Issue 83.4

INSIDE: DIALECTS, ADDICTIONS AND DATA LAWS 1

2

Issue 4

CONTENTS The Bangles

AROUND CAMPUS

TECHNOLOGY

Editorial ........................................................... 2 How to Contribute to On Dit .......................... 3 What’s On ..................................................... 4-5 Letters to the Editor ........................................ 6 Student Representative Council ....................... 7 Clubs on Campus ............................................. 8 State of the Union ........................................... 9 Campus News ................................................. 10 Humans of Adelaide University ................ 20-21

Spotify ........................................................ 14-15 Avoiding the Laws ...................................... 35-37 Guide to Meta Data Laws ................................ 16

CULTURE The Ger manic Origins of English ............. 17-19 Eg yptian Hieroglyphs ................................ 24-26 Yeah, Nah - A Bogans Life for Me .............32-34 Classics and Modern Culture ..................... 44-45 Inter view with Classics ................................... 43

CREATIVE WRITING Poetry: The Integral .......................................... 42 Death of Innocence .................................. 30-31

On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union EDITORS: Daniel Millburn, Daniel McLean and Leighton McDonald-Stuart

CREATIVE TEAM: Viray Thach, Sarah Boese and Anna Bailes COVER ART: Miss Lili

MISCELLANEOUS Five Things to Quit .................................... 11-13 The Death of George Duncan ................... 22-23 Gardening: The Roots of Addiction .......... 27-29 Confessions of an Opaholic ...................... 40-41 Open Letter to BlockBuster ............................ 46

REVIEWS Trent Parke Exhibition .............................. 38-39 Five Tap .......................................................... 42

DIVERSIONS Emma’s Dilemmas .......................................... 47 Crossword & Diversions ................................. 48

INSIDE BACK COVER: Sarah Boese SUB-EDITORS: James Lawler, Mandy Li and Natalie Carfora.

Published 27/4/2015

Contents

1

E D I TO R I A L

Nimrud: An ancient city, thousands of years of culture and life, reduced to rubble.

Looking at this edition’s cover we are brought back to the temporary nature of all things. Although some things may stand ten thousand years, even these will eventually fall. In a brief and idiotic moment, beautiful works of the human imagination and intellect can be pummelled, burnt and reduced to smouldering ashes. These ashes forever remind us of our mistakes and our loss.

Last Friday night, while most uni students were hanging out on the internet, one of your editors was working late in the On Dit office (yes, on occasion this actually happens). All of a sudden and much to his consternation, he heard a faint trickle outside. Slow and constant, it was the kind of trickle he could connect with only one act. He rose with the greatest caution and began to open the door in the hope of discovering the mysterious “trickler”, only to have it shoved back at him by the culprit who was energetically watering the doorstep with his urine.

Precious knowledge in this world is fading. The liberal arts that once flourished at universities – and especially here at Adelaide University – still hang on with a dignified grip, but a grip that is ever slipping (or, rather, being pushed quietly towards the edge). Society once valued the liberal arts; university administrators once valued the liberal arts. But like the destroyers of Nimrud, much of society today couldn’t give a damn about these sacred sites of culture and learning.

It’s in this sense that we encourage you, dear reader, to look up from this magazine from wherever you may be and take a good whiff of what’s around you. Take a moment to laugh at life, perhaps to think on the destruction of Nimrud, or on the unfortunate state of the humanities at Adelaide Uni. Hopefully, and if you are lucky, nobody will be urinating on you.

But perhaps it’s easy to see why: Life simply moves faster in the Infor mation Age. People seldom have time enough to look around and smell the piss – bear with us while we explain.

See you around, Daniel McLean, Daniel Millburn and Leighton McDonald-Stuart

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Editorial

H OW TO C O N T R IBU T E Sub mission De ad lines

I f yo u w a nt t o w r i t e a n a r t i c l e , h e r e’ s s o m e a dv i c e b e f o r e yo u g e t s t a r t e d : •

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Have a chat to us. Your chances of being published are much higher if we’re all on the same page.

Don’t be shy. Come in for a chat.

We’re down the dodg y-looking stairs near the Barr Smith Lawns.

THEME

CONTRIBUTION DEADLINE

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Make sure what you’re writing can appeal to a wide audience. If it’s a technical topic, try to explain it simply. Don’t presume people know all the specifics of niche topics.

Want to write but don’t know what to write about? We have a long list of things we’d love people to write about.

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How to Contribute

3

WHAT’S ON + NEWS: Round She Goes

The Stiches & Craft Show

Fashion Market

Thursday 7th Saturday 9th May

May 2nd

Time: 10:00am - 3:00pm

Where: Adelaide Event

& Exhibition Centre Jubilee Pavilion, Showgrounds

Cost: $2 entry

Time: 10am - 4.30pm

Where: 223 Flinders Street

Cost: Adelaide’s largest indoor event dedicated to women’s preloved fashion Round She Goes Fashion Market is for women with designer taste on a high street budget!

Round She Goes is an award-winning indoor fashion event dedicated to women’s fashion.

The event features 50 stalls selling women’s preloved designer threads and quality vintage fashion, handmade jewellery & accessories!

Kerry Packer Civic Gallery exhibition: Mid Northern April 8th - May 1st

Adults: $15 Seniors Card Holders: $14 Age & Disability Pensioners $13 Children (5 - 16 years): $7 Children under 5: FREE

Calling all craft lovers of Adelaide! Australia’s original craft show, The Stitches & Craft Show, will debut for the first time at the Adelaide Event & Exhibition Centre.

The show will include a huge variety of expert retailers, unique classes for handmade projects and gifts, exhibitions, educational workshops, guest artist displays, DIY craft ideas and much more.

Barr Smith Library Rare Books and Special Collections A Pencil in ever y Knapsack: Digger po etr y of WWI

Where: 55 Nor th Ter race

1st May - 31st of July

Times: Open weekdays 9am-5pm, late Thursdays until 7pm

Time: Available during librar y opening hours.

Cost: FREE

Where: Rare Books & Special Collections Foyer, Level 1, Bar r Smith Librar y

A series of landscape paintings, from artist Sue Michael depicting the blinding dust stor ms, the heat, cold winds and drought as shaping forces of our state's Mid North.

4

What’s On + News

Cost: FREE

An exhibition of poetry which shaped the Anzac legend, composed on the battlefield and the home front. Illustrated with contemporary sketches, cartoons and photographs.

APRIL 27TH TO MAY 11TH Club Events Adelaide University Law Students’ Society Pub Crawl

Adelaide University Media Association Pub Crawl

Friday May 8th

May 22nd, Friday (Week 10)

Time: 6:00pm - Late

Theme: Tweet Yourself

Where: Uni Bar: 6pm -7:30pm

Time: 7:00pm - Late

Distill: 7:30pm - 9pm

Where: Uni Bar: 7pm -8pm

PJ O’Briens: 9pm - 10:30pm

P.J. O’Brien’s: 8pm 9pm

Austral: 10:30pm - 11:30pm

The Elephant: 9pm-10pm

London: 11:30pm – late

The Austral: 10pm-11pm Zambreros All night.

Discounts and specials for people wearing the pub crawl shirts at various venues Contact the club for more details.

Liberal Club UK Election Champagne Breakfast

Adelaide University Education Students’ Association BBQ

Friday May 8th Where: St Marks College Ballroom Time: 9:00am

Wednesday May 6th

Cost: $40. Tickets through the Adelaide University Liberal Club Facebook page.

Where: Bar r Smith Lawns Sausages, drinks, veg gie patties and baked goods.

Pride Indoor Picnic Friday (Week 7) Where: Rumours (level 6 Union House) Time: 10am - 1pm Indoor picnic with free baked goods and drinks.

Oaktree Club: Live Below the Line May 4th - 8th Checkout https://www.livebelowtheline.com.au/ or contact us at s.austen@oaktree.or g for more info!

Live Below the Line is the annual fundraising campaign for Oaktree, one of Australia’s largest youth-run organisations.

From May 4-8, thousands of Australians will eat on $2 a day for five days, the equivalent of living below the extreme poverty line. It's a way to raise much-needed funds for Oaktree's overseas partners and gain insight to the challenges of those living in extreme poverty.

Around Campus

5

L E T T E R S TO T H E E D I TO R Dear On Dit, Seriously?! In an edition of the magazine where the topic of uni fee deregulation is spoken about, you have an article from Rob Katsambis, with the unbelievable title “Removing the Hurdles to a World-Class Education” and a piece from ViceChancellor Warren Bebbington. How much of a Liberal mouth piece has this magazine become?

With wanky statements from Katsambis about a “minority of less than one percent” of students protesting, I feel sick enough to write a letter to the editor, even though I have an assignment due in a few hours. I wonder where Katsambis gets his figures from? Maybe if students didn’t have to work shitty part-time jobs to eat (now with less penalty rates!) and got enough Youth Allowance or Austudy then more students would be protesting.

That “minority” is fighting for your education, your right to having a tutorial class of less than thirty people, your right to more one-on-one time with teachers, and the right to an actual physical lecture and class rather than an ethereal online course designed to save the university money. I am so sick of his sanctimonious attacks on left wing students; he doesn’t even try to hide it anymore in his articles and you keep publishing them. Warren Bebbington is not looking out for the students of this university.

Deregulations is all his dreams come true, with no thought to how it will affect students of poor backgrounds. How many disadvantaged students will choose law or medicine if they will be in debt for the rest of their lives? Placations about “It won’t affect you!” make me want to vomit. Guess what.

You should fucking care about future students.

What if you want to do another degree or want to do Honours? University should be a place for all, not just the priviledged few. I don’t care how many fucking emails I get sent with the lie that it ‘won’t affect me,’ I am not ‘rejoicing’ at the fact that future students may miss out on quality education and courses if this shitty legislation goes through.

Warren Bebbington says he “failed to communicate” the case for refor m. You communicated very clearly Bebbs, people just think it’s a shitty idea and won’t agree with you. I can’t believe he got space in the magazine for this propaganda.

Now I’m off to do my assignment, from a class where there is 30 people in the tutorial and barely enough chairs or space to fit them all.

Regards, Nijole Naujokas

Dear Nijole, Thank you very much for your letter. You should know that this is the first instance that we have taken out some time to sit down and reply to correspondence.

Let’s just jump straight into the premise of your letter, that On Dit is a “Liberal mouth piece”. The On Dit editorial team is composed of three people; one of whom happens to be a Liberal party member.

The two remaining editors have no particular political persuasions. Hardly the out and proud Liberal “team” that some rail on about. All we can say is that at least this year the party membership of your editors is public knowledge, which sadly may not have been the case in previous years.

Secondly, you seem to complain about some of the pieces that were pro de-regulation. Quite simply you disagree with what they say, and in a country such as ours, that is your right. You, like us, have the freedom to say as you wish. However, you seemed to have missed the other pieces on fee deregulation.

There were 12. Of these 12, five appeared to be in favour, five appeared to be against and two appeared to be balanced. We have long aimed for a

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Letters to the Editor

fair and honest debate and in the last edition of On Dit that is what students were delivered. On Dit is proud of the fact it managed to speak to Ministers, shadow Ministers, the NUS President, the Vice Chancellor and many other interested parties in order to deliver an issue where students could hear both sides of a very important debate.

We are not going to critique your other statements because they are those of personal opinion. We acknowledge that for some the issues that you raise are of serious concern; hence why we went about creating an education issue in the first instance.

On Dit has not taken an editorial stance on fee deregulation.

We do encourage you to contact the relevant university department about your concerns, if not the Vice Chancellor himself.

Yours, The Editors.

STUDENT R E P R E S E N TAT I V E COLUMN Renjie Du, President of the SRC

Being an inter national student myself, I would like to share a little about how it feels in this column.

Research shows that although most local students like having inter national students on campus, there is a clear separation between the two groups. It was found that more than one in three inter national students have no close local friends.

Coming from a different culture and speaking a different language makes people feel that you are somehow deficient. I remember when I was in my first year it took great courage to join a club. And I cannot forget when they were nominating a year rep for the club, even though I really wanted to get it, I never had the courage to put my hand up.

International students have fewer opportunities both on and off campus. Most of the scholarships are not available to international students. Most of the internship opportunities are only open to students with a citizenship or per manent residency. Even for part time jobs, most of the cafeterias, restaurants and local shops do not hire international students. It is easy for a local teenager to work in KFC or Subway, but I have never known a single international student who got the privilege to get hired by them.

For an international student, it is extremely hard to get involved with local organisations and community events. Taking the Student Representative Council as an example, in 2013, the council only had one student on the SRC from an international student background. And that student ser ved as the International Student Officer, which is by default a position that has to be filled by an international student.

In ter ms of welfare, they are more vulnerable than local students. Living far away from their families, these students have to take better care of their lives. To save money, many live under illegal conditions and there are even occasions of more than 10 international students sharing one

bedroom. To help relieve the family burden of the more than $32,000 annual tuition fee, a large number of international students work under the legal payment with less than $10 per hour.

There are especially less leadership opportunities for international students. Psychologically, people would turn to find people who are “different” from us to be less trustworthy. Being an international student makes it naturally more difficult to be trusted. Many local students cannot even name an occasion when international students led a team or a small project that they were involved in.

Being an international student myself, I face such difficulties every day as well. It is difficult to be confident. Since being a student in Australia, there have been allegations to me happening all the time, and some of them were quite serious. Sometimes I just feel quite powerless about such accusations.

When somebody calls it ‘strong leadership’, others may accuse it as ‘inflated ego’; when someone calls it ‘respecting others opinions’, others may accuse it as ‘indecisive’; when someone calls it as ‘clear direction’, others may accuse it as ‘crazy ideas’.

Therefore, it makes me even more grateful for all the trust I have received for all these years in uni. And I am extremely honoured to be the first international student to ser ve as student president in the University of Adelaide’s 140 years. I would continue to have the SRC working on reducing such separation between the two communities to create a more culturally encouraging university environment for all students.

How could you help in this? Easy, remember the golden rule: Treat others the way you’d like to be treated. How would you like people to behave towards you if you decided to go to college in, say, South Korea? It’s never a bad time to remember that your own feelings about certain situations are a guide to eliminatating such boundaries.

SRC Representative

7

the unoficial guide to

CLUBS

on campus Adelaide University Anime Club The Adelaide University Anime Club is a social club dedicated to lovers of Japanese animation and to expanding anime culture in Adelaide. We are open to anyone that wants to join so come along to our free anime screenings every Friday in the Napier building. We also hold other social events throughout the year and are a great club to join to meet other anime fans or learn more about anime culture.

Fair Trade Collective

Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AUAnimeClub

Want to help make a positive change? The Fair Trade Collective is all about alleviating poverty and improving the lives of those in the developing world. By raising awareness about fair trade, we aim to promote ethical consumption on campus. This club offers opportunities to meet other passionate people (and fellow tea/coffee/chocolate lovers!), and to make a real difference at university and beyond. The Collective runs various fun activities, including competitions, expos, Sustain-a-stalls, and tea parties!

Email: anime@auclubs.com.au

Interested? Email us at: fairtradecollective@auu.or g.au

Oaktree Oaktree is one of Australia’s largest youth-run organisations that works to build community and political support for action on ending extreme poverty, and provides aid and development to countries in need across the Asia Pacific. At a club level we meet each week and have the opportunity to work with a diverse and passionate community of like-minded people on campaigns such as Live Below the Line.

Interested in joining? Feel free to contact us at: e.mcauley@theoaktree.or g

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Clubs on Campus

or Like our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/Fair.

Trade.Collective.AU

Retraction It has come to our attention that the Adelaide University Sport column in edition 83.3 of On Dit contained sub edits which were not approved by the author Patrick Edwards or by AU Sport before going to print. Some of these edits referenced excessive consumption of alcohol which neither Patrick nor AU Sport condones. The editors would like to apologise for any offence caused.

S TAT E O F T H E UNION Amelia Briggs, AUU President

The break has just started as I write this, and as the semester plods along and the days get shorter, things can start to feel a bit glum. It’s not technically winter, but for me anything below 25 degrees is too cold, and I start saying “I hate winter!” to anyone who’ll listen.

courses to skill you up, at about half the cost you’d find anywhere else. If you’re an AUU member, you get an extra $20 off. The accredited ones include Barista training, First Aid, and Responsible Ser vice of Alcohol, but we also do some more infor mal ones such as Customer Ser vice Training, which is handy to have on a resume. Lastly, you’ll find a bunch of job and volunteer offers on our website from employers just waiting to hear from you.

Moving into assignment, test, and final project season, things start to get real stressful. To add to that, getting up to come into uni by 10am is far, far worse when it’s still dark outside when you leave the house. Also, you’ve probably spent all your money by this point on drinking too much, summer festivals, or going overseas (or whatever else you like to do). So not only is it cold and miserable, you can barely afford hot chocolate.

If you’re frugal with your finances, or just rich, then that’s great for you, and thanks for making the rest of us look bad. Enjoy drinking your 50 hot chocolates a day while you laugh smugly at the plebs around you.

If you’re really running out of money, then visit Student Care. Not only can they help you with sorting out your finances, or giving you a small loan if you’re in a bad spot, they also help out with all sorts of issues that might stop you from studying. If something’s going down in your course like a lecturer treating you unfairly, they can help you fix it. If you need Centrelink help, they are well-versed in the maze of rules and hours of hold music. If you have a traffic ticket or a bad landlord, you can get legal help from Student Care as well. They also live in the Lady Symon building, and as always, you can check out the AUU website to find their details and make an appointment.

Basically, what I’m saying is, we all have problems, and they tend to get harder the closer exams get.

So I want to run through some of the stuff the Union does that can help you out if everything gets too much, as well as some extra stuff that’s around campus for your benefit.

If you’re feeling really down, panicked or anxious, and it’s getting in the way of your studies, you can visit the counsellors. They’re free, and they’ll help you sort it out. The counselling ser vice is located in the ground floor of the Horace Lamb building.

They have drop-in sessions in the afternoons on weekdays from 1pm to 4pm, and you can also make appointments for an hour. Check out the website at adelaide.edu.au/counselling_centre.

If you’ve been frolicking about during summer or doing what I did and deciding that it was my “cocktail phase” and convincing myself “there’s two or three shots in a cocktail, so it works out cheaper!”, then you may be running out of money.

The Union can help you get a job. We run the Employment and Volunteering ser vice, which lives in the Lady Symon building. You can make an appointment with them to fix up your resume, get inter view tips, and generally ask any questions you might have. But it goes beyond that – we also run

f

We want everyone to be able to study to the best of their ability, and not be stopped by anything out of their control. If you want to know more about anything I’ve mentioned, be sure, as always, to contact me.

auu.or g.au

Instagram.com/adelaideuniversityunion

facebook.com/adelaideuniversityunion

twitter.com/UnionAUU State of the Union

9

A HOUSE DIVIDED: SRC Denies Allegations of Dysfunction Author: James Lawler

Allegations of incompetence, nepotism, dysfunction and a “secret meeting” by a for mer SRC officer have been denied by other members of the Student Representative Council.

In a scathing speech of resignation at the SRC’s April 7th meeting, Queer Officer Bobbie Kavanagh, who is also President of the Adelaide University Democrats, slammed what he described as a “dysfunctional organisational culture” which led him to resign from the Council.

“Inflated egos, office politics and administrative incompetence… are not conducive to [me] caring for our LGBTIQA+ students,” although ironically he was keen to point out the good work of SRC Administrator Andrew Watson, “who happens to be the best thing going for the SRC.” The for mer Queer Officer continued to claim that the Council “operates like a start-up “mum-n-dad shop” [sic] rampant with nepotism and cronyism.”

He further alleged that SRC President Renjie Du failed to engage with Council office-holders, demonstrating “an inability to attract, develop and retain talent.”

Kavanagh also claimed to have attended a “secret meeting” on February 6th this year, attended by both Du and Robert Katsambis, in which he was offered support to run for 2016 SRC President. Du is also head of the “Progress” faction in U of A student politics, while Katsambis is an AUU Board Director and for mer President of the Adelaide University Liberal Club.

The 2014 student elections saw preference-deals between Progress, the Liberals-backed “forU” ticket and the Labor Right “Fresh” ticket elevate all three factions to power, gaining a number of seats across the SRC, AUU and student media to the exclusion of left-aligned blocs such as Socialist

10 Campus News

Alternative’s “Left Action” and the Labor Left’s “Activate” tickets.

President Du did not respond to On Dit’s enquiries in time for publication. Any further statement will be published here.

When contacted for comment, Katsambis stated he “cannot recall what [he] was doing” on February 6th. He also denied that either he or the Adelaide University Liberal Club had endorsed Kavanagh or any other candidates for the 2015 student elections.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, SRC councillors were largely critical of Kavanagh’s allegations towards both the Council and Du in particular.

When asked, one member completely repudiated Kavanagh’s criticisms, stating that the SRC’s achievements this year, including organising the SRC’s O’Week contribution and launching the new SRC Volunteering Program, were testament to its cohesiveness. Another dismissed Kavanagh’s comments as “a mountain out of a mole-hill” and defended Du as both a consultative and thoughtful leader.

However, a third office-bearer supported Bobbie’s claims, alleging that a number of SRC members have prioritised maintaining political relationships in preparation for future re-election over acting in the best interests of their portfolio or factional ideolog y when voting. They also commented that the SRC President “often neglects to confer with the SRC before making decisions or taking action.”

Fresh representatives did not respond to enquiries as to whether they were aware of the alleged preselection deal by their 2014 coalition partners.

Kavanagh is the fifth SRC member to resign this year, following General Councillors Max McHenry, Xinjian Kou and Felix Ritson, and Mature Age Officer Yawei Wang.

Five Things To

Quit

in Your Time at Uni Author: Taylor Rundell

Artwork: Emily Hart

A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits!

This is the traditional wisdom whenever anyone is struggling through some area of their life. The Australian stor y is one of barriers being broken by pure blood, sweat and tears: think wartime heroism, sporting successes and watershed cultural moments such as the Mabo decision.

I’m here to tell you not to strug gle. Instead, do the opposite: quit.

No doubt you can remember a moment where you took on a challenge that was easy as wading through a pool filled with Vegemite. Rather than strug gling on, I’m here to tell you to get out – and the faster, the better.

will only get worse. Most of us choose to stick it through because otherwise, you’ll have “wasted” the cost of the ticket.

In reality, if sitting in the cinema for another hour is going to leave you angry for the rest of the day, you would be better off walking out and going for an ice cream. Ultimately, this logic applies to everything – if you can put your time to better use somewhere else, then do so.

As an all-time champion quitter, I’m very qualified to advise you on where to start. Here are the five things I’m glad I chose to quit at uni:

Unfortunately, our brains stop us from quitting things that aren’t helping us. Behavioural scientists call this phenomenon the “sunk cost fallacy”. Let’s say you go and see a terrible movie. This film is so bad that you get half-way through it and know it

5 Things to Quit 11

1. Quit Your Course

2. Quit Your Extracurricular

This one is a pretty common quit. Most of us don’t end up following the pretty-looking degree plan on the University website. We’ve all had that one elective that you enrolled in during the panicky thirty seconds after enrolments opened, or that one compulsory course that just won’t make sense. If you recognise this early, you can avoid a figurative blot on your transcript and pick a new course, or study it later when your head’s in a better place.

‘Join a club,’ they said, ‘it will look good on your resume!’

My own quit was an elective, Australian Legal History. I planned on taking a soulless commercial law course, but all the places were gone. Featuring neither seminars nor exam, Australian Legal History seemed like a very attractive alternative, with the intellectual glamour that history courses attract. I went to the first three-hour lecture with an open mind. But it turned out more like three academics having a fireside-style chat not just about legal history, but about the history of legal history. With a lengthy essay for the main assessment, and no wine to make it tolerable, this was clearly not the course for me. After two and a half hours, I snapped up a new place in that commercial elective and never looked back.

Little did I realise that student societies tend to swiftly degenerate into a rabbit-hole of internal politics. My particular poison was a very hotly-contested role in a large society, requiring a gruelling election and the testing of many friendships with incessant Facebook messages.

Yet when it came to do the work, I realised quite quickly that I was out of my depth.

At this point, with work and other personal commitments weighing me down, I could choose between putting time into a sinkhole that produced little personal satisfaction and a lot of hair-pulling… or I could hand over the reins to someone who would do better work. Admitting you’re doing a bad job is hard. But in the end, you’re not in a student society for yourself, even if it looks good on your resumé – you’re there to ser ve students.

If you’re going to half-commit, don’t commit at all.

3. Quit Your Relationship

Who would have guessed that in a campus of nearly twenty thousand undergraduate students you’d meet people that you find attractive? Watching happy couples cuddling on the Barr Smith Lawn and engaging in public displays of far-too-much affection would make you think that most students have wonderful romance lives.

But that honeymoon phase ends for most couples, and those twenty thousand other students don’t stop existing just because you’ve found one of them. Break-ups are often messy and not everyone comes out unscathed.

But is it better to stay with someone because you don’t want to get hurt, or get out and find the person for whom you’re truly looking?

12 Five Things to Quit

4. Quit Your Friendships

This one is harder than quitting a relationship.

We build ourselves on a bedrock of friendship in our time at uni. We go to lectures together, then start skipping them together. We drive ourselves to hysteria about exams together.

We drink together. Other people see the world the way we do, so we let them into ours.

But turbulence hits friendships the same way.

It turns out that the Chinese whispers of the high school rumour mill don’t end at the university gates. It might be that you and your friend ‘like’ the same person among those twenty thousand students. Or, maybe you’ll reach a point where someone wants you to continually earn their friendship, rather than forgiving your mistakes. Remember: university is the best time of your life to meet people.

Don’t let it pass you by because you stuck with individuals who weren’t worth your time.

Of course, even people pursuing their true calling will come across adversity in what they do. I think you would know when that happens by some higher calling. In that case, you’ll know that the effort will pay off; or maybe I’m just not very good at doing the hard slog.

But, at the same time, if Einstein had started a degree in wine-making and wanted to quit, I’m sure people would have guilt-tripped him into staying. He might have spent less time developing his most important contribution to our world. If you’re hitting brick walls and don’t love what you do, then quit. You’ll thank yourself for it later.

5. Quit Your Goals

Ostensibly, all of us are at uni because we are pursuing some greater life goal. When you were in high school, and you were choosing what you want to do at uni, it may have seemed like you were destined to become a cardiovascular surgeon, or an astronomer, or an art historian.

The harsh truth is our expectations don’t always line up with the reality of a particular line of work. It might be the day-to-day of what you’re doing; it might be the culture of a profession; it might simply be that there are better opportunities.

This one can be tough. People tend to set their sights on the highest-profile goals that are rewarding in whatever way they crave.

No-one aspires to be a middle manager.

People want to be partners, or directors, or prime ministers, or lead designers. But if you set your idea of happiness on reaching some position of power, rather than taking joy from every moment of life, you may find yourself perpetually dissatisfied.

The only thing Taylor Rundell hasn’t quit is his law degre e.

Miscellaneous 13

Spotify Killed the

Radio Star Author: Tom Haskell

Artwork: Mary Angley

Damn Spotify! They’re always two moves ahead of me. Just when I think I have these bastards figured out, they go ahead and stif le the user experience once more.

squashed chip half-eaten off of the UniBar floor.

But I do listen to a lot of music so I must be contributing something?

That guy with the voice of a used car-salesman is letting me know for the third time this evening that I can try Spotify Premium for free for an entire month. “Just click the banner” he says, assuming I have all the time in the world. I can’t even mute this guy; he just picks his one-sided conversation right where we left off once I un-mute him like some needy childhood friend.

I listen to Spotify for about two hours a day on average. Most songs are about four minutes, equating to approximately 30 songs a day, which at 365 days in a year is 10,950 songs. So, 10,950 songs at $0.007 per stream means I am earning my beloved artists $76.65 per year. As I listen to about 30-40 different artists in a given year, I’m effectively giving each of my favourite artists one tenth of a snickers bar from The General annually as a token of my musical gratitude.

Fine! I’ll buy Spotify Premium, if not to get a break from this man’s voice, then perhaps to support the musicians off whom I am mooching music.

Except I’m not supporting them at all. I’m supporting Spotify. Worse yet, I am supporting Mr. Spotify Premium Ad. Spotify has undoubtedly the largest market share over music streaming in the world. iTunes is but a distant memory as our pro-cheap biases compel us to stream a song, rather than pay $2.19 for it. But, Spotify must make so much money from their premium ser vice, and even through their advertising (at least when Lord Premium of the Spotify Realm shuts up).

Surely I must be doing some good for the artists by using Spotify; it’s not as if Spotify keeps all the money for itself. I wasn’t paying for my music before anyway. “The Pirate Bay” (though unbookmarked on my computer due to paranoia) is among my most frequented websites.

So how much good am I doing by using Spotify anyway? Well, according to Spotify, about $0.007 per song. That type of money wouldn’t buy me a

14 Spotify Killed the Radio Star

Let’s do the math.

Now this is fine for your big ger artists who regularly dominate the charts with their production-line pop-music, but what about the small/medium level artists? How much are they getting from the Spotify pie?

Consider Australian rock act Papa vs Pretty.

They’re no longer together but their music is still available on Spotify, and according to last.fm they have had around 80,544 plays. Thus, from last.fm users alone they have earned $563.80 from Spotify streams. That seems okay, until you consider that those are all-time figures and that money is split between more than just the band. Last.fm isn’t indicative of the overall Spotify userbase, but with a userbase of 23 million people it’s nothing to sneeze at.

While this money is nothing to what musicians make from their real bread-and-butter of touring and merchandise, that doesn’t justify the massive disparity between the revenue an artist generates for Spotify and their overall commission.

Consequently, some popular musicians such as

Thom Yorke from Radiohead and Taylor Swift from Taylor Swift have taken their music down from Spotify and told them to (figuratively) shove it up their arse.

The problem is that people will be using Spotify for quite some time. Annoying ad-man aside, they have really nailed the user experience.

Spotify is a little like Candy Crush: a simple concept which has been done before is given a social networking feature and suddenly becomes a hit.

However, Spotify does offer one advantage: a new avenue of exposure. Being able to see your friends listening to a cool new band that no one else has heard of is a powerful tool.

Thanks to Indie/Triple J culture, we’re less interested in new music and more interested in new music no-one else has discovered. Thus, these musical brag ging rights which Spotify provides has enabled previously unheard-of artists to gain a degree of attention.

Ultimately, despite my objections, I probably won’t upgrade to Spotify Premium because I am smart enough now to just turn my speakers down, rather than the application.

I like having all my music in one place and being able to listen to pretty much any song at any time.

While musicians are getting the raw end of the deal on this one, people decide upon these issues by voting with their wallets. It will most likely require a paradigm shift in how we combine our consciences with our listening habits to push for a fair compensation for artists, but as long as these things don’t directly affect us, we’re less inclined to even care. Thus, as long as Spotify is “free”, I probably won’t be changing stations anytime soon.

Technology 15

A Guide to Meta Data Laws Author: Matthew Sclauzero

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

- George Orwell, 1984

The coming of the Infor mation Age has seen the slow passing of personal privacy. On the 26th of March 2015, every Australian citizen's privacy was eroded a little bit more with Parliament passing the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill.

Am I being retained?

The purpose of this legislation is to force every internet ser vice provider within Australia to track the metadata generated from both internet and phone communications of every Australian.

Metadata is a very loosely defined buzzword so here is a list describing what the new legislation entails.

Internet Communication Services provided by Australian Operators:

• Email addresses of sender and recipient • Time, date and size of email • Type and size of attachments in emails • Online chat time, date and identity of participants • Internet usage statistics including bandwidth provided • Number and size of all uploads and downloads made • Communication medium ( e.g. cable internet, wifi, ADSL) • User account details held by their telco or ISP including activation and suspension dates Phone Communications:

• Incoming/Outgoing Caller ID • Time, date and duration of the phone call • Location of the mobile phone at the beginning and end of a call • Unique identification number of every mobile phone •

Whether the phone is lost, stolen or roaming

•

What features were used during the call (such as call waiting)

16 A Guide to Meta Data Laws

Retained information doesn’t include:

• Web browsing history • Content or text of SMS messages • Content and subject lines of emails • The actual file attached to an email • Audio of phone or online voice calls • Recordings of social media chats • Continuous tracking of mobile device locations That’s a pretty extensive and per vasive list, but it is reality now so it’s time to educate yourself and stay infor med. Additionally this infor mation will be stored for a minimum period of two years (with no defined maximum period) and can be accessed by approved organisations without a warrant.

We must also consider the reasons for using metadata in crime and cybercrime prevention. This writer would say that it can be a useful tool in law enforcement when applied correctly, but how its gathered is the point for contention. The most glaring issue here is the scope of capture being every Australian and the implications should this infor mation be stolen or leaked.

So what should you do now?

The bill has been passed, that is out of your control.

As an individual you should stop and think how this affects you and read up on what you can do about it.

In fact there should be more infor mation within this issue of On Dit so keep on reading. If you don’t really care about any of this then that’s ok too.

But remember, this legislation is intended to catch hard criminals, not every day internet users, so kickback and relax with some NetFlix. They can’t see exactly what you’re watching (just yet).

English , ich bin dein Vater! – The Germanic Origins of English Author: Karl Stuklis

Artwork: Carly Harvey

The Germanic Origins of English 17

It may come as a shock to you that English is classed as a Ger manic language. The thought of our polite, sophisticated language belonging to the same linguistic family as Ger man – which is constantly (and unfairly) ridiculed online for its harsh and ugly sound – is enough to make your English professor cr y into their Shakespeare books.

‘Isn’t English much more similar to French?’ you might ask. ‘Don’t most English words come from Latin?’ As a student of Ger man, I am personally not that surprised by the idea of English being a Ger manic language. It’s hilarious how many times my classmates and I have forgotten a Ger man word, substituted it with an English word in a Ger man accent, and discovered that it was in fact the correct word we’d been looking for. With a bit of imagination, many Ger man sentences can be seen as weird, misspelt versions of English ones.

For example, ‘I have a friend’ translates to ‘Ich habe einen Freund’ in Ger man. However, for the vast majority of people who don’t study another Ger manic language, and who aren’t familiar with ancient British history, an explanation is required about how and why English is classified as a Ger manic language.

All the languages in the world can be placed into groups depending on their similarities, which are the result of their evolution from a shared originating language. European languages (with a few exceptions) all belong to the ‘IndoEuropean’ family of languages. A sub-group of this family is the Ger manic branch of languages.

These languages diverged from ‘Proto-Ger manic’, which was spoken in Northern Europe around

18 The Germanic Origins of English

500 BC. Modern-day Ger manic languages include Ger man, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and (of course) English. These are grouped together based on a wide range of complicated grammatical and phonetic criteria, but some of their basic characteristics are: similar sounding consonants, a large number of vowel sounds, stresses placed on the first syllables of words, and verbs usually taking the second place in sentences.

In England and Wales, the Celts lived under the rule of the Romans, who spoke Latin.

So just how did English become a Ger manic language? Around AD 400, the traditional inhabitants of the British Isles were the Celts, who spoke a language completely different from modern English. In England and Wales, the Celts lived under the rule of the Romans, who spoke Latin. During the fifth century AD, the ailing Roman Empire was under increasing pressure from invading barbarian tribes, and decided that it could no longer afford to hold onto far-flung Britain, which it abandoned in 410. This left Britain vulnerable to foreign invaders. In 449, warlike tribes from what is now known as the Netherlands, Northern Ger many, and Denmark, invaded and settled in Britain. These Ger manic invaders (whom we call the Anglo-Saxons) pushed the traditional inhabitants of Britain to the West of the island.

They established their own kingdoms and spoke their own language, now referred to as ‘Old English’. (One tribe was called the Angles, who therefore spoke ‘Anglish’, from which the word ‘English’ derives.) The Celts, who were pushed out of their land into Cornwall, Wales, and Western Scotland, continued to speak their own languages, from which modern Gaelic and Welsh descend.

English grammar and its most basic and frequently used words come from the Anglo-Saxons. These include ‘the’, ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘he’, ‘she’, and ‘it’, as well as numerous ter ms used to describe the countryside and agriculture, such as ‘field’, ‘meadow’, ‘sheep’, and ‘deer’.

The basic Anglo-Saxon structure of English remained fir mly in place despite the coming of Christianity and two more major invasions, although English did absorb many foreign words.

When the Anglo-Saxons began to convert to Christianity after 597, Latin and Greek biblical words such as ‘altar’, ‘angel’, and ‘martyr’ began to enter the English language. In 793, Vikings from Denmark started to raid Britain, eventually invading and settling in Northern England. They introduced some of their own words into English, along with various place names, but Danish did not supplant the local language. In any case, this would not have mattered for the classification of English as a Ger manic language, for Danish is also Ger manic.

In 1066, the Nor mans, under William the Conqueror, launched an invasion of England and defeated the Anglo-Saxons, establishing Nor man rule over the country. This should have spelt disaster for the English language, as the Nor man conquerors spoke French, which became the official language of the government, church, and intellectual sphere. However, the common people continued to speak English. Rather than displacing the local language, French words were merely absorbed into it, giving English an unusually large vocabulary and diversity of synonyms. The number of English words of French origin – such as ‘art’, ‘competition’, ‘force’, ‘machine’, and ‘money’ – has caused English to be labelled by some as a ‘dialect of French’. However, the essential grammatical constructions and core vocabulary of English have remained strongly Anglo-Saxon (to the dismay of many Francophiles, I’m sure).

“The Nor man Conquest was the last time Britain had been successfully invaded by a people speaking a different language.”

The Nor man Conquest was the last time Britain had been successfully invaded by a people speaking a different language. Hence, English has not been heavily influenced by any other language since.

The Anglo-Saxons proved to be the defining group in the development of English. Since the time of their invasion and settlement, the basic Ger manic structure of English, though undergoing some adaptations, has not changed drastically.

With the advent of the Refor mation in the sixteenth century and the ensuing rise of Protestantism in Britain, Ger many, and Scandinavia, the Ger manic link between these cultures continued to strengthen. This perceived bond between the ‘Ger manic’ lands was thought to be so strong that, prior to the First World War, it was almost unthinkable that Great Britain and Ger many could ever be at war, as they had been so culturally and politically close for hundreds of years. However, in response to the World Wars (and particularly to the threat posed by the Nazis during the Second World War), English culture sought to define itself against that of Ger many. Despite this, English, Ger man, and the other Ger manic languages share an undeniably close connection.

Culture 19

HUMANS OF

ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY

Lisa -

Bio Med Sci, 3rd Year

Jaxon, Edward, Sarah -

(left to right) Commerce

1.

1.

E: Overpriced, especially grass roots.

S: Hell shit. Chips are good though.

J: Disappointed in the coffee.

2. J: Absolutely. To the government: come catch me.

E: The laws are slightly concerning, but it’s understandable.

2. Kind of an invasion of privacy.

3. I go to lectures that are after 10:00.

4. A friend of mine went on a tinder date that ended in an awkward kissing-rejection scenario.

3. E: Mid semester test tomorrow and we’re here in the Unibar.

4. J: I know a mate who got a nosebleed once.

5.

They’re all really good and there is a nice variety to choose from. Aroma has great sandwiches.

5.

J: “Love the shed, love the Ed, love the butter on my bread. Amen.”

1.

“Friends are like bras, close to your heart and always there for support.”

The chips are pretty good but prices are going up I heard.

2. Good and bad. I mean, some random fifteen year old could download something on their parents’ computer.

3. I’m first year so I attend most lectures. At the start I said I would attend them all but I haven’t.

Annie -

Commerce, 1st Year

20 Humans of Adelaide University

4. I fell over when I was wearing heels and hurt my ankle. The guy I was with carried me around for the rest of the night.

5.

“For me to be saying I’m not a genius, I’d be lying to you and myself.” - Kanye West

1. What do you think of the fo o d places on campus?

2. Fe elings ab out the new data laws? / Do you downlo ad illegally?

3. What’s your appro ach t o uni? E.g. de adlines, att ending le ctures et c 4. Worst dating experience that you’ve had or that s ome one that you know has had?

5. Favourit e quot e?

1.

A1: Overpriced B: Quality could be better considering the prices.

Aswin (A2) & Jagruti 3rd Year Petroleum

2. B: Piracy is like stealing candy from a baby.

Engineering) (Standing, left to right)

3. A2: I’m 3rd year so I don’t worry too much, I know how things work.

A1: I attend lectures regularly.

J: I’m pretty last minute with deadlines.

B: Usually a day late with deadlines.

Ashwini (A1) 1st Year Adv Math Sciences & Barthee 2nd Year Psychology (Seated, left to

4. A2: Went for a 5km hike at Morialta with J. I was wearing jeans.

J: I was wearing a dress because he told me to wear something nice!

5.

J: “Love is a better teacher than duty.” – Albert Einstein A2: “Chase your dreams, and don’t find shortcuts.” - Sacchin Tendulkar

right)

1.

S: This potato salad is pretty average. I prefer to get food from Rundle Mall M: My croissant isn’t too bad actually.

2. S: I’m not fussed; I download movies though.

M: It’s pretty invasive. I like my privacy.

3. M: Watching lectures online is a lot easier.

S: Spend as little time here as possible; I study well at home.

4. M: We met each other’s parents last weekend.

Matt Commerce, 1st year Suzanne Media, 3rd year

1.

5.

S: “It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” – Marilyn Monroe M: Watch, listen, and learn. You can’t know it all yourself.

Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.“ – Donald Trump

Overpriced, but the food is pretty good. The chips are especially good.

2. Who doesn’t download illegally? I mean, if things were reasonably priced I wouldn’t.

3. I get my assignments done a few days before hand. It’s better that way.

Humza -

4. No comment (smiles)

Innovation and entrepreneurship

5.

“Two things define you – your patience when you have nothing, and your attitude when you have everything.”

(1st year)

Around Campus 21

The Murder of

George Duncan Author: Riley Calaby

Artwork: Anthony Nocera

No-one has ever been convicted for the murder of George Duncan.

Dr George Duncan had moved to Adelaide to take up a new position lecturing in law at Adelaide Uni only six weeks before his death.

On 10 May 1972, he was killed for being gay.

In the early 70s, gay sex was illegal, and most gay men had to cruise for sex on beats in public places. The banks of the Torrens were one of the most popular beats for gay men – but also for the police Vice Squad. Officers of this squad would come to the riverbank at night to harass and assault the gay men who cruised there. Thirteen years after George Duncan’s death, a retired member of the Vice Squad testified to the appalling homophobic violence that was routine within the squad.

According to his claims, in the late 60s and early 70s Vice Squad officers fired warning shots past gay men and threw many others into the River Torrens. One man was even allegedly stuffed into the boot of a police car.

On the evening of 10 May, George Duncan was on the Torrens beat. He had just approached Roger James, another gay man and the only identified witness to the attack, when a group of three people threw the both of them into the river. Roger James landed on the edge of the river, where he broke his leg.

Dr Duncan was further out. He couldn’t swim.

George Duncan’s drowning death was cruel, capricious, and undignified. Even afterwards, Dr Duncan was denied dignity. The police 22 The Death of George Duncan

officer who pulled Duncan’s body from the Torrens tossed it back in because a news crew wanted footage of it being taken from the river. The public were shocked at the murder, and it seemed obvious to many that the Vice Squad was involved.

The ensuing police internal investigation treated George Duncan’s death as a joke. The investigation itself was a farce. SAPOL, in a report which described Dr Duncan’s murder as ‘a high-spirited frolic’, found that there was insufficient evidence to launch proceedings against any of the three officers suspected of killing him. The public was outraged.

External investigators were flown in from London to appease the popular demand for an independent inquiry into George Duncan’s death – although one account was that these Scotland Yard investigators were incompetent homophobes who treated the matter as an occasion for a paid holiday. Three weeks after the release of the coroner’s report, Murray Hill introduced a bill decriminalising gay sex in to the Legislative Council. Three years later in 1975, South Australia would be the first state in the country to decriminalise homosexuality.

Meanwhile, the cover-up continued. Sixteen years later, in 1988, two of the Vice Squad officers who were alleged to have killed George Duncan were brought before a court.

Following a trial marked by irregularities, including reported attempts to unlawfully influence jurors, the two officers were acquitted. Both of them had refused to testify

throughout. A final police internal investigation concluded in 1990 found that there was insufficient evidence for charges to be laid against anyone.

Astoundingly, in the 1990 report police also argued – in contradiction to the testimony of gay men, academics, and even for mer Vice Squad officers – that there was no evidence that assaults against gay men by police officers on the riverbank were a regular occurrence at the time. Instead, it was argued that systematic police violence against gay men was a myth that had ‘grown with the telling’. They claimed this because gay men hadn’t come forward with these allegations to the police or media at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence, and so dismissed accounts of the Vice Squad’s institutionalised homophobic violence that killed Dr Duncan as fanciful and lacking credibility.

While, of course, the legal and social position of queer people today is inestimably better than it was in George Duncan’s time, deeply entrenched attitudes of hatred continues to manifest in queer deaths. Contemporary Australian police forces may have special queer outreach units, but despite the supposed move towards acceptance, police brutality remains an issue for queer people – for example, in the 2013 Sydney Mardi Gras. Queer people, particularly trans or non-binary individuals, are forced to live fearing a type of systemic violence that

straight, cisgender people simply don’t know. George Duncan’s death was appalling, and we need to not only honour his memory but work towards a world where this sort of violence happening, let alone going unpunished, is an impossibility.

The Pride Club is holding a memorial for Geor ge Duncan on the riverbank at 1pm on Monday 11 May, followed by a speech by Prof Carol Johnson in the Har r y Medlin Room. See the ‘Pride Club of the University of Adelaide’ Facebook page for details.

Miscellaneous 23

Walk [briskly] like an Egyptian: a crash course in hieroglyphs Author and Artwork: Miss Lili

If you have ever been given a note from your general practitioner, received a drunk text, or seen the whiteboard in the On Dit office, it is likely that you are already proficient in basic hieroglyphic script.

And the glyph-tracing exercises? Well, I’m just being a smart-arse there.

Sure, Mandarin or Arabic might be more practical to learn nowadays, and it’s not like hieroglyphs are going to become a ‘lingua franca’ (although the use of emoticons is on the rise...). The assiduous, caffeinated stride of the modern world doesn’t feel conducive to the romantic pursuit of language learning either. Did you know that in the 19th century, Jean François Champollion (the initial decipherer of ancient Eg yptian hieroglyphs) learnt Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean and Chinese, and later added Coptic, Ethiopic, Sanskrit, and Persian? And just the other day I fell asleep in the Barr Smith Library and managed to drool on a copy of Aristotle's Physics. I get it. Developing skills in a foreign language can be difficult, especially if you are learning on your own. This article will not cover the beautiful intricacies of ancient grammar, nor will it assist you with assembling your next IKEA shelving unit. And taking into account the immense evolutionary time-span of the Eg yptian language, its artistic and phonetic components, and its modifications due to religious and cultural transfor mations, my purpose here is [ironically] simple and straightforward: to share new ways of retaining and enjoying an ancient language.

Addendum: Although configuration of basic ancient verbs and nouns to fit their modern equivalents has been successful, I had to use “to beat hands together; to clap” to complete a portion of LMFAO’s lyrics, “pimp to the beat” (excuse me while I go and insulate myself from the discerning eye of Professor Gilh’ad Zucker mann).

So grab a latte from the Hub, take out a pen, and try the exercises I have included. No familiarity of ancient Middle Eg yptian hieroglyphs is required; only knowledge of pop culture.

24 Walk [Briskly] Like an Egyptian

In hard copy, English Breakfast tea, and inappropriate laughter, Miss Lili

Song Lyrics

Culture 25

Words and Phrases

Trace the Glyphs

26 Walk [Briskly] Like an Egyptian

Gardening: The Roots

Addiction Author: Meng Wai

Artwork: Mary Angley (Main illustration) and Anna Bailes (Background)

Gardening: The Roots of Addiction 27

Lycopersicon, ocimum, rosmarinus, thymus. This is the cursed nomenclature of our streets’ most ravenous resident, our neighbourhood’s most ver nal character and our society’s most singleminded member: the common gardener.

O the gardener! That superficially prepossessing, self-ser ving creature, whose muddy boots trail stains across the carpet; whose superabundance of superphosphate mulch overlays the garden and despoils the neighbouring air; and whose crusade to plant more plants mocks moderation.

His fixation on the garden alone, like a mafia boss watching the quality of his shoes or a conser vative Christian his abstinence, leads him headlong into dark places.

In my childhood years I must admit I disliked gardeners; today, however, I have something to confess. I may seem to you like nothing but an angry young man. And what I would give to be just an angry young man, to look at a garden and feel nothing! Yet, when I look at the garden I tremble as though stroked by slender, nailed fingers – and a consummation with a garden is not a consummation to be desired.

Oh, mine is a bittersweet lot. When I curse the gardener, I am swallowed by self-loathing. For – and here is my sordid truth – I am a chronic sufferer of his wretched condition. I am a gardener.

As happened to our biblical parents - poor mummy and daddy of Eden - the garden was to be my

28 Gardening: The Roots of Addiction

undoing. At its beckoning call one hot steamy day, an optimistic, empathetic and kindly character (if you grant me this of my past self) was consumed by passion. A hunger developed, per versely broadening the lusts of a twenty-something man – a hunger that could not be fed by fast-food nor satisfied by my favourite pastimes of shopping for chinos or even eating chips on the couch. To put it frankly, I had been debauched. And only gardening could fulfil me.

The decline was swift: my desertion of nor mal life as sudden as opportunity is fleeting.

The decline was swift: my desertion of nor mal life as sudden as opportunity is fleeting. In just a few weeks I became a senseless beast, plodding in ever-growing circles as I dug holes, sprinkled seeds, weeded and watered, all the while obser ved with a certain horror by my family from the kitchen window. In my mindlessness one day I encroached on the brick and mortar of their humble abode.

And they were afraid. Still I could do nothing to change my ways.

Once, a friend came over and I showed her to the backyard. She saw a man hunchbacked as he waddled around his yard, hands folded behind his back, his jeans ripped and his levis t-shirt faded. As my friend looked on, this miserable creature would occasionally break off from his circumambulation and drop to his knees to inspect the chocolate earth, uttering obscurely about raised beds and staking. The friend never returned; the roots – O beauteous, ravishing roots – gripped me tighter than ever.

Although my unhealthy appreciation for all matters green is hard for some to bear, I do find opportunities to share my feelings with people who have kindred obsessions. You might be surprised to know that, while I have been effectively disowned by my family and most friends have stopped talking to me, there are still countless knocks on our door.

Each time, I look up guiltily from my garden bed and, realising someone is here to see me, spring up to open it, inviting – nay, pressing – them in.

Through patches of parsley and rows of rosemary, past cobs of corn and towers of tomatoes, I lead my Mor mon, my Jehovah’s Witness and my travelling salesperson. Without pause, I tell them of my tragic love, breaking down with tears of joy at being able to share this with people who are likewise eschewed in society.

Once, before my gardening addiction, I was ambivalent about these pariahs; now, however, I revel in their quiet company (they really are quite softly spoken). When I see them in the street I

run to catch them and more than often, though they seem to be hurrying somewhere, I embrace them generously before shepherding them to my house. They all know where it is. Understandably they sometimes have other arrangements, and sometimes they cannot come themselves so they send one of their friends in their stead; in any case I am eternally grateful for their company.

My addiction has caused me much grief in social situations, my parents forever infor m me.

Apparently it has been hard to connect with them in recent months on account of the circularity of my conversation, my theories on reproduction and consequent fondness for the word ‘pistil’. Also I am advised not to read my book Origins of Clematis Vir giniana aloud at the dining table, presumably because of its Latinate constructions.

Indeed I treat gardens with fear and loathing, zeal and delight. The various remedies I have tried – urban retreats, indoor therapy and Gardeners Anonymous – have failed. Each time the garden beckons me the addict within takes control.

I am not advising you never to take up gardening, but do not take it too seriously. Beware the traps of indulgence and be moderate in everything, especially the number of plants you plant for your own pleasure – otherwise, like me, you might lose your friends, offend your parents and, though possessing a nice green thumb, live a barren life.

Miscellaneous 29

THE

DEATH OF

INNOCENCE Author: Lauren Copland Artwork: Genevieve Brandenburg and Viray Thach

It’s hard to breathe. Shards of ice-cold fear pierce my heart as I struggle to dull my heaving breath and quiet the ferocious beating of my heart. They mustn’t hear me.

If they hear me, we’re dead. Things weren’t meant to be like this. Why must they be like this?

30 The Death of Innocence

The only small comfort is your war mth nestled in my ar ms, the soft rise and fall of your chest, the only peace that is left these days. You can’t even begin to understand what’s going on. I understand, but only vaguely; a lot of it still seems absurd.

Am I the only one questioning what’s been happening lately?

We leave the only home that we’ve ever known, hoping – no, praying – that it will ensure our sur vival. There’s no time to reminisce about the happier days we’d known here, filled with war m, euphoric memories of childhood, surrounded by the love and laughter of family. These wood-lined walls will forever be burdened with these memories etched in their grains, never able to unleash them and be free. Home. That sentiment died a long time ago; it’s just an empty shell now, forgotten.

do they want us? We’ve done nothing to deser ve this. Who makes the rules?

Gasping. Panting. I’m surprised I manage to run at all given that fear has deprived me of proper breath. Legs screaming due to ill usage, burning as if lit with fire – I should have been prepared; I knew that this day would come. I can’t stop if I stop we’re dead. Run. Running. All that’s left is to run. No destination planned, just need to keep running, hoping my legs will find strength along the way. You’re still crying, blubbering away, nose dripping, eyes watering. I don’t know why. I wish I knew what you needed.

Ear-splitting metallic booms shatter the smothering silence, frightening away the quietness. Loudness envelops us. I don’t know what to do. How to save us? Where to go? Oh God, I want to save you so badly. You don’t deser ve this. None of us There is only fear left, the desperate hope of sur vival and the uncertainty of what the future do. None of this makes sense. I run mechanically, robotic legs going through the holds. You will never remember motions, one in front of the other. this place. Only I am burdened We’re falling, down, deep like the with those bright memories Metallic hail rains heavenly branches. Rock catches burned into my brain, praying on my shoe, like a friendly game that they will never fade. down, leaving of tag – if only this game were Who will I be if I no longer know only the broken, so innocent. I hug you tighter in what shaped my past and who my ar ms, cradling you from the I once was? battered bodies of a fall, landing awkwardly, painfully, malnourished girl and on the rocky riverbed. We are We’re running now.

Down through the deep valley done for. her infantile sister surrounded by gnarled trees From either side of the valley that reach their limbs out to us, ridge, shapes pour down in an spurring us on, like outstretched ar ms desperately trying to shield us but never quite endless stream like ants advancing on a picnic. making it far enough. Every movement we make If only these were ants and not soldiers. We are seems cacophonous in the near-silence of the surrounded. I kiss your soft head and whisper valley, that heavy, deadly quiet. Eerie whispers fill in your ear that everything is going to be alright the void as leaves shiver at the monstrosity, broken as they draw their weapons. We are faced by the only by the crack of death as heavenly branches heads of those metal objects designed to kill.

Guns. I can’t make out any of the soldiers’ faces, fall harshly back to Earth. but it doesn’t matter. I doubt that I would see any You stir. Our eyes, windows to the soul, meet. remorse in their eyes; they’re only doing their job, Mine, a liquid-gold hazel, bore into your wide baby right? Sticking to their orders. blues, thousands of words, explanations, prayers, pouring out of them like a waterfall, but mouth Metallic hail rains down, leaving only the clamped shut, they never reach you. Tears burst broken, battered bodies of a malnourished girl noisily from your eyes, those beautiful, innocent, and her infantile sister. Shocked eyes looking uncomprehending eyes. I wish you wouldn’t cry heavenward, blood-splattered gaunt features, but it’s in your nature, you can’t help it. Running forever questioning. Linked together in an eternal harder. Legs burning. Shaky, unsteady, as if I’m a embrace; a hug to last a lifetime. newborn gazelle unsure of how to control them.

Don’t care about the noise. Have to get away, far Why did this have to happen? We never did away, before they find us. They won’t give up. Why anything wrong. We were just different from them.

War. What good does it do?

Creative Writing 31

YEAH,

NAH

A BOGANS LIFE FOR ME Authors: G azza & Jaxter

This article contains a lot of swearing.

Like, a LOT. If this offends you, or if the subject of bogans is simply not your cup of tea, please feel free to keep f licking through the lovely pages of this magazine.

But if ya stayed, welcome! How’s it garn.

G’day from outback Straya where we proudly call our mates ‘cunts’ and a new cunt ‘mate’. We come from the land of Far mers Union and meat pies, and where ‘get fucked’ is the most useful thing you’ll learn.

We are the bogans of ya backyard; the sick bastards walkin’ up the street yelling ‘GDAY BAZZA’ to the 4WD ute that’s passin’ the ser vo or the cop shop; or the ladies (‘sheilas’ what Pop calls em), the short shorts, ug g boots and matching tramp stamps, probs grabbin’ ice to put in the eski for the footy. Some call us simple bastards, but we reckon school is over-rated when ya could be a tradie from seven’een. We worship Straya’s loosest cunt, Shooter Williamson, and we all wanna take

32 Yeah, Nah, A Bogan’s Life for Me

Artwork: Jac qui Johns

Carl Barron out for a stubbie. We say “nahh, but yeah” and know all the words to Fitzy and Wippa’s ‘Aussie Battler Style’.

Think ya know us? We’re all from woop-woop.

Since we’re bogans and we don’t pronounce shit proper it’s gonna be hard to write exactly how we talk, coz if you get a bogan to read this itllsoundlikethis. Get rid of all ya fuckin big words and chance of soundin’ half smart. Coz, mate, a true blue knows that syllables, separating ya words and diction is totally optional. We sink into our vowels and mostly speak through our noses, and we all drop the letters we don’t reckon are necessary.

But just hang on a sec while we grab our trackies and VBs so we can sit down and have a yarn.

The ‘how to’ guide How can you be boganised?

Pronunci-fuckin’-ation.

Without the bogan accent it’s just not the bloody same, and you would sound even more fuckin’ stupid to all the fellas. We haven’t quite worked out how to demo the accent through a piece of paper, but true blue funny man Adam Hills said it goes a little something like this:

1. Pretend you’re a Brit convict with a cockney accent.

2. Think of a time you were in a place that was well hot.

3. Combine the cockney accent with the time you

4. Attire (we ain’t talkin’ wheels mate) Every fuckwit knows what ya wearin’ gets ya a missus. The usual outfit consists of the following:

Thongs:

Multi-purpose fuckin god-sends, whether it be doing ya shopping, driving ya eski down the road or tryna rob an ATM (no seriously, YouTube it).

Singlet: Shirts are alright, but they are no good for showing off your latest ‘Aussie Pride’ tattoo.

were in that hot place so that every word you say comes out 10x slower.

Shorts: You gotta let the boys breathe. Nuf said.

4. And Bob’s your uncle! You have yaself the

these are essential for keepin’ the rays outta ya eyes on a scorcher.

makings of a legit speakin’ Aussie.

While it’s stock standard to greet a bogan with either ‘the fucks on, cunt?’ or simply ‘MAAAAATTTEEEE’, we all know that our behaviour’s gotta be just as scung y. Here’s just three to try:

1. Chuggin’ a beer

Sunnies: You may look like a speed dealer but Put together all the above and the Sheilas will think ya a spunk!

A day in the life

2. Driving

Ah what’s daily life for a loose cunt? Wake up commando, gotta comb me goldilocks, and rock the shorts 12 months of the year coz no sense no feeling, cunts, yeahhh. Pack the vegemite sanga and smash a few weet-bix and a quick durry before pickin’ up G-Mesh – who lost his licence, the dumb fuck.

No one likes a fuckin’ show off… a show off who remembers to indicate and can parallel park without a blunder. Bogans like their bombs loud and fast. If you have freshly fixed bitumen, it’s a crime not to do a snaky and leave some rubber behind – and if ya can, do it in a Commie beast.

Work hard play hard, fellas – and by hard we mean goin’ to town on the cartons of iced coffee and chocy donuts. Hard yakka bein’ a sparkie, so holdin’ out for knock off so we can chuck some laps in the ute, mate, cut sick down the main on the way to the bottle-o.

It’s basically treason not to finish ya booze, ESPECIALLY when it’s longneck (beer). Even if you’re about to chuck up, you gotta smash that last drop or you’ll be forever known as the light-weight pussy.

3. Gestures Scratchin’ yaself (schnozza, arse, knickers, nog gin etc.) is common practice – who gives a fuck what the other lanky cunts think of ya? If that lanky cunt looks at ya with disgust, the next gesture is the humble flip off.

Home is where you expect ya fuckin bludger friends to hang around like flies on shit. But whip out the Sayos and Tim-Tams for the Frid’y night footy, crack open some coldies, and you got yaself a ripper night.

Culture 33

10 Life lessons 1. With bein’ a bogan there’s a need to swear. We’re not sure why, but maybe it makes what we say sound important. Take the following: ‘So I asked them kindly to be quiet’.

Or – Oi mate, shut THE FUCK, up.

2. Most of being a bogan is knowin’ how to insult someone.

3. Anything that’s not beer is juice.

4. You know that Kath and Kim is not an

ONE WORD to rule them all All bogans know that ‘fuck’ is the most versatile word in ya vocab. Or to quote me very own dictionary: Fuck is the most important fuckin word in the entire fuckin bogan fuckin language, ya slut.

Take the following: As a verb: Johnny fucked Jenny.

exag geration.

As a noun: That sick fuck.

5. Life’s about hardening the fuck up and being

As an adjective: I hurt my fuckin hand!

the sickest cunt to ya mates.

A unit of measure: A fuck-load.

6. We all know that pollies are just dumb cunts in suits (oops did that slip out).

Ref lecting general confusion: What the fuck?

7. The Aussie flag hangin’ in the garage is

Beginning a sentence: Get fucked, it’s cold.

standard.

8. Gotta rock the 80s mullet and borrowed flannies from your old man.

9. Can’t forget them Southern Cross tatts. (But don’t get too competitive at Cen’relink, now.)

(Replace with any ‘who/when/where/why/how’) Expressing distress: Oh, fuck me!

Or satisfaction: Fuck yeah!

And the one that doesn’t need an intro: FUCK OFF, CUNT.

10. And ‘she’ll be right’ (‘she’, being either a

person or thing) loosely translates to: ‘I’ll worry about it when it becomes a problem’.

Much ado about nothin’ So you’ve passed Bogan 101 if you can understand the shit talk: Mate, we hit the pub come knock off, coz she likes to bend at the elbow. Well I was like a shag on a rock while these cunts were chattin her up. A few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, if ya know what I mean, this dog cunt built like a brick shit house reckon’d he knew all the words to ‘Land Down Under’. I told him to shove it up his clacka, and fair dinkum he was a goner; he started singin’ to the bartender. Nek minnit old mate Gazza who couldn’t fart in a bottle (turns out he’s a banana bender) won a free round for neckin’ a tinnie in 12 seconds flat. Fuckin’ stocked cunt coz they charge like wounded bull these days.

Mate, he looked like the north end of a camel goin’ south; he was fuckin plastered! Gotta work at sparrow’s fart, that’ll be a laugh. But I was stuck with some cooked slut chewin’ me ear off - the leg off an iron horse, mate. I’d had enough, I was a cut snake, I just wann’ed a quickie but she was about to call ralph so we chucked a Maccas run and hit the sack.

Howd ya go. Ya savvy?

34 Yeah, Nah, A Bogan’s Life for Me

Peeping Tony: How to Avoid Australia’s New Data-Retention Laws Author: Matthew Tamlin

Do you fe el uneasy ab out the new data-retention laws? Do you fe el like B ig Brother is watching your every move? Do es it c onc ern you that G e orge Brandis knows what kind of p orn you like? If you answere d ‘yes’ to any of thes e questions, this guide’s for you.

Peeping Tony 35

Dubious as it may sound, protecting your online privacy boils down to one idea: not being the lowhanging fruit. By taking steps to make yourself a slightly harder-to-track target, cyber snoops will ignore you in favour of less-protected internet users – and these steps are easy and available to everyone. In this article I’ll tell you about some of the methods I use to protect my online privacy from governments and other organisations, so that you can do the same.

Use a v ir t ual private net work (VPN) ser v ice Using a VPN ser vice is the easiest way to avoid the new data retention laws. A VPN ser vice is a company which acts as a middleman between your ISP (internet ser vice provider) and the internet.

All communication between you and the VPN is encrypted; hence, if the Government went to your ISP to look at your activity, both parties would see that you’re connected to a VPN ser ver, but have no way of actually identifying the data being transferred.

While there are a whole range of potential VPN ser vices, choosing a good ser vice comes down to three main factors: the location of the business, its data-retention policies, and the physical location of its ser vers? Ideally, the business should be based in a foreign country with good privacy laws, and the employees (especially the CEO) should be citizens of this country: this makes it harder for the Australian government to force VPNs to hand over your data. The business itself should also have policies against log ging user data, preferably not retaining any data other than what is necessary to bill you – this way even if the Attorney-General comes knocking, the VPN has nothing to turn over. Finally, all good VPN ser vices have ser vers located all across the globe from which you can choose. This allows you to rest assured that the physical hardware you’re connected to is beyond the reach of the Australian Government, and gives you the added bonus of being able to access geographically-restricted overseas content. Finding a trustworthy VPN that

36 Peeping Tony

meets all of these criteria takes time and research; personally, I’d recommend either Buffered or ExpressVPN.

Sand off your browser fingerprint Every time you visit a website, your browser leaves a ‘fingerprint’ which can be used to identify you: this is a collection of technical details about your browser, such as what fonts it supports and the version and type of browser you’re using.

To see your fingerprint, you can visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Panopticlick (panopticlick.eff.org) and run their test. Just like physical fingerprints, browser fingerprints need to be unique in order to be useful; if the test deter mines you have a unique fingerprint, it could be used to identify you by the government or another organisation.

I can’t say I’ve ever sanded off my real fingerprints (though I’ve been told it’s something everyone should try once) but I do scramble my browser fingerprint regularly by faking my user agent: this is another piece of infor mation which virtually describes which browser you’re using. It’s visible to any website you visit and is a significant part of your browser fingerprint. Fortunately, there are ways to trick websites into seeing a false user agent.

Random Agent Spoofer is a free add-on for Mozilla Firefox which broadcasts a fake user agent, and can be set to rotate through different user agents at random inter vals. A similar extension exists for Google Chrome, called User-Agent Switcher for Chrome (I know, top marks for creativity). If you’re the tinfoil-hat type, you’ll be glad to know that the Firefox add-on can also be used to scramble other more technical parts of your browser fingerprint.

Eat your cookies Cookies are small files which websites store on your computer, and are used during browsing to accomplish a wide array of tasks by practically every website today.

While they are nor mally used for legitimate website operation, they can be abused very easily: advertisers or malicious third-parties can use cookies track you across the web, even if the websites you’re visiting are completely unrelated.

To protect your privacy, you can disable cookies altogether, or even plant fake cookies to lay a false trail.

Most web browsers have a built in setting that allows you to disable all cookies, and some browsers even let you disable third-party cookies while allowing other cookies to function as usual. These solutions are generally the easiest, but do not offer the best protection. Personally, I prefer to poison the well and lay down fake cookies for advertisers or other big nasties to follow. TrackerBlock is an add-on for Firefox which overwrites all of your cookies with fake ones, making it near impossible for annoying or malicious third-parties to use cookies to gather data about you.

Put t ing it all together For the best protection, I use a VPN ser vice while scrambling my browser fingerprint and planting fake cookies. Using just one of the tools will increase your privacy, but in each case there are still ways people and organisations can track you. For example, a VPN ser vice will hide your traffic from your ISP and the government, but organisations can still use your browser fingerprint or your cookies to track you across the web. Meanwhile, just

scrambling your browser fingerprint will help to hide your identity from the websites you connect to, but your ISP will be able to log your history and track your cookies. Using all of the tools simultaneously significantly increases your privacy.

The cost of privac y These tools do a good job of protecting your privacy, but they come at cost. Using a VPN can significantly reduce your internet speed depending on the VPN ser ver location. This isn’t a huge problem when torrenting, but can be a major annoyance when actively browsing the web.

Scrambling your browser fingerprint generally doesn’t have any disadvantages, but some of the more technical settings in the Firefox add-on can be difficult to use and cause your browser to crash. Browsing the web without cookies is more of an inconvenience that anything, but you’ll sometimes encounter a website that simply won’t work without enabling cookies.

To avoid these problems, it’s a good idea to use a nor mal web browser without any privacy enhancements for general browsing, and a different web browser with privacy enhancements when you don’t want anyone looking over your shoulder. Considering everything I’ve told you, you might think that privacy is overrated and not worth the effort, but remember – only the paranoid sur vive.

Technology 37

TRENT PARKE :

THE BLACK ROSE Author: Josephine Boult

Art Gallery of South Australia - Now showing until 10 May 2015 | FREE admission

Trent Parke’s moving exhibition, The Black Rose, is more than just an exposé of the Adelaide-based photographer’s work. Instead, it is an intensely personal visual journey through Parke’s life and experiences. The result of a seven year project using magnum photography, the exhibition is a refreshing reminder of the mystical and powerful way that photography can engage our emotions as well as our senses.

to remind us of the universe. You get a sense of how nature repeats itself, and how you can see the cosmos in the everyday.

As we walk from room to room, we feel as if we are getting deeper and deeper into the heart of the photographer’s psyche. After leaving two dark exhibition chambers, we enter a glaringly white room, which harshly engages your physical senses as your eyes are forced to adjust. The stark whiteness After moving with his family seems to sug gest life. In this from Sydney to Adelaide in room we bear witness to a 2007, Parke began this project bloody yet beautiful water to explore and rediscover his birth and an innocent child’s traumatic childhood through face, larger than life. A few photography. Most of his rooms later, juxtaposed with early memories were lost these images of birth, are around the age of twelve confronting yet strangely after witnessing the sudden engrossing photos of decaying death of his mother in an animals.

Throughout the asthma attack. The Black Rose black and white exhibition are showcases a cleverly curated small leaks of colour. The use selection of photos from the of red is especially powerful, over 1,000 rolls of film used and recurs throughout the throughout the course of collection. There is one image the project. of a tree with blood red sap Trent Parke, Australia, bor n 1971, Fever, Dash, Adelaide, 2014, © Trent Parke/Magnum Photos seeping out of its gnarled bark.

Pulling back the first curtain It looks like a bloody mess, and entering a pitch-black room, we are confronted and makes you look twice. The powerful visual with the first black-and-white images. In one corner narrative leads you on. of this room, Parke has re-created the time they had locked themselves out of their home, trying Perhaps the magic of The Black Rose lies in its to break in through the dog door using a cricket ability to make the familiar and everyday take on a bat and other household objects. In contrast, the greater meaning. The work which most resonated next room is larger than life. The photographs, are with me was “365 Sunsets”, in which Parke took grounded in nature, yet are rendered beautifully a picture of the sunset from West Beach every day 38 Trent Parke: The Black Rose

The Black Rose is symbolic of death “or the overcoming of a long journey.

for an entire year. For anyone who has watched the sun set off of any of Adelaide’s beaches, these scenes will be incredibly familiar. Yet, as I stood in front of this wall of photos, I came to realise how we sometimes take the everyday and the familiar for granted, and how little an “entire” year really is to be portrayed in full right in front of my eyes.

As I searched for my favourite sunset, it made me feel rather small, but also encouraged me to savour that very moment.

According to Parke, The Black Rose is symbolic of death “or the overcoming of a long journey. It is the search for absolute perfection, as the Black Rose does not truly exist. It is also referred to as black magic.” The Black Rose exhibition certainly does takes us on a journey and is ultimately an insight into Trent Parke’s understanding of life and death. As you leave the exhibition, you walk through a fluorescent-lit hallway. Hung on either side are strings of negatives. You are immediately drawn to them, seeing the tiny silhouetted images coming to life.

Trent Parke, Australia, bor n 1971, Limestone Coast, South Australia, 2007, © Trent Parke/Magnum Photos

Trent Parke, Australia, bor n 1971, Cockatoo, Newcastle, New South Wales, 2011, © Trent Parke/Magnum Photos

I encourage you strongly to take the time to visit this exhibition. Not only is it free to the public, it showcases the work of an incredibly-talented Adelaide-based photographer. Enter with an open mind and open heart, and be prepared to experience all kinds of emotion, confronted by the images, be sad, be happy, examine the grotesque and question the mundane. Most importantly, take your time. Sitting somewhere between fantasy and reality, Trent Parke’s The Black Rose is a reminder that memories can last and be recreated - you just have to savour the moment.

Trent Parke, Australia, bor n 1971, Swan, Adelaide, 2007, © Trent Parke/Magnum Photos

Review 39

CONFESSIONS OF AN

O PA H O L I C Author: Grace Denny

Artwork: Matilda Bristow

It began with a cow print denim jacket, white with offensively large black splodges.

I was eight and Lizzie McGuire was my fashion icon, Delta’s “Bor n To Tr y” my anthem and $2 pocket money a fortune in lolly purchase from the cor ner store.

On free dress day at school, I stretched my fledgling fashionista wings to create “hoedown meets paintball explosion”. The jacket was teamed with rainbow knee high socks and matching headband, a pale pink corduroy skirt and a white turtle neck, to the perceived envy of my friends. As a walking advertisement for the dairy industry, I ran faster at lunch, wrote more neatly in pen and even snag ged a date (my crush OMG) to the disco. I was invincible. I was openly parading an item of clothing more unappealing than a rhinestone fanny pack. And it was lovingly purchased for a gloriously low sum at an opshop.

There is a widely perpetuated myth that charity shops/opshops/ thrift stores are ding y, dark places where cockroaches breed and the carpets smell of fresh cat wee. The aisles, crammed with lurid clothing that should have remained somewhere between 1985 and never, are the haunt of eternal students, pensioners or unsuspecting civilians led astray. Despite the example of cow print jackets, however, this is (almost boringly) not the case.

40 Confessions of an Opaholic

There has been an exponential rise in the popularity of the sport – nay, cultural hobby - of thrifting. This rise can no doubt be attributed to Macklemore blazing through the charts on his way to Narnia via scooter in 2012, with a song dedicated entirely to the fine art of not being ripped off.

Frankie Magazine, Zooey Deschanel, Tumblr and an unshakeable love of Wheatus (just me?) have also helped in assisting the sale of brogues, ironically ugly sweaters and – dare I say it – the bucket hat. And yet, even my own mother advised me not to write this article (‘perhaps under a pseudonym – you’d make such a good Ned Grenny’) because of the slight stigma attached to buying second hand.

But the thing is – for me, opshopping is a challenge; a game where the opponents are moneygrabbing corporations, your wallet and your own inner scavenger. If you were the first kid to find all the Easter eg gs, to the detriment of all those you elbowed into bushes, then you would find no greater joy than scouring the aisles of a second-hand store. Silk shirt? Two points. Brand name? Five points.

Half price on that purple tag? 10. Not only will you be able to find pieces that speak to you as an individual; you’ll actually be giving your money directly to a charity instead of indirectly to a sweatshop. Speaking from experience, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify spending serious cash money on clothes from “real” stores when you can buy a new season, genuine, branded

Not only will you be able to find pieces that speak to you as an individual; you’ll actually be giving your money directly to a charity instead of indirectly to a sweatshop.

piece for a fraction of the original price. Second hand doesn’t mean second rate – it just means less wastage on all counts.

I was once told by a fabulously quirky vintage store owner that ‘the clothes choose you’ – a statement which rings true once you get the knack of being able to tell the difference between quality fabrics, prints and styles. When you really need or want an interesting piece to wear (recently I have acquired a silk midi skirt, leopard print fur jacket and 100% wool, tailored pea coat) you may not be able to find it straight away by buying vintage, but you’ll definitely find it if you look enough and it will be a one off just for you. If you hate it in six months, you can send it off as a donation to the land it came from, with the monetary loss being little more than the price of a coffee.

So, I propose this: next time you feel the itch to spend, turn your attention to your local Red Cross, Salvos, Savers or vintage store. Shake off your fear of wearing a dead person’s clothes (the big gest and unlikeliest excuse of all) and instead focus your efforts on avoiding the underwear aisle in Savers which is, alas, a thing. Dare to be Carrie Bradshaw in vintage shoes and colourful skirt, strutting down the East End of Adelaide in defiance of all who stare, faces pressed, from the windows of Pressed Juices. Dare to be badass Judd Nelson in a tartan 100 per cent cashmere scarf from Salvos, fist raised in triumph, as he strides across the Barr Smith Lawns to “Don’t You Forget About Me”. I dare you to be a cold ass honkey – because one man’s trash is another man’s come up.

Miscellaneous 41

Review

Poetry

ADELAIDE UNI STUDENT DEVELOPS ADDICTIVE APP:

F I V E TA P

The Integral

By Celia Clennett

By Max Wurm

It will take you longer to read this explanation of how FiveTap works than it would for you to download it (for free) on your iOS or Android device and tr y it out first hand.

The aim of this frustratingly addictive game is to keep the white blocks from touching the bottom of your screen. This requires your brain to adapt to jug gling and tapping at the same time, which can often be demoralising at first. There tends to be two classes of players, those who put down their phone or those who continue on. However, those with the quick fingers, experienced with games such as Tap Tap Revenge, and the addictive tendencies of a Flappy Bird player will excel at this simple game.

FiveTap was developed by Adelaide University Engineering student Vincent Portella. Vincent is a self-taught iPhone and Android developer. When asked what outcome he expected from the app, he claimed ‘I didn’t make this game for success; I’m not sure what success would even feel like.

I just wanted to prove to myself that I could make something.’ There is an important lesson behind Vincent’s outlook. Sometimes the thirst for success can hinder your confidence and mislead your ambitions, and simply making something for yourself can result in unexpected surprises.

You can track your score with the integrated world ranking ladder, comparing it to your friends, the whole world or even just your previous high score.

While the game is complete, Vincent intends to expand on it, planning to add a multiplayer feature.

FiveTap has arrived at a convenient time of the year for students, it can fill in those awkward moments while waiting for your tutorials, or when you want to take advantage of the free student WiFi! 42 Five Tap Review + The Integral Poem

Oh how wondrous and divine There is no symbol to compare The gorgeous integration sign So sleek, immeasurably fair.

Behold the stroke which therein fits The slender cur ve at origin Original, though I admit I’ve seen it on my violin.

Although so elegant, you say, I see my pen do more and more There surely is a better way They’re really bloody hard to draw.

I see now, at this later stage A fucking million on my page.

INTERVIEW WITH

CLASSICS STUDENTS

Emily Chambers and Nadina Paine, students in second year Bachelor of Arts (Advanced)

What is Classics?

W here could it take you?

Emily: Classics is the study of all things ancient

Emily: There’s actually a wide range of jobs classics can help get you into. Did you know that facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, studied classics and quoted the Aeneid in a product conference? Yeah. He’s worth a casual $36.2 billion according to Forbes, and credits his Latin studies as one of the keys to his success.

Greek and Rome. And I mean all - it’s like studying English, History, Philosophy, Architecture and even Science, all in one major.

Why did you decide to study it at uni?

Emily: I grew up on TV programs like Horrible Histories and Time Team, and so have always had an interest in it, and archaeolog y especially. I got As in Specialist Mathematics and Physics in year 12, but Classics was the only subject I did that I really enjoyed.

What have you enjoyed most about it?

Emily: Probably the sheer breadth of topics and time that it covers. You really are looking into a whole new world, rather than just one aspect of life.

Basically, studying classics requires research and critical thinking skills that can be applied to a range of situations. It’s not so much what you know, but the skills you picked up while learning it.

What extracurricular events have you been involved with?

Emily: I helped out as a conference steward at the Australasian Society for Classical Studies Conference at Adelaide Uni in January. It was an amazing chance to see what’s happening in Classics right now. It’s such a vibrant and active community, with barely any of the stodg y old professors people associate classics with.

Interview with Classics Students 43

Classics and

Modern Culture Author: Alex A. Antoniou

With the recent destruction of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the city of Hatra, and artifacts in the Mosul Museum

by Islamic State militants, 2015 is a grim year for classicists, historians, and archaeologists alike.

Indeed, one might think that with these bleak portents of the destruction to come, the world might remember just how important world cultural heritage truly is. Nothing seems further from the truth in Australia, and especially in Adelaide.

When I tell people that I’m doing my Honours year in Classics, I get two types of reactions. The first is general confusion about what Classics is.

Most seem to think that Classics is an English subject where we read the likes of Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Dickens. Actually, I spend my days reading the likes of Thucydides, Catullus, and Pliny: authors and poets who have contributed just as much – if not more – to everything that we now recognise in the twenty-first century. If you know who these authors and poets are, kudos

44 Classics and Modern Culture

Artwork: Emily Hart

to you! Classical figures and influences per meate modern culture to an amazing extent, yet so many seem blind to their importance as origins. People seem to forget that without Herodotus, we would not have movies such as 300; without Homer, Troy would never have existed (admittedly, I wouldn’t be that sad if that movie had never been made); and without Plutarch, Cleopatra would not be nearly as long and dreary. Indeed, even the venerable Shakespeare regularly dipped into the buffet that is Classics for material. Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus are fun reimaginings of Classical episodes. The fated tale of Romeo and Juliet, possibly the most famous tragedy of all time – if we can think beyond Baz Luhr mann’s seminal recreation with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes – is based on the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid’s Metamor phoses. How many people remember the excellent game Age of Mytholog y, or the more recent God of War series? Who doesn’t know of Freud’s Oedipal Complex, born from the Sophoclean tragedy Oedipus Tyrannos? There simply isn’t enough room in this article to detail each of the Classical allusions in Har r y Potter and The

removed from us in twenty-first century Australia, that does not make the questions we ask – or the answers we find – any less relevant. Since the Classical world for ms such a crucial part of our cultural and intellectual past, we cannot simply ignore it. Talented scholars are asking questions about our past, and those questions go a long way toward understanding not only our history, but also who we are today. Do you think that the twenty-first century invented smut? Try reading about bread dildos in Lysistrata or what Marcus Valerius Martialis wanted to do with virgins (look it up on Wikipedia). How about emotion? Do we deal with pain and grief in the same ways as the ancients? Think slut-shaming is new? Check out the excellent new article by the talented Classics alumnus Lewis Webb, and you’ll soon realise how much we can learn from the Ancient Romans.

Hunger Games. I could keep giving examples until I pass into Hades. In all aspects of twenty-first century life – from literature to popular movies, gaming, and psycholog y – Classical allusions are far from unusual.

The second response I get is: ‘Surely there’s nothing left to look at? Surely we’ve found everything, and we understand it all’. This is the most common reaction I get, and it makes me incredibly sad.

Unfortunately, it seems to be the attitude of our universities as well. Of course we don’t know ever ything. Classicists, ancient historians, and archaeologists are adding knowledge to the world ever y single day. Let’s think about the sensational aristocratic Macedonian tumulus tomb discovered late last year (look it up, its amazing!). Or if you’ve ever seen the much-missed Time Team, you will know that you can put a shovel down anywhere in England and almost always find a series of short, low walls! Just because classicists have a lot of infor mation, it doesn’t mean that we understand ever ything about it. Classicists, ancient historians, and archaeologists spend their lives exploring the knowledge we have in an effort to understand it further. We study ancient texts and material items to gain more insight about the cultures they came from.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it I hate to repeat this overused quote from Winston Churchill, but ‘those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’. Our possible future appears even more dire than this. If universities stop giving us the chance to learn from history, then we are not only doomed to repeat it – we are doomed never to know about it at all. We are doomed to destroy our culture in a more heartbreaking and irreparable way than Islamic State could ever achieve.

While these cultures may seem temporally and physically

Culture 45

An Open Letter to

BLO CKBUSTER Author: Alex Lightbody

To be honest I don’t even remember the first time that I saw you, you were just always in my life.

Living just down the road, we grew up together, you transitioning from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray as I grew from tomboy child to awkward bracesclad teen then slightly less awkward high schooler.

For years you remained by my side, catering to my every need with your ‘5 weeklies for $5’ deal as I progressed through the various phases of adolescence. From Lizzie Maguire marathons to my first MA15+ movie (The Hot Chick), I spent hours meticulously trawling up and down your aisles, trying to find the movie that best fit my mood. After 17 years of friendship I knew you inside and out, but despite this we never grew tired of one another and every time I thought I’d seen all you had to offer, you would surprise me with some newfound treasure (or new release).

You even facilitated my first real crush, remember?

Remember the boy who worked Thursday nights? I would spend ages getting ready just so I could rent intellectual French movies and impress him with my worldliness. And when he failed to fall madly in love with me (which I still don’t understand) you provided a shoulder to cry on in the for m of every Rachel McAdams movie ever made. Like a true friend, you always stuck by my side and forgave me no matter what I did. I’ll never forget the time I kept Rent for seven months, and when my parents finally found out and made me return it, you let me off with just $10 in fines (not the $210 I actually owed).

I think that was the day I realised I loved you.

I only wish I’d known it was too good to last.

Everything changed the day a closing down sign went up in your window, casting a dark shadow of sadness over the entire suburb. Five years later this shadow still hangs over the neighbourhood’s residents, but most of all it hangs over me.

46 An Open Letter to Blockbuster

Artwork: Sarah Boese

Following this break up I, like many girls on the rebound, became somewhat promiscuous, opening accounts at blockbusters all over town. My keychain soon grew heavy under the weight of all my new membership cards, perhaps symbolising the heavy heart that I carried with me from store to store. My friends and family were relieved that I was finally moving on, but it was just a façade. None of these new relationships felt the same and the cracks soon started to show.

I began to return my DVDs later and later, until I stopped returning them altogether. Looking back now I see this as a cry for attention, a desperate attempt to make you notice me. Your incessant reminder texts and phone calls made me feel like you still cared, but we both knew the truth. It became a twisted sort of game to me, opening new accounts only to disappear weeks later, leaving piles of overdue fines in my wake. Before I realised what I was doing, I was in too deep. What we once had was broken beyond repair.

Our only communication now is via the weekly debt-collection letters and phone calls.

You have long since stopped calling me yourself, too much of a coward to talk to me after all that has happened. Despite my best efforts, the scars of our past still remain. I am yet to walk into a video store without feeling a pang of nostalgic grief. I heard a while back that you had gone bankrupt. I expected to feel something, perhaps a sick sense of glee or sadness for your loss, but I felt nothing.

I was numb. I gave up all together a few months ago, now wasting what little downloads I have streaming shitty quality movies, with no option to change language or watch deleted scenes.

It will never be the same, but it’s time for me to let go.

Yours, Alex Lightbody

Emma's Dilemmas Emma,

Emma,

If you’re sexually harassed by a customer while working in customer ser vice, how should you respond? Keeping in mind that you have to remain professional etc. when you’re dealing with something like this.

Do you think that Netflix is a g ood investment? A few of my friends and I were thinking of sharing a subscription because we have a dire and unyielding thirst for Orange is the New Black that cannot be quenched unless we pay money ever y month to a company that will let us watch a television prog ram online, in exchange for money that we have paid.

-Nellie, 23.

Hi Nellie, You should not r eally be asking me about what to do ‘if ’ you ar e sexually harassed by a customer while working in customer ser vice but instead, what to do ‘when’ you ar e sexually harassed by a customer while working in customer ser vice.

That is the key conceptual flaw at the heart of your inquir y.Please consider r evising your question, and I shall consider contemplating it.

Hi Emma, Have you ever considering becoming the Prime Minister of Australia? I think you would make a ver y g ood one.

-Emma, 21 No Emma,To be honest, I have never consider ed becoming the Prime Minister of Australia because come on, we’ve alr eady had one female Prime Minister let’s not get excessive full r epr esentation of females in politics in keeping with democratic ideals has alr eady been r eached blah blah blah.

However, I have given serious thought to the mor e immediately r ealistic possibility of becoming a benevolent dictator, or an empr ess, or whatever style of authority position it is wher e you have people car r ying you ar ound on a litter, fanning you with palm leaves and hand-feeding you grapes.

I think I could be quite good at that.

-Sam, 22 Sam it’s so hard, it’s so hard because is no other way of watching on content online. No other way.

Jk ther e is it’s called ‘pirating’. Pirating is that weird thing we’ve been doing as a nation for, ooh I don’t know about a decade now because the only compelling drama available on Australian fr ee-to-air is the odd episode of The Block wher e a r oom is painted a complete wr ong colour and it’s just a hot mess and the tension is rising so much that they have put in like an overly dramatic soundtrack in post-edit that makes you feel like you’r e watching a final battle scene in Lord of the Rings but instead of orcs and a confr ontation with the manifestation of pur e evil ther e’s a final confr ontation between THE MOST BORING PEOPLE. ON EARTH about SKIRTING BOARDS .

Jk I would never pirate what ar e you talking about. I knew a person who knew a person who did it once HAHAHAH. Oh god. The Dallas Buyers Club people ar e coming . They’r e coming for me. They’r e coming for you. They’r e coming for our childr en.

Hide yourselves. Befor e it’s too late. Befor e they come for all of us.

Emma’s Dilemmas 47

Crossword

by Masya Zabidi

ACROSS

DOWN

2 5 7 9 11 12 14 16 17 18 19

1 “It’s g otta be red” (2 wds) 3 “You don’t just eat ‘em” (1 wd) 4 “I’m lovin’ it” (1 wd) 6 “It’s the way it shatters that matters” (2 wds) 8 “Gives you wings” (2 wds) 9 “The most indulgent chocolate biscuit” (1 wd) 10 “Have a break, have a...” (2 wds) 13 “Maximum kick, no sugar” (2 wds) 15 “The original and the best” (1 wd)

“Big burger taste” (2 wds) “Real taste and zero calories” (3 wds) “The original thirst cr usher” (1 wd) “Life is pretty straight without...” (1 wd) “Take a fresh look at seafood” (2 wds) “Life less serious” (2 wds) “Real town. Real cheese” (1 wd) “The big cher r y taste” (2 wds) “It’s moments like these you need...” (1 wd) “Eat fresh” (1 wd) “People powered pizza” (1 wd)

48 Crossword/Diversions

Illustration by Sarah Boese

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