: 0/5

Rating: 2/5 Best served: On top of vanilla ice cream with a thick chocolate sauce.

Best served: To that lecturer you really hate. Go on, you know you’ve got one.

Initial thoughts: Comes in two cute little bags inside the box, one for now and one for later. I mean, two for now. Initially I was worried that the thin styled Oreo was going to taint my Oreo experience but it definitely improved it. Taste: These literally melt in your mouth. Because these are thins, they’re small enough to fit a whole one in your mouth, which is exactly what you’ll want to do. Rating: 4.5, only because these are a limited edition. Also because I’m sad that my vegan friends can’t partake in this excellence like they can with Oreo originals. Best served: Alone. With the rest of the packet.

BAROSSA COUNTRY BISCUITS MELTING MOMENTS

ARNOTT’S TIMTAM ORIGINAL

ARNOTT’S VENETIAN

Bang for your buck: We got these from the marked down section at our local shops for $1.99 (although the original price was $8.59 for 8 biscuits). Not sure if it’s because they are crushed, past their use-by-date, totally disgusting, or all of the above.

Bang for your buck: $3.65 for 11 biscuits

Bang for your buck: $3.29 for 16 biscuits.

Initial thoughts: The packaging looks like a chocolate whirlpool. Not sure if that’s relevant.

Initial thoughts: ‘Those look gross.’ ‘Hey! I love those ones.’

Initial thoughts: Comes in a gorgeous little bag with a brown cardboard tag, tied up with twine. Apprehensive, but excited to try something made with love and also to support a small business. Taste: A bit stale. I guess you get what you pay for, and we paid for expired cookies. Rating: 1/5 Best served: Three months ago.

Taste: Pure Australian heaven, could only be improved with a slather of vegemite on top.

Taste: Ruby announced loudly that these tasted of burnt sultanas and disappointment. Clancy thought they were the queen of all biscuits. They are fancy, light, and tasty.

Rating: 5/5 Best served: With a warm Milo. Tim-Tam-Slam the shit out of that biscuit. Try it even with Kahlua, apparently, or Baileys. We haven’t tried it, but we want to (maybe next time, when we haven’t spent all the grocery money on $40 worth of biscuits).

Rating: 0.2, or 4.5, depending on who you ask. Best served: On a yacht. Preferably with someone to feed you grapes as well. *** So what have we learned from this? • TimTams are super good. • Healthy shit tastes like shit. • Eating cookies can be exhausting. • We now have a bajillion opened packets of cookies to finish up. • Most importantly, this is the price you pay for art. Ruby is a nursing student who’d probably marry Taylor Swift. Clancy is an education student who enjoys the concept of teaching in theory, but is scared of large groups of children.

WHITE GOLD. WORDS BY: AL AN “SWEET T” RYAN ART WORK BY: JOHN HARGREAVES

In 2014, the World Health Organisation declared that 1.9 billion adults are overweight worldwide. That’s one in every four people on the planet. The only question is: how do we feed the other three?

12-piece Melody Pop orchestra. Was it excessive? Sure! But I’d rather blow a million dollars than burn a precious calorie.

My name is Alan Ryan and for sixteen years I was an international confectionery dealer. A real stud in the game too. I ran everything in my time, you name it: Ukranian Mr Fizzy, yoghurt Mentos from Malaysia, Galaxy chocolate from the Saudis: everything from Thai restaurant mints to Kit-Kats so fresh you could taste the monkey blood. I even dabbled in dog chocolate.

The most important rule of dealing is that everybody’s sweet for something. A good dealer can always tell. Your kid brother? He’s into the bragging candies: jawbreakers, Warheads, Red Hots. Your uncle in his 60s? Lindt chocolate – or as it’s called in the business, “old man chocolate.” Grandma? Boiled sweets, naturally, but you’d better use whatever oldtimey, racially insensitive names she uses for them and if you don’t know, just make one up so long as it offends something. We all play the game.

They called me “Sweet Tooth” or “Sweet T” for short. I wasn’t shy about it either, I loved the sugar rush – high GI and all refined. “Supersize” was my motto. I drove a solid gold car and retained none of my original teeth. On Weeknights I threw gaud, lavish parties in my gingerbread mansion, and filled them with music from my

You probably think I’m a monster, a lost cause, or that I’ve sold my soul to Toucan Sam. Believe me, I’ve heard it before. I can name at least seven governments that thought so too. But you need people like me: think of the diabetics, the aid missions selling Freddo fundraisers, the fat guys on cheat day, parents who need to shut their kids up at the grocery

store. You’re hooked. Where do you think it all comes from? In the end, not even I could resist that sweet, sweet crystal. They say you should never try your own merchandise, but I thought that just related to drugs and guns and such. It’s not. What they don’t tell you is that shit soon becomes a part of you. My veins ran with treacle, my eyes began to gummi over, I was sweating 7 Up, and I’m told that even my hair began to taste slightly tangy. Yet I still wanted more. I had to have more. By my final year in the business I was desperate. My tastebuds were so desensitised, even the pixiest of pixy sticks were tasting like celery. I had nothing left to taste. Nothing real at least. I’d long heard rumours of a very rare Jelly Belly flavour, the ‘American Patriot,’ a hybrid of cherry, coconut and blueberry flavours developed for President Reagan during his final term. I didn’t believe it existed though. Heck, even if it was real, only the

most powerful leaders on the planet could ever hope to hold one.

to the poor, and forced me to live on the Schwarzenegger ranch.

The next day I got call from Kim Jong-Il. Believe it or not, sweets are hard to get by in North Korea, and The Dear Leader had been trying to catch up with the US’s confectionery capabilities for decades. I was offered a trade I was too crazy to pass up: international confectionery secrets for two tiny Patriots. They’d been dyed to show teensy tiny stars and stripes on the shell, and were delicious. That was it for me.

You see, the hardest thing for me was leaving the life. I still love the life. We were treated like Willy Wonka with muscle. We had it all just for the asking. I had paper bags stashed with candy jewellery in the kitchen and a sugar bowl next to the bed.

It wasn’t the CIA or Interpol that finally brought me in. It was Jamie Oliver, tired of de-fattening British schoolyards, his heart was set on taking out the big guys. He enjoyed it. The United Nations came after that, then the Human Rights Council. They even formed a committee with some of my closest friends – Ronny McDonald, Uncle Toby, the Paddle Pop Lion – to chastise me for my actions. Next thing I knew they’d melted down my chocolate credit cards, fed my house

Today everything is different. I can’t even get decent deserts. Right after I got here I ordered some strawberry cheesecake. They gave me tofu with jam. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a bodybuilder.

Rob had another article written for this, but it was near 100% slander. Still, he thanks On Dit for giving him the confidence to express himself through writing this past year.

THE SNACK QUEST WORDS AND PHOTOGR APHY BY: ELLEN SCHULZ

A few weeks ago I found myself sitting on a bus for eight hours, travelling through rural China. It was a winding road through rocky valleys in the north of Sichuan province – that’s the one with the pandas and the pepper. This bus ride was a mixed experience, but certainly a very worthwhile journey. As we passed tiny villages and roadside pit stops I saw sign after sign emblazoned with characters reading ‘xiao chi’, which literally translates to ‘small eat’. Two simple, little characters that hold so much potential. China is the land of the banquet, the feast: meals that are not only about the food, but are heavy with the weight of tradition and culture, friendship and networking. Less well-known is how incredibly well the Chinese do snacking. In China, the humble ‘small eat’ is not to be underestimated. It’s the kind of food you can eat at any time of the day – steaming dumpling soup, slurped while perched on a low stool at a hole-in-the-wall canteen, or golden honey-fried donuts on a stick made fresh by a street vendor. And snacking isn’t just the small bites you grab in between meals, but rather any meal that is less than a banquet: breakfast, takeaway, bao zi, noodles. Snacking is taken so seriously that there are entire streets, known as ‘snack streets’ scattered across the nation. The most famous, quintessential snack street is Wangfujing in Beijing, a pedestrian street in the ancient network of hutong

alleyways, packed full of pocketsized restaurants and all manner of street foods. So, setting out to write an article about such streets I found myself on a snack quest in the wonderful city of Shanghai, where I am currently residing as an exchange student. Let’s be honest, this is the kind of quest that dreams are made of – I envisioned myself as a modern Marco Polo of snacking, exploring all the snack food the mysterious East has to offer – and all in the name of ‘research’. But here, the going gets rough: my snack street dreams were left sadly unfulfilled as I searched Wujiang Road and Yuyuan Temple. These are two of Shanghai’s most famous snack street locales, but I found only over-sanitised restaurants and ugly food courts in place of the hole-in-the-wall gems and intriguing, wafting scents I was looking for. I still got to sample some local treats, like yellow-crowned crab meat xiaolong bao – Shanghai’s iconic soup dumpling – dipped in Chinese vinegar, the unsung hero of dumpling consumption. However, despite the great food (and while I have it on good authority that Wangfujing and other snack streets are still going strong) my snack street experiences just weren’t what I’d hoped for. My snack-thusiasm didn’t remain dampened for long, though. Shortly after my most recent disappointing snack street misadventure, I was sitting in my dorm room, hungry as

per usual, trying to decide if I should walk all of 100 metres to the canteen or just have dinner delivered to my building. Scrolling through the plethora of delivery options available on China’s most popular food apps, it struck me: this is it. This is the future of China’s snack culture – the virtual snack street, all from the comfort of your home. I can have juicy, fried sheng jian bao (the other unsung hero of the dumpling world) or Pizza Hut delivered on a whim. I can have any of the multitude of ice-cream options available in the convenience store (now, that’s a whole new article for another day!) sent to me for the cost of small change. And even better, I don’t even need to have that small change on me, because everything is done via mobile phone: tap, tap, tap, and your snacks are on their way. It’s affordable, irresistibly easy and a fitting development of snacking as an institution here in China. It smells like the future… or maybe that’s just the delicious scent of noodles wafting into my room. The evolution of snack culture is like everything in China: changing and developing faster than you can anticipate, so dynamic that you don’t realise what is going on until you’re in the thick of it. So here’s to a culture that truly values the art of snacking; here’s to embracing change and new snack-adventures – what a time to be alive! Ellen is living it up on exchange in Shanghai but is worried that she’s on her way to literally becoming a dumpling.

AN ODE TO ALMOND BUTTER WORDS BY: KRYSTAL BUCKLEY ART WORK BY: HAYLEY MOHACSY

The art of snacking is a delicate one. Like a flower unfurling its petals under the warmth of the morning sun, one ought to approach snacking with the skill and grace it truly, truly deserves. At a time when motivation levels have sunk to profound depths, it is often the mere thought of snacks themselves that heave you from the abyss of no return. Sparking renewed determination, productivity ensues. I mean, who doesn’t love a good afternoon rummage through the pantry? Scouring shelves laden with packets of IndoMie and stacked boxes of BBQ Flavoured Shapes (the new, disappointing kind), is one ever truly satisfied with the outcome? That’s what I thought. It’s all because you’ve overlooked the key to

snacking success. Almond Butter. O, Almond Butter, how I love thee. Adieu! Adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? ‘Tis almond butter, it seems. – John Keats Best enjoyed when paired with sleepless nights and double dipped spoons, this whipped, velvety goodness pulls out all the snacking stops. Surprisingly healthy and rich in texture, dash some in between a medjool date and there won’t just be a party in your mouth, it’ll be more like a soiree. Aligned with a seemingly bottomless pit of snack foods, almond butter is basically the kid about town. Drizzled across porridge or tossed through a leafy salad, the king of snacking knows no boundaries. Next time you find yourself staring blankly at the contents of your fridge in hopeful desperation, grab a spoon and jar of Almond Butter. Soon enough, you’ll be wondering where it all went. And why you feel so sick. We don’t know Krystal, but Hayley used to do drama with her and said she’s nice. Thanks Krystal!

PEOPLE WHO ARE LEFT WORDS BY: GABRIELL A MCEVOY

Last day of placement…that’s exciting! Here darling, here’s some beans for you – (forcing powdered egg into unwilling mouth.) Gooood girl! – (speaking to ninety-year-old woman). ‘You look bummed’ – a final exit. Professionals who did not comfort the young woman being chased by the older woman with hands clenched and voice trembling with the frustrations of aphasia and invisibility. We are as invisible as them: as irrelevant and inept as the older people left here to disappear – to minimise the discomfort of others. Walking out of a locked place where people are left sitting in stained seats, pelvises soaked with urine and faeces, watching a television of constant noise: trauma, crime, tragedy on repeat. I know their collective distress has not been publicly documented, acknowledged, realised. Empathy silenced beneath a quilt of apathy. ‘They are here now and that is all that matters.’ Personal identity diminished beneath psychiatric diagnoses. Physicians extend lives of stifling confinement. I leave while they stay without release or relief from the daily monotony of restraint, sedatives, and suffering.

PERCEPTIONS WORDS BY: L AUREN HAYNES ART WORK BY: ZAKIA SAYMONTEE

The brick wall of the adjacent parking lot stared Michelle down. Each brick a slightly different shade of speckled red stacked against one another in uniformity. She warmed her hands on her pale pink Minnie Mouse coffee mug against the cool breeze of her balcony and got lost in the unchanging pattern. Her attention poured onto a single brick and she wondered if this was the same brick that captured her fascination yesterday. Perhaps she recognised its particular shade and detail, but then she wasn’t sure, as a brick three across and one down also looked familiar. She pulled her sleeves over her hands – an old habit bred from self-consciousness – and let the warm beverage comfort her as she stacked herself out of existence among the bricks. A clapping bang pulled her back to reality. A scissor lift and some construction cones sectioned off part of the alley below her. A young man with long blonde hair pulled into a messy pony tail surveyed the brick wall and acknowledged her leaning over with a friendly wave and unassuming smile. She recoiled from his gaze and ran inside, leaving her favourite mug on the table. She watched the steam rise from her unfinished coffee from behind the glass sliding door. Unable to fetch it for fear of being seen, she clicked the kettle on and made another. Her afternoons were spent completing her part-time honours, ‘Representations of Mental Health

Disorders in Contemporary Fiction’, in the quietest corner of the library. She struggled to focus today. The heat from his gaze had not yet dissipated. She couldn’t figure out if it was warmth or searing discomfort. Her eyes, a deep blue and a flecked green, were not used to eye contact. Thinking about the morning’s panicked retreat brought colour to her cheeks and tension to her muscles. She stayed out all afternoon and evening, and only returned to shower before night shift at the hotel. She woke at 12.30 to the mechanical sounds of the scissor lift. Pulling her living room curtain back, she was overwhelmed by a brilliant white. She placed her coffee cup next to yesterdays, of which the milk was already curdling. The white didn’t reach the edges of her familiar red bricks but seemed to emanate from a light source at the centre of the wall. The left of the circle was overcast, with the dark shadows of cloud cover being pulled up across the centre by the large sponge of the long haired blonde man. With him engaged in painting she felt safe to go in for a closer look. The hair that didn’t make it into his messy up do was tucked behind his ears. He wore dark jeans and a plain grey t-shirt – just tight enough to outline his lean muscle mass. He sensed her presence and glanced over his shoulder, flashing a wide grin at seeing her once again. She stepped back, but her balcony, made of glass, provided no refuge. He turned back to his work, still

smiling and she slowly and carefully sat down to spend the rest of her coffee finding shapes in the clouds. She woke to the same mechanical whirring the next afternoon. This afternoon, sharp angles of colour jutted out from the bottom edges of the circle. Determined to not be rude again, she’d practiced smiling and waving casually in the mirror. He was higher up today, to the right and noticed as she slid the door open. After his predicted nod, slightly more calculated today, a result of the previous mornings, no doubt, she managed a weak smile and slight hand movement. His natural grin shot back across his face, a little wider than before. Feeling more at ease, she dragged her chair up to the glass of her balcony. With her knees up to her chest and Minny Mouse in hand, she watched the painting progress over the next several days. She watched the mess of colours climb and smash together in stark contrast and sharp angles, knitting themselves into coherence. The shading was all wrong and each section was too busy being something else to convey simply a cheek, or a shoulder, but when viewed as a whole, by day six, it expressed the loose concept of a woman. Her arm was the silhouette of lavender against bright sunlight, her shoulder the intricate detail of a butterfly’s wing. Rivers flowed up her side that bled into deep reds that veined up her neck and transformed

into a tree that housed a blue swallow in her left breast. Her knees, a bed of flowers, were pulled up against her chest. Michelle wasn’t sure if the gaping white hole in the centre was left intentionally blank or if he just hadn’t decided to give her a heart yet. One morning he was level with her balcony. Much too nervous to go outside, she watched him from behind her curtains. He brought together the patches of swirling colours and strange angles with dark lines that traced out the soft edges of her face and filled in the deep void of her eyes. Although obscured behind his work platform, Michelle thought she could see the slightest glimpse of a light pink heart where the blank patch had been. He looked around, as if expecting her, but she kept to her safe place. Greeting her the next day was the intense stare of the fully formed woman across from her. Her eyes, one holding the universe, and the other holding the greens and blues of the earth’s curve, held her gaze. The deep brown pool in which her head had lain was now defined into messy curls. In spite of how embarrassed and exposed she felt, Michelle couldn’t help smiling at the intense beauty and familiarity of the final details of the mural. More familiar was the pale pink, Minny Mouse mug held in place of her heart.

ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU HOW THE STORY ENDS WORDS BY: KALI IVANCEVIC

And I saw through a looking glass with memories engraved in the clear. I saw the fingerprints of another’s eyes witnessing everything I held near. You took a peek into a mind that was not. You peered into a heart that had often been forgot. You saw a light that shone from dual setting suns. You caught a moon that only lived for the stars, and for the fun. They burned bright like the lightening we watch from our windows. You saw that light and ran towards the flame. Through the haze, through the wet, and through the cold, cold rain. You ran because of curiosity, you ran without a care. You ran because they looked like someone you knew, someone who had never dared. Dared to live. Dared to die. But died? with the understanding that the wings they had built could surely fly. Why did the big storm rage when the sun had been so kind? Why had the moon cried when all people ever did was pray for dreams to find. Sharp fingertips were tapping across sharper collarbones. You hear songs sung from lips, from scarlet parted domes. They say, ‘You are the wind, but I never wanted my warmth to wander. You let yourself fade away because you find solace in your beholder.’ I walked away one fateful day and fell through a fracture in my world. As I fell, like that character I’d played, the oceans dried, the skies broke and nature curled back into its starting state. This chaos was my reality: it seeped into a river of

misunderstandings and lies. Lies that carried on wandering, like the ficklest of goodbyes. The location of that river has been carved into my heart. But I let it go because I realised that I’d reached an end and not a start. Why did the little boy who had wings never fly? Why did the old woman who lived forever never ask to die? Why did the bird who flew at night never sing? Why did the seedling never grow into a what, or a thing? Why did the tiger leave his children for the hunters to kill, carve, and leave rotten? Why did those cubs let themselves be forgotten? Why did you ask questions that you knew had no answers? Why didn’t you pass on the secrets which could have given so many chances? Why do the beautiful stars never fall? Dear stars, I know that you know that this world is not all. Bright stars, little dying stars, big shining stars in their height, let yourselves go from the things you may know and fly away from that fright. There is a universe of wonder, completely crafted from magic. Leave behind the book, the pages, the words, the stories, which make your life so tragic. Let yourself be a bird that ascends with confidence into the night. Let yourself be something that shines a million shades of bright. For there is a place with secrets carved into the land’s tender vanity. Where mysteries rob you of your sanity and miracles hide behind your so called reality.

BROKEN GLASS WORDS BY: ANN JACKSON

A place where their words are spikes but your knowledge is a spear. Find this place, it’s so easy. It’s so incredibly near. But in case you don’t just remember, it’s alright. Just remember that there will always be another day after the night. And the people wait patiently, wait for your return. We wait and laugh. We weep and we learn. I’ll meet you there, stranger, says the Entertainer. I’ll see you again one last time. This is never an end, there is always a beginning. And all fools eventually fly.

The final time we fought, we snapped our brittle words upon the air and ground our pride to broken glass. The sunset purpled like a bruise.

RANT SPACE WORDS BY: BRYDIE KOSMINA

BLACKOUT MADNESS Blackouts are weird. I get it. Particularly sustained blackouts, which lead into the night for long enough that we all go to sleep early because it’s dark and we can’t do anything else but get drunk and sleep with each other like the good ol’ days. BUT JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE. I thought enough of society that we would make it through a few hours without power before descending into madness. But apparently not. I was at uni when the power went out. We drank a bottle of wine and then were asked to leave the premises. Ya win some, ya lose some. Getting home was a descent through the seven levels of hell. What the fuck, guys? Just making it to the mall was life-threatening. I can’t drive but even I know that when the traffic lights are out, treat everything like a roundabout AND GIVE WAY TO YOUR RIGHT. Also, DON’T SPEED IN RAIN and DON’T HIT PEDESTRIANS. Finally made it to the mall, and it was like stepping into the opening act of a zombie apocalypse film. Alarms going on, people furtively scurrying about the edges, ominous dark clouds, kids crying in the distance. I slightly drunkenly badgered my sister (who works in a shop

there) for a lift home. I should’ve walked, it would’ve been quicker, safer, and sobered me up faster. I genuinely thought I’d die trying to drive through Light Square. Cars driving the wrong way, cutting in front of other people. Tim Noonan, the weather guy from Channel 7, pulled up next to me looking harried and scared, and I knew fear. The blackout itself was fine. I found a few more bottles of wine secreted about my house, and passed the time merrily. I only burned myself twice on tea candles, and actually made it to bed at a reasonable time, so I counted the night as a win. But the coverage after has been THE MOST ANNOYING THING OF ALL TIME. What kind of pollie tries to turn a STORM into a political point? IT’S A STORM. THEY HAPPEN. We have some appalling politicians in Australia, but somehow I don’t think any of them are powerful enough to genuinely create a catastrophic weather event. Literally every single (actual) expert in the country has stated that renewables aren’t at fault, but the armchair electrical engineers seem to be springing up all over the place. STOP IT. WIND IS A THING THAT HAPPENS. GO AND

TALK ABOUT SOMETHING IMPORTANT LIKE OUR TERRIBLE REFUGEE POLICIES OR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ISSUES. If anyone was talking about the people on the west coast who had to go days without power, sure, valid news stories. Also, stop saying ‘It’s 2016, things like this shouldn’t happen!’ It’s literally just a blackout, guys, it’s not the end of the fucking world. Tl;dr grow up, all of you. Stop going apeshit just because the weather has.

MR STABLES AND MISS L’S CORRESPONDENCE

ISSUE 12 (MY LAST): Stables and L are back for the last time ever. Unfortunately, this correspondence section probably will not be making a return next year. However, it was an absolute pleasure answering your questions –and as for me, well, it’s the last time I’ll ever have to pretend I’m two different people. And for the last time, the original questions are not provided, so this is the last time you’ll ever have to infer the question asked. French dude – When you say that the last time you ever ate out it you ended up with hair in your teeth, what exactly did you mean by that and what is it that you want to know? Seeing as this is the last edition it’s not really something I can answer once I have gotten clarification from you in the next edition. In anticipation of whatever you clarification may be I will offer these two answers: 1) return the meal and get a refund and possibly sue the restaurant; or 2) shave. Karl Marc Jacobs – I don’t particularly like Salties either but going so far as to say you’re going to ‘unfriend on fb anyone who supports their stupid views’ and that those ‘Salties should be outlawed’ only goes to show that FB is not only an acronym for a popular social media platform but also an acronym for what you are

– a fucking bitch. People can think what they want no matter how much hearing it makes you wish it was them instead of Syrians being nuked and rebuked on Christmas Island. Camus – So you say that you feel like every day will be your last? You know what? Me too. Me too. Spice – I mentioned in the first edition that all of the best dank memes could be found on Overheard. Since then, Overheard has become a place full of shit and outdated memes. The occasional good meme that pops up is either a repost from another meme page or FUCKING STOLEN FROM MY GROUP CHATS. For the best dank memes, just make friends with depressed people and their meme ‘likes’ will pop up on your newsfeed. Desgoffe und Taxis –If on your last date your date kept her distance from you then I’d say it’s either because you’re physically repulsive or you smell. Instead of asking her when was the last time she stopped acting like a bitch you should ask yourself when the last time you had a bath was or the last time you properly groomed yourself you disgusting little pig rat.. Edmund Beaumont-Morrisey – You can’t low culture? Good. Fuck

off. Go read a proper book instead of a student magazine you snobbish prick. Princes – There isn’t really an effective way of avoiding having to pay entry fees in clubs, unless you know the manager of the club or something. It always sucks paying those fees though, and it can really take its toll on you if you’re low on dosh. Bod the Guilder – Jesus man, always make sure you have protection! I mean, they teach you this in school. Fancy going to a nightclub, expecting to pick up, and not bringing a hard hat and other PPE gear when you know you’re doing renovations. Your boss was right to send you home. Nooseman Stan – As summer is approaching, the best way to cool off is by wearing weather appropriate clothing. Don’t wear tight trousers or long sleeves; you’d be better off slipping into something more comfortable like a coma or a noose. Andre – I’m not going to reveal who we (Mr Stables and Miss L) are, or rather, is. Nobody really cares to be honest, and it’s not like I want people to know. (But it’s B E M M E R).

DODGY CRAFTS WITH MADDY AND EM WORDS BY: MADDY SEXTON AND EMILY HART ART WORK BY: EMILY HART

ICED DOORMAT We made it to our last column! You have also made it to our last column, which is probably more of an achievement on your part than ours (even though this was probably the biggest commitment of our lives thus far). We thought we would go out in style and leave this doormat behind for you all as a delicious and daily underfoot reminder of the craft suffering you’ve endured this year. An extra fun fact: one time Emily went to a biscuit reader (like a palm reader, but even more scientifically accurate) and got told that she was an Iced VoVo…take that as you will. YOU WILL NEED: A rectangular doormat Red, black and white acrylic paint Paintbrush A packet of Iced VoVos (for research) EATING TIME: 1. Look at an Iced VoVo to get an idea of the proportions of colour on a real-life biscuit. Maybe try tasting the biscuit to really get a good idea

of those colours. Mix your red and white paint together until you have a good shade of biscuit pink going.

difficult and dangerous.) And that’s it! Sit on your porch and eat biscuits! Choose your subjects for 2017!

2. Paint the entire doormat pink, leaving a about a 1 inch border around the edge of the mat. Potentially paint everything else you own pink as well while you’re at it.

OTHER BISCUITS TO EAT/ PAINT:

3. Once the pink is dry (or not, got work in 45 min), paint a nice red jammy strip right down the middle of your rectangle, leaving the border unpainted still. 4. Two coconut options: neatly paint thin white lines all over your dried pink and red mat, OR abstractly splatter white paint with abandon. From experience, excessive consumption of biscuits does seem to increase likeliness of choosing option two. 5. Optional last step: with your black paint (or whatever colour your porch is, actually), fill in the negative edges around the border of your mat to give it the genuine Arnott’s scalloped edge effect. (You could also cut the mat but Maddy has sensibly advised that this seems

• Nice (very easy, very nice) • Scotch finger (exotic) • Fairy biscuits (best) • A teddy bear biscuit (for those who excelled in school) Otherwise, if you think about it, all doormats look like biscuits, so you don’t even really have to do anything. If you have a doormat, you have a biscuit doormat. Well done. (This article is not endorsed or sponsored in any way by Arnott’s and we are personally offended.)