issue 22 by Nexus Magazine

www.nexusmag.co.nz

28 September 2009

The University of Waikato, proud to bring you

Postgraduate Research Month Date

Time

Location

Event

Wednesday 30 September – Thursday 1 October

9.30am – 5pm

Education Leadership Centre, TC Building

SOE Doctoral Workshops

Friday 2 October

10am – 2pm

Academy

Chief Supervisor Workshop

Wednesday 7 October

1 – 2pm

S.1.03 & S.1.05

Student talks during Cultural Hour

Friday 9 October

9am – 3pm

Academy

Student Workshop 1 - Lifting Off (Doctoral candidates only)

Monday 12 October

7pm

Momento, Village Green

WSU Quiz Night

Wednesday 14 October

1pm

LAW.G.02

Doctoral Student Seminar Series

Wednesday 14 October

1 – 2pm

S.1.03 & S.1.05

Student talks during Cultural Hour

Wednesday 14 October

5.15pm

S Block

Recruitment Evening

Thursday 15 October

9am – 12.30pm

Academy

Student Workshop 2 - Keeping Momentum (Doctoral candidates only)

Tuesday 20 October

8.30am onward

MSB Level 1

WMS Student Research Conference

S.G.02

Research Bites: National Graduate Conference

Tuesday 20 – Thursday 22 October Thursday 22 October

8.30am – 5pm

S.1.02

Earth & Ocean Sciences Annual Postgrad Student Conference

Wednesday 28 October

7pm

Academy

Th3sis in Three Competition Final

Thursday 29 October

9am –12.30pm

Academy

Student Workshop 3 - Finishing Up (Doctoral candidates only)

October 2009 For more information please contact the Postgraduate Studies Office – postgrad@waikato.ac.nz

ISSUE 22 28 September 2009 Credits: EDITOR: Joshua Drummond (editor@nexusmag.co.nz) DESIGN: Talia Musson (graphics@nexus-npl.co.nz) ADVERTISING: Tony Arkell (ads@nexusmag.co.nz) NEWS EDITOR: Grant Burns (news@nexusmag.co.nz) SUB-EDITOR: Louise Blackstock WEB GURU: Jed Laundry (jlaundry@gmail.com)

Edutorial

MUSIC EDITOR: Nick Johnstone (music@nexusmag.co.nz) FILM EDITOR: Kirill Kruger (films@nexusmag.co.nz) BOOKS EDITOR: Art Focker (books@nexusmag.co.nz)

by Joshua Drummond

GAMES EDITORS: Antony and Chris Parnell (games@nexusmag.co.nz)

“Nexus loves you. But we’d like to know how to love you even betterer”

Contributors 8 Ball, WSU, Kirill, Burton C. Bogan, Dr Richard

You’re a finicky beast. It’s hard to know just what’s going on in your head. You have so many moods. Sometimes you’re passionate, but more often you just... sit. You don’t always do a lot. Oh, you like a good time, sure, but really, you’re just trying to get through your life with all its tiny dramas and repeating scenarios and difficulties and demons. Maybe that’s why you don’t worry, or try not to worry, about the bigger things. It’s difficult to digest fact and figures when you’ve got another assignment on and one that’s going to be late if you don’t really kick it hard tonight. Drink a bunch of coffee and stay up till the birds start shrilling and the cold light breaks through the curtains and you’ve got that funny taste in your mouth, the tin taste of late nights and no sleep. Then there’s the job, and the arseholes that you work with want you to cover an extra shift for them this weekend. It’s all a bit too much. Also, there’s the party on Saturday, and how are you going to balance all that with worrying about the news article you skipped over in Nexus? You need a laugh. It’s eight AM on a Thursday, the weekend isn’t much of a break because you’re working it all away. Nexus is there for you, baby. Nexus is always there. Nexus loves you. Sure, you don’t see us quite like we see you, or how we’d like to be seen, but it’s okay. Shh, it’s okay. We’ll smooth away the stress. We’ll give you something to giggle at in the humourless confines of an MGMT 201 lecture. Nexus loves

you. But we’d like to know how to love you even betterer. You see, we don’t know much about you. We know some things. Like that you enjoy funny articles, and amusing pictures, and even the odd well-written cohesive feature here and there. You like Lettuce and captions and the other things like the caption competition that you enter in an oddly sporadic fashion. You like News, and Reviews, and even Editorials. Sometimes. We know you dislike some things, but we don’t always know what they are. We’ve helped you, lots. We gave you laughs. We gave you distractions and wit and good times, good times. We need you to help us. You see, we feel a bit left out sometimes. Like you suck out all our love but give nothing in return. But you can fix all that, repair this one-sided relationship, make us happy again.

Swainson, Josh, Grant Burns, Mammoth, HCAC, Jason Sebestian, Penny Wilson, Antony Parnell, Nick Johnston, Louise Blackstock, Emma Swete, Hollie Jackson, Jason Sebestian, Dawn Tuffery, Teresa Hattan, Morgon de Groot, Enisa Kartal, Gordon Dawson, Emma Swete, Jed Laundry, and Art. Nexus is a member of the Aotearoa Student Press Association (ASPA) Because it makes things easier. Sometimes. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS PUBLICATION ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE VIEWS OF NEXUS PUBLICATIONS 2003 LTD, ANY OF OUR ADVERTISERS, THE WSU, APN, THE EDITOR, OR ANYONE. NEXUS: PROUDLY PROVINCIAL SINCE AH WHO ARE WE KIDDING LET’S MOVE TO MELBOURNE ALREADY

WANT TO ADVERSTISE WITH NEXUS?

Nexus needs you to educate us. We want to hear from you. In this issue, you’ll find the Nexus Readers Survey. If you fill it in (perhaps as a welcome distraction in a lecture) and hand it to us at WSU Reception in the WSU building it will help us ever so much. Really. We’ve even made it possible for you to fill it out electronically, on those handy internets. Go to nexusmag.co.nz/survey. There are real prizes that actually exist that we will give to a randomly selected assortment of winners if you do it. We’ve been good to you, Students. Now it’s time to give something back to us.

EMAIL ads@nexusmag.co.nz OR call 07 838 4653 OR 021 176 6180

NEXUS IS LOCATED AT Ground Floor, Student Union Building, Gate One, University of Waikato, Knighton Road, Hamilton PHONE: 07 838 4653 FAX: 07 838 4588 EMAIL: editor@nexusmag.co.nz POSTAL: Private Bag 3059, Hamilton

Magie Acht Kugel By the German Ball

Is the watching of excessive amounts of television while drinking booze and doing as little homework as possible good for your health? Most Likely – what gives humans pleasure tends to be what is good for humans. Given your particular devotion to hedonism, you are on your way to becoming Time’s Person of the Year, as well as God of the Known Universe and Renowned Sex Panther of the 44th degree. If enough students hang Bob Marley ﬂags will it ﬁnally resurrect the man? Yes – but the question you must now ask yourself is, do we really want Bob Marley back? Yeah. I didn’t think so. Is necrophilia still wrong if I heat her up in the microwave beforehand? Concentrate and ask again – the gamma-rays from your microwave are scrambling the psychic wavelengths. However, I have this word of wisdom: Would you stick your dong in a freshlymicrowaved pie? No, you wouldn’t. You’d wait

for ﬁve minutes or more for it to cool. So as it goes with pies, it follows with corpses. Will Obama be assassinated by the end of his term? Yes – but only in an alternate universe or two. In this one, he will complete his master plan to Socialise the entire world, giving freedom and justice for all. Am I an alcoholic? Reply hazy, try again Will shaving a sailboat into my pubic hair make me more attractive to the opposite sex? It is certain – it’s a little-known fact that the action of shaving the speciﬁc shape of a sailboat into your Southern Forest causes your body to immediately increase production of sex hormones and pheromones. The effect of this is to make you irresistible to the opposite sex in much the same way that Lynx doesn’t. For added effect, broadcast the shaving on YouTube.

Will shaving a sailboat into my pubic hair make me more attractive to the same sex? My reply is no – see above for details. The “Sailboat Effect” only works on the opposite sex. Bad luck if you’re gay. If you’re intersex, hermaphrodite, or transgender, the results may vary. Hilariously. Is Santa superior to God? Yes – God is omnipotent, but notoriously grumpy with sinners, casting them all into hell. Santa, on the other hand, is also omnipotent, but when confronted with sinners, supplies them with coal. God consigns non-sinners to heaven for an eternity of worship, which sounds close to punishment to me. Santa, on the other hand, brings pressies! Omnipotence + social justice = superiority. Has ‘cunt’ become a socially acceptable word? Cunt-centrate and ask again – heh. See what I did there? Look again. See? LOL. Now I’d never have gotten away with that if it wasn’t socially acceptable, would we?

NOT ENOUGH ENTRIES LAST WEEK YOU LAZY BASTERDS. TRY AGAIN. With Helen Clark Gruuh! As a popular and competent captioneer myself, I believe it is high time I judged a caption competition. Ugh. Now, all the entries that were not PC were of course immediately excluded. Roh. We also dismissed those that contravened the Electoral Finance Act. Groooo. FEMINAZIS FOREVER! Ahem. Here is last week’s winning caption. “We all turn into animals when we drink” Congratulations Megan Scott! Come into the ofﬁce to collect your prize, which is a good toungue-lashing from me, Helen Clark! Oh, don’t be silly. Rugs are delicious, and it’s ever so much fun to munch on them. It’s even more fun if you’re the rug. What’s that? You don’t want a good tounge-lashing? I’m the Prime 4

Minister, bitch! You’ll be lashed as much as I damn well please! Wait, what? I’m in the UN now? In New York? Oh. Well. You got lucky. This time. GROOOOOOO! Here is this week’s picture! There are no minorities in it! Lightbulbs! Make up a caption for this image and send it to either captions@ nexusmag.co.nz or the caption thread at forums.nexusmag.co.nz! Also, vote Labour! The guy who does the thing now, whatsisname… thingy… Goof! Phil Goof! He’ll be at least as popular and competent as me. Well, maybe not popular. Or even competent. But you know. RAAAAH! COMMUNISIM FOREVER, COMRADES! Idiot students. If you’d voted for me you’d all have universal student allowances now. Burn on the bonﬁre of right-wing politics!

“We all turn into animals when we drink”

1. Do you support or oppose the VSM Bill? 2. Who is your favourite dead person? 3. Have you ever had a religious experience? 4. Nazis and the Holocaust: is it still too early to joke about it? 5. If you could only drink one type of alcohol for the rest of your life, what would it be?

1. I oppose it 2. Koro 3. Yes… 4. Ask Meg 5. Vodka

1. Strongly oppose 2. Bob Marley 3. Yes – Christianity 4. You can joke about anything 5. Steiny Pures

1. Oppose 2. Marilyn Monroe 3. Yes 4. Depends on the situation 5. Bourbon

1. I don’t see why we should pay $95 2. Shakespeare 3. Suppose – I gave myself to God but nothing happened 4. Bad/low humour 5. Steinlager Pure classy and manly

1. Oppose 2. My grandpapa 3. No 4. Na 5. Free alcohol Correction: Last wheek in the Low Fivhe we mixed up a couhple of pictures, accidentally making one person who’d spelled W(h)anganui with an “H” (correctly) look like thhey hadn’t. They rang up and told us. We said we’d apolohgise and fix it. Then their mum rang up and was all rahnty about it. So: We are entirely sorry for the mistake. Howhever due to our lack of a (working) time machhine, we cannot go back in time and fix it. Therefore, we suggest that if it makes anyohne feel better, they take a pair of scissors, go back to last week’s Nexus and swap picthures around to their hearts content. We also added some silent H’s to this correction just to make extra-shure.

ISSUE 22 28 September 09

AGM – WSU Trust proposal passed unanimously Also passed unanimously: Pizza, beer By Grant Burns

The WSU Special General Meeting and Annual General Meeting ran swimmingly last Wednesday in L.G.01 with the WSU Trust proposal being carried unanimously by all present members. Students munched on pizza and slurped on Chang or Coke whilst everything that was on the agenda was carried. The meeting also saw 2009 WSU Board hopefuls gave their promotional speeches. The Special General Meeting was first on the agenda and it dealt with the WSU Trust Proposal. The WSU Trust Proposal will see WSU properties and cash moved into a trust account (the “WSU Trust”) in order to protect such assets in the event of future liability. The “WSU Trust” would conform to the same objectives of the WSU and all money raised through the trust would return to the WSU for the benefit of the organisation and its members. The proposal was passed unanimously by all members present and will come into effect next year. The AGM then followed with consistent droning “Ayes” from students. Four main points of business during the AGM were discussed: the annual plan (what the WSU aims to achieve), membership fees (the fee paid by students to the WSU), honoraria (how much WSU directors are paid each year), and the budget (how the organisation will be run). During the AGM, the Trust Proposal was adopted into the annual plan which means WSU membership fees will stay at $95 for full-time domestic students and $62 for part time students for 2010. Everything else was carried during the AGM which concluded at 1:30pm. During the brief intermission, the WSU handed out free pizza and drinks to all those in attendance while also conducting a raffle for food vouchers and gym memberships. Following this saw the nine people who are running for the eight WSU Director positions give a short promotional speech. Lisa Anderson was slightly disadvantaged by technical difficulties caused by the video link to Tauranga. However, Lisa sounded like a capable, determined student who is currently studying a Bachelor in Primary School Teaching.

Michael Hall and Steven Harvey chose to give their speeches together. Both ex-Student Village students, Hall and Harvey “recognise the WSU does more than just sausage sizzles” and definitely came across as two very sociable blokes. Samuel Lake was a well presented candidate who Art described as “a genuine lady killer.” Kate Magazinovic gave her speech via web link from Tauranga and pointed out that she is the only incumbent director who is running again for next year. The last director candidate to speak was the apparently “well-known” Daniel Morales. Daniel’s main incentive is boosting the sport profiles around campus, including the Uni Games. The next candidates to speak were those who are running for the VicePresident and WSU Presidential positions – funnily enough, there was only one nomination per category which, unofficially, means they are already confirmed for next year, unless they should receive more “no confidence” votes than actual votes. Luke Claasen who is running for Vice-Presidential Maori came across as diligent and forward-thinking candidate who is keen to establish a “Maori student body” on campus. Also, the wolf whistle that followed the calling of his name perhaps indicated his popularity with the ladies. The gracious Glen Delamare gave his spiel from Tauranga and explained that “he’s the guy who walks around campus in a t-shirt, shorts, and no shoes – even during winter.” Glen is the incumbent Vice-President and is running again to retain the great job he has done this year.

Next was Toko Baker who showed tremendous courage during his brief speech on why everyone should vote for him. Toko by far had the raddest haircut; sporting a green mullet with shaven sides.

Incumbent WSU Director Deni Tokunai then gave his apparent prepresidential speech as he is the only candidate nominated for WSU President in 2010. Deni is currently studying a law and management degree, so you know he is more than capable for the job.

Charlie Gillard showed off his impressive academic honours in the management and communications department and came across as a very capable and focused candidate. Carl Halberg then gave his two cents via video link from the Tauranga campus.

And then, everyone left. Incumbent WSU President, Pene “Ben” Delaney, spoke well throughout the meeting and had this to say for himself. “It went really well and it sets the organisation up well for the future and I think everyone who attended had fun.”

WANT TO PUT YOUR CAREER INTO HYPERDRIVE ? THERE’S NO STOPPING YOU. Do you have an undergraduate degree in any discipline and are looking to get into management? You don’t need to have previous work experience just the motivation to really push yourself. Enhance your career prospects by attending our Information Sessions to learn more. Come and hear about our exciting 15 month Master of Business and Management (MBM) programme.

KTD1406/08/09

Join us for a barbecue at the Waikato Management School – Level 4, Room 4.02 at 12.15pm on Tuesday 29 September or Thursday 1 October 2009.

Corporate & Executive Education PROGRAMME COMMENCES MARCH 2010 | CONTACT US FOR MORE INFORMATION ON SCHOLARSHIPS AND ENROLMENTS

Call 0800 800 891 www.execed.ac.nz execed@waikato.ac.nz

Culture Day

Be a culture vulture with the WSU! Jason Sebestian University is coming to an end. Besides the WSU elections, there are no more fun events or attractions to entertain the bored and restless student of Waikato University. What with exams looming up, an atmosphere of inevitable closure permeates the air. However, the WSU has decided that before the exams, they will host one more ﬁnal public event, free for all students at the Village Green. The WSU Culture Day returns to campus on the 30th of September. This time students will be offered the chance to experience and witness the diverse variety of cultures and traditions at the University of Waikato. Starting at 12.00 pm, to 2.00 pm, the WSU and the various cultural clubs on campus will be selling a range of cultural and ethnic food at cheap student prices. This is a great

chance for students to grab delicious ethnic food at reasonable prices. At the same time, there will be interactive displays that detail traditions and cultural traits of each culture represented on the day. It is rumored that the displays will include elements of crowd participation, and thus the WSU urges all students to participate in the quizzes, competitions and activities. From 12.30 till the end of the Culture Day, students will be entertained with a range

if they were looking forward to the Culture

of performances form 8 different cultures. Performers will be presenting songs, dances and traditional music to students at the Village Green. Among the line up would probably include the Paciﬁc Island female dancers that proved to be extremely popular with students in Semester A. When several students were asked

Day, most said that they were as long as the performances were good. Deni Tokunai, the current WSU Director for Afﬁliated Clubs and Paciﬁc Island Student Affairs and who is also running for the position of President of the WSU for 2010,is one of the main organizers of next week’s Culture Day.

University is the time to Experiment With Bands By Hollie Jackson

The annual Band Experiments competition is underway at Flow bar, every Thursday until the end of the semester. The 2009 Band Experiments competition, presented by York St Studios in association with ZM and the Hamilton Live Music Trust, is set to be a roaring event. This year’s programme is scheduled to coincide with the end of the Waikato University and Wintec B Semesters, running every Thursday for five weeks. Each of the four heats will see four bands playing a 20 minute set each, with the winner announced nightly. The final will host five bands including a wild-card ‘people’s choice’ category... and venue entry is a mere $5 for a shitload of good, live music. Established in 1999, the Band Experiments have paved the way for many of New Zealand’s

most successful and legendary acts such as Cornerstone Roots, Katchaﬁre, The Datsuns and Stardrunk. This year should show no exception. Competing acts include psychobilly punk threesome Dick Dynamite and the Doppelgangers and ﬁrst heat winners NRG Rising. So far, so good, according to Band Experiments judge Nick Johnston; “crowds have been good so far, quite similar to last year’s competition. [There is a] very high standard in general from the bands”. Winners will receive two days of mixing and recording at renowned NZ studio York St Studios, 500 CD pressings with Amstore, digital media distribution courtesy of DML Ltd, a one year membership to Music Manager Forum including a one on one session with

one of NZ top music managers, studio quality microphones from Jansen Technology, a bunch of Converse shoes and still, there are prizes yet to be announced. What: Band Experiments Where: Flow Bar When: Every Thursday Entry: $5

Be Cool

Fun with refrigeration By Grant Burns How often do you open your fridge and pick out a pile of cash prizes? Not often, but you can if you participate in the Hamilton Environment Centre’s “Stars on Their White Wares” competition which is a part of Energy Blitz ’09. Energy Blitz ’09 is a campaign which is focused on promoting awareness of energy efﬁciency as it relates to home refrigeration. Students are being invited to decorate their fridges in the most creative way possible to go in the draw to win a $200 or $300 Noel Lemming voucher. Directions for the competition are easy. All you have to do is decorate your fridge anyway you want and send a photo to info@envirocentre. org.nz before 19 October. There are also a range of other competitions on the campaigns

website www.envirocentre.org.nz such as recycling your old fridge to go into the draw for a new, improved one. Pamela Storey from Hamilton Environment Centre is passionate in getting students to be more energy efﬁcient to save their power bills. “We are basically just looking to work with students in a fun way to help them reduce their living costs.” Energy Blitz ’09 focuses mainly in fridge efﬁciency because the fridge is the single biggest household electricity-user and the most expensive appliance in your home to run. [A typical fridge-freezer uses around 500 kWh a year, and accounts for about 15% of an average household electricity bill.

Competition and other details are on the Hamilton Environment Centres website www. envirocentre.org.nz.

Saudis celebrate end of Ramadan By Grant Burns

Waikato University’s Saudi Club celebrated Eid Al-Fitter on the Village Green last Monday in an ecstasy of cheers, prayers and sunshine. Members of the Saudi Club dressed in traditional thawbs, agals, and Keffiyeh while engaging in prayer and a feast to mark the end of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. The event began at 11am when the Saudi Club started handing out dates and biscuits to students while Deputy Vice-Chancellor Doug Sutton participated in the traditional customs of Eid Al Fitter. A tent was set up on the Green while bedazzled onlookers watched over 40 Muslim men participate in congregational prayer and then celebration with loud cheers and traditional swords. Saudi Arabian and New Zealand flags flew high above the cultural festivities while green and white balloons decorated the ground.

Nexus asked the President of the Waikato University Saudi Club about the signiﬁcance of this event and what it means to all the Saudi Arabian and Muslim students on campus. “Since we are away from our homes, it is important for us to host these events on campus to create a sense of connection between us Muslim students,” said Muslat Albogami. Ramadan is an Islamic holy month of fasting practised by Muslims for the sake of the Islamic God Allah. Throughout the 28 days of fasting, Muslims are not allowed to eat, drink, or smoke between the hours of dawn and sunset. The fasting is supposed to teach Muslims patience, modesty, and spirituality. Eid Al-Fitter, which marks the last day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, is an

annual Muslim holiday. It lasts for three days of celebration and marks the end of fasting. Muslims gather to eat, drink, and celebrate on Eid Al-Fitter, but more importantly it is a time for Muslims to come together in the name of their God. Eid is Arabic for “Festivity” while Fitter or Fitr means “to break fast”. Waikato University hosts over 200 Saudi Arabian students per year through scholarship programmes and exchanges.

Gaura needs your help By Enisa Kartal

Gaura, the only vegan/vegetarian food outlet on campus, is in danger of closing if patronage does not pick up, say owners. “Gaura is in a ﬁnancial crisis due to the lack of customers it has been experiencing of late,” Muni, the owner of Gaura, told Nexus. When Gaura began two years ago, there was no shortage of customers. Muni thinks that the shortage of patronage has to do with people simply forgetting where Gaura is. A robbery several months ago did not help things, Muni says. Nexus asked around 100 people if they knew where Gaura was located on campus. Only 25

percent could identify the location of Gaura to be on the ground level of the Student Union Building. Unfortunately of the 75 percent who had no idea of Gaura’s whereabouts, a few also needed an explanation on what Gaura was and just where the Student Union building was situated on campus. With the lack of information about Gaura, it follows that not many people know much about Muni. Not only is Muni involved in improving health standards in food available on campus, along with the customer service that is below expectations, he’s also involved in improving the wellbeing of others on a global scale. Every

End of Semester Olympics

The WSU, Waikato Draught, and ZM are proud to bring you the End of Semester Olympics on Saturday 11th October at 12pm on the Village Green. There’s over $1000 worth of vouchers to be won AND you could even score yourself a Couch! Teams of 10 compete in mental and physical challenges with free Domino’s Pizza and band afterwards – not to mention free Mr Whippy ice cream! To register, email events@wsu.org.nz or complete an entry form at the WSU Reception. For more info go to www.wsu.org.nz

Lose your winter coat

Four month student gym membership are now going for only $155 (m’ship includes exercise consultations & REV Indoor Cycling classes). As a Rec Centre member you get to enjoy over 30 group exercise classes, great Cardio Studio and spacious Weights Room, an Express Zone for that time efﬁcient workout, REV Indoor Cycling classes, Squash Courts, fully equipped Sports Hall and Endless Pools.

Free Food Weekly

The WSU will be providing free food for students on the Village Green every Wednesday from 1-2pm until the end of semester.

International Noho Marae

The opportunity for all international students at Waikato University to experience Maori culture, including an overnight stay on a Marae. All those interested contact the WSU or just see WSU reception.

year he travels to India, helping feed those who are more unfortunate, as part of the Food for life organization. So for the feel good factor, treat yourself to a nutritious, lip-smacking meal from only 6 dollars and Muni will have your made-on-campus meal ready from 11.30 till 3pm, Monday to Friday.

Vault – March 29 1993

Controversy over cops on campus Aroused by Grant Burns

A recent proposal by the University Council to appoint a community constable on campus has been met by ﬁerce opposition from members of the Waikato Student Union. Ratu Tibble from the WSU believes that appointing a policeman to patrol the university will lead to an increasing amount of police presence around campus.

However, Student Services Registrar, Wendy

Traditionally university campuses have been a safe haven for freedom and liberty with police only being allowed on campus in emergencies.

WSU President, John Houstoun, believes the presence of a community constable would address a range of crimes on campus with the

Some students are now concerned that having police on campus could lead to restrictions on the traditional freedom of students. Tibble even goes so far as to say that if current social trends continue, we will see police with guns on campus within the next decade.

main one being theft.

“We have students who are in favour of the decriminalisation of marijuana, they don’t like the idea,” said AUSA President Ritchie Watson.

In other parts of the country, the Auckland University Students Associations is dead against the idea of any police presence on their campus. AUSA said an agreement between the

Watson said that a constable on campus would inhibit students freedom to their political beliefs, some of which a police ofﬁcer might not agree with.

Craig, disagrees with Tibble. Craig believes a campus cop would not only be beneﬁcial, but is necessary to keep order on campus which is about the size of a small town. Craig was the one who originally proposed the idea after seeing it work at Massey University.

university and the police was reached in the 1960s and it stated that police weren’t allowed on campus grounds unless invited.

University issues former VUWSA President two-year trespass VUWSA accused of not being radical enough. “Gnarly” and “bodacious” still up for debate. Michael Oliver Victoria University has issued former VUWSA President Joel Cosgrove and Workers Party member Heleyni Pratley with a two year trespass for their part in last Monday’s protest fracas. Protesters, many from the Workers Party, pelted members of the University Council with eggs and rotten fruit after the council agreed to move its fees setting meeting to a secure location in the Kirk building. A University spokeswoman conﬁrmed that two people who are not students at Victoria had been trespassed from the university for two years from all campuses. A memo from VUWSA Association Mark Maguire conﬁrmed those two former students were Cosgrove and Pratley. The university spokesperson said the behaviour at the council meeting was in clear breach of university boundaries. VUWSA President Jasmine Freemantle, who attended the council meeting, said that while she voted against moving the meeting from chambers, she felt the environment had become disruptive.

“It was my hope that students in the gallery would reconsider exactly how they were portraying things and let the speakers speak. “I do ﬁrmly believe that those sorts of meetings should be made public,” she said. Confusion arose when it appeared Freemantle had abstained from voting to move the meeting. Council were briefed prior to meeting that a vote against such a resolution could be registered by saying nothing. The Workers Party released a statement saying Pratley was not responsible for throwing eggs or fruit, while Cosgrove threw a single egg which he later cleaned up. “In this case, as in others, it is clear that the University is targeting the people it sees as the leading activists organising against their slash and burn agenda,” Cosgrove said. Accusations were rife that Workers Party member Alistair Reith was responsible for throwing an orange at the back of VUWSA President Jasmine Freemantle’s head. Speaking on the VBC, Reith conﬁrmed that he had thrown “a few eggs,” but did not recall hitting Freemantle.

“It was a bit chaotic. There were eggs ﬂying left, right, and centre,” he said. Reith said he had no regrets and partake in similar action again. “The university bureaucrats who are paid several hundred dollars to turn up and raise our fees can afford the dry-cleaning to remove a bit of yolk off a suit.” Sam Oldham, who organised the protest but had resigned his position as VUWSA’s Campaign Ofﬁcer prior to it, told the VBC that he’d become frustrated with the association’s less than “radical” approach to fee raises and advocacy in general. “The people I was pleasing I wasn’t sure I wanted to be pleasing. “VUWSA’s history is called A Radical Tradition, and VUWSA couldn’t be further from that tradition right now,” Oldham said. Freemantle disagreed with Oldham’s assessment. “There has been a more active attempt to engage with students [this year] than VUWSA has seen in the past 10 years,” she said. No details were available at the time of publication about the fate of others involved in the protest fracas. 11

“No one cried, but several people were looking visibly shaken by the size of the events which were unfolding before them”

The Execution By Art Focker

The Execution is brought to you by the letters F and Y and the number 87. If you can’t count that high, please stop reading this page, set the Nexus down softly and go have a think about why you are at university. I’m not going to tease you like I normally do, saving the best parts for last. Just like on your birthday, I’m going to let you eat the dessert first, then settle down to a boring plate of pumpkin and something stew. This could be because of the magazine’s deadline getting closer with every keystroke and it could be because of the lack of non-dessert things which happened in the meeting. Jeff Hawkes is gone. In case you didn’t read last week’s Execution, Director Hawkes was asked to explain his recent actions to the Board of WSU Directors. These actions included, but were not limited to: not turning up to the National Student Union Conference in Christchurch earlier this year and being nasty to student union people through email and texts. He was expected to make an apology and explain his actions. What he ended up doing, to no one’s great surprise, was resign. He didn’t so much apologise as he did blame everyone else for the problems which had been attributed to him. He blamed the other directors for not having safe enough houses for him to park his car at, he blamed the WSU manager for failing to accurately record what was happening in WSU meetings (even though Nexus had failed to see this failure) and he even blamed the WSU for discriminating against him as a disabled person. He waved the flag of being disabled and living out of town as a reason for being bullied and physically threatened (for which he claims to have received counselling) by board members, but did not name any board members to support his argument. Neither I nor Nexus staff had ever heard of such an event. Anyone who was accused of anything in the meeting also vehemently denied any of Jeff’s charges. Jeff’s disability, which leaves him suffering from quite extensive fatigue, was a key reason for his inability to attend the conference, he stated. It would have cost the student union close to $100 to send a shuttle to Mr. Hawkes’ rural home to collect him for the flight. Deni Tokunai said it would

have been good to spend $10 on petrol to go pick Jeff up and make sure he was at the conference. I agree. At one point a loud orchestral sound blast came from somewhere in the WSU building, but then disappeared back to whence it came from. Perhaps the WSU building is haunted by the ghost of an orchestra. Perhaps not. There were not as many raised voices in this meeting as Nexus had come to think would be present. The whole meeting, despite its touchy subjects, was managed with a lot of eloquence and dignity by all parties. No one cried, but several people were looking visibly shaken by the size of the events which were unfolding before them. Kate and Natalie both live outside the city boundary and didn’t hold back from bringing this to Jeff’s attention, but he casually let that slide. When faced with the roar of a lion, Mr Hawkes said, he takes on the demeanour of a clown. While this is normally true of Mr Hawkes, Nexus having been privy to some of his writings, he conducted himself quite well in this meeting, allegations and wild accusations aside. Natalie Good now said “You’re a grown man; you should be able to deal with [the issues of transport] yourself”. Several other directors said that Mr Hawkes had been fine leaving his car on other director’s properties in the past. Mr Hawkes, somehow, had decided that crime had risen to such a point in Hamilton that it would not be safe this year. At the end of this torturous period of time Jeff tended his resignation. Deni opposed it, as he felt Jeff was a useful member of the board. Kate opposed Jeff’s resignation as she didn’t think Jeff had answered for his actions well enough. Several other members simply wanted to accept the resignation so they could move on, while others supported it as in Jeff’s best interest. Through the whole meeting, I could not tell who was biting their tongue and speaking half truths. It was a very tense experience and not one I’m in any hurry to repeat. 8/10

East Hamilton Police Burglary & Vehicle Crime Report 17th - 31st August 2009.

In the past two weeks there were 26 burglaries and 9 vehicles were either stolen or broken into in Hamilton East and adjoining rural areas. As shown on the map burglaries have decreased throughout our whole area. One of the reasons for this is the proactive crime reduction education being put out has struck a chord with many university students who went home on holiday, during the teaching recess. Those who exercised good judgement have often returned home without incident, others who didn’t have returned to find their homes and flats broken into and have now begun reporting these to Police. With offenders aware of the varsity recess they have gone on to target other houses around the area taking Plasma TV’s, jewellery. Of note over the past two weeks laptop computers have outstripped large screen plasma screen televisions as thieves’ appliance of choice. Over the past weekend there were seven laptops stolen in burglaries compared to five TV’s. Imagine how hard it would be if to complete that paper without your laptop and the data stored on it? Home security advice is available from the East Hamilton Community Policing Centre on Clyde St, as a minimum precaution Police recommend recording the serial numbers of your valuable appliances and storing that data somewhere safe. This enables Police to identify recovered goods and return them to their rightful owners, recently several items have been found by Police when executing search warrants but officers have no way of tracking owners. Circumstances of a Burglary: During daylight hours on 18th August, residents of a home heard their back door bell ring. About 10 seconds later they heard the door open and saw a male walked into their kitchen. When confronted, the male intruder

looked shocked someone was home and muttered a couple of words about a tent to the students. The offender then fled, walking briskly up the driveway on to Cameron Rd. Question from the Police: How often does has this happened to you and your flatmates? What have, or would you do about it? Would you leave it, thinking nothing of or would you ring the Police? Did you know? Over recent months Police have been alerted to reports of people walking up people’s drives and when confronted claiming to be looking for cats, dogs, basketballs and children. Other residents have seen people, asked what they are doing on the property and left it at that, only to find out later their neighbour was burgled. In future please call the Police, we can investigate and help stop burglaries from occurring. If you have any information that might help Police resolve offences burglaries please call the University Constable, Nick Sickelmore on 8582792 or e-mail Nicholas.Sickelmore@police.govt.nz

The Nexus Haiku News By Drummond-san

Are those big boobs really news? Silly newspapers It’s as the saying goes – bigger boobs Bigger news Da Vinci Code sequel out this week Franchise food for thought Read Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” Satisfy your cravings Plastic owls used in the battle against bird poo Bird poo, plastic birds too That’s what passes for news In Palmerston North Sex good for cricket, says India coach It makes perfect sense

That sex would spur Better ball and bat-handling skills Cops caught playing Wii on the job Police didn’t Wii-lise Wii were watching them They Wii-ly did screw up Killing of women, child ‘witches’ on rise Witches arise Children die Ignorance never goes out of fashion Racists lack the clout to derail new America That’s right, racists Cling bitterly to your guns and religion Uh-oh.

PH 07 856 6813

PH 07 856

THE NEXUS LETTER OF THE WEEK WINS A WINS A $20 BOOK VOUCHER FROM BENNETTS OP E WEEK BOOKSH TTS TER OF THBOOKSHOP! WAIKATO UNIVERSITY IVERSITY S LET M BENNE IKATO UN THE NEXU VOUCHER FRO WA WAIKATO UNIVERSITY BOOKSHOP SHOP! ts.co.nz OK TY BOOK u@bennet $20 BO UNIVERSI EMAIL wk WAIKATO ADDRESS Gate 5 HillcreststRoad FAX 07 856 2255 ad EMAIL wku@bennetts.co.nz Ro cre

6813

856 FAX 07

S Gate ADDRES

2255

Letter of the Week

Gay old time Send letters to editor@nexusmag.co.nz Letter of the Week wins a $20 Bennett’s voucher! Letters may also be sent via the letters thread at forums.nexusmag.co.nz. We sometimes get too many letters to publish these days – but don’t stop sending them! Letters that don’t make it into the mag can be viewed in the forum as well.

Txts to the Editor! Nexus now has a non-new TXT-in service! Send Letters to the Editor - via text - to 021 235 8436. Don’t forget: You can send Busted pictures in by pxt! Send us your best snaps of you or your mates in Busted-type situations to 021 235 8436. Letters policy: Nexus welcomes and encourages debate through the letters page, serious or not. Letters should be kept under 250 words and be received by Wednesday 5pm on the week prior to publication. We’ll print basically any letter, but the editor reserves the right to abridge or refuse correspondence. We won’t correct your spelling and grammar either, so it’s up to you how much of an idiot you look like. Pseudonyms are okay (all correspondence must include your real name and contact details – they won’t be printed if you don’t want them to be) but if it’s a serious letter we’d prefer you to use your real name. Send letters to editor@ nexusmag.co.nz

Dear Nexus The week prior to my writing this letter was gay pride week, a cultural mile stone and a great time for men to put on breezy dresses in broad daylight outside of Scotland. It also happened to coincide with yet another leaflet bombing of my neighborhood by the local seventh day Adventist church. Now I’m a man who enjoys the irony when idiots actually blither so I read the four page pamphlet and after some minutes of tittering at the signs which apparently herald the coming apocalypse (including wars around the world, an increase in knowledge, people traveling a lot and disobedient children) I was suddenly mortified when, on page three, the writer actually referred to gay people as perverts and compared them with adulterers and pedophiles. The actual quote runs as follows “the main reason why god destroyed Sodom was because of the homosexuality, adultery, and sexual perversion that prevailed in that city. As adultery, pedophilia, pornography and homosexuality invade our society, we find ourselves becoming just like the city of Sodom”.

Adultery bad √, pedophilia bad √, pornography? The jury’s still out on that one (I like to use the old self-service pump on occasion) but then homosexuality… I have friends who are lesbians and live in what are perhaps the healthiest and most loving, monogamous relationships I have ever seen (hot too) and it amazes me that this kind of crass, ignorant hate-mongering somehow persists in a supposedly enlightened society. It’s like some sort of gross jungle-fungus that’s infected our culture (see what I did there) and won’t go away. Grow up. If there’s one thing that Neil Gaiman has taught me it’s that all things must change in time or they will die and that includes your religious dogma. Gay people are not part of an evil global agenda, conspiring to threaten you’re world view. They are everyday people, who live, dream and hope with the rest of us. The Emo trend was murdered by Professor Plumb, in the billiard room, with mockery; and now I say its time we turned our attention on religious bigots. We can do it.

Whimsical Insolence P.S. My god is bigger than yours anyway. Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgahnagl fhtagan! Amen.

Also Oi nexus Get a Fcukinn’ 027 that we can send our bitchy texts into, we all dont have credit to text your stupid 021 off. see i have to resort to emailing you just to get my message to across. C.H

THE NEXUS LETTER OF THE WEEK WINS A $20 BOOK VOUCHER FROM BENNETTS WAIKATO UNIVERSITY BOOKSHOP!

PH 07 856 6813 14

5 Hill

FAX 07 856 2255

ADDRESS Gate 5 Hillcrest Road

WAIKATO UNIVERSITY BOOKSHOP

EMAIL wku@bennetts.co.nz

Snakes on a plane reference, lol

Good call

Nexus. I HAVE HAD IT WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKING SUDOKU IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING NEXUS! Now ive just about had it with trying to get myself a free fucking burgerfuel voucher. every monday morning i tell myself “i can do this i can ﬁnallly completely full out a stupid sudoku form sheet and win a voucher” but no

u have 3 levels of the stupid game, y dont u put little mazes or spot the difference like the good old tv guide i bet they have entry forms ﬂooding all over the place. i bet half the reason no one enters your competition is because that stupid stupid evil game. now im not saying get rid of it (mabey just re-locate it) im just saying make

came cross da person who said something bad bout

my dreams are bought tumbling down when i ﬁnd out i fcked up for the 100th time in a row! all i want is a free bloody burger! ive tried and tried to ﬁll it out! ive even tried cheating but it still wouldnt let me win! can u please make a section that isint designed for the bloody third year student or asians to win. its bad enough

it easier to ﬁnish the bloody page so we can actually have the chance to win something. is that too much to ask? ps. i think i deserve a voucher, cmon’ ill even share it with that homeless dude who likes to hang around burger fuel. Honest C.H

Art, what? Youre the biggest bigot in nexus! Bad choice

Wassup! Im readin your txts to da editor section and I muslims. Two words mate: up urs! Cheers :D

That can probably be arranged Art foker I want to have your babies

Bizarre ﬂame war continues of words. Hate me for my bigotism but theres nothing worse than a hypocrite. Even Christians know that

I think you’ll ﬁnd it’s “VSM” bill, but spank you anyway Yay NEXUS you guys are awesome! Mondays are always the best night at work because I can read your work rom cover 2 cover :) not happy about this VMS

Too late, fella. Burger Fuel ended their arrangement with us as soon as those damned baby jokes appeared, and we don’t blame them. You have been torturing yourself for no good reason. The Puzzle Pages are now strictly for your own amusement.

bill! Noo

Yeah, what’s up with people missing the bowl? Come on. 2 the ppl in the teachers college LEARN HOW TO TAKE A PISS ur toilets r rank

Those pesky demons again I’ve thought of how I could write this letter without offending the guy who wrote the letter about Student Life and the talk on demon possession in this week’s Nexus. But I realised even if I said this in the nicest possible way I think it still will be taken the wrong way. So you guessed it I’m going to say it anyway. I disagree with the letter as I was interested in the topic myself and went to hear the talk and I can’t see where the speaker insinuated that epilepsy was demon possession. I took it as forms of demon possession that has been documented in past history. Before you start saying ‘she knows nothing about epilepsy’ I’ll clarify that my brother suffers with sever epileptic ﬁts and has been repeatedly hospitalised due to his type of epilepsy and has almost died as a result. I also worked with a girl and cared for a little girl who had epileptic convulsions. I have also known someone who died as a result of epilepsy. Due to growing up with a brother who suffers with this condition I know exactly what epilepsy

is and take it very seriously when people are flippant about it. I also am well aware of the discriminations and misconceptions of what convulsions or ‘fits’ are in society. I was of the opinion that during the talk that he was basing it on fact from external sources and wasn’t trying to get anyone to see those who have epileptic fits as demon possessed. I’m even pretty sure he used the words ‘can be seen’ not ‘it is’. And as telling Student Life off for implying people were evil... yeah I didn’t really take that away from the talk. I’m sorry you thought that the talk was offensive. I just really did not see the point you thought the guy was trying to make about epilepsy being the same thing as demon possession. To tell you the truth I think what people would remember from the talk were the gory photos and video not that epileptic fits are to be associated with demon possessed people. Natalia Sutherland

I laughed at this, then felt slightly ashamed I like those asian mimes by tha lake, although I can never ﬁnd their money hat…im in a boring lecture yes

So did I its ok art, I cried when musafa died in the lion king too!

Delicious muesli bars This tech lec is so frikkin boring! Im textn nd eating my Flemings chewy muesli bar nd reading up on the katest nexus. Sent by hara. P.s.my friend has fallin asleep! Hes completely out! Lucky punk

Takes all kinds… To the girl in my philosophy 106 tutorial, 10am in the school of Ed who believes that solving world hunger would be to wait for the population to crash and who also believes in euthanasia so we can have more resources, please carry on talking the load of bull that you do. Me and my mates enjoy listening to you and mocking your terrible views and we also love the fact that even retards can make it to uni.

The Best Games You’ve Never Played By Arty Nerdstink and Joshie McAwesome Pants

You call yourself a gamer, but your only games are Halo 3 and Fallout 3. You’re not actually a gamer, you are just a fad follower. Whatever’s hot, you’ll play it, regardless of whether or not it’s a good game. You played World of Warcraft because all of your friends played it, but now you deny you even know what it is. You should be ashamed. The lot of you need to take a good hard look at this list and play outside of the popular channels. Then and only then can you call yourself a true citizen of the gamesphere, a Gamer with a capital G. Tropico: A lot of people in my circles of friends have heard of this game, but very few people have actually played it. It came out in 2001, when first person shooters were still ruling the roost. Such releases as Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Halo were controlling the charts at this time. As a result, Tropico went largely unnoticed by gamers. In the game, the player takes the role of being a dictator of a small Caribbean island nation 1950, trying to keep in the good graces of the Soviet and American powers that are fighting the Cold War at the time. All you have to do is keep everyone happy, a task which seems to become impossible as the game goes on. You can choose to have free elections or not, but limiting elections raises the amount of CIA funded rebels in the woods. If you don’t keep the military happy, you risk a coup de tat and gun battles in the streets, as soldiers still loyal to you try to defend your palace. While you don’t have direct control over your units, you have 16

more control than many other games. You can decide political policies, the wages of farmers and factory workers and the price of rent in various apartments and shanty towns which are sprinkled across your island. This game, being essentially a sand box game (unless you go for one of the near impossible missions) with any outcome you chose being attainable. Piss off America or Russia and you’ll have a gunboat sitting off your coast. Keep on poking the bear (or the eagle) and you’ll end up with a full blown invasion on your hands. As with many of the games in this list, you don’t need a super powerful computer/gaming system to run it. A Pentium II and Windows XP should do it. Sid Meier’s Pirates: Most of you would have played one of the Civilisation games at some point. Sid Meier doesn’t just create games where you can be Ghandi or Genghis Khan. He also made games where you could be a goddamn pirate! As a pirate, you chose where you sail, you chose what jobs to do and you shoes when to fight or flee. No linear storylines in this game, folks. Sure, you can go looking for your sister, your uncle and parents, but you’ll have a lot more fun leading your pirate fleet on raids across the Caribbean, attacking towns and doing little missions for priests and colonists. The game is available on pretty much any old machine, from Amiga to Xbox. You don’t need to have a powerful computer to run it and it has gone through several editions from 1987 to 2004.

Majesty: Most people who profess to be gamers have probably played an RPG where you run around and do quests for a king, who provides you with gold for your chores. Imagine if you WERE the king and you somehow had to convince your heroes to do quests. You have to decide where buildings go, how much gold is spent on quests and general day to city management, if your city was Hobbiton. Think of Majesty as SimCity with goblins and rat monsters being your main sewer concerns. While you have very little control over who does what and this can make the game challenging to some traditional RTS gamers, but it’s a very addictive game, despite its steep learning curve. It is 9 years old, but the only giveaway to that is the graphics. The game play is easily maneuverable and fun. God knows where you’ll get it, but you could try a Google search. Area 51: A game with a strong voice acting cast is not necessarily a good game. A game with a setting in the overused Area 51 location is also not necessarily a good game. Are 51, however, is a good game. Playing a character voiced by David Duchovny and fighting with help from an alien voiced by Marilyn Manson, you attempt to stop a virus from spreading outside of the confines of the titular location. Sure, sounds boring you say. Find and kill things that aren’t you, you say. Wrong. Part way through the game you are infected with the virus and gain the ability (or curse, depending on how much of a sadist you are) to turn into one of the mutants you are fighting! While not being exactly sure,

I’m reasonably confident that this is one of the first FPS games which allowed you to change the nature of your avatar and use different ‘forms’ to confront problems in a way outside of the box. It was awesome and nobody played it. That’s why it’s here. It’s available for the oldschool Xbox, and had some of the best graphics of the day – they still hold up pretty well now. EV Nova: I’ve never finished this game, but I’ve sure played the hell out of it. It’s a shareware game, published by the wizards at Ambrosia Software (ambrosiasw.com) and it costs money to get the full version. I’ve never quite stumped up the US$30 they require you pay for it, simply because I resent playing NZ $60 for shareware. But this is a prejudice I will soon have to get over, because if I don’t find out what happens in the end I will actually kill something. The game itself is fantastic. You play as a space pilot with a space ship in an absolutely immense (spacious?) universe populated by the warring factions of a former galactic empire. The game’s genius is its simplicity. The control scheme is asteroids-ish and the story (which is fantastic, in a space-opera-cheese way) is told in text panels. You start off as a humble trader and have to work yourself up to uber-mensch and Saviour of the Universe. Probably. Like I say, I’ve never finished it, because if you don’t register after X number of days a chap called Captain Hector comes and hectors you, usually by blowing you the fuck up. It’s absolutely worth trying – download from the address mentioned – and almost certainly worth buying. In fact, I’m

going to as soon as I fix this little situation with my credit card. The New Zealand Story: This game was notable for being for the original Amiga computer and having exactly sod-all to do with New Zealand. A tricky platformer which featured a Kiwi (?) bearing a distinct resemblance to a dust-ball with a beak, The New Zealand Story was a weird little gem of a game. Its “plot” was that a walrus, that natural enemy of New Zealanders, had stolen the Kiwi’s animal mates. So it goes that the kiwi has to fight the walrus with an assortment of utterly bizarre weapons, the most powerful of which looked a lot like a child’s scribble on a wall. Others included a bow and arrow and something that might have been a kind of Kamehameha wave. I don’t know. This quirky game can probably still be found on Amiga emulators, and (bizarrely) was recently re-released for the Nintendo DS. Sonic CD: This was close to the best Sonic the Hedgehog game ever made. It featured the titular anthropomorph in an adventure where he had to collect Time Stones (instead of the Chaos Emeralds for a change.) The gimmick was you could trip signs that said either “past” or “future” in a given level. Travel fast enough after this, and you’d find yourself zipping either back or forward in time This changed both the level design and aesthetic. Go forward, and you’d find yourself in a dystopian future, the Sonic equivalent of Blade Runner, with a shitload of enemies and traps. Go back, and you could find a prehistoric world with less

enemies and a mysterious robot generator hidden in each. Blow this puppy up, go forward in time again, and you’d find yourself in a different “present” or future, featuring less traps, enemies, and generally good times. The effect was essentially four times the levels found in a normal game. About the only bad thing about this game was the unforgivable introduction of the hideous Amy Rose character, who will one day be boiled in oil if I have anything to say about it. And I will. Ahem. Now, to mention the ridiculously great techno soundtrack, which was only available on the Japanese and European (which includes NZ) releases. For some reason, Sega, a notoriously arbitrary company, decided Americans weren’t quite ready for techno yet, and wrote shitty, shitty music for the Yank release. But the original music was mint. I haven’t even touched on the boss battles, which were probably the best of any Sonic game (bar Sonic 3 and Knuckles,) and which culminated in a fantastic race-off between Sonic and the sinister Metal Sonic. Yeah. I’ve already said too much about this. Where can you play it? Well, unless you’ve got a Sega Mega CD lying about (unlikely) you’ll need to play it on PC CD-ROM on Windows, which sadly features only the crappy American music – it’s still possible to find in shops. Otherwise, your best bet is one of the many Sonic collections available for various consoles or the pirate-y realms of BitTorrent. Do play it.

Engineering Students Pay Tribute to Mullet Hero There ain’t no party like a YES-Club party By Toni O’Sullivan

How to run a successful, fun, engineering themed event on a budget of only $60? The answer to our problem was another question – “What would MacGyver do?” A couple of weeks ago, on Thursday 17th September, the Waikato University Young Engineers Society (YES), ran its second event of the year, and in fact the second event since its recent inception; “The Mystery MacGyver Challenge”. Engineering is about many things, but one quality that all good engineers have in common is possessing great problem solving ability. Who then could make a better role model for a Waikato engineering student than MacGyver? A man who can make an explosive out of salt, sugar and weedkiller (no seriously: Season1, Episode3). And he does it all while maintaining an impressive mullet and still getting the girl – something most engineering students can only dream of. The challenge was held at The RIV in Hamilton East, where we had drink specials and a $5 burger and beer deal going. We were also fortunate enough to have our YES committee Vice President Shane convince The RIV put on a $100 tab for first place and $50 tab for second. This meant we were able to spend our entire budget on crap for the competition.

The Challenge as presented to the participants was: MacGyver has awoken with marble type device strapped to his chest. A recorded video from a cheesy nemesis reveals that this contains a tracking device and a new type of explosive, which is stabilised by movement. Currently his breathing motion is providing this stabilisation. If this movement stops the device will instantly explode. MacGyver must construct a device that will allow him to keep the marble device rolling while he moves to a safe distance. You Challenge is to make a marble racer!

Rules • Goal is to keep the marble rolling the longest • You may only use the materials supplied • The structure must be self standing (or MacGyver will die!!!) • You only have an hour to construct the structure • Beer consumption to enhance creativity is encouraged The items at the MacGyver wannabe’s disposal included: scissors, plastic cups, newspapers, a Nexus magazine, iceblock sticks, straws, playing cards and an overabundance of almost useless

sticky tape... it seems that MacGyver awoke in a $2 shop. There were some incredibly interesting and intelligent designs, however many of these didn’t function as planned – particularly the creations of the fourth year and PhD students, which looked promising but placed firmly in the back half of the competitors. It seemed the older students with all their experience struggled with the time constraints, or maybe they were all just liquored up. Not sure if the same could be said for the team of lecturers, who placed only 5th out of 14 teams. More might have been expected from those who teach us, however one of the lecturers had the very eloquent excuse of “A teacher’s real success is watching their students succeed”. It sounds really nice but I’m not convinced. Regardless, I will lay off giving them too much flack as having the lecturers compete was a real draw-card for the event, it seems beating your teachers was one of the higher-ranked motivating factors for the participants (up there with drinking and cheap food of course). I will even go as far as saying that we are lucky to have such social and involved teaching staff in our department. Anyway, enough about the losing teams. Quality testing the performance of the racers

throughout the construction was conducted by many of the teams – and while this idea did help, it also ran the risk of ‘losing your marbles’. Due to the abundance of newspaper and rubbish scattered around, The RIV started to resemble a hamster cage or a student flat and the single marble assigned per team was often lost. The penalty enforced to obtain a new marble was hard but fair – the team must buy one of the judges a drink. The winning creation was by a bunch of third years that went by the team name of “Graeme isn’t funny”, their marble-racer kept the marble rolling for 17.3 seconds – hopefully long enough for MacGyver to escape the two dollar shop of doom. Second placing went to a team of first years – “The Bryant Hall Brigade”. It seemed that their youthful exuberance and matching outfits really benefited their cause, and like any typical bunch of first years they managed to put their bar tab prize to use immediately. All in all, the event was a success and an important community service as it educated some of the younger students on an 80s icon. It was a small example of the bigger and better things that YES plan to achieve next year.

WSU PRESENTS

DATE: Wednesday September 30 PLACE: The Village Green (Gate 1, Knighton Rd)

“Come along and EXPERIENCE the DIVERSE CULTURE at Waikato” 12:00pm – 2:00pm

Traditional food for sale from many different Cultures - AT STUDENT PRICES

12:00pm – 2:00pm

Interactive displays introducing Icons and traditions for each Culture Audience participation, essential

12:30pm – 2:00pm

Performances from 8 Cultures, Traditional Dance, Music and Song

There will be COMPETITIONS, SPOT PRIZES AND GIVEAWAYS All students, staff, friends, family and the hamilton community are welcome

Nexus and the WSU want to know about the readers of the mightiest collection of weekly published words on campus! We’ve come up with a few questions that should give us a reasonable psychological proﬁle of you, so all you have to do is ﬁll in the blanks and prepare for another fantastic year of Nexus manipulating your hopes, fears, quirks, and suppressed issues. If you are too hip to write

• A goody bag from WSU, including a Waikato Draught duffel bag, t-shirt, sunglasses, and other surprise prizes! • Two 12 packs of Steinlager Pure!* • Two 1-month Rec Centre memberships! • x4 Burger and Beer deals from Momento cafe! • x10 Free coffee vouchers, redeemable at Momento cafE!

To enter, simply ﬁll out the survey with your HONEST opinion, without being a silly bugger, and make sure you include your name, contact details, and student ID number so we can contact you and get you your prize. All survey answers remain strictly anonymous.

on paper you can also take the survey online at www.nexusmag.co.nz/survey. Every student that submits a survey also goes into the draw to win a number of fantasmo prizes! The prizes include:

• Four $20 Bennetts Books vouchers!

them in at Nexus itself (in the WSU Building) Otherwise

Completed print surveys can be dropped in the survey box at WSU Reception, or handed to the receptionist. If you’re really desperate, you can hand there’s nexusmag.co.nz/survey, and you can also

*for those 18 and over only, valid photo ID (drivers

keep an eye out for the Nexus crew roaming about on

license or passport) needed to claim prize

campus at strategic times this week, getting you to ﬁll this thing out. So with out further ado…

To enter the prize draw, please give us your student ID number, name and contact details Student ID

Name

Phone

I study at University of Waikato / Wintec (circle whichever applies) Do you want to let us keep your email address so we can send you news of sweet events and pictures of cats? (optional): Answer any of the questions that you feel like answering. 1] Which ethnicity do you describe yourself as?

5] What parts of Nexus do you dislike?

2] Is there a religion/spirituality that you identify with?

6] What should Nexus feature more of, or what should it have that it currently doesn’t?

3] Are you currently employed? 7] What should Nexus keep, but have less of? 4] What are your favourite parts of Nexus?

Momento Lakes

We are looking for performers for our open mic nights Every performer gets a bar tab

Winner gets to play at O week 2010

Contact Courtenay: 021 891 810 or info@momentoespresso.co.nz

Pres Sez By WSU President Ben Delaney Last week the WSU held a very successful Special General Meeting . The purpose of the meeting was to give the WSU the ability to form a trust which would then go and develop the WSU assets for the benefit of you the student. Thank you to the nearly three hundred students who braved the rain from both Hamilton and Tauranga campuses. The full membership fee of $95 dollars on the recommendation of the board remained unchanged; however our services over the year have increased. Next year as we look to provide even more value for you we will see a greater emphasis put on services for you. Copies of our Annual plan 2010, and Annual Report 2009 are available free at our office. The WSU is all about you, from the services we provide to the representation we do for you in and beyond campus. The irony is that on the same day we the student body were making changes for the future, Roger Douglas was in Parliament advocating that our future be determined by a party with less support than New Zealand First at the last election. The Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Bill as introduced looks to make student association membership opt-in entry rather than the current system of opt out. In our organizations history, the opt in

WSU Cultural Contribution

SCHOLARSHIP

$2,500 Closes 12 October 2009

For more info check out www.waikato.ac.nz/scholarships

“Next year as we look to provide even more value for you we will see a greater emphasis put on services for you”

method has been tried with unfortunate results including less services and representation to you the student. The facts are that today we are a professionally run organization which puts on over 40 events per year. We support students with advocacy, and a hardship fund. Support sports teams and individual athletes. We have over 40 affiliated clubs which we support and ambitious plans to increase the level of all of these services. Your Board represents you throughout the university and have key relationships with all of the key players who affect you. But all of this is supported by the critical mass you as students bring. By being your elected body all of you have a say on who represents you. You all have a say on where the organization heads through our consultation round and effectively you all have access to our services. The fact that you are reading this in your student magazine can be attributed to our existence. This year we face a challenge to our existence. Others will argue that this law, if passed, gives freedom of choice. We argue that you cannot choose what doesn’t exist. Ka whaiwhai tonu matou ake ake ake We shall fight on forever Prez

VP Speaks By Glen Delamere

Upcoming WSU Events

International students, this one is for you! The Waikato Students’ Union is holding B semester International Noho Marae. This is your opportunity to experience Maori culture ﬁrst hand as your Student Union will be taking a group (limited numbers) out to Waipapa Marae in Kawhia. You will get to participate in a powhiri

(1st October) 2-4pm in Guru Phabians

(Maori Welcome) followed by an introduction to Maori culture and will be staying overnight on the Marae. The next day will be spent learning different Maori skills such as ﬂax weaving, waiata (songs) and Pene may even display his taiaha (Maori weapon) skills. This unique

WSU Board Meeting

1. WSU Director Campaigns (21st Sep-2nd Oct) I have a dream…

2. Hakinakina opportunity is one which will forever leave a wonderful memory for you to take back home with you, so get on down to the WSU reception for more information before you miss out.

Does your fridge have star potential? Here at the Hamilton Environment Centre we are always on the lookout for ways to enrich your life and lower your spending on frivolous extras like electricity.

Energy Blitz campaign manager Pamela Storey says that research shows fridges account for 15% of an average household’s power bill. And if you’ve got a fridge more than 10 years old, it can cost you $200 more to run each year.

3. Culture Day (30th September) showcasing various cultures and celebrate the diversity of our students, Village Green

4. International Noho Marae (2nd-3rd October) The opportunity for International students to experience Maori culture, including an overnight stay on a Marae

5. WSU Elections

So we the Hamilton Environment Centre bring you this golden opportunity: let your creativity rip by decorating your boring old fridge and you could win a $300 Noel Leeming voucher to spend on anything essential to your life. There’s a $200 voucher for the second most creative effort. If your fridge work shows real star potential it could feature in the Waikato Times! The ‘Make your fridge a star’ is part of the Energy Blitz campaign by the Environment Centre. This year it is focusing on fridges, which chew up more electricity than any other home appliance.

(30th September) Interschool Maori Sports

(6th-8th October) Vote for me, vote for me…

6. WSU Election Results (12th October) I demand a recount! Congratulations to the 2010 Board Entries for ‘Make your fridge a star’ close on October 19. You’ll need to submit a pic of your fridge plus a hot energy saving tip. All the details and lots of other useful information are on the Environment Centre website, www.envirocentre.org.nz. While you’re there, check out the other Energy Blitz promotions – the chance to win a new fridge if you recycle that old dunga in the garage; plus the chance to nominate a deserving Waikato household to win one of three $400 Pak’nSave Mill Street grocery vouchers. 25

Event Recap A great turn out by all for the 2009 Waikato Students’ Union SGM and AGM held in Hamilton (L1) as well as at two campuses in Tauranga, Windermere (A2) and Bongard (203). A big thank you to Kate Magazinovic who came over to Tauranga so that we had Board members at each campus to address any questions fellow students may have had regarding the WSU Trust, Annual Plan and the coming elections. It was a great turn out in Tauranga however there was disappointment that the rafﬂe was Hamilton campus only. On the ﬂip side the Tauranga students were given pizza and drinks from the beginning of the meeting. Election speeches went down well and as mentioned it was probably to my advantage that the visual link to Hamilton was down otherwise some of our students may have thought that they were watching a fugitive from police 10/7. Good luck to all the candidates who are running and to all of students out there make sure that you vote in a couple of weeks!

The WSU WOF: The Directors Reply (well, three of them do)

Directors, including those listed as “the dearly departed” were asked to provide a one line reply to the recent Nexus WOF. The following have replied:

Glen Delamere: “TEMPER…What TEMPER! Next you will say that I have the phone manner of Alec Baldwin! :-p ”

Dave (Burton C Bogan) Snell: “Zero for fashion

sense? That it, it’s the hairy Bogan birthday suit for you”

Jo Bissett: “Thanks for being nice about me – I guess the blow job really paid off :)”

WANT TO BE INVOLVED WITH NEXUS BUT CAN’T TEAR YOURSELF AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER?

forums.nexusmag.co.nz ..........sign up today!

WSU PRESENTS

The International Students’

Noho Marae “Come and enjoy a real New Zealand experience with the WSU, Waikato International Centre, University of Waikato Cultural Committee and the Pro Vice-Chancellor Maori Office” This event aims to give International students a taste of New Zealand you wouldn’t get from a tourism centre. At the noho marae you will: • experience a traditional Māori welcome • come to understand the early history of the Tainui (Māori Kings) people • learn how to make and use a poi • learn a traditional Māori stick game • learn many Māori songs • learn how to speak the Māori language • learn flax weaving When: 2-3 Oct 2009

Where: Waipapa Marae in Kawhia

Cost: $30

For more details email reception@wsu.org.nz or come visit us at the WSU office

The Nexus Noticeboard Send notices to notices@nexusmag.co.nz before Wednesday, 5 pm. Placing notices is free for students. We don’t always have much space, so get in quick! Notices cannot be any more than 75 words unless you ask us specifically and we say yes. They will roll over every two weeks, unless specified – so please, tell us how long you want us to run your notice for. We will not accept handwritten or otherwise non-electronic notices or dictation over the phone – that’s stone-age shit. If you (somehow) don’t have access to email or a computer, come into the offices and use one of our computers to type up your notice. Ta.

Flats and Mates 1 large bedroom available to live with 2 existing girls (fairly easily going) from the 8th Nov, by 5 cross-roads. Rent is $109pw, includes power, rent, wireless internet, we do our own food. Looking for a male or female who is clean, tidy, and reliable with rent, someone easy to get along with. Fully furnished flat but you will need to deck out you own bedroom. text or call Jodie on 0273162476 two flatmates wanted For a nice sunny house in the Ham East area To share with 2 funloving males! House has internet, heatpump and both room are of good size Close to shops, Uni and town Text or call either 027 727 9156 or 0210460828 We need a flatmate 4 existing female flatmates. 5 minute walk to uni. $102pw plus power, mysky and wireless broadband. Single room available. We are looking for someone who pays rent and bills on time, is tidy and doesn’t waste electricity by using heaters 24/7 and leaving lights on. Text or call 0212158365 or 07 8566630. Room available for rent from October 16. Do you need a place to stay up until Christmas? 5 min walk to uni, fully furnished, off street parking. $113/week (neg.) Txt 0274625199 for more dets. Large sleep out available with own shower, ten minutes walk from uni. House is down a long driveway with off street parking close to warehouse shops. Broadband in house and a spare room currently used as a study. Current flatmates are one girl and one guy. $116 per week covers rent, broadband and

phone. If your keen to have a look text or ring Nick on 07 858 2933 or 021 0229 3528.

Applications still open for AIESEC OE+ work abroad visit www.aiesec.org.nz

Flatmate Wanted: To live with 3 others in a 5 year old town house on old farm rd. Walking distance to uni and hillcrest shops. $115 per week which covers rent, power, phone and internet. If interested and want a look text or email Natz on 027 42 30 228, ngg2@students.waikato.ac.nz. WANTED FLATMATE!!!!!!

Social Runners Wanted for Taranaki Steelformers Around the Mountain Relay 14th November Legs between 5 and 11km. $50000 in spot prices www.mountainrelay.co.nz Entry $40 but we are looking for funding. No matter your fitness level, come along for a good time! Txt 0274755751

Room available in a 4 bedroom house with 3 other flatmates. Ham East area, close to Uni, Town and Ham East shops. 92.50 per wk, really good size room, wireless broadband is set up, heatpump and awesome friendly, laidback flatmates!! Call or Text 027 727 9156 or email rll9@ waikato.ac.nz Really nice, 1 year old flat/apartment for rent. 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, heat pump, 2 mins walk to uni. Greensboro Street. Take over Nov sometime, easy going landlord. $450p/week, well worth it. Ph/txt 0272211422 FLATMATE WANTED One single bedroom available in a neat two bedroomed flat which is about 2 min walk to Uni. $115 a week includes rent and all expenses. Room available from November onwards and they 1 easy going existing female flatmate. house is neat, clean and tidy.if keen contact Theo on 0211235923/email me on tnm11@ students.waikato.ac.nz

Random Winner of the AIESEC phone top up draw is 0273612761. If this is you please txt 0273300767 to arrange a meeting.

Seeking Other Half: NZ bachelor handsome healthy 29 years, looking for an Indian wife, prefer tall slim good natured girl. Text 0226255890 or email bachelor1980@windowslive.com Come to the Marketing Tradeshow to view our product - Travel Mate. Travel mate is a compact, durable and inflatable travel pillow. It can fold up for easy storage in a bag or suitcase. Travel Mate is ideal for travelling, camping or backpackers. See you at the Tradeshow Fri 2 October @ 5.30pm PWC. “LOOKING FOR BAND MEMBERS! for a metal band. looking for guitarists, bassists and a drummer as well as any other instruments (including piano/ keyboards, Bagpipes, violin or anything else you can bring to the table). Influential genres possibly include Doom Metal, Black Metal, Folk Metal, Thrash Metal, Non Gay Power Metal as well as Heavy Metal and Classical Music. Planning to do a range of covers, but mainly our own material. Mainly just for fun and the regular jam. Text 0273454458 to find out more.” 29

BOGANOLOGY BY BURTON C BOGAN

Penultimatism

This is the second to last Boganology ever, at least written by me. I know I’ve said it before...three times in fact...but this time it’s for real. So I’ve been writing a Boganology column for four years now, that’s right I’ve been writing a column for about as long as it takes for you to do a degree. So if you’ve been reading it for at least three of those years you can now say you have an honorary degree in Bogan. Congratulations, your award ceremony consists of a can of Waikato and some sort of black sash of doom. I thought I’d do a summing up, a “what have we learned”, if you will.

“So if you’ve been reading it for at least three of those years you can now say you have an honorary degree in Bogan” Most importantly: Bogans are people too. We have similar processes to all of you, it’s just that we’re a bit more obvious. We represent ourselves through symbols, but ours are demons or skulls. We also represent ourselves through the smell of our unwashed clothes, creating a second presence that enters the room first like our own personal introduction by our own personal butler. Now if only I could train my musk to bring me beer, that’d be awesome. Much like my musk, these symbols can also be permanent. They can be carved onto our bodies through tattoos and body modifications. Like all of you, we have our own territories. These aren’t just our homes but are also our bars – when they can stay open for longer than six months. Much like a cat, our territories involve piss – only ours is usually Waikato or Woodstock. We also have our own way of doing things. Cooking usually involves instant noodles, or something fried, or ordered via a clown’s head. We roam the countryside in our Holdens, polluting it with our beer cans and plumes of acrid smoke. We have our own class – it’s called Roach Class. Embrace it, ‘cos you have no choice anyway – much like roaches we’re here to stay and can’t be killed by conventional weapons. Kind of like how Goths can only be killed by a stake through the heart and vegan Metallers can only be killed with a steak through the heart. We have our own history and festivals. Big Day Out (BDO) used to be our festival, also known as Bogan Day Off, but sadly the glow sticks took over. We’ve been here in force since the 80s and arguably before that. We predate Emos, who took some of our shit and perverted it – like black jeans. We’re your ditch diggers, your mechanics and your plumbers. You can’t survive without us. If we had a strike for Bogan rights you’d all be fucked. So the next time some guy or chick walk past you dressed in black and scruffed up to the nines – have a quick think before you label them trash – because without them your toilet wouldn’t flush and as a result all civilization would crumble. 30

AGONY ART by Art

Dear Agony Art I’ve started to notice some really, really hot girls on campus. It’s like all the ugly girls have gone into some kind of warm-weather hibernation and released all the hot girls from their winter prisons. Seriously, it’s really starting to freak me out. Please help me understand this phenomena!? Sex Crazed Monkey Beast From the Outer Realms Dear SCMBFTOR This phenomenon is one as old as the human race itself. During the winter months of the caveman years, all the hot ladies would remain in caves, getting boned by the hairiest guys in the tribe. It was the job of the unattractive women, the ones who wore bright green jeans and thought pony-tails were still cool, to go out into the snow drifts and hunt for food. They could easily blend into the mammoths, as they were often as hairy and smelly as their prey, thus making them far superior hunters. Being out in the snow, however, made the cave-hunguses prey themselves. Sabertooth tigers, avalanches and sabretooth avalanches killed many of them off, which was not a loss exactly mourned by the cave folk and their hot ladies boning back in the caves. When winter ended and trade between the tribes opened up again, all of the ugly girls were quickly sent into the pits of the caves. This was to make sure that neighbouring tribes thought the tribe only had the hottest cave-chicks and thus gave them sweet trade deals. This pattern of “hiding the ugly girls” during the summer months has remained in our genetic memories even until the present day. When was the last time you saw a truly gross, nauseating woman at the beach in the Coromandel? Now, compare that with the last time you saw a revolting woman on a rainy day in Hamilton. Or Huntly. Now, you may be thinking that this can’t possibly be true. Well, let’s think about it a little closer. In countries which are always cold and miserable, there is an excess of attractive women. Think about Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland. Due to it always being winter there (well, more or less), the ugly girls have been forced out to go hunting on a more permanent basis, falling prey to the aforementioned sabre-toothed beasts and (because it’s Europe) Nazi breeding programs. The hot girls have thus remained inside and kept on having babies, until it is totally impossible for there to be any unattractive women in those countries. Bam! Art Focker has spoken.

Send your agonising questions to agonyart@nexusmag.co.nz. If you don’t, Art will call down a curse of Chlamydia on your head. And head-Chlamydia is not socially acceptable. That address again: agonyart@nexusmag.co.nz

THE FEMININE FILES By Mavis and Gertrude

You’ve seen them in town. Vajayjays hanging out of their tops-turned-dresses, drunk as ugly skunks, throwing up on their cheap stilettos they can’t walk properly in anyway, screaming at every guy they know and making a scene just so they can prove they know someone of the opposite sex. We get it. You know a guy. You’ve probably done him, but he just wanted to be friends. Right? Sorry to dredge up bad memories. Don’t be this girl. This girl has Chlamydia. Guys laugh at this girl. There’s no respect there. You want to be the girl every guy wants to tap, not the girl everyone has tapped already and is totally over. To become this awesome girl, follow these simple rules. #1: Keep your vajayjay undercover. It is a special flower. It should only be viewed by a few special somebodies (one at a time, preferably, although that’s not compulsory). It’ll be appreciated more if the whole dance floor didn’t get a look at it when you danced sans panties on the Altitude stage. The girls who do that tend to have haggard vaginas from rough treatment. Take care of it. You only get one, and they start out quite pretty. #2: Tops are not dresses. Simple rule – if the tag says it’s a tunic, it’s NOT a dress. If you can’t sit comfortably in it, it’s not a dress. If you can see your lady gaga in it, it’s not a dress. Wear leggings or tights with it. Or hey! PANTS. #3: Only show one lovely lady feature at a time. The simple fashion rule is that you either show off your legs, your bust, or your stomach. Not two, and never all three. This is where hoes fail miserably. If guys see your legs and not your cleavage, they’ll be intrigued. Display all three and all the classy, worthwhile guys will pass you by and you’ll be left with the rapey pervs and desperates. #4: Mavis has spent many a wretched night with her friend Beatrice, who relentlessly pursues guys who are clearly not interested in her (weirdly, considering she’s a babe). She texts the guy continuously, asking them which bar they’re at, and then drags Mavis from bar to bar searching for them all night. This is desperate behaviour. Text the guy once – tell him you’re at Bar X, and ask what he’s up to. If he replies that he’s having a boys’ night, tell him to have fun and then STOP texting. He has your number if he changes his mind. If he says he’ll be there in a minute, cool. If he doesn’t reply DON’T CHASE HIM. He’s not keen. We cannot emphasise this enough. If he wants you, he will find you. Don’t remove the challenge by being a weird stalker chick. He will run. #5: Most importantly, be safe. Look after your buddies, even if they’re being stupid. Don’t let her go home with a dodgy-looking stranger. Don’t even shove her in a taxi alone. Sacrifice your night to ensure she’s okay. She’ll totally owe you. You don’t want your friends to get hit by a car or raped. It’s not worth it. There’s always more Saturday nights.

THE MADNESS

With Morgon de Groot

I like to complain about a lot of things. Whorishness, democracy, and douchebaggery are among these things. Oh, there are a lot of other things, too, like rotary engines, lawn darts, cyclists who take up the entire road (move the fuck over, alright?), people without common sense, homoeopathists, and other people lacking basic critical reasoning skills. What you’ll not find me complaining about is Communism, and I’ll tell you why. Communism can be an effective form of society, given the right circumstances. However, Communism gets a bad reputation from the likes of the Chinese Communist Party, who, like the drunken guy vomiting on the policeman’s shoes, manage to ruin it for everyone else. You see, the political idea is based on some very sound philosophies; like having an egalitarian, classless and stateless society where a common ownership policy means everything is shared, and everyone is equal. Seems straight forward enough, right? Well, it works. Quite effectively, too, in theory. Karl Marx was a pretty smart guy. And Lenin. He wrote some pretty mean songs. (Or was that McCartney who did all the writing?). Anyway, who wouldn’t want to live in a society where wealth and labour are shared? To get by, well, all you’d need is love and a little help from your friends – though remarkably this is also the downfall of Communism: It only works well when you know everyone in the society. So really, you’re limited to about 50 people, tops. Like rotaries and lawn darts, Communism is more effective in theory than in practice, and is subject to the same pratfalls as any other system of government. People are greedy, and when given enough leverage (especially in an egalitarian society, an oxymoron to face), they will manage to collapse into their own ego and ruin the otherwise flawless plan. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why the Chinese Communist Party, and in general, China, are seen in such unfavourable light. Attempting to trust 1,320,000,000 people (and counting) who are on equal par as yourself is mightily difficult, especially when we often can’t trust our spouses to be faithful or our Michael Bays to produce quality cinema (not that he ever did. Damn you, Bay). Small communities of people working in harmony can be stable and effective, but once the population gets beyond some critical value, which I will arbitrarily claim to be 50, you suffer a breakdown – a leader must emerge who has too much power. Throw in a dash of self-indulgence, a council of yes men and a stylish wardrobe, and you have what we (and by ‘we’, I mean ‘I’, and by ‘I’, I mean ‘refrigerators’) refer to as an “ineffective government”. And I expect that there will be people out there who will find it necessary to take offense with me sympathising with Communism, which vicariously means I support every questionable action China takes, as well as Soviet Russia and anyone else that our democratic country feels less than amicable towards owing to differing political opinion. It also probably makes me a Nazi, if you feel inclined to argue that way. I do have a fashionable moustache, so perhaps there is something in it. Well frankly, Communism can work, but it takes hard work and trust of your 50 (or less) peers. You should try it sometime. It’s the new vogue.

KIRILL INVESTIGATES: Knock Knock. Who’s there? Tens and tens of drunk people who want to drink alcohol and ﬂip kitchen implements in your garage. Not funny is it? No. But it happens often at my house. Every Thursday I descend from my pedestal and partake in alcohol with the unwashed masses (boy, don’t I sound condescending). Regardless – let’s investigate! First and foremost, it must be said that this topic was chosen out of necessity. Kirill missed the Bums, Tums & Thighs class he was going

intuitive, but then again so is everything else I have ever done while under the inﬂuence. Somehow, my garage became something of a congregation point for international folk. They like to gather in masses and throw balls into cups, forcing each other to drink, much to the jubilation of onlookers. When everyone has consumed enough ball-tainted beer (teehee!!!) the Germans stop speaking their Sauerkraut tongue to each other and it is demanded that “ﬂip cup” be played.

with one person drinking the cups contents (spit, beer, pills and spiders), then balancing the cup on the table edge and trying to flip it so it lands on its end... and not fall over again. Upon this achievement the next person drinks. This continues until one team wins. See, just like some kind of ale-swilling, kitchen-smashing, drunk-fest. The games continue to alternate between flip cup and Beer Pong. Eventually the garage fills up with cigarette smoke and empty

to attend on Tuesday, and as such had to improvise. Let’s hope he makes sense with this one, and makes it on time to the class next time. People like games. People like drinking. People don’t particularly like Thursdays or musty cobwebbed garages with no insulation. But when you throw the ﬁrst two into the last, you get good times. This may seem counter-

Imagine if a Viking and a stereotypical plate smashing Greek man were to have a baby. Imagine that this child came to be a frat boy. Imagine his nightly rituals. Somewhere in there you probably created ﬂip cup. Line up people on both sides of a picnic table, in team like formations. Now place beer in a plastic up in front of each person (warning: Rohypnol spiking reaches a peak at this point). The game starts

bottles. Various other activities soon take place. Burlesque competitions are common. Accidentally locking one’s self in the bathroom seems to be a favorite. Political discussion, literature evaluation, opinion inspection and art critique are generally not encouraged as we are at university and such activities have no place here.

Outdoor

Social Sport

www.asbsocialsport.co.nz

WHAT ON EARTH IS AN EPOA? An enduring power of attorney is a formal document giving someone the power to act for you if you loose the capacity to make decisions for yourself. There are two types of EPOAs – one for your money and property and one for your personal care and welfare. You can appoint more than one attorney for your money and property but only one for your personal care and welfare. EVERYONE – young and old – should establish an EPOA ‘just in case’ you may need it one day. There is a lot of information on the internet about EPOAs but you must seek legal advice and have your signature witnessed by a lawyer, legal executive or trustee corporation employee and the EPOA will have to be on a specific form. The University branch of Citizens Advice Bureau can give you information about the implications of this or other important documents. They have heaps of pamphlets and a huge database to help answer anyone’s questions. Visit them at the Cowshed from 1pm – 3pm daily during semesters or phone 8384466 extn 6622 or 0800FORCAB.

Enter online or at the Rec Centre Exciting, challenging & fun games to suit your team’s ability

SIX-A-SIDE SOCCER &

TOUCH Starting 13 & 15 October

Entries close 8 October

NEW 40 MINUTE SIX-A-SIDE SOCCER GAMES

PHAT CONTROLLER

Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (PS3, Xbox 360, PC)

By Antony Parnell Everyone is a comedian. I find this applies even more for geek humour, because people can make obscure references and if you don’t laugh they’ll hide behind a shield of “You don’t get it”. Penny Arcade is a bastion of light in a sea of mediocre gaming humour, having provided consistently great comics for over 10 years now. The creators of PA (Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik) have risen to a large degree of internet fame over time, expanding from their comics to a series of other projects. One of these projects is a 4 episode game series known as On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness. As soon as you are dropped into the game, you create and name your character. It’s a relatively limited creation mode, but sufficient enough to get a degree of personalisation on your in game doppelganger. No more than a minute in to the gameplay was it apparent that this game was designed with the fans in mind. The events of the game are set in motion by the appearance of Fruit Fucker Prime, which steps on your house, leaving you homeless. For those curious, Fruit Fucker Prime is a giant incarnation of the Fruit Fucker 2000, a robot which engages in carnal pleasures with fruit, a method by which it produces juice of said fruit. This concept is a good barometer for whether you’d be a fan of the writing in the game; if you think you can get behind fruit the idea of fruit defiling robots, then this game is probably for you.

The game plays as an Adventure/ RPG, where you and Penny Arcade protagonists Gabriel and Tycho set off around the city of New Arcadia to solve the mystery of the Robot menace. The RPG combat contains many commonplace elements, (HP gauge, turn based attacks) but does well avoiding the pot holes of tedious combat systems by adding in some interactive elements. For example, when one of your party is attacked, a well timed hit of R2 will block and if your timing is spot on, will allow for a counter attack. The game is mostly a 3D adventure game, with interjection of dialogue and cut scenes in 2D form. All the art and writing is done by the PA creators, and it shows. If you appreciate the artistic style from their comic, you will be immersed in the world of New Arcadia. Furthermore, the writing is top notch. The dialogue is interesting to read and usually pretty funny, and you won’t find yourself skipping through endless text too often, if ever. I hadn’t played an RPG in a while before I got my hands on this, and I couldn’t have asked for better. I’m getting tired of giving glowing reviews for games, but I’ve just had so much fun with this game so far that I can guarantee I’ll be getting Episode Two when I’m finished. Having said that, it might be a good idea to check out the Penny Arcade comic before buying, because ultimately that will give you a good idea whether or not you will enjoy characters and the writing, and the overall experience. Or download the demo, whatever floats your boat.

Everyone is a comedian. I ﬁnd this applies even more for geek humour, because people can make obscure references and if you don’t laugh they’ll hide behind a shield of “You don’t get it”

MOVIE REVIEW

Aliens in the Attic Directed by: John Schultz

Reviewed by Reginald Barclay Starring: Ashley Tisdale from High School Musical and a bunch of kids I’d never seen before, but who are probably being groomed to make their parents rich as we speak.

As far as kids movies go, this one was trying extra hard to make itself a timeless classic, the kind of film that future generations would look back on in the same nostalgic way I look back on Home Alone and Beethoven. I will not be looking back on this film in the same way, but this may be due to my age, so please keep that in mind as you read on. The premise is a pretty fun one for kids, or at least it would have been when I was a kid. A group of aliens land at a beach house and try to take over the world and the only ones who can stop them are five kids. They can’t tell their parents because they’ll get grounded and nothing will stop the aliens from taking over. Not everything, however, is as it seems. No, actually, it is very much as it seems. Everything the kids do goes completely and perfectly to plan, while the aliens, who have travelled from the distant edges of the galaxy, are completely powerless to defeat a pre-teen gang of all-American white kids. Now, if these aliens had landed in South Central Los Angeles or Harlem, the movie would have been about three minutes long, with the aliens getting demolished in a random drive by. They land in whitey-land, USA, population: Cracker and get beaten with nerf guns and sock monkeys instead. I’m not kidding you. This movie drips cheese like an elderly Italian man’s moustache.

It is at the end of the day a kid’s movie. I look at this the way my parents looked at Power Rangers and most of your parents looked at Pokemon. It’s not offensive, it’s just very stupid. On the upside is the fact that Aliens in the Attic was filmed in Auckland and most of the special effects were done by Kiwi artists. This is good. It also means that Ashley Tisdale was in the country for an extended period of time. If you don’t know who she is, you’re probably not a High School musical fan. Which I’m not. I’m a fan of beautiful people. This is what Ashley Tisdale is. I suspected, part way through the film, when she started to rub sunscreen on her body, that Miss Tisdale was only in this film so men (like myself) could have an excuse for going and seeing it with their girlfriends. I give this movie 3/5, two of which come from Ashley Tisdale in a bikini

Auteur House Presents: Michael Powell

By Dr Richard Swainson

Englishman Michael Powell began directing films in 1931, serving an extended apprenticeship making so-called “quota quickies”, extremely low budget short features that were basically a form of tax avoidance. He churned out 23 of these in 5 years, learning his craft in the process. The turning point into prestige and A-pictures came in 1937 with “The Edge of the World”. Set and shot on a remote Scottish island it reflects Powell’s interest in the culture and mythology of the British Isles and characters of stubbornness and eccentricity. In the immediate aftermath of its success he was swept up in the need to

Unfazed, The Archer’s delivered a bizarre, 1940s variation on Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” whose storyline features a villain pouring glue into people’s ears. “I Know Where I’m Going!” (1945), a stunning character study cum romance in which a strong willed woman’s determination to marry for money is undermined when she is exposed to a remote part of the Scottish coast, sees a return to Powell’s interest in folklore and superstition. In “A Matter of Life and Death” (1946) this is extended to the point of outright fantasy, with a supposedly dead RAF pilot pleading for his life in a celestial court. “Black Narcissus” (1947), is set amongst a community of nuns as their efforts to establish a convent in the Himalayan mountains comes unstuck

make propaganda, initially with “The Spy in Black”, a Hitchcockian eve-ofwar espionage thriller, and then, upon commencement of the hostilities proper, with a string of shorts and features encouraging stiff upper lip resistance to the hun. Some of these don’t date too well, but “One of Our Aircraft is Missing” (1942) has grit and a bit more realism, and marked the beginning of Powell’s writing and directing collaboration with the Hungarian born Emeric Pressburger. Calling their independent production company ‘The Archers’, Powell and Pressburger embarked on an unprecedented series of masterpieces. The first was “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (1943), a satire on dead wood and fogyish attitudes in the military that was so loathed by Winston Churchill that the Prime Minister attempted to have it suppressed.

because of a combination of sexual repression and jealousy. “The Red Shoes” (1948), the Archer’s last undisputed classic if far from Powell’s final flirtation with greatness, is the cinema’s ballet film par excellence, laying the ground work for later attempts at integrating opera and dance in “Tales of Hoffman” (1951) and “Oh...Rosalinda! (1955). The originality of Powell and Pressburger would be extraordinary at any time. The fact that they flourished during a period of war and rationing, delivering films of visual opulence, uncommon intelligence, unconventional structures and pacing with characters that challenge sympathy, is even more remarkable. The Archers brought a sense of passion and uncompromising love of art that is unique in British cinema. Many of the films mentioned above are available for rental at Auteur House.

DVD: Robot Chicken Star Wars Episode 2

Reviewed by Paul Barlow

If you’re not a fan of Robot Chicken to begin with, three things are certain. Firstly, you will not like this DVD, secondly, there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise and thirdly, you are an unimaginative douchebag who probably liked Transformers and Twilight. For, you see, what Robot Chicken does is take these beloved pop-culture icons and extrapolate the comedy by focusing on minute details. Star Wars of course is very much one of the most beloved targets of Seth Green and company, and this is their second Star Wars Special. The team behind the show love the movies and what they’ve done not only makes fun of the movies but also reveres them in a way that should make milk come out your nose. In this second special characters that make only brief appearances in the series get expanded on – Dr Ball who chastises Padme for losing the will to live despite millions of dollars of medical equipment around her that could keep her alive, or the Taun-taun (Maurice) who made a good

sleeping bag and how his friends must have missed him. This show is full of laughs. Then throw in gags like a Bobba/Jango Fett – Annakin /Luke Skywalker father/son dance off, Palpatine getting a haircut, Darth Vader trying to drink from a glass or Admiral Ackbar having a side of “insensitive Bitch” when his date orders the Calamari and you’ll get the jist of how this works. They make fun of the two trilogies in the most loving way possible and George Lucas really seems to like it – he even lent his voice to this and the first RBSW. Lucas isn’t the only Star Wars Alumni the show has lined up as voice actors. The list Carrie Fisher voicing Leia, Mark Hamill voicing Luke, Billy Dee Williams as Lando and Ahmed Best reprising the ever-hated JarJar Binks who acts as an interpreter for an insurance commercial The biggest problem with any Robot Chicken is the length of what you’re watching. Even at half an hour, three times as long as a regular

episode, the disk would be pretty empty without a feast of extras, over 2 hours worth. Here you can listen to many commentaries including one done by Yoda (and voiced by Frank Oz), you can see the work that goes into creating these puppets and stop motion animation and relive some of the most clever promos any show has on TV. If this review hasn’t talked you into trying out the DVD though I really should throw you to the Rancor – after all, there really is no hope for you. 35

BOOK: The Last Pope

By Luis Miguel Rocha Reviewed by Art Focker With book stores across the world being flooded with Dan Brown and his imitators, especially now that The Lost Symbol has been released, it seems to be getting harder and harder to find a good conspiracy novel. They almost always have something to do with how many wives or children Jesus had, or how many alien spaceships are buried under the Vatican or how many Presidents have been clones. They are, by and large, very far fetched, with chapters compressed to the size of a heartbeat and all easily readable in a trans-Tasman flight. Out of Portugal comes something quite different. The conspiracy is incredibly intricate, has very little to do with God and has grounds in a variety of recent political events, all of which fit nicely into the narrative. The assassination of Aldo Moro and the short tenure of John Paul I (who was pope for only 33 days) are all connected, as are real world Masonic orders and Mafia crime syndicates. There are no heretical words in this novel, unlike the heathen Dan Brown’s page-a-second trash. This book really makes you think, not presuming to think

for you and offer up explanations because the plot has become so contrived that you actually need them. The tale begins in 1978, with the mysterious and sudden death of John Paul I and jumps back and forth (but not with the nauseating regularity of some other conspiracy novels I have attempted to read) to the present day, with references to Pope Benedict XVI (the current one, for those among us not in tune with our Catholic brothers) making this book seem more and more believable. There are no impossibly fast jets like in Dan Brown’s work and there are no unresearchable possibilities from the distant Biblical past. It’s all there, the little black spots in history which happened behind closed doors and don’t conﬂict with any recorded and sacred versions of events. I haven’t always had a lot of time for translated texts. One book I recently attempted to read was so poorly translated that using Babelﬁsh may have produced a more palatable result. The Last Pope, on the other hand, has been deftly translated from the original Portuguese

by Dolores. M. Koch with stunning skill, making you forget entirely that it was ever in a language other than the Queen’s. This book is excellent, soaring past all the crap which is being pumped into bookstores at the moment. You might not be able to read it in a single night, but you’ll be glad you tried to.

8/10

By Nick Johnston Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has announced the band will be releasing a collection of 44 songs periodically over the internet as they are recorded, completely free! He promises there will be no strings attached, you won’t have to sign up to any mailing lists, no charge or catch whatsoever. The plan is to earn revenue from strictly limited physical copies, which will be very pricey. The sound of the new recordings are meant to be similar to the band’s debut album, Gish. Influential 90’s indie band Pavement will be reuniting next year for some benefit show gigs in New York. The band themselves have stressed it is not a prelude to a permanent reunion. Fans had better start saving up for their flights now! Lawrence Arabia recently won the Apra Silver Scroll awards in New Zealand for the best song of the year, ‘Apple Pie Bed’. It truly is a great song, check it out if you haven’t heard it yet. Very deserving of the top prize.

Best Albums of 2007 1. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible 2. Radiohead – In Rainbows 3. Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog

4. Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero 5. Queens of the Stone Age – Era Vulgaris 6. Rilo Kiley – Under the Blacklight 7. Bjork - Volta 8. Kanye West - Graduation 9. Bloc Party – A Weekend in the City 10. The White Stripes – Icky Thump

Best Albums of 2008 1. Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer 2. Opeth - Watershed 3. The Mars Volta – Bedlam in Goliath 4. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes 5. Portishead - Third 6. Nine Inch Nails – The Slip 7. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive 8. Mogwai – The Hawk is Howling 9. Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue 10. TV on the Radio – Dear Science

Muse: The Resistance Reviewed by Nick Johnston

I really do feel sorry for Muse. Three years after releasing their magnum opus Black Holes and Revelations, they had to prepare a release that couldn’t possibly top their earlier work. And it does fall short as expected. First single and opening track Uprising is a fantastic start to the album. It stomps along like Mechanical Animals era Marilyn Manson mixed with British electronica duo Goldfrapp (the song is quite similar to their hit ‘Strict Machine’). I wish I could say it is all this good, but straight afterwards we are introduced to the soulless ‘Resistance’ and ‘Undisclosed Desires’, the latter trying some kind of R&B feel that ends up sounding pretty tacky. ‘United States of Eurasia’ is brilliantly cheesy and over-the-top, but great to listen to. If only there were more moments like this on the album. Very much a classic rock sound reminiscent of Queen, but it suits them nicely. ‘Guiding Light’ is a bit of an embarrassment with its bad 80’s sounding drums and synths. It ﬁlls a similar position that ‘Invincible’ had on Black Holes and Revelations (arguably the weakest track on that album). It’s crafted for a cellphonesin-the-air arena show moment, but it feels

soulless in its studio recording. ‘Unnatural Selection’ is a little bit better but it isn’t until ‘MK Ultra’ that the album gets exciting again. This is a classic fast paced Muse song and easily one of the best of the album. If you’re not planning to buy the whole thing, grab this track on iTunes anyway, it’s worth it. ‘I Belong To You’ is a strange departure from their normal sound, but unlike some of the earlier songs, this really works nicely. Part way through the song it jumps into their rendition of a piece from Samson and Delilah by French composer Camille Saint-Saens, before snapping back to the original song with an added clarinet solo. The ﬁnale, a 13-minute ‘symphony’ is a very good effort although it is not a work of genius as many early reviews would have us believe. The overture sounds a lot like Philip Glass with added guitars and a drum machine. It’d be perfectly suited for a movie trailer; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was the soundtrack to a Watchmen 2 trailer eventually or something along those lines. Part two is very Rachmaninov-ish while part three ‘Redemption’, the best part of the symphony, does exactly what it promises … it tries to redeem the

album for its patchy start. It is a great end to the album and softens the blow for when the listener realises that this album is quite inferior to a lot of their previous work. The main problem is that the album is very unfocused. There are plenty of good themes and concepts to run with but it all gets jumbled up and lost in the confusion. Muse seem to be having an identity crisis and they’ll hopefully focus their efforts a little more in the future. There are some great moments on The Resistance, but there are also quite a few moments when you are just left thinking “wha’happened?” 37

Send your gig listings to gigs@ nexusmag.co.nz. We will print them for you! Seriously, send them. There’s got to be SOMETHING happening in this city.

The Sound of Music Musik Makers present the story of Maria Rainer and the Von Trapp family set in pre war Austria. Full of memorable songs and scenes. Where: Riverlea Theatre 83 Riverlea Road, Hamilton When: Saturday 19 Sept – Saturday Oct 10 Contact: Bryan Bevege - ph 07 856 5450

ext 2. This is a non-proﬁt initiative by the Hamilton Community Arts Council. Cost: $30 per artist to list Further details: 838-6424 ext 2 directory@hcac.org.nz

The Real Art Roadshow

Hamilton Artist Directory

Launched 2!

The Artist Directory is a marketing & promotional tool for artists. 2500 high quality booklets will be designed & distributed throughout the Waikato. Get your name onto the coffee tables & into the minds of potential clients. Cost is $30 per artist to list. What we need: A jpeg ﬁle of your work & 100 words about who you are & what you do. Email directory@hcac.org.co.nz or phone: 838-6424

Celebrating disability culture through ﬁlm, art, sport, comedy and music! When:Tuesday 22 Sep 2009 to Tuesday 29 Sep 2009 Where:Meteor Theatre, 1 Victoria St, Hamilton Contact Details:Chris Mcmaster Phone: 07 850 8965 Cost and booking details:All events, gold coin donation / koha

The Real Art Roadshow is two huge truckloads of real New Zealand art that wheels its way to secondary schools through out the country. Each truck – one silver, one black – literally unfolds to form a 64 square metre art gallery and displays over 60 original artworks by some New Zealand’s leading artists. Together they form a fascinating collection of post 1945 New Zealand visual art, not to mention the country’s biggest and only mobile art exhibition. Monday 28 Sep 2009 to Friday 09 Oct 2009 Civic Square, Worley Place, Hamilton

Don’t forget Open mic nights! 5pm till late every Thursday

Momento Hours

Now open till 6pm Monday & Tuesday And till 8pm or later Wednesday – Friday!

EMAIL YOUR BUSTED MOMENTS TO NEXUS Step one: Party Step two: Take pictures Step three: Email them to us at busted@nexusmag.co.nz Seriously, do it! It canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be that hard, people are (apparently) partying here all the time. Embarrass your friends! Display your ugly mug! Showcase your boobs! Do it, goddamn it!