BULL Magazine 2014 Issue 6

Issue 06, 2014 / FREE

THE RISE OF HIV / TATTOOS / FEMINIST PORN / WELFARE, WHAT CARE? / STUDENT CARERS

Issue 06 CONTENTS

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Editors

CONTENTS

Eden Caceda Katie Davern Sophie Gallagher Rob North Sean O’Grady Erin Rooney

REPORTERS

Hannah Edensor Flora Grant Peter Walsh

F E ATUR E S

REF

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LOGICA

NCIN

L STRU

G...

CTURE ...

FINDING RESOURCES...

ING...

FORMATT

T

UN O C

D OR

...W

...BETTER GRA

DES

...DU

helps you get it right

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Build & store a personal library of research material Cite resources accurately & with ease Collapse & expand sections to focus on specific parts Automatically format to academic standards Collaborate with others in the cloud Use Promo Code BU1403 CMYK / .ai

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BACK IN OUR BLOOD PRETTY IN INK 13 REAL SEX APPEALS 18 WELFARE, WHAT CARE? 27 CARING FOR CARERS 32

Dominic Byrne Katelyn Cameron Riddhima Dabhowale Whitney Duan Zoe Hitch Samantha Jonscher Rebecca Karpin Alexandra Mildenhall Jordan Mullins Diana Pham Emily Shen Katie Stow Wanyi Xin (Cabbage)

CMYK / .ai

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Publications ManagerS Louisa Stylian Mary Lentros

Design manager

E DA TE

A REVOLUTIONARY NEW APP • • • • •

Contributors

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Robyn Matthews

Design

Simon Macias Peta Harris

R E GULARS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

The USU acknowledges the Cadigal People of the Eora Nation as the traditional owners of the land we meet on today. The USU recognises that the land belonging to these peoples was never ceded, given up, bought, or sold.

We pay our respects to the Aboriginal Elders both past and present and extend this acknowledgement to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people here with us.

What’s On 04 Editorial & Board 06 Letters 07 Opinion 09 Interview 16 Taste 22 Go 23 Move 24 Learn 25 The Time I Tried 31 Campus Fashion 35 Vox & Classic Countdown 36 Cow & Horns 37 Arts 39 Reviews 40 Experience 41 Club Confidential 42 Shutter Up 44 Comics 45 Ask Isabella 46

CONTACT

editors@bullmag.com.au bullmag.com.au facebook.com/bullmag @usubullmag usu.edu.au/bullmag The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of the USU. The information contained within this edition of Bull was correct at the time of printing.

Write for us!

bullmag.com.au

/bullmag

/USUbullmag

Whether you’re a budding student journalist or have a random idea that could be a great story, email us and you could get published here. editors@bullmag.com.au

4

bull usu.edu.au WHAT'S ON

Issue 06 what's on

WHAT'S ON

every week THURSDAY

MONDAY

For the FULL CALENDAR OF EVENTS – head to USU.EDU. AU AND CLICK THE CALENDAR.

monday – friday

$4 tap cider and $4 spirit HAPPY HOUR

Clubs & Socs – remember to submit your events on the website!

THEATRESPORTS®

1-2pm, Manning BarBar

4-6pm, Manning Bar

MON 02

wk 1 (September)

01

TUE

WED

THU

03

04

FUNCH Eastern Avenue, 12–2pm BAND COMP GRAND FINAL MANNING BAR 6.30PM

RADICAL SEX AND CONSENT DAY WORLD SEXUAL HEALTH DAY

FRI 05

09

10

5-6pm, Manning Bar

12

1-2pm, Manning Bar

series screenings

AUSTRALIAN DISCUSSION GROUP

Get Up! Stand Up!

3-4pm, Level 4 Wentworth Building

TRIVIA

19

wk 3 (September)

FUNCH Eastern Avenue, 12–2pm

23

24

25

26

WEDNESDAY MARKETS Eastern Avenue, 9Am FUNCH Eastern Avenue, 12–2pm

wk 4 (September)

1-2pm, Hermann’s Bar

Debating Regionals

4pm, Hermann’s Bar

Beat The System – Local Bands and DJs 5pm, Hermann’s Bar

$3 dog night

6-8pm, Manning Bar

FRIDAY

5-6pm, Manning Bar

DJs

$4 tap cider and $4 spirit HAPPY HOUR

$4 tap cider and $4 spirit HAPPY HOUR

$4 tap cider and $4 spirit HAPPY HOUR

$3.50 house beer & wine HAPPY HOUR

$3.50 house beer & wine HAPPY HOUR

$3.50 house beer & wine HAPPY HOUR

50 C WINGS

2 for 1 schnitty

free topping friday

6-8pm, Manning Bar

4-6pm, Manning Bar

4pm, Hermann’s Bar

6-8pm, Manning Bar

4-7pm, Hermann’s Bar

4-6pm, Manning Bar

4pm, Hermann’s Bar

All day, Manning Bar

MUST SEE Radical Sex & Consent Day Thursday 4 September, 9am Eastern Ave The inaugural Radical Sex & Consent Day encourages radical re-thinking and re-learning sex education through a range of events including workshops, discussions, film screenings and performances. The event caters to and celebrates diverse sexualities while presenting a range of ideas that educate and promote sexual health, body positivity, consent and mutually satisfying sex. It will also help combat the problem of Sexual Harassment on Campus.

COMING UP

PRESENTS

22

wk 5 (September / October)

18

12-4pm, Manning Bar

$3.50 house beer & wine HAPPY HOUR

5.15pm, Alternating Venues

4-6pm, Manning Bar

17

WEDNESDAY Eastern Avenue, 12-2pm

4pm, Hermann’s Bar

16

4-6pm, Manning Bar

FUNCH

FOOD CHALLENGE

\

15

$4 tap cider and $4 spirit HAPPY HOUR

SOLO SESSIONS

6-8pm, Manning Bar

WEDNESDAY MARKETS Eastern Avenue, 9Am FUNCH Eastern Avenue, 12–2pm

wk 2 (September)

4pm, Hermann’s Bar

TUESDAY

11

4-6pm, International Student Lounge

$7 steak night

PRESENTS

08

POOL COMPETITION

$3.50 house beer & wine HAPPY HOUR

28 AUG

Theatresports Showcase Sydney Uni Band Comp Grand Final

3 SEPT

29

30

01

02

03

STUVAC

STUVAC

STUVAC

STUVAC

STUVAC

12 SEPT

5 SEPT 6 SEPT

Protest the Hero Pop Will Eat Itself

The Kite String Tangle 13 SEPT

14 SEPT

The Wonder Years Rock ‘n’ Roll and Alternative Market 26 SEPT

RAW Awards

5

6

Issue 06 7 LETTERS & PICK OF THE MONTH

bull usu.edu.au EDITORIAL

LETTERS

FROM THE EDITORS EDEN, KATIE, SOPHIE, ROB, SEAN, ERIN

BULL wants to hear from you

For the first time ever, this issue will have its content appear online simultaneously with the print edition. Over the last little while, we’ve been spending many late nights working towards the realisation of our

humble website. It’s something we’ve been passionate about and committed to achieving all year and we think its development marks an important step for BULL, so please go check it out at bullmag.com.au.

Inside this issue but outside of the high school sex-ed classroom, talking openly about sex and sexuality is difficult for a lot of us. The conversation gets even harder when you’re interested in sex that is deemed non-normative. Mainstream media and pop culture isn’t helping either. Fifty Shades of Grey springs to mind bringing an altogether misrepresented Robin Thicke ‘Blurred Lines’ kind of approach to BDSM. Flora Grant and Diana Pham delve into the world of feminist porn, examining its increasing popularity among people looking for sex-positive and realistic adult entertainment. Eden Caceda takes a look at the current resurgence of HIV/AIDS in Australia and why it is piquing the attention of the health sector.

We’re also excited to publish Wanyi Xin (Cabbage) who is the first student to illustrate a feature article in BULL this year.

Wanyi reinterprets classical mythology as an accompaniment to Sean O’Grady’s feature exploring the relationship between mental illness and financial security.

Katie Davern sheds light on the issues students who are responsible for caring for a family member or close friend face whilst studying at the same time. Her investigation reveals a lack of support services specifically dedicated to young adult carers, particularly those studying at a tertiary institution.

As you flick through these pages you may start to wonder why there are so many skin close ups in this issue. Hannah Edensor explores how ink has become integrated into the workplace, and the meaning behind the artwork that some are often quick to judge.

That’s all from us... now back to the Internet!

Communications, Innovation, Commercial Operations, and Co-Curricular Experience.

Each of these areas demands our attention, and we will always be working to improve the organisation and our commitment to it.

B: Given the opposition of many on Board to the proposed deregulation of the university sector, do you believe the USU has a role in fighting reforms proposed by the Abbott government?

What, in comparison to the SRC and SUPRA, do you believe that role to be?

B: Do you intend to campaign for anyone in the upcoming SRC elections? Do you think it is appropriate for the head of a student organisation to support specific factions?

Q&A: TARA WANIGANAYAKA USU President B: What, in your mind, is the most important thing this board needs to accomplish in the coming term?

TW: We should always be making tracks towards universal ACCESS, welfare initiatives and setting the foundation for future growth so that we can one day see every student a member of a club and society and engaging in student life on this campus. But ultimately, it is difficult to narrow down to a single issue – this Board works across all levels of the organisation, and works operationally across a breadth of areas including Governance,

TW: I care about my education and who represents me within the Students Representative Council as a student of this university. As such, I have a right to personally support a candidate or group of candidates in the SRC election. However, any decision I make to personally support a candidate does not represent any in-kind or in-principle support from the Union, and I won’t use my position as President to support any candidate.

In short, you may see me in a shirt – but as this interview is focused on my role as President, I’ll ask that the separation of my duties to the Union and my personal decisions is respected.

Ultimately, I will have the duty and pleasure of working with all democratically-elected SRC councillors and Office Bearers, and I hope to work productively with them in the new year.

BULL Eds.

TW: I definitely think there is a role for the Union to play – we, as a membership body, have a duty to inform our members of wider issues which may affect them. We have already made strong headway in developing a longterm relationship with the SRC, SUPRA and CSG in the area of creating joint campaigns or strategy. While the SRC and SUPRA, as representative organisations of all students, perhaps have a stronger ambit to reach out on political issues, when it comes to deregulation we believe we have a responsibility to do our best to educate students about what it might mean for them. As access to tertiary education becomes more difficult, so too does the ability for many students to get involved in campus life, and we believe educational resources should be available equitably. Access to education should not be easier for some than others.

Tell us about the stories you shared with your friends or those you placed on the bottom of your budgie cage. Or just write and let us know you’re lonely.

Email editors@bullmag.com.au

LEAVE LANA ALONE

RE: OUR SILENT EMERGENCY

Warmest salutations to my fellow BULL readers,

Dear BULL,

Allow me to begin this letter by taking you for a short walk down YouTube memory lane, and remind you of that beautiful video that emerged in 2007, featuring a blonde Michael Jackson look-a-like who had tears streaming down his face, anguish in his eyes and a violent tremor in his voice as he pleaded with people to “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE.” Memory successfully refreshed?

Good. Now please consider this letter my opportunity, with shaking fingers and tearrimmed eyes, to beg you to LEAVE LANA DEL REY ALONE. I ask you all, WHAT DID SHE EVER DO TO YOU? Lana Del Rey’s new album, Ultraviolence, has received a fair amount of criticism from various sources (including an article published by The Guardian that Del Rey later criticised over Twitter), and I was sad to see that the review published in last month’s edition of BULL proved to be no exception.

Lana (yes, I feel that I know her well enough to be on a first name basis) is entitled to express whatever emotions she has in her music in that sultry tone that only Lana does best. And if those emotions revolve around rather morbid themes like drug abuse, death and sleeping around in order to achieve some sort of success, then so be it.

I’m much happier listening to ‘Old Money’ than some bloke who is parading around in some Canadian Mountie hat telling me he’s ‘Happy’. No thanks, that ain’t gonna cut it before a Monday morning, 9am lecture.

Lana, if you’re reading this: I’m on your side! Always and forever! ~ Bernadette Anvia, BIGS (Hons) Eds: We’re glad Lana Del Rey has a fan in you, Bernadette, and we’re so glad you guys are on a first name basis!

I really enjoyed reading the feature on domestic violence in the last issue. I think it’s important to get information out there and I liked the point Georgia Hitch made about education, not only for the victim, but for the bystander so they know it’s okay to say or do something. Sometimes it’s okay to have a voice. It may be difficult to say something because as adults we all make our own decisions and we don’t want to come across as being nosey and risk losing the friendship.

Domestic violence is learnt and history often repeats itself so unless the perpetrator is willing to accept they have a problem and is willing to change, it might be hard to overcome.

Domestic violence can happen to anyone; just because you go to University or are educated, doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you and so it’s good to get these ideas out there. ~ Anonymous Eds: Thanks for the feedback on ‘Our Silent Emergency’. You raise a really valid point – domestic violence can happen to anyone and education is key.

Dear BULL, Your article on all you can eat restaurants made my homemade Vegemite and butter sandwich (which I was actually looking forward to) taste like dirt. Thanks a lot. ~Forever Hangry Ed: Bet it looked like a dirt sandwich too #sorrynotsorry

HERCULE POIROT Late one night the BULL eds realised that something BIG was missing from the magazine this year: there was not even a single mention of the world’s best-dressed detective. In an attempt to rectify this atrocity, we decided that it was perhaps time the sole purveyor of classy crime-solving took out the most enviable column of them all, Pick of the Month.

Hercule Poirot is truly in a league of his own. And what better actor to play the Belgian retired detective than the charming David Suchet... be still my beating heart!

With an egg-like head and sparkling green eyes, Poirot is able to work his little grey cells and solve every mystery whether it’s in Mesopotamia or on The Orient Express. He went from Agatha Christie’s primary crime-solver to everyone’s favourite pedant in a matter of hours. How? Our bet is on that impeccable moustache.

Poirot is a great man despite his faults – his awkwardness with all things l’amour, his annoyingly irritable stomach and his endearing fastidiousness.

He taught us that all you need is order and method and a proclivity for patent leather shoes. We second guessed and wondered every time he noticed something we didn’t. What did that ripped letter mean? Why was the long distant aunt of the recently murdered speaking in hushed tones to the maid?

We trembled as he took all the suspects to task right at the end, revealing their secrets as he eventually landed on the murderer.

How did he figure out such an incredible mystery? Why are you even asking? It’s Poirot. No one questions Poirot, the greatest detective of all time.

Issue 06 OPINION

OPINION The Bust in the Business

JORDAN MULLINS My sister, mum and I all stand around the computer, mesmerised by the images on the screen. The trifecta of brassiere perfection lies before us: beautiful, affordable and comfortable, all in the Victoria’s Secret catalogue of bras.

But alas, this leisure is really torture – we want what we cannot have, because these bras are not made for Australian consumption. Although the lingerie empire has opened its first Australian store in Sydney, it is still yet to sell bras. Despite their universal popularity, the multi-billion

ENHANCE THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE Learn valuable skills including: Event Planning Building valuable industry contacts Professional business communication Time management

BECOME A STUDENT LEADER

Budgeting Get a glimpse of your potential career by: Planning campus events that contribute to the Uni community Editing BULL magazine or Hermes literary journal

If you’re dynamic, motivated and creative, follow your passion and apply now at usu.edu.au/studentleaders

Curating art collections and supporting student start-ups

Student leaders may be eligible for an honorarium payment.

Why public schools exceed public perceptions

Katelyn Cameron Last semester I was sitting in Eastern Avenue Auditorium, waiting for my American History lecturer to signal the start of his talk with the usual “Hey y’all”, when I got chatting to a girl I’d never met before. We arrived at the subject of high school and I mentioned that I had gone to a public school. “Oh,” she said, giving me a look of sympathy usually reserved for someone who has just been diagnosed with a serious illness. “Was it really bad?”

This student’s reaction to my public school background is something that I have experienced more times than I can count since starting at the University of Sydney, and I’d like to assure anyone in doubt that attending a public school can actually be a positive experience.

dollar company seems hesitant to put its best asset forward. Even an offshoot of Victoria’s Secret, La Senza, has stopped selling lingerie in Australia.

As a result it seems Australia’s lingerie industry is bereft of affordable but beautiful bras. The problem isn’t that we’re experiencing a shortage of quality bras altogether: every woman in the country must have a Berlei bra in her undie drawer.

However this is not because it’s a particularly lovely bra, but rather because it’s functional and fits well.

The short supply of luxury bra brands means that the few bras that do tick the boxes for comfort and beauty certainly aren’t cheap. In a moment of weakness you might think ‘Maybe I’ll splurge a little and buy that new Elle McPherson range’.

Myschool didn’t have a multi-million dollar performing arts centre or a Latin motto ...

It’s true, my high school didn’t have a rowing team or state of the art computer labs. In fact, the closest we came to having our own swimming pool was when the bottom oval flooded after a day of heavy rain. My school didn’t have a multi-million dollar performing arts centre or a Latin motto, but that doesn’t mean I have ever felt

But then, on the odd occasion that you do find something in that range, it’s so clearly designed by a person that cannot possibly know what boobs look like, that the bra cups somehow manage to be prone to both nip slip and riding up your collarbone.

So I guess the easy answer is just to order over the Internet. But honestly, the real solution will only come when the lingerie industry realises they’re missing how big the gap in the market is here for luxury undies. The impending arrival of big-brand international stores like Uniqlo and Sephora on Australian soil gives me hope that Victoria Secret will soon put their breast foot forward. Until then, I’ll just have to be content with the online catalogue.

disadvantaged because those things are not what make a great school.

Our teachers were incredibly committed – during my senior years I would frantically email a ridiculous amount of draft essays, and they replied to every single one, even when the clock was approaching midnight.

My English Extension 2 teacher read my major work so many times he probably could have recited it from memory.

Throughout my school years, everyone was always encouraged to get involved in activities they were passionate about.

I was able to participate in a bunch of extracurricular activities such as debating, public speaking, musicals and Rock Eisteddfod. A number of my friends frequently competed in sports at a state level, and we had students participating in the State Dance Festival and Schools Spectacular each year.

So, to answer the question of whether going to public school was a “really bad” experience, I would like to respond with a resounding no. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else.

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10 bull usu.edu.au FEATURE

Issue 06 11 FEATURE

back in our blood

Eden Caceda investigates the reasons behind escalating rates of HIV/AIDS in Australia.

In July this year, thousands of people from across the world travelled to Melbourne to attend the biennial International AIDS Conference.

Held by the International AIDS Society (IAS), the conference is the largest on any health or development issue globally.

With the height of HIV/AIDS infections 29 years ago, many people have grown complacent and believe that the disease is no longer a threat due to medical progress. This International AIDS Conference proved to be the most important in recent years with Australia experiencing a sustained rise in new diagnoses of HIV infections and the fight against AIDS restarting.

Originating in western Central Africa at the beginning of the 20th Century, HIV/ AIDS spread internationally within 40 years.

Scientifically, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the virus that renders the immune system deficient and prevents it from fighting other infections and diseases, and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is the final stage of HIV infection and consists of a wide range of complications and symptoms.

HIV is primarily transferred through blood and semen, meaning that the disease spreads easily through blood transfusions, hypodermic needles, and from mother to child through pregnancy, delivery or breastfeeding. Many HIV victims do not die from AIDS, but from a variety of other diseases including pneumonia and tuberculosis.

HIV/AIDS was initially recognised by the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1981. At the time the disease was primarily isolated to homosexual men and injecting drug users. In 1981, five per cent of gay male residents in New York and San Francisco were infected with HIV. However, by 1983, it was apparent that HIV/AIDS was not isolated to the gay community. As of 2012, AIDS had taken the lives of 36 million people, and in 2013, 1.5 million people died of AIDS-related diseases. Fortunately medical progress allows us to test an individual for HIV, however a cure for AIDS has not been discovered yet.

Observing the statistics, HIV/AIDS appears to be a disease that mainly affects the marginalised and vulnerable groups of society.

Many social factors contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS including higher likelihood to handle contaminated blood, participate in high-risk sex practices and sharing needles. Transmission through contaminated needles or unsafe sex practices often means that HIV/AIDS is not associated with high income earners or upper class citizens, and unfortunately stigma of the infection is typically expressed in conjunction with one or more other already stigmatised labels including homosexuality, promiscuity, prostitution and intravenous drug use.

There has been remarkable progress in turning back the tide of HIV/AIDS since its spread in the 1980s. Between 2001 and 2012, 26 countries reduced new infections by more than 50 per cent and accessibility to preventative measures is higher than ever before. However as Dr. Norman Swan of ABC’s Health Report said during the opening of the panel discussion from this year’s AIDS Conference, “It has not gone away, we have not solved the problems.”

This year, in Australia, HIV rates are at a 20year high. There are now over 1,000 new HIV infections per year and roughly 80 per cent of these victims are gay men, with the highest rates among those over 50 and under 30 years old.

The UNSW Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society reported that as of 2014, 26,000 people were living with HIV in Australia.

These shocking statistics echoed in the alarming rates of HIV/AIDS diagnoses throughout Europe and the United States with 2.1 million people infected with HIV every year, however a majority of Australians are still ignoring the growing severity of the situation. In the developed world, HIV/AIDS is perceived as something that affected us in the 1980s before going off the radar. In reality, HIV/AIDS has never left our society. While we are particularly fortunate to have decreased AIDS-related deaths in Australia, the growing rates of HIV infections signal it becoming a big part of our society once more.

Changes in laws and culture have developed our understanding of HIV/AIDS and suppressed the epidemic of the 1980s in modern-day developed nations. However, despite legal reform and social change, HIV/AIDS is rising at an unexpectedly high rate. Currently in Australia, the two groups currently most at risk appear to be individuals who were not in the midst of the tragedy during the peak of HIV/AIDS and older citizens who may believe that the worst of the disease may not affect them.

While it may be easy to blame these groups for neglecting their responsibility, this new rise in HIV/AIDS can be easily attributed to a general social lack of care and urgency today. Long gone are the cautionary tales of people unknowingly spreading a disease that could kill hundreds and the promotions for using clean needles and condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS are no longer as effective as they once were. Prevention programs have not been updated since they were put in place and there is a general notion that HIV/ AIDS is no longer a public health threat.

In November 1991, Freddie Mercury, the gay lead singer of Queen, died of pneumonia brought on by AIDS one day after he publicly acknowledged he had the disease, joining the ranks of Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson and Liberace. These public figures shared their experience of the effects of HIV. Because of this, people were exposed to the reality of the disease and the seriousness of HIV/AIDS was made more public.

The role of sex education in teaching young people about human sexuality, anatomy, reproduction and health is an important part of primary and high schooling. In current sex education classes, HIV/AIDS is commonly thrown into the category of simple STIs and the full extent of the infection isn’t explored in depth.

Studies have shown that comprehensive sex education is more effective in preventing sexually transmitted infections than education

that focuses solely on teaching abstinence until marriage. UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, claims that universal primary education is not a substitute for prevention but a necessary component. Without a thorough explanation of the cause, effects and nature of HIV/AIDS, many young people do not receive the necessary education from primary or secondary education that could change the future of HIV/AIDS.

In Australia, HIV rates are at a 20-year high When doctors learnt that AIDS could be a sexually transmitted disease and the use of condoms were encouraged to prevent the transmission of HIV, their use exponentially grew after the 1980s. However, today, many sexually active people view condoms as unnecessary, and the statistics confirm this.

Current condom advertisements focus more on pleasure and not protection against STDs and HIV. This lack of reinforcement sidelines STDs and HIV/AIDS and fails to highlight or remind people about the medical advantages of using condoms. Gottfried Hirnschall, Director of HIV at the World Health Organisation said at the AIDS Conference, “Condoms are by no means redundant. Our position is clearly that condoms should be used in all circumstances. But we also know not everybody uses condoms all the time.”

Hirnschall proposed a combination prevention system, merging condom usage with education so that there is zero per cent chance of transmission between parties.

The Kirby Institute this year claimed that unprotected sex between casual male partners continues to be the major cause of HIV with lesser rates attributing AIDS to intravenous drug use and blood transfusions. “Fortunately [there] was pioneering in the 1980s and [it] has really led the world in large-scale implementation of needle and syringe programs and that has led to effectively no epidemic taking off,” Associate Professor David Wilson said during the AIDS Conference.

Since 1996, treatments for HIV have vastly improved and it is now easier to live with the disease in developed nations. Victims of HIV are now able to take one to three pills per day to keep AIDS at bay and retain use of their immune system. Scientists have also revealed a new approach to get rid of the HIV virus, called the

“kick and kill” approach which used an anticancer drug to kick the virus out of where it is hiding in the body. Dr Ole Schmeltz Sogaard from Denmark’s Aarhus University said at the AIDS Conference that he gave patients anticancer drugs which increased the production of HIV-infected cells by more than three times, be traced and targeted with existing treatments.

Many activist organisations within Australia are continuing to promote awareness around the rise of HIV/AIDS. Pozhet is an organisation that is the heterosexual HIV service in NSW and provides programs and services to the heterosexual community of people living with HIV. The organisation is particularly interested in raising awareness around heterosexual people living with HIV and advocates for HIV-positive heterosexuals in Government and nongovernment settings.

Another new organisation committed to HIV/AIDS is the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON). The organisation has a central focus on ridding Australia of HIV through prevention promotion, advocacy and support services for people currently living with HIV/AIDS. Their ‘Ending HIV’ campaign is currently aiming to test every sexually active gay man and aims to ensure that every gay man diagnosed with HIV has access to treatment as early after detection as possible. The program outlines that “more testing, more guys on treatment earlier and maintaining good risk reduction practice […] are what we need.”

Fortunately modern HIV testing is highly accurate and the accessibility to it with the ‘Ending HIV’ campaign and other organisations is effective in Australia. Professor Sharon Lewin, co-chair of the conference, commented on the progress of on-the-spot tests to discover if an individual is HIV positive or not. “The licensing arrangements have just changed in Australia around that point, so that in the future we will be able to have home testing, and they are on-the-spot HIV tests – are you positive or not,” Lewin said at the AIDS Conference. With faster HIV testing and earlier detection comes the possibility of eradicating the disease.

Observing the statistics of those groups affected by HIV in Australia, it has become apparent that young people who are not aware of the effects of the disease and older people who lived through the dark times of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic must bond to innovate and empower society once more to protect their friends and their community, bridging the gap between different age groups is essential.

We now live in an age where we have the ability to defeat the modern disease for good.

However science alone will not achieve that daring goal. We must not forget the lives lost to HIV/AIDS. As Bill Clinton declared at this year’s AIDS Conference, “An AIDS free generation is within our reach” – now we have to fight for it.

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Issue 06 13 FEATURE

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UNLIMITED internet package now available

iglu.com.au

Hannah Edensor explores the negative perceptions surrounding tattoos.

14 bull usu.edu.au FEATURE

Issue 06 15 FEATURE

“First impressions last and when I go in wearing a shirt, people are listening to what I am saying, not looking at the pictures on my arms ”

‘Why would you want to ruin your skin like that?’

It’s a question my grandma has been asking me ever since I got my first tattoo two months ago. I get the same response from my uncles, my stepmother, and sometimes, even my employers. Despite increasing acceptance of tattoos in modern society, I couldn’t help but wonder why something so personal can still be so openly judged by others.

I recently got a butterfly inked on my forearm, and while the majority of my family disapprove and my grandma dismisses it as ‘dirt’, I remain happy with my decision.

A lot of meaning lies behind this tattoo, and the fact that I got it in memory of my recently deceased mother makes it feel particularly special.

Family is a value that inspires many concepts for ink, such as the tattoos of Tenille Furness. As Office Manager for a search marketing company, Tenille never thought her decision to get a tattoo would be an issue in the workplace. She has her family crest on her wrist, and her sister’s birth date on her neck, and both are of strong significance to her. Whilst her existing tattoos didn’t impact on her ability to get a job, they were a frequent topic of office discussion.

“I have been asked constantly, ‘Why did you get a tattoo?’ or ‘What’s the point?’ by work colleagues who are against the idea of tattoos,” Tenille explains, expressing her

bewilderment at their open criticism of her personal presentation choices.

“I’m also constantly asked, ‘What if you and your sister have a falling out and you’re stuck with her birthday on your neck?’ as a way of making me question my tattoos.”

To me, the most desirable aspect of getting a tattoo is the immense personalisation of the process. You select

“I didn’t get my tattoos to piss off or please other people, I got them for myself, so what everyone else thinks is their problem.” something that resonates with you, and then you choose to have it inked onto your body, where it remains, for better or worse (or until laser becomes less painful). It certainly shouldn’t be up to others to judge or comment on what we elect to do with our skin.

Ida Thommessen is a student at the University of Sydney, and with three tattoos

under her belt, she doesn’t have time for people who disapprove of her ink.

“When it comes to acceptance in public, I honestly don’t care,” Ida admits. “I didn’t get my tattoos to piss off or please other people, I got them for myself, so what everyone else thinks is their problem.”

The tattoo on her ankle holds the most meaning for Ida. A unique coded image, it is replicated on the shoulder of her dad, and represents the powerful bond they share.

“It makes no sense to everyone else, but for the two of us, each letter and number represents something special,” she tells me.

And it’s these stories underlying the artwork that make tattoos so interesting.

But not everyone gets tattoos for their meaning, instead collecting various symbols on their body as a form of expression.

Whether you get something you have a personal connection with, or you choose an illustration because you liked it at the time, getting a tattoo is an individual choice, and not one that warrants the approval of others.

Unfortunately, it’s here where I sometimes think I’m wrong. The very conspicuous nature of tattoos invites public opinion and commentary, and whether we like it or not, when people see a tattoo on someone else, they form a personal view.

Older generations tend to be the most critical of tattoos, a theory shared by Nicola Evans, the Human Resources Coordinator at Ogilvy Public Relations, who says this comes down to a difference in generational trends.

“There has been a change in mindset around tattoos,” Evans says. “Now it’s almost a mode of expressing yourself.”

And in terms of workplace discrimination, this issue is becoming more and more relevant. Employers are beginning to come to terms with the fact that tattoos are more popular than ever and as a result they’re fast moving into offices in a variety of different industries.

A level of professionalism, however, is something that remains essential to boasting tattoos in the workplace.

Nicola tells me that it’s all about being tasteful and respectful of clients’ needs and ideals. “When you get to know your client and grow with your client – if your client is a consumer brand that is edgy, that is chic, that has more panache – then I think it’s ok to basically reflect that in your personal branding of what you wear,” she explains.

Sarah Jane Owen is a Senior Account Manager for Percolate New York, and spoke to B&T Magazine last month about her various tattoos. She insisted that when it came to her clients, personal presentation is integral to making the right impact.

“First impressions last and when I go in wearing a shirt, people are listening to what I am saying, not looking at the pictures on my arms,” Sarah said, adding that after making her initial impression, she loves seeing the reaction when clients catch a glimpse of her ink.

Throughout my research, I can see a trend emerging with regards to appropriate times to reveal tattoos. The creative realm of the workforce – that is, writers, advertisers, musicians, and designers – are more flexible when it comes to self-expression displayed across the body. And no doubt there are a number of anchor and rose tattoos hidden underneath the corporate suits of other offices, unbeknownst to other employees and employers, as that tends to be where they stay.

Web developer at VML Josh Russell told B&T that he’s never experienced any form of discrimination due to his extensive ink.

“The vibe in the advertising industry is that we’re all creative people and everyone is different so there’s a lot of acceptance,” he said.

But he sings the same tune as Sarah, and covers up when he feels it’s necessary.

“We have clients like Rip Curl and with them I wouldn’t even think about putting a long sleeve shirt on,” Josh explains. “But if I had to go to a meeting with a bank tomorrow, I probably would.”

Regret often accompanies tattoo artworks, and is something my grandma is fond of mentioning. ‘What happens when you’re old and wrinkly and it looks awful?’ she’ll ask me – and sometimes I think she has a point. The practice of getting tattoos becomes so addictive that we often end up with more ink than we ever envisioned getting. In fact, this weekend my little sister is booked in for her second tattoo in two

months, and I myself am in the process of deciding what I want next.

It’s only logical then that sometimes, when we have more tattoos than we initially intended, regret might creep in.

But is employment ever a contributor to ink remorse?

“Personally, I don’t regret any of my tattoos,” Tenille tells me. “But when I recently got my sternum tattooed, my workplace colleagues, after seeing it, struck up the conversation of how I had made a huge mistake.”

Once upon a time, tattoos were deemed taboo, and getting one was seen as rebellious and irresponsible. This is something we can see remaining in the opinions of older generations. But with tattoos becoming more prevalent and therefore familiar in society, perhaps it’s time to realise that while one person’s art might be another person’s dirt; personal presentation is a personal preference.

In the working environment, there’s never been a better time to sport some ink and get away with it. As Ida suggests, many people think tattoos are just another trend, and once the craze passes, regret will change the way we see them. But when I ask Ida if she thinks she’ll ever regret her tattoos, she just smirks.

“I say we’ll look badass till we’re 80,” she states matter-of-factly. Because as it turns out, when you get a tattoo, it’s no one else’s damn business anyway.

16 bull usu.edu.au INTERVIEW

Issue 06 17 INTERVIEW

Interview PEPA KNIGHT of Jinja Safari

When I speak to musician Pepa Knight, he is sitting in a tipi. Assembled in his Long Jetty backyard from poles he bought from the Hunter Valley, and large enough to fit a Queen sized bed, a small table and pillows, he now calls it home. “Me and my girl are living in there at the moment, and it’s such a good place – like it can get cold obviously, but it’s so nice.” It becomes clear that Knight is anything but a conformist, which doesn’t come across more clearly than in his music.

Forming Jinja Safari after meeting fellow musician Marcus Azon at a beach campfire party in 2010, Knight soon became the face of the ‘forest rock’ band. Their worldly sounds, and so-called ‘ugly dancing’ drew audiences in, and made them a staple of the Australian music scene.

Though Knight had been working as a solo musician before the band came together, his solo attempts this time round have been bolstered by his increased profile. His music has similarities to the band’s well-known sound, yet it’s more raw and edgy, drawing on the intensity of his eccentric global influences.

“With [Jinja Safari’s] last album, I did touch on some of those world sounds, but I feel like I got to go full throttle on those sorts of influences with this project.”

When he speaks he goes on continuous tangents, with every story leading to another.

However his tone remains calm and casual, similarly to the construction of his music. You never know where a song will go or which instrument from a harp to a sitar will be used, but the music is still subtle, relying on the movement of sound rather than vocal intensity.

From his stories, it seems that it’s the world around him that creates this dichotomy between vibrancy and minimalism. He wrote and recorded the majority of his new work in

India, drawing on the sounds and voices of the people he met. He describes one song he created during the Hindu festival of Diwali: “It’s this festival where they just have fireworks everywhere, endless fireworks in the street, and I recorded these samples of the fireworks, made a drum beat out of it and turned it into a song. I think that’s one of my favourites.” It’s clear he isn’t appropriating sound or tradition from Indian culture, but instead he finds music out of the ordinary everyday sounds he hears.

Indeed, on top of a fort in Rajasthan one morning sitting with a Sadhu (or Holy) Man, he created his first single, ‘Raah!’ Immediately inspired by his surroundings, with permission he recorded samples of the Sadhu Man’s voice and beats from the town to make the backbone of the song. He hesitated when trying to describe the gravity of the experience. “For me, I just wanted to escape everything, what was going on at home, and just live this crazy Sadhu life, so that’s basically where the song came from.” The rhythm and melodic focus of Indian music was drawn out in his songwriting over there, and in the creation of his album.

Upon returning to Australia with new music in tow, disaster struck. This time last year, he had a completed record that he planned on releasing. But when updating his iPhone, thinking he had copies of the album elsewhere, he deleted it. The record was gone, with only demos and sounds remaining.“Some days it was really hard to get motivated to get up and do it all again. But I got through it in the end and I re-recorded it all. It wasn’t good, but I felt like I did it better the second time anyway.”

Here, the tipi found its stride. As the studio was too hot in the summer heat, he built the tipi as his new studio. It seemed like a mini holiday in there, and we discussed the

logistics of me building a similar tipi in my house. Though with limited space, Knight swayed me from that idea. And besides, I didn’t have an album to record – he did.

The result of the tipi music experience is a two-volume collection of songs titled Hypnotised, with part one being released in late September this year. After his first gig at GOODGOD Small Club early this August, he says he aims to tour a lot more.

He established a band of musicians to tour with him who live on the streets surrounding his home, and hopes to continue the vibrant standard that Jinja Safari set in their live performances. As usual, the crowd is invited on stage to share the space, as Knight prefers it. He hates the divide between the artist and their audience, and even allowed the crowd to sit on the stage with him throughout the entire GOODGOD gig. But the ferns and vines that frequently decorated a Jinja show are gone, and a more futuristic vibe is in, as Knight and his band now wear 3D glasses and “weird outfits”, to spice up the music experience.

Funding the entire solo project himself, it’s obvious how much love Knight has for music.

I ask if there will be a vinyl release of Hypnotised, and though expensive, he says he probably will just so he can have a copy. It’s the simplicity and naturalness of doing something out of pure happiness that is most moving for Knight, and it’s clear that, being such a part of him, he won’t be slowing down from creating music anytime soon.“It’s a big investment a project like this, but you end up just doing it for the love of it. When you have a vision of what you want to do physically, it’s really nice to just do it.”

Sophie Gallagher

18 bull usu.edu.au FEATURE

Issue 06 19 FEATURE

Flora Grant and Diana Pham go deeper into the world of feminist porn.

There’s a knock at the door, and two female friends greet each other with wry smiles. They have a pleasant chat and soon begin making out, stripping off their clothes to reveal real imperfect bodies with fat and hair. Mouths, hands and toys go to work, and though the orgasms ensue, the camera focuses on the faces of the performers and their interactions – there aren’t many genital close-ups. The two lovers, now satisfied, have another short chat, and with that, the video fades to black.

This is a feminist porn scene and, as any porn connoisseur will tell you, it is vastly different from the kind of videos showcased on sites like RedTube and PornHub. “The videos I watched didn’t really match my expectations of porn,” Richard*, a first-time viewer of feminist porn explains.

“They were shot more like a short movie, with real sexual acts.”

Avoiding the mainstream porn tropes, feminist porn flicks are more likely to represent a broader range of body types and races, include transgender stars, show a wider variety of sexualities and sexual practices, use lube, and practice safer sex on-screen. Behind the scenes, the focus is on the autonomy of the performers. Unlike in most mainstream porn, the performers choose who they want to work with, and negotiate what they’re going to do with the producers – often on-camera – and the orgasms are real.

All of these factors contribute to a sense of authenticity, which speaks to the broader politics of feminist porn. Ms Naughty, the Australian feminist porn producer of Bright Desire, a feminist erotica website marketed Zahra Stardust: Queer Feminist Porn Star

as ‘smart porn’, says “It’s often in the eyes of the beholder... it’s about trying to depict women in a really positive way, and move away from the clichéd and sexist ways most porn perpetuates about women.”

Zahra Stardust is a queer feminist porn star and activist who ran for parliament with the Australian Sex Party. She says the overall focus of feminist porn is on the process itself, and not just the end product.

“Feminist porn has developed into a broad and inclusive movement drawing upon feminism, performance art, experimental filmmaking, queer theory, critical race studies, sex worker rights discourse and disability activism, with a focus on ethical production and diverse representation,” she says.

In a mainstream online porn video titled Alanna and Rocco, Alanna is dating Rocco’s dad and it’s getting pretty serious, so Rocco wants them to get to know each other better.

He forcefully tries to kiss and feel up Alanna, who says she doesn’t think that it’s a good idea several times, before she eventually relinquishes her restraint and is overcome by his animal magnetism. That is to say, they screw.

Feminist pornography tries to combat this common kind of narrative where the female actor in a porn scene is submissive, and the oppressive idea that ‘no’ really just means ‘ask again’. The sex acts we see might be more representative of what happens in bedrooms than what’s shown in mainstream porn, and the women genuinely express desire.

The Crash Pad series, one of the most popular and well known feminist and queer porn websites, is based on the narrative

premise that there is a specific sexy group of people in San Francisco who have the keys to the titular lodgings. ‘The Keymaster’, a voyeuristic presence who observes every moment of the actors’ lives, pens the description of each episode. As a viewer, you’re implicated in the scene, and made aware that the performers not only know you’re watching, but they want you to be watching.

In one episode, performers Andre Shakti and Tina Horn do a scene that involves mutual spanking, fisting (four fingers and a thumb sliding into a vagina) and a big glass dildo. The two have pubic hair and real breasts – indeed, Andre Shakti started making porn because she was born with larger inner labia that she was “constantly insecure about”, and wanted to see her genitals represented on screen.

One of Shakti’s main principles is that she always uses protection in all her scenes – condoms, dental dams and black nitrile gloves. There are a few minutes of unscripted discussion before they start having sex, and during the scene awkward moments, giggles and pauses are included in the footage rather than edited out. The performers check in with one another, and Shakti asks Horn whether she wants more fingers inside of her before she does.

In addition, there’s extra material – interviews with the actors after the scene where they recap how they felt and affirm that they had a good time. The actors are humanised and there’s no question that they’re completely into what they’re doing.

“I would assume my general taste in porn isn’t that out of the ordinary,” explained Thomas*, another regular porn consumer

20 bull usu.edu.au FEATURE

who we asked to watch the scene. “Who wants all that dialogue? If anyone did, they’d watch a movie,” he said. “The overly drawn out kissing shots just distract from the sex and take out the heat from it.”

Ms Naughty says, “to make consent and safe sex very apparent in porn is to sort of bring that into the fore and acknowledge that people are watching and also know that these things can be sexy. Putting on a condom can be a sexy thing, putting on a condom should be a normal thing.”

Stardust further explains: “consent is not just sexy, it is crucial. Porn performers negotiate our desires, boundaries and risks before a scene commences.”

Technically, producing pornography in Australia is illegal everywhere except in the ACT, under laws that prohibit ‘objectionable goods’. The criterion for what is deemed objectionable, however, is not publicly available. Rather, these guidelines are overseen by the Classification Board, where Board Members are in charge of defining ‘the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults’.

This makes it hard to know what lies out of bounds or within the confines of acceptable acts, and who these reasonable adults are.

Stardust is currently completing her PhD at UNSW on the regulation of queer and feminist porn in Australia, focusing on how these regulations proscribe particular types of sex acceptable to be seen on screen.

Body piercing and tattooing, the application of substances such as candle wax, bondage, and spanking are all not permitted, and laws that prohibit depictions of adults who look like they are under 18 have manifested in the Classification Board using breast size as a criteria for the legality of porn. Female ejaculation has previously been incorrectly classified as a ‘golden shower’ – a similarly prohibited act, while male ejaculation is A-OK. Fisting, often a legitimate part of lesbian and queer sex, is also banned. In this way, the classification laws reproduce normative sex and sexuality.

“In Australia, the X18+ category actively engineers specific, state-sanctioned bodies that are permitted to be viewed – bodies with sufficiently large breasts, neat labia, that do not participate in kink or fetish, and lack the ability to bleed or ejaculate,” Stardust says. “I truly believe that the regulatory system fundamentally misunderstands and criminalises queer intimacies and non-normative sexual practices, and that the closeting of these practices represents danger for marginalised sexualities, threatening a lack of access to rights, justice, representation and sexual citizenship.”

Issue 06 21 FEATURE

These laws limit the types of sex we can see on scene, which can have real ramifications for our real-life sex. While reliable statistics on porn are difficult, with self-reporting and the vested interests of researchers often muddying the results, there have been indications that we learn much of what is acceptable and unacceptable in the bedroom from porn.

In a 2012 survey conducted by the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition and Youth Empowerment Against HIV/AIDS titled ‘Lets Talk About Sex’, respondents were asked how they learnt about sex, with 85 per cent relying on the Internet, 69 per cent on schools and 64 per cent on pornography. Catharine Lumby, Professor of

The sex acts we see might be more representative of what happens in bedrooms than what’s shown in mainstream porn, and the women genuinely express desire.

Media at Macquarie University co-authored the 2008 Porn Report, and found that 59 per cent of porn consumers said porn had a positive effect on their attitudes towards sexuality, for example, in becoming more at ease with sexuality, and more tolerant of other sexualities.

However Lumby also challenges the common assertion that teenagers, especially boys, watching porn will learn misogyny from it. “The idea that porn causes this attitude ignores research that says the ‘monkey see monkey do’ relationship is too simplistic,” she says. “Not all women who go and see romantic comedies believe in the retrograde fantasy of a man on a white horse.”

It would be easy to argue, as many people have, that feminist porn shows more genuine pleasure and challenges stereotypes, whereas mainstream porn with its fake-

breasted, long blonde hair women and focus on anal sex and cream pies, is automatically anti-feminist. Lumby’s evidence found, on the other hand, that porn was more likely to show a variety of body types than those shown in the fashion industry, for example, and that amateur sites are more popular than industry glamour porn. Even more than this, the stereotype that all mainstream porn ignores womens’ pleasure is a generalisation, she says. “Female pleasure, women having orgasms and touching themselves, is actually a staple feature of mainstream pornography,” explains Lumby. Indeed, 30 per cent of porn consumers are women and it’s the largest growing market of porn consumers.

The key difference, however, is that the perceived audience for this female pleasure is always male. Feminist porn imagines a broader audience than simply straight white men, and in doing so embraces and celebrates a much broader range of sexualities, racial backgrounds, body types and genders, expanding the narrow definition of what can be considered sexy.

Lumby sees feminist porn as concerned with ‘giving women more permission to own the role of porn in their sexuality,’ and links this back to the taboo of female sexual pleasure. “To acknowledge sexual desire as a woman is still seen as potentially threatening,” she says, recounting a telling anecdote of when she visits schools and asks classes about masturbation. The classes are comfortable acknowledging that boys masturbate, but the same question directed at the girls is met with embarrassed laughter.

“Do kids learn about the clitoris in sex education in school?” Lumby asks. “No! Why? Why not? Feminist or not, porn is at least the one place where women get to see other women’s vaginas, and they get to see female masturbation as a normal practice.”

The small but growing market has big potential to shake up things for both the industry and the audience. Later in our interview, Richard, our first-time viewer of feminist porn, explains: “I think the idea of porn is that you can step into the shoes of one of the performers, or into the shoes of the cameraman, and enjoy what’s going on.”

“I think I read once that that’s why a lot of the famous male porn stars aren’t very attractive – because it means any guy can substitute himself in,” he says. Perhaps with the further development of feminist porn, seeing yourself in porn will be a privilege available to more and more people. *Names have been changed

Zahra Stardust: Queer Feminist Porn Star

22 bull usu.edu.au TASTE

Issue 06 23 GO

TASTE

GO

BACON

CHINA

GHOST CITIES

Whitney Duan Have Your Bacon and Drink It Too

Samantha Jonscher Sydney is bringing home the bacon – or at least making a new home for it – as the last couple of years have seen Sydney’s foodie scene inundated with the cured pork belly product. It all started off innocently enough as a must-have on everything between two slices of bread. In 2014 though, bacon is an option in everything from your ice cream to your cocktail. It comes doused with maple syrup as a $5 side at Paramount Coffee Project, and Adriano Zumbo has even put the pig in biscuits as a Zumbaron flavour.

After all, what’s not to love about bacon?

It’s fatty, salty, moreish, and when you glaze it with maple syrup it apparently does science to your brain that makes you happy.

Despite the fact that the bacon we know and love has origins in 12th Century English cooking, bacon has a distinct association with North America, and it’s difficult to separate Sydney’s ‘bacon mania’ from our city’s recent rise of Americana diners and ‘roadhouse’ establishments.

Like bacon, these places are everywhere, peddling gourmet versions of American ‘Down Home Cookin’ – Mary’s, The Soda Factory, Paramount Coffee Project, Earl’s Juke Joint, Hartsyard, and Miss Peaches to name only a few. On their menus you

will find any number of bacon concoctions, usually paired with its two best friends: maple syrup and whisky (AKA the Justin Vernon trifecta).

It’s no longer just a food for the hungover, it’s a symbol to be lumped together with the ‘authenticity’ of flannel shirts, living in the woods, and men with beards. Bacon also has nostalgia in its corner; the post-Civil War American South thrived on its high fat content and affordability. It’s a preserved cheap off-cut born from practicality rather than taste (though the aforementioned high fat content happens to make it, incidentally, very tasty).

Today bacon is everywhere: you can get bacon lube, bacon-scented candles, perfume, body lotion and even baconprinted Converse and Band-Aids to show off your cured-pork sensibilities. The trendy meat is a little bit normcore as well, insofar as it is ironically average. In the words of Food Historian Josh Ozersky, “it has the magic quality of being just different enough, just odd enough, to qualify its proponents as not absolutely mainstream.”

At the same time though, bacon is as extreme as food can get without being widely dismissed. Its charming equation of high salt + high fat + fried + maybe some maple syrup = unabashedly sinful in these #cleaneating days. Bacon is at once

a rejection of a society obsessed with body image and simultaneously reclamation of the ‘every person’s’ meat.

Either way, as long as Epic Meal Time exists, bacon looks set to have a sturdy future in our cultural conscience (and our alcohol).

BARS WHERE YOU CAN DRINK YOUR BACON: 1. Mary’s: This Newtown gem has its own baconified twist on the Bloody Mary – served straight up and garnished with a strip of bacon and a slice of melted Kraft cheese.

2. The Gilt Lounge: For the bacon

connoisseur who likes it vintage, try their Applewood Bacon Old Fashioned cocktail with bacon bourbon, black peppercorn sugar, creole bitters, chocolate-covered bacon and flamed orange.

3. The White Hart: Head to this Neutral

Bay local for their Bacon Manhattan: bacon bourbon, maple syrup, bitters and vermouth topped with a bacon rasher and black pepper.

4. Zeta Bar: The CBD cocktail bar

also offers up their take on a Bacon and Maple Syrup Manhattan: maple cedar bacon bourbon, cherry syrup and vermouth.

5. Earl’s Juke Joint: Soak up the Art Deco glow and sip on the Maple Bacon Ale on offer from Rogue Ales.

You’d never have seen such a perfect city, especially not in China. The vast boulevards of flat, black tarmac are precisely lined with rows of sleek multi-million dollar high-rises, the capitalist concrete of China’s superrich investors and developers, saluting to the commodifiable ‘fresh’ air of a relatively unpolluted sky. It’s beautiful, I guess.

It’s also empty. The pristine high-end apartments glint in the smothered sunlight, untouched. There is also a school, with generous playing space, but no children.

Shopfronts sell no goods, vast scenic parks are devoid of admirers, and the everchanging traffic lights direct the city’s ghost pedestrians. It’s an eerie scene; a deserted post-apocalyptic dystopia lying between some of the country’s most over-populated, suffocating mega-cities. Here, everything is so still.

And there are so many of these cities scattered around China. Trillions of dollars are spilled into a central urbanisation scheme of massive proportions, trying to move hundreds of millions from rural locations into these instant-made cities built in often– confused semi-European themes in sync with the country’s Western worship. There’s an abandoned replica of Paris, New York and one of London. But the government’s efforts have fallen short, leaving the sites

abandoned and half developed, economic ruins they attempt to sweep under the carpet – but enormous cities aren’t easily hidden.

As I’m travelling across provinces in a car towards Wuxi, the skylines of ghost cities run parallel to the highway, inviting my curiosity.

“What’s that city?” I ask my driver. “I don’t know girly, there’s no one there,” he replies.

Unlike China’s over-crowded tourist destinations, there’s nothing to really see or do in these ghost cities, and there exactly is where the allure lies – the sheer emptiness is in itself a sight to see. Here lies a Chinese mega-city, stripped of its most defining aspects; it is absent of its millions of residents, the air isn’t choked with the thick smog of fuel fumes, street food and clammy humidity, and the buildings are bare without their usual mosaic of flashy advertising screens and characters in colossal neon tubing. Standing in the middle of the highway, I have the unnerving experience of being the first or last person on earth. It’s an experience that is unadvertised and uncommodified, it’s not an experience that is purposely curated, making it a truly raw one. In a country that is as drunk on capitalism as China, the true experiences aren’t the ones on the Great Wall or in the Forbidden City, but rather the ones the government tries to distract us from.

It is behind the façade of success, in the urban slums, and the ghost cities where real China is, ushered away from Western eyes.

I regret that I can’t really tell you where to find these ghost cities – they aren’t marked

on Google Maps and there are no tour groups headed for a city with no commercial value.

You can only come across them if you’re lucky.

So look hard. Travel the countryside until you find an enormous city that could hold millions between two long and empty plains.

My driver speeds down the highway, cigarette jammed between his yellowing fingers; he hacks and spits out the window into the rapid current of tarmac beneath us.

In the distance I can see the skyscrapers of Wuxi loom ahead, and already, you can see the ads that dot the skyline. I look through the back window searching for a last glimpse of the abandoned city I left not too long ago, but it’s already been swallowed up by the rocky landscape, as if it had never even been there.

Images courtesy of ibtimes.com, businessinsider.com and yaplakal.com

Craziest Ghost Cities in China: Spring Legend (APPROX 56KM from Beijing):

A mock-Alpine town with the most colourful main street you will ever see.

Anting German Town (APPROX 32KM from Shanghai): With half-timbered buildings,

the town has a huge empty Germanlooking quarter with Chinese signs. Weird.

Tiandu Cheng (APPROX 24KM from Hangzhou): The Eiffel Tower replica

and Parisian buildings have the perfect European feel but the empty town is too eerie to enjoy.

24 bull usu.edu.au MOVE section heading

Issue 06 07 25 section heading LEARN

MOVE

LEARN

No Lights No Lycra

Useless Human Adaptations

Scumbag Body Parts

Erin Rooney Image courtesy of nolightsnolycra.com

Dancing in the Dark

Zoe Hitch We’ve all heard the expression, ‘Dance as though no one is watching,’ and most likely seen it plastered across various social media feeds. But have you ever truly given it a go?

That is exactly the opportunity a new trend called No Lights No Lycra (NLNL) is giving attendees.

As the name might suggest, NLNL involves dancing in a space with no lights where you are encouraged to let loose and break out your moves without feeling self-conscious. And although NLNL is gaining momentum in Sydney, we’ve been a bit slow to truly jump on the bandwagon.

The idea originated five years ago in Melbourne as the result of two dance students, Alice Glenn and Heidi Barrett, desiring a place to dance free of expectations, instructions or skill. Since then, the craze has spread around the country and the world.

NLNL first made its way to Sydney in 2011 for a short time but regular meetups weren’t available until earlier this year.

Disappointed by the local absence of the event, NLNL Sydney ambassadors Ash

Maher and Jodie Fisher paired up and started organising temporary pop-up versions of the event in Sydney late last year.

“I know how confronting it can be to walk into a dance class where there’re mirrors and you’re like, ‘Ok, how good are you going to be?’” says Ash, “… and ‘How crap am I going to be?’”

“So, I think what I love about [NLNL] is that you can experience that joy you get from dance and that pure happiness without having to worry about if you’re good enough, or if anybody’s going to be watching what you’re doing.”

Jodie feels her love for NLNL has only grown since she started organising events, explaining emphatically, “When you stand in that room and you see 100 people or 200 people just going crazy to some song, it is just the most beautiful thing.”

“And that you have any part in getting that to happen and getting that to come together is just unbelievable. It’s awesome.”

The enthusiasm of the organisers seems to be infectious as the atmosphere at a NLNL event is somewhat euphoric.

There are cheers and claps during and after every song and almost everybody in attendance throws caution to the wind as they learn to enjoy dance in a way they haven’t had the chance to before.

“You can really let yourself go and just enjoy the music that you’re dancing to with no alcohol and no cares. Everyone is there for the same reason – to have fun and dance,” says attendee, Aislinn Atkinson-Keen.

“It felt like great stress relief and exercise.

I sweated more in that one hour than I think I ever have in a gym.”

Make no mistake, you will be sweaty, as will all those around you so it’s advisable to wear exercise gear or at least clothing you’re comfortable in.

If you’re going to give NLNL a shot – and you’d be crazy not to – you should be made aware that your sense of sight is not completely deprived. Although every effort is made to keep the space dark, you can see the movements of those close to you. For those who are feeling apprehensive after this revelation, don’t be, as NLNL is a strict no-judgment zone.

Everybody in the crowd attends for the exact same purpose, the experience of dancing without insecurity or embarrassment, which is unique if nothing else! If you’re interested in attending, NLNL is currently hosted every Thursday night at 7:30pm at 189 Church St in Newtown and will cost you $5 – you can thank me later!

The dull ache of wisdom teeth in the back of your jaw is the only reminder you need that the human body is far from perfect.

Over millions of years our ancestors have evolved and adapted to their surroundings, leaving us with remnants of features and traits that were once integral to our survival, but are now more or less useless and often quite annoying.

THE APPENDIX Possibly the most famous vestigial organ of the human body, the appendix continues to cause more trouble than it’s worth. But scientists at the Duke University School of Medicine have found that the appendix actually serves as a harbour for beneficial bacteria, ready for release after infection from cholera or dysentery.

Interestingly, the appendix could also carry out another function, if the human diet were ever to change. Australian marsupials such as koalas have been noted to have extremely long appendixes, suggesting that there may also be a dietary function for processing complex foods like eucalyptus leaves.

WISDOM TEETH Causing intense pain and susceptible to infection, wisdom teeth are more of a hindrance than help to modern humans. Whilst they originally aided early humans in consuming their coarse diet, these pesky molars weren’t given enough space in the mouth. The rapid growth in complexity of the brain meant that the brain case (the back part of our skull) had

to expand. Sadly, with all that backroom expansion going on the extension of the jaw was altogether overlooked, leaving the wisdom teeth cramped. The good news is that much of the population is missing them, particularly in some ethnic groups; as much as 45 per cent of the native Inuit people of the Arctic lack wisdom teeth.

For the rest of us…well, at least we’re keeping dentists in business.

GOOSEBUMPS Feeling cold or scared sparks a reaction in the arrector pili, tiny muscles in the skin linked to body hair, resulting in raised spots. This may look rather ridiculous on modern humans, but it might have seemed more intimidating back when our ancestors were covered with hair, much like the threatening fur-raise of a cat.

Puffing up fur also would have regulated body temperature, trapping insulated air closer to the body, which unfortunately does little for the bare skin of modern humans.

TONSILS Contrary to popular belief, tonsils are not the dangly bit at the back of your throat (called the uvula), but rather the collections of tissue on either side. Like the appendix, they are often assumed to serve no purpose, however scientists such as Dr. Robert Good have conducted research that demonstrates the role of tonsils in the development of the immune system in young mammals, including humans. Whilst they can help fight off infection, they often become infected themselves and must be removed.

MALE NIPPLES The nipples are so associated with females that there have even been some

4 Cool Underwater Animal Adaptations 1. JELLYFISH: Despite lacking a brain, jellyfish have light-detecting organs that allow them to determine up from down underwater.

2. CUTTLEFISH: With about 10 million colour

cells in their skin controlled by neurons, cuttlefish can make flashing patterns to deter rivals or form perfect camouflage.

3. SEA CUCUMBER: As a defence mechanism,

sea cucumbers can change their body from solid to liquid and back again.

4. CLOWN FISH: When the alpha female

dies in a clown fish community, sexually immature males have the ability to change into females in order to continue reproduction.

attempts to deny their existence in males at all, such as the recent Diet Coke print ad run in the UK, in which the man’s nipples were completely Photoshopped out. The reason they occur in human males stems from early fetal development. As sexual differentiation does not occur until the release of testosterone in the male fetus, nipples are part of a ‘genetic default’ of characteristics in males and females before this occurs. The trait has likely persisted in males due to the lack of disadvantage they pose to male survival.

Despite their often-detrimental effects, these body parts won’t be leaving the human genome any time soon. Evolution is a slow and random process, so check back in a couple of hundred thousand years.

Issue 06 27 FEATURE

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Submit to the oldest literary journal in Australia T h i s y e a r ’s t h e m e i s “ L i m i n a l ”. S u b m i s s i o n s c l o s e : M i d n i g h t 2 6 A u g u s t H e r m e s p u b l i s h e s a w i d e r a n g e o f c r e a t i v e g e n r e s BY U n i v e r s i t y o f S y d n e y s t u d e n t s , a l u m n i & s t a f f f o r m o r e d e t a i l s VI S IT :

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Welfare, What Care?

SEAN O’GRADY EXAMINES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FINANCIAL SECURITY AND MENTAL ILLNESS.

28 bull usu.edu.au FEATURE

Issue 06 29 FEATURE

“The government failed me, the doctors failed me, I came to a point where it was just like fuck it, I need to do this myself.”

Warning: This article discusses mental illness and sexual violence.

It may be triggering for some people.

In June of this year a small piece of a larger puzzle fell into place. The McClure Welfare Review handed down its preliminary findings. Among its recommendations were that Disability Support Pensions (DSP) be withdrawn from people under 35 with mental illnesses that are episodic in nature. Whilst cuts to welfare are veiled in rhetoric about helping people get back on their feet, many who suffer from mental illness feel that it has the opposite effect. Slowly, services which can help them get better are being chipped away in a social narrative that at times makes mental illness feel like a choice to be sad, rather than a diagnosable sickness.

It is already hard to gain access to the DSP. Alice*, has been waiting on a decision for 18 months.Youth Allowance, which Alice is on, provides her with $400 a fortnight. Alice spends $210 on medication a month. Add to that the fact that Australians are guaranteed only six free appointments with a

psychologist a year – one appointment every two months – a number that is grossly insufficient for many to receive the necessary support, and that prescribed medication often requires appointments with poorly subsidised psychiatrists, it becomes hard for young people with extremely limited means to cope.

Gaining access to even the minimal services which exist can also be incredibly hard. Henry, a student at the University of Sydney has co-morbid anxiety and depression. “Basically it means I often have very low motivation and often withdraw from people,” he tells me. He has only been able to access Youth Allowance because of a friend who helped him negotiate an application process which “tries to trick you into getting rejected”. In the wake of the Abbott Budget and broader trends within the provision of welfare, Henry* is anxious about the increased emphasis on working for payments. He cannot save and go overseas like many of his friends do, for fear of losing access to his payments. Both Henry and Alice have problems finding and maintaining regular work. Henry recently lost his job when his work closed down with very limited notice. As we have

lunch in a nice cafe, he muses that he may not always be able to afford this.

At a pub, Alice laughs at me as I stumble awkwardly from one word to the next, trying to ask her if she has thought about looking for different work.

“You mean vanilla work?” she says bluntly. I confirm that this is what I am asking about. Alice is a sex worker. She has become fiercely attached to the financial independence that the job gives her. She has lost ‘vanilla’ jobs in the past when she complained of mental illness and was unable to fulfill her duties.

She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At 12 she was suffering from severe physical pain and an inability to digest food. Despite having a desire to eat, a doctor diagnosed her with ‘subconscious’ bulimia. In reality, her liver was wrapping around her duodenum. At 15 her liver failed, and a transplant was necessary. Alice describes herself as being traumatised not just by the physical suffering she endured, but by “the trauma of not being believed for that many years”.

She describes moving from doctor to doctor looking for the help she needed. As she was attempting to finish her HSC at Sydney’s Bradfield College whilst supporting herself financially, she became increasingly depressed and anxious. Attempting to change her medication, her withdrawal was so severe that she was admitted to hospital, and her formal education ended.

At a certain point Alice became determined to get better; she describes herself being in a “desperate place.” In a world where the government and doctors failed to give her the care she needed, Alice turned to sex work. She describes the manipulation and an addiction to cocaine that led her to move from massage to full service. Eventually Alice was given to a client of the brothel in payment of a debt, and was forced to flee to Melbourne.

After returning to Sydney and once again being admitted to hospital, the bills began to add up and Alice returned to sex work, this time at a much safer establishment. She seems to have lost faith in the government, she says that welfare and healthcare are insufficient, but instead of waiting for it to change she is determined to be independent.

During our interview I keep wondering whether or not Alice had an active choice in becoming a sex worker. She seems content with her situation; the money she makes gives her the freedom to live comfortably and pay for the healthcare she needs.

“The government failed me, the doctors failed me, I came to a point where it was just like fuck it, I need to do this myself,” she tells me. Sex work was a decision that made sense for her, but I can’t help but wonder what her life would have been like if the system had worked. “I lost my high school years, I lost my primary school years,” she tells me with a pang of regret.

Henry is not hopeful going forward. He is from a working class background, and has had problems accessing care.

His illness has meant that he has not been able to complete all units of study he has enrolled in, and if he applies for one more Discontinue Not Fail, he will lose access to Youth Allowance.

In this way, mental illness insidiously permeates much of his life.

“Ultimately for someone with anxiety and depression all these things cumulatively add up,” he says. His concern, though, is not just for himself. It extends to all those trying to access care that they need: “They are just ripping everything that makes the world stable away. They are turning things into debts which increases the uncertainty of being able to pay for things.”

For Henry the government is failing, it has a responsibility to

help people, to allow them to get to the point where they can support themselves, telling me, “although you can’t pinpoint it and say this is the reason why people kill themselves, the whole point of the welfare system is to give people a sense that there is a possibility for engaging with the world.”

What this possibility looks like is difficult to quantify.

In contrast to Henry, who hates the manner in which the government attempts to control what welfare recipients spend their money on, Alice suggests that vouchers for groceries and other essentials would be a good mechanism of care. She has received some from the Sex Workers Outreach Program in Surry Hills which in periods where she had uncertain income helped her prioritise her expenditure.

How to distribute welfare is an entirely separate argument what seems clear however is that the manner in which governments conceive of and implement policy needs reform.

For Henry, the recent protests surrounding the Abbott budget provide a degree of hope, people appear to be organising and committed to challenging the logic of a conservative government.

For Alice, this change may not have as great an effect. Yet in spite of this, she is becoming more involved in political organisation and action.

****

“although you can’t pinpoint it and say this is the reason why people kill themselves, the whole point of the welfare system is to give people a sense that there is a possibility for engaging with the world.”

Whether or not change is likely to come is unclear. Despite an overwhelming consensus within the academic and scientific communities, there is little ground being gained when it comes to enacting practices which can best help the mentally ill.

This is the second time McClure has headed a major review of the Australian Welfare model. The last time, in 1999, the review had its own website. In 2014, despite much technological progress, there is no such website. In 1999 the federal government called for public submissions. In 2014 no such advertisements were issued. One wonders if anybody is listening.

If you are in need of mental healthcare please call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or make contact with the Sydney University Counselling and Psychological Services on 8627 8112.

In an emergency call 000.

Illustrations by Wanyi Xin (Cabbage) *Names have been changed

Issue 06 31 THE TIME I TRIED...

THE TIME I TRIED...

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY UNION

RAPPING

20 AUGUST - 27 SEPTEMBER

COMEDY-MUSIC-NUDITY

If you only saw one revue last year, this year you should see more

THE PRICE IS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: ARCHITECTURE REVUE

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DOLLAR COPAYMENT: MED REVUE

THE UNLIMITED DREAM FACTORY: ARTS REVUE

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE MARDI GRAS: QUEER REVUE

MOOLAH ROUGE: COMMERCE REVUE

TRAPEZE GETS DEGREES: SCIENCE REVUE

THE LAND BEFORE TIMETABLES: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL WORK REVUE

THE ACATTERY AWARDS: VET REVUE

HOUSE OF CLERKS: LAW REVUE

AGM OF THRONES: A SONG OF FIRE (WHISKEY) ON ICE: ENGINEERING REVUE

Thur 21 - Sat 23 August 7:30pm, Reginald Theatre

Thur 21 - Sat 23 August 7:30pm, Everest Theatre

Thurs 28 - Sat 30 August 8pm, Everest Theatre

Wed 03 - Sat 06 Sep 7:30pm, Reginald Theatre

Wed 20 - Sat 23 August 8:00pm, York Theatre

Wed 27 - Sat 30 August 7:30pm, York Theatre

Wed 27 - Sat 31 August 7:30pm, Reginald Theatre

Thurs 04 - Sat 06 Sep 7pm, York Theatre

Sat 27 September 7pm, Camden Campus

Thurs 11 September 7:30pm, Manning Bar

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Following a quick trip to the Wu Tang Clan name generator our undercover reporter Phantom Overlord snatches the pen to wax lyrical.

If there is one thing that the cultural appropriatin’ big booty reppin’ emcee Iggy Azalea proves, it’s that even those from the land girt by sea can make it big in the rap game – and with a humble Arts degree fast approaching its conclusion, this fellow Australian decided to give spitting fire a genuine go.

When controversial rapper, singer and pee-pee provider R. Kelly dropped the silky smooth ‘The World’s Greatest’ he articulated with much pomp and posturing exactly where I want to be as a hip-hop star. And, although you might be sitting there hating on me for setting the bar oh-so-high, just think: do you dream of working for peanuts in middle management, or making it rain as the CEO? In the rap world this means making it in the United States – a rare feat for even the most talented of Australian artists – so I once again looked to local heroine Iggy for

some inspiration and guidance. Working on her shit for a number of years, she “studied tha Carters” – rap superstars Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., aka Lil Wayne, and Sean Corey Carter, aka Jay-Z (no relation for the uninitiated) – until the day she received a record deal. And so I started honing my craft by doing the same.

The first thing I discovered listening to the lyrics of Lil Wayne was to throw conventional wisdom and logic out the window. Shoehorning needless meaning into your metaphors is for chump rappers – if I want to be at the top of my game I need to keep things simple and focus on what sounds good. When Weezy lets you know he’s “got 10 bathrooms” so he can “shit all day” no one ever stops and asks whether he learnt to flush as a child (you only need one toilet Weezy #realtalk) – everyone just accepts the poignancy and lyrical genius of his defecation-based braggadocio! I can only assume this is what Iggy meant when she told us she was working on her shit for so long. I also learned that it’s best to leave as much to the imagination as possible.

Jay-Z is the reigning champion of suspense – when Hova spits “I’m an animal/half man,

half mammal” he draws listeners into a gripping mystery not even the Scooby Gang (and I’m talking both the pot-smoking and vampire-slaying posses) could solve.

Unfortunately unlike Iggy, who ventured to the United States during her teenage years to pursue her career ambitions and quickly lost most of the quintessential Aussie twang while rapping (despite paradoxically maintaining a fair amount of it while she’s speaking), ya boy Phantom O soon realised he lacked the requisite racks on racks on racks for a plane ticket.

Instead I jumped out onto Eastern Avenue with a small stereo to engage in impromptu curbside rap battles. That’s not to say that anyone actually stopped to throw down with me – most of the passers-by obviously couldn’t handle my level of swag.

Or perhaps I’d done too much research on my US rap idols.

The Australian rapper is quintessentially a painfully dinky-di, true-blue, working class hero, whereas I’d focused so much of my attention on emulating the gangstas.

Or perhaps just no one wants to hear a white-boy from the suburbs between Sociology and Anthropology.

32 bull usu.edu.au FEATURE

Issue 06 33 FEATURE

There are over 2.6 million carers in Australia and over 360,000 of those are Aged between 15 and 25.

Caring for Carers Amanda Renez and her brother, Diego.

Katie Davern asks why Sydney University doesn’t have a specific policy to support carers.

It’s hard to imagine a university lifestyle that isn’t centred around you and only you; your needs, your wants, your future aspirations. We’re told that our 20s is the decade where selfishness is good, necessary in fact, if we want to discover our ‘true self ’. As much as this reasoning is slightly unconvincing, it’s hard not to notice that the wider public constantly labels Gen-Y as the ‘me’ generation. But what happens when you’re trying to embark on a degree at university, but have family or community obligations that mean you put someone else before yourself?

Often it means your uni lifestyle isn’t like others’. Research echoed by experiences of carers at Sydney University (as gathered by the SRC Disabilities and Carers Department) shows that isolation and social exclusion are major issues for carers.

Sometimes it means that you just miss out.

Amanda Perez, 21, said she was born into caring for her brother, Diego, who has severe cerebral palsy. After finishing her Arts degree last year and successfully gaining entry into Sydney University’s prestigious architecture course, Amanda stopped attending classes and deferred her studies indefinitely. Although she enjoyed the course, she knew that she could not commit to the recommended 20+ hours that just one subject required because of her commitments at home.

Amanda contacted a handful of staff from the Architecture Department with severely disappointing results; not one could direct her to a student service that could make things more

manageable. One staff member even encouraged her to apply for suspension.

“I felt like I couldn’t expect them to somehow magically reduce my workload or anything,” she explained, “Like it was still unfair to me I guess, but you just have to cop it on the chin.”

A research project by Carers Australia in 2002 confirmed that only 4 per cent of primary young adult carers remain in education compared to the national average of 23 per cent for the same age group.

Sarah Chuah and Yaz Camdzic, both carers themselves, are the student officers of Sydney University’s SRC Disabilities and Carers Department and believe that people like Amanda shouldn’t have to “cop it on the chin”. “[There’s] a significant portion of people in the country who are caring for somebody, and those people should have equal access to education and a right to the correct services to help them achieve their potential,” Sarah argues.

There are over 2.6 million carers in Australia and over 360,000 of those are aged between 15 and 25, to be more precise.

Despite these figures, more localised data about carers on campus is difficult to obtain due to the lack of a data collection process at Sydney University.

Most alarmingly, there is an absence of a carer-specific policy at Sydney University and universities around the country.

Chantelle Day is a Carers Australia Ambassador and has been her mum’s primary carer since she was 12. As part of her

Doctorate of Philosophy at Griffith University, she is currently conducting a unique investigation into the impacts of caregiving on the educational aspirations and future life-prospects of Young Adult Carers (YACs) in Australian universities.

She emphasises that lack of research in this area makes policy development difficult at best. “I’m hoping there’s greater awareness and recognition from my research ... I’m hoping to create a pathway for future researchers,” she says.

However, some see lack of research as a poor excuse for the lack of specific support services for carers. “There’s a lack of research but it’s a circular argument: there’s a lack of research so we don’t know what the demand is, so we’re not going to put the resources into research,” Yaz explains.

As highlighted by Jordi Austin, Director of Student Services, although no policy exists that is uniquely designed for carers, there are provisions in the assessment policy that state considerations should be given to carers and their situations in the form of special consideration.

Amanda had experience with special consideration when her mother, Diego’s primary carer, was visiting relatives in Chile late last year. “They were really good about it, but for a three year course, I don’t know what the options would be,” she says.

“It would work better for me to be able to work longer hours at home as opposed to having to be on campus, in the workshop.”

Sarah and Yaz have similar qualms with the extension-giving support service. “The thing about special consideration, it’s supposed to be for short term illnesses or misadventure and when you’re caring for someone who has a chronic disease or something that’s ongoing, it should be the same as disability services, where you have the ability to access support in a very simple and direct way rather than having to submit a new application over and over again,” Sarah says. “It’s really impractical and draining for a student who is going through so much already.”

The need to keep reapplying for special consideration can often feed into a carer’s uncertainty over their degree. Yaz offers a simple, logical solution: “Sydney University, as an institution, can address that by creating a system where carers are registered, where they’ve thought about it and are able to maintain a system where adjustments can be applied rather than this sort of ad hoc system that exists.”

Despite the inadequacy of special consideration for carers, things are looking up according to the SRC Disabilities and Carers Department. The officer title was formally amended to include carers late last year, and a very informative Carers in Higher Education: Access & Inclusion booklet was produced last year too. “We’ve been successful in getting carers included in the terms of reference and we’re trying to ensure as the Local Disability Action Plans are being developed, we get some kind of inclusion of carers at the local level,” says Sarah.

The Disabilities and Carers Officers also conducted a survey of over 30 carers on university campuses and has been able to coordinate a student support network for carers to share their experiences with people in the same situation.

On a University level, Sarah and Yaz tell me that discussions have occurred and with any luck, carers at Sydney University will see developments to support services in the next 12-18 months.

Jordi confirms this and expresses a desire to support carers on campus, “We are keen to explore this issue further and to engage in productive conversations with students with carer responsibility”.

Speaking to Amanda, she said when the one staff member did reply to her emails, it was late, unhelpful and “was like he was washing his hands of me.” A policy specifically for carers must be put in place to make sure staff responses like this are eradicated and that a culture of awareness and support is institutionalised.

Issue 06 35 CAMPUS FASHION

CAMPUS FASHION EXCHANGE

Rachel Stow // Arts (International AND Global Studies) III Jumpsuit: I bought it online Thongs: Havaianas Where were you on exchange? Studying in Rome as part of the Global Leadership Exchange.

What made you pick that country? Ever since I was a little girl I’ve had a fascination with Italy. From the history, to the architecture, to the seemingly endless supply of gelato – picking Rome was not a difficult decision.

Al Cu exan nn dra ing Ex piry ha D 31 m De ate cem

be

r

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What Italian styles are you inspired by or love?

The women here are exceptional. At this time of the year the city is swimming with tourists, yet it is so easy to spot the Italian women amongst them. Their style is both elegant and chic, almost a classic beauty!

45

JUST $

SEMESTER 2 CARDS

Describe your exchange in three words or less: Inspirational, motivational and challenging.

usu.edu.au/sayhello

‘Looking like The Simpsons’: The beauty industry has seen some strange things, from vampire facials and crimpers, to the classiest of vajazzles. But we’re here to introduce one of the most bizarre collaborations of all.

One of the world’s biggest beauty brands, MAC cosmetics, has paired up with none other than

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Laura Hanlon // Arts (Media AND Comms) IV

Rabia Glynn // Arts III

Dress: Zara Basic Hat: Dotti Sunglasses: Ralph Lauren Shoes: Betts

Shirt: Urban Outfitters Tee: Zara TRF Jumper: Ralph Lauren Pants: Zara Shoes: Nike SB Janoski Sunnies: Ray Bans

Why did you choose that outfit? I’m fairly pale so knowing I had a full day of outdoor cherry picking ahead, I wanted to choose pieces that would prevent further freckles, as well as being back sweat-resistant and breathable in the summer humidity.

Where were you on exchange? Japan. This shot was taken at the Yamamoto Orchard in the Northern island of Hokkaido.

What made you pick Japan? The ‘all-expensespaid-for’ tag narrowed down my choices but I’ve always been intrigued to discover Japanese culture beyond the sushi train and deepen my understanding of cross-cultural communications.

Who’s your style icon and why? I like a lot of people’s style but I’d say Cara Delevingne’s chic casual style is somewhere near the top.

What’s your favourite place in the whole world?

Anywhere sunny and beachy… or my bed.

What’s the most stylish city in the world and why?

I think Sydney has some pretty awesome style overall, but I do like Milan in winter when everyone goes to work in suits.

Most hated style trend that you’ve spotted abroad?

Sliders and socks – it’s not okay.

What Japanese styles do you love? The street-style is a balancing act of local and foreign labels and the end result is something which I admire but could never pull off. Think lace socks paired with punk platforms.

The Simpsons. Yup, you read that right, MAC is taking inspiration from Matt Groening’s cartoon creations for its latest line. The collection sees ‘donut sprinkle’ blushers engraved with Marge’s face, lip-glosses to perfectly match Lisa’s orange dress, and an eye shadow in Bart’s eat-my-shorts blue. Shockingly, they have yet to bring out a tinted moisturiser in bright yellow…. D’OH!

Despite being the most unexpected faces of beauty, The Simpsons Collection is set to be a winner and is launching at none-other than Comic-Con. It will be available online towards the end of August, so there’s not long until you can fulfil your lifelong dream to look exactly like Mr Burns.

Katie Stow, Emily Shen and Rebecca Karpin

36 bull usu.edu.au CLASSIC COUNTDOWN & VOX POPS

Issue 06 37 COW & HORNS

HAVE A COW Top 5 Richard Curtis Rom Coms

VOX pops

Let’s face it, we all guiltily indulge in a corny, sickening love story now and then. AND when it comes to romantic comedies, Richard Curtis is king.

SOPHIE GALLAGHER recommends marathoning all of these with copious amounts of wine.

5 4

THE BOAT THAT ROCKED (2009)

Its soundtrack encompasses the best rock and roll of the 60s. Bill Nighy and Philip Seymour Hoffman are total rock gods, and let’s not forget the clothes. This is a great film to feel some nostalgia, and jam to some classic tunes.

Four Weddings & A Funeral (1994)

I’m pretty sure every wedding joke ever was made in this film. Every bad wedding song, dress and moment you’ve experienced is mocked, which makes it all the better. Rowan Atkinson as a bumbling, scattered priest, particularly in Bernard and Lydia’s wedding, is a true highlight.

3 2

NOTTING HILL (1999)

“I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” That scene is just one highlight of this film. Hugh Grant is seen in all his floppy-haired, awkward glory and the bohemian streets of Notting Hill set the backdrop perfectly for this classic film.

Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: if Colin Firth and Hugh Grant were fighting over me in the middle of a rainsoaked London street, my life would be a lot better. Whether it’s Bridget drowning her sorrows in buckets of wine, Shazza giving her perfect best friend advice with regards to men (“Fuck him, fuck the lot of them”), or Mr Darcy revealing, “I like you, just the way you are”; there’s a lot to adore about this film.

1

Love Actually (2003)

I physically can’t pinpoint a favourite moment in this film. Emma Thompson listening to Joni Mitchell as she realises her husband has fallen out of love; Andrew Lincoln holding up those signs to Keira Knightley (“To me, you are perfect” *swoon and flail simultaneously*); Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon caught making out in the school play; Colin Firth trying to propose in Portuguese; not to mention Kris Marshall’s American orgy. Don’t just watch this at Christmas; watch it all year round, on repeat, forever.

Andrew Sinclair// ARTS III Listening to: ‘Mosquito’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs Reading: Tin Tin: Explorers on the Moon Watching: Agatha Christie’s Marple

Prachi Nagrath // INGS 1I Listening to: ‘Countdown’

by Beyoncé – all day, everyday Reading: : Nineteen EightyFour by George Orwell Watching: 22 Jump Street

TIFFANY ALEXANDER // ARTS II Listening to: ‘We Own The Night’ by The Wanted Reading: The Game of X

by Robert Sheckley Watching: One Tree Hill

Sean O’Grady puts pressure on university infrastructure According to Wikipedia, the use of pressure to transport and dispense water began as early as the 18th Century BCE in the Minoan capital of Knossos.

Imagine popping a pimple. As you apply pressure to each side of the unsightly blemish (we blame the media for making you ashamed of your physical appearance), pain gives way to pleasure and the pus, with nowhere else left to go, is propelled rapidly towards your bathroom mirror and slowly trickles down.

The process by which water arrives in your bathroom sink is more or less identical.

Your pipes are full of water, and as soon as you turn the tap, you release that pressure and it flows out. We have had some version of this technology for nearly 4000 years.

A friend tells me that a building he used to work in has bubblers that are heritage listed.

So we have had bubblers, drinking fountains or whatever you want to call them, for at least a hundred years.

It amazes me then, that when Sydney Uni installed places for you to fill up your water bottle around campus, that technology was not sufficiently developed to dispense it at a consistent rate. Unless you are the kind of ridiculous and stupid person that only drinks spring water (you have far too much money and far too little sense), you have,

I am sure, by now noticed that if people try to utilise the multiple outlets at such a bubbler simultaneously, that the water pressure is reduced to almost nothing.

When one person pulls away in frustration, the other tap explodes almost uncontrollably, missing the mouth of your water bottle and creating the illusion that you failed to make it to the bathroom on time.

I for one have had enough. The only mechanism by which our university’s increasing investment in research and corresponding failure to invest in teaching can be rectified, is if the capital invested in research manages to solve this egregious problem. Until then, I say, for shame!

In Defence of Cats: The Musical Dominic Byrne

In Defence of Cats & Dogs (2001) Peter Walsh

When I heard that Peter was anti-cats – the musical, Cats – I was so furious that I had to give myself a nice, long tongue bath. I’ve never seen Cats before. My only experience with it is when that puppet in Team America admits to being molested by the drunk cast members.

Can a puppet be molested? I think that’s a really interesting question. I think that if the puppet was a real person then it could definitely be molested.

One of the best things about the musical Cats is that the cats never molest each other. The cats though – some are... very sexy. Me likey...

We grew up on Cats. Remember those lazy Sunday afternoons spent role-playing as Munkustrap or as Old Deuteronomy? And then you wake up Monday, turn on Cheez TV and the World Trade Center is collapsing in front of your eyes? So crazy…

Hey Pete! Care to let me know where I can see DOGS: The Musical?? What’s that buddy?

Sorry was wearing my customised SkullCandy headphones with attached cat ears, couldn’t hear you over the Cats classic ‘Grizabella: The Glamour Cat’ – it’s pawtastic! No tickets available? Uh, what a bummer…Wait, what’s that? *swivels Razor scooter back to face Peter* Huh? It’s not a musical? That’s because dogs molest each other, friend. Guess I’ll just get back to my second favourite Cats tune: ‘Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’.

When I heard Dom didn’t like the 2001 AmericanAustralian action-comedy Cats & Dogs, I was furious. Mum had to put me in the downstairs padded room so I could swing my limbs like a rabid geriatric until sunrise. This film wasn’t just part of my childhood, it was a load-bearing pillar for my present identity. I wouldn’t be me without Jeff Goldblum’s heart-warming attempt to cure dog allergies.

Featuring Tobey Maguire, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Jon Lovitz and Michael Clarke Duncan… Can you imagine what they talked about on set? Alec Baldwin would have offered Tobey Maguire something to take the edge off, to help his anxiety about learning lines; “Here kid, take this script for Spider-whatever.” Jon Lovitz was probably visited each night by the ghosts of Chris Farley and Phil Hartman, who said: “Either this or Rat Race – one of these films will send you back to the top.”

Dom, this movie features Charlton Heston voicing a Mastiff at age 78. Did he understand what he was doing? He probably kept spouting that old-timey prejudice I’ve learned to ignore at family Christmas. Dom, you’re not listening.

Was Charlton Heston afraid of dying? Did he wonder if this would be his last role? Do you think, 50 years ago, on the set of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, he ever imagined he would reach these heights?

LOCKING HORNS CATS VS. CATS & DOGS

Issue 06 39 ARTS

ARTS

19–21 AUGUST 2014

Riot Girl

HUMANITARIAN WEEK - W H E R E R IP P L E S B E CO ME W A VE S -

Photo courtesy of Romain Duquesne

Sophie Gallagher

T UESDAY 19th

11am, Humanitarian Launch, Eastern Avenue 7.30pm, InterLOL Comedy Night, Manning Bar

WEDNESDAY 20th

1pm, Volunteer Matchmaking, International Student Lounge 1pm, FUNCH & Amnesty High Tea, Law Lawns

THURSDAY 21st

2pm, Developing Nations Pregnancy Kit Assembly, Isabel Fidler 6.30pm, Young Vinnies Winter Sleepout, Front Lawns

AND MUCH MORE!

/USUAccess MSS314

@USUAccess

@USUAccess

/USUonline

usu.edu.au

Walking through Eveleigh on the way to class during Fashion Week, a statuesque offduty model strode past me. I wouldn’t have given her a second glance if it wasn’t for her T-shirt, which in blaring black hand-painted letters read the statement, ‘Reject Racism’.

Later that day, waiting at the bus stop on City Rd, I saw another who wore ‘Sexism Sucks’.

I was immediately intrigued by the idea, and noted how everyone around me began discussing the statements they saw. For Ollie Henderson, model, activist, and creator of the ‘Start The Riot’ T-shirt collection, this was her intention.

“The aim was to encourage young people to become politically aware and involved,” she says. “Obviously it’s sharing the message that’s on the shirt, but it was more about encouraging other people to do these kinds of things, wearing a T-shirt that says a message that you care about. You may not be the one to change the world, but someone might see that T-shirt and feel inspired.”

Feeling helpless with Australia’s political climate, she wanted to speak up and provoke discussion. Henderson designed and handpainted 100 shirts for friends and colleagues to wear at this year’s Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. With statements from ‘Abort Abbott’ to ‘Welfare over Wealth’, and ‘Keep Tassie’s Bush, I Keep Mine’, they made a lot of noise.

Though this brings into question what role political fashion statements such as these play in our culture, and in the culture

of activism today. In a technologically forward world where people want information fast, do bold, simple statements have a better reach than protests or essays?

University of Sydney Performance Studies teaching fellow and ‘Fashademic’ blogger Rosie Findlay doesn’t think so.

“It’s one way of getting an idea across – visually spectacular stunts like this capture attention, but do so briefly. We see them, note them, then move on. So they might be good to briefly raise a talking point, but if not followed up with other actions or ongoing discussion, their ongoing impact is probably quite limited,” she says.

Henderson agrees, and believes following up on an original idea is the key to making lasting change. “I think you need the combination of both to really get somewhere,” she says.

It may not seem enough on the surface, but images and statements have always led political activism. Fashion’s role in creating some of these images, such as women wearing trousers before it was socially acceptable to do so, remain poignant and shocked others into action. Indeed, Findlay notes designers who are political in their collections such as Alexander McQueen, as well as individuals who dress in ways that challenge social conventions are successful in building social critique and commentary, “constantly challenging the perceptions of the people who encounter them.”

It’s in this regard that Henderson’s

‘Start The Riot’ collection builds momentum, following up her successful Fashion Week release with a new range of shirts, a zine exploring the issues she presented, and a Facebook group where people can discuss politics. Indeed, 20 per cent of every shirt sold goes to charities she personally selected, from Amnesty International to One Girl.

Sitting in Henderson’s Surry Hills bedroom/studio, it’s clear that she’s committed. The walls are covered with racks of half-finished shirts and whiteboards, while her desk is scattered with plans and empty cups of coffee. She shows me lists of future projects and collaborations that are in store for ‘House of Riot’, the umbrella term for “all the things we’re going to do.” With films and discussion groups lined up, they’ve also just begun working with UK based activist group, The Future, where Henderson started the Australian branch. Together, they’ve just had their first protest outside the Parliament House of NSW this August.

For Henderson and political fashion statements in general, that first shocking image of the clothes is only the top layer of activism. The ongoing work underneath that pushes for change is where the statements on the T-shirts come to life. “I do feel like when the political climate gets a bit rocky, the world speaks up and uses whatever medium it has at its disposal to discuss it.

So if people are angry, we will see that,” she says. It’s clear, for Henderson, that this is only the start of the riot.

40 bull usu.edu.au REVIEWS

Issue 06 41 EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE

REVIEWS

SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS 2014

WATCH: ATTACK ON TITAN TetsurO Araki

WATCH: Offspring – S5 Debra Oswald

Attack on Titan is an unforgivingly brutal anime series that is as addictive as it is beautiful – avoid starting this one when you’ve got assessments due (what a big mistake that was).

The show centres on foster siblings Eren and Mikasa, and their friend Armin, who take part in humanity’s desperate battle for survival after one of the walls protecting their town is destroyed by the monstrous and gargantuan titular Titans.

I watched the subtitled version of the show, available now in full, but the English dub is currently airing if you’d prefer.

The storytelling throughout the series is absolutely brilliant, and although there are plenty of action sequences and moments of horror to keep things exciting, it’s the gripping mystery behind the Titans’ existence that really drives the plot forward. What exactly are they? Why and how did they appear?

And are the Titans the only threat our protagonists face?

Despite often recycling the tired tropes of Japanese fiction – Eren is the typical angst-ridden teenage anime protagonist – believable relationships and heartbreaking moral dilemmas keep things from feeling stale. We watch well-loved characters suffer horribly gory deaths, while others betray their friends. Featuring an absolutely epic opening song – the hallmark of any good anime series – Attack on Titan deserves all its success and deserves your attention.

Network TEN’s hit drama Offspring has developed considerably over its five year run, and has perhaps at long last found its true tone. This season focused on establishing the neurotic Dr Nina Proudman (Asher Keddie) as a single mother following the unexpected death of her husband (Matt Le Nevez) at the end of season four.

Thankfully her crazy family, who put the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional, provide laughs by the bucketful to lighten the heavier moments.

Returning fans will be pleased to know that the comedy of the show is no longer at odds with the drama, with the flashbacks and fantasy sequences funnier than ever. Newly separated sister Billie (Kat Stewart) moves in with Nina to relieve her of her new duties, while their mother, brother, and his lover do their best to navigate their own chaos to much comic relief.

Unfortunately many of the other supporting characters are neglected, and at times the plot treads the same paths we’ve seen before – most notably the establishment of two competing potential love interests for Nina – leaving many questions about the future direction of the show.

Offspring has had a good long run with the Proudman family – here’s hoping the next season can keep fans as satisfied as this season has.

Talia Meyerowitz-Katz

Eden Caceda

PLAY: Valiant Hearts: The Great War Ubisoft Montpellier While the backdrop of World War II Europe has often been used as a virtual playground, videogames dealing with World War I are few and far between. But perhaps all we needed was a developer like Ubisoft Montpellier to do it justice.

Valiant Hearts: The Great War deftly tackles the horrific conflict with the aesthetics of a graphic novel and the gameplay of a side-scrolling puzzler, using the intertwining narratives of its four playable characters to illustrate the devastating physical and emotional impacts of the war. Through the eyes of reluctant German soldier Karl, his French father-in-law Emile, Belgian nurse Ana, and American volunteer Freddie, the events on the Western Front unfold.

This game is wonderfully accessible – the puzzles are fantastic, but never too difficult – and each level is accompanied by short paragraphs full of facts and trivia tied to the plot. The history buff in me wants nothing more than to jump in the DeLorean and give this game to my younger self!

Unfortunately the depiction of the German antagonist, Baron von Dorf, is a little trite and it would have been nice to see a more nuanced villain, but this is a minor detraction from an otherwise stellar game. Entertaining and informative, Valiant Hearts proves that interactive stories of The Great War are entirely possible.

Rob North

WATCH: SEX TAPE Jake Kasdan Featuring a familiar but overstated eccentricity, Sex Tape follows the escapades of a married couple, played by Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, as they attempt to retrieve a sex tape, made in an effort to rekindle their love-life, from the electronic devices of various friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

As expected in a film cowritten by Segel (see Forgetting Sarah Marshall or The Five Year Engagement) there is a fair amount of silliness and slapstick comedy.

However, Sex Tape fails on many occasions to find a balance between humour and believability, coming off as farcical instead of funny.

While the inclusion of new technologies as a major element of the plot gives the film relevance and a modern edge, this praise is quickly tainted by the bizarre turns in the narrative, with long sequences of the film dedicated to Segel being chased and attacked by a seemingly invincible dog, whilst Diaz snorts cocaine with her prospective employer. It’s hard not to feel that everyone involved got a little too carried away.

If you’re a big fan of Segel’s previous films you’ll probably appreciate this style of comedy and ludicrousness in the extreme.

Otherwise it might be best to give this one a miss.

Zoe Hitch

As a person coming from a strong family tradition of strictly indoor-only activities, the camping lifestyle was one of the first things during my very first Splendour experience to slap me hard across the face – freezing nights, perpetual tent dampness and traumatising toilet experiences were all part of the deal.

Suffice it to say, I’m about as ready to see a tent again as I am to be eaten by a hippo.

This being said, Splendour In The Grass was one of the best experiences I’ve had this year. Organisers did an impressive job of keeping lines and human traffic jams to a bare minimum as well as wrangling some of the world’s best and most famed musos – if my only Splendour story was that I danced on top of a natural amphitheatre to Outkast during their sole Australian show, I would be quite satisfied.

Luckily though, it’s not. Splendour In The Grass was like all of my summer festivals come at once, minus the stifling heat and minus the usual high concentration of shirtless, ignorant douchebags. Kelis was a highlight, funking up hits like ‘Milkshake’ and ‘Bounce’ with a superstar set up which included some flashy brass instruments. Childish Gambino and Hot Dub Time Machine injected some serious energy into the Splendour crowd and I was pleasantly surprised with acts like Broods and Ásgeir. If I had to pick a favourite musical child, it’d be Tune-Yards and their entrancingly eclectic show.

Splendour isn’t just for music lovers either. Films, panel discussions and comedy were what punters could enjoy at the Forum tent if the musical offerings weren’t cutting it. Women of Letters, a joint initiative by Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, saw a handful of female musicians and comedians reading out their sometimes tear-jerky, often witty letters to the song they wished they wrote; Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ got a mention, as did all things Tori Amos.

A Rational Fear, the satirical panel show hosted by funnyman Dan Ilic, filled Splendour audiences in on what is wrong with the world, complete with mysterious and jaded special guest and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake. White people wearing Native Indian headdresses were called out to rapturous applause and a Splendour audience answer to the Israel/Palestinian conflict was unsurprising: “just chill out”.

I think the thing I loved most about Splendour was that all the musicians and performers were just as excited to be there as the crowd. The smiles on their faces – Courtney Barnett’s infectious grin flashes to mind – were immovable and in turn, made everyone else’s attitudes skyrocket.

Would I go again? Is that even a question?

KATIE DAVERN

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Pretty good. Doesn’t top The Simpsons episode where Troy McClure plays “the human”. #drzaiusdrzaius

People Who Didn’t Go to Splendour: @peoplewhowenttosplendour It’s been a month already.

Stop talking about it. We know it was the best three days of your life.

People Who Went to Splendour: @peoplewhodidntgotosplendour #sorrynotsorry #outkast #smugsuperiority

Robin Thicke's Paula: Even though you finally consented to a divorce, everyone still thinks you are a #creep.

Undergrad Students: #midterms life is so hard.

Honours Students: @undergradstudents #lol #doyouevenstudy #fuckyou

Drunk Kebab: haha you are going to throw me the fuck up. #sorrynotsorry

42 bull usu.edu.au CLUB CONFIDENTIAL

Issue 06 43 CLUB CONFIDENTIAL

CLUB CONFIDENTIAL Labor vs. Liberal Debate: Trade Unions

An angry thorn stuck between two roses.

Hermann’s Bar, 4 August 2014 There are few things more beautiful in the University social calendar than Labor and Liberal coming together to battle it out in front of a crowd of rowdy students ready to put the opposing team’s head on a stake. This time the debate was on a topic close to many hearts – the effectiveness of trade unions.

Moving into the very warm Hermann’s Bar after a brief session of drinking by Labor and many wondering where Liberal was five minutes before the debate was to begin, it was clear that this wasn’t merely a friendly debate between parties; this was Game of Thrones of the most epic proportions, where no speaker hoped to be the Joffrey of the Lannisters and others tried to be Daenerys Targaryen. Each speaker had one chance with one microphone to try (not) to start a riot.

The argument about trade unions seemed to be sidestepped by many speakers who were rather interested in bringing shouts of anger and agreement from the crowd. I probably heard “SHAME!” and “HERE HERE!” more times than ever before and I didn’t appreciate cider being spilt on me mid-debate – thanks *name redacted*.

Nonetheless, it was fun to see members of both Labor and Liberal come out of their usual friendly recruiting manner and into attack mode.

When both sides were done and each party had used up all their political-ness, each side went back to being comfortable enemies and mingled.

It never is the expected ending to a war on stage but a it’s a satisfying one no less. If they don’t have another debate soon, that truly would be a “SHAME”.

Our fashion team concluded this physics student has invented a time machine. Apparently his beanie is very 2002.

An argument about whether Analytic or Continental Philosophy is superior is settled with a fight to the death.

How can I tell them I’m an anarchist...

RE-O DAY

EASTERN AVENUE // 30 JuLY 2014

Cheers to university politics!

Student reacts physically to the new Sydney Student system

Re-O Day hit Eastern Avenue not with a bang, but with a whimper. It turns out a one-month holiday is not as sufficient as three months when it comes to replenishing the spirits of club executives.

Out in the largest numbers were the political societies. With SRC elections just months away the day provided an important (read: sycophantic) opportunity to sign up new members (read: campaigners).

Of perhaps most note to this sleep-deprived gossip columnist was that an unnamed energy drink providore actually showed up with free drinks this time. The fact that they contained zero sugar led to him (who is now suddenly referring to himself in third person past tense) hoarding several to keep his eyes wide open and his waist size down throughout semester.

As evidenced by the adjacent picture, this sandstone university likes to keep traditions alive.

This fight to the death was more brutal than that time the Red Viper fought the Mountain in Game of Thrones. Laws (those pesky things) kept us from publishing gorier pics, but I am reliably informed that a video is receiving huge numbers of hits on the Dark Web version of USU hub.

As this gossip columnist signs off, he would like to assure you that he wore that foam Headspace visor in the jauntiest fashion on campus.

Sean O’Grady

The rapping battle begins...

Insert your own joke about musical instruments and sex

Eden Caceda

You get a car!

And you get a car!

You all get cars!

“Let me explain why my Labor faction is better than the other two Labor factions…”

44 bull usu.edu.au SHUTTER UP

Issue 06 45 COMICS

SHUTTER UP Tunnel/2011

COMICS SEND YOURS TO US AT EDITORS @ bullmag.com.AU

Photographer: Riddhima Dabhowale Camera: Canon 600D Focal length: 50mm Shutter: 1/125 Aperture: 5.6 ISO: 100

Meanwhile, over at Sydney College of the Arts...

BY Alexandra Mildenhall

snap!

Send us your unique, arty or just plain cool (as in, not another quad shot) campus snap to editors@bullmag.com.au We’ll publish our fave each edition in full page glory. High-res, 300dpi jpegs only – portrait orientation.

46 bull usu.edu.au ASK ISABELLA

ASK ISABELLA WEEK FOUR CRUNCH Dear Isabella, Niece of Aunty Irene Lover of Daddy Mack Mother of three and to all those who need advice I am woman, hear me roar

Why am I always lulled into a false sense of security during these first few weeks of semester?

Week 4 comes along and then, BAM, I’m drowning. I miss my girlfriend, my friends, my life – what can I do to regain the balance? ~ Rich

to get things going. (There’s a free, allpurpose life lesson for you!) Show your commitment to this yeasty affair and give your baker a symbol of friendship that’s better than bread puns. Be creative! ~Bella xxx

VASES Dear Isabella,

Dear Rich, That’s quite a pickle you’re in, but nevertheless, one that many of your little leftovers-for-lunch friends are in as well so my sympathy is, well, non-existent.

However, I am pond trained and fully respect the need for balance – teetering and tottering one way or another will do you no good. Keep your beady little eyes fixated on one point of the pond surface and slowly look up. You might surprise yourself dear Richy-Rich! ~ Bella xxx

BAKER’S DELIGHT Dear Isabella, The new bakery just opposite my work makes amazing bread. As much as I love the bread, I am failing to connect with my baker. Do I need to change bakers or is this relationship salvageable?

I’m moving out of home this weekend and I’m doing a bit of homeware scouting except I can’t decide whether I want an elegant tall vase or this cute little short vase I saw one time for the kitchen table. Thoughts? ~ Jackie Dear Jackie, You have come to the right animal advice column. Let me tell you, if you don’t get the tall slim vase now, you will regret this decision for the rest of your life. I know you humans like the quirky, “cute” ones, but take it from Isabella, you can’t trust them! They will leave you with five hatchlings and not a feather on your back to make ends meet. Exhibit a) poor Colin, he’s gone and run off with ‘The Rabbit’ from Issue 5, the slimy little rat! Short vases never did him a bit of good. ~Bella xxx

~Fay Dear Fay, True, a good relationship with your baker is intrinsic to digestive happiness.

Most bread-givers I know are always a little subdued but all it takes is a strum of the vocal chords and a friendly peck

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Taking you places

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