2019 Edition 2 by Farrago Magazine

CONTENTS

News in Brief cw/ Islamophobia, violence,

death

5/ Calendar 8/ Metro Updates See Ya Later Duldig 9/ Vegie Patch Shutdown 10/ Parkville in Good Form 12/ The Places Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll Go 13/ Crossing the Language Barrier 14/ Mad About Inequality cw/ mentions of

suicide and mental illness

16/

Bitter Beans cw/ workplace verbal

abuse and altercations, including gender and

religious discrimination

42/ 43/ 44/

18/ Taste Test 19/ Satire 20/ Office Bearer Reports

Flash Fiction cw/ mention of suicide, animal death Paint to Poetry cw/ mental illness Good Whore//Bad Whore cw/ sex, misogyny,

slurs

47/

The Fairytale Gazette cw/ references to sexual

assault

25/

My Father Was at a Mosque Today cw/ death, violence

grief, Islamophobia

26/ 27/ 28/

Making Tomorrow Diaspora Dilemmas cw/ racism, colonialism, violence Mediterranean Homosexuality cw/ homophobia,

heterosexism, pornographic content, sexism and misogyny, slurs,

transphobia, transmisogyny

32/ Double Take 33/ Living Well When Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Unwell cw/ chronic illness 35/ Sushi and Stramenopiles 36/ Kiss and Tell cw/ racism 39/ Regulating Language cw/ ableism 40/ Mythologies

48/ Slug cw/ implicit references to blood and violence 49/ Milk Caps 50/ A Thing With Feathers 52/ The Scenic Route Graphic Column 54/ Joan 57/ Old Bath 58/ 808s & Fantasy 60/ Waialua 61/ conditioning 62/ The Remarkable Quests of Raddish and Quill 64/ For and Against

cw/ = Content Warning

COLLECTIVE

THE FARRAGO TEAM Editors Katie Doherty Carolyn Huane Ruby Perryman Stephanie Zhang Contributors Lauren Berry Alexius Choi Darcy Cornwallis Denis Curnow Kaia Costanza-van den Belt Vanessa Jo Di Natale Natalie Fong Chun Min Hannah Garvan Gülsüm Güngör Ailish Hallinan Megan Hanrahan Sam Harding Esmé James Will Johns Stephanie Kee Elyssia Koulouris Joel Tse-Yao Lee Jasper MacCuspie Joel Mak Andie Moore April Nougher-Dayhew Sonja Repetti Morgan-Lee Snell Maggie Tan Lucy Turton Caitlin Wilson Mark Yin Jessica Zhou Subeditors Ruby Adams Daniel Beratis Clare Bullard Jessica Chen Bridie Cochrane-Holley Claire Thao Duong Nick Fleming 4

Emma Hardy Asher Harrington Ashleigh Hastings Stephanie Kee Tiia Kelly Wing Kuang Finbar MacDonald Marilla Marshall Sloan Amber Meyer April Nougher-Dayhew Ella Patrick Sarah Peters Yiani Petroulias Romios Ed Pitt Bella Ruskin Chiara Situmorang Carly Stone Greer Sutherland Alison Tealby Teo Jing Xuan Taylor Thomas Finley Tobin Tharidi Walimunige Sophie Wallace Charlotte Waters Reina Wibawa Caitlin Wilson Lindsay Wong Freyja Wright Catron Allen Xiao Claudia Young Graphics Jennifer Luki Andreany Alexandra Burns Cathy Chen Bethany Cherry Van Ahn Chu Sonia Jude Reann Lin Peijing Li Hayley May Alex Mortensen Amani Nasarudin

/ ART BY STEPHANIE NESTOR

Stephanie Nestor Alain Nguyen Monique O’Rafferty T-Dog eXtreme Charanja Thavendran Tiffany Widjaja Lucy Williams Sian Williams Raymond Wu Yushi Wu Lizzy Yu Columnists Bethany Cherry Conor Clements Creative Literature and Writing Society (CLAWS) Jocelyn Deane Alison Ford Kaavya Jha Madeleine Johnson Sarah Peters Veera Ramayah Luke Rotella A’bidah Zaid Shirbeeni Iris Shuttleworth Haley Zilberberg Farrago is the student magazine

Social Media Sachetha Bamunusinghe Ashleigh Hastings

of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), produced by the media department. Farrago is published by the general secretary

Cover Yushi Wu

of UMSU, Reece Moir. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU. the printers or the editors. Farrago is printed by Printgraphics, care of the ever patient and speedy Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. This collection is © Farrago and Farrago reserves the right to republish material in any format.

COLLECTIVE

EDITORIAL We acknowledge Farrago is created on land that always has and always will belong to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations. This land is stolen and sovereignty was never ceded, and no acknowledgement is enough to give it back. We pay our respects to elders past, present and future, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people who have been sharing stories and making art longer than anyone in the world. We thank readers for picking up our magazine and listening to what we have to say, and urge you to actively seek out, and listen to, the people whose land you exist on too. “Editorial!” Steph yells, as the rest of us desperately avoid starting to write it. “Editorial!” They’ve been up since 6am, lost their wallet on the bus, and just want to go home. We have to send the magazine to print tomorrow. Like everything else in Edition Two, we’ve left this until the very last minute and it barely feels real. We don’t know what’s going on, we’re weak, we’re tired, no-one is eating right. Once Caro ate straight up dirt because her crush dared her to. He proceeded to say “gross” and walk away. It was “a seminal moment” for her. On Sunday Katie made tacos out of cheese she had to cut the mould off of, and very squishy wrinkly potatoes. She’s been eating them for three days now, and has also fed them to her far-too-trusting partner. Neither seem to be showing signs of food poisoning yet. Ruby consumed way too much [dust] at Golden Plains and can’t think of an anecdote because she hasn’t become human again yet. Steph hasn’t eaten anything in a while because of the whole wallet thing. Donate to their GoFundMe here. This edition, news and campus is filled with long juicy pieces. Hear from international students themselves in Alexius Choi and Maggie Tan’s ‘Crossing the Language Barrier’ (pg. 13) and Madeleine Johnson’s second installment of her column Mad About Inequality (pg. 14). Or, follow Ailish Hallinan and Megan Hanrahan on their investigation into workplace environments of cafes on campus to decide which brew is best on your conscience. In non-fiction, check out Sonja Repetti’s piece on protists (no, we didn’t know what they were at first either) on page 35, and Will Johns’ exploration of top/bottom dynamics and the concept of ‘Mediterranean Homosexuality’ (pg. 28-29). In the creative section, Hannah Garvan tells sex work like it is (pg. 44-46). Sam Harding in ‘Old Bath’ (pg. 57) and Morgan-Lee Snell in ‘Waialua’ (pg. 60) will make you feel All Of The Things through their quite differing but equally as gorgeous experience of the beach. Feast your eyes on Peijing Li’s adorable Little People on pages 6 and 7, and Charanja Thavendran’s awesome digital AND hand sketched collage (pg. 37). We love multimodal art, please send us some! Thanks for bearing with us, Ruby, Katie, Caro and Steph P.S. Seriously though, if anyone sees Steph’s wallet please hit us up. Retraction from Hayley Edwards, regarding last year’s election guide: “I recently read Farrago Edition 7 2018 and noticed a statement published under my name that I’d never seen before, which I did not write or agree with. I am grateful for the opportunity to retract the original statement.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAIN NGUYEN /

TAG CAMPUS

Content Warning: Content Warning for Christchurch: Islamophobia, violence, death

NEWS IN BRIEF RISE TO THE TOP The University of Melbourne tops the latest rankings of Australian universities from Times Higher Education. Globally, it retains its place at number 32.

WALKOUT

WEBS

DISAFFILIATION

On 6 March, University of Melbourne students joined the Student Walkout calling for a shut down of detention centres organised by RISE.

The new Western Edge Biosciences Building, housing Veterinary and Agricultural Science, Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, and the Faculty of Science has opened.

MU Pool, a club dedicated to the tabletop cue sport, has been disaffiliated from UMSU Clubs and Socities following an unsuccessful appeal to Students’ Council.

CHRISTCHURCH

OB RESIGNATIONS AND APPOINTMENTS

A horrific terror attack occured on 15 March in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 and injuring 50 more. The UMSU People of Colour department said: “[We] strongly condemn the attack on Muslims that occured in Christchurch and emphasise the dangers of white supremacy. We extend our condolences to the victims, their families, loved ones, and send strength and love to the Muslim community.” These are the names of the victims: Mucad Ibrahim, Atta Elayyan, Daoud Nabi, Sayyad Milne, Naeem Rashid, Talha Rashid, Zeeshan Raza, Ghulam Husain, Karam Bibi, Haroon Mehmood, Sohail Shahid, Syed Jahandad Ali, Syed Areeb Ahmed, Farhaj Ahsan, Hosne Ahmed, Zakaria Bhuiya, Mozammel Haque, Omar Faruk, Abdus Samad, Hafiz Musa Vali Patel, Khaled Mustafa, Hamza Mustafa, Linda Armstrong, Amjad Hamid, Matiullah Safi, Hussain al-Umari, Tariq Omar, Osama Adnan Abu Kweik, Lilik Abdul Hamid, Maheboob Khokhar, Ramiz and Asif Vora, Anzi Alibava, Junaid Kara/Ismail, Mohammed Imran Khan, Ozair Kadir, Ashraf Ali, Mounir Suleiman, Ashraf Morsi, Ahmad Gamaluddin Abdel Ghani, Ashraf al-Masri, Mohsen Mohammed Al Harbi, Abdukadir Elmi, Musa Nur Awale, Atta Elayyan, Abdul Fattah Qasem Ibrahim Qasem, Ali Mahmoud Abdullah Al Madani, Kamel Mohamad Kamel Darweesh. There remain victims unidentified. We at Farrago stand with the Muslim community and strongly condemn any instances of Islamophobia. The Australian media has enabled Islamophobia to exist in mainstream media for far too long, giving platforms to far-right figures who do nothing but fear-monger. We welcome any Muslim stories that wish to be heard, and would like to offer a safe space for marginalised groups.

Over the last month more Office Bearers elected in the general election last year have resigned.

Read Gülsüm Güngör’s personal piece about family and tragedy and grief in the face of the Christchurch terror attack on page 25.

/ ART BY SOMEONE SOMEONE

In the Education (Academic) office, Elizabeth Tembo resigned to force a casual vacancy. Following a committee meaning, Tembo and Dominic Roque Ilgan have been appointed. In the Queer office, Will Parker has resigned. Remaining officer Andie Moore has resigned as well to force a casual vacancy, and it is likely that they and Raph Canty will be appointed. Education (Academic), Queer, and Indigenous departments will all be having by-elections. Jocelyn Deane has also resigned from the Disabiltiies office, but at this moment no byelection seems imminent. Lucy Birch will be the sole office bearer.

SCHOOL STRIKE 4 CLIMATE

On 15 March, around 60-70 students made up the University of Melbourne contingent to the School Strike 4 Climate. Students met up outside the Sidney Myer Asia Centre and marched down to the State Library. They were joined by other universities’ contingents, along with secondary school students and marched to Treasury Gardens. Strikers demanded an end to new coal and gas projects, an end to the Adani Coal Mine, and 100% renewables by 2030. The movement is a global one urging for climate action now. On the day, people in over 2,000 cities worldwide participated, with an estimated 1.4 million pupils from every continent. Acting Vice Chancellor Mark Considine said, “Students who decide to take part in the action should consider that the University is unable to guarantee that any work that may be missed as a result can be delivered on another day.”

Content Warning:

TAG

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CALENDAR : APRIL WEEK 4

WEEK 5

WEEK 6

WEEK 7: RAD ED WEEK

MONDAY 25 MAR

MONDAY 1 APR

MONDAY 8 APR

MONDAY 15 APR

2pm: Ace+Aro collective

12pm: Low SES collective 2pm: Ace+Aro collective

Mudfest artist applications open!

12pm: Low SES collective 2pm: Ace+Aro collective

TUESDAY 26 MAR

TUESDAY 2 APR

TUESDAY 9 APR

TUESDAY 16 APR

12pm: WoC collective 1pm: Trans collective 1pm: Enviro collective 1pm: On Track & Syndicate 2pm: Take back our co-op 5pm: Welfare—Yoga

12pm: WoC collective 1pm: Trans collective 1pm: Enviro collective 1pm: On Track & Syndicate 1pm: Southbank Queer collective 5pm: Welfare—Yoga

12pm: WoC collective 1pm: Trans collective 1pm: Enviro collective 1pm: On Track & Syndicate 5pm: Welfare—Yoga

12pm: WoC collective 1pm: Trans collective 1pm: Enviro collective 1pm: On Track & Syndicate 5pm: Welfare—Yoga 6:30pm: Sustainability Forum

WEDNESDAY 27 MAR

WEDNESDAY 3 APR

WEDNESDAY 10 APR

WEDNESDAY 18 APR

12pm: Women’s collective 12pm: Welfare collective 1pm: Mudcrabs Rowdy Laughter 1pm: PoC collective 1pm: Queer lunch

THURSDAY 28 MAR

THURSDAY 4 APR

THURSDAY 11 APR

THURSDAY 19 APR

12pm: Queer PoC collective 1pm: PoC in media collective 4pm: Fitness class 5pm: G&Ts with the LGBTs 5:15pm: Meditation

12pm: Queer PoC collective 1pm: PoC reading group 4pm: Fitness class 5:15pm: Meditation

12pm: Queer PoC collective 1pm: PoC in media collective 4pm: Fitness class 5pm: G&Ts with the LGBTs 5:15pm: Meditation

12pm: Queer PoC collective 1pm: PoC reading group 4pm: Fitness class 4:30pm: Queer Gals Movie Night 5:15pm: Meditation

FRIDAY 29 MAR

FRIDAY 5 APR

FRIDAY 12 APR

FRIDAY 20 APR

12pm: Mudcrabs Rowdy Writing

2pm: Ace+Aro collective

/ ART BY SOMEONE SOMEONE

Content Warning:

/ ART BY PEIJING LI

Content Warning:

as something happened on campus thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s made you mad? Did you hear about something dodgy? Or just have a story you think Farrago readers should know about? We want to bring you the best news possible. Let us know if you see or hear something you feel we should look into by emailing us at editors@farragomagazine.com or stephanie@farragomagazine.com. Confidentiality will always be upheld. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be afraid to speak up.

ART BY PEIJING LI /

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METRO UPDATES

SEE YA LATER DULDIG

LUCY TURTON GETS BORING

VANESSA JO DI NATALE REPORTS

isruptions on Grattan Street will continue throughout 2019 as Parkville Station construction for the Melbourne Metro Tunnel enters its “most exciting year to date.” Rail Projects Victoria spokesman Joel Dwyer told Farrago the road closures, pedestrian and cyclist diversions around Grattan Street and University Square will remain “largely similar”. 2019 marks the third year of the project’s five-year lifespan, with excavation beginning in March. According to Rail Projects Victoria, disruptions will not significantly interfere with day-to-day student business. “No dust will be in the air, there’ll be no noise,” with small acoustic sheds built to contain the site, Dwyer said. Students south of the Grattan Street works expressed concern about the construction temporarily spoiling the area’s amenity and accessibility. Law student Alex Fielden said the works have not had any significant impact on his day-to-day life on campus. “Timetabling is fine, [there’s] no noise during class,” he said. However, the developments in University Square have made socialising around the Law School difficult. “There isn’t anywhere for us to really chill out anymore… University Square was a great place to catch up with friends, lie in the sun and study.” With the works around University Square, outdoor campus spaces are now lacking, Fielden said. The Metro Tunnel project is aimed at “getting [Melbourne’s] infrastructure into the 21st century and dealing with Melbourne’s exploding population growth,” according to Dwyer. However, The Age editor Alex Lavelle, said in an article that the Andrews government is merely “playing catch-up” in its preparations for Melbourne’s population reaching 5 million people this year. The new railway stations will reduce University commute times by “up to 40 minutes,” with direct rail connections to the CBD. The design of the Parkville Station was revealed last year, and features glass roofs and walls to “maintain the natural beauty of the Parkville area,” Dwyer said. New stations as part of the Melbourne Metro project are also being built in North Melbourne, Swanston Street, Collins Street, and the Arts precinct south of Flinders Street.

/ ART BY CATHY CHEN

aul Duldig has left his position as the Head of University Services, which he had held since 2014. In December 2018, Duldig was replaced by the former Deputy Head Neil Robinson. No clear reason was given for Duldig’s swift departure. Duldig played a role in facilitating the business and operational direction of 1,600 people across the nine portfolios he oversaw as Head of University Services. Prior to 2014, the University had 18 service centres. In a 2017 talk on business improvement in universities, Duldig said the reason for the scaling down to nine services was to combat “vastly different service delivery”. Duldig implemented the University’s new “move then improve” shared services model. Perhaps most noteworthy to students was the consolidation of faculty student services into the singular service centre Stop 1 in 2014. Stop 1’s success as a comprehensive and easily accessible service has been widely debated. From the project’s inception, Duldig was also the New Student Precinct Project Sponsor. Duldig said Provost Richard James is the precinct’s new custodian. Duldig said he decided to leave the University because he was “nearing the end of [his] five year interim”. As for the suddenness of his departure, Duldig said “It was all very amicable, but yes, kind of quick, very quick”. “Neil Robinson, having been the University’s Academic Registrar would be all across the student side and I guess the Vice-Chancellor figured he’d give Neil a go. I guess after a period they’ll put it to the market place.” When asked if Robinson is being given a ‘trial of sorts’ Duldig said, “I guess so, yeah.” Duldig later corrected himself, saying “[He] checked with Neil and he says it’s not a trial—he is doing the job for six months”. Robinson, the new Head of University Services declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding his appointment. The University of Melbourne Student Union will be moving from Union House into the New Student Precinct in 2020-21.

Content Warning:

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VEGIE PATCH SHUTDOWN JASPER MACCUSPIE INVESTIGATES

nion House’s popular sandwich store ‘Vegie Patch’, amongst other stores, has closed down over the summer to the disappointment of many students. A vitriolic message was left on the menu board of the store that offered healthier options amongst a sea of fast food, and has since cast a spotlight on the University’s operation of food stalls. However, it was not the closing down that drove the most discussion; rather, it was the message left behind. The message is attributed to Yijing (Jenny) Xu, one of the purported owners of the popular food store. Farrago is not suggesting that Yijing Xu is the sole owner, or the standalone spokesperson for Vegie Patch. “Evil !!! [sic]” read the message. “I will fight until my last blood.” The message alleged conduct by the University, referred to in its role as a landlord, was cause for some concern. There are three key actions alleged against the University, which Farrago will cover in chronological order. The notice claims that the store’s lease renewal was contingent on the owners agreeing to specific requirements to upgrade in 2007. “We had the lease renewed after we agreed to use [the University’s] nominated designer and builder to make some simple cosmetic make ups [sic] of the shop at an expensive price.” There was no evidence provided to back up this claim, nor was Farrago able to get in touch with the owner of the store to whom the message can be attributed. The message goes on to state that the owner was active in campaigning on behalf of other stores facing closure at the hands of the University, which resulted in backlash against the owner. “As revenge [for the campaigning], I received an offer to renew our lease with ridiculous terms such as replacing all aluminum bench top and all floor covering [sic],” Xu stated. The University opted not to provide specific comment on the details of the allegations. A University spokesperson provided the following statement:

“Food outlet tenants operate under a commercial lease arrangement with the University. The University owns the building. Each outlet is managed as per the terms of individual leases.” “The Vegie Patch tenant’s lease came to an end with no more options to renew,” the statement concludes. It is important to note that none of these allegations are able to be verified at this stage. Given the nature of the disagreement and the bad blood evidenced in the message, it is possible that these allegations are entirely false, or misrepresent the situation. Discussions over these allegations with legal experts indicated little immediate liability on behalf of the University. The source, who was unwilling to be named, indicated that the length of time since the alleged conduct makes it more difficult to pursue action. They also noted the importance of acknowledging that the sign represented one side of a seemingly contentious relationship, and thus is unreliable in terms of accuracy. Farrago went down many avenues to contact the store owners to clarify the situation; however, these attempts were unsuccessful. Ultimately, there appear to be no further avenues to pursue this story. The closure of the Vegie Patch is not the only change to store frontage in Union House in recent times. Other popular stores, including ‘Uni Curry’, ‘Sweet Tooth’ and ‘Old Saigon Noodles’ have all been replaced. The curry shop will become a kitchen facility, the noodle shop is set to transform into a ‘Wash Against Waste’ space, and the confectionary store will be a stall that sells fresh fruit and vegetables. While many students will no doubt be grateful for the addition of more environmentally conscious and healthy options, these changes represent a significant change in the makeup of Union House. This may be in preparation for the planned move to the new Student Precinct in the coming years. With the number of changes present in Union House at the moment, it is possible that more controversy will arise in a similar vein in the future.

ART BY REANN LIN /

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PARKVILLE IN GOOD FORM LAUREN BERRY EXPLORES PARKVILLE SCULPTURES

o you ever feel like you’re being watched when you’re at uni? Well I hate to tell you—Parkville students—but you are. They’re figures you barely notice. Figures silently lurking at every corner of campus. Shaming you as you traipse your way to tutorials. Judging you for lounging about South Lawn sipping on painfully-sugary bubble tea. Frowning at you as you plug your ears with Air Pods and succumb to the hypnotic power of glowing screens. Many of them have stood proud for decades. Lots of them have migrated here by some miraculous twist of fate. Some of them are a bit weird-looking… some are just damn good-looking. All of them work harder than most of us at improving the appearance of our university. “But they’re just sculptures!” I hear you exclaim, “They’re just there for decoration! They’re not even alive!” But how do you know they’re not alive… if you blink, how do you know they haven’t moved? Well, animate or inanimate, it’s about time we take a look into exactly what these mysterious sculptures represent and how they’ve come to grace our grounds.

Hellenistic hotties The gods are in our midst. Symbolising protection and shelter, the goddess Charity and her two paupers are physically intimidating, but well-intentioned. The immense bronze sculpture (‘Charity being kind to the poor’ c. 1893) has resided on the lush greenery at the bottom of South Lawn since 1981. But her holiness was actually originally cast at the Imperial Art Foundry of Vienna, and then situated on the Equitable Life Assurance Society Limited headquarters building in Melbourne’s CBD, before the building’s demolition in the late-1950s. Her neighbours take the form of two labouring giants, straining beneath the immense weight of South Lawn car park. The ‘Atlantes’ (c. 1880)—inspired by Atlas who held up the world in Greek mythology—found their home on the gothic arches in 1972, having previously featured on the entrance to the Colonial Bank of Australasia in the CBD (which too was demolished). Yet these are not the only major figures to have ever presided over the car park’s gothic aesthetic. The space has featured in many film and television productions such as Mad Max and 12

/ ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

Network Ten’s Masterchef. And finally, even though he is smaller than his counterparts, the majestic ‘Poseidon’ (c. 1950) has arguably the most fascinating origins. Our sculpture— situated in the courtyard of the Elisabeth Murdoch building since 1994—is a replica of an original statue dating back to around 460BC and attributed to the Ancient Greek sculptor, Onatas of Aegina. His statue— named ‘Zeus of Artemision’—was mysteriously lost at sea and recovered by fisherman off of Cape Artemision in 1928. It now resides in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. However, the original sculpture has been wrongly assumed as representing the god Zeus, when it actually depicts Poseidon preparing to throw a thunder bolt, an item which was missing from the original and hence our casting. Only two castings were made of the statue, ours, a gift from the Greek Orthodox Community to commemorate the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, and another, which currently resides in New York’s United Nations building.

Statement pieces Then there’s some pieces which thrive on their strong intentions. Above the main entrance to Wilson Hall stands Socrates, reflecting the light of truth onto humanity with a mirror, and holding in his other hand the poison which ensures his death. A follower reaches for the mirror, suggesting that the Ancient Greek scholar’s lesson will prosper, whilst another tries to prevent him from taking the poison. The scene on the copper panel (1954-1959) is sculptor Tom Bass’s interpretation of the event of the ‘Trial of Socrates’ in 399BC where the scholar was condemned to execution for challenging the status quo and encouraging his students to think differently. While this picture may be grim, it suggests a lot about how strongly we should value our moral attitudes. Embellished on the west façade of this building are more of Bass’s works—comprising four pressed cement sculptures (c. 1957) serving to remind us symbolically of a university’s key principles. ‘Observation’ illustrates a sea crew sailing into unexplored waters, suggesting intellectual inquiry and discovery.

Content Warning:

‘Contemplation’ depicts one scholar prodding the sun whilst others put their heads together to ruminate on the matter. ‘Teaching and learning’ shows an instructor and students engaging in activities. And lastly, ‘The talents of knowledge’ depicts a Christlike figure either bestowing or receiving talents and a student figure bent over, hiding his own talent. This last panel suggests that students should not shroud their gifts but rather be thankful to God for blessing them with such skills. On the other side of campus is a piece which puzzles and intrigues every student. Protruding from the external facade of the Ian Potter Museum of Art is ‘Cultural Rubble’ (1993), an assemblage of sculptural casts of notable works from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Sculptor Christine O’Loughlin made copies of such pieces as the ‘Venus de Milo’, the ‘Discus Thrower’, the ‘Winged Victory of Samothrace’, Corinthian columns and Greek pots, and arranged them into a collage of Classical era excellence. Yet, its prominent positioning on the building emits quite a powerful message about the necessity to break out of the ideology of European art’s dominancy in Australian culture, and instead encourages us to appreciate the collection of distinctly Australian work within the museum. There’re also two works by the famous Germanborn Australian sculptor Inge King which dominate the grounds of Parkville. There’s the centrepiece of Union Lawn, ‘Sun ribbon’ (1980-82), which invites the eyes of the masses passing through the busy road and provides a great place for students to rest. And in Wilson Avenue— east of the John Medley building—there’s ‘Upward surge’ (1974-75), commissioned to represent the rise in great developments being made in the teaching of children. According to the artist, it resembles “flight with wings soaring upwards”, thus articulating these aspirations. It was installed in its current location in 2001. And ultimately, a major work remains almost always unobserved, despite its popular location and humble undertones. Japanese-born sculptor Akio Makigawa’s ‘Spirit Wall’ (1999-2001) wraps around the exterior wall of the Sydney Myer Asia Centre. The work, high above the bustling corner of Swanston St and Monash Rd, features nature imagery which is contrastingly

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rather tranquil: seed pods symbolising birth and growth, water representing life, five houses signifying five continents, and an annulus (ring) refering to the Eastern symbol of heaven.

Brilliant beasts Those pesky magpies and 9am tutorials aren’t the only creatures waiting to pounce… Fittingly located on the facade of the Zoology building, the copper medallion ‘Zoology relief’ (1962) features a number of animals—insects, mammals, reptiles— encircling a nerve cell. Sculptor Andor Meszaros gained a reputation as a renowned medallion sculptor in Australia, and also famously worked on a commemorative medal for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. And, at last, let’s not forget the guardians of the university-galaxy. Bruce Armstrong’s partially-formed creatures—ominously named ‘So it’s come to this’ and ‘She would like to be left with it’ (1986)—have lounged in Deakin Court since their installation in 1986, initially guarding the entrance to the University of Melbourne Museum of Art—the antecedent to the Ian Potter Museum of Art. These abstract sculptures, made of redgum, fall into a canon of Armstrong’s mainly primitiveinspired works—which also includes the immense eaglehawk sculpture ‘Bunjil’ (2002) that towers 25 metres-tall over Docklands, and a pair of untitled beasts (Guardians 1987) which once featured in front of the National Gallery of Victory but now lie in the sculpture garden behind the museum. There are many more shapes and figures to be found scattered around campus: like the strange interwoven panels on Union House (‘Ornamental balustrade’) symbolising, quite fittingly, unity, and Eastern Resource Centre Plaza’s abstract steel forms (‘Untitled 7/73’) which balance each other out and have no useless parts. So, although they may seem a bit sinister in their unmoving, standoffish kind of way—the campus sculptures have an integral part to play in the aesthetic and cultural life of the university. They’re also here to protect us, apparently. Unless you believe in the whole Medusa thing…

ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS /

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THE PLACES YOU’LL GO MEGAN HANRAHAN LOOKS OVERSEAS

he University of Melbourne has set a target for 25 per cent of students to participate in overseas study by 2020, reflecting growing national demand to study abroad. The new target, along with changes to the Study Overseas program, form part of a concerted national push to simplify the process for domestic exchange students. These changes come as a much-needed update to the notoriously difficult application experience. Elliot Incerti went on exchange at Autonomous University of Barcelona (AUB), and described the application process as “lengthy and very confusing”. Despite spending a lot of careful time on his Study Plan, Incerti still encountered problems. “Almost none of the approved subjects were available to me once I got to Barcelona, and there was so much delay on both the Melbourne and Barcelona end of things… I was scrambling to get subjects approved [before the deadline],” Incerti said. Many overseas partner institutions have outdated and sometimes non-existent online handbooks, or poorly staffed international student advisors that struggle to meet the required University of Melbourne deadlines. With students needing to finalise their Study Plans shortly after arrival at their host institutions, any delays can be detrimental to the approval process. “The administration at AUB was shocking, they had one office for exchange students that was meant to cover absolutely everything, but it was just one woman working there for three hours on Tuesday and Thursdays,” Incerti said. “Fortunately I had been documenting these troubles with the exchange [advisor] for Europe, and she’s been supporting me.” The advisor in question, Anatoli Amanatidis, cares for between 150 and 250 outbound students per semester. She urges them not to be “afraid to ask the questions”, as some institutions may not have much information available online for inbound students. “It is stressful. Students need to be prepared to navigate through that,” Amanatidis said. “If there is a problem, come and tell me. If your visa is running late, or you don’t know what’s happening, if you want to check [you’re doing] enough credits, reach out.” Jess* went on exchange in Scandinavia and reported

/ ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

struggling initially with her application. “I think I was at Stop 1 almost every week trying to get answers for something.” Last year, Stop 1 had 4,300 drop-in visits for Study Overseas queries, a number which Davina Potts, Associate Director of Global Leadership and Employability, hopes to see reduced as the new changes roll out. Shari Blanck, who works alongside Potts as the Student Programs Coordinator, said that the feedback of students like Elliot and Jess has been critical to updating the administrative systems. “There is real co-creation with students,” she said. “We are in the process of overturning—to make it more student friendly.” Smaller changes include the renaming of Global Mobility to ‘Study Overseas,’ as well as simplifying the website, while more significant changes include increasing the number of overseas summer and winter intensives, resourcing more funding, and removing nomination WAM and GPA requirements. “There’s no evidence to say that students will do better [on exchange] if they’ve got a higher WAM,” said Potts. Rather, she said, “it’s about maturity and how you’re able to adjust,” adding that students with lower WAMs who participate in an exchange, compared to their peers with higher marks, tend to benefit more academically upon returning. Furthermore, the replacement of Google Doc forms with an online Study Plan has allowed data on subject selections to be gathered and analysed. In the future, some subjects will qualify for automatic accreditation, making the process smoother for applicants. All students interviewed agreed that, despite administrative difficulties encountered, their exchanges were very worthwhile, giving them confidence and clarity regarding future study. As these improvements are implemented and expanded upon, the number of students studying abroad can only continue to grow. With the most recent data from the 2017 graduating cohort showing exchange figures at 22 per cent, the University is very close to achieving their 2020 goal. *Individual’s name has been changed.

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CROSSING THE LANGUAGE BARRIER MAGGIE TAN AND ALEXIUS CHOI INVESTIGATE

ehind the scenes of Australia’s highest-ranked university, a few Chinese international students at the University of Melbourne are struggling with their courses due to language barriers. “I don’t physically go to my lectures because I can’t keep up with how fast the lecturer moves through the content,” said Abby, a Chinese international student who wishes to remain anonymous. “I like to watch the lecture capture afterwards, that way I can put the parts I don’t understand through a translation software.” Abby’s struggle with the course is not a single case. In the latest International Student Survey conducted by the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) International, 49 per cent of around 2,000 student participants struggled to understand course material. The survey also found that 30 per cent of participants cited ‘language barriers’ as an issue, making it the second most prevalent difficulty that international students face. “UMSU International believes this is an issue whose root cause must be addressed, “ said Jonas Larsen, president of UMSU International. According to the University’s entry requirements, international students from a non-English speaking background need to pass an English language proficiency test that is internationally recognised. This could be either Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), Pearson Test, Cambridge English Score, or International English Language Testing System (IELTS). For applicants who have outstanding academic performances but achieve a minimum score in the language test, the University will require them to sit in the Diagnostic English Language Assessment (DELA) upon their enrolment at the University, and then offer them various language support programs such as academic writing classes in accordance with their grades. However, some of these requirements are reportedly too low for a level that is sufficient for tertiary studies. For example, the IELTS website states that students with a score of 6.5 out of a highest 9 still need to improve their English ability before they are fully able to undertake “linguistically demanding academic courses”, and are at a level that is perhaps acceptable for “less linguistically demanding academic courses”. Phoebe Huang, president of the Melbourne University Taiwanese Students’ Association, believes that it will be difficult to resolve the issue of insufficient English ability

amongst international students. “[The University] should have high standard [sic] for international students when enrolling in uni,” she says. Huang recounted an instance where a friend, during class, posed a question in Chinese to his lecturer, to which the lecturer answered in Chinese as well. “I feel like if you can’t even ask your questions in English you’ll experience difficulties,” said Huang. The language barriers could also prevent international students from adapting to the foreign environment. “It’s virtually impossible to become friends with local students because my English isn’t very good,” said Fiona, another Chinese international student who wishes to be anonymous. Currently, the University’s Academic Skills hub has programs in place to support students with their English language and study skills. They offer workshops that focus on vocabulary building, pronunciation, and grammar, as well as Academic Writing drop-in sessions with a Peer Leader, which can all be booked through the Student Advising System. “We aim to work with other UMSU departments to make the university aware of the impact this is having on international students,” said Larsen. “We aim to facilitate platforms and forums through our range of events for international students, where they can have the ability to get study friends and conversation partners helping those struggling with their English skills.” The insufficient language support for international students is also found in other Australian universities. In November last year, the ABC interviewed several university academics who expressed concerns on some international students’ poor academic performances due to their limited English competence. Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrew also wrote a letter to the National Tertiary Education Union calling for a review of international students’ university entry requirement, according to an exclusive report by The Age in January. In response to Farrago’s request for comment from the University on the ABC report, a University spokesperson said, “The University of Melbourne is proud of the diversity of its student body and believes this creates an outstanding learning environment for future global citizens...our international students come from more [than] 130 countries.” ART BY YUSHI WU /

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Content Warning: mentions of suicide and mental illness

MAD ABOUT INEQUALITY MADELEINE JOHNSON SPEAKS TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

n 2018, there were nearly 20,000 international students, or 40 per cent of all students, at the University of Melbourne. In graduate programs, that percentage is higher and in some graduate courses, international students form the majority. These students’ fees are a significant part of the University’s total revenue. But are international students getting fair and equal access to education in Australia? I spoke to four international students, all current graduate students at the University of Melbourne, one of whom had also completed her undergraduate at the University. Three were Chinese international students, and one was Indian. Each student I spoke to had a different focus on the key issues facing international students, but the six main themes were: communication skills, cultural differences, racism towards international students, finding employment, social isolation and inadequate support provided by the University. Many of the difficulties mentioned were not raised with the expectation of a solution on the part of the University or other student organisations. They are shared below with the hope that international students will see their own experiences reflected, and give local students an insight into their experiences. A significant proportion of international students at the University of Melbourne are not native English speakers. One student told me, “for many, English is not their first language, which makes it extremely hard to adjust in the first few months.” Another said they initially were unsure of how to respond to common phrases that Australians used as greetings, suggesting the communication difficulties they face are not about language skills, but about the cultural knowledge required to conform to social etiquette. This might impact their ability to communicate and voice their opinions in tutorials. A student told me that one of the worst parts of her university experience was frequently having a really good idea to contribute in class, but faces difficulty expressing herself in English, hence choosing to stay silent instead. Another student mentioned how it was the practical difficulties of having to find private accommodation and provide food for themselves that she struggled with. Whilst the University is currently piloting a guaranteed student housing programs, private rooms start at around $400 per week, which can be rather costly for some. Another student raised the different discussion

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styles and academic writing conventions as an issue, saying they failed essays in their first semester until a lecturer met with her to teach her the University’s academic writing style. While Stop 1 provides some English language classes for international students, the students I interviewed did not mention involvement in these classes. Social isolation can also cause serious consequences amongst international students, with one student informing me: “Most international students come to Australia with the least amount of maturity and direction. Most of them leave their homes behind out of necessity or family pressure to create a better life for themselves, without knowing how to achieve any of those things. I have personally ended up talking three of my friends out suicide and urge many others to seek professional help when they can’t handle the stress.” Two of the students I spoke to emphasised how social isolation can be a huge struggle faced by international students and possibly impact their wellbeing. Another student described how she had struggled to make friends in her masters program, which had relatively few Chinese internationals. She felt that local students already had established friendship groups. Furthermore, many of her classmates were older and had families, which made it harder to form meaningful connections with. As a result of this, she had very few opportunities to practise communicating in English during her first semester in Melbourne. Instead, she told me she turned to wandering around the CBD and going into shops to talk to the salespeople as a way to practise. The graduate students I spoke to emphasized social isolation to a greater extent than the student I spoke to who had completed an undergraduate degree in Melbourne. One student mentioned: “Students [tend to] stick to cultural groups which makes it really difficult to get a more diverse and multicultural experience [at] the University. Joining clubs and societies and volunteering outside the University was the only way to interact with people from other cultures.” Another student raised the issue of mental health amongst international students: “There are thousands of international students who slip under the radar by not being able to integrate into the campus or local community, missing classes, facing language and cultural barriers, struggling to survive in a

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new place, feeling alone and battling depression alone all because they come from cultures [who] believe that to fail is weak and they should deal with their problems themselves.” A student also identified that her status as a Chinese international student had affected her studies. “It’s [particularly] obvious in Arts where most of my classmates are white local students. You need to be very progressive [for your] classmates [to be] willing to speak and work with you.” Many international students also experience racism, with one student, who had completed her undergraduate degree here, noting: “Universities are always much more diverse than high school, and first-year experience is so essential in that it not only affects students’ mental health but also the development of their academic competence in the upcoming two years. When joining the universities, international students themselves already expect a diverse environment, but I have seen lots of local students [who did] not [expect a diverse environment].” A postgraduate student told me she did not feel she had experienced racism in class, potentially because her classmates were older and more mature. However, she had experienced being verbally harassed in Melbourne. The students I spoke to also raised employment as an issue facing international students because most jobs require experience, which many of them lack. One student mentioned how her friends were getting paid $11 an hour to work at the Chinese restaurant in Union House. One student mentioned, “employability is strongly tied with communication skills. Lots of international students struggle with finding a suitable job, especially at the beginning of their careers. Some of them resort to lower-paying jobs and even illegal ones, risking their student visas.” One student suggested utilizing Stop 1, as they carry out resume-checking services and can help students find employment. She also suggested going to networking and social events to help overcome these difficulties. How is the University doing to address these issues and provide support for international students? Every student I interviewed pointed out multiple ways the University and other student organisations could improve their support of international students. Accessing student services and activities provided by organisations like the University of Melbourne Student Union and the Graduate Student Association can

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be difficult for Chinese students as they are mostly advertised on Facebook. Although many Chinese students do have Facebook accounts, they don’t think to check them very frequently because they don’t have many friends who use the platform, resulting in a potentially self-perpetuating cycle. This suggests that student groups and organisations need to consider using other forms of communication channels that would allow them to better reach certain groups of international students, such as WeChat. “[The University] tries to establish an effective supporting system for international students, but it is yet on the ground. It underestimates the complexity of international student groups,” one student said. Another student said, “there needs to be better preparation and guidance provided to international students before and after they arrive in Melbourne … [The University should] let international students know that it is ok to seek help and make them aware of all the free services the university provides for their welfare beyond how it is currently done. Weekly well-being check ups for emergency cases and monthly well-being check-ups for every international student should be encouraged.” Ultimately, social isolation and difficulty finding employment, caused by a complex variety of factors such as cultural differences and a range of communication barriers, are leading to serious welfare and mental health issues amongst the growing population of international students at the University of Melbourne. There is still a lot to be done in terms of addressing social isolation, orienting international students to a culturally different academic environment, and ensuring they are not subjected to discrimination in their studies. The University should consider these problems that international students face and strategies to tackle them. They also need to take into account the different needs and problems facing different groups of international students. As one student said: “I wish every international student from every university in Victoria can band together and collaborate into raising the issue of international students’ welfare in Australia.” I welcome feedback, criticism and comments, particularly from anyone affected by an issue discussed in these columns, and can be reached at madeleinej@student.unimelb.edu.au.

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Content Warning: workplace verbal abuse and altercations, including gender and religious discrimination

BITTER BEANS MEGAN HANRAHAN AND AILISH HALLINAN INVESTIGATE HOW GOOD THE COFFEE ON CAMPUS IS FOR YOUR CONSCIENCE AND YOUR TASTEBUDS

he last few years have seen many cafés and restaurants ousted for non-compliance with correct pay. Although these businesses suffer in the form of damage to their curated image and brand, workers often bear the brunt of an underpaid and overworked existence—workers who are usually students themselves. Caffeine is an undeniable lifeline for a large number of students, and most are generally conscious of the environmental impact their daily brew can have. There is, however, another aspect to the ethical consumption of our morning coffee—the wage of the barista serving it to you. According to a 2012 survey by the National Union of Students, over 66 per cent of students reported being concerned about their finances, and this has not changed over the last seven years. “Many young workers are fearful of speaking out, let alone demanding their rights because of the high cost of living and the need to support themselves,” said the Univeristy of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) welfare department. “Students are vulnerable to getting underpaid because they’re not well-versed with the law and do not know their rights. With international students, the fear of an inquiry and them being on a visa also comes into play.” This concern among students about their financial wellbeing makes them more at risk of being exploited in the workplace. While the cost of living has risen steeply over several decades, wages have been slow to catch up. Many students choose any work available in order to cover costs, regardless of compliance with award pay and benefits. Alex*, a member of staff at Baretto Espresso Bar, is one such student. Alex* currently works part-time at Baretto and claims to be paid off the books in cash. Although their alleged rate of pay is 45 cents an hour more than the award requirement, they claim that they are not receiving the paid leave or superannuation they are entitled to. “Honestly, I was pretty desperate for a job and wanted some money,” they said.

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Baretto owner/manager Sab Randazzo denies that any of his staff are being paid illegally or not receiving their award entitlements. “It would’ve happened in the past but times are changing,” he admitted. “Everything’s recorded. It’s all on the books [now]”. Mr Randazzo also insists that he has “a lot of systems in place” to ensure all his staff are treated and paid correctly. Additionally, despite rent increasing, Newstart and Youth Allowance have barely changed over the last 20 years. For international students it can be even worse, and, without the safety net of Centrelink and a capped working limit, they can often accept jobs that pay off the books. ‘Wage Theft in Australia’, authored by senior law lecturers from the University of New South Wales, found that one third of international students were paid $12 or less, which is approximately half the casual minimum wage. Upon investigation, Farrago found that many cafés on the Parkville campus do in fact pay the correct award rates to their staff. However, it appears that the University of Melbourne itself has no obligation to monitor the pay or welfare of any of the café workers on campus. “Just like a shopping centre is liable for incidents in its common areas, so is the University. What happens within the confines of an establishment is the responsibility of the store-owner … and not the party that leases out the space,” UMSU Welfare explained. “Honestly, I do not think every café [has] the same payment standard on campus,” former Carte manager Bobby Chen said. “Even though we are happy to do the right thing, it makes it a little bit hard because [with] the same price, some [other cafés] become more profitable”. Although Carte may be paying its staff award wages, a former staff member alleges that the café wasn’t giving its staff correct breaks. According to the Hospitality Industry General Award, staff who work for nine hours or longer are entitled to at least one 10 minute paid rest break and one 30 minute unpaid meal break. In their year and a half working at Carte, Jordan*

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claims to never have received their paid rest break when they worked nine or more hours. In spite of this, Jordan* still looks back on their employment with the café fondly. A number of other employees also expressed similar sentiments about working at Carte. One issue that continuously arose during Farrago’s investigation was that both students and cafés, while happy to discuss their working environment, often would refuse to comment about pay. When Farrago reached out to a number of staff from Castro’s Kiosk, no one wished to discuss their rate of pay. However, a Castro’s manager insists that their staff are receiving award wages and that the cafe is “100 per cent transparent” about its pay rates when hiring new staff. Mikey, manager of Parkville’s House of Cards, highlighted this issue. “House of Cards pays award rates and super. It’s the right thing to do. If anyone doesn’t feel comfortable or omits this question, then I think that’s an answer in and of itself.” However, it appears not all workers on campus are being paid award rates. Adam* was employed at Professors Walk Café from March 2015 to December 2015. “I clearly remember my starting salary was $16.67 per hour, and I was not notified about this before I started. To be honest I was very excited, as this was my first job so I didn’t care much.” Staff at Professors Walk are actively discouraged from discussing their pay. Sam* told Farrago that “[the manager] threatened to fire whoever had talked about pay behind [their] back”. Adam* further explained that one worker, upon turning 21, asked for a pay rise, and was “shut down right there, in front of everyone”. The manager allegedly said that it was “very disrespectful of him to ask about his pay rates whilst he was at work”, and that this was the reason many staff were reluctant to ask for the rate they were entitled to. Even when Adam* was given higher responsibilities as Team Leader, he did not receive a raise to match his duties, and even did some tasks, such as cleaning and closing up the café for free. Sam* also alleges that Professors Walk underpaid them during their employment in the latter half of 2018. Payslips they received from the café showed their hourly rate had discrepancies with the current award. Darcy*, a former barista, said that his manager would severely cut shifts as “a warning”, after mistakes had been made, or if staff

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asked for a pay increase. He further explained how firing on the spot was not uncommon, for small things such as answering questions in the wrong way, dropping sandwiches, and in one instance for cutting an orange incorrectly. Sam* described how there was an atmosphere of fear in the workplace which created anxiety amongst staff. “Any time you spoke to [them] it was like ‘is this going to put my job on the line? I would describe the atmosphere … as socially tense. There was a real feeling … that [the owner] could come in and you would get punished.” All former employees of Professors Walk requested anonymity when speaking with Farrago, not only due to payment discrepancies, but also due to emotionally distressing workplace issues. Sam*, who at the time had not yet come out as non-binary, left work in emotional distress after the manager introduced gendered aprons. “It actually led me to have a panic attack that day and I had to leave the café just to hyperventilate and cry on South Lawn,” they said. In his three years at Professors Walk, Darcy* remembers a number of physical encounters he had with one of the café’s owners. “There were definitely times where [they] would push me away forcefully,” he said. However, Darcy* insists that “they were better to me than others”. Both Adam* and Darcy* also claim one of the café’s owners would frequently show up to work intoxicated. Throughout Darcy’s* first two years of employment at Professors Walk, one of the owners “was stumbling in [to the café] and you could smell the alcohol on [their] breath,” he alleged. Adam*, who is Muslim, describes one particular incident when leftover food was being given out to staff members at the end of their shift. The owner offered him a ham and brie baguette, which he declined. “[They] kept on questioning me why I wouldn’t take it. And I explained how it was forbidden in my religion. After hearing my answer, [they] sort of scoffed, and said that my reasoning didn’t make sense to [them].” UMSU Welfare actively encourages students to approach UMSU Legal for help. However when Adam* approached UMSU Legal to seek compensation for underpayment, he was told they had too many cases. After he went to Fair Work to get specific details of what he was owed, he re-contacted UMSU Legal but received no response. Management from Professors Walk Café declined to

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comment on these allegations. Despite these negative experiences, many cafés are doing the right thing, and foster a supportive work environment. Employees from both House of Cards and Standing Room reported feeling comfortable and valued in their workplace. In response to Farrago’s request for comment on the issue, a representative from the Fair Work Ombudsman encouraged students to get in touch, and said, “We prioritise matters involving requests for assistance from young workers as they can be particularly vulnerable in the workplace and reluctant to complain.” Farrago also reached out to the University to comment on this issue, however did not receive a response.

If you’ve experienced unfair treatment at work or believe your workplace rights have been violated, the UMSU Legal Service provides free advice and assistance to all enrolled students of the University of Melbourne. For enquiries about workplace rights and entitlements, call: 0468 720 668. For more information on work rights, visit www.fairwork.gov.au or call the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94 for free advice.

*Individual has asked to remain anonymous. A pseudonym has been used in place of their real name.

TASTE TEST BY ANDIE MOORE Standing Room

Castro’s

Waiting time: 4 minutes Bean blend: “SR Espresso” Tasting notes: Quite full-bodied—definitely a darker tasting coffee which packs a punch. Rather creamy, with a long, distinctive finish. Some people might find it bitter, I quite enjoyed it—I could feel it giving me coffee breath though. Could have used a little more microfoam. Special notes: Only comes in one size. No option for a large. Shaaaaame! Also refused to serve me a coffee at 4:01pm – an attitude which matches the pretentious café décor, not gonna lie. Price: $3.90 Rating: 8 beans

Waiting time: 4 minutes Bean blend: Tasting notes: Giving me caramel vibes? A slight sweetness to the coffee, but doesn’t hold much creaminess or pallet taste. You get the creamy flat white taste at the start, then it sort of dashes off, and it arrives again with a long, semi-bitter finish. A half-compromise between SR and HOC in that sense—milky arrival, long finish. Could use more microfoam. Price: $3.60 Rating: 7 beans

House of Cards

Professor’s Walk

Waiting time: 5 minutes Bean blend: Clark St Coffee Tasting notes: Creamy, creeeeamy boi. Very smooth and velvety, with a strikingly rounded gout, and a milky white chocolate finish. On the mellower side of flat whites, with a subtle sweetness to it (quite distinctive of House of Cards). In my opinion, could use a bit more oomph to it. Perfect amount of microfoam. Special notes: Chucked on a surcharge for using a card—cheeky. Gave me a card to pick where they should spend their charity donations though, which is cute af. Also has a keep cup discount! NICE. Price: Rating: 8 ½ beans

Waiting time: 2 minutes Bean blend: Professor’s Walk Fair Trade Organic Tasting notes: Weak. A little watery, not much of a creamy body, or much of an espresso edge or long finish to give the coffee character. A little too foamy for a flat white. A little disappointing and didn’t feel a huge amount better than a servo flat-white. Special notes: Barista’s cute. Chucked on a surcharge though. Price: $3.80 Rating: 5 beans

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BREAKING: “Monash is so Much Prettier Than Unimelb,” Remarks Mate who went to Monash BY JOEL TSE-YAO LEE

ccording to multiple sources, Monash University is much more beautiful, spacious and welcoming than the University of Melbourne. These sources, primarily made up of your mates who went to Monash, reportedly leave no opportunity to compare the two campuses. “Half the buildings were actually designed by Zaha Hadid. Our bus loop was the inspiration for the architecture in Blade Runner,” said one mate, sporting a Harvard University hoodie. “The wide-open spaces, the trees, it’s really got a campus feel to it, you know? It must feel so cramped and restrictive up there in Parkville. I’ve heard that can be bad for your learning, like psychologically.” “There’s a real emphasis on entering full-time positions, practical knowledge, that kind of thing. I suspect our first few years in the workforce will be much more comfortable than yours,” said another mate, while sneering at a group of jaffYs comparing ATARs. “Also, GYG is better than Zambreros.” Upon bringing up the considerable distance of Monash’s main campus from the CBD, many of said sources apparently became quite defensive. “Look,” said your mate who lives in Upfield. “A two hour commute is nothing. If I had a problem sitting down for four hours a day, why would I even go to university. If it wasn’t for public transport, we wouldn’t have Rosa Parks.”

SATIRE

“I JUST WISH THERE WAS LESS DISCUSSION!” Tutor’s Regret as ‘Name-And-Major’ Icebreaker Goes Too Well BY DENIS CURNOW

moke alarms went off in Arts West on Monday afternoon as fiery banter poured out of a Week 1 Media and Society tutorial. Eyewitnesses report that the intense camaraderie of the class, who just an hour prior had never met each other, was the result of a “master stroke” by their tutor, Dr Jeannie Yass. “I was sensing there were a couple of nerves around, so I had to improvise,” Dr Yass recalled, “I told everyone to – get this – go around the room and say their name and their major.” As she revealed this, gasps and scattered applause could be heard in the crowd around our reporters. “I was bit shy before class, but the icebreaker really brought me out of my shell,” recounted Billy Waters, 19, holding back tears. “Hearing everyone mumble a bit about themselves truly gave me the confidence to speak up and debate the readings.” The students were devastated when class finished, according to Dr Yass. “I practically had to push them out the door! We’re all going to the pub together now, so that we can keep discussing the assessments.”

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OFFICE BEARER REPORTS PRESIDENT/ MOLLY WILLMOTT This semester is in full gear, and we’re speeding through the academic period with an array of events, services, and campaigns! Keep up to date on our UMSU website calendar and all our socials (@umsuunimelb). We’re about a month away from a federal election so I thought I’d take this time to remind you to VOTE! University funding, Centrelink, housing, penalty rates, climate change, and refugee rights are all on the line this election. The voice of students is powerful – if you want this country to listen to young people, have your say in May and help create a Future Worth Fighting For!

GENERAL SECRETARY/ REECE MOIR The Neverending Story was released in 1984! And, just like the title, the work is never ending! The start of semester has had me bewitched! Students’ Council (our board of directors, basically) meets every two weeks in semester to discuss the strategic direction of our Union. This is open to all students to attend (y’all just can’t vote, unfortunately). Notice of meetings go up on the website, and there is a form to sign up to the mailing list—exciting! Committees and collectives are another body you can get involved in, so why not join us (and have fun)!

ACTIVITIES/ LIAM O’BRIEN AND OLIVIA PANJKOV Hey! The Activities department has been in full swing to start off 2019. Heading into the second half of semester 1, keep an eye out for our famous trivia events and the rest of our Tuesday Bands, Bevs and BBQ events. We still have some massive acts to keep an eye out for including RVG who we’ll be supported by Club Med on 6th of May and the massive Sampa The Great on April 29th, who’ll be sure to pack out North Court. We look forward to hanging out with you at the rest of our events.

BURNLEY/ JAMES BARCLAY No OB report submitted.

CLUBS AND SOCIETIES/ JORDAN TOCHNER AND CHRIS MELENHORST CLUBS! Clubs have been crazy over the last few weeks. We had a successful appearance at Southbank’s carnival with a good club showing. Our big publication, the Clubs Guide has finally been printed and looks great, and we are well on the way finalizing stalls for o-week. Our fingers are crossed that we get good weather and well-behaved clubs. Clubs have also received their lockers, the allocation of which was the death of one Jordan Tochner. The attendance scanner app is coming along well with regular bug tests, and of course, lots of emails have been answered.

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CREATIVE ARTS/ ELLIE HAMILL AND LUCY HOLZ It’s been a thrilling start to the year, Summerfest was a blast for Creative Arts! From Arty Party to scrunchie making and face painting, we have been busy making and supporting art at both Parkville and Southbank campuses. We have also been getting ready for Mudfest with a Grants Workshop and getting our production team on board. Mudfest Artist Expressions of Interest close on at 9am May 13th! If you have any sprouting ideas (sculpture, performance art, stop motion film, anything that comes under the art umbrella) that you want to see realised in a large-scale festival, you should apply!

DISABILITIES/ LUCY BIRCH Hello again. We hope the beginning of uni hasn’t exhausted you yet In any case, the disabilities department will have you covered, in whatever capacity. We’re beginning the semester proper with our inaugural disability collectives, as well as mediated, anxiety support groups, Special Consideration workshops. This latter will cover the potential tangles and nuances of the university SEDs application process, as well as the landscape of disability at uni. Spaces are limited, so if interested please be sure to attend. Finally, we will have guided art therapy sessions and mindfulness workshops, whether you might need a quiet place, a space to convene, relax or otherwise detune.

EDUCATION ACADEMIC/ ELIZABETH TEMBO AND DOMINIC ROQUE ILAGAN We protec, We atac, we ed-ac! Your Education Academic Team has grown by 100% since the last Farrago edition: Elizabeth has a new co-Office Bearer, Dominic! SO get keen because this means EdAc will now have the capacity for more focussed campaigns! Our goal this year is tackle inequity, accessibility, employability and general student satisfaction. Elizabeth will be lobbying for more study spaces and in-semester 24Hr library access, equity scholarships and green investment. And Dominic will be combatting high-stake assessments, increased student support from Counselling and Psychological Services. We’ll also be lobbying for specialised support from Stop 1!

EDUCATION PUBLIC/ CHARLI FOUHY AND CAMERON DOIG Wow! It’s been a month (and a bit) of 2019 and EdPub has been steam rolling through our goals. Definitely most importantly, UMSU Ed’s hard work has paid off and the On Track Passes have finally arrived! If you’re a student facing financial strain, EdPub has your back with public transport, offering limited 7 and 30 day free public transport passes to students facing hardship, to apply go to legal’s website: bit.ly/umsulegal. As always, our Instagram content remains amazing on @umsueducation and our facebook page UMSU Education has been blowing up! Don’t be the last on the bandwagon, peace activists.

ENVIRONMENT/ WILL ROSS

Enviro is back! And so are your favourite things about us. With the semester starting and the year going ahead, we have a lot in the pipeworks. First off, Rad Ed Week will be coming back in Week 7 of Semester 1, looking closely at topics like climate action, student radicalism, and the intersection of dumpster diving and urban wildlife. Keep an eye out for more announcements! Not only this, but our popular Play With Your Food events will be returning on a fortnightly basis this semester. With an exciting lineup of guest speakers, the Food Co-op opening its doors to all manner of cuisine and play every second Wednesday. Want to get involved? Enviro Collective meetings Tuesdays 1pm-2pm, in Graham Cornish A (Lvl 2, Union House). Stick around until 3pm for our Radical Reading Group.

INDIGENOUS/ JORDAN AND MARLEY HOLLOWAY-CLARKE

Hope everyone has had a good start to their classes and getting back into the swing of things. It was great to see everyone at the First Murrup Barak lunch and at our first event. It was great to see the celebrations for International Women&#39;s Day, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and Close the Gap Day over the last month. Shout out to all the strong Blak women, non-binary and queer folx in our wonderful community. Follow us on social media to stay updated Facebook - /umsuindigenous Instagram - @umsuindigenous 23

CAMPUS

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PEOPLE OF COLOUR/ FARAH KHAIRAT AND MARK YIN S’up friends and welcome to a new semester! We’re stoked to have met so many of you during SummerFest, and hope 2019 is bangin’ so far. Currently, we’re getting things started for our annual mag, Myriad, so we’re looking for a team of editors, designers and subeditors—hit us up to get involved! We’re also kicking off some Anti-Racism workshops; come along if you’re down to get mad woke with us. All our regulars—collectives, film screenings and reading groups— are still running, which is totally tubular. As always, go to our Facebook, Instagram or website for the full 411!

QUEER/ ANDIE MOORE

SOUTHBANK/ LILY EKINS

Hello again! It’s your fellow gays. We hope your semester’s been good to you! We’ve been BUSY. We’ve been working hard to ensure queer students get accessible more gender-neutral bathrooms on campus (especially in the new student precinct), and rolls and ID cards that respect trans students. We’re also throwing events everywhere. G&Ts with the LGBTs is happening at the Ida every even Thursday, 5pm, and it’s unmissable. Come to Queer Political Action Collective and join discussion about important political issues affecting our community! Grab free sushi and pizza with us every Wednesday, 1pm, in the Queer Space. If you’re at Southbank, POC, trans, asexual or aromantic, join a collective for food and friends. GET INVOLVED DARLINGS! No OB report submitted.

WELFARE/ ASHWIN CHHAPERIA AND NATASHA GUGLIELMINO Hello! Hope you had a fun-filled and enjoyable SummerFest and are settling into your classes. If you have early morning classes or are trying to make ends meet, Welfare has got Breakfast covered. Come down to the Ida Bar on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, or North Court on Thursday, from 8:3010:30am every week. We also got Yoga & Meditation on Tuesdays and Thursdays, respectively. For more info, visit https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/support/welfare/ Hope you enjoy your classes and Happy Easter!

WOMEN’S/ ARIA SUNGA AND HANNAH BUCHAN Thank you to everyone who has attended all of our events so far—Carnival Day, Women’s Mocktails and our Moonlight Cinema. Especially thank you for marching with us during the International Women’s Day March. In continuing the Safety on Campus campaign, we will be having our first meeting with the university’s taskforce at the end of March, and we will continue to work closely on this issue with the university. The Women’s Department has also been involved in college o-weeks, to help foster a closer relationship between colleges and UMSU. We’ll soon be starting to work on Judy’s Punch, so keep an eye out for when Judy’s Punch collectives are announced!!!

ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY SOMETHING BY ALEX SOMETHING MORTENSEN / 25/

Warning: Content Warning: Content death, grief, violence, Islamophobia

NONFICTION

MY FATHER WAS AT A MOSQUE TODAY BY GÜLSÜM GÜNGÖR He is there every Friday for the Jumah congregational prayers. He prayed and listened to the Friday sermons, in a place that is still, serene and perhaps cosy. In a place where his heart is at ease. In a place where he reconnects with God. When I got home tonight, I got to see my father. However, a little girl in Christchurch didn’t get to see hers. Because someone decided that she shouldn’t. The 49 deceased from the Christchurch Mosque shooting today were praying and reflecting in a similar space. Their hearts at ease. Their troubles gone. They gather. They exchange friendly banter. They pray. They listen to the Imam’s speech. Then in the midst of all of this they are disturbed. They’re defenceless. Praying to God they can return home safe and sound to their families tonight. This did not matter to the cold-blooded white-supremacist who has no regard for human life. He meticulously plans, marches into the mosque and destroys lives. He callously, cowardly and shamelessly murders. He murders the very immigrants who were attempting to escape violence back in their home country. The very violence they were subjected to inside their safe space. Their peaceful haven. Their home. Their mosque. I remember when the Bourke St attack occurred last year November, Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged the Muslim community to take ‘proactive’ measures against the radicalisation of Muslims. He said: “If you’re an imam or a leader in one of those communities, you need to know who those people are in your community that might be doing that. They are the infiltrators.” The Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, said: “Let’s be real, we need people to do more and certainly that’s what we would expect from the Islamic community.” There are three problems with these statements: Firstly, the Islamic communities in Australia are very clear with their stance in regard to radicalisation and they consistently issue statements against attacks that are carried out in the name of Islam. Secondly, the Islamic communities should not be held responsible for the acts of a murderer who claims to represent Islamic tenets and practices. Why should I, as a Muslim Australian, apologise for the

actions of a complete stranger who murders others indiscriminately? I fail to understand why I am asked to prove my sense of humanity every time a stranger commits an act of terror? Thirdly, following this attack in Christchurch, Morrison did not call on the average white bloke to be ‘proactive’ against right-wing extremism. He did not state that the average white community ‘need[s] to know who’ the radicalised white-supremacists in their community are. Dutton did not call on the average, nonextremist white communities to ‘do more’. However, this is reasonable considering that the average white bloke shouldn’t be held accountable for the crime committed by the Christchurch Mosque terrorist. Right? Remembering the terrorist attack in a place of worship, I, too, am broken. Angry. Frustrated. Confused. The next time my father goes to the mosque, I, too, will be worried. I, too, will pray that he’ll be there when I get home. Despite all the negative and intolerant sentiments all around the globe, let’s do what we do best as humans and share messages of love, peace and tolerance. Let’s pray for the victims and remain strong and patient. In spite of all, let’s stand together as Australians, in solidarity regardless of religion, ethnicity and political views. “Oh you who have believed, seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with the patient.” (Qur-an / AlBaqarah, 2:153) When you sleep in your cosy bed tonight, I want you to remember that there’s a little girl, living and breathing, just like me, just like you. She’ll be waiting for her father tonight. Just like I do on Friday nights. She’ll wait and wait and wait. She won’t understand why her father has not returned, why her mother’s crying in the next room. This daughter of New Zealand won’t see her father tonight or any other night. My father was at a mosque today. As he is every Friday for the Jumah congregational prayers. He prayed and listened to the Friday sermons. In a place that is still, serene and perhaps cosy. In a place where his heart is at ease. In a place where he reconnects with God.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE ZHANG /

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MAKING TOMORROW KAIA COSTANZA-VAN DER BELT ON FRAMEWORKS FOR SUSTAINABLE HOPE

‘B

usiness as usual’ is hurtling us towards a desolate change, or emerging from the ashes of a scarred world. future. If we continue this way, climate change Either way, having a shared vision is important. It gives us will intensify, sea levels will rise and humanity will face an something to talk and dream about. When we know where existential catastrophe. We know this, but what would it we want to go, the policies that will get us there feel like look like if we started doing better? Blind optimism can common sense. When we collectively commit to a world distract from the truth, but frameworks of hope can help with healthy wildlife, social justice and renewable energy, us find common goals and inspiration for the future. I then sanctuaries, laws, and clean power grids can fall would like to present two such frameworks: solarpunk clearly into that established framework. and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are particularly useful for working with Solarpunk is a literary movement that imagines a governments. They can identify what we want, instead of desirable future, in contrast to bleak every advocacy group coming up with cyberpunk dystopias. Technology aids new values and demands. If governments an equitable humanity, living in harmony sign on to the SDGs, we can point out how values individuality. with nature. In solarpunk, the high the SDGs will be affected by government Corporate propaganda standard of living afforded by technology proposals. Still, they aren’t enough. Their applies to everyone. Its aesthetic includes breadth makes them widely applicable, but has convinced us that tall buildings draped in foliage, lightalso vague and noncommittal. We need individual action starts and soaked balconies, greenhouses and solarpunk for its concrete, communityends with buying better bicycles. Building a solarpunk society oriented vision. Clean energy for those products, or recycling requires collective action, not just who can pay and green roofs for the one government mandates. Solarpunk is a per cent won’t change anything except rich those already movement that emerged from popular people’s light bulbs. Solarpunk demands purchased.” culture. It has a strong vision but no clear egalitarian access to green, well-designed goals. Solarpunk is bottom-up; from the people. infrastructure. We need it because we need punk. The SDGs are, according to the United Nations Punk culture values individuality. Corporate Development Program, “a universal call to action to end propaganda has convinced us that individual action starts poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people and ends with buying better products, or recycling those enjoy peace and prosperity”. They are a UN initiative, already purchased. This is preposterous. Individual action agreed to by governments and organisations. (It shows: doesn’t have to be about stuff. We must hold the real goal eight includes economic growth—likely included for perpetrators—industrial polluters and their enablers— appeasement rather than sustainability). The 17 goals accountable (big activism), but we should also create state broad visions, including no poverty, gender equality, supportive communities for ourselves (small activism). affordable clean energy and life on land and below water. Punk culture values being a creator. That means building Solarpunk and the SDGs are two visions of the same pieces of the world we want, in order to lead by example thing: an egalitarian, just society and thriving ecosystems. and fill the holes left by poor leadership. The SDGs say nothing about declaring marine sanctuaries, Hope without action is feeble. We must fight like it’s passing laws which promote LGBTQ+ rights or switching the apocalypse, and build a world that might avert the cities to renewable energy, yet these things connect worst scenario, or rise from it. Solarpunk literature can be directly to the SDGs. A marine sanctuary, for example, found online and in fiction, and there are guides for getting promotes goal 14 (life below water). Solarpunk imagines started with the SDGs in universities. Students around what would happen if these abstract goals became part of the world are demanding that their institutions commit to the world; how we will live if the SDGs are implemented. working towards these goals. We can’t know the future with This future might involve avoiding the worst of climate certainty, but we can shape it into a place we want to live in.

“Punk culture

/ ART BY TIFFANY WIDJAJA

Content Warning: Content Warning: racism, colonialism, violence

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DIASPORA DILEMMAS VEERA RAMAYAH ON HISTORICAL AMNESIA

t is the year 1600 and India is dressed in the colours of the Mughal Empire. One of the world’s richest countries, it has a 23% share of the world economy. India opens her arms to the East India Company and over 200 years, royal colours of maroon and gold are forcibly replaced by white, blue and red.By the time the Company leaves in 1947, India has been turned into a poster child for third world poverty. It is the year 1919 and Sikhs in the city of Amritsar celebrate Vaisakhi at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden. Without so much as a single warning shot, Colonel Reginald Dyer orders troops to open fire on a crowd of innocent, unarmed Indians. He later boasts that not one piece of their 1600 rounds of ammunition was “wasted”. Rudyard Kipling calls Dyer “the man who saved India”. 1200 people die in the April sun. It is the year 1943 and India is starving. Sir Winston Churchill deliberately redirects grain needed in the midst of a famine for the reserves of troops on the frontlines in WW2. During a cabinet meeting he tells Amery, the Secretary State for India, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine is their own fault for breeding like rabbits.” Churchill is confronted by his own men stationed in India, with concern over the rising death tolls. He writes in the margin of the memorandum, “if the famine is such an issue then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?” 10 million die. It is now the year 1947. On August 11th, cries of “Pakistan Zindabad” are carried on clouds of green and white. On August 15th, shouts of “Jai Hind” are carried on clouds of green, white and orange. In the months that follow, trains of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are carried on tracks marred with green, white, orange and deep scarlet. 2 million will perish. If reading the above unsettled you slightly, its just mere proof of the existence; and comfort of complacency. Reading the narratives of indigenous peoples from all around the world is nothing short of eye opening, but affects all the senses, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth. It’s funny what happens when you remove the thick layer of sugar that coats our histories. In this age, everything seems to be under scrutiny -- the media, authenticity and verification of reporting

-- it seems puzzling that there are still some of us who ignore the fact that our history is one-sided. Our textbooks reduce what is a sphere of vast knowledge and experiences to a rudimentary circle, drawn with as much care as the Radcliffe line. Historical amnesia is a serious issue and is one that tends to be overlooked in the pursuit of comfort. We have been operating in a colander; one that allows authentic experiences and indigenous history to fall through the sieve, yet places a clear emphasis on the ability to preserve, revere and martyrise apologists, romanticists and leaders on the definitive wrong side of history. A huge issue exists in the reality that so many PoC learn the authentic history of our countries of origin through an isolating and uncomfortable journey into revisionist history. It’s a journey we often embark on our own, in contradiction to academic narratives we have been presented for most of our lives. To have consumed material that has glamourized and presented a false view of our history for so long, and then to suddenly unlearn so much of what we professed to know about our histories is a big mouthful to swallow, and one that doesn’t go down smoothly. It often puts us in the awkward position of having to correct mainstream historical narratives in a classroom situation, leaving an invisible label of an ‘angry brown person’ floating above our heads. Historical amnesia places us in direct opposition with almost the entire faculty of History, especially as it currently stands. The current social climate seems to project the ideas of “PC Culture” having infiltrated too many facets of society and that it is a scourge that needs to be limited. This has resulted in the “burden of proof” to fall solely on the shoulders of PoC, to argue for and make a case for reading against the grain. While I am not here (unfortunately) to convince you of the horrors of the Empire, I do believe that all of us should have the ability to decide for ourselves what side of history we align with. Making a choice without having all the information available is not only impossible, but forces a generation of ‘independent’ young adults to be shepherded into a particular narrative. I’m not sure about you, but being a sheep isn’t something I want added to my resume. ART BY TIFFANY WIDJAJA /

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Content Warning: homophobia, heterosexism, pornographic content, sexism and misogyny, slurs, transphobia, transmisogyny

MEDITERRANEAN HOMOSEXUALITY WILL JOHNS ON THE FEAR OF FEMININITY

wonder what it’d be like if Grindr had existed in the Roman Empire. Nude torsos, an appetite for gay sex and toxic masculinity—the Romans certainly weren’t that different (well, except for 4G and smartphones). In fact, if we compared the Roman Grindr to today’s, we’d find a surprising number of similarities, including users’ fear of “fems”. Hadrian (76 CE – 138 CE) was an odd Roman emperor. Unlike his predecessors, he chose defence over conquest, granted certain autonomy to nations under his rule and spent little time in Rome, preferring to venture beyond his walls rather than rely on informers’ reports. There was, though, one additional factor which set Hadrian apart: his open relationship with the handsome Greek youth Antinous. Homosexual activity was by no means a rarity in Hadrian’s time. Elite men could have anal sex with slaves—so long as they were the top. Rome’s quest to dominate the world was echoed in the bedroom, where submitting to another man was not only emasculating, but unpatriotic. “The passive partners who … endure the disease of effemination,” wrote Roman philosopher Philo, “let both body and soul run to waste.” Hadrian’s relationship with Antinous, however, defied those rules. The two were free-born and so, when they had sex, it wasn’t along the master/slave paradigm. Hadrian was instead openly affectionate towards his lover. After Antinous’ mysterious death on a cruise along the Nile, Hadrian had him deified, founded a cult to worship him and named a city, Antinopolis, in his honour. It’s hard, therefore, to see Hadrian as the oppressive top Rome would demand he be. Perhaps this is why (in part) he was so unpopular with the Senate; his sexuality zig-zagged their narrowly drawn lines of masculinity. Two thousand years later, and the perceived power dynamics of anal sex—where the top is dominant and the bottom submissive—still exist. This phenomenon even has a name: ‘Mediterranean homosexuality’. Mediterranean homosexuality conceives the bottom as the quintessentially effeminate gay, while the top is not considered homosexual at all. This is because the penetrator assumes the violent, masculine trappings of the heterosexual macho. They can consequently deny 30

/ ART BY CHARANJA THAVENDRAN

any same-sex attraction, even after engaging in anal sex, while the submissive bottom is always presumed to be homosexual. This means that if you bottom, your partner can turn around and say “no homo”—but you’re stuck with a label. Hardly seems fair, does it? Mediterranean homosexuality is misleading as a name: the myopic binaries which privilege certain types of masculinity are common, from the Strait of Gibraltar to Australia. Anyone who’s used Grindr in Melbourne knows it’s polluted with terms like ‘masc4masc’ and ‘straight-acting’. Like the popularity of ‘straight guys’ on PornHub, these expressions suggest a fetishisation of heterosexuality; a lunging for straightness with homoerotic fingers. Our obsession with a patriarchal form of manliness has ramifications for anyone who does not fit the alpha-male-as-top archetype. Within Mediterranean homosexuality’s hierarchy of masculinities, there is no space for any gradation of queer identities. Where do those who engage in both sexual roles, or abstain from non-penetrative sex altogether, fit? What hope is there for trans men who want to bottom without feeling emasculated? And what about bisexual and pansexuals, or those experimenting? Being a cis gay man, I can’t answer firsthand how Mediterranean homosexuality oppresses the large diversity of queer genders and sexualities. Nevertheless, we have to ask the above questions: it’s clear that heteronormative structures affect more than just cis gay men, and it’s important to remember that. In the gay clubs of Spain, there was one particular song that would get everyone dancing. This parody of Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys would have club-goers, myself included, sculling our drinks, bouncing out of our chairs, and belting “esa marica es pasiva”. Only recently have I begun thinking about the lyrics. The phrase translates two ways: “that faggot’s a bottom” or “that fairy’s a bottom”. Either way, it denigrates the bottom—the marica pasiva—for their supposed femininity. These sexist slurs aren’t limited to Spain. English gives us “poofter”, “nancy” and “daffy” (from “daffodil”), which similarly deride men perceived to be too feminine.

Content Warning:

NONFICTION

This is the real rotten core of shaming bottoms: since Nothing has changed since Philo wrote that bottoms the Roman Empire, we’ve shamed them not necessarily “endure the disease of effemination”. We still watch for their same-sex attraction, but because they are seen videos that deride bottoms as “whores”, “sluts” and as feminine, and feminine is seen as lesser. “bitches”, whereas tops get to be hypermasculine “military One extreme form of this intersection between jock[s]”. We still rush to the dancefloor to chant songs internalised homophobia and misogyny comes from about “maricas pasivas”. We still use misogynistic insults g0ys.org. “G0y” is a self-identifier for gays repulsed by the like “pussy” and “bitch” to chastise men not deemed rainbow flags and progressive politics of queer liberation. manly enough. According to their website, the zero in “g0y” aims to The day after I lost my virginity, I had an eight-hour return homosexuality to ground-zero. What this means, work shift. I’d just started working at The Athlete’s Foot I’m not sure. Handjobs in Roman baths and fucking and was still coming to terms with touching customers’ slaves, perhaps? feet. I took myself out the back, sat in the storeroom and The website’s banner is telling and screams in cried. I felt irredeemably dirty; corrupt; vulnerable. I could capitals, “N0 BOTTOMS, N0 ANAL, N0 BITCHES, N0 hardly serve customers that day. Every time I spoke, my TRANNYS, N0 MANGINAS”. Later, voice cracked for fear that they were “As with femnenella, judging me. You dirty little faggot. You they announce that they find anal sex to be “dirty, degrading and marica, loca before, filthy poofter. damn un-masculine”. There’s a lot to I’d like to say I no longer worry these feminizing slurs unpack here, but what’s clear is that about emasculation, but it’s a work in are unashamedly homophobia and transphobia in the progress. I remind myself, daily, that gay community go hand in hand with misogynistic. They’re also bottoming should be celebrated. It’s a sexism. threat to the patriarchy, I tell myself, particularly toxic for trans I wish I could claim immunity from with the revolutionary fervour of a men who want to bottom this internalised homophobia. It would politics major. Bottoming opposes the be easy to laugh at these repressed sexist ‘masculine as active/feminine as men in their dark corner of the internet. passive’ dichotomy! But I haven’t been able to undo the While this is true, it’s not really shackles the Romans bound us with. about bottoming, is it? The greater I used to cry after watching porn. Perhaps it was just issue is that so many men, gays included, have a problem residual Catholic guilt squeezing itself through my tear with the feminine. ducts. But now, with the neurotic self-analysis of an Arts So, what can be done? student, I think I can intellectualise why, by way of example: Well, for one, I’ll be watching no more misogynistic porn. Step one: google ‘gay porn’ and click on PornHub. It’ll be But individual solutions aren’t enough. Structural the second result. (The first one’s Gay Male Tube, but it has changes are needed so that people value femininity. too many ads.) Place tougher sanctions on homophobic, transphobic and Step two: don’t overcomplicate things. Just go to this misogynistic behaviour; include queer identities as part of month’s most popular videos; the crowd can’t be wrong. compulsory sex education; increase funding for art that Step three: Choose any video that tickles your fancy. Your represents a wide diversity of sexualities—these are just options for March include “Daddy breeds his femboy princess” some of the changes that could be enacted. and “Straight military jock barebacks his best friend”. Through this, I hope that “you’re so gay” loses its I wish this were a quirky hypothetical: a procedure that bitter sting; that the phrase “femboy princess” falls out I hadn’t repeated day in, day out in lieu of a healthy sex of erotic favour; and that when “marica pasiva” plays, the education. But it’s not—it’s an experience common to so many. dancefloor empties.

without being emasculated.”

ART BY CHARANJA THAVENDRAN /

/ PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIAN WILLIAMS

Content Warning:

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIAN WILLIAMS /

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DOUBLE TAKE KAAVYA JHA GOES TO EUROPE, DARLING!

French doesn’t grant you a Pokémon-style evolution. ou’ve been dreaming of Europe for a while now. Whether it is helpful or harmful to go into exchange The culture, the art, the history. The cobbled with a preconceived set of expectations depends on you pavements squeezed between grand buildings from and how your perceptions will translate into your actions. another era. The locals with their cute accents and The genuinely fun moments can get obscured by ability to pull off funky hats. The fresh bakeries trying to live out the perfect Roman Holiday fantasy. You serving up almond croissants to go with a shot get so caught up in feeling like you aren’t correctly doing of espresso, with not a flat white to be found. the ‘best time of your life’, frustrated by the realities and For many young Australians, Europe—the entire bureaucracy of moving overseas. On the other hand, the continent referred to as if it were a homogenous place same expectations can motivate you to actively explore —is a fantasy, an essential part of a second coming-ofand create your own adventure. age where you transform into a suave and self-confident The whole conversation on the impact of a semester adult. Consequently, it doesn’t come as a surprise that abroad is Europe-centric. Films like Amelie and Call Me student exchange is a highly anticipated part of many people’s degrees. By Your Name, or even watching But perhaps from daydreaming the cast of Gossip Girl pop over to too long, the experience of a semester Paris whenever they feel stressed, has abroad can get crushed under the romanticised Europe to the extent weight of years of expectations. Student that it can feel like the only place as a person, and exchange is often proclaimed as the worth visiting. you’ll return worldly, best six months of someone’s life. You But students are starting to opt are told that travelling will completely for a diverse range of study abroad wiser, and with an change you as a person, and you’ll locations, which can only be a good return worldly, wiser and with an thing. Choosing a destination based Instagram feed to die for. on individual preference rather than a In your mind, everything is already played-out fantasy will likely lead to a laid out and planned in detail. Your best moments of more fulfilling experience. exchange will be exhilarating—weekend trips to Paris At the very least, exposure to any new culture as with your new partners in crime, ticking off items on your young adults can expose us to the different versions bucket list as if they were groceries. of ourselves that we can become, if not automatically And yes, it is true that the highlights of studying transforming us into them. Everyone’s exchange abroad will remain among your fondest memories experiences will be different, but for me, the biggest for decades to come; but boy, there are some tough thing gained was becoming more self-aware of who I am moments too. (wow… “finding myself”). Culture shock, isolation, language barriers, and Having to rely on yourself to get through difficult homesickness are all genuine concerns. Flaws and situations forces you to confront and resolve your weaknesses will not miraculously disappear once you weaknesses, coming out better for it in the end. You must leave Melbourne. make cognitive and behavioural changes to improve as a But that’s not to say that travel doesn’t change you person; simply replanting yourself in a new location, but as a person. As a personal example, I’ve made the very keeping the same habits, won’t do anything. grown-up transition from being a white wine drinker to My biggest advice for people hoping to embark on red. However, the deep, transformative growth that is their own adventure this year? Take care of yourself. promised rarely occurs. Spending a few months garnering The only constant in travelling to far flung corners of the experience points by making small talk with the cashier in world is that you must bring yourself along for the ride.

“Travelling will completely change you Instagram feed to die for.”

/ ART BY RAYMOND WU

Warning: ContentContent Warning: chronic illness

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LIVING WELL WHEN YOU’RE UNWELL HALEY ZILBERBERG ON ACCESSIBILITY AND INCLUSION

elcome to Living Well When You’re Unwell, a column that answers all your questions about navigating uni, life, relationships, and jobs with disability and chronic illness. I hear the term ‘accessibility’ being talked about a lot. I thought accessibility only had to do with wheelchair access and I don’t want to sound stupid asking people what makes something accessible. Can you tell me about it? - Afraid to Sound Dumb You shouldn’t feel dumb for not knowing. Even those who have made careers in accessibility and disability advocacy are constantly learning about accessibility issues they had never heard of before. A good way to think about all the things that might pose barriers to accessibility is to consider your senses. How might someone find a barrier to sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch? You will also want to consider the impact of physical barriers and impacts on emotional or mental health. 20 percent of Australians report living with a disability, and over 90 percent of disabilities are “invisible”, meaning you can’t tell someone is disabled just by looking at them. This could refer to a learning disability, limitation to mobility, mental illness, chronic illness, limitation to mobility, blindness, hearing issues and more. The difficult part of accessibility is understanding the diversity of people’s needs. But having a disability isn’t an inherent set back. People with disabilities experience the most hardship when the world isn’t constructed in a way that can be navigated, which includes physical spaces and the attitudes from others. I’ve put together a list of some common things to think about with accessibility. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start: • Is the space accessible for individuals with mobility devices? • Does this space impact the senses (e.g. lights, fragrance, or noise)? • Could this space/situation be harmful to mental health? • Is there accessible content (e.g. captions and screen readers)? • Can a person with disability navigate this space

easily and with dignity? Have you asked individuals attending if there are any barriers to their access needs? Accessibility is a broad term. There are some great toolkits online that outline some common accessibility features, but accessibility is not one size fits all. •

My friend just told me she is disabled. I don’t know anyone who has openly let me know they’re disabled before. I’m worried I might do or say something wrong. I don’t want to be rude by asking questions, but I want to make sure I’m not being ignorant. How can I be a good friend? - Concerned Pal It sounds like you’re already being a good friend! One of the best ways to know how you can be a good friend to your lovely pal is to ask. Beyond that, there are a few things you can do. You can do some research about her condition to get an understanding of what she might be experiencing. Googling doesn’t eliminate the need to actually communicate with your friend about her needs, but it’s good to try to understand what she is going through. You should understand that there might be some things your friend can’t do. Or things she can do one day, but not the next. Don’t assume! Even if you think you know what to do in a certain situation—or you’re sure your friend can’t come to a certain event—let her decide. With chronic illnesses, sometimes symptoms fluctuate. Don’t make her feel weird about being able to go shopping one day but being too exhausted to leave her house the next. Let your friend know that she’s not alone and you don’t think of her differently just because she has a disability. Be patient, be kind, and don’t make her feel like she’s a burden just because she has limitations.

Have a question on the general topic of disability and chronic illness? Send an email to livingwell@farragomagazine. com to get your question answered. You don’t have to be living with a disability to send a question—any questions you might have about disability and health are welcome. ART BY REANN LIN /

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/ ART BY LUCY WILLIAMS

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SUSHI AND STRAMENOPILES SONJA REPETTI ON PROTISTS

hree and a half years ago, in a first year Genetics and the Evolution of Life lecture, I had an academic epiphany. The lecture itself was not one that you would expect to convert an aspiring speech pathologist into a marine biologist: the lecturer had inherited this section of the course from an academic who retired the previous year and had about as much idea of what was going on as we did. Blocks of lurid yellow text covered blue backgrounds, and the same slide of ‘Snowball Earth’ kept inexplicably popping up with zero explanation. But something shone through the less than stellar delivery that ignited a spark of passion in me. The lecture was on protists, a broad group of life ranging from tiny marine microbes to massive brown kelps. If you take all complicated life (which is not prokaryotic like bacteria), everything that is not a plant, animal or fungus is a protist. It’s a grab bag group of left-over lineages that are not more genetically related to each other than everything else, they’re just less appreciated. While there are some macroscopic protists, seaweeds for example, a vast majority of them can only be seen under a microscope and thus go unobserved and unappreciated by people every day. So, what is so fascinating about these weird organisms? Firstly, they are everywhere: snow, soil, sand, the guts of termites, the ocean and freshwater. When corals bleach, they’re kicking out the dinoflagellate protists that live inside of them and give them their colour. Lichens, the crusts you sometimes see on rocks, trees and railway platforms, are a fungus that has either a protist or bacterium living alongside it. Even dead protists leave their mark, with the calcium carbonate skeletons of single cells called coccolithophores building up over millions of years into chalk deposits like the White Cliffs of Dover. Some protists are of big concern to human health: Malaria, the terrible parasite whose death toll reached 435,000 in 2017 according to the World Health Organisation, is a protist. Along with Toxoplasma gondii, the brain parasite famous for being transferred from cats to humans, it is in the group Apicomplexa that is somewhat closely related to the dinoflagellates you find inside corals. Giardia is a bug-eyed looking protist that causes an unpleasant diarrhoeal disease which, while on exchange in Canada, I heard referred to as ‘beaver fever’.

But it’s not all bad. Seaweed such as nori (in the genus Pyropia, which you’ll find wrapped around your sushi rolls), are an important part of many diets around the world and are rich in fibre and protein as well as many nutrients including iodine, calcium and magnesium. Protists also produce a range of products that we as humans use every day. Carrageenan and Agar (vegan gelatine) are produced by red seaweeds and used as gelling, thickening and stabilising agents in food and other products, like toothpaste. Agarose, a purer form of Agar, is used in biochemistry and microbiology. However, the real reason I fell in love with protists is simply because of how beautiful they are. Look at a drop of pond water under the microscope and you will find a forest teeming with life, hundreds of tiny cells surviving and interacting. Ciliates rhythmically beat their hair (cilia) as they dart between long green filaments of cyanobacteria or green algae, seeking out bacteria or algal prey. Boat-shaped pennate diatoms glide smoothly along the surface, encased in cell walls made of glass, while golden brown dinoflagellates whirl in a corkscrew spiral so quickly they are nearly a blur. Amoebae spread out thin like glistening pancakes and countless tiny colourless flagellates zip in and out of view. It is like the entire range of colour, symmetry and shapes available to mother nature (or rather, the force of evolution), the origins of all the complexity that makes up humans and the rest of our complex world, can be observed in only a millilitre or so of murky water. My small glimpse into that world changed my life. The past three and a half years have seen me change my major, hassle a series of unsuspecting academics for mentorship and advice, and go all the way to the east coast of Canada for a single course on microbial protists. I have unleashed the full brunt of my enthusiasm on innocent students taking Marine Botany. I have learnt to do biology on computers and have analysed the proteins from a cell in a whole new class of life. When honours work gets too much and the imposter syndrome kicks in, I head upstairs and look at my cultures under the microscope. Watching a sea of little green ovals (Pedinophytes) wriggle in lazy circles reminds me of the sense of wonder I first felt in that lecture about these strange beautiful organisms that can teach us so much about life on earth.

ART BY LUCY WILLIAMS /

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Content Warning: racism

KISS AND TELL A’BIDAH ZAID SHIRBEENI’S (PARODY) GUIDE TO DATING PEOPLE OF COLOUR

started dipping my toes in the dating pool at 14 years old. It was an exciting time. I remember when I had my first boyfriend, Clark, a Melburnian boy just a few years older than me. Clark had blonde hair, blue eyes and baby scruff on his face. He reminded me a lot of Michael Clifford from 5 Seconds of Summer, except Clark didn’t play the guitar and spent most of his days playing Assassin’s Creed. Clark was sweet and 14-year-old me thought he was a 10/10 quality boyfriend because he’d often tell me how much he loved me and shower me with a million compliments: “You’re so beautiful,” “You’re so pretty” and “You’re so exotic”. Yikes. Exotic? As a person of colour, especially one that comes from a biracial background, being called exotic is common. I’m expected to take it as a compliment because being called exotic implies that I have features or characteristics that some people find unusual yet attractive. Right? 14-yearold me didn’t know any better, but when I received a text from Clark’s best friend mid-music class that read “Abby he’s only dating you because you’re not white”, the meaning of exotic changed entirely for me. Needless to say, I broke up with Clark not long after. Now I chuckle nervously when people happily exclaim how exotic they find me and roll my eyes whenever someone mentions they’ve dated an Asian girl before. Don’t get me wrong, my experience with Clark doesn’t mean I’m opposed to interracial relationships. I think interracial relationships are beautiful and deserve to be acknowledged, celebrated and made visible. But for that to be possible, we obviously need more interracial relationships, right? With that, here’s a quick guide as to how to snatch a lover who comes from a distant land, from a faraway place. 1. Show interest in our background Squint your eyes when you look at us and in a very curious tone ask us, “Where are you reaaaaalllyyy from?” Nothing shows more interest in who we are as an individual than wanting to know where we’re from, other than the place we actually were born and raised in. It’s always a fun time explaining to people that I’m Singaporean, with a mum who’s Malay and Chinese with roots that go back to Malacca, Malaysia, and a dad with a mixed Arab and Indian background… only to be told, “Oh but you look like you’re (insert other race).” Oh no, I guess I wasn’t sure what race I was. Let me go 38

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take a DNA test. Thank you stranger for helping me. 2. Compliment us Everyone loves a compliment or two. In addition to calling us exotic, try telling us how you think we have pretty “almond-shaped” eyes, that our curly hair is so pretty and wild compared to boring straight hair (do attempt to touch our hair while you’re at it) and how we’re so lucky for the melanin in our skin that prevents us from burning immediately in the sun. Remind your friends and family that we’re so unique, polish us like a newly-won trophy and don’t even bother mentioning the fact that we are all actually different individuals with different personalities. 3. Learn our mother tongue It doesn’t matter if we’re Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean or Japanese. We all understand what “ni hao” means. It’s a common greeting among Asians—yes, including Southeast Asians, Central Asians and to a certain extent South Asians. Try to pull a bunch of sounds together or better yet, string up some ethnic-sounding names and use them in a sentence. We won’t fault you for the bad execution and pronunciation. It is absolutely normal for people to butcher our language so hey, it’s the effort that counts I guess? 4. Reject racism This point is a bit of a no-brainer. Racism happens around the clock. Marginalised ethnic groups are oppressed and silenced every day. Show love and support to your partner by never shutting up about what a good ally you are! Constantly remind us that you’re no ordinary snowflake and you’re here to save and protect us from the bullies out there. Bonus point: by rejecting racism and dating a person of colour, you are automatically not racist and can never be called out for making blatant racist remarks or appropriating our culture whenever you fancy. 5. Be visible This is a common rule in dating. You have to let people know that you’re putting yourself out there and are open to being in a relationship. The easiest way to catch our attention is to place it right in your Tinder bio: “Love spice, love rice, love chocolate, love curry”. You’ll be getting swipe rights in no time.

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ART BY CHARANJA THAVENDRAN /

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/ ART BY ALEXANDRA BURNS

Content Warning: Content Warning: ableism

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REGULATING LANGUAGE CONOR CLEMENTS ON WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT LANGUAGE FROM DEAF COMMUNITIES

ign language is something that few people even class that was important. It was what they were doing in experience in their daily lives, let alone learn. the playground. Even as a linguistics student, I’ve found that my Most at the Melania Morales School were Deaf children education has focused exclusively on speech, with meeting other Deaf children for the first time in their casual references made here and there on the lives. Any experience they’d had with signing was limited applicability of theory used for spoken languages to to simple gestures with family and friends. Despite this, sign language. Even then, it’s mostly an afterthought. the students showed amazing aptitude to communicate If this is the case even within undergraduate linguistics with each other by signing; first as basic gestures, but with courses, you can imagine that a broader societal increasing complexity as more students came and went. understanding of sign language is, uh, non-existent. The development of the language was a bit like how a pidgin Many think that sign language is just a spoken language becomes a creole—its grammar regularised over time, and translated with gestures replacing words or letters. In irregularities and idiosyncratic features were worn down reality they have all kinds of different features, many in favour of a shared language. The formation of grammar of them not analogous to anything we see in spoken occurred so quickly that even linguists were shocked. language, but these sorts of misunderstandings are Atticus It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the birth of Finch moments compared to some of the treatment faced Nicaraguan Sign Language (abbreviated to ISN). Here, for by Deaf communities worldwide. the first time, is clear evidence that children are pretty Take the example of Deaf education. much born with the ability to create Despite the existence of many diverse and rapidly learn grammar. It was as “Here, for the first sign languages, Deaf schools have often if ISN wasn’t the first spontaneously only featured attempts to teach students created sign language, but in the past, time, was clear to speak and lip-read a language, other local sign languages were usually evidence that children displaced once educators who knew a rather than teach in sign languages. This approach, known as Oralism, was signed lingua franca, usually American are pretty much rooted in the eugenics movement and Sign language, came into the area. was rarely successful. However, even Linguists studying ISN were incredibly a broken clock is right twice a day; careful not to introduce such a threat, Oralism’s use in a Nicaraguan Deaf so as to allow ISN to grow organically. school led to a development that has Some have criticised this decision, revolutionised our understanding of saying it would stunt the prospects of language and how it works. those at the school, that it amounted to First, a quick history lesson: for much of the 20th century, human experimentation—but at the same time, can the Nicaragua, a small nation in Central America, was ruled by linguistic imperialism of forcing American Sign Language the Somoza family and their cronies—backed by the U.S. on these students over their own unique language really Government—resulting in a series of authoritarian, socially be justified? conservative regimes. The Somoza cared little for their I’ve barely touched on this topic. It is brimming with people; by the time Anastacio Somoza Debayle’s government implications for how we can understand language. ISN is was overthrown by the leftist Sandanistas in 1979, only one as close as we’ll ever get to seeing the birth and infancy in five Nicaraguans could read. In an attempt at education of a language, short of putting a bunch of toddlers in a reform (one that actually proved pretty successful), the newly room for a few years and trying to get them to make up formed government embarked on a ‘literacy crusade’—their a language. In many ways, it’s inspired more questions words, or their Spanish equivalent I guess—which included than answers—we’re still no closer to finding a languagemassively increased funding for Deaf schools. learning centre in our brains that would explain how ISL This brings us to the Melania Morales School, in could be created so spontaneously. But if nothing else, Nicaragua’s capital, whose attendees were ostensibly it shows that government regulation of language is a there to learn Spanish. But it wasn’t what they learned in double-edged sword.

born with the ability to create and rapidly learn grammar.”

ART BY CATHY CHEN /

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MYTHOLOGIES IRIS SHUTTLEWORTH ON KEEPING TRACK

y phone promises that I keep track of time. So the ultra-wealthy cultivate their identities according to what why do I keep losing track of time instead? Foucault described as “technologies of the self,” turning The iPhone provides me with a detailed breakdown of surveillance capabilities of late capitalism in on oneself, how I use it. The information is unflattering, and somehow sculpting the individual into the ideal capitalist subject. always surprising. “Where did all that time go?” Each moment of the day is accounted for, revealing a life I resent the alerts because it was Apple who created the of painstaking effort described in nightmarish HR jargon. addictive technology, and now it wants to discipline its users There is something puritanical about this kind of work ethic, for their addictions. It abdicates its own responsibility for in which the total sum of human life could be measured in your time and attention span; it wants you to be mindful. productive output. It acts like a parent, prodding you with reminders, keeping Needless to say, this kind of relentless self-policing an eye on you, though a corporation can do no such thing. — while intended to be aspirational — comes across as However, it does not love you, it wants your two most unappealing to most people. It draws an obsessive line finite resources: your attention and time. These reminders between what is worthwhile (green juices, spreadsheets, serve an elegant and counter-intuitive function: to curb bullet journaling, self-help books, personal finance) and the addiction just enough that one does not try to go cold what is wasteful (political organising, calorie dense food, turkey. Just to spend a mindful 2.5 hours on the screen, as fiction). I do not want to wake up at 4:30 am to drink a opposed to an excessive four or five. charcoal smoothie before embarking I have lost control of my time. My on some kind of extra difficult yoga that “There is something attention span isn’t what it used to only rich people know about. Such a life puritanical about this be. I can’t get lost in a book like I used does not allow for a Sunday morning kind of work ethic, in to — unless I really try and the book is lie-in with someone you love, or a plate particularly compelling. I spend a great of cheap dumplings washed down with which the total sum of deal of time on Twitter, even though a cold beer or reading books that do a human life could the experience is mostly terrible. I know not explicitly support the development my commutes would be better spent of the productive self. Surely, the most be reading a book or staring out the window. pleasurable parts of life are the ones Nonetheless, I keep returning, gambling which perhaps do not have an obvious my time in hopes I see something point but are simply worthwhile in and interesting enough to make the scrolling worth my time. of themselves. Like a slot machine, my phone rewards me just often Perhaps the problem is that we spend so much of our enough to keep me coming back for more. I know how lives under late-capitalism performing labour. One can unfashionable it is to criticise technology. The problem is monetise their own car, their spare room, pictures of a not these kids with their phones. It is a question of attention, meal out with friends. In all these cases, a CEO somewhere and who is profiting from the way it’s directed. is profiting. If I spend too long scrolling apps on my phone, Silicon Valley is aware that people don’t like this I am making money for tech-CEOs when I could direct obsessive, unfocussed feeling. It has become a status my attention in ways that might be more enjoyable. If I symbol to show yourself to be in control of your life. To want to take more control of my life, there are a range of demonstrate productivity is to demonstrate discipline, products designed to support this goal, but they seem to signifying success under capitalism. Technological advances promise a life of a different kind of labour, maximising my have allowed us to monitor ourselves as much as we want. own economic output for what appears to be a miserable Your phone counts your daily steps whether you like it existence of relentless work and self-obsession. or not, but you could choose to monitor your heart rate, What is life but attention? I do not know how to get your calorific intake, the books you read, the depth of mine back. There are apps on my phone that stop me from your sleep. Self-knowledge is delegated to the work of the using other apps. This seems to be the best line of defence. machines, and our level of satisfaction is measured in what I suspect the solution to these problems is not an individual machines tell us. Philosopher Tom Whyman documents this one, it does not lie in fastidious self-control. Life is meaningful phenomenon in an article for The Outline, describing how because there are other people in it. Let’s start there.

measured in productive output.”

/ PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE ZHANG

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ART BY RAYMOND WU /

Content Warning for Train by Day: mention of suicide Content Warning for Have You Ever: animal death

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FLASH FICTION PROMPT: GOATS

WORSHIP BY MARK YIN

Solve. Coagula. Solve. Coagula… Voices rise over one another from behind scarlet cloaks; the procession marches. At the head, the horned demon Baphomet, unfurling its terrible wings. Solve. Coagula. The procession halts. “Blessed art thou, O Sabbatic Goat, before whose sigil we gather today. Praised be the flame upon thy pate, for it guides us, the carnal and the meek, to glory in damnation eternal.” The figures remove their cloaks and begin to copulate. Solve. Coagula. Lightning in the distance.

TRAIN BY DAY, JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT! ALL DAY! BY JOEL MAK I’m not toxic I’m the cure. Watch me show my nine-year-old intermittent fasting, no-gi imanari rolls, the Joe Rogan Experience, exogenous ketones, Mark Hunt don’t swear in this house mate, picograms of turinabol in his ethicallyhunted kangaroo breakfast burger, open-air mosquito buffet Thai camps, hill runs, beep tests, suicides, ringside girls’ Instagram pages. Cage Warriors reruns, hyperbaric chamber therapy, Chinese bone lengthening because you want that reach tiger, folk style free style all styles, sambo not samba. Sure, paint, write, and dance, but shit son, you wanna be the GOAT or what? I’m not toxic I’m the cure.

HOMECOMING BY STEPHANIE KEE That autumn, the goats returned to the sea. They roamed in herds of about twenty, enthralling visitors all along the Cretan coast. Flanked by the most wizened among them, they traversed the beaches languorously but with a certain focus, as though searching for something unknowable. The elderly were the first to go when autumn arrived. Illuminated by starlight, they slipped between the waves, calmly, as if practised. Day after day, no one noticed, until only bleating younglings remained. And then they too were gone. No goat carcasses ever washed ashore. Up among the stars, Pricus wept with joyous sorrow.

HAVE YOU EVER BY NATALIE FONG CHUN MIN spill something anything everywhere something will stick in the forest goats inhabit that helps blend green with the greener things in life goats don’t intend to slice themselves with silver linings but men always get what they want even if they spill everything somehow anyhow something will become something else milk will graduate to shampoo and lotion some form of scented devotion (doe to kid) misconstrued by human intervention (‘done’ to ‘did’) to be held in the wrong arms is assuring all the same the goats allow us to use them wisely and would we prove to be in vain? 44

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Warning: ContentContent Warning: mental illness

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Sarah plays on the association of colours and words to write her poetry using Taubman’s paint samples from Bunnings.

ORANGE GLOW BY SARAH PETERS The little orange ladybird crawling at the tip of my finger keeps asking why I can’t see amber lights flashing in my eyes that should be a calm ocean blue. She tells me, I should be painting my skin in mandarin and citrus, the orange glow of sunsets I’m avoiding. I don’t want to remember that the ash sinks with the sun into my stomach when the fire goes out. She tells me, “The orange peel will unravel like a path to follow before you rust out. Find the gerberas, the deliahs.” The acidity burns my tongue, and boils my skin more than R U OK ribbons I struggle to attach anywhere I see. Everything crunches like autumn leaves and I can’t move like her. Wandering into flowers, I pick them, But only for others.

ART BY LIZZY YU /

Content Warning: sex, misogyny, slurs

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GOOD WHORE//BAD WHORE BY HANNAH GARVAN

intro ((room))

t doesn’t matter how I got here or why I chose it. It doesn’t matter who brought me into this world. This cock-filled, cum-stained world. The first time, damn. When was that? The first time I had sex, you mean? Or the first time I got paid? First fuck musta been that boy, way back. Lovely boy, lover, in that big, comfy, rich-person bed. Back when he had rosy cheeks and some meat on him. Not like today. Long-haired burnout, painted nails and a cigarette addiction. How I loved you. That’s not what you wanted to know, though, is it? You want to know how it started, don’t you? Well, I told you. It doesn’t matter how I got here. Every person’s road arrives at the same fork. The same sign pointing to Cock and Cash. You can take that turn anytime you want. And you know it. We come from every background, with every past. There’s no quality we possess to distinguish “us” from “you”. We are anyone. We could be you. You could be us. The first time? Of course, it was scary, foreign, unnatural. Every movement is self-conscious, like you’re twelve again trying to impress your crush at the school disco. You paint your face and dress up for him. Heels a quarter foot high. It’s all unknown, every element. You fumble through a flirtatious script. Send him off to disinfect. You’ve never seen such pristine, marble showers before. Then he sets himself atop the bed, fresh. And you overcompensate with every twist and suck. It is during your labour, so fresh yourself, that you’re overwhelmed by this urge to go: ‘STOP!!!’ You almost burst: ‘This isn’t ME! This isn’t who I am! This is just something I’m doing for a bit. I’m a Normal Person!!!’ You want to explain yourself and all the Normal Things you do. You want to tell him about your family 46

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and how you did okay at school and how you could do something else if you wanted to. You’re afraid he’ll think you’re a junkie or forced into it by an abusive boyfriend. What if he doesn’t realise you’re none of the stereotypes? What if he’s judging you RIGHT NOW?? There’s so much going on between the lines. You can feel his judgement like waves rippling out. It’s so loud. He loves you because you make him feel good. But you’re also his nightmare. You are the worst possible outcome for his daughter’s future. You’re the most treacherous act his wife is capable of. Just interacting with you is his biggest shame. You want to explain how you’re different. An exception to the rule. An outlier. How he should be proud of his daughter if she ended up like you. How you’re not like the rest, you’re a Good Whore. In fact, you’re barely a Whore at all. You’re a student, a girlfriend, a daughter. You take drugs but not the addictive ones. And only sometimes! But who is this Whore anyway and why is she so Bad? Why are you any better? Within that silent interaction of fear and judgement obscured by the noise of flirtation, a transformation occurs. You realise that until you were judged by this man as a Poor Decision Maker, you believed you weren’t guilty of making the same Content Warning: sex, misogony, slur judgements on others. You were wrong. You ignore the urge to go ‘STOP!!!’ You’re not here to explain yourself. Instead, lean forward girl. Show those tits, hold that gaze. Convince him he wants YOU. And when he’s almost through and you catch his eye, let him cum on your tits for an extra fifty bucks.

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$$$$ When “““God””” flipped my coin Female, I wonder if He knew what it meant. Or is He as ignorant as the rest of ‘em? Did He realise I’d be trained to serve, smile, submit and stroke ego? Did He realise to survive here Girl must master the Art of Pleasantness before she can master anything else? Did He realise that Girls are better than what His book says??? Suddenly it dawned on me, with a cock in my mouth, this wasn’t new to me. This wasn’t new at all. That feeling when you’re new to a job and you feel like a burden. When your workmates manage your incompetence with an air of frustration. ‘I’ll get it soon, don’t worry!’ you want to say. At some point you’ll get it: student becomes teacher, evolution in the workplace. It might take months or years. But you’ll get it. Suddenly, here in this Whorehouse, just as he was ordering me to suck it faster. Just as I was thinking ‘I’m not cut out for this…’ It dawns on me: I have never been so qualified. In fact, I have been training for this job my whole life. That feeling of being new and confused, incompetent, useless. It’s gone. Had I ever introduced myself to a man buying Pussy? Of course I have. He tries to buy it every time I enter a bar, party, club or festival. Every day on the bus and in the street. I meet him every time I leave the house. He’s always ready, always wondering what it takes to convince me. And I’m there with him, like I am in that Intro Room, appeasing his gaze, flashing a smile, laughing on queue. I subdue him with gentleness, lure him with language. Mastery of Pleasantness is Woman’s power and defence. It is her way to control without dominance, to resist danger without fighting. It is our burden and our strength. We learn young to be attractive in every aspect of our lives. To be attractive is to open the door to respect. We do it to capture love and hold influence. We do it to appease those gross, demanding eyes; eyeballs reminding you that in this world, man calls the shots! It dawns on me that I’ve been arching my back since

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there were tits to push forward. I’ve been dressing and dieting since there was a Woman’s body to mould. I’ve been fucking with single flamed purpose—HIS orgasm, HIS pleasure—since I first spread my legs with that first fuck. In my pursuit of attractiveness, as a Woman, I have developed around the desires of man. But I have stroked their egos, dressed up for them, painted my face for them (((FOR FREE))) for far too long. Only now, in this employment, am I rewarded for my efforts. Only now am I compensated for the endless, thankless task of Making Men Feel Good. My only question is: where’s my goddamn backpay?

ART BY T-DOG EXTREME /

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Content Warning: sex, misogyny, slurs

<3 <3 <3 Fierce women. Sluts, brutes. Women whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll pound you â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;til you burst. Women who turn ragdoll. Endurance is strength. Women who control, who dominate with stealth. Women who embody that Porn Star look to lure their prey and provoke their cocks. Women who provide for families, who set bread on the table. Women who will spread their legs for a thousand strangers without hindering their commitment to The One. Women who are not born deceitful but must lie for safety. Women, rich women, hard-working whores. Cunts of steel. Tough, strong, gorgeous, flawed. 48

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Content Warning: references to sexual assualt Content Warning:

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he future queen’s reign is in doubt with allegations that she practiced witchcraft to seduce her husband. The accusers (who wish to remain anonymous) state that Cinderella was often found singing to herself or charming animals while doing household tasks. “Instead of being dedicated to her chores, she practiced sorcery.” One accuser says, “it wouldn’t be too far fetched for her to switch from charming poor animals to defenceless men.” A magic commentator, Our Local Witches’ Society, has called the claims “possible” but “doubtful”. The royal family has refused to make a statement on this matter, but the prince has called the claims completely ludicrous. “I love her,” the prince says, “these claims against her are unfair and entirely unfounded.” The coronation will still move ahead.

fter the leak that revealed the location of the legendary ‘sleeping city’ yesterday, tourists have flocked to the area for the opportunity to snap some photos of its inhabitants. To preserve the site and ensure that the sleeping citizens—whose bodies were still and remarkably looked like inanimate statues—were not harmed, the government had rigidly enforced an oath of secrecy when it was discovered. However, such efforts were futile as tourists soon made the journey to the isolated area. It is speculated that the volume, the noise and the stamping of feet ‘woke’ the inhabitants. To the astonishment of tourists as well as researchers, one of the inhabitants, an unidentified young woman, abruptly sat up. “She looked refreshed as most people do after a good sleep.” A tourist reported, “But once she realised that there were people gawking at her, she just screamed and then fainted.” Authorities have viciously condemned and criticised other alleged misconducts of tourists that include but are not limited to photographing, kissing or touching the bodies of the unconscious inhabitants. “Desecrating an archaeological site due to immaturity and mocking fairytale legends is somewhat expected nowadays. You see people carelessly breaking artefacts that had been painstakingly preserved,” one spokesman told The Fairytale Gazette, “But stealing someone’s image for their own enjoyment and defiling someone’s body without their consent is one step too far.” The woman later woke up again and was taken to a safe location by authorities. While security blames the disruption to the site by tourists as the cause for the awakening, others are not so sure. Such speculation can only be confirmed once the tourists have been evicted from the area.

ART AND LAYOUT BY TIFFANY WIDJAJA

A million-dollar reward for the return of a pair of glass slippers. Please contact the Castle’s royal aide via appropriate channels.

couple with a baby girl on the way is seeking a person who is willing to go grocery shopping for them once a week. Responsibilities include climbing over the wall into their neighbour’s garden, grabbing some greens (specifically some Rapunzel) and returning to the house safely. Their neighbour has graciously agreed to overlook such an invasion, but the work still has to be done when the neighbour is out of the house or asleep at night, just in case. Selection criteria of the desired candidate: -Knowledgeable about greens and vegetables (essential) -Physically fit -Has a certificate in deflecting witch spells and insults -Immune to hypnotic persuasion -Doesn’t ask questions (a must) Hours are irregular but pays well. Please inquire in person at the red brick house next to the witches’ brewery.

BY ALISON FORD /

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Content Warning: implicit references to blood and violence

SLUG. BY ESMĂ&#x2030; JAMES I was twelve and they were giggling when I melted into the floorboards. They were giggling and I was twelve when steaming blood became hard-polished. My lungs and lips slipped into the cracks and I was twelve and lost a tooth on the way. I see the tooth as I slide through the floors and tickle their feet and they are giggling. I am contorting and watching them giggling and bone marrow has seeped into the walls. They do not see me and I am twelve when I creep into the top corner of the kitchen. I watch them pour tea and drop spoons for years and now I am giggling. They are not twelve but I am a house and slither through the attics and rooms. through cracks and observe them make love but they are not giggling.

I whisper

Sometimes I will scream and they will fall and I will hug them through the kitchen tiles. When no one is home I will tear paint away because I am twelve and the floorboards are not giggling. Strangers appear who are old and are giggling and I will creep beneath their feet and eat them. They will stomp me and I will retreat into the ceiling and watch them while giggling. I am twelve and I am a house and they are trying to leave me. I will cry and the house will start giggling and I will slither through its ruins, waiting. I am twelve and I am a house and they are screaming itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s haunted! I will cry and the house will start giggling and I will slither through their ashes, waiting.

/ ART BY SONIA JUDE

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MILK CAPS BY ELYSSIA KOULOURIS She told me that her grandmother used to hoard the gold and red caps The bottled branded M Wash and return 600ml It didn’t mean anything Her silver hair blinded her left eye, her head Did that tilt when I said “I am using it as a flower pot” The verbena sprouted as though its seed knew to follow the glass formation The bottom was still scarred with rust, I tried to pick it off with my finger-nails like the skin Left over from a Popped pimple No success It sits on the birds-eye maple Stained by a ring that I can’t scrub off.

ART BY SONIA JUDE /

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A THING WITH FEATHERS BY JOCELYN DEANE She lives on a moor in the north. She lives alone. [Spring] opens like a blade there. Anne Carson, ‘The Glass Essay’ 1. o. Emily Dickinson—who may not resemble Emily Dickinson—is closing her eyes in the garret she rents from her boss. We agree there’s nothing much in her room. A bed. A chest of drawers and facsimile crucifix. A chair—the dress she arrived in slumps over its back, caked in sewage. She’s finished one more day supervising the Black Rose anarchist bookstore/co-op. Her passive perception is 20; nothing escapes her. Her charisma is 18. All outcomes in D&D take the form of numbers, added to numbers. Eighteen is a +4 to all rolls related to persuasion, intimidation. It helps her to hawk the fantasy equivalent of Kropotkin and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to any borrowers. As she fragments into sleep, the DM asks: does she still hope she’ll wake up back in Massachusetts? I mean, hope is a thing with feathers, right? Also, I don’t know if it counts as hope when you’re in a situation your brain can’t get. If you don’t get the rules, might as well hope something happens? Each of us gives the DM our character sheets: our states, spells, proficiencies. Moreover, our bonds, ideals, and flaws. D&D has these listed out and itemised, as per the background you choose for your person. Our DM sits us down privately and asks what our characters cherish, believe and what can be inferred from this, positively, negatively etc. Out of these, the DM builds what they call their “knives”. A way—if not to hurt—then to induce character development. Emily Dickinson is dreaming. She is on stage somewhere, like a ventriloquist. She can’t make sense of the crowd. She begins to panic, remembers travelling circuses, Barnum and Bailey. Did Barnum and Bailey exist when Emily was alive? the DM asks. I don’t know. Emily gets the impression she is being asked to read, but can’t speak. She can only garble and fragment lines of poems she’s written, and ones she’s admired: No coward soul / I see / I’ve known a / like a tent / its shining / rip of nail / to signalise / O God / North America. Emily Dickinson wakes up, still in Sigil.

/ ART BY VAN ANH CHU

2. Gondal is a city and municipality in the Rajkot district of the Indian state of Gujarat. Gondal state was one of the eight first class princely states of Kathiawar Agency, Bombay Presidency in British India. Ruled by a Hindu Rajput dynasty of the Jadeja clan, the capital of the state was Gondal town. At some point in 2018, possibly, a group of poets is holding a séance at Hares and Hyenas, a beautiful queer bookstore. The event is called “Dramatis Personae”, possibly after Robert Browning. There are still photos on Facebook. You—there, now, dreaming—can’t remember how long it went: you think you left before it was over. Memory is past hurting now, but it still leaves furrowed, blank nails in your head. In this given photo, for example, everyone who took part is posing. Spoken word artists around Melbourne, rigid in a circle, to channel the ghosts of canonical poets. Everyone selected to channel knows and likes each other, much as you would expect their spirits to, in heaven. Everyone portrays the dead as close to their images as possible, as though they were waxfigurines. Your portray your assigned gender, except for one man as Dorothy Parker, who wears a bonnet and speaks waspishly. A woman is Edgar Allan Poe: pencilled-on moustache, black longcoat, eyeshadow and a deep red scarf; she tears up The Raven, almost roaring the last stanza. Her partner is dressed as Lord Byron as he died in the Greek war of independence. Beside them, Hugo Ball, in a metal bird costume he wore at Club Voltaire performing Dadaist soundscapes during the Great War. He looks like a tube of whipped cream wearing a Superman cape. One of them bookends their set by saying: No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of... before the mic cuts. The first English settlement in the Western Presidency was begun in 1618 at Surat in present-day Gujarat, when the East India Company established a factory, protected by a charter obtained from the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. In 1661 Bombay was ceded to the Kingdom of England as part of the dowry of the infanta Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to King Charles II. So lightly was the acquisition esteemed in England, and so unsuccessful was the administration of the crown officers, that in 1668 Bombay

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was transferred to the East India Company for an annual payment of £10. The man impersonating Arthur Rimbaud on the right of the image, in a waistcoat and cravat, performs the poems in a Hercule Poirot-eque voice, emphasising as a preface that we don’t know if in fact he went into the slave trade after he ceased writing in his 20’s. There’s no reliable biography from that time, he gurns in his outrageous accent. In the centre of the picture, in a handstitched gown, with pre-Victorian tresses, is Emily Brontë. The most upscale residential areas in Gondal are Bhojrajpara, Kailashbag and Radha-Krishna Nagar, near to the bus station and the main market. Gardens and parks include Tulsi Baugh and Ashapura. The schools in Gondal include St. Mary’s School, Vidhya mandir, Patel Boarding, Akshar Purshotam Swami Narayan High School, and Highway Gurukul. Monghiba High school is one of the oldest girls’ schools in the region. The largest factors in the economy of Gondal are oil mills and marketing yards. Gondal is the largest producer of ground nut oil in Gujarat. The marketing yard is one of the biggest in the Kathiawar region. Gondal is growing in the cotton trade with the development of many ginning and pressing industries. Unlike everyone else, who channel their poets unproblematically, Emily is aware of her death. She chats amiably on stage about cohabiting with the other poets: she and her sisters have Christopher Marlowe and William Burroughs for tea. This is said somewhat exasperatedly; William Burroughs has just removed the bright orange cod-piece he wore for his set; he had spent the majority of time poring over the details of his accidental murder of his wife. She reminisces about the tuberculosis that killed her, fondly. How she and Anne had kept up their games in their imaginary world, how—quoting one of her biographers—they remain “in the very closest sympathy which never had any interruption”. She quotes again: “the heroes … tended to resemble the popular image of the Scottish Highlander, a sort of British version of the ‘noble savage’: romantic outlaws capable of more nobility, passion, and bravery than the denizens of ‘civilization’”. Gondal has a history of art and literature. It is the

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birthplace of poets, singers and artists like Pankaj Udhas, Manhar Udhas, Nirmal Udhas, Dhumaketu, Makarand Dave, Jay Vasavada, Sairam Dave, Vipul Mangukiya and Atul Pandya. The first Gujarati dictionary was written by noted educationalists/authors (like Shri Champaklal Vyas) in Gondal with the financial support of Sir Bhagvatsighji Maharaj. Bhagvatsingh improved the regional livestock through modern animal husbandry, built dams and irrigation networks and introduced sewerage, plumbing, rail systems, telegraphs, telephone cables and electricity, also becoming a champion for women’s rights. Bhagvatsingh’s four surviving sons were all educated abroad. We run a support group for other poets dead of tuberculosis, she says: Keats, Poe, Elizabeth Barret/ Browing, Robert Burns, who is also performing here. Part of the therapy—she laughs dryly—is figuring out from whence someone has become unstuck, adjusting to the mores of the past and future. It’s a two-way deal, for her and her co-sufferers. To conclude her set, she reads “No Coward Soul is Mine”, a poem she says a biographer wrote was “probably as an answer to the violation of her privacy and her own transformation into a published writer.” She continues quoting: “Despite what my sister Charlotte may have said, it was not my last poem.” Emily smiles. “I’ll have to speak to Charlotte one of these days about that.” The lights come up after this for a break, and the photo is taken.

ART BY VAN ANH CHU /

/ ART BY BETHANY CHERRY

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ART BY BETHANY CHERRY /

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JOAN BY DARCY CORNWALLIS

he ground is so dry, so parched from summer’s onslaught, that the air actually smells of hay; the yellow patina of desiccated grass releases heat in clouds as the students run, or more often than not stumble dejectedly, back and forth, across the blazing oval. For many of the taller, better-built specimens, vast sweat patches and occasional muttered curses are the only indications of the incredible, oppressive heat. Most of the others adopt a more proactive response, and complain vehemently at their teacher whenever she scurries into range. The heat is of the intense, dry, February variety; a purging heat.. Removed from the bulk of the students is a small group of teenagers who have evidently decided that the usual stipulations of a Physical Education lesson do not, necessarily, apply to them. They are thus situated under a tree near the border of the sports oval, sprawled in a disorderly mass, like some malignant growth sprouting from the bright yellow earth. It is towards this crew that Joan is walking. Her shirt clings to her and she screws her face against the sun and the flies. Her hair feels disgusting. After an abortive attempt to participate actively in whatever pointless exercise the teacher was drilling them in, she has decided that she would rather be sitting with her friends, even though she knows that Harry and Olivia will be flirting with each other awkwardly, and that Lucy will probably be high as a kite. Actually, she thinks, that might be unfair; as far as Joan is aware Lucy usually restrained herself to lighting up on a strictly extra-curricular basis. At any rate, she can see her dopey friend’s flaming mass of orange hair glinting in the distance already like a flaming tower toppling to the earth. As she walks towards them she sees Harry reach out and clasp Olivia’s shoulder. He leans in towards her ear 56

/ ART BY CAROLYN HUANE AND STEPHANIE ZHANG

and, staring straight at Joan, mutters something. Their unnecessary proximity is not lost on Joan, who squints into the blinding sunlight and wipes the sweat from her glistening brow. Olivia is laughing at whatever witticism Harry has just muttered to her. The dull heat is suddenly cut. A desperate cry rakes the sky from somewhere behind Joan; she half-turns and falters slightly. She stops and then turns awkwardly to view the students from the rest of the class as they heave themselves through the heavy air. The arched and monumental sky, astonishingly blue, swings on its axis pendulously above her. She cannot identify the source of the noise; her class seem to have noticed nothing. As she looks across the oval her eye meets with Brian’s, who grins at her in a way that makes her feel sick. Joan does not like Brian. He is tall, muscular, and very blond. Joan had known a friend who had briefly dated Brian. Sophie. Her name had been Sophie. When things turned sour, Brian had shared a certain photo of Sophie around the school by hacking into her Facebook page. She took it down as quickly as possible, but not before it had racked up hundreds of views. There was nothing to be done, of course. The school followed procedure, Brian was interviewed, students were called to give character testaments. That hardly helped; Brian was popular before the incident and, with a certain type of adolescent boy, more popular afterwards. The school could prove nothing and it made sense to some people that a stupid girl would post a photo online and then cast herself as a victim. These young people simply do not understand the risks and responsibilities inherent to social media; they are naïve. These kids are surely fools. The worst bit was that Joan never really did enough. There was nothing she could do, really. She could not prove that Sophie hadn’t posted the photo herself. But

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it still felt terrible. It was always there, somewhere, this acidic creature sitting in her stomach. It scratched at the lining of her stomach whenever it saw Brian, scratched and tore with its hideous nails. Sophie left the school, and Joan has not heard from her since. No-one has. A sharp, high cry rattles through the air again. Joan suddenly feels very afraid. Her breath is catching in her throat, as if it is a jagged, rusty piece of piping that keeps snagging the air gushing to and from her lungs. She looks around the burning oval nervously. Nobody seems to have noticed anything. The students continue to stumble across the dry face of the earth. Joan looks back over her shoulder, into the light; squinting, she thinks she can see her friends staring back at her. She decides that whatever is making the noise is being too mysterious to deserve her attention, and turns fully to approach the group under the tree. The otherworldly scream rends the world again, devastatingly this time—deafeningly loud and so desperate in tone that Joan is utterly terrified; she is shaking and sweating violently, the light is flickering too intensely into her eyes. She looks up and finds that the sky has darkened around the edges, as if the light is bleeding slowly away from the edges of the dome, leaching the blue away and leaving behind something grey and terrible. Although the light is fading from the sky, the sun above the tree-line seems to be burning brighter than ever, beaming into Joan’s face. Joan is shivering now, she feels feverish and elastic. There is a terrible pain, inside her skull. A deep, metallic thrumming is pounding through the air now. It is low and alien, felt rather than heard, and terrifying. It feels unearthly, and invasive, as if it is forcing itself into a world which it does not belong in. The light suddenly flares with an incredible intensity

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and the world becomes gold and white; Joan can see nothing. The thrumming gradually becomes clearer and she realises that it is composed of voices—they are singing, chanting, somehow simultaneously low and high, the impossible sound of light being delicately rearranged, gently pulled into thousands of individual notes and chords, weaving a burning sonic tapestry. It grows louder, and louder still, and then as it reaches a crescendo that flows through Joan’s quaking body, the golden light disappears abruptly. Joan is lying on the ground, and her eyes, she realises, are tightly closed. She pulls herself up from the ground and gasps in terror. Before her expands the oval, but terribly distorted, twisted. It seems endlessly vast, and the whole world has somehow bent; the sky is fixed and dull, and slants hugely towards the earth, as if a single, immense piece has cracked and fallen loose. The air is still and utterly silent. The space between Joan, the school, the students, between everything, in fact, seems to have warped and frozen; people’s legs do not match with their torsos, the branches of trees jut out at impossible angles for impossible lengths. The world has suddenly become a smashed mirror. Joan jumps in fright as something hisses, serpentlike, behind her. She spins around. She sees a tall figure before her, a man who gleams and shines like new pavement in summer. He has thick, dark hair which falls elegantly to his shoulders and he is clad in a robe of white which clings tightly to his muscular frame. More pressingly, he has a pair of vast, feathered wings sprouting from his back. They gleam so brightly white that they are painful to look at. His face is beautiful in a way that Joan cannot equate with the universe; his cheekbones and jaw look carved from marble. His irises are gold. He is only a few feet from her. The man is eerie, certainly; he seems comfortable ART BY CAROLYN HUANE AND STEPHANIE ZHANG /

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in the new and freakish reality that bends and glimmers around Joan. She is not immediately frightened; instead she feels an impossible yearning, a sense of aching desire for something that will make the fractured world hers again. She is still shivering, and feels hot—not as she had before, from the raw friction of the sun scraping her skin, but from an internal warmth in her gut which slowly expands and tingles through her body. The man stares at her with what is perhaps amusement. Joan cannot speak; there is some rip in her mind, some gulf separating thought from language which makes speech impossible. A faint, devastatingly beautiful melody shimmers into earshot—whatever that means now that distance has apparently been kicked out of shape. The sinuous lines of song begin to twist like satin cords through Joan’s ears, and the sound is so delicate, so high and so thrilling that she forgets, for a moment, all about the man standing before her, whose face is sliding sardonically into a smile, and looks up to the warped sky, as the song fills every part of her body. Her heart beats wildly. Infinity seems to grow in her mind and all is still and beautiful. Something touches her on her chin and she is brought back to earth. She looks down and sees the unearthly man standing directly in front of her. He lowers his perfect hand from her face and she looks into his eyes of molten honey with pupils dark like eternity. They dare light to attempt entry. The lips suddenly split from their smile and a long, black, forked tongue lashes out, flickering before Joan’s eyes with a rattle and hiss from a nightmare. She shrieks and jerks backwards; she stumbles; she falls; the earth is tugged away like a rug and she is spinning and flipping through the dizzying dark, ripping the dark apart, the world is at her feet and then pulls her by the hair, the air is running down her throat and then climbing from her nose, and she is breathless, lying on the burning oval, dirt in her hair and eyes, the delicate dry rustle of thirsty grass in her nostrils, sun pushing down on her. She hears cries of alarm and slowly pulls herself from the ground into a sitting position. Her friends are 58

/ ART BY CAROLYN HUANE AND STEPHANIE ZHANG

on their feet in the shady distance, shouting to her. She blinks and twists around as she hears the thudding pattern of sprinting bodies behind her. Joan is not sure what she thinks or what she wants, or whether she can even be bothered standing up. She decides that she probably won’t, and waits in the sunlight as the class hurtles towards her. All she knows is that somehow everything is very, very different from what it was when she stepped out onto the oval earlier that afternoon. Everything has changed. The first few boys from the class reach her and it is Brian, she notes with interest, who leads them. He crouches before her, sweat gleaming in rivulets tracing his face, cheeks red, powerful arms on his knees. His eyes bore confidently into hers. His hair is lank with sweat, and he breathes heavily. His smile lurks somewhere between concerned and lascivious. ‘Hey, Joan!’ he says huskily. ‘Are you ok? Hey!’ he calls over his shoulder, ‘Get us some bloody water down here!’ Joan fixes her eyes on his, and suddenly finds her face breaking into a grin. ‘Honestly, don’t worry about it,’ she says. ‘I’m fine. Really. I… I don’t think I’ve ever felt better.’ Brian smiles at her. Joan smiles back at Brian. This world is new, she thinks to herself. I have seen the face of the deep and it has been recast. The world is new. And the first thing I’m going to do in it, she is smiling more broadly than ever, and a great calm is descending over her heart, and she reaches slowly to Brian’s hand, smiling into his uncritical eyes, fingers playing against his—the very first thing I’m going to do in this new and breathless world, will be to carve your fucking face apart.

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OLD BATH BY SAM HARDING Glad iron bars covered in oysters combing the shallows catching lonely rags and wire. I love your gaps your rusted failures where the stingrays fold in & frighten us. You sound like a wheelbarrow in all the wind & lapping. I wonder if it stings when the birds run their beaks along your blooming cracks. How many Decembers have you seen? Hands reeling in wire, hoping for that beautiful gumboot? And how many running wet feet, slipping across your back? This is a Cornetto moment, w/ all the flicked pip mandarins, & pregnant bellies being rubbed, under ice-cream umbrellas, The setting sun dipping over the final planks of your splintered neck. Dear anchored bath, what were the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;30s like?

ART BY AMANI NASARUDIN /

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808S & FANTASY BY LUKE ROTELLA

CUT IN. INT. WANGS BAR & CAFÉ. NIGHT. A distinct, yet soothing low-fi sound of a distorted synth ripples through the air like a sawblade slicing through steel in an empty factory. Its sharp, staccato nature mimics the sound of rain beating against a window then sliding down into a puddle below. Yet, an aggressive edge seeps through the track almost as though someone ran it through Audacity, boosted the bass and randomised the mixing. What should have been an ethereal, angelic voice of a woman is compressed and amalgamtated into an industrial and demonic collection of syllables that create a dichotomy between the vocals and instrumentals. The sound reverberates, permeating the air and creating an unseen but noticeably present feeling of unrest. ENTER DANTE DANTE slides the ‘NERV’ branded lighter into his pocket and swishes his hair to the side as he enters through the kitchen side door. He throws an apron over his blotted red spray jacket, wraps his headphones around the discman dangling by his cargo pants and walks into the foyer. Although he seems to be moving around with deftness as he shuffles towards the stereo, his view is obscured as his eyes glimmer with the flashing image of a girl. The white of his eyes are cloudy and bloodshot while his obscured pupil pulsates as it generates the image of the flailing girl with the obscurity of a flipbook. She slices her arms through the air as if trying to keep afloat in a river current while still maintaining the serenity and a dreamy transfixion of a swinging pendulum. With his eyes locked on the image of the girl, his body acts sentiently and pulls him towards the stereo against the back wall. He pulls a dial out towards him until he hears a click then slowly turns it left as the green text on the CRT display changes. It changes from ‘Genesis (slowed, reverb)’ to ‘Win96: dreams’ to ‘F A I R Y F O U N T A I N’. The crashing of the drums and backing of ambient rain amalgamates with looped image displayed on the CRT, glass wall sitting behind to create an eerie, hopeless vibe. DANTE gazes past the stereo to waves crashing against the metal wall separating the concrete jungle and roaring sea as rain plummets from the endless, grey sky into the abyss. The wall silhouettes and dwarfs DANTE as he watches stress lines and TV snow cut in and out of the image; distorting and warping the view of the city. ENTER RANDAL RANDAL Hey, what the fuck are you doing mang? I know you weren’t supposed to be here today but Wang isn’t paying you to stare out a fucking window. DANTE *Grunts*

/ ART BY HAYLEY MAY

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RANDAL Hey! The big hand is currently on 11 and the little hand is sitting just before 1. When that hand ticks over onto the 1, I wanna see some tables being waited g! DANTE You got it boss. The camera tightly tracks DANTE as he moves towards the bar. A red and purple strobe light illuminates two aging men yet the flashing light gives the ambiguity of a darkroom. The large congregate of chatter fails to muffle the man with an unkept beard and vague wrinkles on his forehead as he slams his fist onto the wooden counter. He turns to the man with a clean shave and slight greyed hair to lament. PUNK #1 I don’t know what the fucks goin’ on anymore; these fuckin’ tea connoisseurs all go on about strawberry tea. What the fuck happened to chai man… what happened to chai? The man with a clean shave nods and his eyes begin to moisten but DANTE uncaringly interrupts. DANTE What do you guys want? PUNK #2 *Waving voice* Yeah, we’ll actually get the uh… What do you want man? PUNK #1 I don’t wanna spend too much. Just picked up the Yeezy 808s so I’ll just get a cinnamon-shake. PUNK #2 Yeah okay, gimme that as well. DANTE Will that be all? PUNK #2 Nah… DANTE’s attention is immediately stolen as he looks past the punks as purple and red neon strobe lights beat down on a woman with pink hair and an oversized yellow jumper tucked tightly into her gingham skirt. She dances alone.

ART BY HAYLEY MAY /

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WAIALUA BY MORGAN-LEE SNELL Wake before dawn all tangled in my sheets, feels like there’s no returning to sleep, and my things are scattered through the bed; filters, papers, napkins full of journal entries to be glued down later. The force with which I was thrust into wakefulness, makes me feel that someone is not ok (he messaged me saying I love you.. just a minute ago). So I sing myself daydreams of past and future selves, try to fall back to wonderland.. no luck, get up, put your boots on, go out in the rain. Feels like it’s been raining for days, like I don’t know how there’s anything left in the sky. Walk up gutters like tiny asphalt rivers, with plastic ducks and rubber seahorses and oil slicks. Glittered monkey dropped by some small thing. Slowly drenching through as the rain gets heavier, harder—no, neither, just denser. Like the weight of the rain here stays always the same. Little cotton jacket sticking down to my back, drupelets jumping from my fringe to my eyelash, I keep brushing them away. The cement at the cafe is dusted with tiny flowers like miniature frangipani confetti. A guy once told me he was an environmentalist because he didn’t throw his cigarette butts on the ground. Rocky little secluded little beach just for me, hidden behind dead coral chunks and covered in sea glass. I think to take a purple lump thrown up onto the sand but then think better of it; shouldn’t steal things from the places they belong, shouldn’t take them from their native lands. Tide coming in, sun coming out. Rotten coconut skull cracked open on the clay earth. Scarf off jacket off, thin layers of fabric revealing inky skin. Snake tattoo looks like he’s swimming through yesterday’s shells. I swim like a lonely bird back through the pitter patter of gauzy drops.

/ ART BY MONIQUE O’RAFFERTY

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CONDITIONING BY NATALIE FONG CHUN MIN as in air, but also liquid flexibility, as in velvet drafts of cold, but also responding to sunburnt carrot-dangling, as in replacement of the old-fashioned dinner bell, but also gradually getting used to a new temptation, as in grafting surgery, but also wear the sun as a face mask, as in what everyone else is doing, but also do what you have to, as in put what you are asked to do first, but also know, it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make you feel better. you have to think it will. that is the point.

ART BY MONIQUE Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;RAFFERTY/

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THE CREATIVE LITERATURE AND WRITING SOCIETY PRESENTS: THE REMARKABLE QUESTS OF RADDISH AND QUILL

A LIVELY MARKET VISIT BY JESSICA ZHOU CLAWS is a club about writing, reading, discussing, and performing creative works. Ultimately, we’re a club about story-telling, self-expression, socialising, and, of course, fun! We plan to do a lot of stuff this year: weekly workshops, semi-regular open mic nights and seminars, DIY zine-making workshops, as well as our publication, Inkspot. Our email is claws.unimelb@gmail.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Wordpress, where we post regular updates and other fun stuff (including a blog by Raddish and Quill themselves!)

rom the moment Quill blinked awake, they were buzzing with excitement. It was a Sunday! And for the great questers Raddish and Quill, that meant they were out the door quicker than usual. There was a skip to their steps as they rushed through the forest, all the way to where the trees parted to reveal a large clearing. There, for one day a week, the grass was enshrouded by an expansive set-up of stalls. As they reached the edge of the market, Raddish, who was already purring with delight, pushed up onto their hindlegs to get a better look at everything. “Oh, I do love Sunday Markets,” Quill agreed with a content smile. “Look at all these people!” Indeed, there was already a crowd gathering about the stalls. Neighbours and distant visitors alike walked down the busy aisles, trading goods and greetings. The first stall they came across was a wool and knitwear store, manned by a family of mice. Excitement flashed across Raddish’s face and they sped up. “Oh no,” Quill muttered. They chased after Raddish, but it was too late. Raddish pounced. The mice squealed. Quill put a wing to their face. “Raddish, we already have a ball of wool that exact colour!” Raddish meowed distractedly as they buried themself into the large basket of wool on display—a ball of fuchsia yarn clutched lovingly between their paws. “In fact, I’m quite sure you have a bigger collection at home than they have here. Put it back!” Quill ignored Raddish’s pleading whines, turning instead to the mice with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry about this. You know how Raddish gets. They just love your stuff!” 64

/ ART BY STEPHANIE NESTOR

Noticing the frowning mice, Raddish quickly restored all the wool to their proper places. The mother mouse sighed and waved a paw dismissively. “We’ll let it go this once, but only because Raddish is still our best customer to date. I’ll never forget the time they bought out our whole stock!” “Oh, don’t remind me,” Quill tried to scowl, but their tone was affectionate as they recalled the sight of Raddish buried under a mountain of wool. Raddish had the sense to look sorry as they rejoined Quill to continue down the aisle. “You ever wish you could have your own stall here?” Quill looked around at all the stalls: from photo frames and paintings to berries and jam; a family of beavers selling bracelets; and Talon’s owlish stare from behind their table of books and parchment. Quill’s heart soared at the thought of finding a place among them, but: “What could I sell?” “Heaps of things! We could finally put your feathers to good use. You know, next time you moult.” “Feathers? What would anyone want feathers for?” Raddish turned their head slowly and directed an unimpressed stare Quill’s way. “Quill.” Quill blinked. “What?” “Quills, Quill. Pens. Writing devices.” “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Quill’s Quill Store. They could work with that. It was the smell that first attracted Quill’s attention. Raddish perked up at the same time, though their motivations were slightly different as they raced towards the cake stall.

The Spikes family had lined the week’s treats along their front table: rows of cupcakes, cookies and other baked delights. At the back of the stall was an array of mixing bowls and kitchen utensils, all surrounding their centrepiece product: a hardcover recipe book entitled, Spiny Delights! A Hedgehog’s Favourite Recipes. The mixture of sweet and fruity scents tempted Quill’s stomach and it was all they could do to resist buying everything on the table. Well, surely they could afford one. Or two.

Content Warning: “Raddish, would you like a cupcake?” When no one responded, Quill whipped their head around. But Raddish was already nowhere to be seen. “Raddish?” A blissful purr answered them, though it was neither an answer to Quill’s question, nor a hint to the cat’s location. However, Quill didn’t call themself Raddish’s best friend for nothing. “Would you mind terribly if I took a look at your kitchenware?” Quill asked the hedgehogs. “And I will have two strawberry cupcakes, please.” They looked through the mixing bowls first, then the Tupperware containers. Finally, they found what they were looking for in a soufflé dish. Because of course—by

some law of the universe—if an object had an opening, it would also have a Raddish. “How much?” Quill couldn’t help but smile indulgingly. A head distinguished itself from the ball of fur in the pan. “Oh, wait, you don’t have to buy this!” “Let me, Raddish. You look so snug in there, I couldn’t bear to see you part from it.” Raddish beamed and disappeared back into their new den. “How about stuffed toys? Little bird crafts with real feathered wings?” Raddish suggested between bites of their cupcake. They sat on a hill overlooking the market, soaking in the nice weather as they ate. “I’d need more than feathers to make those,” Quill replied, “—like paints, and something for the body.” They

raised a brow at Raddish. “Maybe wool?” “Don’t even think about it!” Raddish jerked away, cradling their cupcake as if it were the wool in question. Then, like a peace offering, they added, “But I could help you paint.” “Thanks.” Quill played with the paper wrapper of their cupcake. “Or maybe some sort of feather coat?” “Great idea! It sounds tough to make, but I can think of a few people who might appreciate that, especially when winter comes.” They ate in companionable silence for the next while, broken only by the occasional idea that happened to strike either of them. Then, Raddish threw the remaining piece of their cupcake into the air and pounced up to

CREATIVE

swallow it whole. “I’ve got an idea, wait here.” They chucked their paper wrapper at Quill and sped back towards the stalls. Quill watched with not much concern, but rather a great deal of curiosity. Raddish tended to have some pretty wild ideas, but they usually ended up being the best ideas. So when Raddish came running back, Quill couldn’t wait to see what they had in mind. “What’s this?” “A present for you!” Raddish grinned, handing over an acrylic paint set. “You don’t need to overthink it. Even if you just make little trinkets or feather crafts, they’ll look fantastic! You can use this to help!” Quill stared at the paint set, then at Raddish. Excitement and pride radiated from their best friend. Dropping the set (carefully!), Quill pulled Raddish into a tight hug. “Thank you so much!” “Anything for you, my friend,” Raddish grinned. “And I had to thank you for the soufflé dish, somehow.” They were walking back when Quill noticed a skip to Raddish’s step. Quill narrowed their eyes; they were all too familiar with that particular gait. “Did you buy something else while you were getting the paints?” Raddish froze. Slowly, they turned towards Quill with

wide, guilty eyes. “In my defence, it was calling out to me! It just had to be bought,” Raddish said, revealing the fuchsia ball of wool they’d pounced on earlier. “Really?” Quill let out an exaggerated sigh. “What if we share it? I’ll let you use it for your dolls— then it’ll count as a useful purchase!” “It really isn’t a big deal, you can buy whatever you like. You didn’t have to offer.” Quill watched as understanding dawned on Raddish’s face. Just as the cat opened their mouth to speak, Quill grinned and cut in first, “But no take backs! Thanks, Raddish!” Raddish scowled at first, but eventually relented to reveal a matching grin; a grin that they wore all the way home, contented with their wonderful finds and even more wonderful friend.

ART BY STEPHANIE NESTOR /

FOR AND AGAINST: CLOWNS FOR BY APRIL NOUGHER-DAYHEW

AGAINST BY CAITLIN WILSON

n 2016, ‘sightings’ of evil clowns popped up everywhere. IT was a hit, Melbourne band the Clowns received hate mail and Mississippi made it illegal to wear a clown costume for Halloween. Mass hysteria has tainted a diverse comic tradition which goes back millennia. Until the 18th century, monarchs sought jesters’ advice, knowing they would speak candidly. Sometimes they lost their head, but most of the time clowns made rulers doubt rash decisions when no one else could. Clown You Zhan convinced emperor Qin Shi Huang not to paint the Great Wall of China. James VI of Scotland was so averse to reading contracts, his jester tricked him into signing his own abdication. And when Persian ruler Shah Naseredin asked if there was a food shortage, his jester replied “Yes, I see Your Majesty is eating only five times a day.” Aussie politicians don’t need any help with abdications, but good clowns are still giving us permission to be silly when the world feels heavy and overcomplicated. Some of the most universally entertaining performers of recent times practice clowning—Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean), Jim Carrey, Charlie Chaplin and Helena Bonham Carter, to name a few. The Melbourne comedy scene is full of clowns too, like Sharnema Nougar and David Tieck, who in their show Two Little Dickheads, feel groovy about the discometeorite about to obliterate the earth. “The idea is that you’re an expert on being an idiot”, Tieck says. Nougar, former captain for the Starlight Children’s Foundation, says clowns link health services to children in remote areas. “Clowns speak a universal language—the doctors don’t want to get on the plane without Starlight clowns on board, because the role they play in helping kids feel safe and relaxed is so important”, she says. So, here’s a list of things creepier than clowns: taxidermists, toe socks, morning television hosts postscandal, Russian Youtube channels made for children (look it up), Hollywood moguls, daddy long-leg spiders (who named them?), fedoras, Snapchat maps, every virtual assistant ever,and string cheese. Food shouldn’t be that texture. If clowns still give you the jitters, think about this: classically dressed circus clowns put on the most recognisable outfit in the world. If clowns wanted to get away with murder, they should have gone corporate. Take it from PTV: you’ll be pummelled by a rhinoceros on a skateboard long before the clowns get to you.

/ ART BY VAN ANH CHU

ne of my earliest memories is being scared shitless by a clown. The terrifying creature goes by the name of Slava Polunin, and his nightmare carnival of a show, Slava’s Snowshow, scared me out of my five-year-old mind. My recollection of this encounter has grown hazy in the intervening almost two decades, but I remember a lot more cringing and shaking with fear than laughter. That’s the major issue I think a lot of us have with clowns—they aren’t particularly funny. Maybe way back in the day clowns were the height of hilarity, before our sense of humour was refined/ruined by internet memes, Vine and Tik Tok. But it’s not just that they don’t make me laugh; it’s that they actively freak me out. Nowadays, clowns carry much creepier connotations. We all remember that weird spike in evil clown sightings around the world in 2016 with a shudder. Even here, Facebook pages with names like ‘Melbourne Clown Association’ threatened actions ranging from vague, potentially spooky pranks to legitimate violence—some clowns were seen holding knives or machetes. The look doesn’t help dispute the spookiness either. The painted-on smile and whiteface is pretty nightmarish. Give me glam, full face beat clowns with Instagram brows and glaring Fenty highlighter and… I’m still not on board. In fact, I may have made clowns somehow even worse, and I apologise for giving you the most horrific nightmares you’ve had since the release of the movie IT. Their annoyingly perky energy, much like their headache-inducingly bright appearance, doesn’t do it for me either. Frankly, I don’t trust anyone that positive in the year 2019. Have they not seen the news? Your juggling and honking won’t save the icecaps, buddy. And no, I don’t want a balloon animal, thank you very much. Perhaps it is this lack of relevance that makes clowns such terrible characters. Krusty the Clown is undoubtedly one of the worst (non-racist) Simpsons characters. Ronald McDonald has a weird energy, and contributes to childhood ill-health with his spruiking of greasy, delicious fried food. Jared Leto’s Joker was laughable, admittedly, but I don’t think that’s quite what they were going for. I could probably delve into my psyche to discover why a person with a façade of happiness permanently rendered on their face creeps me out so much, and make peace with the goofy entertainers. But I think it’s easier just to avoid circuses and children’s parties. I’m quite content with my coulrophobia.