SPUR Issue the Second by SPUR Magazine

This is a magazine called

Issue the Second Volume 1 June-ish 2012

SPUR

Featuring: Featuring:

Dananananaykroyd

Featuring:

M.J. Hearle Dr Brown Poetry And more

Also, it's free

CONTENTS Contents

Editorial

Letters

Li-Be

Lars Von Trier & Me by Tom

B-C

To Abort Or Not To Abort... That Should Not Be The Question by Serrin Prior

University As Market Place by Fletcher O’Leary

Liberals On Campus by Jack Batty

A Note From The Flinders University Women’s Officer by Rose Pullen

Big Bang Theories by Daryl McCann

Ni-Na

Casualisation & Flexible Work by Gabs Evangelista

A Letter From Your Local Chapter of The Zeitgeist Movement by Mason Lee

Al-Si

God by Gloria Wang

An Interview with MJ Hearle by Alistair Grantham

An Interview with Dananananaykroyd by Tom Gaffney

An Interview with Dr Brown by Daniel Fitzgerald

Album Reviews

A Short Story by Tony Duggan

Ca-Ti

Poems

V-Cr

Sam Says with Samuel McDonough

Fun

Fe-Co

No Laughing Matter

Pleases & Thank Yous

Editorial The wages of banality are obscurity, replacement and a footnote on a Wikipedia page. Fourscore years ago these wages were paid unto the deserving by a brave group of students demanding a new student magazine that promoted what ‘We Say’, and as such, apathy was broken like Samson’s strength. It was a time for joyous cries to reign through the halls of a proud University. That was eighty years ago. All the members of that noble group are almost certainly dead; their ambition and hope doubtlessly is. Their magazine is not.

The last genuine alternative to On Dit lasted for one edition in 1934. We are now doing one-hundred percent better than those guys. Indeed, several-hundred percent better when you consider that SPUR is not just for the University of Adelaide; it’s for all the Universities, and anybody universally minded. - Editors.

P.S. For those astute observers out there, you may have noticed that the third man in the SPUR lineup, James McCann, is absent from the Editors’ photo below. AsIn that time a lot has changed. Eighty years ago the suming you are in fact astute observers, you will also people did not know nuclear energy, space travel, the have noticed that he is flaunting himself on the front internet, Kanye West, Agent Orange, the decline of cover and was thus otherwise engaged, leaving Serrin classical music or SPUR. and Sam with naught but his glasses for comfort in his absence. As the old saying goes, new problems require new solutions. In this post-modern, pansexual, oxymoronic, P.P.S. In issue the first, there was no mention of the subjectively objective vacuum of love and God era in rate at which SPUR Magazine would be released bewhich we resign ourselves to live there must be some cause, at the time, what with financial uncertainties, staunch phallus to impregnate the minds of the wea- we did not know. We’re happy to announce that, for ry and woeful, create a fertilised ground from which 2012, SPUR is a quarterly. brilliance may spring and rain upon Danae like the gilded semen of Zeus. P.P.P.S. An especial shout out to Flinders University, who have been especially good to us.

Editors Serrin Prior, James McCann’s glasses, and Samuel McDonough

Dear Serrin (and James and Sam), As one of the editors of On Dit in 2011, it was with some interest that I read your interview with Raff Piccolo. Though informative and well written, I feel that it somewhat misconstrued and misrepresented the funding issues that marred the final weeks of On Dit last year.

PPS. You might want to double-check the methods your printers are using; the mag has an unmistakable smell of sour grapes.

Firstly, you write that Raff ’s “version of events…was missing from the issue”.Though this is true, it was not for lack of trying on the editorial team’s part. On receiving notice of the cancellation of issue 12 we wrote Raff an email outline our opposition to the move and reasons why. We never received any reply from Raff. As such, it was hard to present his “version of events” within our now-notorious final issue.

Any and all information of relevance relating to the issue mentioned above can be found in Issue 1, Volume 1 of SPUR and Issue 11, Volume 79 of On Dit. To conclude, we would like to leave you with a poem by the incomparable Robert Frost:

On that note, On Dit’s “version of events” seems to be missing from your own article. Though Raff states that “It wasn’t about saving dollars”, the email we received from him, in which we were told of issue 12’s demise, clearly mentioned that On Dit had been running at a loss. Notwithstanding the fact that sourcing advertising (and thus revenue) was never part of our editorial role, bringing up a lack of profits while simultaneously informing us of a funding cut certainly begs the question. Further, the contention that we were going to release an issue after week 12 is simply wrong. All our issues ran on time pursuant to pre-planned schedule that took into account semester breaks. But despite all of this, the main problem — something not mentioned in your article — is that we received no consultation prior to being informed of the cut. Though you mention that Raff will “certainly be willing to have a talk”, neither he nor anyone else at the AUU gave us any warning. As editors yourselves, you are no doubt aware of the time that gets poured into making a magazine. To be told, two days before our penultimate issue is set to go to the printers, that we wouldn’t have a final issue, was something of a shock. Though this is all proverbial water under the bridge, I thought it best to clear these things up, so as to keep said water running smoothly. Best,

Thanks Rory!

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. (Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, 1923) Love, SPUR Magazine Dear Spur Magazine, After reading your first edition I feel it necessary to say that although my compulsory student union fees may go to On Dit; my heart has been stolen by Spur. Sincerely David Skene

Rory Kennett-Lister PS. Glad you’re still pushing for people to write about knitting in On Dit. You did such a great job with your crocheting article in last year’s On Dit; I’d hate for this year to miss out.

Thanks David! What a nice letter. Love, SPUR Magazine.

The opinion by Michael Arnold titled: “Affirmative Action: Entrenched disadvantage” could have been written 20 or 30 ago, since it has nothing new to offer. He starts with the old, tired banality about the “the principle of the fair go.” He says, “We believe that, regardless of their race, gender, age or socio-economic background, every Australian should have the same opportunities to make of their life what they choose.” The more is the reality of discrimination and inequality becoming visible in Australia, the more it became necessary to spread repeatedly in public how nice the world around is. As such, Australian Fair Go is only a belief, an article of faith, in interest of the fat and privileged. And that faith is called “equal opportunity” which is poised as an anti-dote to a society based on solidarity and freedom for all to choose their own life-style, not being forced into servitude, into menial labour. He goes on to say, “For as long measures such as quotas are in place, any person belonging to that (special, marginalised) group will be seen as a device for fulfilling a quota, rather than an individual with unique talents and abilities.” As if in Australia, or in any other imperialist country, “the merit”, talent and abilities have always been the criteria by which people get access to jobs and wealth. He wants us to believe in a utopian Australia that had never actually existed in history. He does not recognise, for example, the existence of economic and social power in Australia. The holders of which are almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon and Jewish in origin, including a few other nationalities. This monopoly of power would be impossible to break merely through individual “talent and ability,” because of the conscious purpose of the Anglo-Saxon power holders to reproduce their power through ethnic nepotism. This also suggest the true process in formation of “talents and abilities” since in all development, socially and in workplace, collective support is essential. Just like in playing chess, for example, talent and ability is developed only through collective means. Individual talent means nothing unless people and players are attracted to you and you feel treated equally. When outsider ethnic groups arrive in Australia they, just like the chess players, need collective support to develop their talent and abilities. When such collective support is lacking (due to Anglo-Saxon ethnic nepotism) then the outcome you get is a segmented labour market, and deeply channelled, separate pathways for Anglos and migrants. Boris Radic

Thanks Boris! By government regulation we have to have at least one letter from somebody named Boris in our magazine. We didn’t have one right up until the last moment, but you really came through with the goods! Love, SPUR Magazine. Dear Spur, I really enjoyed reading your first issue, I found one sitting near our gulag food court at Flinders. The first section, 'Welcome to SPUR' really made my day. The ethos of your magazine is appealing. I feel disenfranchised with my university; we have very little student culture and currently have no student publication. Reading through the magazine, I found no clear identifier to a particular university. I was excited that there might be cross- institutional publication that unities the entire student community across Adelaide, which would fill the void left at Flinders. But then I read your 'about' section on Facebook and was concerned: are you only a secondary magazine for Adelaide university? I was wondering if, instead of being tied to one institution, your magazine would consider having no master and roaming the streets of Adelaide accepting contributions from any student? I have a feeling Flinders is itching with talent from students who want a forum. Adelaide is freed from the shackles of magazine monoculture. Can you help free Flinders from the tyranny of ignorant apathy? Luke Marshall Thanks Luke! Everybody is welcome to write for SPUR, reguardless of whether they go a particular university or not. We only care that the writing is good. Love, SPUR Magazine.

LARS VON TRIER & ME

Here is a transcript of my latest interview with Dan- filmed in the Dogme 95 style, including the films ish avant-garde director and screenwriter Lars Von Breaking The Waves, The Idiots and Dancer In The Trier, taken in his home country of Denmark. Spoil- Dark. er alerts. Von Trier: Ah yes, the Dogme trilogy is a very imporThomas: Thanks for letting me hold this interview, tant part of my work. Mr. Von Trier, though I must say it was quite a struggle for me affording flights halfway across the world Thomas: How do you respond to claims that the to Denmark for it. Dogme theory of film-making was a pretentious, self-limiting pile of wank? Von Trier: I appreciate it, and it is much to the cause of my morbid fear of flying. And death. Often leading Von Trier: Well I think the stark realism of all those me to have intense anxiety attacks or long periods of pieces speak for themselves. If it wasn’t for the loss of manic depression. non-diegetic sound and staged lighting the scene in The Idiots where all the characters gangbang while Thomas: Wow, you put Woody Allen to shame. pretending to have severe mental disabilities would have just looked stupid. Von Trier: It’s no laughing matter. Thomas: During this period you also came under Thomas: Let’s talk about some of your earlier work, fire because of the way you treated Bjork during the starting with what most noticeably got you recog- filming of Dancer In The Dark. Apparently every nised on the global scale of cinema. I’m speaking, day she would arrive on set, spit at you and speak of course, of your work on the Golden Heart trilogy, the words ‘I despise you, Mr. Von Trier’?

Von Trier: This is true. But after seeing the music vid- proach to film-making. eo clip for ‘It’s All So Quiet’, I could tell she was prone to mood swings on set. Thomas: If we could, to lighten the mood, I would like to reflect on and ask you about your more coThomas: I think it was more to do with your harsh medic productions. direction of method acting Von Trier: …I wasn’t aware any of my films were Von Trier: Well her character in the film was blind, meant to be comedic. so I like to do whatever is necessary to elicit a true performance. Thomas: No, no, I’m talking about your performance in your 2011 Cannes Film Festival interview Thomas: But her character also gets executed in the footage. end of the film. Von Trier: Ah yes. Von Trier: Whatever is necessary. Thomas: Did you not consider it maybe a bit insenThomas: That explains all those ‘Paul AND Bjork sitive to claim that you were a Nazi in a country that Are Dead’ blogs online. was once occupied by those very people? Von Trier: Of course, but I believe public opinion and critics have judged me too harshly. I did not just treat Bjork like that. I believe in equality and fairness in the workplace – which is why I make sure I mentally abuse ALL my cast and crew.

Von Trier: If these people cannot take this as a joke then they have no sense of humour. This is just like when I was kicked out of church for claiming I was Satan, slitting all the clergy’s throats, urinating in their cold dead mouths and then setting the pulpit on fire.

Thomas: Though, in response to that, general feedback from previous cast members of your films have found that it is mostly the women who feel emotionally stressed under your direction. Do you think of style of film-making, and also subject matter of your films are mysogynistic?

Thomas: Well Mr. Von Trier, unfortunately that brings us to the close of this interview. I would like to say that you’re quite possibly completely mentally and socially unstable, disputably abusive to your cast members for the sake of artistry, consumed by your own flawed pretentiousness, and obsessive over a very small number of morbid subject matVon Trier: That is a ridiculous claim. Though the ters. But shit, all your films are fuckin’ awesome. subject matter might be harsh, most of my films accurately reflect the struggles, bravery and triumphs of Von Trier: Up top. women, even in the face of execution, mental illness or sexual repression. We then high-fived. Thomas: Yes, but to extract these performances Tom blogs at http://tomhelpsyouout.tumblr.com/ surely each time every actress will feel great strain. Did you notice this, aside from Bjork, with perhaps Nicole Kidman or Charlotte Gainsbourg? Von Trier: I’m not sure, me, Stellan Skarsgard and Willem Dafoe are usually too busy having mojitos between takes to notice. Thomas: Do you plan to change any of your common subject matters in your upcoming production? Von Trier: My next film is to be called Nymphomaniac. Anyway, superficially mysogynistic pieces are definitely considered high art. It’s the Kanye West ap-

Before Björk worked with von Trier, she was a well adjusted human being. Also, she knew how to write a good single.

Toabortornottoabort... that should not be the question

Of course, the topic of abortion is a complex one that can hardly be summarised in a pithy Shakespearean quote. However, if it could, “to be or not to be” would seem to be the most accurate way of doing so. On the one hand you have the pro-lifers who want the foetus to be, and on the other, you have the pro-choicers who want it not to be. As such, the debate that rages between the aforementioned groups appears to be in the form of a question: to abort, or not to abort?

to legislate against making abortion an option for the individual? (As an aside, it thus seems a sad irony that the anti-abortion movement is one primarily taken up by conservatives, who otherwise fiercely argue against government intervention in the individual’s life). When you consider the issue as a private one, you can find yourself in one of two camps, and in either you are faced with two facts. You may not believe in abortion. In this case, you can refuse the abortion option for yourself, yet allow that others may make a different decision. Or, you may believe in abortion. In which case you may or may not choose to have an abortion at some point in your life, and allow that others can make their own decision. The only role of the government here is to ensure, for those who choose that abortion is the right option, that the procedure is available, affordable and safe.

But is this really the question we should be asking? Is it even the question that is being asked? It seems as though, as in the worst of primary school debates, we have found ourselves in a debate of definition – only no one seems to realise that that is what this is. While the question for pro-lifers is whether a woman should have an abortion (with the answer, of course, being in the negative), this is not the question for pro-choicers. The question of whether abortions are morally wrong or right has not been discussed here – and it is not really being debated out in The problem with the current discourse surrounding abortion is society either, at least not as much as we think it is. For a debate of that it has been framed as a dichotomy. You’re either pro-life or this nature to occur, we would need an affirmative side and a negpro-choice, anti-abortion or pro-abortion. That is, pro-life has ative side, and that is not what we have. Pro-choice is about being been posited as the opposite of pro-choice. This is not the right neither affirmative nor negative, it is about letting each woman way to look at it. and those who are important to her, decide for themselves.

Pro-choice means that you are in favour of choice, and not nec- I suggest that what we should really be questioning is whether essarily abortion. You could be pro-choice and decide that you abortion is a matter for the private, or the public, sphere. would never ever have an abortion under any circumstances. It’s an interesting thought, and one that seemingly few people have Serrin Prior considered. Yet that is what the choice side is actually arguing. It is not saying that pregnant women should have abortions, which would be the argument favoured by the side opposite to pro-life. At a recent forum for young feminists (organised by Adelaide University’s Women’s Officer, Catherine Story), one of the speakers, Professor Judith Dwyer of Flinders University, summed it up in a refreshingly concise way. The pro-choice movement frames abortion as a private matter, while the pro-life believes it to be a matter of state – else why would the latter lobby for governments

Do you belong to an under-represented group? Are you yet to transcend identity politics? If so, SPUR wants to hear from you! If you have an idea for a column or article that will allow others to better understand your group, email us at spur.mag@gmail.com under the subject heading: NOT WHITE, MALE OR MIDDLECLASS.

What’s happening

University As Marketplace:

How the new funding model is going to diminish your education University has always been an elite institution, in Australia as elsewhere in the world. Australia’s first universities were founded to allow the up-and-coming wealthy colonials to have a proper English education without having to go around the world, and for generations, the parchment was a confirmation of your high standing in society.

S ON CAMPUS: (yes, there is a non-left wing option out there) University students are spoilt for choice when it comes to political ideology.

There have been three major challenges to this status quo in Australian history. The first challenge was in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, when the Federal Government paid for the enrolment of tens of thousands of working class ex-servicemen to receive an education. This led to a surge in the number of Australians with a degree, and increased the depth and width of Australia’s intellectual output, leading to a focus on things such as the nature of class in Australian history that were rarely if ever discussed beforehand.

Soft Left. Hard Left. Crazy.

The second great challenge was the provision of free education by the Whitlam Government, though this was stunted by the succeeding Fraser Government cutting support to poorer students, making education, no matter how free on paper, an unrealistic option for many. This led to free education being declared a ‘failure’, and the introduction of HECS in the late 1980s

Each trying to ‘out-left’ each other in a rapid race to extremism, this loud minority can leave you with the impression that all university students are left-wing. Spend too much time on campus and you could be forgiven for forgetting one of the most powerful forces in National Politics, the Liberal Party of Australia, even exists.

You and I, my friend, are seeing the third great challenge to the elite University. The Federal Government has taken a two pronged approach to this. First it has told Universities that they are allowed to have as many students as they see fit, throwing open the doors, as opposed to the quotas that each University had under the old system. Secondly it has set targets for groups that have previously been locked out of higher education: students from low-income backgrounds, non-English speaking backgrounds, students with a disability and Indigenous students all must be drawn into higher education by Universities. It seems clear that the Government bureaucrats think that they have solved the problem to all of society’s ills: there was a collective facepalm last year after they asked Universities to start collecting information on how many of their students identify as LGBTI - with the intention of not sending them to camps, but rather making an equity target out of it. Of course, this wouldn’t be much of an article if there wasn’t a catch. This latest system is a market, and a market doesn’t work unless the customer can walk away if they don’t like what they see. This year La Trobe University will not offer any Australian History subjects because of a lack of demand. Demand for Engineering and Law, which provide nice pay packets upon graduation, have gone through the roof. So where does that leave our education? Well, it is based on popularity rather than substance. Some things are of value, but for whatever reason students want to avoid it. This is particularly bad for Arts students like, because there is no set core learning for something like History or Politics – you can get your degree in History whether you focused exclusively on Western Europe in the 16th century or took the broader path. But the broader path isn’t always possible. Universities get their funding from two main sources – teaching students and producing research. For years, Universities have been encouraged to focus on their ‘research strengths’, which means, what they already do well. So what do Universities do? They give the students what they want, as long as they already get money for it. It’s a nice little scam, and the students at any one institution get an increasingly restricted choice as lecturers die off or retire who may have been tenured from a bygone era of intellectual diversity. At the University of Adelaide, this means you get stuck with a lot of European History – especially if it is from a time period before the invention of the light bulb. There is now only one lecturer in Asian History left at Adelaide, who teaches a subject every second year. Not that you’d want to learn about Australia’s main trading partner or the inventors of rocket power. Nor are you likely to learn about the history of the Middle East, despite the fact that we’ve been occupying countries from that part of the globe for ten years now. And of course there’s no study of Africa or Latin America, reinforcing the biases already prevalent in History. A generation of students in the 60s were inspired to rebel at the thought that their University experience was a cog in a factory machine – they stressed that the University experience was meant to be more than vocational. We shall see what the outcome of the latest move towards this diminishing of education will be. Fletcher O’Leary

Sit in a tutorial and you’ll be able to find the whole gamut in less than 5 minutes. Wonder around Orientation Week and it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Dare to approach a group of student politicians for very quick results.

This is curious because while being a Liberal at university isn’t always easy, it makes sense. The Party is primarily one of liberty promoting individualism and freedom. We believe individuals are best equipped to make their own decisions and spend their own money. Not the government or some other body, like your student union. This concept of freedom appeals to students and manifests itself in a variety of issues that are relevant to young people. The return of compulsory student unionism springs to mind. Last year the Gillard Government delighted the ideological left by introducing a new student services and amenities fee. All students will pay an extra $263 for services they might not want or might never use. Unsurprisingly, the loud minority loves it! Your student union overwhelmingly supports it and looks forward to wasting more of your money on a variety of niche political causes. Liberals on Campus, on the other hand, would prefer to spend $263 on textbooks, transport and rent (or 26 jugs of beer for that matter) than fund the fun and games of student politicians. The fee offends one of our basic principles: freedom of choice. Individuals should be empowered to spend their money on whatever they choose. This will in turn force student service providers to genuinely serve students by delivering only services that students actually want and choose to fund. The Liberal ideals of liberty and freedom become increasingly attractive to students as Federal and State Labor governments systematically create a Nanny-State. According to them, I can’t surf the internet without Minister Conroy telling me what I can or can’t read; I can’t enjoy a tasty guava cruiser without Minister Pliberseck slapping me with a tax on my delicious alcopop; I can’t go out at night without Premier Weatherill deciding when I should have to go home. Labor is treating young Australians like mindless idiots, unable to make their own decisions or think for themselves. So despite the fact the mere mentioning of the name ‘Tony Abbott’ anywhere in the Napier Building will likely attract looks of disgust I urge the currently unengaged to ensure your voice does not continue to be drowned out by the perceived majority on campus. If you scratch the surface there is an alternative to the Labor Left, the Labor Right, the Greens, the Socialists and the Communists. You’ll probably find us shoved in some back corner at your university O-Week. Jack Batty is President of Liberals on Campus. To join Liberals on Campus please email info@liberalsoncampus.com or like our Facebook Page.

on campus

a note from the Flinders Uni

WOMEN’S OFFICER

As the Student Council at Flinders University currently stands, there are equity positions to support minorities. As the Women’s Officer, I am often asked why this position is still necessary. My standard retort is women are systematically oppressed by our patriarchal society; but let’s dig deeper. First, a foray into the world of statistics. According to the pivot tables available on the University’s website, 64% of all enrolments are made by female students. Fantastic! That’s not a minority at all; doesn’t this mean all the problems women face in the world no longer exist, or at least are not prevalent at university?

On the surface, yes. In reality, no. Female students comprise 61% of part time students, and a stunning 80% of external enrolments. Now, the statistics only provide you purely with numbers, not reasons for the type of study undertaken – but the application of problems women face in daily life helps to explain the type of study they choose. Despite recognition of the important role that fathers play in their children’s lives, parenting is not shared between the sexes, with women still performing the vast majority of childcare and parenting duties (Craig, 2006). In real world terms, this means that while women look after their children, they are often unable either to attend a campus to study, or to study full time. This time-heavy parenting load stands alone – add the unpaid work in, with women performing 1.6 times the amount of unpaid work as men (ABS 2001), and you’ll see why women are time poor. Traditional gender roles remain cemented in our society, to the detriment of both women and men – but when it comes to study, it is women who suffer the most. Outside of the university setting the disparities continue. The graduate gender pay gap fluctuates over the years, but remains always in favour of male graduates. In 2011, the average starting salary for male graduates was $2000 more than their female counterparts (Graduate Careers Australia, 2011). So we can see that in the university and post-university setting, women face problems that men do not. This is also true of society at large. How often do men worry about walking by themselves at night? Will a woman you know be one of the 40% who has experienced violence against them (White Ribbon 2009)? When will women across both Australia and the world finally be sovereign over their own bodies? We do not have equality, and until we do, women need to be represented and need to be provided for. At university, this means many things, from a safe space for women only to a student representative – and I currently am said representative. What does this all mean? The role itself is pretty diverse across universities, so I’ll focus on what I know. At Flinders, the Women’s Officer maintains the women’s space, runs awareness campaigns and fundraisers, and attempts to foster a sense of community among female students. This is a lot harder than it sounds. If you’ve experienced student life at Flinders then you’ll know that student engagement can be a little lacking. I’m told that prior to VSU there were many active clubs and collectives, but unfortunately that’s not the world we live in now. I have plans to reform the women’s collective and harness the amazing knowledge andstrength of female students to get involved in campaigns. Under the current format, the Women’s Officer is also automatically the Vice President. This is called affirmative action, and it is designed to empower minorities who have traditionally been oppressed. Affirmative action allows

for minorities, such as women, to be promoted to roles and positions to which they ordinarily would not be due to our society’s everpresent, inbuilt discrimination – remember that patriarchy I mentioned? Well, it means that women won’t achieve as high-ranking roles as their male colleagues, for no reason other than their possession of a vagina. This led to an interesting campaign by a male Flinders student last year, who decided that the most effective way to propose change to the student council’s affirmative action would be to run for Women’s Officer. This student created a Facebook page promoting himself as the ideal candidate. He (or his friends) accompanied this page with a description which, while intended as humorous, offended a lot of people. I don’t remember specific quotes, but it basically mocked the role, serving little purpose other than to denigrate the position itself. An effective way to stir debate about affirmative action? Hardly. Instead, people saw little more than a man advertising himself as running for a female office position – not exactly an action which could be considered admirable. After much debate – well, as much debate as one can have in the form of a series of Facebook comments – the page was deleted. With much change happening at Flinders, a new Student Association is soon to be formed, and it is proposed that under this system the Vice President (VP) be internally elected from within the student council. This may seem like pointless abolition of affirmative action, but I actually support this move for a few reasons. For one, it allows anybody who would be put off running for office because of the daunting title of VP to participate in student politics; conversely, it stops people from running for a position they aren’t really interested in just for that title. It also gives a firm structure to the new organisation, as the VP role will be clearly defined. Finally, the title of VP is currently so nominal that removing it has no real effect on women at Flinders. I am a firm believer in affirmative action, but I believe that it should be real action, positions which count. The VP is not one of those things. I acknowledge that this is possibly a controversial stance, but I would rather see effective change occur than have a token effort by the university. I would love to live in a world where having a Women’s Officer was redundant, even antiquated – but until this happens, women must be represented. Once equality finally wins out, we can consider getting rid of this role. Until then: stay strong, my sisters.

Rose Pullen is an arts student and legume lover. She enjoys theatre, napping, and Dance Academy. She is also the Women’s Officer at Flinders University. Any Flinders students interested in joining the women’s collective can email womens.officer@flinders.edu.au.

Big Bang Theories By Daryl McCann

Living in an apartment in Los Angeles are two physicists, Leonard and Sheldon, both of whom have jobs at the California Institute of Technology. Two of their co-workers, aerospace engineer Howard and astrophysicist Raj, also spend a lot time at the apartment. All four possess the most brilliant intellects, and yet in their early thirties they remain avid fans of sci-fi, fantasy, and comic books. This is the setting for the television programme The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Texas, and he often refers to his childhood as “hell”. Sheldon, who earned a PhD at the age of 16 and has an IQ of 187, and his devout mother, Mary, often clash over their different views about religion. Sheldon is very much the kind of scientist who believes religion is mere superstition. In one particular episode when he is experiencing a hard time he cries out: “Why hast thou forsaken me, o deity whose existence I doubt.” On another occasion, after scoring a spare in bowling, he cheerfully exclaims: “Thank you, Jesus!...as my mother would say.” Across the hallway from Leonard and Sheldon’s apartment lives Penny, a blonde waitress and would-be actress. When it comes to religion, Penny believes in ghosts, astrology, psychics and voodoo. This is just the type of mumbo jumbo that Sheldon would expect a waitress and occasional bartender at the Cheesecake Factory to accept as true. She is a victim of her provincial upbringing and lacks his superior intellect and scientific training. The mystery of the universe is not to be found in superstition but in those mathematical formulations that fill his whiteboard. Sheldon, after all, is the man who seeks to solve the space-time geometry in higher spin gravity. There is a paradox about Sheldon’s staunch atheism and rejection of faith. Sheldon denounces his mother’s religion as superstitious, and yet the makers of The Big Bang Theory have Sheldon and his friends going to their comic book store on a certain day of the week and at the same time each week. They read their sacred texts, and they treat certain objects with special reverence, as when Sheldon obtains some of Leonard Nemoy’s DNA. Most of the gods they worship in their comics are Americanised-versions of European pagan deities, Thor being a direct lift. In Viking mythology Thor was the hammer-wielding god associated with thunder and lightning, and the protection of mankind. These comic cosmic fantasies and obsessions have not helped Sheldon, Leonard, Howard and Raj grow up into adults.

Sheldon is unable to function without strictly adhering to a routine. Irony and sarcasm elude him. The world of romance and human emotion, and basic common sense, are beyond his simultaneously brilliant and childish mind. Penny might be a waitress and occasional bartender at the Cheesecake Factory, but she is his guide to the world. In fact, Sheldon’s relationship with Penny echoes his relationship with his mother. When Sheldon is sick or cannot get to sleep, he insists on Penny singing him a lullaby. Who is the smart one here…the flaky scientist with his string theory or the flaky blonde waitress with her fear of ghosts? This brings us to another Big Bang Theory, the theory about how the universe came into existence. When I was growing up the Big Bang Theory had become the prevailing hypothesis in cutting edge science, but the yet-to-be updated books I read in our school library were still discussing the Steady State Theory – that is, the concept that there was no beginning time in our universe; everything stretched back in the direction of infinity. This proposition did not have to prevent you from believing in God. Even so, the need for a Creator God, which is central to most but not all religions, became somewhat unnecessary in my eyes. I found this a worrying discovery because my own mother was a little like Sheldon’s in her devout religiousness. According to the Big Bang Theory, the Universe exploded into being at a certain moment. It was in a tremendously hot and closely packed state that expanded. This speedy spreading out caused the Universe to cool and resulted in its current continuously expanding state. According to the most recent measurements and observations, the Big Bang occurred approximately 14 billion years ago. One of the arguments to do with the Big Bang Theory is what triggered the whole process in the first place. In other words, what was the uncaused creator that set the laws of the physical universe into motion? Sheldon’s mother in The Big Bang Theory show would obviously insist on giving the name God to the uncaused creator. Her son would be most reluctant to do so. It is unlikely the next Global Atheist Convention will propose that something or someone called God is the creator of the universe. However, the laws of the universe appear to some as if they were designed to make possible our existence. If the potency of the gravitational force varied by just one thousandth from its current value, all

stars would be either blue giants or dwarves. If that were the case, our medium-sized Sun would not exist, which in turn would mean the impossibility of life on Planet Earth. Some of the world’s most famous scientists, such as the physician-geneticist Francis Collins, now see no incongruity between science and religion. Similarly, the astrophysicist Robert Jastrow argued in God and the Astronomers (1978) that scientists had searched high and low for an explanation of the mystery of creation, only to arrive at an answer that exists outside and beyond the laws of the physical universe, and might as well be called – God. Nick Hawkes wrote a straightforward, nononsense account of the relationship between religion and science in The Dance Between Science and Faith (2007). He addresses the anthropic principle, the uncontroversial notion that “the universe exists in a very precise way that has allowed the development of complex living organisms including human beings”. There are two versions of this principle. Atheists adhere to the “weak” version, acknowledging that “the universe contains properties compatible” with the existence of its human observer, but steer well clear of bringing God into the equation. The “strong” version of the anthropic principle claims there are just too many miraculous coincidences in the universe for a religious explanation to be ruled out. Hawkes quotes no less an authority than Stephen Hawking on the matter: The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang is enormous. I think there are religious implications. John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and theologian, goes even further and denounces the “weak” version of the anthropic principle as “an intellectually lazy” response to the “unexpectedly precise requirements” necessary for human existence. He depicts atheistic scientists as basically saying, “We’re here because we’re here” I would not argue that science has proved the truth of religious claims. Science is about measuring the physical realm, the laws of the universe for instance, while religion by definition is not just about the natural world. Religion is the cousin to the humanities and music and art and cannot be measured so easily, and yet is central to our being. The character of Sheldon disavows such things and perhaps this explains why he is a genius intellectually but emotionally a child. The celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins might take issue with the notion that atheists struggle in the Emotional Quotient department. In 2008 he pro-

posed the idea that atheists be referred to as “Brights”, and those with faith be classified as “Dulls”. Sheldon would no doubt concur. Another celebrity atheist, the late Christopher Hitchens, wrote many entertaining books in his time, but not until he published God is not Great (2007) did he achieve genuine commercial success. In one section of his fiery tome Hitchens argues that science, thanks to the theory of evolution, has once and for all refuted religion. Had he perused, even for five minutes, the website initiated by Francis Collins, BioLogos, Hitchens might have written with less hubris. One of the ironies of Hitchens’ cancer of the oesophagus was not the devil-may-care chain-smoking and scotch consumption throughout his life, but that Francis Collins, author of The Language of God (2006) and team leader of the Human Genome Project, became both his physician and close friend. Collins, who enjoyed the adversarial company of Hitchens – “an excellent stimulus to sharpening my own thinking” – employed every experimental drug and radically new technique at his disposal to save or at least prolong the life of Hitchens. In the wake of Hitchens’ death, the religious Collins wrote movingly of his atheist friend’s stoicism in that final year of his life: “He soldiered on, never complaining, never wanting his illness to be the topic of conversation if something more interesting could be identified.” If nothing else, the magnanimity exhibited by Francis Collins challenges the central tenant of God is not Great – namely, that “religion poisons everything”. The most I should like to claim here is that the scientifically-observed cosmic order does not in itself make religious faith unreasonable, and that the Sheldon Coopers of the world might find something better to worship than their own fallible selves, or even Thor for that matter, much as I enjoyed the new Avengers movie. Written almost two thousand years ago this line from the Bible in Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 3, comes to mind: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen is not made out of what was visible.” I used to believe in evolution, but not anymore, because when I see something as complex and beautiful as Professor Richard Dawkins, I know that can’t just have happened by chance. - Stewart Lee

Casualisation & Flexible Work: How far can the bosses push before we snap?

The eight hour day was won by workers in the building trades in Melbourne on 21 April 1856. But one hundred and fifty years later, increasingly fewer workers in Australia can hold a 38-hour week to their name. Casualisation is the process of shifting employment away from permanent full-time engagement, toward part-time and casual work, and it’s been rising modestly for the last two decades. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 21% of employees were casualised in 1991 in comparison to 25% in 2007. Casual employment is a job where you have no paid leave entitlements: no paid personal or sick leave; no paid annual holidays; and no paid public holidays (if your workplace is shut). A permanent part-time worker is considered casual if they have no leave entitlements, even though they are still guaranteed the other rights of being permanent employees. It’s easy to see why employers prefer it, casual workers can expect to be sacked without warning, have no guarantee of hours to be worked, get called in to work when not rostered, and get sent home as soon as peak or busy periods finish. We can also see how casualisation affects workers’ social lives. While employers demand flexibility, landlords do not - neither do utility companies, and stomachs that need regular filling. As the nature of casual employment demonstrates, the flexibility doesn’t work both ways, and flexibility for the boss is of course at the expense of security and stability for workers. Under the Fair Work Act 2009, the right to challenge unfair dismissal has been severely limited. Outside of the race and sex discrimination laws, workers at small businesses (under 15 employees) can’t make a claim for unfair dismissal unless they have stuck around there for a year, something nearly a quarter of casuals will not do. For big businesses, it is six months. As most casual employment is in unskilled or low-skilled jobs, it is not surprising that casuals, under the fear of getting sacked and replaced, can easily be made to work at unsafe speeds or do work dangerously. Casualisation also disproportionately affects women, who make up 56% of casual workers and earn on average $400 a week, while men earn closer to $600. While the trend is generally towards further casualisation, there have been some explosive instances of workers fighting back against the trend. In December last year workers at Visy Cardboard Manufacturers in Sydney and Melbourne struck over Enterprise Bargaining deals in which the company wanted to further casualisation, amongst stripping of other conditions. Visy workers in Queensland and Western Australia put on overtime bans to pressure the company to budge on the deal. A picket at the Dandenong plant in Melbourne was broken up by police, with twenty-nine picketers arrested. This comment by a striker (WSWS 2010) outlines the way Visy used casual workers’ vulnerability to their advantage: “What sort of a future can you build on a casual wage? If people are employed as casuals here for more than three months, they have to be made permanent. So the company just gets rid of them and brings in others. This is hopeless, but obviously the company thinks it’s a worthwhile exercise because they don’t have to pay them long-service or other conditions.” Between February and May, Maritime workers took strike action nationally a number of times demanding, amongst other concerns, a move

Fig 1. A Flexible Worker, or What Happens When Circus Folk Try To Assimilate away from casualisation, which stands at 60% for Patrick bulk and general worksites according to the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA). “This is not acceptable,” Paddy Crumlin, MUA said. “Those casual workers have been stuck in limbo for, on average, five years - some for as long as nine.” In December 2009 workers at Australia Post started what was meant to be two days of stoppages over a new enterprise deal. Australia Post claimed that its Christmas Casuals, a few hired extras, and the use of admin staff, to scab, were enough to keep mail distribution centres running during the strike. Australia Post also won an application to Fair Work Australia to have the strike ruled illegal by day two, and won a separate case in the federal court to make the, also successful, pickets illegal – giving the impression that the ¼ workforce walkout and pickets did put significant pressure on their operation. Although its effect was probably negligible in this instance, the will of the bosses to quickly mobilise casual workers as scabs is a worrying tactic, and a clear example of a ‘divide and conquer’ tactic by AP. Casualisation clearly provides a genuine and growing threat to workers in Australia, and if we are going to begin the struggle to do anything about it, we need to recognise it as exactly that. It is an issue of class struggle at its most basic, the bosses want casualisation because it means not only a cheaper workforce, but a workforce which can cop the slack for business downtime and part of the expansion of one of capitalism’s finest concepts: that workers should be made to pay when the bosses have problems. As for some suggestions on how we could begin doing this: we should aim to deepen our theoretical understanding of this issue - it is complex. We should develop agitational propaganda that reflects this and that encourages other workers to get together, form and join unions and challenge casualisation, workplace by workplace. Unionisation should be a first step, as the Unions are prepared to fight the trend and they provide the kind of institutional protection needed for this kind of struggle. Join and undertake union rep or delegate training with your union to get some hands on skills in workplace organisation. Of course, we need to place an emphasis on a culture of grassroots self-activity and control, as well as solidarity between each site of struggle and the next, as it is the most effective way forward in any scenario. We only have the rights we have because our comrades and other workers have been fighting and dying for them for a hundred and fifty years. This is a struggle that is definitely worth fighting for. Gabs of Organise! [sources will be made available on www.organisesa.org]

a letter from your local chapter of...

If you have political beliefs and are wanting to rage lyrical about them, send us your appeals/manifestos/declarations of war to spur.mag@gmail.com under the subject header: HACKS AND CRACKPOTS.

by Mason Lee The Zeitgeist Movement invites people to consider the world’s socio-economic model - one which has negatively affected all areas of society and is based on outdated traditional values. The model requires infinite growth, scarcity, constant technically unnecessary or socially pointless services and increasing levels of resource consumption so that it can continue to operate.

Earth’s resources and hence create more profit. This is obvious in technology such as mobile phones which could simply be designed so they can be easily repaired or upgraded when new advancements are made. However it is more profitable for consumers to go out and buy an entirly new phone as frequently as possible.

The Zeitgeist Movement recognizes that the current socio-economic system dominant throughout the world is the root cause of what many people perceive to be isolated social and environmental problems or simply inherent flaws in human nature and behavior. However, in our current system many social problems have a reinforced incentive. Problems such as violence/war, greed, poverty, inequality, resource depletion, environmental degradation, drug abuse, increasing mental and physical health disorders, are just some of the reinforced symptoms of our social disease. The root cause of this social disease? - monetary economics and the behavioral tendencies and psychological values it perpetuates.

Monetary economics also requires the constant waste of human energy and potential because we all need “jobs” to earn money. Even though technology exists that can replace most human labor or services it cannot be implemented because it would reduce the lower class’s purchasing power and therefore be less profitable for industry as a whole. Therefore, it is not in the interest of corporations to maximize human potential.

Caution: people often reject this information because they have an immediate emotional reaction to it because it is likely to conflict with their current values or beliefs they perceive as intangible realities. Yet it is important that people think critically and process information outside of the confines of their current cultural values in order for them to understand the train of thought The Zeitgeist Movement promotes. So while you are reading this ask yourself: are you processing this information critically or are you dismissing it based on a narrow and isolated frame of reference?

Outside of the confines of monetary economics many existing “services” are completely invalid eg. any occupation that involves the handling or accounting of money, advertising, marketing just to name a few. The fact that government and the general populous tend to think that creating more “jobs” is a sign of progress, shows just how distorted our values and measures of success are. A society with a true economy would perceive the redundancy of pointless or obsolete “jobs” as positive social progress and efficiency.

It is also clear that monetary economics increases negative behavioral tendencies (war, violence, greed etc.) and decreases positive behavioral tendencies (innovation, compassion, creativity etc). Monetary economics requires behavioral and technical inefficiency for many reasons but to summarize quickly it requires the Considering The Zeitgeist Movement recognizes monetary eco- servicing of problems and scarcity in order for people to have jobs nomics as the underlying root cause of social and environmental and to create value. destabilization we have to consider viable alternatives, but before you consider an alternative, consider this: what is an economy? So, what is the alternative? An economy is supposed to be the efficient management of resources and human energy in order to sustain a progressive society. When applied to social concern it should also reinforce desired behavioral tendencies and decrease negative behavioral tendencies and meet universal human needs. Therefore it should have a basis on our current scientific understandings. Our current model not only encourages but requires constant increased consumption of the planet’s resources. It is in the interest of industry to keep us consuming as much as possible at an exponential rate so as to create profit. This is obviously perpetuated through advertising and, more importantly, through intrinsic and planned obsolescence. Intrinsic obsolescence is the creation of a good that is immediately inferior due to restrictions imposed by cost efficiency. Planned obsolescence is the conscious/deliberate reduction of efficiency through design and production methods so that goods being sold have to break down and be replaced at a rate that can allow the cyclical consumption of the

The alternative economic model is the application of the scientific method for social concern; this could be called an Earth Economy. It is not a set model, instead it constantly updates as our understandings and technology progresses. It is not based on the movement of money or any units of exchange, but the intelligent management of the Earth’s resources drawing inference to the physical world as to the most efficient, strategic and sustainable method for meeting the needs of the human population. The Zeitgeist Movement is not loyal to any country, race, religion or political party. It recognizes the world as one symbiotic system. It is also not an institution; rather it recognizes the emergent nature of our reality and our understandings. It does not have elected leaders or leaders of any kind; the only authority is the scientific foundation for social health, progress, sustainability and individual development. Anyone can participate in any way they desire including you, our system is collaborative, not competitive.

From here we are able to arrange society with very little need for human opinion, the system we describe is self-generating and it becomes self-evident once those parameters are assumed. For such an economy to take place there are three dominant economic principles which should be considered in the long term. Resource Accounting: We live in a virtually closed planet with a set of mostly finite resources at our disposal. Given this reality the logic becomes quite clear as to our responsibility if we wish to allow our habitat to sustain itself for future generations and meet the needs of the current population. We must organize and account. Proper economic resource allocation really cannot be made unless we have a clear understanding of what we have and where it is in a complete and unified way. Eventually this understanding will lead to what we call the “Carrying Capacity of the Earth”, which is very important information. But this accounting; of course is only the first step. Dynamic Equilibrium: We also need to track the rates of change and regeneration where applicable. Usage rates must be lower than regeneration rates for sustainability. The classic example of this issue today is deforestation. Trees have a natural growth rate and cycle and if our use of wood exceeds the rate of natural regeneration (which is of course the case today unfortunately) we have a problem. For it is by definition unsustainable. Remember, the monetary market model requires as much consumption as possible to keep the growing population employed and the economy operational. This is of course simple eco-cidal.

participate is for challenge, mastery and participation in progress. Monetary reward actually inhibits our creative and innovative performance as individuals. A great short video to watch on this is RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us on YouTube. An Earth economy would not only be in our individual personal interests if we want to thrive as individuals. But considering our economy and modern civilization is entirely dependent upon an exponentially decreasing resource (fossil fuel*) to sustain an exponentially increasing population it is in our collective interest to adopt a new economic model to survive as a species. *We rely solely upon fossil fuels for food (10 calories of fuel in every 1 calorie of food consumed by western civilization) , transport and most material goods including tires and toothbrushes. We must develop new infrastructure for transport and food production methods before the existing infrastructure is neglected from having no oil and deteriorates from lack of maintenance or society will collapse. So what can we do to inspire change and social awareness? The advantage of being in a herd is when 5% of the total population becomes aware of something , everyone else becomes aware immediately. Our success depends upon 2 things. 1) How many are we? 2) And what will you do?

Remember, a core requirement of a true economy is to econo- More information on The Zeitgeist Movement and an Earth or mize. Or be strategically efficient and conservative. Today we live Resource Based Economy is available at www.thezeitgeistmovein what could be called an “anti-economy”. ment.com and www.zeitgeistaustralia.org Strategic Design: Efficiently meeting the spectrum of human needs on a finite planet in a sustainable way means resource allocation must be optimized strategically and conservatively. Today this is not done or you could say haphazardly done through arbitrary monetary realizations. It is about what can be afforded by the producer and hence the consumer, not what the most scientifically efficient and strategic usage actually is. Not to mention the issue of longevity of a given good and the method to be used for its eventual breakdown hence recycling. All of these elements need to be considered in the initial design without the interference of the market system and cost efficiency which serve as inhibitors to sustainable design. An economy is about increasing efficiency at all times. It is about doing what is scientifically correct. Not what some company can afford in order to remain competitive in the market model. We need strategic accounting, allocation and design as derived from proven technical parameters that assure maximum efficiency and sustainability. Anything less is simply negligence. People often ask: Why would anyone want to work if they don’t get paid? There seems to be an inaccurate assumption that people only engage in productive activities (not confined to “jobs”) if there is a direct monetary incentive. This is only true for repetitive, mundane or socially pointless tasks because there is no personal satisfaction or social progress. But outside of the confines of monetary economics most of these jobs would become redundant or technically obsolete over time. When it comes to human creativity and ingenuity (our underlying nature that allows us to thrive as a species which is currently inhibited) the incentive to

Artist’s impression of a world after capitalism: starved, but closer together.

By Haneen Martin

God By Gloria Wang

Part One

Part Two

She was awoken by a violent need to poo. Hoping not to have to get out of bed she attempted to will her bowls into retreat and clenched all the clenchable parts of her body. She soon understood that her time was limited, and made haste to the bathroom. At the threshold she found the door closed and light shining under it. She begged whoever was in there to let her in but there was no response. Rattling the handle in distress, she, miraculously, found the door was not locked. There was nobody in the bathroom. She rejoiced until, as she went to sit down, she realised that there was no toilet either.

The toilet of her youth was no more; the toilet she had used daily did not exist and, she now saw, could never have existed. But what is a toilet, really? Toilet or no, she still had to poo and, unable to control her own body anymore, she did one and, to her immense surprise and satisfaction, she realised that she was indeed sitting on a toilet, of a sort, after all.

MJ Hearle

(Mormon housewives aren’t the only ones getting in on the teen paranormal fiction racket) Alistair Grantham spoke to M.J Hearle to find out what it’s like to be a former ad-man writing paranormal romance (about a teenage girl who doesn’t even have any vampires or werewolves to fall for!) ahead of the release of his second book, Winter’s Light. SPUR: Winter’s Shadow was such a page-turner. It reminded me of things I’d read as a teenager, but at the same time, it’s something I could see my mother enjoying. Who do you aim for when you write? M.J.H: I didn’t write the novel with a young adult audience in mind, I wrote it for me. But halfway through, I became aware it would appeal nicely to teenagers. So I became a bit more conscious of not putting graphic violence, lots of swearing, or sex in. By the same token, I didn’t want to dumb it down, I don’t think young adults need to be spoken down to, so I take care to keep the language reasonably sophisticated.

marketing perspective gothic novels are as hot as paranormal romance. In tradition, it might be gothic, but in today’s terms, it’s paranormal romance. SPUR: I’m glad I was on the money!

SPUR: You are a man writing in what is usually a ‘girls’ genre. So M.J.H: A lot of bloggers and critics haven’t picked up on that! I mean, I’m what’s up with the initials? It makes me think of J.K Rowling and the pretty overt, come on guys! story of not wanting people to know she was a woman. SPUR: Your supernatural creatures are inventions, not staples. There M.J.H: I didn’t submit the book as M.J Hearle, I submitted it as Michael are no vampires or werewolves. Do you think this gives you more freeHearle. In the back of my mind, I was aware the genre is more or less dom? dominated by female authors, and that might prove marketing problems. I’m honestly not sure, what, do you think a young, a teen girl would be M.J.H: Absolutely. Vampires and werewolves, angels and fairies, they’ve less inclined to pick up a paranormal romance written by a male than she been more or less played out. I’m free because I’ve invented this world, I would a female? can make up the rules. But then I need to keep track of the rules because I don’t want to contradict myself. I’m just about to start writing the third SPUR: I think she might be a little put off because she might think it’s Winter novel, and I’m going to have to go back and reread the first to a bit light on the romance, maybe. make sure I have the mythology straight so I don’t invent rules on the fly! M.J.H: Perhaps. Perhaps. That was definitely the concern raised by the SPUR: The second book is coming out in May, how do you think you publisher. They suggested I go with the initials. And I thought it was kind have developed as a writer? of cool. I’m sharing good company with Rowling! M.J.H: I painted myself into a bit of a corner with the end of the first SPUR: It makes you sound mysterious as well! I read a quote from you novel, so when I sat down to the sequel it was really really tricky. Winter’s questioning why paranormal romance should only be for girls. What Shadow was so certain. I wrote it for me and never dreamed it would be makes you as a male want to consciously place yourself in a genre that published. But all of a sudden I had a publishing deal, and Pan Macmilis usually gendered female? lan asked for a sequel. I sort of nodded and said ‘oh yeah, there’s a sequel coming’, then sat down in a blind panic. Winter’s Light is a more advenM.J.H: I guess the genre can be more than it is at the moment. I‘m gener- turous novel because I discovered it as I wrote it. I felt ally dissatisfied with the paranormal and romance genres. All the books more constrained with the first book, so I think this is much better, much seem to be little more than soap operas or bodice rippers. I wanted to more solid. write a romance that was a little more real with supernatural aspects that weren’t just recycled. I think with the paranormal genre you have this amazing opportunity to let your imagination run wild. I wanted to create Alistair is a Masters of a new mythology, a new world, new monsters. There’s a lot less sighing, International Studies student there’s a lot less on the love interest’s Adonis-like beauty. And I didn’t who is ‘chuffed’ an author want to just spook my readers, I wanted to scare them. So I called him a journalist over guess there’s more Stephen King in my writing than there is Stephanie the phone. He has read a bit Meyer. too much of both teen and gothic fiction, and he tweets SPUR: You’ve placed yourself in this genre that is so hot right now, @stair. but it struck me that the novels are quite gothic. You name drop the Brontës, Poe and throw in an English class on gothic literature. Would you say you are striving for the gothic more than standard romance? M.J.H: I’d love that label! I think definitely the book leans heavily to the classic gothic. The wide-eyed ingénue, a dark and mysterious world, the Byronic antihero and a secret in the attic. But I don’t think from a

interviews...

Dananananaykroyd are -or were, as they broke up last November- an indie rock band hailing from Glasgow who were famous for their ludicrous genre crossovers (Wikipedia describe them as a fusion of indie pop and post hardcore, and they’re really not far off), their ‘wall of cuddles’ live technique which surprisingly fits in fairly well with the aforementioned genres, and their really awesome cover of Devo’s “Whip It”.

Ex-Teens. On top of that I’m running a dance label called Mortar & Pestle and working on my dance projects Baby Diego and Dolby Anol.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Why oh why is this lovely, handsome student writer interviewing a band that broke up last November?” Firstly, thank you for the compliment. Secondly, just because they split, doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant. You get to hear all the juice on why they broke up and the future of the band. Without further ado, here are the questions asked by this author to lead singer John Baillie Jnr over a night of Facebook messaging.

J.B.J: Thanks! The first time we were in Australia I snapped my arm into 3 bits and had to stay there and get emergency surgery, I was having such fun until then too. The 2nd time we were only there for 6 days, but I felt we knew what To expect a little more in terms of brutal jet-lag so I think we dealt with it a lot better and had more fun. Stuff that sticks out for me is playing Splendour '11, shadow boxing Ryan to try and stay awake to fight jet-lag, Byron, most of all playing Sydney 2 years to the day we had to stop out set when I smashed my arm. It was like noise therapy.

SPUR: How did you feel like the second album stacked up to the first? Which one did you prefer?

SPUR: How was it to play the secret show with Bloc Party over here? (If you can remember, it was a while ago).

JBJ: “There is a Way” is a lot closer to my heart because I wrote most of the vocals/lyrics myself whereas for “Hey Everyone!” I only wrote a couple of tracks. When we were recording our debut it was a matter of getting all of our songs up until that point recorded and adding a couple of new ones. Our second album was our first chance to make an album from concept to completion. Our experience with recording with it was better too, plus I prefer the sound of it and the performances are much better. So for me, “There is a Way” wins hands down.

J.B.J: We played really soon after we landed so that night is a bit blurry, but we've stayed friends with Gordy (bass player) and toured with his other band (Young Legionnaires) back home. Lovely guys.

SPUR: What were the major aspects of the breakup, and did everyone in the band have mutual feelings about wanting to split? JBJ: Many different reasons, in the early days of the band no decisions were made with the band's longevity in mind, meaning by the end we had a lot of baggage (legally, financially, personally). We could easily have continued but we'd have been compromising what we had already achieved and what we loved about what we had done together. It’s always been all or nothing, it was a great way to end it too, we were still best friends, and nothing changed. SPUR: Are there any side projects happening? J.B.J: Well, they're not side projects anymore! But David, Roy, Ryan, Paul (who played drums on our last tour) and I have a new band we've started called Alarm Bells. Duncan and Paul Carlin are playing in a band called

SPUR: What were some of your best times in Australia? (I saw you guys at Splendour 2011 and it was the best show I saw all weekend. No lie!)

SPUR: Is there any chance for a reunion tour? J.B.J: Haha, already? IF that happens, you'll be waiting a while... SPUR: Finally, how did you guys manage to get your name out there in the early stages of Dananananaykroyd? Did you guys find it hard to break the local band barrier? J.B.J: We basically toured and played to no one and slept on floors and starved for years while always making sure that our live game was up to scratch. We were just relentless, and had to be because what we were doing wasn't being done by anyone else at the time, so we had no one's wave to ride as it were. See that? Ended on a surf reference for you over there in Australia #stillgotit Unfortunately due to their hiatus status, there’s really not much to plug. But do make sure to keep a close eye on their side projects Ex-Teens, Alarm Bells, Baby Diego, Dolby Anol and of course John’s label Mortar & Pestle. Tom Gaffney

...comin’ at you!

DR BROWN Daniel: Could you pronounce the name of your show [Befrdfgth] for us? Dr. Brown: Ha ha! No, no I can not. D: Did you just mash the keyboard? DB: Yeah, basically. If you look at the keyboard all the letters are kind of close together, so I sprinkled my fingers across the keyboard, just to make up a word that you can’t say. D: You studied with, among others, Phillippe Goulier for two years in Paris. How did that come about?

relationship. The challenge is to get that pure raw connection without touching or talking to the audience.

DB: I saw his show in Edinborough six years ago now, and the D: Have you ever had a bad reaction from an audience memshow was really amazing and it was by these two clowns, and I ber? asked them what their training was and all that and they told me to go check this guy out in Paris. DB: Oh yeah, totally. D: You just applied?

D: Like pouring pepper in their eyes?

DB: You don’t really need to apply man, you just kind of show up on time, before anyone else gets there. Then he basically just beats the shit out of you for like a year, psychologically, then maybe something comes from it.

DB: Actually that was a good audience. That was good. Having done the comedy circuit, in London especially, you’re essentially dealing with hecklers all the time, the minute you’re on stage you’re defending yourself, so a way to defend yourself is to be the aggressor. By the way, I didn’t exactly pour the pepper into their eyes. There just happened to be a fan on stage and it was blown into their eyes. It’s hard to find a balance.

D: I read he tries to make you develop your own individual style, how did this work for you? DB: Yeah, I mean it was good, you just come with so many influences and ideas in your head on how to do theatre and be funny or to entertain. It’s all about getting rid of those ideas and finding your own pure way of doing it. It was very helpful, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. He’s just an old French guy who doesn’t like you. That’s simply what it is. D: A member of your show the other night commented that he thought your show was weird. DB: Ha ha, yeah. D: Do you think it’s weird? DB: Yeah, I think it’s weird, but I think everything is weird. All art should be weird. It’s a personal expression, everyone is weird. Who’s normal? Who wants normal? I’d want to see something weird and special to that person. Not weird for weird’s sake, but because it’s ‘mine’ mine you know, the same way yours would be yours. D: There is a lot of audience participation, does your show change from night to night depending on the audience?

D: So do you think you can push the boundaries too far in terms of personal space? DB: I think with every individual it’s different you know, so you just have to gage it with the individual you’re playing with. So if they don’t like it, you back off. I mean I’ll take someones pants off if the guy is liking it, and the audience is loving it. But I won’t take someones pants off if the guy is really resistant and the audience is feeling really awkward about it. I want to do it to please people. To make them laugh, ultimately, and if it’s not making them laugh and it’s humiliating the person involved then I won’t do it. D: At the end of the show, while you were virtually naked sitting in the audience, you seemed genuinely concerned about how the audience perceived your show. Is this something you worry about? DB: Yeah man! I want to give people a good time. Ultimately I want to connect and have a very satisfying experience on both ends. D: Also, you also do a children’s show?

DB: Um, yeah. Sometimes I won’t do so much audience participation. My shows in the past I did more audience participation, but I’m trying to go away from that a little bit. But I just can’t help it. We’re in a room together, so it’s kind of hard to ignore the fact that you guys are there, the same way it’s hard for you to ignore the fact that I’m there. It’s a relationship, I’m playing the

DB: Yeah I just bring the clowny kind of silliness. My show is a kids show, I think, for adults. Like, if you take out the [mime] fellatio. It’s exactly the same mindset. There are a lot of bits from my kids show that I’ve taken from my previous shows for adults and vice versa. It’s the same spirit of play and silliness.

album reviews with Brillinus Garwich

Die Antwoord Ten$ion From point one, with the strong opener of Never Le Nkmise 1 immediately letting the listener in on what this album is all about Die Antwoord’s second album is one hell of a ride. Showing what Zef- inspired rave-rap can really sound like and blurring the lines between performance art and genuine attitudes, Ninja, Yo-Landi Vi$$er and DJ Hi-Tek are making some very intriguing music that no one else has really ever done to any great success. They are South African rappers. As with their first album, $O$, Die Antwoord place the starring tune, I Fink U Freeky, in second order, letting the first track cleanse the sense of whatever false reality you were a part of before and bringing you into the full-blown near-surrealist dimension of Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er. Being given a glimpse into the world of these sociopathic idiot savants is an intense, violational experience relatable to the first time you listen to Big Black’s Songs About Fucking. It feels dirty, it feels tacky, it feels cheap and it is, spectacularly so, but there is an overriding tongue-in-cheek sense of ridiculousness and cock-sure insanity that you can’t help but feel yourself being drawn in deeper with each track. It's a dirty, sweaty, charmingly classless experience, they jump into every cliché with such enthusiasm and sincerity that Oscar Wilde would be proud. These cats know rap, having been on the scene in various forms

for more than two decades Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er have the experience behind them to make some really great music. And great music they make, taking their acute wit and hard-earned musical intuition in the direction they are is, for better or worse making themselves into international spectacles not just for their maniacal personas but for the astonishing fact that what they’re making is actually of a surprisingly high quality. The incorporation of Afrikaans lyrics, slang and such strong identification with South African subculture brings an entirely new and refreshing take on popular rap that can only be pulled off with the bravado and commitment that Die Antwoord bring to the table. Everything they say or do in public being part of a performance piece, with the subtleties in action or in their awkward bilingual rantings and running gags that the group keep going bearing testament to their intelligence and dedication as artists. All of the music video clips, interviews and promotional short films about the group are obviously as integral a part of the experience as the music itself. This is not just an album to be listened to, it’s a message being transmitted through several mediums and only really being realised by experiencing all of them. Maybe all at the same time. Fok Julle Naaiers indeed.

Grimes

Visions

atmospheric darkness so acute that it almost fits in with ambient music.

This girl Grimes is an interesting character, she’s a 24 year old, houseboat-building Mark Twain fanatic who makes some pretty decent electronic indie dream-pop. Though, as pretentious as that genre association sounds, it’s still a pretty terrible summation of the style of music displayed in this, her third album, Visions. Grimes exhibits an angelic, ethereal voice obviously deriving some heavy inspiration from Elizabeth Fraser’s style of nearglossolalic vocal practices. Visions is an interesting intersection of wordless emotional projection and bouncy electro-pop that demonstrates what a deep understanding of musical composition Grimes possesses. This is not a happy album, despite being the bouncy electro-pop album of wordless emotional projection this musical expedition could not be considered cheerful in the least, if anything it evokes a feeling of desperation and confusion. The tone of the songs brings around notions of

Though, as great as Visions is, despite the fact that the songs are not very similar at all, due to the peculiar vocals they can meld into one another fairly easily and you can find yourself to have been listening to it on repeat for several hours before you realise that you’re revisiting old ground. That may be, however, the exact way this music is to be appreciated. Visions is clearly not intended to be thought deeply upon but to be enjoyed in states of psychological cleansing, I found it an incredibly good fit with my daily meditation ritual, for example, the album being specifically designed to get lost in and drop out of the Newtonian frequency of reality and plugged into Grimes’ super-focused ultra-aware anxiousness-driven dimension of chaos. Undoubtedly one of the best albums of the year and one of the better of the decade, worth a look into if you’re trying to weird yourself out a little. Great music to take drugs and fuck to, especially Be A Body.

short story

BETHLEHEM

TONY DUGGAN

‘The Abrams is a piece of shit.’ ‘What?’ I reply as I pull at the strap under my chin. I can barely hear him through the crackle of the headset. ‘I said: The Abrams is a piece of shit.’ He pauses. ‘Sir.’ I hear him clearly that time, although it’s hard to hear anything on top of all the noise between us in the hull; hard enough to hear your own thoughts. And it’s not that I deliberately want to ignore him, it’s just that his opinions about tanks are as stupid as his opinions about everything else, so I don’t answer. We just carry on rolling along. He’s driving up the front and I’m in the turret. Rubble crunches and splits under our track pads. I wipe the sweat off the sides of my face with my sleeve. My God, it’s hot in here. I adjust the gun tube’s viewing screen as he turns a tight corner and we start to pass some burned out buildings. But they’re all empty by the looks of it; all clear. Good. ‘That’s right,’ he repeats to himself. ‘A. Piece. Of. Shit.’ The Abrams isn’t a piece of shit. Not generally. I mean, as the US Army’s main armoured vehicle it’s actually pretty good. Although this one we’re in? Maybe not. But that’s the thing with these models: you need to spend a huge amount of time looking after them. I swear if you let an M1 sit long enough, something will break on its own. But then it’s not even our tank. And there should be four of us in here, not just me and him. There should be a commander and a driver and a gunner and a loader. I don’t see how I can create ‘unit cohesion’ when I haven’t even got a unit. We’re not even proper mechanised infantry; we’re not signalers or comms, so all of that stuff we’re just trying to do as best we can. Radio ops isn’t our field either, although that doesn’t matter so much because most of the guys we’re speaking too can’t even speak English properly anyway. It’s a mess alright. To be honest, this whole situation is fucked up. And it’s just me and him, again. It feels like it’s always been me and him, getting ourselves into one mess or another. I hear grenade fire somewhere off in the distance. O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie Oh, man, I can’t get that stupid song out of my head. I wish it would stop. But at least he’s gone quiet again. I’m so goddamn tired it’s just not true. Two hours we got last night, with the shelling and the noise of the bulldozer squads going through Jenin pushing down house after house. It was a long way away from us, but I heard the screams too. We both did. Those drunken maniacs in the D9s don’t give a damn. Israeli Defence Force? Yeah, right. I don’t see where the defence bit comes in when you’re smashing down houses with people still sleeping in them. Poor Palestinian bastards. ‘ETA ten minutes, Sir.’ he shouts. He loves to shout. ‘Right.’ Ten minutes. I try to concentrate. O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by I close my eyes and take a deep breath. But it’s full of heat and dust and I’m struggling to even get it in. My chest is hard and tight. My shoulders feel like they’ve been bent into the wrong shape. We haven’t exercised for weeks. We can’t. We have to stay undercover, because even though us Americans are funding this thing, this Operation Defensive Shield bullshit, we’re not supposed to be here doing the fighting too. And that’s why there’s only two of us. There’s not enough men because most of our combat brigades

have been shipped off to Afghanistan. Apparently that’s where it’s all going to be kicking off soon for real. The rest, like me and Rodriguez here got stitched up with this West Bank covert bullshit. We can’t even wear our own uniforms and badges We’re in plain khakis. I feel like a goddamn garage attendant. The tank lurches to the side as we hit a crater. If you ask me he’s been doing an okay job so far, seeing as it’s like driving through an earthquake zone. But then as we lurch back again I hear a ‘Holy motherfucker!’ and then the unmistakable angry kick of a steel cap against a metal panel. I crouch down for a few seconds and peer through the overheated gloom to see that he’s hit his forehead on the control bar. I’ve done that a few times myself. That’s why all of us tankers have got scars. Chipped teeth. Bits of eyebrow missing. ‘Sorry for the profanity, Sir.’ ‘No problem, Private.’ I say, ‘Keep focused.’ ‘Yes, Sir. ETA five and a half, Sergeant, Sir.’ ‘Good.’ ‘Ah, man, that hurt.’ I hear him mumble to himself as I stand up and wipe some more sweat away from the back of my neck. I take a sip of my water. My right leg is starting to cramp really bad. I wish I could get out and run or swim or something. Anything. I’m starting to go stir crazy in this thing, I really am. There’s a siege going on at some church and we’re going there to ‘assist’. We’ve been traveling to it for two days. Two days of the heat and the flies, two days of watching our backs, of knowing that we’re basically sitting ducks here if anyone just knew. Two days. And now there’s only five minutes left. We pass a burned out car, and some children appear from inside it. They start throwing rocks. I swing the turret through forty-five degrees, but they’re just kids. They run, splitting their formation like a pack of rats dressed in rags. The hopes and fears of all the years la la la la la laa That stupid song again. ‘Four minutes, Sir.’ ‘Copy.’ Concentrate. Concentrate. He has to call me ‘Sergeant’. Or ‘Sir’. That’s how it works. It’s protocol. I’m the Sergeant, he’s the Private. But the protocol doesn’t stop him from being a massive pain in the ass. But then he’s always been like that, ever since he was the new kid in third grade and he moved into my street. I was assigned to look after him. I suppose I still am. He’s been like my little Mexican brother for my whole life. I can’t believe we’ve ended up in the same regiment. But I tell you, ever since we were kids he’s never really been one for grasping the reality of a situation. Not even later on, when we went off to college together. I took military history and politics; he scraped through some kind of mechanical engineering. I wanted to know what was going on in the world; he just wanted to get stoned and get laid. And I remember too when we were standing together waiting for his bride to walk up the aisle. There was me, nervous as all hell, checking that I’ve got those goddamn rings safe every ten seconds, and there he was, whispering dirty jokes to me about priests.

Six months later when his little boy Rafael was christened I was being Mr Serious again, holding his little crying baby. Next to me is Rodriguez, pulling faces at his brother out in the congregation. But that’s just what he’s like. I suppose things have moved pretty fast for him: married at twenty, a father at twenty-one, signed up with the military at twenty-two. I’m in it for the long haul, but he told me that he just needs the money, to send home to Maria and the kid. They’re trying to buy a house. I hear some gunfire somewhere. It’s close. Four minutes. I start getting the smells of the town now: spicy food, animal shit. I check our GPS co-ordinates again, but it’s hard on the crappy little cracked screen. I fiddle with the cheap controls but it just makes it worse. This tank is a piece of shit. But the really scary thing is that I don’t think he even knows what’s really going on right here either. The Israelis versus the Palestinians; the Intifada; the history of it. 1948 and all that. He doesn’t know that this is yet another impossible situation created by the goddamn British; created like they created Northern Ireland and Iraq and every other hellhole around the world. ‘They’re all towelheads to me, Sir, I can’t tell the difference.’ he said to me last night, before belching a beery mist into the air. ‘So fuck ‘em, I say.’ Jesus Christ. Here he is, rolling along surrounded by twenty tons of high explosive with the lawful right to use them and he doesn’t even know who the bad guys are. ‘Yeah, we’re gonna kick some ass when we get to that church, Sir.’ I pretended to be asleep. ‘And that Afghanistan thing, Sir? Well I think it’s good that Mr Bush is gonna do something about it. I never really trusted that Clinton, I’m glad he’s out. He was too soft if you ask me. Chickenshit. Don’cha think, Sir?’ I kept my eyes closed. He kept drinking, kept watching the missile traces cross the black sky like comets through the broken plastic window next to us. I turn the turret around to the left. I’m watching the road closely, for visible wires, traces of proper mines, for IEDs. But I’m still suspicious. Two minutes to the church of the holy nativity. Who knows what kind of shitstorm we’re in for today. ‘Almost there, Sir.’ he says, with the pent-up excitement of a man who has done nothing but training for a long time. A man who is sick of guard duty, sick of surveillance, sick of sitting in a bush for three days waiting for an enemy that doesn’t even show up. I can smell the anticipation on him; he’s sweating like a mad dog. O little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go… I roll my aching head around. I can feel acid rising into my throat. We turn the final corner. ‘Stop!’ I shout, although like me Rodriguez has already seen the man who is standing facing us in the middle of the road. ‘Stop! Stop!’ We finally slide to a standstill on the sandy gravel. Ten feet in front of us there’s a tall man. He’s wearing a western suit, baggy and worn; a white shirt hanging out of his waistband. Enough room for a belt bomb. Close enough to kill us all. His face is skinny and unshaved; his eyes are as blue and watery as the sky above him. The acid in my throat rises again and I fight the urge to be sick. For thirty seconds or a minute maybe there is a complete stillness as I stare. But this is precisely the problem here in this place: I can’t tell whether this guy is a civilian joker who likes to dance with tanks or whether he’s an insurgent, a fundamentalist maniac, a suicide bomber. Because there’re no clues in his empty eyes, no clues to whether he’s an Israeli or a Palestinian. They all look the same anyway. I swallow hard, tightening my grip on the machine gun’s handles. I slide a finger into the metal loop of the trigger and point the sights towards his bony shining head, just

in case. laa la la la la shineth, the everlasting light. S Stop it. Stop. ‘Sir, what do we do, Sir?’ asks Rodriguez. He sounds half scared, half excited. ‘Maintain our position, Private. Wait for my orders.’ ‘Sir.’ I’ve been trained for exactly this kind of scenario. But somehow I can’t remember what they told me. ‘Initiative and Creative Thinking in a Tactile Combat Environment’. Yeah, that was it. But I didn’t think it’d be like this. It’s all going too fast. A drop of sweat falls from the end of my nose. In the stillness I hear its tiny splatter on the metal floor. I take one hand off the gun and pick up the external radio handset, watching the guy as he stands there. He is still, patient, his arms held out to either side in a Christ pose. What the fuck is he doing? ‘Please move out of the way of the vehicle.’ I say through the tannoy, hoping that he can’t hear the shakiness in my voice, hoping that my accent isn’t too obvious. Because if this guy’s from Rafah or Jenin or basically anywhere around here then he probably hates Americans even more than he hates the IDF. I scan my eyes around quickly; at least he’s on his own. The sun-bleached street and its houses are deserted, their windows hollow and broken. He doesn’t move. He looks like a statue, a shabby evil statue. ‘Move out of the way of the vehicle.’ Nothing. ‘Move out of the way of the vehicle.’ Nothing. Nothing but that goddamn song in my head again. Not now, please. …praises sing to God the King …and peace to men on earth No, no, no, no. Shut the fuck up. ‘Sir,’ says Rodriguez. The sound of his voice surprises me. ‘Shall I go and approach him, Sir?’ Rodriguez: Duty, honour, country. Hungry, young, stupid. ‘No, Private, no. Maintain your position.’ I say, waiting for him to confirm. But he doesn’t reply. All is quiet again. As quiet as death. I wish I was back home. Home. Falls Point, Nebraska. Cold. Calm. A thousand people and one village store. My vision blurs for a second as sweat drips into my eyes. What is this guy doing? ‘Move out of the way of the vehicle.’ I repeat, ‘Move out of the way of the…’ Through the screen I see the driver’s hatch start to open. ‘Private, no! Rodriguez, no!’ I shout, but it’s too late. He’s coming out into the sunlight: his head emerges, now his shoulders, and as he comes out up to his waist he’s holding an AK47. The tall man remains as still as a corpse, but his eyes are now locked on Rodriguez: his enemy, maybe his executioner. ‘Private! Get back inside, now!’ I yell through the headset. Rodriguez looks back towards me and gives a wave: a don’t-worryit’ll-be-alright kind of wave. And through my sticky screen I can see that he’s almost smiling. He thinks this is a game. But it isn’t a game, Rodriguez, it isn’t World of Warcraft, it isn’t college dorm fun, it isn’t one of those endless sessions on the SIMNET; this is real. This is the filthy stain of the British Empire and this is the PLO and this is Yasser Arafat and the Gaza Strip. And for God’s sake why don’t you realise that this is the stench of fifty years of murdered children and destroyed lives and more hate than you could ever realise.

‘Get back inside!’ I yell once again but he’s not even listening anymore. He’s standing up in the fully-opened hatch. I feel sandy air rushing inside the tank. He’s saying something to the guy but I can’t tell what it is. He wants the engagement, it’s his first time and he wants the morbid thrill of the exchange with the foreign enemy. He only wants to go further and further with this thing, he doesn’t feel the anchor of logic, he’s not slowed by the weight of the pointlessness of being trapped in someone else’s war. And then the tall guy’s face changes. He starts to smile. He puts his arms down by his sides again. For a second, I think he’s finally revealed that he’s just an innocent joker. Rodriguez must be thinking the same as me because he lowers his gun and undoes the armor around his neck. I almost feel relief. But then no, something is wrong. Something is wrong. What? Oh no. Fuck. Rodriguez, cheeky little Joey Rodriguez, the funny kid, the crazy skateboarder, the class clown, the one that all the girls loved: he doesn’t realise what’s going on. He doesn’t realise that this is a trap. An ambush. But I do. Me, Brad Adams: the clever one, the one with potential, the one that all the moms loved, the brains of the Brad ‘n’ Joey Gang. I alone can see that the tall man’s smile is not full of humour at all but full instead of sick intent. I suddenly see the slaughter, the wickedness in his eyes, the vile hatred. I see the anticipation in the minute twitching of his fingers. Joey doesn’t. Because Joey’s not suspicious enough. And so Joey doesn’t see what I see next either: a sniper quickly rising from behind a wall to our left. There’s no time. No time for him to hear my warning before the first bu let hits the front of Joey’s throat. I hear a tiny dull thud as it enters. ‘Joey!’ O little town of Bethlehem how still we.. ‘Joey!’ …la la la wondering love. That song. Now I remember. Falls Point Elementary Christmas concert, 1979. I can see my parents in the front row. My mom, beaming. Joey’s parents too: our town’s latest arrivals. His dad, in a maroon sports jacket, is squeezing Mrs. Rodriguez’s arm and then clapping his hands and then squeezingher arm again. I’ve never seen a man look so proud before. He looks like he’s crying. Why is he crying? The girls behind us are doing their high note thing. But me and Joey are up here on this little wooden stage with a fit of the giggles that is almost killing us. Mr Stromblad keeps giving us the evil eye as he bashes on his piano keys. We know that this is everyone’s favourite winter song, because Mrs Bernstein told us. It’s about peace and love and Jesus and all. So I keep pinching Joey and he keeps kicking my ankles, but with all the restraint of our eight-year-old selves we just can’t stop it. We can barely sing the song, the song that we’ve been practising for weeks, the highlight of the show. So we stop and let the rest of the choir carry us. ‘…No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him still, The dear Christ enters in…’ We finally manage to stop laughing. I close my eyes for a second and just listen. The noise is immense, glorious. It sounds like we’re in a cathedral. So just sing, Brad, sing. Come on! This is serious. But I can’t. I want to go with it but somehow I just can’t. Now that it’s here and it’s really happening I feel kind of… paralysed. It’s all too much. I open my eyes again and look out straight ahead of me. And as I watch, motionless, I see that first bullet go straight through Joey’s neck and shatter with a spark on the sur-

face of the Abrams behind him. I try and aim my sights at the sniper but it’s too late, he ducks and then he vanishes. For a split second, I spot him running... …running towards the hall’s enormous wooden doors, the grand finale done, we drag ourselves away from the hugs and the chatter and the adult smell of warm sweetened wine. We run without fear towards the world outside. That song, the song that we must have sung a thousand times in the last month is still echoing around the hall, still echoing around our heads. We run. But then from nowhere, as the sound of the adults’ clapping starts to fade, a second bullet hits Joey square on the chin. A third hits his chest. I watch again, my mind an empty space, as three rhythmic spurts of blood arc through the harsh desert sunlight. Blood spreads out all over Joey’s new red sweater, his favourite one, the one his mom made for him. His tiny hands grab at it in disbelief, little fingers sticking to shredded wool. The tall man starts to laugh, slowly raising a celebratory fist into the air. And as we burst through the doors and sprint out with our hands held up towards the sky, we feel the early evening darkness embrace us alongside the simple miracle of a fresh fall of Midwestern snow. It is beautiful. Serene. The white comes up to Joey’s knees. Heavy snowflakes quickly cover our hair and our home-knitted hats and our dirty khaki uniforms. The air is crisp and sharp and eternal. My sweating face dries instantly and my clenched jaw stops hurting and I feel calm and relieved. Throwing ourselves face down into the snow, we are laughing out loud now, without restraint, and the sound echoes off into the surrounding woods. I throw a handful of snow at Joey and then tickle him under his chin. He drops his machine gun and convulses with laughter. I can hear the Christmas angels approaching. Joey’s body, still gripped around the waist by the tiny driver’s hatch, flops forward. He convulses once, twice, and then goes limp. A thick stream of blood oozes from him and runs off the edge of the tank, pooling on the frozen winter ground in a growing bubble of red on white. Red on white. Like the red wine that is splashing now from our glasses onto Joey’s pristine wedding tablecloths as we laugh; like the red on white blur of our college football colours as we shoot like racehorses, cheered across a field of bright spring green; like the red on white of the flag that they wrapped my father in when I was a little boy; like the red on white of our V Corps U.S. Forces insignia that some dumb pencilneck bastard told us we’re not allowed to wear. The blood’s traces dry instantly on the hot steel of the tank. I aim my gun to fire again but the sniper is gone for good this time. And I’m not even quick enough to shoot the tall man either. The blizzard is coming in thick and fast now. In the distance I can hear our parents calling us. I fire off a few rounds through the blinding white haze but I miss; the tall man bounds away over a wall and disappears. The leap lifts up his shirt and displays his bare, bomb-less middle. He’s gone. And then there is nothing but silence. I don’t know what to do. My right leg won’t stop shaking. There should always be at least four men in a fire team and nine in a rifle squad, everyone knows that. It’s in standard combat regulations 4.3, section 2, for God’s sake. But there just weren’t enough men. There just weren’t enough men. There was just me and Joey. I don’t know why but I shoot again. The sound of my pointless gunfire echoes off into the empty streets of Bethlehem. If you’re sitting on a short story, or want to write one specially, please send it to SPUR, at Spur.Mag@gmail.com.

Poetry

If you have poetry or a short story to submit to SPUR, please send it to Spur.Magazine@gmail.com under the subject: I AM A TORTURED SOUL

The Man with Amphetamine Fingers Peter Thomson

I’ll tell you a tale both sordid and true; Of a man with amphetamine fingers. Whose digits impressed upon every taboo. Legacies that still frighteningly linger.

After many years, settled down in a dear Little suburb in Prague sat our hero, and paused. There was nothing in life that he wanted or feared. But when you’ve done it all, you might find that you’re bored.

Upon a still morning our story begins. Dawn’s first sunlight shone through cold windowsills. And our hero is restless, for he normally sleeps in. But his fingers are rapping and tapping on things.

Suddenly from on high there was massive elation. A poem so eloquent it’d last for all time. About life, love and learning, the human vocation. But this is when our tale starts to unwind;

“My fingers are finging”, he curtly remarks As they bury and scurry and slip through the dark. And his nails are dirty “Just where have you been!” “It’s six in the morning and you’ve just come in.”

The life of Icarus should have served as a portent As he dangled and dragged them through mountains of white. But they flopped, unresponsive, as the day turned to night. Years of amphetamine abuse had rendered them impotent.

The fingers replied, though they have no mouth Simply scamping and cramping and scrambling about You may think his plight funny, but would you be fine If your pinkie finger just snorted a line?

So he sat there obsessing on the end of his bed. These lines so prophetic circling through his head. Mankind’s solution from which heaven could form. Slipped line by line from his mind into the dawn.

His feet into slippers, and slippers to floor. The fingers fling open the cold kitchen door. He’d need a coffee if his fingers were wasted. And be damned it’s the best ever coffee he’d tasted. Morning chores were accomplished by quarter to nine And the fingers were dealing with cleaning, just fine. He sat down at the piano and started to sing. And the fingers played deftly, most wonderful things. On Monday he strode, begrudging to work. “Just behave yourselves” and from, Index a smirk. Or was it just a wiggle. He thought to himself. As ring finger made jokes in pockets lined with felt. By three, he was startled by raucous commotion. His boss slapped on his back, “Boy, you’ll have a promotion.” “These figures you’ve figured, a week’s worth in a sprint” So he smirked and he worked and he saved them a mint. He figured the fingers deserved celebration Fingers did a few lines and rode to bars from the station His hands grabbed a guitar, and then screamed in elation Even the seediest bars made standing ovations. From this moment on there’s not much left to say. His fingers caught women from Bonn to Bombay. His middle solved riddles to pay for their way. And the champagne flowed freely, for the king of the day.

The Encounter

And it is not madness but rather, an elegant endless dance of hopelessly exquisite nothings: infinite in complexity; infinite in absurdity.

Scott Arthurson

lives balanced on the trembling surface of a single drop of water. Whether a ray of light falls here or there now or then yesterday tomorrow means nothing but matters everything.

And we witnesses, all bound together in the same unplanned choreography: flail in unison with the objects we disdain – while our horror reflected in the eyes of the vacant Is no more potent; No more terrible, than the rhythms of rain, the years and the tides, or the mote of dust that praises the sun.

Whether the smallest bird flaps its wings: high or low, fast or slow, entwines with the currents of breath; the eddies of thought and the undertow of a million emotions: To create; To remake; the world in the image of boundless purposeless flux.

So when next you scream when next you sigh when next you moan in pure ecstasy – know that yours is but the forlorn wandering, of cool wind between the rocks, in an ancient sun-bled ocean.

A Haiku

David Robinson Bleak, grey canopy The storm clouds conspire to hide Their silver lining

How the people yearn For delicious Thai cuisine. Shoo, austerity!

- François Hollande

January

Claire Roberts The last Christmas pine needles decorate the pavement like a child has scattered brown bobby pins. A woman empties her mailbox; water eared catalogues crumble. While the sweet burned summer smell

rises in the blond haired rain.

SAM SAYS

NB: It is important for the other editors of SPUR to emphasize negative about America’s sphere of influence in the artistic world with utmost clarity the fact that nobody, under any circumstances, and the above action is surprisingly satisfying. should ever take life advice from Sam and that his views do not necessarily reflect those of either Serrin or James, or anybody else 6) Ask for a raise. for that matter. Approach your employer and ask that you be paid more. This 1) Tell people you love that you don’t love them. is all we have to measure the monetary worth of a person, why should you be paid minimum wage? Are you worth the minimum It is very easy to tell people you love them, however saying it often amount a human can be priced at? You will almost certainly not and with such habitual certainty that it can at times feel mechanic. get it, but this seems to me like a good exercise in self esteem Tell them you don’t love them. Ideally, this will create a strong building, and best case scenario you get more dollars. feeling of cognitive dissonance, churning your stomach and making you uneasy. The depths of your disgust at saying such a thing 7) Hate Queen Elizabeth II. to your parents or your partner should give you a much more visceral indicator towards how much the opposite is true, subse- Why not? She’s born into a position ordained by a protestant god quently giving you a much clearer idea of how much you do in and lives on the other side of the world and yet owns your land. fact love them. I have not yet developed an objective measuring If you feel the need to hate somebody in an authoritative position system, however this remains a good tool in subjectively measur- it might as well be the one who got to that position in the most ing the existence, or lack there of, of your love. You may do irrepa- illogical way. Personally speaking, the only good thing about havrable damage to this relationship, but one cannot analyse without ing her on the back of our money makes it easy to imagine what interfering and it may be worth the certainty to some. she would look like decapitated. 2) Be naked more often.

8) Remember that nothing is ever done in moderation.

If you are only naked in the shower you mustn’t be very proud of who you are. A complement on your clothes is a complement to the designer, not yourself. When you have no clothes to adjust, or makeup to apply, you are left with only that with which you were born, all that is ever truly yours.

Everything is always completed. If you have two beers it doesn’t mean you drank in moderation it means you completely drank two beers. If you feel as though you haven’t finished something what you have actually done is completed two separate things; one tangible thing, and an idea of what that thing could become. Everything, at all times, is in a finished state.

3) Embrace the fact that you are ugly.

10) Don’t feel obligated to do things in sequential order, or to acOf course you’re ugly; if you don’t think you are you’re delud- tual multiples of ten. ed. Every single goddamned one of us is a hideous freak. Stop pretending you’re not with your fancy clothes and strategic hair placement. You are not the non-existent ideal, and you never will be. Your imperfections are what make you an individual. Champion them. The universe would not exist were it not for imperfections. 4) Stop taking photographs. If a moment is important enough to take a photo of then you should not be experiencing it through a lens. Food is to be eaten. Sunsets happen three hundred and sixty-five times a year. People are there to talk to and/or have sex with. The memory will be remembered if it was at any point meant to be. And as far as the ‘artistic merits’ of your photography, you are merely stealing beauty that already existed and passing it off as your own. It is not a coincidence that my favourite photographs are of paintings. 5) Print out a picture of Nicolas Cage and brutalize it. This one is relatively self explanatory. He is a symbol of all that is

FUN

Anxious? Man is forever pushed from slavery to anxiety and back again. He yearns for freedom but feels dizzy the moment he has it and hurries to shackle himself once more. We hope these drawings serve as a solution to your existentialist quandary; pictures of lifestyles ‘outside the box’, for you to colour inside the lines of. Imagine a world without wrath and tears, without subjecting yourself to the horror of the shade.

These images were taken - with permission - from Jacinta Bunnell’s Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon (PM Press, 2010), a children’s book that knows how to turn a gender stereotype on its old-fashioned head. Illustrations are done by Nat Kusinitz. Answers to Find-a-Wordsearch from Issue 1: 7 world capitals (addis ababa, baku, dublin, lima, oslo, sofia, warsaw) 6 horcruxes (diary, Nagini, cup, diadem, Potter, ring) 5 herbs (Parsely, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, Basil) 4 of Romney’s sons (Taggart, Joshua, Craig, Matthew) 3 poets (Rimbaud, Dickinson, Angelou) 2 Musketeers (Porthos, Aramis) 1 dead language (Gaulish)

c o l o u r i n !

SWITCHBITTONS THE LESBIAN SKELETON

Art by Evildan / Written by Benzin Bullock 2011

Benzin Bullock

is a writer from Adelaide, South Australia. Mostly he collaborates with other artists to create horrible comics for horrible people. Visit him at http://benzinbullock.tumblr.com

If you have a webcomic that you would like to transform into a real comic, please submit it to Spur.Mag@gmail.com

NO LAUGHING MATTER

By Emma Glover

“History is written by the victors”. This quote, attributed to Winston Churchill, has been passed down through the years like the annals of some conquerous nation. But what happens when the victors have no means of writing their saga? What happens when some of the greatest struggles our world has ever seen are allowed to slip through the cracks of time like a child’s melted time-icecream? However, if music be the universal language, perhaps at least some of these struggles have been carried along on the notes of a sacred ocarina... Archeologically speaking the lost nation of Hyrule is not dissimilar to Troy in that its exact location cannot be determined, but everyone’s pretty sure that it existed. Artefacts have been found which have led many historians to believe that the ancient Hyrule Castle Town was situated near current-day San Francisco, although conspiracy theorists still allege that the city of Pompeii was destroyed by the eruptions of what the Hyrulians termed ‘Death Mountain’. Regardless of this geographical mystery, the effects of the infamous Ocarina of Time saga on the Hyrulian nation were inarguably devastating and the exclusion of this incident from the curriculums of Australian schools is nothing short of criminal. The rebellion of the Gerudo King Ganondorf against the Hyrulian royal family is to date one of the most heinous crimes against humanity the world has never heard. The kidnapping of Princess Zelda and the theft of the nations sacred Ocarina of Time plunged the people of Hyrule into seven years of hardship and tyranny, plagued both by the cruel whims of the despot Ganondorf and by the arrival of countless monsters which stalked the land. Even in the most thorough and respected records of that time, these seven years are glossed over as though the pain and suffering of thousands of innocents are unworthy of note. Even in the years following the arrival of the hero Link, their troubles were not ended. Countless homes were ransacked and stripped of rupees, weapons, and ammunition to fund the crusade to restore Princess Zelda to the throne, and it was not long before the only citizens capable of eking out a living were those involved in the manufacture of ceramic jars and wooden crates. Even the nearby realms of Death

Mountain, Zora’s Domain, and the Gerudo Valley were not untouched by the horrors of the Ocarina of Time events. The desecration and destruction of these people’s temples lasted for years, and it is believed that they were never fully restored even after the return of Princess Zelda to the throne. As Link’s campaign to rid Hyrule of Ganondorf ’s oppression took him to new regions of the map, countless women were known to give him aid in return for the false promise of marriage upon the completion of his quest. Because of this, the royal line of the Zora was extinguished after its last member, Princess Ruto, refused to marry after being seduced by Link’s charms. The trials endured by the people of Hyrule during this time are often overlooked when researching the battles of Link against the monstrosities of Ganondorf. Because of this, it is a common misconception that the seven years between the abduction of Princess Zelda and the return of Link were no more than slightly uncomfortable for the Hyrulians, and that his crusade was quick, well-planned, and minimally disruptive to civilians. It was only in recent years that the true plight of these people was brought to light with the discovery of a farm girl’s journal. Malon’s Diary, as it has come to be known, is currently the only written account of the time and doubts of its authenticity have circulated for as long as its existence has been known. The failure of historians to fully document the Ocarina of Time saga has prevented most people from learning about the true impact of Ganondorf ’s coup on Hyrule as a nation. Even the most well-known events of the time have been largely forgotten due to the limited literacy of Hyrulians during this period and faulty documenting by researchers. It can only be hoped that with the accurate chronicling of the Ocarina of Time proceedings will come a greater understanding of what it means to be a fully-functioning member of society.

PLEASE

Please submit your letters, poems, articles, artwork, and stories to SPUR Magazine, at

Spur.Mag@gmail.com and we will be sure to

THANK YOU

Just as we thank all those who have contributed to our second issue, and a big, warm and gushing thanks it is indeed! Another eruption of Spur thanks to all who advertise with us, for without you, we could not exist. We recommend to everyone who reads this to use their services, eat their food and watch their shows.

Yet another thanks to those who attended our launch party, with special thanks to Tsarie Duthie, whose generous donation catapulted her to Spur legendary status. Thanks, of course, to you the reader for choosing to experience brilliance in its infant stages.

Cu (in issue 3!)

Adelaide Comedy