NZ Comics 路 Comic Creator Interviews 路 Lots of Comics!
“The Making Of” Special! Ever wondered how Nexus gets put together? In this special ‘making of’ feature, we let you into our inner sanctum and tell you all about it.
Monday the mag comes out. Hooray! Dawn checks it over and growls at all the mistakes that horrible Matt did.
Volunteer N*ck comes to visit. Then Dawn is a spoilsport and refuses to run his pisstake ad. Lame.
Josh screens potential volunteers. Jessica “Bum Chin” Simpson doesn’t make the cut.
Josh calls Matt’s mum and sister ‘cousins of the wife of the butler of a servant of an ugly brother of a line-dancing squirrel-toed fork-tongued idiot with magazine editing tendencies’ so they fight it out in Samurai Shodown 3 – as you do.
:o
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Matt warms up his girlish and sensitive graphical fingers. He is actually owning the CPU player with Ukyo. Slice you, bitch!
Tony is hard at work booking ads. Hahahahahaha!
Volunteer M* is hard at work researching MySpace, LiveJournal and email.
Josh compiles statistics and information on his declining enrolments news article. Still can’t make the digital girl orgasm. Just like real girls, huh? (Oooo!)
Everyone’s working hard, so we take a break and make bets on how high a tower of cans can grow. Matt wins.
Thursday and deadline approach. Josh works even harder to look like he’s working.
WSU Pres Sehai discusses the layout of her column whilst also being creeped out by the designer demon
Sadly not. Stress levels rise. The violence escalates. Ben the design bitch gets a whippin’...
Outside are noisy skaters. Inside are worried writers.
In a delerious flurry, Nexus is finished about 5am (scene unfit for public viewing).
...While Matt the designer gets a smackin’!
Time for another embarrassing Josh photo? Yes!
Ben is doing work - but is he doing it fast enough for Matt?
Matt and Matt discuss serious publication issues. Dawn discovers some hangers-on. The perils of being a one-backpack girl.
Come 9am Friday, Dawn takes the PDF files to the lovely Karen at the This Week office. Who may or may not look like this.
Those files then zoom over to see Martin at APN Media in Tauranga. No, not Ricky Martin. He prints em up nice and folds them and stuff.
On Monday the mag comes out. Hooray!
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
I Got Five
The questions 1 – What is your favourite comic? 2 - The best superhero is… 3 – Draw me a superhero
By Rocky
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
Michael 1 - Don’t read them 2 - Baked Beans Man
Megan 1 - Power Puff Girls 2 - Superman – I just saw the movie (was uber-lame)
Rebecca 1 - X Men 2 - Wonder Woman
Lloyd 1 - Spiderman 2 - Catwoman
Nicolai 1 - X Men 2 - Batman
Parties!
Party Review by Skot and JR Skot and JR approach the party that they have been requested to review...
Unfortunately upon their arrival they are politely asked to leave.
Luckily one of the party-goers decided to cause a distraction outside the gate and we snuck in behind the smoke screen.
Once inside we found some bogans and thought we would get to dance in a circle pit.
However there was nothing circular about the dancing at the party whatsoever.
Top three quotes
I bought seafood today - bloody everything! Just wanted to put a smile on her face. Think she’d let me? Not a chance. All I said was that I got laid off. Anybody would’ve thought I’d told her my prick had dropped off!
Here’s the mail, it never fails. It makes me want to wag my tail. When it comes I want to wail - Mail!
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Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly... stupid.
Txt me any time (after 7am) 0274 279319 and JR and myself will review your party.
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CONTENTS
Cover Story Something to do with New Zealand Comics
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A look into the New Zealand Comics scene and what’s movin’ and shaking. Features interviews with Toby Morris, Dylan Horrocks and Ant Sang.
Features Nexus: “The Making Of” Special Gig Spotlight: A Low Hum City City City interview Working in the USA
02 25 32
News 8-13
International Enrolments down Freedom Week NZUSA Elections coming up Short Shorts Nexus Haiku News Mr. Safety Bigglesworth A day in the life of a News Editor
Regulars
Credits
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04 05 07 14 15 26 24 33 33 34 35 35 36 36
Editor Dawn Tuffery nexus@waikato.ac.nz
News Editor Joshua Drummond news@nexus-npl.co.nz
Designer Matt Scheurich graphics@nexus.npl.co.nz
Music Editor M. Emery htownslut@gmail.com
Assistant Designer Ben
Books Editor Michelle Coursey
Advertising Manager Tony Arkell admanager@nexus-npl.co.nz 0211766180
Proofreaders Gemma Burrows M. Emery Main Feature: Scheurbert
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I’ve got 5 on it Party Review Editorial Lettuce Jerk Jokes WSU columns Gig Guide What is Goth? Engine Talk Split Decision Word Freak Confessions Rage In A Cage Guide To Society
37 37 38 39 40 41 41 42 43 44 45 46 46 47
Boganology 101 Classic Rock Review Uncle Jim’s Kiddies Page Comics Food Muscle Man Magic 8 Ball Citric DVDs Books Films The Player Opal Nera competition Busted
Contributors this issue: Hazazel, Rocky, J. Boyd, Danielle Thomson, Andrew Neal, Lucy Dunn, Ross MacLeod, Mazzy, El Groado, Nick Elliot, Boulanger, Skot, Matt, Brie Jessen, Burton C. Bogan, CJ, Nick Chester, M. Emery, Gary Oliver, Uncle Jim, Kazuma Namioka, Joe Citizen, Josh Drummond, ASPA, WSU Nexus: Likes to draw The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of Nexus Publications 2003 Ltd, any of our advertisers, WSU or APN Media. Nexus is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA). The cover was done by Scheurbert (www.lvl99.com). If you wanna do a cover, email graphics@nexus-npl.co.nz.
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
NEXUS NEWS
“KEEPING YOU UP-TO-DATE WITH WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK”
MONDAY, 7 AUGUST 2006
COMPILED BY JOSH DRUMMOND
Uh Oh, spaghetti O’s!
By Joshua Drummond
Sacred international cash cow adds to student exodus.
The number of students attending Waikato University has continued to plunge this year, with Equivalent Full Time Student numbers currently resting at just 9,728 as of 21 July 2006.
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This is well short of the University’s goal of acquiring 10, 522 EFTS by the end of the year, and is 603 students less than the University had in 2005. Overall, student numbers at the University have dropped by 1, 867 since 2003. International student numbers have taken a particularly hard hit, with 14 per cent less enrolled than last year. University Vice-Chancellor Roy Crawford blamed the decrease in internationals on the strong performance of the New Zealand Dollar in recent years, as well as other factors.
“In May, the New Zealand Tertiary Education Consortium, of which Waikato University is a shareholder, signed a major educational services contract with the Omani Minister of Higher Education to supply course content, quality assurance and staff training for four degree
Orgad said that while she did not think that the figures reflected specifically on the quality of education available at Waikato, she did think that the University needed to “focus more on its key strengths.” “I don’t think it says anything adverse about Waikato, specifically, because this trend is present at almost all the universities in NZ. The Uni needs to look at ways it can promote the qualities of the institution so potential students find the University more relevant to them. They need to understand what market they’re going into in order to make the Waikato experience relevant.”
programmes in Oman”
Student numbers are projected to come to 10, 054 by the end of 2006, still short of the University’s 10, 522 goal. Despite this, Crawford said in a press statement that the University was “very pleased with domestic enrolment numbers, particularly in regard to students who are new to University, where there has been growth for the
She added that any changes have to be made quickly. “They obviously can’t keep going the way they’re going, because student numbers have plummeted, so they clearly need to make a change,” she said.
first time for several years.” The press statement also outlines that the University expects to be one per cent short of its projected EFTS enrolments by the end of 2006, due to “strong B semester enrolments” – bringing it close to a projected total of 10, 522 EFTS.
University, according to a press statement, has outlined several strategies for increasing EFTS and enrolments, which include the “successful introduction of a new online enrolment interface, which makes it easier for students to apply.”
The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University, Doug Sutton, put an optimistic spin on the figures, saying that the rate of decline in Waikato’s student numbers was “well below the national average,” and that the University was likely to achieve its (revised) EFTS goals. “That in itself is positive,” he said.
The press statement also included the ViceChancellor’s comment that while universities continued to find the business of enticing international students “challenging,” he did have some developments.
Sehai: Worried But the Waikato Students Union President, Sehai Orgad, said that the figures worried her. “In terms
of the University overall these figures affect the projected funding for the year - which means the Uni has to look again at the budget, the funding allocation, and the reason why student numbers are dropping,” she said.
Changes are, apparently, underway. The
Oman, who will save us?
“Just this week we signed an agreement with the University of the South Pacific, which will open up a number of exciting new academic opportunities,” he said.
Fun, fun, funding – till Cullen takes the EFTS away It’s not just Waikato University that has been struggling with falling enrolments. Most universities in New Zealand have been experiencing falling domestic and international rolls, with the notable exception of Welllington’s Victoria University. The falls come after university rolls reached a national all-time high in 2003. Equivalent Full Time Student funding, or “bums on seats” as it is popularly known, is the main method of funding for all tertiary institutions. In 2004, the Performance Based Research Funding initiative was launched, which was set to phase out EFTS funding by the year 2010. PBRF is a method of funding that grades universities according to the quality of the research they produce, and allocates funding accordingly. Tertiary Education Minister Michael Cullen recently announced further changes to the tertiary funding model that are designed to “ensure tertiary education has greater quality and relevance”, and will be introduced incrementally across the sector from 1 January 2008. Dr. Cullen intends for the new model to be about collaboration rather than competition amongst providers in order to strengthen the quality of New Zealand’s tertiary system. “The competitive funding model has spread expertise in the tertiary sector too thinly, and not always in the areas of greatest need. Under the new approach tertiary education organisations will be expected to play to their strengths and reduce undesirable overlaps.”
News
Amnesty International’s
Freedom Week By Andrew Neal Last week was Amnesty International’s Freedom Week. Friday afternoon saw the Wai Taiko drummers perform in Garden Place as part of the festivities, which are aimed at raising funds and awareness of human rights abuses occurring all around the world. Freedom Week is a global annual event that raises money for work Amnesty International does all around the world protecting human rights. Freedom Week is Amnesty’s most intensive fundraising effort. This year it was decided that Amnesty activists needed to “make some noise” for human rights. That’s where the music and performers come in. There was plenty of busking going on around New Zealand and the world, including here in Hamilton. On Friday afternoon there was acoustic performer Allana playing in Garden Place with the Wai Taiko drummers following. This year’s events were huge, with healthy expectations for raising a lot of money and awareness of human rights abuses. This year’s Freedom Week celebrations focused on the human rights crisis currently occurring in Sudan. “Darfur is the world’s forgotten human rights crisis,” said Amnesty International New Zealand Development Manager, John Shaw.
At this current time it is estimated by Amnesty International that 250,000 to 400,000 Sudanese men, women and children have been slaughtered. Thousands of women and girls have been raped. Up to 2.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes – and of these, 200,000 have been forced to live in refugee camps in neighbouring country Chad. The vast majority of these abuses have been committed by ethnic Janjawid militia groups, armed and paid for by the Sudanese government. The atrocities are continuing today, and spreading into Chad. “They were shouting ‘We come to kill the black slaves,’” one Sudanese man from the destroyed village of Bir Kedouas claims. “I was running away next to The Imam who was very old. He was shot four times in the back and in the leg. They then burned the village.” “Appalling human rights violations have been taking place there since the civil war in Sudan spread to the region in 2003,” said John Shaw.
Amnesty International is the world’s largest human rights movement with around 1.8 million members in 150 different countries. The work Amnesty does is imperative to protecting people’s way of life and standard of living. This work includes campaigning against rights abuses such as imprisonment, torture and murder on account of people’s beliefs or identities. Amnesty’s doctrine is that everyone on the planet has the rights to their beliefs, culture, language, nationality, even the right to have a job and a family. Amnesty International believes the biggest weapon against human rights abuses is information. Therefore, Amnesty International provides complete, impartial research and evidence of human rights abuses as a main part of its work. The other part of Amnesty’s work is acting on abuses. This is done in many different ways, including lobbying through letter writing and delegations, publicity and development activities. It’s not too late to help out Amnesty International. There are plenty of things you can do to help out. You can ring 0900-486-26 to make a twenty dollar instant donation, visit the website at www. amnesty.org.nz and become a member or go along to the Waikato University group meeting on Wednesday August 9th in the Guru lounge at One o’clock.
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News
National Bank Expands Tertiary Deal to Include Part-Time Students By Megan McKechnie Part-time students will now be able to apply for the National Bank’s Tertiary Plus package, for the first time, after consultation with the Unitec Student Union (USU) and other student bodies prompted a revision of the bank’s terms and conditions. The new terms mean that from the beginning of Semester two all students who are under 25 with New Zealand citizenship or Residency and enrolled in an NZQA-accredited course are eligible to apply for the package. The bank will also continue to offer an International Student Package for foreign fee-paying students. The savings from associated bank fees and
interest on overdrafts add up to be potentially over $100 for part-time students who would previously pay standard customer rates. The National Bank’s senior manager of corporate affairs, Robert Reid, says the Bank has a strong association with students. “We have banking packages designed to assist students as they move from school into the workforce or tertiary study. The launch of the part-time package recognised that part-time tertiary study is becoming an increasingly common choice for school leavers,” says Reid. He says the Bank recognises Tertiary students may have unique financial needs. “Tertiary Plus was created to meet those needs. It is a comprehensive package of banking products and
NZUSA Elections Open
By Nicola Kean Applications are now open for the annual National Union of Students’ Associations (NZUSA) elections.
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A total of three positions are up for grabs, two co-presidents and one national women’s rights officer. Candidates do not have to be currently serving on a student association executive, or even have to be a student. “Helen Clark could run” if she wanted, says current CoPresident Joey Randall.
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Applications must be received by Returns Officer Hayden Wilson of the law firm Kensington Swan by 4pm on 18 August. Nomination forms are available on the NZUSA website www. students.org.nz . The elections will take place at a NZUSA conference on 2 September. To win the election, a candidate must gain two-thirds of the vote with up to three rounds of voting. Randall says he will “definitely” be running for a second term as copresident.
services with special benefits for students and it has been designed to help students manage their finances, and to make things easier while they are studying.” Special benefits include fee waivers, an interestfree overdraft and a personal loan at preferential rates. According to USU president Robert Freeth, “the manner in which students study is changing and it’s important that student’s associations work to educate the commercial sector of that fact”. “The National Bank has produced a policy that benefits both students and business. I think this is a very smart decision that has opened up benefits potentially to thousands of new students,” says Freeth.
News
Library gets Internet! Should have had it ten years ago, says everyone. Hamilton City Libraries continue to diversify their community appeal and improve access to information by providing public internet access at all local library sites. Hamilton Libraries director Faye Clark says that the provision of public internet access to customers at community libraries is another example of libraries’ growing profile as an information and learning hub within the community. “Internet access adds an important dimension to Hamilton Libraries’ suite of information tools,” said Clark. “Libraries play a key role in developing a passion for knowledge within the community. The internet is a primary vehicle for knowledgegathering yet it is not something that everyone has ready access to. By making the internet available at our libraries, we are able to make this tool more accessible to the community to use for personal interest, study or research. Broad internet access will be available to library customers and library staff will be working closely with customers to provide guidance and ensure
The Nexus Haiku News Because procrastination is fun. Mel Gibson’s tirade? Anti-semite spigot: Passion of the Bigot.
No plea by officer charged with drink-driving You silly cop! You know, You shouldn’t have had One or so for the road.
have a “Firearms Spokesman”
Libertarianz state the obvious
Visa clampdown unfair to visitors from poor countries, say Greens
May consider changing party policy to “We’d let people do whatever the fuck they want.” “Auckland Gun Dealer Greg Carvell should be applauded for his actions in defending himself from a machete wielding aggressor in his shop yesterday,” says Libertarianz Firearms Spokesman, Peter Linton. “All too often these days, ordinary citizens are portrayed as being
Greens vow to halve press release output, will now send out only 30, 000 per week Green Party MP Keith Locke says the significant increase in visa rejections for those seeking entry to New Zealand has little to do with terrorism. A special immigration profiling unit set up last year has turned down almost three times as many visa applications than in previous years by citizens
the bad guy when they are simply acting in self defence.” “Here is a clear case of a criminal entering private property and threatening lawful citizens with what appears to be deadly intent,” explained Linton. “Fortunately, Mr. Carvell was able to defend himself with a level of force that he ‘deemed appropriate, in the circumstances he believed them to be’. This is the universal right to self defence under the 1961 Crimes Act - the same Act which allows Police officers to use force.” Nexus spent several minutes of slack-jawed catatonia with the realisation that the Libertarianz
who come from a secret list of 21 allegedly high risk countries. “We have yet to see proof that anyone convicted for carrying out terrorist attacks, or anyone legitimately suspected of terrorist intentions, has ever tried to enter New Zealand,” Mr Locke says. “What MPs like me are finding is more complaints from New Zealanders that the Immigration Profiling Group is stopping their mother, father, brother or sister from coming for a visit. The people having the hardest time getting a visitor visa are those from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.”
Aerial spraying plans ‘outrageous’, residents say
NZ Idol finalist dropped for being pregnant
“Don’t spray us, we’re beggin!” God! - they’re not dropping A chemical weapon.
Dear woman, it is stated: An Idol you’re not While impregnated.
Winston’s spider no joke for NZ First
NZ lags in oral health
Good heavens, poor Winston! By a spider On his ass he got bitten.
Dentist, an oral Check-up, please Why, Dentist, are you down on your knees?
More Winston jokes
Rotorua defiant on plan to ban criminals from CBD
Bite on his ass What a pain Hellish indeed, coming back on the plane.
Bank manager and wife deny bank robbery charges Robber and missus Came to a consensus, “we’re utterly witless.”
How can, when you have a wealth Of criminals, Ban a town from itself?
Late-night and designer gone mad It is late at night A loud noise cries out I got a big fright
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Mel Gibson: idiot.
appropriate usage.” So no porn then. Sorry, kids.
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Crime and Safety
Mr. Safety Bigglesworth in the
“Crimebeat on Campus” Hola! This week’s Mr Safety Bigglesworth’s Crime Column comes to you courtesy of Spain. Coma esta usted? Muy bien? Yeah, I thought so. But you’re not so muy bien if you’ve just been robbed, eh? Being robbed is el Diablo, La mierda del toro, [the devil, bullshit] and the rest. And all thieves are Pajiera.[wankers] If you ever meet a thief who speaks Spanish - say this to them: A noche me folle a tu madre por el ano, Vete a la mierda, me cago en la leche de tu madre, usted chaperon! [Rough translation – oh, hell. Look it up yourself. It’s pretty dirty.]
The Hamilton East area had 19 burglaries for the week - and police are continuing to remind residents to keep their houses secure at all hours of the day. Police also want to hear from residents who see any suspicious activity in their neighborhood.
Rightyho. Enough waffle. There has been something happening this week. Ray Hayward, Uni Security ex officio, tells me there’s been some bikes nicked out of the big ol’ bike parking area by the Bus Stop. Now, there were what the cops dub “extenuating circumstances” here. The bikes were stolen: a) at night – as they’d been left overnight, for reasons that escape me but probably don’t make a whole lot of sense, and b) while they were locked up with shitty low-quality bike locks.
On both occasions, the burglaries occurred between the hours of 12.00pm (midday) and 3.30pm. The burglar appears to be targeting cash and laptop computers and enters houses through insecure windows.
Moral: don’t leave your bike at the Uni overnight. While there may not be a hell of a lot of thieves on campus, there are (as you will see) plenty in the immediate vicinity. And use a proper bike lock, one that won’t come off if you say, pull it quite hard.
Senior Sergeant Paul Jermy says police are continuing to focus on identifying burglars and are interested in identifying a male in the Hamilton East area, who is believed to be burgling houses during the day. The tall Caucasian male was seen in the vicinity of 2 burglaries in Hamilton East, carrying a bag.
Now, I don’t know if it’s the same guy, but a mate’s flat was burgled not too long ago in a pretty similar way. They took a laptop, an Xbox and a host of other stuff. And surprise! – They didn’t have insurance. The lesson, kids, is twofold: 1. Get insurance. 2. Lock the fuck up. Properly. Until next time, children,
Crime near campus has been pretty bad over the last couple weeks. To give you an idea, have a look at the map below. Whoa. That’s a lot of burglaries. And that’s just near campus. Here’s the rest of the news, and it’s not good:
The House is Burglaries Blue car is cars broken into
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Upside-down car is cars stolen
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Adios!
A Day in the Life of a News Editor
Crazy Comics By Josh
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
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Send your letters to nexus@waikato.ac.nz before 5pm Tuesday and the best one wins a $5 voucher for Campus Kiosk – conveniently located in the Cowshed courtyard for all your snacking needs!
Lettuce Policy
Nexus welcomes and encourages debate through the letters page – serious or otherwise. Letters should be no more than 250 words and received by 5pm on the Tuesday before publication. All letters will generally be printed so give it a bash, but the editor retains the right to abridge or refuse correspondence. Bad spelling and grammar will not be corrected. Pseudonyms are acceptable but all letters must include your real name and contact details even if you don’t want them printed (and they won’t be printed!). We discourage the use of pseudonyms for serious letters.
Letter of the Week Reply to “Bikes are people too” I own a scooter meself and it goes max 50km/h. And everytime I get these bloody ego tripped ppl
I haven’t been a student long, but its long enough to complain about something minor like toilet paper. How people think that something similar to sandpaper is good for my arse, I don’t know. I do know that everybody should have a copy of the new Nexus paper, because it probably makes a softer alternative.
Emo Bashers Get What For
(Don’t worry Nexus it’s a compliment. If my arse is happy, then I’m happy, which is usually the aim of your magazine.
mean to say chuck your pretty much my favourite animal but some time you just don’t know where the line is... speaking of lines I’m sorry that you cant get into any of the clubs, because of your face, (move along, move along) But don’t take it out on us girls who just wanna have fun. In future could you not compare every female in town, trying to fill the void with alcohol and music, to a common prostitute. I think a lady of the night is more appropriate. As for the “…swaying side to side like an alcoholic bum…”comment, my friends and I like to maintain a “steady as she hoes” motto. Seriously, I think some one is over compensating for something, why don’t you grow a little homohawk of your own find $3 in the couch and go out and buy some one a drink? Just remember… “it’s all in the hips!” Ok so maybe your thinking throw me a freaking bone here, your just trying to make a name for your self as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many people you hurt and leave dead and bloody
speeding off after me with their shitty used up jap car. I bought my scooter on march this yr and I’ve already fell off the bike 2 times due to collision by these ppl. Why r general kiwi drivers so impatient and inconsiderate? Too much debt and poor life style? It really cracks me up when I see how kiwis
Tash.
drive especially on the roundabout at the bridge st/angelsea st countdown area. They r supposed to merge like a zip, but look at all these ego tripped
Losers? That’ll teach em
ppl go!!! wweeeee, i hope they get crashed and get heaps more debt YO!
Dear Ed
Steven Ishii
The Lebanese are losers. Anybody that thinks a militant group like Hezzbola will bring peace and prosperity should stop smoking that shit. It’s not good for you. The Palestinians have decided that the best way to get what they want is to blow up random people. The Palestinians used suicide bombers, Hezzbolza lob inaccurate rockets at civilian populations. Katyusha rockets are only good for killing civilian targets. Hezzbola wants to destroy Israel. How? Will killing random civilians
Steven has scored himself a $5 voucher to use at Campus Kiosk. Come and grab it from Nexus!
But controversy is fun This haka controversy is highly unnecessary. The answer is simple. Change the flippin thing. It would be just as insulting if the Aussies incorporate the ‘up yours’ finger sign in theirs. Sia.
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Open The Don Why isn’t The Don open when its meant to be? 11:00 is 11:00, so when you go down there at 12 planning to start your weekend early or get a few drinks in before your afternoon lecture and its not open, naturally you get a bit pissed off! They do a good job down there but whats up with that?? from wanna get on the piss.
I can’t believe it’s not sandpaper!
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overthrow the government. How can you have a ceasefire with an organisation whose primary aim is to destroy you totally and forever? Even if Hezzbola succeeds, Israel is a nuclear power. Does anyone believe that destroying Israel will produce anything but a smoking, radioactive wasteland in all the middle east. Hezzbola are cowards who hide behind woman and chilren, who hide behind religion and who like killing random people. Terrorism has never worked anywhere in the world, so why do Lebanese choose this as a way of changing the Israeli political system. Because they are losers. Yours A Ghandi Supporter
Dear Chunk and Banjo, Regarding your new column in the Nexus, “Guide to Society” I am very displeased, indeed! Firstly, your article on meh, meh, I don’t like the emo kids. Was more emo than the freaking emo kids. I
along the way. Well I write sins not tragedies, so can you deal with that?? - Mollew Phoenix
Aw, love i’d just like to say hi to the cute brunette in my ECON100 class. U usually sit a few rows from the front, with anothr chick. One day Ill be brave enough to ask u out, but for now I adore from afar. You make going to that class all worthwhile. Your anonymos admirer WHAT! Send us your letters, biatches! OK! Send them to nexus@waikato.ac.nz
Jokes and Stuff
A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, “Relatives of yours?” “Yep,” the wife replied, “in-laws.” A man said to his wife one day, “I don’t know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.” The wife responded, “Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you! This Maori fella is walking up the beach with a couple of live crayfish in a bucket when he is stopped by an Inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries. He says to the Maori that it looks like he has caught a
couple of undersize crayfish. The Maori fella says “Nah Bro. These crayfish are my pet crayfish. I just bring them down to the beach every day for a swim and when I whistle they hop back in the bucket and I take them home. The MAF officer doesn’t believe him and says it’s illegal to catch undersized crayfish and starts writing out an offence notice. Then the Maori says “Nah bro, just watch this” and chucks the crayfish into the surf. The MAF officer than says “OK, lets see ya whistle and make those crayfish come back to you.” And the Maori fella says “What crayfish?” Contributed by Gary Oliver (winner of the Rialto pass)
Featured Funny Website
Crying while Eating
www.cryingwhileeating.com This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the ‘net, at least, until the Americans made linking to sites like www.tubgirl.com illegal! I guess it is a pretty rude thing to do, but anyway, Crying While Eating is genius; it’s videos of people doing what the site name says. They all have different foods they eat and different motivations for having a cry. Brilliant!
Send your jokes and funny website links to nexus@waikato.ac.nz
Lost Prophets “Emo” Competition No-one understands my pain! Can’t you feel my f$%king pain?!
The winner of last week’s Citric “Lost Prophets Emo Competition” is Geoffrey Churchill! Good work at being the only entrant to this comeptition – It was a no-brainer awarding it to him!
‘Shallow life drowning alone I gasp for air Coldness creeps over pale skin There is darkness so deep it pulls me down Happiness dies in a deep dark sea.’
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Geoffrey also submitted some emo poetry which we thought was rather emotion-filled and will post it here for your perusal.
It must be tough being emo but occassionally, it pays off. Free CD!
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SOMETHING TO DO WITH
NEW ZEALAND
COMICS By Scheurbert New Zealand-made comics are a bit of a rare thing in comic outlets. That’s not to say that they don’t exist. However rare or out-of-sight they may be, there are quite a few gems amongst their ranks. Not many people know it but there is a comic scene in New Zealand that has been developing for a while, burning away in the background with nary but those ensconced in the industry’s dark surroundings knowing its full secrets – a congregation of alchemists turning lead into gold. The dedicated few work hard to produce personal works whose distribution generally goes as far as family, friends and the local comic shop. The prevalence of the computer and the Internet in all manners of personal and business life have allowed comic artists and many
couple Superman comics at your friend’s house and most likely saw one of the numerous comic-based movie adaptations out there which seem to flood theatres at the moment. With the nostalgia of yesteryear in our memories, more people are made aware of the pop culture of comics and come back to them like welcoming an old school chum. Comics are your buddies and New Zealand has made some great buddies for you to befriend. As a celebration of New Zealand comics, I present some interviews with well-known New Zealand comic creators, descriptions of some New Zealand-based comic events, and some information on outlets and publishers ready and willing to deliver you comics made from good ol’ Aotearoa...
more individuals the facilities to easily open their works to the wide world, to be found and appreciated by a larger group that may have previously never ever heard of our New Zealand creators. The Internet heralded the “Information on demand without having to get off your butt” age, making things much easier.
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I thought I’d write up a feature that celebrated this small artistic group and raised awareness of it. Most people will have experienced comics at a base level; you all watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons as kids, read a
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Something about New Zealand Comics event that celebrates the Japanese style... The Doujin Overload is an event based on Japanese pop culture, ranging from comics (“manga”) and video games to animation (“anime”) but not inclusive of either. The event was spearheaded by group of like-minded individuals and abetted by the Graphic Novel Cafe and Nuke-Bloodaxe.org . Most people already know about Armageddon, that great giant expo of pop culture madness which really is just a big fat huge money spinning stall trying to suck you into the Dark Capitalist Arts of Materialism, so I won’t mention it here . Last Auckland’s event was really quite bland for NZ comic creators and this year’s Wellington event wasn’t all that spectacular either. However, here are a couple lesser-known events that help inform the public and inspire the fledgling New Zealand comic creator
The Doujin Overload featured things like a Cosplay contest (short for “costume play”) where people create and wear costumes of various characters. It also had a small display of animation cells from numerous Japanese animations. An Art Competition was held to pit artists against artists and strike up some friendly competition. The meat of the whole event was artist and doujin booths, which were on hand to sell their home-cooked wares. The Overload was hosted at the Mercure Hotel on July 9, 2006
scene.
Doujin Overload
and was deemed a success by all those involved. Another event is being planned for next year and will most likely be a bigger affair.
“Doujin” might seem an alien word to most people out there, and it’s because it is -- “doujin” literally means a “literary group” but used in this context describes media made by fans of a branch of Japanese culture (i.e. anime and manga). Yes, it is ironic that I start off an NZ comics article about a
As a personal observation, the Doujin Overload seemed like a top-notch tribute to festivals such as Comiket which is held in Japan with a huge convention centre taken over by hundreds and thousands of artists and fans, all making their own
Chopper Chick Comics was started by two New Zealand artists: Marty Emond (also co-creator of Illicit Streetwear) and Simon Morse
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(one of my favourite comic artists). Chopper Chick Comics was an offshoot from Wellington gig guide The Package, which frequently ran high-quality art from local artists in its weekly gig publication.
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Chopper Chick Comics have published artists such as Simon Morse, Toby Morris (see interview on opposite page) and Greg Broadmore (currently at Weta Workshops – he has also worked on projects such as Lord of the Rings, King Kong and even designed the Riff Raff statue!). While their output isn’t as frequent as usual publishers, Chopper Chick Comics publish comics with high-end presentation; some full colour, some black and white. All boast fantastic art, colourful covers and high-grade paper. Chopper Chick Comics also take submissions so if you think you’ve got the stuff that’ll make kings want to purchase your comics with gold, go check out www.chopperchick.co.nz.
thing. It’s a very DIY-based scene and one that will surely build here in little ol’ New Zealand, especially with the Japanese style so influential these past few years with TV shows such as Dragonball Z, Pokemon and popular straight-to-home releases such as Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell.
New Zealand Comics Weekend & Eric Awards The New Zealand Comics Weekend was on the 28-30th April of this year and coincided with the Wellington Armageddon. Boy, do I wish I had gone to this instead. Held at the Ron Barber Gallery in Wellington, the NZ Comics Weekend featured an exhibition of New Zealand comic art from the past to the present and also featured talks by people such as Dylan Horrocks (see interview for more info) and Darren Schroeder, and also hosted the 2006 Eric Awards. The Eric awards are New Zealand based awards that recognise the achievements of New Zealand artists within the realm of comic arts. Judges this year were people such as Draw, Moira Clune, Dylan Horrocks, Arthur Cantrill, Bob Scott, Burton Silver and Joe Sacco(!). The awards got their name from New Zealand comic pioneer Eric Resetar who first self-published comics back in the 1940s.
Something about New Zealand Comics sails. I haven’t seen lots of these people’s work so I don’t know what kind of stuff is actually being produced, but from what I can see it looks like there is a lot of energy there at the moment. Like any scene it goes through waves of activity and waves of quiet - good to see it’s picking up again.
Toby Morris has been a prolific creator of comics in New Zealand – at least, while he was in New Zealand! He is now located in Melbourne, Australia. Toby has been involved with publishers such as Chopper Chick Comics with his Pirate Technics series (up to Issue 2) and has also been the main illustrator for the A Low Hum gig posters. He was even published in Nexus once upon a time ago with a serial comic titled Dreamboat Dreamboat. I gladly took the opportunity to present him with some questions and get his opinions on comic creation. What originally got you into comic creation? I’ve always done it, I can’t really remember why i got in to it. The first time I actually went and got a finished comic printed up I was 13. I grew up with a massive pile of Tintin and Asterix books and I loved those to bits so I think that would have had something to do with it. How do you think New Zealand comics are being perceived by New Zealanders themselves? Oh, I think most people who are fairly open minded about the arts in general are prepared to give them a go when they come into contact with them, but there aren’t many opportunities outside of meeting someone who makes them for that to happen. NZ comics are ever so slowly growing in profile/acceptance but realistically it is still very much way out on the fringes to your average joe kiwi.
What are your impressions of the current New Zealand comic scene? It’s funny for me because I’m away from it now, but it seems like having a few new keen people has blown some fresh enthusiasm into everyone’s
What do you like appreciating the most out of your’s or someone else’s comics? Impressive execution, like really flash drawing, is one thing but really it’s personality I mainly want to see, a unique idea or perspective. Sincerity and humour are important to me too - people think those two things are opposite but when there are both there that can be magic.
With your ‘Dreamboat Dreamboat’ series, were you aiming for some kind of ‘Home and Away’ serial? For sure, very much so. My whole thing was to make it like the whole thing was being sung by a tough 50s girl band (like ‘leader of the pack’) so that’s why I have a 50s girl band as part of the story but also why I tried to do it in a really soap opera serialised way. Do you prefer to tell a good story rather than make any kind of story up as an excuse to draw? I love drawing but I have a lot more enthusiasm for writing the stories. I have the concepts for hundreds of comics in my head and scrawled in sketchbooks but I only find the time to draw and complete a tiny portion of them. My sketchbooks are mainly filled with writing - whatever that means.
“I think about robots and music more than a lot of other things.“ What do you think the future has in store for New Zealand comics? I don’t think NZ comics will ever take over the world but I quite like that about it. I think NZ comics will continue to attract people who do really strange and personal and odd work, and the more generations of people doing that the more the precedent will build to have to do even better stuff than ever before. What comics have you been reading lately? We All Die Alone by Mark Newgarden, rereading lots of early/mid Love and Rockets (I love that stuff!), Kramer’s Ergot 4 and 5 are still my favourite books after two years, some Ron Rege, Kevin Huizenga. What was the inspiration for the “Pirate Technics” comic series? I wanted to do something that tied together my involvement in music and comics. It was also kind of tied specifically to the medium I was putting it out through. It started being in ‘the package’ which was quite a dance music oriented publication. I felt like I was a rock n roll dude and they were getting me to do all this work for them, and it felt like rock was creeping up and taking over dance music in Wellington at that time, so I started doing stuff for the package with rock n roll pirates ‘invading’ the package and taking over in the name of rock n roll. By the time they wanted me to do the series I felt
Your ‘A Low Hum’ posters are really awesome. Not to mention you’ve done a million other posters for other bands, including your own. What kind of job are gig posters to you? Thanks. I love doing posters and approach them in a pretty similar way to comics - even though it’s just one image, I still use a storytelling approach. You have to find some kind of connection between a visual image and the music which I love doing. You have to set the tone, the mood the vibe etc for the gig. It’s easy and awesome to do if you love the band, hard if you haven’t heard, don’t like or don’t get the band(s). I’m not doing as many these days as I’d like because I’m too busy playing music, but I’ll come back to it for sure.
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How viable do you think comic creation and illustration is as a job in New Zealand? It’s not easy. Comics as a job is not even worth thinking about - illustration as a job to pay bills while you do comics is do-able – that’s what I was doing before I left NZ but I was not making a hell of a lot of money and it had taken me a good few years of doing illos for free and building a profile to even get to that stage.
What kind of elements and themes do you try to include in your own creations? Whatever is on my mind. I have a few things that will pop up again and again (robots and music would be two big ones) but it’s usually whatever I’m thinking about on the day. I think about robots and music more than a lot of other things.
like the whole thing had turned around and that whole rock n roll explosion had happened and by that time I felt like rock was being stolen by pop so I made the series about rock and dance teaming up to defend against pop.
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Something about New Zealand Comics
Where to buy New Zealand comics? The most logical choice is to try your local comics shop. If you can’t find them on display then ask at the counter to see their selection.
Mark One Comics and Games Mark One has been Hamilton’s primary supplier of pop culture goods since 1989. Throughout my lifetime I’ve shopped at Mark One and they’ve made it easy to appease my changing tastes of nerdary goodness over the years supplying things such as basketball cards, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer, Japanese animation and comics and regular Western comics. The store manager of Mark One, Chris, has also been entrenched in the New Zealand comics scene – aside from being a big fan of comics himself. Going to school with the likes of Hamilton’s old mega-comics group Oatz and being a manager at a comics store has given him insights into the positives and negatives of publishing one’s own works to comic form. He provided me with some good ideas towards getting comics out to the people (which you can read in the box to the right). MK1 stocks publications by more prevalent artists such as Dylan Horrocks, Marty Emond (White Trash), Roger Langridge (I picked up a copy of No More Mrs. Nice Nun while I was there), and various other smaller publications such as some issues of Pirate Technics, various comic
anthologies by Funtime comics (a group located down in Christchurch – check out funtime. comics.org.nz) and to be honest, not that many self-published Hamilton efforts aside from a couple of issues from Dean Ballinger himself (you might see his comics quite regularly on page 39 of Nexus). Sometimes you can spot M. Emery’s excellent Manfighters comics on sale but recently there haven’t been many. Look out for a new New Zealand comic publication called Pictozine which is a collection by various artists around NZ. It’s got some great names on the bill and should be a good introduction to the world of New Zealand comics. MK1 are more than happy to order comics from known distributors so if what you’re looking for isn’t in store then they will, generally, be able to get it for you. Mark One Comics and Games are located on Victoria Street. MK1 also have a swell website which you can keep up-to-date on comic and other arrivals by accessing www.mk1.co.nz.
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Graphic Novel Cafe Aside from residing on Shortland Street in Auckland, the Graphic Novel Cafe is slightly different to your regular comic store. Aside from buying comics, you can pay to read comics from their in-store library, or if you like, watch from their extensive library of Japanese animation. They also stock a wide variety of Japanese pop culture related merchandise and can most likely import anything for you from Japan. To top off the banana sundae that is the “GNC”, they even serve coffee so you’re more than welcome to sit down and read the whole of Great Teacher Onizuka with a cuppa in hand. The other thing that makes Graphic Novel Cafe
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so exemplary is their devotion to nurturing a local comics scene. They were one of the companies supporting the Doujin Overload festival and also provide a place for creators to sell their goods. Good on them for encouraging local artists. Graphic Novel Cafe also have a website where you can peruse their goods (and also “doujin” goods created by local artists) at www. graphicnovelcafe.co.nz.
If you’ve got the passion, most likely you’re already producing your own comics in print or on the web. Chris, the manager at Mark One Comics and Games has some interesting gems to impart to future and present comic sellers looking to make money from their self-produced works. “If you are wanting to produce a comic, be clear why you want to do it. If your goal is to see your work in print and see it selling in a local outlet then go for it – I will buy a few copies at least. If you want it to be read and consumed in large quantities then put it on the web. If you want to achieve fame then streak across Waikato Stadium (preferably while there’s a game on), write a mini-comic about it and sell it on TradeMe. If your goal is riches, then choose a new hobby and marry well. Again exceptions are about – witness local alumni Christian Pearce & Greg Broadmore’s growing Weta fame, Ant Sang and Bro’ Town, and Dean Ballinger is huge in France.” “The other bit of advice I’d have to give is to get the format right. Comics can be small periodicals or large self contained volumes but they can also be mini-comics. Better 4 pages of pure gold than 20 pages of waffle. Mini comics can be inventively packaged and designed, as well as reasonably cheaply produced. There is a growing amount of Kiwi anthology comics being produced and some of them have great comics in them, all to often surrounded by not-great comics (I’m being polite).”
Something about New Zealand Comics
Dylan Horrocks is perhaps one of New Zealand’s most well-known comic artists, within New Zealand and abroad. He won an Eisner Award (American-based awards given for creative achievement in comic books – Dylan earned the “Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition” award in 2002), he’s been regularly published in the NZ Listener, had editions of various books translated into other languages such as French, Italian and Spanish, worked with overseas comics companies such as DC and Vertigo, among many other comic things! What originally got you into comic creation? I’ve always been into comics - since before I could read. And as soon as I was old enough to pick up a pen, I was drawing comics. My Dad was into comics, too, so the house had a lot of good stuff on the shelves - European BD magazines, American underground comics, you name it. How do you think New Zealand-made comics are being perceived by New Zealanders themselves? It’s hard to tell, really. As a cartoonist, I spend much of my life hidden away in my study writing and drawing, without much contact with the outside world. But the recent NZ Independent Comics Festival in Wellington was amazing - people came from all over, and bought heaps of local comics! So I guess there’s more awareness of NZ comics these days.
What do you appreciate the most about comics? I like it when comics are beautiful to look at. And when they open doorways for me - to new ideas or ways of seeing and thinking, or just to a new imaginary place or daydream. I’m big on daydreams, fantasies, powerful desires and all that stuff...
[It’s] growing exponentially, and full of creative energy and ambition. It’s also a really fun bunch of people. There are currently a whole heap of very good comics being drawn here, and I hope they’re going to be seen widely.
What do you think the future has in store for New Zealand comics? I really don’t know. Sometimes I’m reminded of the NZ music scene 20 or 30 years ago - when there was no industry, just a scene, at the fringe of most people’s awareness. But it was
“Look – Batman isn’t a character these days, anyway. He’s a franchise. A brand. Owned by Time Warner and maintained purely for profit. That’s the bottom line, and to my eyes that’s what shapes and informs everything about the character and stories.” Does the computer play a large role in your construction of comics? Only after I’ve drawn them. I draw everything the old-fashioned way, but then scan the artwork and send it to the publisher as a TIFF file. Sometimes I tweak things in Photoshop, but nothing more than I used to do by hand in the past. It’s just easier on the computer. My colour work is usually coloured in Photoshop, too. The main difference the computer has made for me is the ease with which I can now communicate with publishers and other cartoonists around the world. Being able to upload artwork to a publisher straight away and have their feedback immediately - that’s fantastic! Websites and blogs have also made it so easy for NZers to be involved with what’s happening in the comic scenes in Europe, America, the UK, Asia - everywhere! It’s a very exciting time. What kind of elements and themes do you try to include in your own creations? Right now, I’m really interested in the creation of imaginary people and places in art. I like
just beginning its transformation into an actual industry, with a very robust presence on the national stage. Maybe that’s about to happen to NZ comics, too. What comics have you been reading lately? Kramer’s Ergot, The Ganfeld and Mome, which are really interesting American comics anthologies. They feel like despatches from a growing underground art movement. Also some great stuff from Europe, by people like Joann Sfar and Blutch. And local comics like Robyn Keneally’s epic Roddy McDowall book, Brent Willis’s hilarious Battlevan, Tim Kidd’s beautiful Came the Dawn and whatever else comes to hand. How did you get to work for overseas companies such as Vertigo and DC Comics? They asked me to do some writing for them, on the strength of Hicksville. The first thing I worked on for them was Hunter: the Age of Magic, which was a Vertigo book, and hence supposedly a bit less mainstream. Though I soon realised Vertigo is really just another category of mainstream.
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How viable do you think comic creation and illustration is as a job in New Zealand? It ain’t easy to make a living from it. There are no local comic publishers; although I get the impression some NZ book publishers are increasingly interested in graphic novels. Even so, it’s hard enough earning money from any kind of writing or art in NZ. The people I know who are making a go of it either deal with overseas publishers, and/or do a lot of freelance illustration work. But the vast majority have a day job, and do comics in their spare time. Which isn’t a bad solution, in my view, and some of my favourite comics have been done by part-time cartoonists. What are your impressions of the current New Zealand comic scene?
being able to add something new to the world, something that didn’t exist before. Otherwise I’m trying to focus on the pleasure principle right now - I want to enjoy what I’m doing, selfishly and without really caring what other people think of it. And I’d much rather be writing and drawing about love and sex than fighting and war. You can never have too much sex in art, that’s what I say! Though these days, war just keeps rearing its ugly head and forcing its way into my stories.
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Something about New Zealand Comics What was it like working for those overseas companies? Fascinating, but personally very difficult. I quickly found I’m not really cut out to write that kind of stuff. And it meant engaging closely with the US comics “industry”, which is a pretty ghastly institution, really. Anyone who’s read Hicksville closely should realise I’m ambivalent about that industry, and working with it only deepened those feelings. DC and Marvel have been in decline for decades, and they show no sign of recovering any time soon. I really don’t like the kinds of comics they’re publishing, for the most part. And it was an odd experience to find myself writing comics I couldn’t really respect. Now I’m working on a story (The Magic Pen) about the experience - and the terrible things it did to my head. So at least I got some good material... It’s quite an honour to get given a project to work with characters such as Batman in ‘Legends of the Dark Knight’. What was it like writing for these well-established and revered characters? Well, I never really grew up revering those characters myself. I was always more interested in British comics (2000AD etc), European comics (like Tintin and, Moebius) and American alternatives and undergrounds (Robert Crumb, the Hernandez Bros, etc). So I didn’t have a personal store of reverence or my own fantasies about “how I’d like to write Batman” or anything like that. And of all the DC comics, I like the Gotham City titles the least - it’s all very dark and grim and gritty, and takes itself very seriously.
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Look - Batman isn’t a character these days, anyway. He’s a franchise. A brand. Owned by Time Warner and maintained purely for profit. That’s the bottom line, and to my eyes that’s what shapes and informs everything about the character and stories. The same is true of all those characters - Superman, Wonder Woman, Spiderman, the X-Men. Maybe if they’d been allowed to die with their creators, they could have remained powerful individual visions. Or, alternatively, if they’d entered the public domain and become part of our shared repertoire of icons, symbols and stories. But instead, they’re stuck in this awful commercial limbo, unable to die and unable to truly come to life. They’re the Undead of comics...
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So it was fascinating, as I say. But not an altogether pleasant experience. What is the creative freedom like when working with companies such as Vertigo and DC Comics? Well, that’s hard to answer. In theory, there’s quite a bit of freedom to write whatever you want. I was almost never told outright what or how to write. But in practise, there are expectations,
Panel from “Physics Engine” story in ‘Are Angels OK?’ (published by Victoria University Press, 2006)
and it’s hard not to internalise those. And certain things really are off-limits - especially in the DC titles (Vertigo is the ‘mature readers’ line, so allows a lot more swearing, sex and violence). It always bugged me, though, that the bar was set much lower for sex than for violence. I wasn’t allowed to have Batgirl sleep with Superboy, for example. But a teenage girl being tortured to death in a long, graphic, creepily sexualised scene - oh sure, that’s fine. But I should say that other writers have been way more creative and determined about pushing the envelope with DC than I ever was - and more power to them. What advice do you have for anyone wishing to pursue a career in comics on an International level? Go for it, but (a) understand you will need to have a ‘day job’ for a long time - if not forever; and (b) there’s no substitute for doing the actual hard yacka. You’ll have to produce a lot of full, finished comics before anyone will start paying you for it. That’s the only way to get good enough, and also the only way to get noticed. So don’t sit around waiting for someone to hire you - just start making comics and enjoy it! “Hicksville” is about a New Zealand comics creator who makes his mark on the comic world but isn’t acknowledged by his hometown, which (ironically) has many people who love comics. Was this in any part slightly autobiographical or is it more of criticism on New Zealand’s ‘tall poppy syndrome’ ? Not really. For one thing, Dick Burger is hardly presented as a character to emulate. The people of Hicksville hate him for a very good reason. I think Hicksville is more a celebration of being at the margins than a plea for acceptance...But I love the way each new reader seems to uncover new things in the story which I wasn’t aware of - that’s one of the biggest treats about being
published and read by people other than my friends and family. What was your motivation behind ‘Dirty Comics’ and ‘Tijuana Bibles’? They are much more adult-orientated (in a sexual tone) compared to your other publications... I like sex. Doesn’t everyone? Seriously, though, I think the erotic is a very powerful - almost magical - force in art, and something I’m very interested in exploring. Besides, the idea of my comics actually turning people on seems like an indescribably beautiful and potent thing for art to do. I’m currently working on a long graphic novel called ‘Venus: the Secret Comics of Arthur Holly,’ which explores all this stuff in greater depth. It’s been one of the most difficult and challenging things I’ve ever written. But only because it deals with stuff which is so damn powerful and personal and complicated. So I know it’s worth doing... What exactly is ‘Cornucopia’? From what I gather, it’s a country that you’ve completely made up. It seems to be a big part of your new series ‘Atlas’. It’s the country where cartoonist Emil Kopen was born and spent most of his life. The history of Cornucopia is utterly fascinating and I’ve been interested in it for a long time - the world’s only communist monarchy (from 1946 till very recently, when the new king began a radical reform process). And the role of comics in their culture is uniquely significant, which seems to me a story that needs to be told. Of course, the people of Cornucopia would be very offended to hear I’d made their country up - so I won’t say any such thing. Check out Dylan’s site: www.hicksville.co.nz
Something about New Zealand Comics include in your own creations? Whatever interests me at the time. Big themes about life, death and why we’re here seem to crop up a hell of a lot in my work. This isn’t a conscious theme I”ve chosen to explore... it’s just that I’m fascinated by this stuff so it winds up in my work.
Ant Sang made his name in New Zealand comics initially with his DIY effort Filth but more breakthrough was with his serial comic Dharma Punks. If www.antsang.co.nz you’re still lost, then you might know Ant from the TV series Bro’town as he was the character designer for the denizens of Morningside. I hit him up on some questions to get the low-down on his opinions, ideas and work. What originally got you into comic creation? I’ve drawn cartoons for as long as I can remember but I didn’t start producing comics until the early 1990s, when I discovered “alternative” and autobiographical comics... stuff like Dan Clowes’ “Eightball” and Chester Brown’s “Yummy Fur” and “Ed the Happy Clown”. How do you think New Zealand comics are being perceived by New Zealanders themselves? I don’t think most New Zealanders are even aware of New Zealand comics! Do you prefer working on comics with other people or by yourself? Comics are a very personal form of self-expression for me, so I really like to work by myself. Doing comics isn’t really a fun process, it’s just something I feel compelled to do.
What are your impressions of the current New Zealand comic scene? It’s a really diverse yet tiny scene. There is a whole spectrum of artists working in different genres and towards different goals. Some are seriously trying to make a living from comics while there are a lot of hobbyists who do it for fun. Despite this, most cartoonists seem to know each other or at least know about each other and what we’re all up to. What kind of elements and themes do you try to
What do you think the future has in store for New Zealand comics? I suspect NZ comics will continue to exist beneath the radar of mainstream New Zealand, despite our best efforts... What comics have you been reading lately? “Louis Riel” by Chester Brown, “100%” by Paul
How did you come about the design of the characters for “Bro’town”? Did you base them on well-known New Zealand personalities? Yeah, four of the five main characters are based on the four Naked Samoans, who are the writers and performers of bro’Town... so I had to design teenage, cartoon versions of them and from there had to design the rest of the characters of Morningside. With your illustration work in publications like Pavement and The Fix, do you generally have free creative will in deciding the final outcome of the works you do for them? The Fix has been really good about any illustration stuff. Richard either likes it or not and so either accepts it or not. I’ve only done a few illustrations/ comics for Pavement and I’ve had no problems with them either. They’re so supportive of local comics, it’s great.
“Doing comics isn’t really a fun process, it’s just something I feel compelled to do.“ Pope, “It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken” by Seth and “Shaolin Cowboy” by Geoff Darrow. Your ‘Filth’ series is essentially the beginnings of ‘Dharma Punks’. How did ‘Filth’ start? I was inspired by the DIY ethic of alternative and autobiographical comics and thought ‘yeah, I can do that!’ and just started writing. It was a particularly confusing and angst-ridden period of my life and “Filth” was a natural expression of that.
‘Dharma Punks’ seems to be one of the very few comic serials you’ve had completed and printed. Are you working on anymore comics or are you concentrating more on different avenues? I’m currently working fulltime on series 3 of bro’Town. Apart from that I’m working on the Dharma Punks script and yeah, I’m also working on my next comic project, which will involve kung fu and Shaolin monks and plenty more...
What kind of themes were you trying to convey with ‘Dharma Punks’? “Dharma Punks” was my attempt at making sense of the “Filth” era of my life. It was also time to move on from “Filth” and “Dharma Punks” was a way of closing that particular chapter. On your website you mention that you are working on a ‘Dharma Punks’ script for film. How is that progressing? Very, very slowly. Though in the last few months I’ve made a few breakthroughs. I’ve set myself a deadline... by the end of this year I will have the first draft finished, fingers crossed. Doing the character design for the cartoon show “Bro’town” must have been a fun job. How exactly did you get it? The show’s producer, Elizabeth Mitchell, tracked me
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How viable do you think comic creation and illustration is as a job in New Zealand? Doing comics as a viable career in NZ is very difficult... almost an impossibilty really! Doing illustration work is pretty difficult too, but not nearly as hard as basing earnings around comics. With illustration there are a lot more opportunitys and outlets for work such as advertising, children’s books, working with design studios etc etc.
What do you like appreciating the most out of your’s or someone else’s comics? The comics I enjoy the most are ones where the writing and art complement each other seamlessly, neither overwhelming the other. Another thing that makes a good read is a comic which has emotional power and which gives me some heightened sense of being alive... and these are qualities that I strive for in the comics I create.
down when she heard about “Dharma Punks”. She asked me to try out designing some rough ideas of the main characters and luckily she and the Naked Samoans liked what they saw. And yes, it’s been great working on the show!
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Gig Guide
If you know of any gigs or events, send in the details to nexus@waikato.ac.nz. For any possible changes to this list, listen to Contact 88.1 FM
Auckland events are marked with an @ symbol
mates to Auckland to support them!
@ The eavesdrop listening party If you are interested in previewing new music by awesome bands head along to the Eavesdrop Listening Party at The Wine Cellar (St Kevin’s
@ Mole Music Presents Auckland girl rockers the Bengal Lights, Aucklands rock’n’roll hotties White Birds and Lemons, Hamilton’s own Sunny Tokyo and The Vacants at the Kings Arms Tavern, Auckland. Inverse Order, Full Code, and a few others will be playing at the new Hysteria, K-Rd, Auckland.
Arcade, K Rd, Auckland) from 7-11pm.
The show will cost $7 and will be R18.
Tuesday August 8th
Hamilton Film Society meets at 8pm every Tuesday at Victoria Cinema. Student subscriptions are $85 full year or $45 half year. 3-screening Flexi tickets are also available for $25. ‘In My Father’s Den’ will be screening on the 28th of March. @ Art Exhibition Go along and see an exhibition of new works by Rumpus Room Drummer Greg Page. 1 - 13 of August, Satellite Gallery, Auckland. Opening Night is the 1st of August 2006. 6 - 8pm
Wednesday August 9th Zebra Jazz band Zebra play at The Cook, Cook Street, Hamilton East every Wednesday night from
Friday August 11th @ Mole Music Presents Charlie Ash, Collapsing Cities, Whipping Cats, Kill Surf City and The Bonnie Scarlets at the Schooner Tavern, Auckland. Both Mole Music shows feature DJ H-bomb. Hamilton hardcore lords Antagonist will be doing a free show in Real Groovy. Go along, buy their new CD!
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Thursday August 10th @ Pig Out All the way from Christchurch, Pig Out will be playing with DJs in Auckland City. The show is going to be at the Wine Cellar which is in the Kings Arcade. This will be an ultra cool show so get a carpool deal together and take your
Coming up... The Black Seeds at the Raglan Town Hall With DJ Lord Fader, 8pm. Presales from Info @ Raglan and Tracs, Hamilton. R18. Spark 06, Wintec’s annual five-day festival of international media, arts and design, will be held in Hamilton from August 21-25. This always has some great speakers and presentations and it’s definitely worth catching a few sessions for inspiration. Look out for more details in the next Nexus.
@ Surrender to the Night And once again come along to the Kingsland Vinyl Appreciation Society at the Kings Arms, Auckland. This goes from 4.30-7.30pm w/ Jug Specials and is followed by the A Low Hum show (read below for more).
Semi-Permanent 06 is happening up in Aotea Centre, Auckland, on August 19th. Semi Permanent is a big design event with leading design professionals from local and around the world locations giving talks on how they do things. It’s like a bigger version of Spark! Tickets are $80 for Students ($120 for others) and you get heaps of cool stuff as well. Check
Saturday August 12th
out the list of speakers, other related events and also how to purchase your tickets at www. semipermanent.com/auckland.
A Low Hum Presents Jakob (Napier), City City City (Melbourne) and Operation Rolling Thunder (Dunedin) and introducing the very first live shows of Hamiltons own The Deadly Deaths. Upsett Records, Victoria Street, Hamilton (Matinee AA show from 2-5pm). The Castle, Ward Street, Hamilton (R18 Show from 10PM). Please note that there has been a venue double-booking at The Castle so look out for any kind of venue change for the ALH show on Contact 88.1 FM.
The Hamilton wing of the World Battle of the Bands is happening at Axces bar and Heat 1 will be on Friday 1st September, Heat 2 is Friday 8th September and Heat 3 is on Friday 22nd September. If you’re in a band that wants to compete, sign up at www. worldbattleofthebands.com and see if you can do as well as previous winners Chuganaut. New Zealand finals will be in October hosted at Hysteria in Auckland and the final finals will be hosted in Hong Kong!
8pm. @ Battle of the Bands Go along and watch the bands battle it out to be awarded the title of ‘best’. This is at the Kings Arms, Auckland.
@ The Cosbys ‘There’s a party on Cosby Street’. Go along to the Schooner Tavern, Auckland to see The Cosbys perform with The Situations and The Quick + The Dead. The Cosbys are a fantastic band and are definitely well worth checking out!
Gig Buzz
A LOW HUM presents Jakob (Napier) + City City City (Melbourne) + Operation Rolling Thunder (Dunedin) + the very first live shows of Hamilton’s own The Deadly Deaths SATURDAY AUGUST 12th HAMILTON Upsett Records (Matinee AA show from 2-5pm) The Castle (R18 Show from 10PM) From silence to violence, the swelling, lush soundscapes of Jakob from the Hawkes Bay have been responsible for creating some of the most magical and memorable shows in New Zealand over the past decade. Whether you’re a lip biter, a shoe gazer or a hippie arm swinger, odds are you fell in love with one of their first two albums, the smashing debut Subset of Sets or the sonically massive follow-up album Cale : Drew. You’ve been waiting for that third installment and Jakob are currently putting the finishing touches on their third record Solace.
They’re So Good They Named Themselves Three Times M. Emery talks to City City City.
They’ve toured the US, Europe, Australia and are now about to embark on their biggest ever New Zealand tour, including their first EVER all ages shows. A multi-instrumentalist five piece band from Australia that has two drummers and four vocalists? City City City are from the fine city of Melbourne and have been confusing reviewers and making journalists lives hell ever since they formed. Perhaps the only way to describe their sound is to take 60s film scores add New York post-punk, add free jazz add kraut-rock, a smattering of post-rock; finally add some bleeps and chaos. Whatever you do, don’t call it ‘cinematic’. According to Die! Die! Die!, the next guys are the “Best Band in the World”, and even though it’s taken as granted that you won’t see Operation Rolling Thunder entered in the ‘World Battle of the Bands’, take it as fact, if
What has been a highlight of the City City City experience so far? Playing at Meredith Music Festival as the sun went down last December was pretty amazing. It was a beautiful night in the country and we had 5000 people all listening and having a great time. Things like that are pretty hard to surpass. Maybe also just getting The Perimeter Motor
To accompany such a mammoth tour, it would only be fair to offer a spectacular compilation and album this month. So, as usual, entry to all the shows is ten dollars, but if you pay fifteen big ones you will get the new August issue of A LOW HUM magazine and the new compilation featuring: Jakob, Barnard’s Star, Explosions in the Sky, Operation Rolling Thunder, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, The Deadly Deaths, Three Month Sunset, The American Dollar, City City City and more…!
Show finished. It was a long process undertaken mostly in our own studio by us, so that felt pretty good – and getting hooked up with Remote Control in Australia as a result of that was great. How did Blink trick you into coming on one of his Low Hum tours? Oh jesus don’t say that, I’ve only heard good things! I met Blink at Happy in Wellington earlier this year – I was doing a couple of solo shows there. We got talking about a band I play with sometimes in Oz called Rand and Holland. Blink loves them but wouldn’t believe I play with them because I’m from Melbourne and they’re from Sydney. Anyway, I can’t remember if he watched my show that night but I gave him a copy of The Perimeter Motor Show and a couple of weeks later he wrote to me in Melbourne and asked us over. What has been the worst gig you’ve played so far? I’d forgotten all about it but Joe informed me that it was definitely in a bar called 101 in Melbourne in December 2004. It was a shit night at a shit venue, run by a bona fide ex-mercenary from Africa, who went about threatening what audience members there were before ordering us to stop playing about 5 minutes into our set. Really, really
fucking awful. What can NZ expect from City City City? We don’t really go in for stage histrionics and we all dress kinda differently – so if you’re after a unified fashion statement with high kicks maybe this gig isn’t for you. But live the music is a lot more driving than the albums I guess, and the shows are usually pretty full on – we’ve got 2 drumkits, guitar, synths, bass and vocals and samples and noise and shit flying around everywhere which usually equates to some pretty wild and beautiful music. Set-wise our travelling swag will include about half songs from the current album, a song from the first album, and a few new songs. The new stuff is all really vocal centric compared to our stuff from the past, so that should work out quite well sandwiched between the two fully instrumental acts (Jakob and Operation Rolling Thunder). What would it take for you guys to sell out? Well firstly, let me just say what a great question I think this really is. Brilliant. So brilliant I don’t think I can possibly answer it.
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How did City City City form? The first City City City show was about 5 years ago, but it was much different then – more like a free-jazz improvising quartet. It was okay, but I’m actually the only surviving member of those days. Once our drummers Joe Talia and Rory McDougall joined, along with Mick Meagher on bass, it started feeling like a real group, and I started gravitating much more towards the sort of music I’d always really loved – namely more rock based stuff. Ben joining on synths really sorted the sound… that’s when the real City City City thing started to make sense to me. And we’ve just sort of built it from there - there’s been plenty of guests and comers and goers, but that’s essentially the band. Unfortunately our trumpet player Eamon is off rolling around Europe with The Band Who Knew Too Much so he won’t be attending this Aotearoan juggernaut.
they were a metal band, they would have won. Like an ebbing wave of noise washing in over a windswept peninsula, a sound that only a band from Dunedin could emulate, Operation Rolling Thunder are gonna make sure that you don’t go swimming for at least an hour after you’ve eaten. Even though they don’t have a bass player, Operation Rolling Thunder will still make all your empties fall off of the subs and smash on the floor.
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WSU President Sehai Orgad
90 Day Probationary Workers Bill Debate Be there! WSU are giving you the chance to have your say, and to participate in a debate with prominent MPs who have written this Bill, as well as MPs who oppose it. National Party MP, Dr. Wayne Mapp (the fulla who wrote it) will be at the Village Green/The banks, along with his mate, MP David Bennett,
debating against strong opposition from MP Sue Moroney (Labour) and guests. It’s gonna get heated people, so get your ‘academic debating’ hats on, and take part in this
about legislation that could greatly affect your working lives. The French rioted, the Aussies are getting laid off via text messages - surely you WILL have an opinion, so come down and
controversial banter.
have it heard.
If you don’t know much about the Bill, or the debate, come down anyway and get clued up
FRIDAY 11 AUGUST 12:30 – 1:30pm @ VILLAGE GREEN/THE BANKS
Vice President
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Carl Gordon
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Plagiarism and Big Brother Part 2
the UoW, making it look ‘more effective’ than others. That’s status gained by being more punitive.
and application. And there is a growing sense of fair play among members of the Discipline Committee.
“Misconduct” is very broadly defined in the Student Disciplinary Regulations (2006 Calendar, p. 755). And the “summary jurisdiction” regulations (op. cit., pp. 759-63) say all cases of alleged plagiarism should be
The UoW nominally has more ‘plagiarism’ cases than other NZ universities, possibly because of its definitions (and reporting system). Waikato students are not worse than others. But there is a widespread impression
So, there are positives too.
referred to the Pro Vice-Chancellor, who may delegate to a departmental “chief examiner” the right to exercise “summary jurisdiction” (the PVC can directly exercise summary jurisdiction).
that the UoW is more authoritarian, and it’s time that changed. The ‘authoritarian’ impression is reinforced by unjust decisions typically involving inexperienced staff members adjudicating.
753-769). The Student Discipline Committee comprises: Chairperson, two staff reps, two student reps, and secretary. You can take a friend for support. Second, ask WSU for an Executive member to also be there with you for support. Make sure you explain not only what happened when you did not reference something, but also the circumstances (e.g. lack of time because of family tragedy; relationship crisis; health problem). You can bring a letter from a counsellor.
Departments should deal with all but extreme cases internally. Maybe those with more centrally adjudicated ‘plagiarism’ cases pass the buck to reduce their workload. It’s unethical to have a punitive centralised committee or its Chair adjudicating on minor errors of referencing. That‘s harassment. Centralised reporting/referrals elevate the numbers of plagiarism cases ‘dealt with’ by
But having more ‘cases’ doesn’t mean that we are worst in addressing the issue. Major efforts have been made to (a) decentralise, (b) train adjudicators in fair procedure to ensure natural justice, and (c) educate and inform students (as both a preventative and corrective measure). Other universities don’t appear to be doing as much. Others may have fewer reported cases, but they are more likely to have inconsistencies in outlook, regulation
If you are charged with plagiarism … First, read the rules in the Calendar (pp. 132-3,
If you think the ruling on your case of alleged plagiarism is unfair or too harsh, you can appeal. Come to WSU for help.
Sports and Recreation Officers Paora Mato – Joint Officer with Matangaro Paerau Kia ora koutou, Well I’ve got some feedback from the Canteen – Corporate Relay. They are keen to have students helping out (no surprise) but I haven’t found out whether or not we can actually enter teams. The race is on 17 September. 5 members per team $100 entry. The run is approx 2km, supporting young people living with cancer. More on this next week. Also, the 2 September Great Race ball follows the rowing race between us and Cambridge University. Even more detail to come. The University Fijian games are in Christchurch in two weeks, and that is followed by the
Uni Winter Games. At the moment I am in the process of sorting out some admin and sponsorship issues with our travelling students and hopefully while you’re reading this that has been completed. Scholarships - there are still some that are open and waiting for you. Follow this url: http:// www.waikato.ac.nz/research/scholarships/ scholarships_and_prizes.shtml Now … if you ever wonder where I get all those newsy type events from, the uni website has an events calendar. Just plug in this url: http://events.waikato.ac.nz/cgi-bin/index.pl If you have struggled with the best way to write an essay, or critique some writing or even just
prepare for some exams and stuff, we have a great service on campus – Teaching and Learning Development Unit (TLDU) located in Info Commons in the Library. If you want some info on these guys and what they can do for you follow this url: http://tldu.waikato.ac.nz/ I highly recommend them. Lastly, the Interschool Hakinakina has been scheduled for about the middle of September. I know the School of Computing and Maths Sciences are quite keen to recover this trophy since we lost it last year – but no idle challenges need to be written here. Just you guys be ready! Kia kaha!
Mature Students’ Officer Vince Malcolm-Buchanan Ya Gotta Be Proud!
Adult Learners Week – MORE Awards and MORE Giveaways!
Te Komiti Hikoi – Te Huinga Tauira 2006
WSU has agreed to significantly contribute to the 2006 celebrations of International Literacy Day and Adult Learners Week! So much so,
A contingency of 40 Waikato University Students are receiving support in order to attend Te Huinga Tauira – this being the Annual
Often, voluntarily working on the WSU involves more industry, energy and effort than students might otherwise imagine. Sometimes, in all honesty, it’s so much work, for so varied and little individual success. In so saying, there are those occasions when, with much exertion, we, your representatives, work successfully to implement proposals that can only enhance your academic experiences at this institute.
Conference of The National Maori Students’ Association (Te Mana Akonga). This year it’s hosted by Victoria University. Congratulations to our Campaigns Representatives (Joe and Jade) for industriously pursuing this endeavour. Furthermore, a sincere word of gratitude is extended to each of the Executive who industriously assisted and supported this effort. To the best of my knowledge, this means that Waikato University will be sending its largest ever contingency to partake and compete against all other tertiary representatives – whew! Often your voluntary WSU representatives put in pretty long hours and contribute large efforts, with modest acknowledgement for those industriously earned successes. On this occasion, I have to salute your entire WSU! Ya gotta be proud! Have a great week - one and all.
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It is appropriate to acknowledge the two most recent achievements of the WSU, on the basis that the following accomplishments benefit our student’s campus-wide (both here in Hamilton and in Tauranga)!
that in fact, the WSU has now proffered two additional Adult Learners Awards, in alignment with the Vice-Chancellor’s! Not only is your WSU financing the two equal and additional awards, they have agreed to fund MORE giveaways, MORE benefits and, well, generally lots more overall, as regards to the week long September celebration. Due to the numerous logistics involved, both ALWC and ALMS will confirm details closer to the time – so keep an eye on NEXUS for the public announcements! My personal gratitude is extended not only to each of the Executive for supporting these endeavours, but also to our current Management – thanks Kirsty! Notably the ALWC Committee went ‘all out’ to help, thank you all so much.
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Environmental Officers Envirowhets and Enviropene Well, at the time of writing this I’m am so hungry, almost fading away, but we will press on! The theme of this week is personal sustainability. What is it? According to Professor Google it is “Well-Being from the Inside Out”. Having last week attempted our very own fruit and vegetable challenge (which Envirowhets lost by two incidences of improper eating) we can assure you that we are definitely cleaned on the inside. But what about the out? The question is through our actions can we effect change to our environment to be well on the outside. OK, let’s start with the basics - waste. How much waste
Shot Enviropeepz, a big win for the environment.
do you make? How much waste can you save? To find this out take the test by following this link - http://www.mfe.govt.nz/withyou/do/ footprint/ to calculate just how many worlds we would need to have in order for all of the world’s population to have your lifestyle. Then have a think about it. Recycling on campus is an issue we aim to address once we find out who’s in the know.
& Enviropene shall endeavour to assist you with comic relief
Feedback from last week’s challenge: Absolute win for the Uni lakes, Mr VC declined our offer to take a dip in the lake, but has committed research towards their restoration.
STUDENT INITIATIVES ON CAMPUS
This week’s challenge: Is between enviroofficers and campaigns-officers. Starts at WSU office this Wednesday 3:30pm, for 1 hour. It is to see who can collect the most rubbish from around the Uni and it will be weighed at the end to determine the winner. Anyway, back to the grindstone. Remember, mini breaks for sanity and longer breaks for fun. Should you require assistance with personal leisure time as a social concern we Envirowhets
Here are some fun things to do during an exam
don’t understand any of this. I’ve been to every lecture all semester long! What’s the deal? And who are you? Where’s the regular guy?” 4) Fifteen minutes into the exam, stand up, rip up all the papers into very small pieces, throw them into the air and yell out “Merry Christmas.” If you’re really daring, ask for another copy of the exam. Say you lost the first one. Repeat this process every fifteen minutes. 5) Do the exam with crayons, paint, or fluorescent markers. 6) Come into the exam wearing slippers, a bathrobe, a towel on your head, and nothing else. 7) Come down with a BAD case of Tourettes Syndrome during the exam. Be as vulgar as possible. 8) As soon as the instructor hands you the exam, eat it. Mmmm... Lake gunk...
1) Talk the entire way through the exam. Read questions aloud, debate your answers with yourself out loud. If asked to stop, yell out in Homer Simpson’s voice, “Oh, I’m so sure you can hear me thinking” 2) Bring cheerleaders. 3) Walk in, get the exam, sit down. About five minutes into it, loudly say to the instructor, “I
Cultural activities on campus in the nature of Student Initiatives have a budget line fairly untouched. If YOU have an idea, get the Vice-Chancellors support by applying to the Cultural Committee for funding. Contact: jph17@waikato.ac.nz
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And the rest of the WSU...
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Campaigns Officer Jade & Joseph
Tauranga Officer Andrew McKenna
Women’s Issues Officer Kim Armstrong
GLBT Officer Megan Moffet
Education Officer Andrew Pritchard
Disabilities Officer Jeff Hawkes
Maori Students’ Officer Renee Rewi Communication is a two way street – information goes out and information comes in, both have the realisation that that which comes in or out has the assemblance of truth (we would hope). The reason for my comment is that to some out there who think that there is an allowable bias for those who hold positions on the WSU Executive. As the MSO I pride myself with the knowledge that abuse such as this is not a value on which I base any of the representative
who attended different items. The word out there seems to be that Nexus covered Te Wiki O Te Reo Mäori very well. I take no ownership for the information, as it was just my reorganisation of popular articles and pictures presented on the web along with contributions by others. I acknowledge all these people where it would be inappropriate just to name a few. Wednesday events down at the banks went off a treat. I would like to thank everyone who gave up
I attended a concert provided for all who came from the young ones. Whilst manning the WSU BBQ we were treated to a vision of the future in song, haka and poi – it was indeed a pleasure to be serving sausages and patties to all who attended. Congratulations go out to all the organisers and helpers who helped make the night the success that it was.
processes I hold as the WSU Mäori Student Officer (I hold myself accountable to all Mäori Tauira of Waikato University for direct scrutiny).
their time during cultural hour to help out and to all those students who gave it a go. It was wonderful to see and hear those Maori phases spoken.
ponder:
Te Wiki O Te Reo Mäori went off with a real bang both in the eyes of the students and the public
Te Puna Tautoko kapa haka – my partner and
I leave you as always with something else to
“If you guys and gals are going to be very happy chappies in the future,’ (a brave person once said), ‘[Then] most people will not bow to the reason of TYRANNY”.
HIKOI TO PARLIAMENT 24TH AUGUST 2006 Programme 11am
Pohiri for manuhiri roopu @ Te Herenga Waka marae, 46 Kelburn Parade, Victoria University, Wellington.
12noon Lunch 12.45pm All assemble on Te Herenga Waka marae atea - Opening karakia - Introduction - House rules for hikoi to and at parliament grounds Guest speakers
2pm
Leave Te Herenga Waka (Transport provided to grounds for kaumatua and kuia)
2.30pm
Assemble on parliament grounds Opening by facilitator Testimonies from akonga Submissions by roopu Member of Parliaments’ opportunity to address roopu. Closing karakia Leave parliament grounds
Organise: Own travel to Wellington (Intercity buses give some great $10 overnight deals!). Own accommodation - Te Mana Ākonga (TMA) can provide contacts etc. Contact with TMĀ so we know numbers for pohiri, lunch and kaumatua transport. Own parking. Note there is no parking at Te Herenga Waka. Suggestion is to park car for the day at the Cake Tin: cost is $6 a day. The city bus stop is a short walk through the train station for drivers dropping off cars and busing back up to the marae - bus is Highbury 20: cost $2. Is a good idea as the Cake Tin parking lot is then a short walk from parliament grounds at the conclusion of the hikoi.
• • • •
Please bring: Own banners Own picnic blankets for sitting at parliament grounds Own fold out chairs for your kaumatua and kuia Own kaumatua, kuia and whanau
Remember: Appropriate language and behaviour at all times and in all aspects No abusive, violent or ridiculous submissions or behaviour. Each roopu to be responsible for roopu members Ahakoa te riri, me mau hoki te rangimarie i ngā wa katoa
Prepare submissions: Purpose is to tell the government what you
want; based on your experiences, and your hopes and dreams for you, your whānau, and Māori in tertiary education. Issues that TMA consider of greatest concern are: Quality and Relevance for Māori (review of courses and institutes, etc) Support funding for Māori (withdrawal of SSG Māori and SSG sub-degree, Manaaki Tauira) Furthur developments (continuance of racebased funding cuts, Treaty Principles Deletion Bill). Note: TMA has prepared draft submissions that roopu are welcome to change as they please. Have submissions from your roopu collected and ready to present at end of akonga speeches (i.e. may want to present in kete or something). (Also count of how many for formal record). (TMĀ will contact roopu president regarding speeches).
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1pm
Roopu / Association’s / Organisation’s responsibilities
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WSU International Students’ Officer
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Sonja Greubmeyer
The Ministry of Immigration has recently decided international students need to have an extensive and expensive health check every two years instead of once, before they arrive - for public safety reasons. If you find this as discriminating as I and want to protest, come to the WSU and pick up a protest card.
Flatmate Wanted Small double bedroom (can fit queen bed, drawers and bedside table easy) In ice house 5 min walk from Uni and around the corner from shops Off Carrington Ave Must be asygoing call 856 2718 or 021 035 9933 Flatmate wanted. Claudelands, large room. $115 including power and ph. Female flatmate wanted. Ph Vicky 8537522 or 0273024413. Flatmate Wanted. Female (18-25): $90 p/w includes pwa and rent. $240 bond, to live in urnished 4 bedroom house, spacious indoor and oudoor living. walking distance to uni and to town. Currently 3 easygoing, fun and friendly girls living in house. Contact Pip 0274589255 Flatmate wanted, 20+ mature flatmate wanted $110 p/w, 1 kingsize room avail. In big 3 bedroom house, fully furnished with dishwasher. close to town and uni, spacious indoor and outdoor living with parking available. contact Hayley 0274423228 Any bloody gender flatmate wanted for 5 bedroom flat, 5 minute walk to uni (vesty ave). Warm very sunny spacious room, great flatmates male and female!!! All uni students $80 p/w + expenses ph. 859 3198 (ask for Rob) Go on u know u want to!!! Female flatmate wanted. to live with 3 guys and a girl, all in 20s. Non-furnished, very sunny room. $95 rent covers phone, power, gas heating, broadband, sky and basic supplies. Down oneway end of Cook St, close to shops, town, walking distance to uni. Phone Tracey on 856 6630 or text on 021 130 1265.
DOUBLE ROOM $90p/w, 5min to uni in Silverdale house opposite shops, liquor store, bakery, takeaways + bustop, fenced o/s parking, broadband internet. To share with 2 others, approx $110 everything except food + tolls. Can be furnished, bed, desk, chair, lamp etc. Call Steve 0211571717 or 8560979 a/h. Lost: Faceplate for Pioneer stereo, last Tues. If found please contact Lisa (07)8590026 Auditions to become giant marijuana leaf for College Hall ball. Follwing earth element. Must be of a ‘higher’ class. Contact Tovah 0273280454 Band members wanted Looking for keen, committed drummer, bass player and singer for covers band. ACDC, the cars, boston, queen, steve miller band, RHCP influence. Text 027463 7483 Records for sale. 100s or even 1000s for sale at good tight prices at 15A Nelson Street weekly from Monday to Friday. Call 859 1271. No Holds
On the whole, taking everything into consideration, after weighing it up carefully and looking at it from all sides, it is generally agreed by most reasonably intelligent people that clichés just take up space but say little. We can help you get rid of them from your writing. Visit us at www.editwrite.co.nz. When you write wrong, we right the wrongs.
Club Notices 500 Card Tournament Prize for the winners Wednesday 9th August 7:30pm-10pm In the downstairs part of WSU building $2 entry pay at the door Please email wsu500@gmail.com to indicate numbers Meet people and prove your skills. Everyone welcome! See you there! Are you…. Interested in exploring your own spirituality? Interested in learning about different spiritual perspectives and practices? Interested in sharing your experiences of being a spiritual being on a human path? Come and share in our meeting discussions and workshops: Waikato University Pagan Society. This week’s topic: Reincarnation (part 2) Wednesdays, 1-2pm in J.B.07 Correction from last week: We are the sixth biggest religion in New Zealand. We are not a Star Wars appreciation club. We are the Hamilton Order of the Jedi. Contact : hamiltonjedi.yahoo.com.
Send your notices of 100 words or less to nexus@ waikato.ac.nz, or drop into box at WSU reception. Deadline is 5pm Tues.
2007 WSU Executive Elections Nominations for the 2007 Waikato Students’ Union Executive open today. Nomination forms and portfolio descriptions are available from WSU Reception in the Student Union Building, ground floor. Nominations close on Friday 18 August 2006, voting will be held Monday 18 September to Wednesday 20 September 2006. This is your chance to contribute to student culture and initiatives on campus.
If you require any information or a full time line of the elections please contact Kirsty Blackwell on (07) 856 9139 or wsu@wsu.org.nz
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The following are the positions to be elected; President Vice President Finance Officer Maori Students Officer Campaigns Officer Sport and Recreation Officer Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender Officer Mature Students Officer Education Officer Womens Rights Officer Environmental Officer Tauranga Representative International Students Officer Disabilities Officer
We look forward to hearing from you.
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Getting International
Work, Party and Play in the USA… all summer long! By Lucy Dunn
I am always reminiscing about my experience last summer, and I am planning to do it again as soon as I can. A friend and I wanted to do something different instead of our usual summer holidays at home and decided to make the big trip to the States during the uni break. We chose to go to California for a white Christmas and a lot of snowboarding.
everyone loves the Kiwis (especially our accent) people were always stopping to chat. The mountains in America are nothing like you would ever see in New Zealand, no rocks, knee deep powder, and a lot more lifts! Working in the States had so many other pros that included being able to ride/ski every day of the season, getting discounts off everything and getting invited to awesome parties! Working with all these people naturally meant almost every night there was something on and a lot of parties were planned, including massive monthly employee parties. The Americans were always keen to show us how they party in their country and trust me they are always good times!
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International poster entry by Yi-Leen
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We got a job at one of the ski resorts in South Lake Tahoe along with many other young people like us from all over the world including Aussies, Brazilians, Argentineans, more Kiwis and of course the friendly Americans. Working was the best way to meet people when you’re there. I worked on the lifts so I had the chance to meet hundreds of people every day, and because
Living in California meant we got to visit really cool places that were close by like the O.C, Hollywood and Las Vegas. We also got time off work to go travelling, and took an awesome road trip to San Francisco. There are so many places to go. There is never a dull moment when you are travelling and meeting so many other young people like you and we now have friends to stay with all over the world. If this sounds like something you would love to do you definitely should, it’s the best way to spend your holidays. CCUSA sorts out everything you need to do before
you go they are awesome. Check out www.ccusa. com to find out more. And if you don’t want to miss the summer or you’re not into the snow scene you can always go to Hawaii!
Columns
Now I’m not the best artist in the world, but I still got into the whole swing of things with this weeks comic nexus. However, there was a motivation behind what I decided to draw.
The other week, I was pulled up by a cop, for speeding. It was as I was coming into Cambridge from the Rotorua side, where you come out of a 100 zone into a short 70 zone and then a 50. Like any relaxed driver, I usually slow down as I come into the zones, rather than beforehand. Of course, this gives the pigs an opportunity to make some money. The cop that pulled me up was parked right next to the 50 sign, so there was no doubt that he was just waiting for someone to come into the zone still going a little fast. Unfortunately, that just happened to be me that time.
Now you have read all about goth definitions and history, I’ll give you my viewpoint. I have been part of the Gothic subculture since I first moved to Sydney in ‘99. I have always been attracted to its themes and music. At a game shop in I met a goth DJ who took me to a few clubs. Years went by and I would go out dancing at these clubs in Sydney usually once every two weeks. As there are only about a hundred Goths in Sydney they rent out a bar once every two weeks or so- decorate it out like Halloween and play music and dance. One of the main reasons I am part of the goth scene (besides the aesthetic) is because it is mostly composed of intelligent, artistic individuals. It is also a drug free scene and no one in it that I know of is even a heavy drinker. A lot of the girls dress in a revealing fashion but it also has a high moral ethic in regards to sexuality, where promiscuity is frowned upon and the scene is heavily composed of couples or people who are trying to start some sort of relationship. A lot of them marry young and stay married. Most of the Goths are university students or have some goth type job or life, like jewellery making , clothes making ,leather worker or work in a book store or wine shop. I always get extra points for being a coppersmith. A recent study by Sussex University suggests that Goths are likely to grow up to be doctors, lawyers or architects, and that Goths are usually intelligent, refined and sensitive, and keen on poetry and books. As a lot of the people in the scene are quite religious themselves (mostly pagans or wiccans ), I can freely talk about Scientology with no worries about being attacked as these people are smarter than that, and a lot of them are happy to find out what its really about. As the conversations often go to spiritual topics I am often asked what I “believe in”. There are a few interesting phenomena in the scene that I have observed as well. One is a slight class system, a ranking based on behaviour and length of time in the scene. With the Elder Goths (often not wearing any sort of crazy goth clothing at all and instead wears a dark coloured suit or some similar attire) at the top and the Nu- Goths or Kinder-Goths wearing over the top gear – piercing and black mohawks etc at the bottom. To be continued. Next week – the final instalment.
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
Btw, last week I said Renault was Korean owned, which is wrong. I meant to say Samsung, which is known as Renault Samsung Motors, hence the mistake. Little mistake, my bad.
Part 2.
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ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006 Columns
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Columns
The art of shopping is one I’ve never been good at, although from the retailer’s point of view I’m probably just the person they’re after. Gone are the days of high school when I shopped and hunted in a pack, seeking peer approval on every purchase. Instead, I shop alone. I shop fast, ruthlessly, and with rather little thought about finances. I chat with the salesperson and refuse to believe they’d ever lie to me. I enjoy my wee shopping excursions, it’s my therapy allowing me to distance myself from reality and pretend to be someone else. In retrospect I’m probably more easily swayed today than in my teenage years. I can try on clothes and shoes I’d never wear, just for shits and giggles, I can try the most expensive clothes and happily leave empty handed, I can happily wander from shop to shop almost aimlessly murdering time. But when purchase time looms, or more frighteningly home time, I rush. I suddenly get ants in my pants, grab what’s within reach and make a mad demented rush for the counter. I even lie to the salesperson, “Yes I’ve tried it on.” Almost everything is an impromptu purchase, I’m basing my shopping around wants not needs, and these impromptu purchases cost me little thought, no risk, no worries and all my pocket money. It’s gotten so bad I’m breaking the fundamental rules of clothes shopping: 1. Every item in wardrobe (or potentially about to be in wardrobe) has to go with at least five other items. 2. Shop only at the start of each season, following a list of what you need, which will allow you to comply with rule one. 3. Know what you’re spending, and where. Set yourself a budget and buy accordingly. If you spend your entire budget on one big ticket item, TOUGH COOKIES! 4. Buy things in neutral shades, or at least limit the number of outlandish items, to avoid one season use. 5. Shopping must not and cannot become a hobby. You probably can’t afford it.
You may have noticed that unlike much of the rest of Nexus, my column has words. I did (briefly) consider drawing my column, but in the interest of successful communication I decided against it. I figured that no one would be able to make out what my pictures actually were, so I decided that words are definitely the best word to go; and besides how do you convey the history of a word in pictures? In keeping with this week’s theme, I decided to look at the word ‘comic’. ‘Comic’ is ultimately of Latin origin although a cognate is also found in Greek. It is unclear exactly how ‘comic’ was borrowed. However, it is likely that it was a direct borrowing from Latin ‘cōmic-us’ meaning “of pertaining to comedy”. ‘Comic’ is also thought to be related to Greek words meaning ‘a comic poet or actor’ and ‘merry-making’. In its modern use today, as “graphic novel”, the other (and still current) meanings of ‘comic’ are often passed by without a second glance. Most of us probably know that ‘comic’ is also related (very closely in fact) to the words ‘comedy’, ‘comical’ and ‘comedian’. When explicitly listed, the relationships between the words seem obvious, however what you probably don’t know is that at one time or another, ‘comic’ has actually meant what we would today name ‘comedian’ ‘comical’ and ‘comedy’. The word ‘comic’ entered into the English vocabulary around the mid 16th century, (although there are examples of its usage, which date from the late 1300’s, these are obscure). Originally used as both an adjective and a noun, as it is today (although the noun is much more frequent), the adjective ‘comic’ originally meant “belonging to comedy, in the dramatic sense, as distinguished from tragedy.” This meaning has been adapted over the centuries, and has come to mean something which is “laughable”, “humourous”, or even “ridiculous”. The use of ‘comic’ as a noun to mean a “graphic novel” or a “humorous set of pictures” is a relatively recent development which is thought to date from no earlier than very end of the 19th century (1889 to be exact), but it is likely that this term didn’t come into common use until the early-to-mid 20th century. Originally ‘comic’ was used as a noun to describe a comic actor or writer, both of which, we would today call a ‘comedian’. So, there you are a brief run down on the history and meaning of the word ‘comic’. In words, I’m afraid, but hey, I am a word freak after all, so what did you expect?
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
I’ve seriously broken the fifth rule; I’m almost addicted to throwing my money away. I’m chucking cash round like a millionaire, letting it rain down on the masses. I find myself bored, and at a loose end, then I suddenly find myself looking for a car park in town or at the Base, and it all ends when I find myself locating homes for my newly acquired items. More often than not I don’t even have an occasion for the clothes or the five things they need to go with, which always means another shopping expedition.
‘Comic’
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Columns
Gunning for Glory For anyone who has not seen Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, you need to. And for all who have, you need to see it again. Because right now in New Zealand, a number of gun nuts are raising their heads and we need to be reminded that lots of guns don’t make you safe. Greg Carvell, the guy that shot a machete wielding maniac who entered his gun store looking for weapons, is not a hero. Yes, he has every right to defend himself from violent attacks like the one he experienced, but by making him a national saint we are saying that it’s OK to shoot people.
For those who have forgotten, a hero is someone who sacrifices something big for the sake of someone or something else. You aren’t a hero if you beat cancer or crawled from a burning building. People do those things to save their own arse, that’s it. And that’s exactly what Greg Carvell did. He didn’t think “If I give this crazy guy holding a machete a gun he will hurt somebody, probably even kill somebody”. No. He thought “If I don’t shoot this guy, he will chop me into small pieces.” Not to say that his actions (or the actions of those who have beaten cancer or crawled from a burning building) aren’t commendable, they just aren’t heroic.
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
Gun nuts will use this ISOLATED incident (go back and re-read that please) to claim that more guns will make us safer. That every shop attendant needs to have a gun under the counter to “protect” themselves just in case this sort of thing happens. Well it just don’t work like that. Or maybe it does. Maybe the one thing we need to protect ourselves is crossfire. Yeah right.
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The reason you should all watch Bowling for Columbine is that it shows you what happens when a country lets guns get out of control and into the hands of a large amount of the population. In short, people die, and lots of them. Just a reminder – this is New Zealand, not Tennessee, and we have done fine without guns for a long time. Using one incident to push the issue and making St Greg Carvell a national treasure just encourages a culture of violence, one which New Zealand could do without. So all you crazy wannabe gun nuts, back off. We don’t need to be packing.
Wannabe Gangstas ‘Sup peeps! Welcome to another thrilling edition of Chuck-E-G and B-to the-Mizzay’s Guide to Society. This week, we shizzle in the nizzle world inhabited by the youthful wearers of low-riding jeans and torn hoodies - teenaged Pakeha wannabe gangstas. You’ve all seen them; in fact, one in every three teenaged New Zealand Pakeha males is one. They are around 160-170 cm tall, having not yet reached the prime of adolescence, and weigh around 55-60 kg. They are usually aged 17 and below, because at about 18 the wannabe gangsta realises how pathetic he looks and sounds, and thus evolves into a normal human. Wannabe gangstas, nevertheless, are quite easy to spot. They’re the ones having trouble walking straight because their pants are so low that they are in danger of permanently marring their ability to procreate. The pain this is causing them is reflected in their facial expressions, which seem to resemble those of our boss’ constipated dog. The music of the Pakeha wannabe gangsta is usually hip-hop. Not the socially-conscious music of artists such as Matisyahu or even the NZ Christian rap group Rapture Ruckus, but Chingy and Chamillionare; musicians who only speak about frivolous sex with multiple anonymous female partners, and people who probably deserve a good dose of some horrid STI like syphilis or genital herpes, or even children. As some may remember from last year’s Nexus – rap is the abomination of mankind. Indeed the whole culture of rap can be summed up by Jay-Z when he says “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one.” Charming. No one’s ever heard of a gay rapper – what’s up with that? Perhaps that’s a topic for another article. Unfortunately the white wannabe gangsta’s musical taste has had a profound impact upon his speech and grammar. One particular example is the introduction of the phrase “could of” into everyday speech. “I’ll knock your face dick” is another commonly heard statement. However, our personal favourite (courtesy of Chuck’s 15 year old brother) is “Fuk up u loser or il stab u wen u fal asleep.” Great stuff. In conclusion we leave you with the immortal words of Chamillionaire; “Girl, yeen know I’m crazy like Krazie Bone; just tryin’ to bone, ain’t trying to have no babies.” Or in the mocking words of Chuck; “To the Pap Tav Bitches!” indeed. Once again any comments, suggestions, hate mail etc please email chuckandbenjo@ gmail.com.
Columns
Boganolog y 101—By B urton C B ogan Why “Tubby” Trent Reznor shoul d’ve stuck to drugs…. I pooped a little Manson & I got fucked up and had a wild goth orgy
On Drugs: Drugs + Manson + Reznor = Downward Spiral √ uck to drugs…. Dave Grohl did the drums
I was in Nirvana
ed up orgy
Off Drugs: No Drugs + Dave Grohl + Reznor = With teeth X www.myspace.com/demiurgeband Brutal Wellington Death Metal
Kiss
The Very Best Dave Grohl of Kiss did the drums
I was in Nirvana
Reviewed by C.J
Since I can’t draw I’ve decided to review the closest thing to a cartoon that the rock world has to offer, Kiss. Firstly they look like cartoon characters, with the makeup, stage theatrics and offstage antics. Secondly they’ve been in cartoons: Family Guy (the one where Gene Simmons tongue “finds” Lois…) and My Dad The Rock Star. And finally, their music is of epic, and sometimes Off Drugs: cartoon-like, proportions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Kiss are No Dave or Grohl + Reznor not toDrugs be taken+seriously anything. In fact, the=complete opposite is true. These With teethguys Xare absolute legends, with 40 years of success to prove it, and the proof is this week’s album, The Very Best of Kiss. It starts out with ‘Strutter’, which I discovered through my love of San Andreas. It’s a piece of pure classic rock, with simple riffs, a simple beat, a nice simple solo, and lyrics about a girl (in this case it’s a prostitute, I think). It’s hard to believe that this was written 40 years ago, cos it still totally rocks. If you’re any kind of Kiss fan then you can’t ignore ‘Detroit Rock City’. This song is pure rock energy which makes you wanna get up and show everyone how shit-hot you are at air-guitar. Or get in your car and blast this at all the wankstas with their shit-hop booming out of their “sacked out” sacks of shit. My absolute favourite Kiss song is ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’. It’s got that driving rhythm which makes you feel like anything is possible, the guitar work is near to perfect, and of course there’s the lyrics. Have a listen some time, it’s the ultimate rock love song. And then, of course, there is ‘God Gave Rock ‘N’ Roll To You’. Epic? Yes. Inspirational? Yes. One of the greatest rock songs ever? Yes. It’s like a rock ‘n’ roll hymn, a prayer to the mighty Gods of rock, proclaiming that it truly is the chosen music. Amen! 8.5/10
Competition
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The winner of last weeks prize is Geoffrey Churchill. Roxanne (also about a prostitute) is definitely a very worthy candidate for best rock song ever. In 25 words or less, is Axl Rose a bitch? The prize is “…and the horse you rode in on” by Aussie legend James Reyne. Answers to cjw37@waikato.co.nz by midday Tuesday.
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ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006 Activities
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Comics
The English Language Smoking a fag (Example 1)
Hamilton,Where it’s Happening
by Bill Smoking a fag (Example 2)
by Gary Teko ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
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Columns
The comics edition of Nexus reveals a new look to the ...
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
By The Panther
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Tip# 64: Everybody’s talking about joining the university gym and getting into a cardio program. I recently visited the gym to find out what it’s all about (where I witnessed Sarah Ulmer playing squash like she had brain damage, stick to the bike sweetie). Anyway cardio isn’t some new high tech eftpos service, it’s like running on a treadmill and cycling on a stationary bike (by the way I didn’t see a place to put my pencil or ruler - what the fuck?), well I say phooey to that. So I just did 200 reps of the bike and 150 reps of the treadmill, they were heavy but don’t worry about me- I’ve got lots of muscles. Tip# 32: Robot dancing, I know what you’re thinking: enjoyable pasttime for the mentally challenged? Well, now it’s an effective muscle building exercise program. From the makers of Bowsex and 60 Second Flabs comes the only muscle building program approved by N.A.S.A. (Necromaniac Association of Sex Addicts). So if you want to pump it up send 300 payments of ONLY $9.95 to groadthefunk@hotmail.com.
Food & Drink
Restaurants By Hazazel
When summer eventually rolls round, the place to be will be the Eastside deck, which on a warm day is sun drenched and a great place to enjoy a cold beer. But until then you can park your frozen ass in front of the fire. Beer and cold asses aside, The Eastside Tavern is a warm, clean tav with a fairly modern feel to it. The tav is well laid out with pool tables, couches, leaners and lower dinning tables and the previously mentioned fireplace, the space is well used and doesn’t feel at all cramped. However, the new addition of a TAB outlet might make a quiet beer may be harder to come by as TAB rules require races to be at an audible level. If you can manage block out the droning voice of the racing commentators I strongly recommend grabbing a bite to eat down there. The food is cheap and pretty darn good with the best deal being the $5 breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays (great if you overdid it the night before) although my pick is the bacon and chicken burger which is massive and a bloody good eat with a whooper piece of chicken in it. Beer selection: 9/10 On tap: Tui, Waikato, Murphy’s, Monteiths etc… Food selection: 7/10 the platter looked good the rest definitely tasted good Atmosphere: 8/10 before the TAB arrived 6/10 with the TAB BONUS: The big screen for those BIG games…
Iguana After again encountering trouble finding a restaurant open on a Sunday night, we eventually settled on Iguana. We were told we didn’t need to make a booking for our party of four (and, in fact, that they don’t make them for groups under 10 people!), but it was still pretty crowded. Nevertheless, our table was ready promptly, and service was generally quick and friendly. Our waitress forgot to bring us the Wild Food menus (which were presented in a very funky way) at first, so if we
Everyone except myself choose the wild main - ‘Billy Goat Bluff’ - goat & oyster hot pot, peru peru potato, horopito & macadamia nut damper bread, matched with Monteith’s Pilsner. This was another beautifully presented dish - the damper was cooked in tin cans, which were then hung on the lantern stands! Very rustic, but the food itself was by no means coarse. Tender flavoursome meat (despite the combination of oyster and goat - odd to my palate!); crisp but rich pastry; great
had not known it was running we might have missed out. That would have been a tragedy. After we had ordered, the waitress brought us some dinky little tealight lanterns for our table. It looked like their wild food experience entailed some extra ambiance. For entrees, two of us had the wild option - ‘Up Chetta Creek Without a Paddle’ - duck egg coated rewena bread, smoked eel, watercress bruschetta & dark peppercorn smoked essence, matched with Monteith’s Black. The eel had a delicate texture and a subtle smoky flavour, and the bread (think rewana french toast) was a soft and satisfying, a nice accompaniment to the eel. The other two choose from the standard menu - the filo parcel with char grilled vegetables, blue cheese, walnut & caramelised pear compote. I wouldn’t have called the sliced of caramelised pear a ‘compote’, and there wasn’t much ‘blue’ flavour to the filling, but it was very tasty. Crisp filo filled with piping hot veges, served on rocket and pear. The walnut may have been in the filling. I couldn’t tell. Both appetizers were were nicely entree-sized, leaving us raring to go for the mains...
little purple potatoes that tasted a bit like kumara, and a bit like potatoes; and lovely warm damper with a crunchy crust.
Each dish was well presented, but they have really gone the extra mile with the wild food combo. Apart from being great eating, the lanterns, the sorbet, the damper... this was a meal that seemed to combine high-class attention to detail with campfire charm. I quite like Iguana, but wouldn’t normally consider it a really outstanding dining experience. Right now (until the 13th of August) it is.
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Those who had ordered both wild dishes were at this point treated to a fantastic wee serving of lemon and Radler sorbet (served in a most unusual dish!) to cleanse their palate between servings. A very nice touch!
It seems a few restaurants are going above and beyond the ‘1 entree, 1 main’ requirement in the Monteith’s Wild Food Challenge (eg, the cake at Metropolis). Iguana also offers a ‘Bugs bunny’ pizza with Celtic jus, mozzarella, spinach, caramelised onion, roast carrot, braised rabbit, blackberries and horopito; and a cress side salad with a beetroot horopito chutney. I ordered both, which was a little ambitious... I had to leave a slice of pizza on the plate in the end, which was a pity, as it was delicious. The rabbit was surprisingly tender, and I was surprised at how well carrot (when well done) works on pizza! The salad was small for the price, but very tasty and a nice counterpoint to the rich bready pizza.
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Citric By M.Emery
Where has all the metal gone? Metal has kind of been homeless in H-town since the closure of 6 Foot Under and the beloved Soundproof. The Grandview Sports Bar in Nawton recently played host to a new H-town metal crew Utu, playing old school metal in the Slayer/Cannibal Corpse vein. It’s a shame that it’s come to this, but it seems metal has moved to surburbia and now takes up residency amongst family cover acts and bad karaoke. The Airwigg Records H-town Compilation CD should be underway as I’m writing this. Compiled by Scott Newth for Airwigg Records it is due for release in September during Tempo. A whole host of bands have been born, lived and in some cases died since the last H-town compilation so it will be great to see something documenting the last few years and the current music scene in Hamilton. I think submissions may have closed for this, but if you have something and you haven’t put it forward try contacting Scott immediately, scott@thedatsuns.com The New Caledonia are after a saxophonist / multi-instrumentalist. I’m guessing they want someone like the man giant, Adrián Terrazas-González, of The Mars Volta and The Regimen. If you play a good sax and are interested, contact spaceprophet on the internet dating site www.htown.co.nz This Night Creeps have recently toured down south with Auckland’s Shaky Hands. Hopefully we’ll have some reports and pics of their escapades next week. This weekend, The Deadly Deaths play their debut show at Upsett Records and The Castle with the latest A Low Hum tour. Featuring former members of Nimbus and Dead Pan Rangers, the band have a fantastic tune ‘See The World’ which can be heard at: www.thedeadlydeaths.com Antagonist’s first album through 1157 Records, These Cities, Our Graves, was released last week. Antagonist are touring through August with a Hamilton show, 19th August, at Upsett Records (all ages) with The Warpath, Upheld, The Wrongmen. Antagonist may also embark on a south island journey with The Warpath after they finish destroying Australia. The Perry Bible Fellowship will teach you what it means to laugh http://www. thepbf.com
Solaa
Steps in Time By M.Emery
Christchurch group Solaa have released an impressive album incorporating multiple styles, jazz, funk, soul, latin beats, hip-hop and more. Pulling together the jazz improvisational skills of the top calibre talent in this band, Solaa have crafted a collection of solid compositions that draws favourable comparisons with other local releases from Opensouls and The Black Seeds. With a band that varies in line-up with a current personnel of twelve members, the music across Steps in Time benefits from the varied input of so many musicians. Resident Solaa singer Nat Rose is joined on many songs by a variety of guests including Hollie Smith, Ladi 6 and Opensoul Tyra Hammond. Having received airplay for previous tunes extensively around the world as well as here at home, this album will be a good opportunity to get Solaa onto the world stage. This debut effort is self-released and well worth checking out for fans of the New Zealand dub/soul/urban jazz scene.
(hed)P.E.
Back 2 Base X By M.Emery
The fifth album from (hed)P.E. is a departure from previous efforts and while hardcore fans may be disappointed new fans may be turned onto the new direction the guys have undertaken. Back to Base embraces punk, reggae and ‘70s sounds and dispenses with a lot of the nu-metally shtick that was initially (hed)P.E.’s signature sound. There is still a healthy dose of hip hop across this album, it being a genre (hed)P.E. have dealt in since their first self-titled release 12 years ago. Back to Base is a less polished/produced effort than prior albums with the bulk of the album having been recorded live. The album benefits with this production suiting the more raw elements of the music. The new sounds (hed) P.E. are pursuing should ensure they ride out the nu-metal extinction wave and may even lead them back to the mainstream attention they received with their Broke album. Their press release acknowledges vocalist Jahred’s emphasis on more meaningful lyrics this time round although I preferred it back when he was hating on bitches, bands, gays and other specialty groups. Only in a humorous way, you understand. If you like your rap metal and your metal rap check out their breakout album Broke and the follow-up Blackout first, otherwise Back to Base could be that new fresh rock music you are looking for.
Twisted Hamilton metallers Chuganaut have been recording their long in gestation debut album this year. They will be playing locally next at Digger’s Back Bar with Aucklander’s Prolepsis on August 26th. An extensive promotional tour is promised after the album release where people can witness their creative music and be inspired to have fun. Just like a sermon at the In the future all the hyperlinks in this article will open up as holograms when Destiny Church, every song will portray a key message about life. you touch them.
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March of the Penguins Directed by Luc Jacquet
How much you like this film depends largely on how much you love emperor penguins. Do you have an endless pit in your soul that can only be filled by watching hours of penguins? Because if your patience with penguins is in any way finite, you will have trouble watching this film till the end. Now when I started, I thought I loved penguins, but turns out my cravings for the butler-birds are indeed limited, though this limit has previously been so distant as to be over the horizon. Luckily, I have an endless pit in my soul that can only be filled with Morgan Freeman, and guess who’s narrating! The makers of the film love penguins too, they spent 2 years or something in the real Downunder getting footage for this Academy Award-winning documentary, and for the documentary about making the documentary, also included in the DVD. Turns out this film is in black and white, I didn’t even notice. But seriously, the images are beautiful: stark white land and blue sea, all composed of varying states of water, with lighting that is only possible at the end of the Earth. Your heart will take a pummeling as you watch these birds, so like people, walking on their hind legs in an achingly slow gait across over 100km of freezing wind-scorched wasteland. Respite comes with arrival at the breeding site and the touching courtship displays. Then separation, Antarctic winter, and consequent deaths and broken eggs, followed by spring, and hordes of fluffy grey penguin chicks that will overload the cuteness appreciation centre in your brain. Then a predatory bird fucking tearing into helpless adorable penguin chicks. The whole experience is like being tossed from a spa pool to the cold sea and back again, nothing good ever happens to them without a cruel aspect of the world trampling them back down, and sometimes I couldn’t see the screen through the tears. Of mirth.
Johnny Cash Man in Black: Live in Denmark 1971
I would have loved to see a real live Johnny Cash concert. Better still to see a set played at a prison. On DVD, naturally, I’m not some timewarping criminal. Still, I guess it’s unlikely that any of his prison stuff was properly recorded visually, so I have this DVD instead. It’s recorded in the fashion of those music shows from the time, with the band in front of what looks like a small studio audience of, in this case, unenthusiastic Danes. Johnny and the Tennessee Three play a great set though, no doubt about it, with help from Carl Perkins (Blue Suede Shoes), the Statler Brothers (I’ve never heard of these guys before but there’s four of them, they’re harmonising brothers and most have awesome ‘taches), the Carter Family, and in particular June Carter Cash, who was a fox in real life (Johnny is super-supreme, but no Joaquin Phoenix). The DVD is 19 tracks and comes in at around an hour long (it’s an episode of Cash’s music variety show that aired on TV back in the day) and has his trademark songs in there: ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, ‘Man in Black’, ‘I Walk the Line’… I guess he played them every week or something? Then again C4 plays the Pussycat Dolls like once an hour every hour, you could turn on Amp’d and Jono would be telling us how Snoop Dogg ended up collaborating with them. Wish we had a country and western variety hour. This DVD also had a couple of songs I hadn’t heard before, like the gentle ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ which I thought was ace. No extras though. Oh, you can jump to the specific track you want to hear using the Select Track menu. The magic of DVD.
Both Reviewed by Kazuma
Reviews
Books Wife Living Dangerously
HAVE YOU
READ…
Debra Kent HACHETTE LIVRE
Reviewed by Pheobe Meryll This book sorely wants to be Desperate Housewives. From the cover imagery and rip-off font, to the ‘Primrose Lane’ setting, to the ‘an irresistible read for the millions who love Desperate Housewives’ back cover note, it all comes across a bit, well, desperate. The odd thing is that this approach is rather like squeezing a chocolate éclair into a muffin tin – unnecessary manipulation of an adequately tasty thing. As far as light escapist fare goes, Wife Living Dangerously does fine. Julia Flanagan is a good suburban wife and mother but finds herself lacking joie de vivre. How to fix this? Have an affair, or at least agonise about having one for 250-odd pages. ‘How do I go from Good Housekeeping to good sex with Evan Delaney?’ muses Julia on the first page, thus summing up the book’s primary thrust, so to speak.
Having said that, the book is easier reading than the plot makes it sound, mainly because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. As an account of a threatened marriage and the ensuing emotional issues, it’s reasonably authentic and likeable. Less authentic are the character arcs and even Julia comes across as mildly annoying at times. It’s no classic and, much as it would like to, doesn’t have the irony or substance of certain TV shows. But despite the limitations, Wife Living Dangerously has enough wit and awareness to make comfortable absorbing reading.
The Assassin of Gleam James Norcliffe HAZARD PRESS
Reviewed by Deanna Foster
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
Having enjoyed James Norcliffe’s award winning Emerald Encyclopaedia, I started The Assassin of Gleam with great anticipation. This is a great book by a New Zealand author.
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Set in the fantasy city of Gleam, which is ruled by an obsessive dictator, this story follows the fates of siblings Tobias and Johanna. Tobias is lured into a powerful but secretive Brotherhood, while Johanna is set up by the ruler as the mysterious Maiden. The Maiden is prophesied to release the citizens of Gleam from his dictatorship, and what better way to destroy that hope than to kill the Maiden?
Although it is aimed at the young adult audience (12-16 years), I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fantasy-fiction. Norcliffe’s writing evokes vivid imagery and contains some sophisticated themes around death, power and hope. The language is perfectly pitched and beautifully rich, with well developed characters and a clear, uncomplicated plot. At only 207 pages, this is a quick read, but is to be followed by two more books; The Mistress of Yewfire and The Witch
of Aboraxus.
David Boring (2000) Daniel Clowes Reviewed by Jeff Rule David Boring tells the story of its eponymous narrator; sex, murder, lateteens-early-twenties angst, and terrorism. The perpetually glum David Boring is the epitome of the skinny white boy searching out his ‘feminine ideal’ with the aid of his voracious libido. In spite of – or perhaps because of - his ordinariness he is presented as a modern-day hero. Everything and nothing happens. Boring goes about his daily life, dates women, gets shot, and avoids a terrorist attack. Yet by the very ambiguous ending, we get the sense that none of it really mattered. Not since Catcher in the Rye has there been better fodder for an existential crisis. This graphic novel is a highly readable 116 pages drawn in crisp black and white which is heroically punctuated by colour between each of the three ‘acts’. It was compiled from a series of Boring’s diary entries that appeared in Eightball magazine. A sense of near-futurism was achieved by dating each entry slightly ahead of the publication date. Clowes credits his apocalyptic vision of terrorism and urban futility to his own cynical nature. The life of David Boring is no longer a sci-fi absurdity in the era of the War On Terror.
Reviews
Films Breakfast on Pluto RIALTO CINEMA
Reviewed by Joe Citizen I don’t want to start off by making wild generalisations, but most of us just want to be accepted and loved for who we are. Growing up different in a small Irish town thirty years ago was never going to be easy, but what I like about this film is that it’s not a ‘coming out’ or ‘journey of self discovery’ story. This is about a boy who always knew that he liked dressing like a girl - he knows who he is, it’s just other people who
that it doesn’t pander to popular myths about how a person is or isn’t. Kitten’s self identity is a bit of a non-issue to himself; he’s a strong and confident character in a frequently hostile world. There’s great pathos here and some extremely funny moments amongst the dross of human existence, some of it surreal, ironic, not to mention retrospectively bizarre. The shots of the interior of a peep show booth for instance reveal
have difficulty with it. It’s not so much that he’s a threat to life and limb like some of the members of the Republican Army encountered along the way, it’s just that he makes people question their own sense of reality by not being what they expect. Maybe it’s that old human fear of the unknown that makes people angry towards others who are unlike themselves, but ‘Kitten’ provokes reaction wherever he goes.
the complete seediness and hypocrisy of the seventies, whilst the Womble sequence had me laughing out of my seat. The scene in the police cell sobered me and it made me contemplate contemporary society’s thirst for vengeance in the face of terrorism – when we want somebody to blame, we don’t look for people who look like we do. Justice is fine for those who can afford it, or for those who fit in with our preconceived notions of what we think normal is.
At that time it must’ve been hard to escape the popular notion that transvestism was about sex or sexuality, and what I liked about this film is
Rialto
By Leigh McGeady
Direction and camera work was subtle and understated although at the start and end of
the movie there’s these ridiculous sequences involving robin redbreasts, who are given subtitles so that we may understand their speech. Kitten may believe that there are places in the world where magic and the fantastical exist, but this just stretched my credulity to its breaking point with these inane add-ons. Most of the time however I was left to enjoy what was presented to me without anything else so obtrusive. Otherwise a great movie in a season dominated by shallow child orientated and regurgitated cinematic fodder.
Check
So next week I’ll give you a bit of a lowdown of our film fest films showing in the first week. Come and pick up your brochure from us today if you haven’t already done so and plan your calendar around some kick ass cinema! This week’s lil ramble is about a film we like
to call Colour me Kubrick. This stars John Malkovich. Need I go on? It’s gotta be worth a squiz if this magnificent actor is in it, surely? Malkovich plays Alan Conway who hides his neurotic insecurities behind the facade that he is in fact Stanley Kubrick, the great director. But instead of attempting any similarity whatsoever to the real Kubrick (whose filmography he barely even knows), Conway creates a new persona for each time he attempts the impersonation. The only commonality is that it’s always an endeavour to take a little (or a lot) of money from the encounter. His victims range from heavy metal bands and cabaret singers to gay men from whom he can squeeze a little pocket money. He acquires an unusual and exotic wardrobe that helps create the varying personas for his version of Kubrick. When journalists and eventually
the police start to ask questions, Conway slips into yet another guise that fools them all – or at least enough of them. This film is based on a true story and took place during the time of production of Kubrick’s last film – Eyes Wide Shut with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Colour me Kubrick is directed by Brian W. Cook who was also first assistant director on the abovementioned film. This film will appeal to avid film buffs and novices alike, and especially to those who are fans of John Malkovich and Stanley Kubrick. A deliciously campy comedy! Don’t miss. Season begins 3rd August.
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Thunderbirds are go at Rialto at the moment – counting down for the 2006 Telecom International Film Festival. The brochures are out. The beer is on ice. It’s our most exciting time of year and we all love it. It means never being idle, especially for our poor projectionists who are non-stop and over-worked throughout the busy 18 day period – having to put together approximately 50 films and then breaking them down after they finish their one or two screenings. Busy busy!
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Reviews
BROUGHT TO YOU BY: By Josh Drummond Well, we haven’t really got a game to review this week, but in lieu of actual content I’ll chat about the Nintendo DS. (DS stands for Dual Screen.) I’m not sure how well the DS is doing in New Zealand. If it’s moving anything like as badly as the Nintendo Gamecube did here, then people are probably trying frantically to give them away to their enemies. But somehow, I don’t think that’s the case. The DS is, worldwide, more popular than Sony’s PSP. There’s a good reason for this: although the PSP is way more powerful and can do prettier graphics, you can draw on a DS.
nothing else like it in consoles. It’s entirely original. And that originality is drawing (no pun intended) gamers – and non-gamers – in droves. You see, the DS has plenty of games where you have to draw stuff to win. Like an update of Pac-Man, where you have to draw away the ghosts. (Again, no pun intended. That’s actually what you do). The mega-popular Brain Training has just arrived in New Zealand, and it’s probably the first ever video game to be entirely immune from accusations from the lunatic fringe that it “rots your brain.” It’s designed to do precisely the opposite – to make your brain bigger, if you can believe it. Then there’s the
based mini-games, and there’s - oh, hell. It’s just such an awesome time waster. After playing one for too short a time I can safely say it was the most fun gaming I think I’ve ever had – not intense or exciting as such, but fun. If you want to check out a DS, nip up to Games Plus and ask them for a go. They’ll probably talk you into buying one. And now that we’ve told you all how great they are, maybe they’ll give us one too.
That’s right. In keeping with this week’s comics/drawing/art theme, I’m going to point out that the DS is designed around a stylus (a sort of screen you can draw on.) There’s really
cutesey-named Nintendogs, where you can use the stylus to stroke a virtual puppy, and the built-in microphone to call it. There’s New Super Mario Brothers, where you can play drawing-
did. Word of advice, idiots; when someone gets you to write a limerick for a competition, try finding out what a limerick actually is before sending anything in. Google works well.
Competition winner! The winner of last week’s competition is Slade, for actually knowing what a limerick is. He was the only one of last week’s 7-odd entrants who
GAMES PLUS - THE NEXT LEVEL: Providing you with all your necessary gaming needs S H O P 1 0 5 , C E N T R E P L A C E M A L L , V I C T O R I A S T, H A M I LT O N · P H O N E 8 3 8 0 8 0 1 XBOX · PLAYSTATION · GAMECUBE · PC · GAMEBOY · DS · PSP · MOVIES · ANIME
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Opal Nera Recipe Winners
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Sarah: My favourite Opal Nera Drink is the Fire Alarm. This is the drink for those who like backdrafts but can’t handle having too many. In a way it’s ‘mini backdraft-ish’, but you can have heaps. Fill a shot glass up 4/5 with Opal Nera then layer the other 1/5 of the shot glass with Chartreuse. Light it on fire and let burn for about 10 seconds, blow out the flames and quickly suck the warm drink up through a straw. YUMMY! Mathew Neame-Patuawa: Raspberry delicorice 30ml Absolut raspberry vodka 15ml Opal near
15ml Cointreau 30ml cranberry juice sugar syrup to taste (50/50 sugar and water) muddle two lime wedges and four raspberrys add ice, ingredients, shake and pour into a large caprioska glass and garnish with a mint twig. Initial sweet texture is countered with a slightly tangy bite laced with licorice undertones. Muddled raspberries balance the characteristics and sugar syrup is essential. Congrats Sarah and Mathew! Come up and grab your prizes.
ISSUE 17 / 7 AUGUST 2006
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