twenty600 issue #2

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spooks, spies and outer space canberra’s secret inhabitants

dead celebs and the media

the psychopath coming to an office near you

ISSUE TWO

i heard it on the radioblogosphone

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editor’s thingo

Claire Thompson and George Poulakis at Canberra Glassworks for the launch of twenty600

Issue 2, hey? After surviving the Curse of the New Mag (around 90 per cent of magazines don’t make it to a second issue…or so they say…), we’re back again with more fat, more fluff and more fun in twenty600: the sequel. We have some fantastic new writers and photographers on board.

We’ve repeated some of your favourite columns and categories, and brought in a bunch of new stuff including features, interviews and opinions.

Speaking of opinions (and seamless segues), thanks to those of you who took the effort to let us know what you thought of the mag. We got a huge response to our first issue – you loved it, you hated it, you hated us and wanted to punch us in the back of the head (the back?). It’s been a great experience for us to see what you thought, and we’ve tried to take all your comments (positive and negative) on board to keep building our mag and making it better with each new issue.

So stay in touch, and keep reading! Until next time…

George Poulakis EDITOR

t w

t w

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Claire Thompson on stuff Looked up: Stuff Replace with synonym: Material.

Material. Substance. Matter. Things. Objects. Bits and pieces.

Replace with synonym: Possessions Possessions. Belongings. Things. Kit. Gear. Equipment.

Replace with synonym: Fill Fill. Pack. Cram. Ram. Jam. Stow. Load. Squeeze. Stuff.

Editor George Poulakis Assistant Editor Claire Thompson Contributors Charlie Big, Petunia Brown, Elliot Cooper, Brooke Davis, Nick Ellis, Gerald Gaiman, Declan Greene, Sarah Hart, Mark Russell, Jamie Swann and Claire Thompson

Brooke Davis on stuff “So... do you like stuff?” Just something that Ralph Wiggum says in a Simpsons episode? Or is it much more than that: a kind of ‘I think, therefore I am’ for the Me Generation, revealing Ralph’s true identity as a modern day Descartes? Or perhaps it’s just a lame thing I say to get myself out of awkward situations. Either way, I think Ralph was onto something.

Photographers Charlie Big, Cameron Ellis, Nick Ellis, Matt Fussell, Georgia Perry and Scott Newman Please send all contributions, cheques, compliments and ponies to george@twenty600.com.au Please send all incessant, whiny, pointless ranting to thisisnotarealemailaddress@twenty600.com.au

Mark Russell on stuff When I think of writing, stuff is not what comes to mind...stuffed is a little closer. In my frequent nerdy moments, I liken it to dictionary golf.

You hit a thousand loose words into the ether, till you’re so frustrated with your own mediocrity you just mash your forehead against the keyboard. But once in a while, you tee off perfectly. It sails straight down the literary fairway and out of range of any poorly conceived sports metaphor…Ilk8ujnbyvcxmjnkxd

www.twenty600.com.au (02) 6139 1078 twenty600 owns the copyright in this publication. Reproduction of its contents in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited. twenty600 welcomes all unsolicited text, illustrations and photographs. When you submit any content, you acknowledge that you have all necessary rights, including copyright, in the material that you are contributing. You agree that twenty600 may use the material, now and in the future, and that twenty600 retains the right to edit submitted work.

While twenty600 endeavours to provide accurate and current content, no guarantee is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this magazine.

Views and opinions expressed in twenty600 are not necessarily those of the publisher. twenty600 is published four times a year.

Gerald Gaiman on stuff Stuffing, as a cooking practice, was first developed by the ancient Phoenicians in an attempt to get rid of old toast. A good basic stuffing is to mix 3 cups of toasted sourdough breadcrumbs, 1 teaspoon of a sage, 1 onion (finely chopped), 2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped), 2 tables of butter (finely melted), and 1 egg in a bowl and then shove it up a chicken.

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contents

Indie twinkies 22

What goes on in those tight black jeans

You like eating kittens? 26 The don’ts and don’ts of dating

Spooks, spies and outer space 28 Canberra’s secret inhabitants

I heard it on the radioblogosphone 36

Dead celebs and the media

Little bits 40

Our contributors tell us a secret

Young (and) professional 43

We talk to Australian playwright Lally Katz

The psychopath 46

Coming to an office near you

Reviews 54

Music and theatre

28

2 36

22 6

54 46 26

matter of opinion

Got something you wanna get off your chest about the mag? Why not drop us an e-mail? Because you’re lazy, that’s why.

Letters have been edited for spelling, grammar and length.

As a 2007 graduate of St. Clare’s who never really could fit into the rugbyMarist vs. Eddies-pregnancy scene (although my grade did break the curse/tradition), it was refreshing to find something so substantial, witty and real about Canberra, and the people that live here.

After returning from schoolies in Byron, I was feeling utterly depressed about my home town. Not to mention that I continually copped shit at schoolies for being a ‘Canberra-nite’. This magazine has reprised my almost-love for this sometimes kitsch, always too small town. I commend you. Best of luck to your and your whole team. I hope to see many more of your issues while I sip my painfully cliché Starbucks skinny caramel frappuccino with extra topping.

One of your many expectant and faithful-to-be readers, Lauren PS—Mee’s sushi in Manuka goes really well with Starbucks + twenty600. Try the chicken-schnitty or salmon!

Finally, a decent magazine in Canberra that actually has articles of substance, and articles that are interesting to read. Well done. Not full of advertisements and social photos!

Nathan Hannigan Well done on the first issue. It looks great and very right for the times.

Robbie Swan 10

G’day, I really dug the first issue of twenty600. It’s really great to have a free street press that has a bit more class and substance to it. I especially liked the insight into the Canberra sex industry, as it’s one of those things that no one really seems to talk about.

But let’s face it. Taboo is interesting... well it is to me!

Julian Abrahams I am prompted to write an itty bitty email to you as I’m currently, and quite possibly weeks prior to this, utterly in awe of the fine stuff your team at twenty600 has given birth to. (Seriously, coming from a tactile person, those pages are HEAVEN!) I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience that was twenty600, and feel it’s right to safely say, twenty600 has raised the bar. Not one page was left unturned! Or unread! Or unexamined for its artistic, yet not too busy, prettiness.

The first few pages showed not only people in clothes—but people in clothes that I KNEW! Fantastic! I especially loved the harping about customer service that is poo. I felt kindred spirits ooze from the page. (Yucky... oozing). Also appreciated the fact that you distribute twenty600 in a lovely little place that I frequent in Manuka, where the clothes are nice, but the owner is nicer, which in turn gives me the excuse to see her now on a regular quarterly basis! Hurrah!

You have created a following! With ribbons and bells and all things Canberra. And if you don’t mind, I’m jumping along for the ride!

Many thanks, Jasmine

This is not incessent or pointless, it may however qualify as a rant. But bear with me. I read your mag from cover to cover, and with an open mind. First up I don’t care what Sarah Hart thinks or doesn’t think about spirituality. Her opinion is worth as much as the next person’s, (eg not much!) unless it’s clever, original, interesting or maybe a teensy weensy bit researched?

The days where only a qualified writer could get a gig for a mag are gone. In a world full of blogs and Facebook pages there are endless opportunities to express ourselves. Let’s face it, we all have something to say... But my question is this: what makes any group of writers worthy of being in print? Throwaway articles set out as filler for advertising is commonplace, but trees are felled and chemical inks leached into our waterways for the purpose of airing the thoughts on your pages. It’s a free world and I am not arguing censorship but I am thinking about content vs the resources involved in making your little project. Yes some of the articles are interesting... the piece on the future by Nick Ellis was worth my time. But seriously guys... anyone can shoot their mouth off about what is and isn’t cool according to them (or the ins and outs of good and bad service) but maybe a little more wit, humour or depth wouldn’t go astray... otherwise start a blog, email your friends and save the trees—they belong to all of us!

And your porn industry headline gets the readers to pick up, and the story does have some content... but could do without the glamourising soft focus images. Hope your next issue is slightly more thought out... (you guys can obviously write).

Joan Cornish

Sitting outside Stocks on a friday afternoon, enjoying a cigarette that I gracefully ‘borrowed’ from a businessman who seemed to be in a world of his own, probably talking to himself on his mobile, two eye-blinding girls straight out of a Supré catalogue approached me asking for money, which they would probably spend on a photo booth to take degrading photos of themselves, which would no doubt appear on Myspace in the next hour— I’m not one to stereotype. As I declined them, they threw a somehwhat catalogue looking book at my feet.

I wouldn’t usually accept a magazine that had a naked woman on the cover, but I accepted it, and I was fucking suprised that I had a magazine from a stranger where I could open the pages, rather than them all being stuck together. It is not often that I can sit in public and read a magazine for half an hour, but this was one of those times.

Thank you for providing me with some entertainment while I sat in Civic, watching the Christmas shoppers run around like blind rats in a cage.

Your magazine is a real eye-opener to the city we live in, as it provides us with useful stories about our nation’s capital. Unlike the vampires at The Canberra Times, whose stories look like past scripts from Home and Away.

I look forward to the next issue.

Robert Waterman, an optimistic 16-year-old Love it!!!! I have just picked up a copy of your first issue and have to say, “Finally, a mag that can get across the frustrations of our town’s creative folk.”

I agree totally with your views on showing Canberra there is amazing talent in this town. Thanks again for a great mag. I look forward to the next issue!

Craig Rhodes Saw your mag, and happen to think it’s the classiest thing to come out of Canberra since... well, yes.

Jordan Prosser 11

THE CHASER’S AGE OF TERROR VARIETY HOUR

to do list: autumn 2008

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE I honestly don’t know a great deal about this show, but I told Dave that I’d give it a plug, so here goes.

It’s a jazz musical set in 1922, and methinks there may not be a great deal of modernness about it (which seems a tad ironic, although I’m not sure—Alanis has me confused), but apparently this is what Canberrans want to see. So, uh, yeah, go see it, I guess. Feb 28 - March 15 at Erindale Theatre. Visit philo.org.au or call 6247 4455 and ask for Dave.

It amazes me that some people still don’t know the Chaser boys when they see them. But just as well, because what fun would their show be without random bogans exposing their ignorance to viewers every week?

Coming to a theatre near you, namely the Canberra Theatre, what to expect from their live show is anyone’s guess. You’re anyone, so go on, guess. Will Chas get naked? Will Clive be slightly too loud? Will Anna Coren find a convoluted segue between parking inspectors and obese children? To find out, grab your tickets from canberratheatre.org.au or call 6275 2700. March 28-29.

MICHAEL BUBLÉ

FINDING INSPIRATION I can’t think of a blurb to write for this. If only there was some sort of writer’s workshop I could go to that involved informal presentations, discussions and exercises. It’d be hosted by Anthony Eaton, and take place at the ACT Writers Centre on April 20. If there were such a thing, I’d want to call 6262 9191 or take a look at actwriters.org.au for info.

SKYFIRE You know the gist. Lake Burley Griffin. Music.

Fireworks. March 15. Sentence fragment.

He’s no Harry Connick Jr, but like it or not, crooner Michael Bublé’s vocals go with big band and jazz like your mum goes with a football team.

I don’t know why I feel the need to justify Bublé’s musical cred. Just because the guy’s sold a few records, doesn’t make him any less of an artist.

Check out premier.ticketek. com.au for info, and prepare for a room full of moist seats on May 28 at AIS Arena— okay, so maybe he’s sold out just a little.

DISNEY’S HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL: THE ICE TOUR Hahahahahahahaha!!! But really, if you absolutely must see this, visit ticketek.com.au or call 13 28 49. April 30 - March 4.

12

NATIONAL FOLK FESTIVAL

Apparently folk music isn’t just for hippies. No really, hear me out. I went to the National Folk Festival last year and saw more than just a bunch of barefooted, bearded old fogies. I discovered some incredibly talented musicians I’d never heard of, from stunning vocalists to funky trios.

Seriously, just get yourself to Exhibition Park, March 20-24. How do you acquire tickets? Funny you should ask. Call 6249 7722 or visit folkfestival.asn.au

Ross Noble is, without a doubt, the funniest man alive. Forget your Jerry Seinfields and your Billy Connollys, Noble is where it’s at. And if you don’t believe me, then you’re wrong.

Also, I’ve been to see Noble a number of times, and I swear, it’s as though he’s making up 90 per cent of his material on the spot. While this isn’t proof that he’s the funniest thing since sliced bread—which, granted, isn’t all that funny—you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. May 2-3, Canberra Theatre. To laugh your arse off, visit canberratheatre.org.au or call 6275 2700.

Got something coming up that you think we should know about?

E-mail your events to george@twenty600.com.au

QUANTUM IDEAS G12989

ROSS NOBLE

11 – 26 APRIL 2008 BOOK YOUR TABLE NOW! 6247 1223 www.thestreet.org.au CHILDERS ST, CANBERRA CITY WEST

bodeoyrgaia rPterry with G

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14

How m uch would have to we pay you to get a twenty 600 tatt?

Belle: A hell of a lot.

What d o tatts m your ean to you?

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Hurts li ke a bit ch.

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15

What’s with that?

This sure is a strange city we live in. We may not have Melbourne’s cool, or Queensland’s beaches, or Sydney’s… whatever Sydney has, but there’s a whole bunch off stuff that makes this kitsch town unique.

What’s with Manuka cafés charging 13 times the norm just because they’re in Manuka? I mean really, who pays $10.50 per person for corkage anyway? The Queen, maybe, but I don’t see her dining in Manuka all that often.

And even if she did, I’m sure she’d be all, “$10.50 for corkage?”

What’s with that fountain of the man and the child?

Dubious. Now that it has no water in it, it just looks dirty.

What’s with those legless blue sheep in Dickson? Why don’t they have legs? Why are they blue? Are they public art? Why do they look like turds? Speaking of sheep, how many pieces of public sheep art can one city have? Like the ones in Kambah. Or the depraved sheep in Civic with its legs spread apart. Was that some artist’s joke that went horribly wrong? And I’m not sure what’s worse: the number of tourists who have stopped to take crude sex poses involving said sheep, or the second sheep that eagerly watches on.

What’s with roundabouts?

If you’re meant to give way to your right, what happens if three cars approach a roundabout simultaneously? Will that create a rip in the spacetime continuum, or will they just be stuck there for a really, really long time?

What’s with the blokes who sit outside the Civic Pub, waiting for a woman to walk past so they can yell charming things like, “Get a dog up ya!”? Seriously, have a shower, tuck your nuts back up the leg of your stubbies, grow some new front teeth, and then we’ll talk.

What’s with that new giant fuck-off intersection? When are we going to be given the training video that shows us how to not die when passing through it?

What’s with Tuggeranong?

What’s with Pooh’s Corner on the Clyde? The last time I went there, somebody had given Pooh a computer. But Pooh’s just a painting on a rock, so what good is Windows going to do him?

About as much good as it’ll do the rest of us. DISCLAIMER: Pooh’s Corner is not actually in Canberra. What’s with that?

What’s with P platers? If it’s only P platers who are reckless hoons, just give them their full license to begin with. No P platers, no problem.

What’s with twenty600?

I just want to punch those guys in the back of the head. Their attemps at humour are, like, embarrassing.

What’s with Centrelink? Last time I checked it took less effort to just get a job.

What’s with Toast closing down?

Where are Canberra’s outcasts going to go now? What’s going to be the new black?

argh!

manners: some mothers do

by Charlie Big

We’ve all seen them. Many of us are them.

But none of us have the balls to stand up to them. Whether they’re in our way or in our face, we’ve all encountered them. You know who I’m talking about. Parents.

The other day I was at a café, struggling with my Sunday morning hangover, when a mother and her toddler showed up for brekky. Mummy ordered a skinny latté and a babyccino, which kept the toddler amused for all of—well, how long does it take to throw an espresso cup full of lukewarm milk all over yourself? Not long, it turns out.

As soon as that was over, the kid started screaming. This wasn’t just a one-off scream.

This was a wandering scream. It walked to the door and screamed. It walked past each table in the café and screamed. It lay on the floor and screamed. And what did Mummy do while all this was going on? Nothing at all.

She didn’t even look up.

But as much as I hate children—and believe me, I hate children—here’s the thing.

Are you ready for this? Put your latté down 18

ave

em

and just listen. The kids aren’t the ones at fault. The kids aren’t the ones setting the bad example by being completely oblivious to the world around them. The kids aren’t the ones teaching themselves shitty manners. So who do you think that leaves?

Think about it. A café full of grownups is not the place to bring your total lack of consideration for the rest of the world. Maybe you should turn on a little bit of give-a-shit for the fact that I have a giant hangover and a hatred of small people. And PS—what the fuck is with babyccinos? Is there anything more pretentious in this world?

Maybe I’m wrong, but if I lay on the floor in the shopping mall and pissed my pants, screaming until I got an ice-cream, I’d be wrestled to the ground by the nearest security dude and would probably have my face stepped on. Obviously I’m not advocating this same approach for kids, but if your little darlings are causing a scene, insisting on screaming until you give in, maybe put Michaela on a leash and give

Jayden some Ritalin before I assume the role of the security dude.

I know what you’re thinking. Do you even know what parents go through to raise children?

No. I don’t. And I hope to never find out. Besides, you’re the one who decided to bring this ‘bundle of joy’ into the world, so you deal with it in a way that doesn’t involve me. I sympathise with you for having to stay in on a Friday night after a hard week’s ‘work’ while I’m out on the dance floor, childless and carefree. I really do. All I’m asking is that you stop thinking the world is your own little playground. Let me demonstrate.

You know the signs that warn you about taking prams onto escalators? If you don’t pay attention to them, when you let go of said pram, chances are it’s going to crash into me with little Connor in it.

Seriously, nothing gets kid blood out. And if you really feel the need to own the largest double-decker deluxe pram illegally imported from Germany, it’s probably not the best idea to attempt to navigate it through a tiny store, clearing everything in your path.

And pushing a shopping trolley with a screaming kid in the seat doesn’t actually mean you own the entire

mall. And here’s a suggestion: maybe you shouldn’t keep leaving your trolley parked in the middle of the aisle. I realise you’re pretending to ignore me because you’ve got enough to worry about, what with Jacinta crying because her nappy needs changing, and Tyson hassling you for more sugar, but a little common decency wouldn’t hurt. And when you eventually get out of my way, if you’re going to drive your trolley into my ankles and expect me to apologise, don’t be surprised when I lose my shit.

I don’t know why I’m so bitter and self-centred.

Maybe it’s because my mother never breastfed me.

Or because every Christmas I asked for a Nintendo, all I got was a cigarette burn. Or because I feel the need to make these things up. But what it comes down to is this: having a kid doesn’t entitle you to special treatment. So if you’re one of the aforementioned, think again next time you decide to push in line, complain about mundane shit, or even take nine items into the eight items or less aisle. I’m not saying you should stay at home and be damned to living a retail-free life. All I’m saying is you shouldn’t take it out on me. That’s why you have children.

19

oh, shut up!

deal with it

by Petunia Brown

Babies. They drool, they scream, and their very presence turns every conversation into mindless drivel about sleepless nights, feeding patterns and whether Billy or Bobby is learning how to crap like a grownup. As if babies are something important to talk about. Even worse, their selfish bloody parents sometimes put their kids in a pram and leave the house so that they can socialise with other human beings. How dare they?

Especially when it inconveniences people like you as you go about your day-to-day business. Right?

See, here’s the thing. You, also, are freaking annoying. Hard to believe, right?

But really, you are. You stop the flow of pedestrian traffic by constantly stopping to check messages or make pointless calls on your stupid mobile phone. You 20

have irritatingly loud conversations at cafés about that guy you met last night who was sooooooo cute, or about the fact that the merger was supposed to go through yesterday, Richard, and you can’t understand why Bill is stalling. You do yoga, go on macrobiotic diets, and poison the atmosphere with your lentil-induced farts. You take up two seats on the bus even if it means other people have to stand. So until you’ve ditched your own heinous personal habits, please rein in your abuse. Bursting a blood vessel in your head seems a fairly extreme reaction to a woman with a pram.

Think about this: the thought of squeezing a watermelon through a keyhole is challenging enough, but on top of that there are other pregnancy and birthassociated nasties that women have to put

up with—such as the poo-while-you-push phenom; being in labour for a good 22 hours while an entirely separate human being makes a dash for freedom from your privates; growing a person in your insides that leeches you of everything that is good and healthsome about your body; having your bellybutton pop inside out; and being in the sort of agony that can only be fought by a painkiller that involves paralysis from the waist down. So how about you compare your irritation with a pram blocking your way to the potential irritation of having a needle the width of an elbow jammed into your spine? After you’ve done that, how about you shut up?

Families go through a lot to have a baby. You potentially go through very little to have a mobile phone, a bag of lentils, or a one-night-stand with Gary from the mailroom. And yes, please give me the spiel now about how women choose to have a kid, and so all the crap involved with producing one and

then trying to keep sane while it grows up is a happy la-la sort of choice that should be kept out of your face. And then I’ll give you the spiel about how my kid will eventually pay the taxes that contribute to your incontinent retirement.

The best part of this story is that having a kid changes your perspective, or so they say. They say you learn to prioritise, to focus on the things in life that really matter. Unfortunately this probably means that people with kids are not at all inclined to give a crap about your pram rage or your dislike of babies in public places. I personally can’t stand businessmen, anybody who wears bike pants, or people who come home with an accent after a two-week trip overseas, but they’re everywhere. And that’s life. So if babies aren’t really to your liking, just keep in mind that my kid, or one just like him, will eventually be staffing your nursing home and feeding you chicken schnitzel through a straw. Cycle of life, people. Cycle of life.

21

Indie twinkies for Adam Curley

by Declan Greene Hi Adam So, we had that conversation in the kitchen last night about indie boys. About ‘indie’ gay subculture, ‘indie’ butt-sex, the generational nature of gay intimacy, and how emo-boys are hot. Incisive stuff.

I’ve been thinking a lot about it today.

See, I’ve slept with a bunch of guys since moving to Melbourne. They’ve all been around my age and, I’m ashamed to admit, some breed of indie-boy, art-fag, poseur or emo-kid. For a while I dated a guy—last year, before I knew you—and all we did was watch The Labyrinth and blow each other to The Go! Team. It was pretty lame. Then a few months after we broke up I started going out with a guy who was nine years older than me. The first night we went home together he said he wanted to fuck me and I said flat out, ‘I don’t do that’. Then, being the smart, sassy, strong-willed guy I am, I let him do it. And eventually I even came to like it.

A beautiful story, yeah? I’m a converted savage turned missionary in a ray of divine understanding, writing to you armed with the dramatic selfrighteous power of retrospect. The way I

see it—you and I come from this underling generation of gay boys who have no interest at all in butt-sex: who’ll spend the formative years of their lives fumbling dicks out of shrink-wrap stovepipe jeans, jerking each other off in sunglasses. Excuse me if I think it’s a little crazy. So I’m going to try and pick out a couple of reasons why this has happened.

To start with definitions: gay indie boys are a league of indie boys who happen to be gay. That’s pretty much all there is to them. ‘Gay’ doesn’t define their behaviour.

That’s pre-defined by their scene: intense music snobbery (limited to a rotating roster of better-known Matador, Subpop and Kill Rock Stars bands), cultivated twee or ‘90s eurotrash fashion sensibilities, and movies

by Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry—only.

Weekends at nice, corporate ‘indie disco’ nights run by people ten years older than themselves. They’ll lament about how much they hate the gay scene, gay stereotyping, gay clubs—but they’ll throw a daiquiri in your face if you bump their ironic coif. The rest of the evening is spent dancing to songs they already know in a sarcastic and self-conscious fashion. Like: ‘Hey, look at me Travis, I’m doing the robot.

Huh-huh-huh. Aren’t Kings of Leon rockin’?’ That’s a pick-up line. Then they go home and blow each other.

Gay emo kids are similarly ensconced in the wider scene.

They all wear the uniform, gay or straight: black hair combed over face, piercings, skinny black jeans, Misfits t-shirt and pink converse. They jump up and down to My Chemical Romance, screaming over the music about how they want to move out of home but don’t earn enough working at McDonalds (pick-up line). Then they go home and blow each other.

So within these scenes, the gay guys—or, most of the gay guys—don’t have butt-sex. And last night we were trying to come up with reasons for this. This is where I’ll pick this up.

Looking at where emo and indie kids fit into pre-existing ‘gay’ discourse, there’s Gay Pride, which we’re all familiar with—equal rights for homos, wave your flag, wear rubbers while fucking, gloves while fisting, etc. Then there’s the relatively new phenomenon of ‘Gay Shame’, which exists in response to the perceived destruction of GLBT identity through Pride’s position of assimilation. For example: the assumption of family-friendly middle-class tropes like marriage and adoption—which Gay Shame would interpret as a stupid ideology adopted for the sake of fitting into wider society. But indie and emo boys seem to subvert both Gay Shame and Gay Pride by totally scrambling the representation and, therefore, the definition of their sexuality.

At indie-discos, you’d be hard-pressed to pick out the gay kids. That’s not because they’re particularly ‘straight-acting’.

It’s just the stereotyped signifiers for ‘faggotry’ are stamped all over every male on the dance floor. You’ve said already that 23

it’s regressive and offensive to try and ‘pick out’ gay guys like this. And you’re completely right. But whether we like it or not this ‘camp’ criteria are the signifiers we use to construct a homosexual identity for pretty much every stranger we meet.

In indie-discos, there’s the vanity; the preening, meticulous attention to the outfit, the hair, the intense self-consciousness.

Aesthetically at least, you could say there’s ‘hetero’ co-option at play here, more than gay assimilation: quite simply, the gay kids are just dressing like everyone else and everyone else happens to dress like a faggot.

But, of course, the hetero-co-option of a ‘gay’ aesthetic can only extend so far before fey straight boys have to venture into the murky realm of sex and gender preference.

And here it becomes even more difficult to demarcate a black-and-white version of sexuality. After all, the fondness emo boys share for making out with one another, gay or not, has been made pretty famous by YouTube. Then there’s indie boys, who are so obsessed with paying homage to the ‘fluid’ sexuality made mandatory by their scene (gay boy on straight boy, straight boy on gay girl, etc) that they’ll get it on with pals without a care for gender preference.

What appears to be happening, then, in indie and emo culture is a picturesque assimilation of gay kids into the subculture: that is, assimilation—on the gay kids’ terms—into a ‘mainstream’ that is actually pretty gay to start with. And with this in mind, the ‘no butt-sex’ rule can’t be rising out of a need to repress hardcore gay sexuality to fit in—so then, why?

To answer this, you could look toward the media’s construction of gay identity—the stereotyped trappings of a

metro-fag lifestyle. Drag queens, glow-sticks, clubbing, divas, apartment in the clean inner-suburbs, twin Great Danes called Bette & Joan...

Indie and emo kids say no to this; but they don’t really fit alongside gay-denialist subcultures: bears, homo-punks, leather-daddies, ‘straight-acting’ guys. These are groups whose very definition still depends upon the title of ‘gay’. Gay emo and indie kids don’t advertise the fact: their sexuality is de-regulated to third or fourth tier information. It’s not that they’re closeted—they’re just not willing to make a big deal about it. And maybe this has something to do with TV and the gay imagery our generation has grown up with.

I mean, remember what a huge deal that ‘gay’ episode of The Simpsons was?

Before then (aside from news stories on AIDS and—you know—Mr Humphrey on Are You Being Served?) there wasn’t a normalised gay presence in mainstream media. Then Will & Grace turned up; not exactly an amazing benchmark in gay normalisation, but

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it was based on a ‘normal’ middle-class gay existence with jobs and responsibilities rather than, say, Queer as Folk’s AIDS-ridden basement fuck-hole. Then there was Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, those guys off The Block, gay housemates in Big Brother; Neighbours’ lesbo storyline...

It’s really repulsive to list these because, of course, they’re totally regressive, one-dimensional representations of the queer community that privilege fashion, cooking, cattiness and one-liners as hallmarks of homosexual identity. But it was good PR with the straight community. For a brief time in 2003, straight guys even started moisturising and frosting their hair and generally looking like total fucking Chapel Street faggots. And it was pretty funny and cute in ‘that dog’s wearing a hat’ kind of way.

This faded out and we were left with a generalised feeling of acceptance towards the gay community.

And, in the high schools of our generation, particularly inner-city, middle-class ones, it meant kids could be more comfortable coming out to their friends and their parents. I think I came out to my friends when I was in about Year 10—age 15. And I lived in the fucking country! Does this mean city kids were stepping out of the cubby-closet at age seven?

With this in mind, you could argue that due to the media’s relative normalisation of the gay community— however narrow—there’s a generation of latter-day emo and indie kids who didn’t go through the closeted,

repressed gay teen angst that defined the pro-Pride ‘fight for your rights’ attitude of today’s older fags.

And this would help to explain why indie/emo gay kids don’t engage in a markedly homosexual lifestyle.

If there’s been nothing to fight for, then these boys and girls can comfortably relegate sexuality to the back-burner and focus on what’s important—which is, as I understand it, records by The Go! Team, day-trips to Greensborough Savers and bitching about how their mum just totally doesn’t understand. It could be that butt-sex is another casualty of this attitude: susceptible to indifference just as much as Art Deco, showtunes, or banana-bread baking.

So then, anal sex is just another tenant of mainstream homosexuality that hasn’t made it into the manifestation of ‘gay’ taking seed in emo and indie scenes. These kids are non-mainstream. They take pains to be non-mainstream. And maybe anal sex is—yeah—just too mainstream.

It’s difficult to identify the point at which this is repression: whether it’s a self-imposed denial of sexuality for the sake of assimilation, or simply a liberated form of homosexuality that doesn’t need anal sex to assert its identity. I don’t know. Point is: it makes for pretty lame sex. And, for fuck’s sake, The Go! Team just isn’t sexy blow-job music.

The unabridged version of Indie Twinkies originally featured in The Sex Mook, published by Vignette Press 25

relationships

You like eating kittens?

by Petunia Brown

Keen to bag yourself a lady? Petunia Brown gives you the don’ts and don’ts of how (not) to pick up.

The dating scene in Canberra is facing some dark times. Guys are mimicking the behaviour they see in movies and expecting to get laid, and women everywhere are running for cover. See, in the movies, the simple waitress always says yes. In the movies, if you get turned down you just keep on showing up, bringing flowers, singing songs, getting soaked in a thunderstorm as you pour your heart out to the woman of your dreams. The problem is, this is not romantic. It’s stalking. What Women Want, and all that? Mel Gibson has a lot to answer for.

Guys are now under the impression that certain topics of conversation are guaranteed to get them in the sack. The problem is, you can’t buy a shag with your sad man toys, with your sensitivity or with an entirely contrived personality that you have adopted just for tonight. No one is going to shag you because you have a boat.

No one is going to shag you because you’re friends with all your exgirlfriends, because you call them ‘babe’ or because you think that ‘existentialism is so, so interesting’.

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If you’re out for a root, you should also avoid saying things like, “Oh, you like movies? I like movies!” This is not surprising. Most people like movies, or ham, or the weekend, or whatever it is that you find so fascinating that we have in common. These are likeable things. If you find yourself saying, “Oh my god! You like eating kittens? I like eating kittens!” then maybe we’re made for each other. But if you tell me that you like cake, please do not expect me to pash you as if you’re the only other person on earth who likes cake. Everyone likes cake.

Of course, if you’re not the guy who has his lines all worked out, then you may be the guy who obviously has no idea how to have a normal interaction with a person of the opposite sex. I met this guy. Dale was a 35-year-old Canadian man who overcame his mid-life crisis moments before our first and last date by ramming a pin through his ear and shoving a sparkly stud in the bleeding hole. This was presumably his version of being ‘edgy’. The breaking point came when Dale told me he was taking his best friend out for Indian food the following night and that he needed to ‘get prepared’ for a day of ‘blowing his arse’ afterwards.

Another growing trend among you beleaguered single boys seems to be the five-minute sell. This technique involves cramming all of your good points into the first five minutes of conversation of a first date, regardless of whether they are subtle, relevant to the conversation, or true. Patrick, one of my

more dubious one-date-wonders, was a master of this technique. He stuffed all of his lady-pleasers into his first sentence, but in doing so became so fascinated with himself that the first sentence lasted an hour and a half. His pièce de résistance was to inform me that he was a single dad who had raised his daughter alone. Now, being female, I know I’m supposed to shit myself with emotion at the thought of a man raising a kid. But in reality, having a kid and getting all cheesy about the fact that you raised it yourself is like being an accountant and pissing your pants with excitement over the fact that that you added some numbers together.

Which leads me to my last piece of advice: if you’re going to brag about something, make sure it’s worth bragging about. Things that fall into this category include having Jason Bourne style skills (the ability to come smashing through a window before beating a guy to death with a magazine); being able to turn turds into gold; owning your own island; or having a dessert named after you. Things that are not worth bragging about include having a job; being able to grow sea monkeys in your bath; drinking until you vomit on yourself; or not having washed your sheets since you moved out of your mother’s house.

Point being? If you have nothing interesting to say, if you think that ‘blowing your arse’ is an acceptable topic of conversation, or if you’re just a garden-variety idiot, then say nothing and be mysterious instead.

Chicks love that shit.

Well, they do in the movies.

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Aliens? Not so much

Do you think of Canberra as the city that fun forgot? Well… actually, that might be true. But it isn’t the city that cool forgot, oh no. Strange as it seems, Canberra has witnessed some of the creepiest, craziest and most awe-inspiring moments of Australia’s history. From Jason Bourne-style covert ops and dead Prime Ministers who come back to life, to touching the edges of the universe, our little town is a hotbed of spooks, spies and rock-and-roll aliens. So read on to find out what you’ve been missing all this time…

In 1977 the Voyager 1 space probe was launched from Earth. As well as carrying robotic instruments to explore and record our solar system, the spacecraft also carries a golden disc that contains songs, images, sounds and greetings from planet Earth in 55 different languages. If there is alien life out there, then this disc will be their first clue that they are not alone in space.

Aliens, black holes, meteorites, men on the Moon. The unknown of deep space exploration has captured the imaginations of people across the world. And here in Canberra, we’re sitting right on top of one of the world’s most important sites of deep space exploration and communication—the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex.

Also known as the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station, Canberra forms one part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). The DSN consists of three stations—Tidbinbilla; Goldstone, California; and Madrid, Spain. As part of the DSN, Tidbinbilla sends and receives messages from spacecraft travelling

“Even if communications are lost, the silence will not be total.”

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anywhere from beyond the Moon to the outer solar system.

NASA’s Tidbinbilla site, which is run by CSIRO, has been the setting for some of history’s most dramatic moments of space exploration. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually a Canberra tracking station—the now defunct Honeysuckle Creek—that transmitted the first images from the Moon for television. Parkes, Goldstone and Madrid also received the images, and the signal transmission was soon switched to the Parkes station, but it was Honeysuckle Creek that transmitted the data first. Honeysuckle Creek has been torn down now, but its antenna was relocated to the Tidbinbilla site and continues to be used.

More recently, the Messenger probe started its fly-by of the planet Mercury in mid January this year. The probe was originally supposed to send data and images to the Goldstone station, but technical problems with other probes meant that the Californian station had too much traffic. At four in the morning, Tidbinbilla was put into action.

For many of us, however, it’s the alien angle that keeps us tuned in to what’s going on in space. From Roswell and flying saucers to alien abductions and crop circles, we’ve long been fascinated with the concept of extraterrestrial beings and whether we can find them—or they can find us. As part of the DSN, Canberra is still involved with the search for alien life, but these questions remain difficult to answer conclusively. On a basic level, the distance from Earth to the parts of the universe that scientists

are interested to explore are immense—on February 4, the Deep Space Network was pointed at the North Star, Polaris, and a Beatles song (Across the Universe) was beamed into space in an attempt to contact any alien life that might be out there. Travelling at light speed, it will take the song 431 years to reach the star, and at least that length for any reply. As for Voyager 1 and its golden record, the probe has now passed the ‘termination shock’—the beginning of the end of the Sun’s influence in space. This spacecraft and its interplanetary message in a bottle are now the furthest human-made objects from Earth. According to NASA, as of July 2007, messages from the probe, travelling at the speed of light, take 14 hours and 12 minutes to reach Earth. Once the probe leaves our solar system, says NASA, it will be 40,000 years before Voyager 1 and its celestial time capsule get close to any other planetary system in space.

Despite a lack of evidence, scientists haven’t entirely given up on the prospect of finding extra-terrestrial life forms. NASA’s chief historian, Steven J. Dick, explored the possibilities presented by the Voyager probes and their golden records leaving the solar system. “Even if communications are lost, the silence will not be total,” he writes. “…

In some ways these time capsules from Earth already seem quaint even to us in the age of CDs and DVDs. How much more quaint will they seem to any extraterrestrial civilisations that may intercept them?

But even if the messages cannot be deciphered, the spacecraft themselves will be mute testimony that our species, perhaps one among many, has entered the new ocean of space.”

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Canberra the friendly ghost (town) ’

It’s two in the morning as you drive up the dirt track. Coming to a cattle grid, you slow down. The car stalls. You weren’t riding the clutch, you weren’t overloading the engine, but the car has stalled. There is something to the right, in the light of the headlights.

It is a woman. She’s running towards you. She’s wearing a nurse’s uniform. Her face is screwed up and she’s crying, asking if you’re okay. She comes to the door and tries to get in the car. She’s on the bonnet now, trying to smash the windscreen. She’s screaming.

You get the car going, reversing back the other way, but she’s still running after you, still screaming. You can see her in the headlights.

The next day no one believes you.

And quite frankly, neither do we, but the story, or one like it, has been enough to get Canberrans and Queanbeyanites up to the Air Disaster Memorial, late at night, to try and find a ghost for some time now.

The Air Disaster Memorial itself is real enough (although kudos to anyone who can actually find it), and the site does mark a horrific air crash that killed 10 people including key members of the Menzies government. What isn’t real is the cattle grate (although there used to be one), or the idea that a distraught nurse would try to bash her way into cars at night—the accident occurred in bright daylight at 10 am and the plane smashed into the side of the hill, killing all occupants instantly and catching alight. The story relies on the same sort of things that most ghost stories rely on—a creepy location, a horrific, preferably real occurrence, and enough realistic detail to get you to believe it might be true.

According to some sources, Canberra has more than enough of the aforementioned ingredients. Entrepreneur and cryptonaturalist Tim the Yowie Man believes Canberra to be one of the most haunted places in the country. “Canberra’s got its fair share of ghosts in haunted homesteads, like Lanyon homestead,

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“Most paranormal activity, including ghosts, is very difficult to prove.”

Blundell’s cottage and also has a famous ghosts, the ghost of a former Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, who haunts Hotel Kurrajong. There are an incredible number of ghosts in Canberra. A lot more than people expect.”

Canberra’s spirited nature (if you’ll excuse the pun) works well for Tim, as he runs a ghost tour of the city each month (check out destinytours.com.au/canberra.htm for details), however he is quick to point out he doesn’t state that the hauntings can be proven outright. “Most paranormal activity, including ghosts, is very difficult to prove.

[On the tour], we don’t try to prove [that ghosts exist]. If someone has an experience, they have an experience. It’s a very personal thing—some people believe, some people don’t.”

Tim experienced a ghost himself 10 years ago at the Hotel Carrington in Bungendore, “I saw a ghost of an old man run down the corridor of this old house at about 100 kilometres an hour and vaporise through a locked door.”

Old Parliament House, on Tim’s list of haunted locations, has long had a reputation amongst security staff for a number of ghosts. There are apparently ghosts in both the Senate and the House of Reps, including a disembodied pair of legs that apparently causes havoc in the courtyard that comes off the Café in the House.

“I haven’t seen it, but I’ve spoken to two security guards who have,” says Tim. “After everything’s closed up and there’s no one around, the security guards reported seeing a pair of legs just running around the courtyard.”

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THE CANBERRA SUPREMACY Gripped firmly by two armed members of Russia’s security forces, an attractive young woman is dragged through an excited, tinder-dry crowd to a waiting aircraft. The crowd explodes, screaming and pushing, grabbing at the woman’s clothes and abusing the security surrounding her. She stumbles, a shoe is lost, she is finally pushed on board. Her destination? Russia, and the treatment Russia saves for its traitorous spies—almost certain death.

It’s the height of the Cold War, Evdokia’s spy husband has just defected and disappeared and her end seems near. Only one more stop before the final flight home. Evdokia is torn between love for her country, love for her husband and pure fear. At the last minute, on the very edge, Evdokia is separated from her minders and offered asylum. She takes it.

These dramatic scenes are not cut and pasted from a le Carre novel. They took place in Australia in 1954. The asylum was offered in Darwin. The crowd protested and the shoe was lost at Sydney airport. And the whole situation, from defecting spies to armed deportations was cooked up in Canberra. It’s difficult to reconcile our boring old Canberra with the origin for an international incident of intense historical, political and emotional significance. Traitorous Russian spies just seem so... European and farfetched. And yet, Canberra is the closest thing Australia has to a hotbed of intrigue and espionage.

It was the infant Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, whose headquarters were and still are in Canberra, that convinced Petrov, Evdokia’s husband, to defect in 1954. ASIO is probably more notorious today for being infiltrated by The Chaser at the APEC summit than for convincing foreign nationals to betray their native administrations, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still going on, and going on in our backyard. Back in the day, shady characters exchanged hot info in such unlikely places as under the Queanbeyan bridge and over the bar of the Kingston Hotel.

These days, Canberra plays host to the headquarters of a number of other highpowered spy acronyms. “There are six main intelligence agencies [that make up the] Australian Intelligence Community,” says Geoff, the ASIO agent who answers our call. “Three of those are Defence organisations, so you’ve got the Defence 34

Intelligence Organisation [DIO], the Defence Signals Directorate [DSD] and the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation, or DIGO. And the other ones are ASIO, ASIS and the Office of National Assessment.” There are distinct differences between all of them, but one thing they all have in common is the lawful ability to collect intelligence by covert methods. All exist to protect some aspect of Australia’s security. For example? “ASIS look at the collection of secret intelligence, so they look at anything that isn’t easily available,” Geoff says. “They don’t look at any open source information—they gather their information through human sources. Whereas ASIO looks at anything that’s related to security, whether it be open source or some of that more secret intelligence gathering. ASIS can’t operate in Australia—they’re solely collecting in relation to foreign intelligence, so they’re overseas looking at anything over there. But at ASIO, our nexus is security, and that’s not geographically defined. So we still have officers overseas as well.” DIO, DIGO and DSD gather intelligence that might interest the Defence forces. And finally, ONA keeps an eye on everything and reports directly to the PM. The agencies mentioned above, along with the Defence force’s intelligence services, employ thousands of spies. While they prefer less melodramatic job descriptions—collection agents, case officers, field workers, analysts etc.—believing this will fool everyone into thinking they are just regular members of the public service, we at twenty600 know better. Canberra is crawling with spies, and has been since the birth of ASIO in the ‘40s.

Getting in contact with these agencies is relatively easy (although some, such as ASIS, don’t list a media officer or a public telephone number at all); getting information out of them is an entirely separate issue:

twenty600: What was your name?

ASIO: Geoff. twenty600: Geoff…?

ASIO: Yeah, because we’re operational officers we don’t actually give our last names. The only declared officer in ASIO is the Director General, Paul O’Sullivan. twenty600: So is that Geoff with a G? Or a J? Or it doesn’t really matter, cause it’s not your real name?

ASIO: [laughs] No, it is my real name. Just stick it down with a G, that’s fine.

Engaged Canberrans will be nodding at this point, and swapping tales about secret passages under Parliament House. There are stacks of rumours about Canberra’s hidden spy infrastructure. The Telstra Tower is used to spy on the Chinese Embassy. Bulletproof cars are stored in underground DFAT bunkers. Subterranean bases abound in locations ranging from the US Embassy building to the Naval communication station in Belconnen. Almost impossible to confirm, but, in a very Jason Bourne, paperback novel kind of way, very thrilling to think about.

As to the specifics of what real spies get up to these days... who knows? That being the whole point of operating covertly. One would expect an emphasis on curbing terrorism, and on operations involving staking out people known to have played cards with bin Laden, chatting to oil barons, treading delicately around North Korea. But one would not be able to confirm this. The average punter generally only finds out about what the intelligence agencies are up to when something goes wrong. Iraq turns out not to have weapons of mass destruction. Bali gets bombed. Etcetera. However, regardless of what happens next in the world of spying, good or bad, whether we’re aware of it or not, there’s one thing you can be sure of—ASIO and pals will be nutting out the detail in good old Canberra.

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I Heard it on the radioblogosphone: Dead celebs and the media

by Elliot Cooper

I once drafted a will that asks for a friend of mine to write my biography on an A4 page and distribute 103 copies on whatever street corner is closest to his residence at that time. This means that in addition to my family and friends, the few who bother to read the pamphlet will know that I am dead.

Maybe one will mention to someone else that they read a strange pamphlet about somebody who died.

It is a miserable notion, I know. But now think about this: a guy from Perth named Heath Ledger is dead and everybody knows it. We know it because the media jumped on the story and reported it. They reported to speculate on the circumstances of Ledger’s death, then, when the family made a statement insisting that it was not suicide, ran another report that was packaged as sympathetic towards the family. Then they reported on what people who knew him had to say about his death. They reported on his career and film honours.

The story was packaged and framed in all these different ways, yet from having listened, read and watched the news on the matter, I have only learned one new thing, which can be summed up thus: Heath Ledger is dead. The reason for all the filler is obvious: it’s there because people will read, watch and listen.

But why is it that when a celebrity who is a complete stranger to us dies, the community is stricken by a general sense of grief? Could it be that the medium that conveys the news to you has a say in how deeply it affects you? (Cue The Twilight Zone theme music).

Communication theory suggests that each new medium shapes society in new ways. Furthermore, it is not so much the message itself, but the medium through which information is conveyed that (to some extent) determines the way you feel about the information. It can do this because different media have the ability to engage or disengage you as an audience.

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So how did you find out? Was it a more traditional medium like the television, the radio, the newspaper, a conversation, or something more recent like a website, a blog or a podcast? For me it was a telephone conversation. A friend of mine watched a TV news update that reported on the subject. Out of shock, she decided to call me immediately. “Hey, you know, Heath Ledger is dead,” she said. “Really? Shit,” I replied. I stopped what I was doing (probably trying to remember the correct word for ‘the’ while updating my Facebook status). It was not like reading in the paper that someone I didn’t know had died. I didn’t know Heath Ledger, but I heard that he died and I actually felt a bit sad about it.

The question is, did I feel a bit sad about it because someone I know told me about it over the telephone? It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that because the message was conveyed to me through a very familiar medium (the telephone conversation) that it had more weight, or truth, or reality to it than if I had read it on a pop-up from ninemsn. The conversation is a medium which, due to its subjective and personal nature, will have a stronger effect. But this is only really one aspect of my personal experience of the media event that is Ledger’s death, and is potentially irrelevant to the rest of the world’s experience. So what else can we say about this celebrity death and its effect?

Ledger was a good actor who ordinarily kept his press exposure to a minimum and once dated Heather Graham. Somewhere in amongst this he must have established a connection with his audience. We can’t really say that we liked him as a person because we didn’t know him. Is it enough of a connection that he was Australian and we are Australian?

Some people, like me, might recognise an age connection and feel, for

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a moment, their own mortality. Others may have felt a sexual desire towards him which, we can now say with absolute certainty, will forever be unsatisfied. These links are all extremely tenuous.

I’m just old enough to remember the TV news when Kurt Cobain died and for that to mean something to me. I remember hearing the radio report when Lisa ‘Left-Eye’ Lopes died. I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard (on the radio) that Hunter S. Thompson had suicided. I remember the radio news that Steve Irwin is dead. I remember picking up a newspaper last year and reading that Jean Baudrillard had died a month earlier, and was outraged by the audacity of the article’s author who was basically saying that all of Baudrillard’s writings were crap and useless.

Of these five dead celebs there is one I wanted to sleep with, one I was fairly ambivalent about, and three who I have respect for as good writers of completely disparate forms (I’ll leave you to speculate over which is which). To return to the idea that the medium influences the way audiences feel about information, if I were to rate the affect of the media through which I received these news messages, radio easily rates the highest, then newspaper, then television. This is completely at odds with how important or unimportant these people were to me.

On the other hand, if George Lucas, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, Zac Efron, Susan Sarandon and John Travolta all died horribly from, let’s say, Ebola, I doubt that I’d be affected by it. Yet, if I heard the news on

the radio, there is every chance I could be. Currently, I get about 90 per cent of my information about these people through blogs. It is the nature of blogs to be highly opinionated. They are, after all, generation Y’s opportunity to publish their interpretation of the world and be as subjective and self important as they please.

So, there’s every chance that if I read about you on a blog, I’m probably not going to have a high opinion of you, whereas if I hear about you on the radio or in conversation with a friend, then there’s a higher chance I’ll think positively of you.

With all this potential for manipulation, I’m going to risk this opportunity to sound like a bit of a crackpot, because there is one more question that deserves to be addressed: Is Heath Ledger really dead?

For his roll in Monster’s Ball, Ledger played a character who committed suicide because his relationship with someone he loved had broken down (sound familiar?). While he gave a great performance in this film, this is not what it is remembered for (it’s remembered for the scene in which we see Halle Berry flip flopping around like she’s lost control of her limbs and in a warbling voice, saying the horrid words, “make me feel good,” and then she wins an Academy Award). Will we, in fact, remember Ledger for this most recent hyperreal (to borrow a term from my dead celeb friend Baudrillard) performance? All that we have been exposed to in relation to this event is a media simulation of the death of a moderately famous actor. Our minds have been effectively hijacked by a

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Synapse very complete imaginary world of sounds and images. For us at the receiving end, who didn’t grow up with him in Perth, who first saw him in that movie Blackrock in which a high school student commits suicide to elude society, a media simulation is exactly all he ever was. If you are still thinking, ‘No! He’s real, I saw him, I watched his movies, and now he’s actually dead’, then think about this: Heath Ledger, the dead guy, will appear in a new movie this year, and possibly another in 2009.

I am aware that the media disliked Heath Ledger while he was alive. Of course it has sided with the grievers after his death. This is something the media does for commercial purposes, and I say this in full awareness that I am communicating through a medium. But whatever has been said about him, I have the impression that he is a decent person. And, no matter what, the death of a decent and talented man with a great deal of potential at age 28, is tragic. This may be an opinion that I have reached entirely on the basis of his courageous performance in Brokeback Mountain. More likely it’s an afterthought inasmuch as I only really decided what I thought of him when the news of his death reached me. But even his supposed decency does not explain anything.

In this world of sound and images it is not unreasonable to believe that someone in a film,

eCommerce eMarketing Flash CMS a picture or the owner of the voice that is singing that song and who we have never met, can mean something to us. It is through media that we know these people. Therefore, the media has given us the opportunity to have a relationship with them. When we hear that the relationship has ended (even though they have been immortalised in film or on a record) it seems only quite normal to feel sad. Is it the sign of a mental illness? Almost definitely. Not on the level of the individual, but on the level of ideology. Heath Ledger’s death, and others, points out something about our culture and our community. He is dead and everyone knows it. But if one of your neighbours got ill or died, how long would it take for you to find out? The news probably won’t get on the radio or the TV. You won’t see it in the newspaper or read of it on a blog. There might be a stranger standing on the street corner trying to give you a sheet of paper with an abridged biography about the deceased. More likely, though, you would simply never hear of it.

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little bits OUR WRITERS TELL US A SECRET.

Can you imagine that little bastard haunting you forever?

I gave up teaching not long after the chlorine removed all the hair from my arms and legs, leaving me looking like a Ken doll, only with a much larger package. You’d think the near-fatal incident would’ve had something to do with it, but no, it was definitely the chlorine.

CHARLIE BIG’s near-fatal secret.

I saved a child’s life during my brief stint as a swim instructor. I’ve kept this secret because I’m not really one to brag.

So there I was, trying to teach my class, when this one little smart-arse decided he was going to update my criminal record by almost drowning while I wasn’t looking.

I wasn’t going to let this disrupt the lesson.

Correcting one kid’s bent-arm-pull technique with one hand, I used the other to heroically pull Drowny McSinks-a-lot to safety. I still remember the sound of water gurgling in his lungs, like he was punching a bong with each breath.

Even though it was partially my fault he was drowning in the first place, and by partially I mean entirely, the point is I totally saved that kid’s life.

And it’s a good thing I did, because he looked exactly like the creepy boy from The Grudge.

PETUNIA BROWN’s secret lie.

I was sitting at the park the other day while babysitting my friend’s two-year-old son. The kid was playing in the sandpit and I was sitting on the edge, watching him, when out of nowhere, an ex-boyfriend of mine strolled past with his 40

nephew. The ex and I had had a pretty crap break-up about two-and-a-half years earlier, and we both tried to pretend we hadn’t seen one another, but eventually he did the grown up thing and came over to say hello. At that moment he noticed the kid.

“Is that yours?” he blurted.

I honestly, honestly don’t know what came over me, but I said, “Yes. He’s two.”

I could see him doing the mental maths.

“Are you married?” he asked.

“No.” “Single mum?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said. “Not how I would have planned it, but... you know.”

A look of fear came into his eyes. Please, his face seemed to be saying. Please tell me that kid isn’t mine.

“Anyway,” I said, scooping up the kid. “See you later.”

As I walked away from the park, I wondered if I should feel bad.

Probably.

SARAH HART’s secret secret.

I keep secrets for a bloody good reason: I don’t want people to know about them. Besides, I can’t imagine why you would give a shit. I’m just words on a page. To be any good, a secret’s got to concern someone you know. So if I were to say that Prime Possum spent last Saturday night shooting up behind Cook primary school, you’d all be pretty excited. But if were to say that I once cheated on a maths test, you wouldn’t give a rat’s. So what I’m saying is that you’re not getting any of my secrets. Oh, and also that people inside animal suits are automatically deviant. I saw a thing on the internet where Tigger punched a kid fair in the face. Then the kid’s dad pulled out a four by two with a nail in it and everything got right out of control (may or may not be true).

BROOKE DAVIS’s many secrets.

I love using disabled toilets. I tell people I can keep secrets when I’m completely rubbish at it. I hate writing on recycled paper. I use too many commas. I wish I could sing. I was the one who farted in the cinema. I cried at my first 41

piano exam. I once ate an entire bucket of ice cream in a day. I sometimes look at planes flying high in the sky and think: ‘What would it be like to see it explode?’ I was held back a grade in gymnastics class. I love reality television. I cry watching the news. I pretend to like bananas. I tell people I like Radiohead when I don’t. The first dead body I saw was my own mother’s. I steal people’s identities, put them in my stories and don’t tell them about it. My favourite outfit when I was in Year 8 was a Hypercolour t-shirt, overalls and a pair of John Lennon glasses. I find it hard not to judge people doing commerce degrees. I once stole a Snickers bar. And a library book. I like Russell Crowe. I like Lleyton Hewitt. I suck at Scrabble. I have too many secrets.

ELLIOT COOPER’s secret shameful myth.

I once walked off the roof of a library in Iceland. This is not really a secret inasmuch as there are people out there who know about this. What turns this so called secret into an actual secret has more to do with the culture of the Icelandic people. Being such a small country, with a national population comparable to that of Canberra, Iceland has a predisposition to gossip. With the folkloric nature of their history, new lore can be generated almost spontaneously.

So here’s the secret: If you ever happen to go to the east coast of Iceland and you are drunk (or whatever) and get offside with a local, and he/she, instead of telling you to fuck off, tells you to ‘ganga burt a bókasafn’, (‘go walk off a library’), the ambiguous phrase originated when news spread that some drunk and unbelievably stupid foreigner, trying to take a shortcut home, walked off the Egilsstadir library and fractured his elbow. It was me.

JAMIE SWANN’s secret game.

Sometimes, when I’m home alone, I play pretend photographer keep-aways. All the windows are open, and the pap’s on foot just outside, or looking through a telephoto lens.

This really depends on the house, and the level of anxiety I feel like subjecting myself to.

The game starts with me standing in front of a window. Foolishly, the photographer is now trained on the wrong window. He notices that I’m in the bedroom so he swings his camera 42

around to get the shot, only to see me fleeing into a dark zone. These are the areas in the house where you can stand without being seen from a window. A normal, suburban home will have around 25 per cent floor space occupied by these spaces. Too much more and it’s just not a challenge. The photographer now faces a dilemma–where will I emerge next? Should he focus on the next window along, or stay at one I’ve just been spotted in? And thus begins the complex game of cat and mouse between me and my fabricated photographer friend. This game continues until someone comes over, or I feel like some Weet-Bix.

young (and) professional

Lally Katz Lally Katz is an award-winning playwright now living in Melbourne. twenty600 spoke to her about how her work has been influenced by her childhood in Canberra.

You’re originally from the United States. What brought you to Canberra?

There were a lot of guns and drugs [in the US], and the schools were really crowded. I came from Miami to Canberra.

It was a strange transition. I lived in Kambah for 10 years. It was great. We’d go play on the hills and in the drains and stuff.

Your play Lally Katz and the Terrible Mysteries of the Volcano was set in Canberra, right?

Well, it’s kind of Canberra, but it’s Canberra as a tropical island with a big volcano on it. It’s sort of peppered with bits of experiences that I had in Canberra, and people that I knew, but all different and distorted. The characters walk through Fyshwick and Woden Plaza and Wanniassa, but they’re all kind of melted and there are dinosaurs there.

The Eisteddfod will soon be playing in Canberra. What should we expect from that?

I guess mainly it’s about desire and ambition. It’s about a brother and sister who’ve become agoraphobic and created this whole world, alone in their room. They have desires and heartbreaks, and they play them all out in fantasy. The brother’s really obsessed with winning a local talent show 43

called The Eisteddfod. Meanwhile the sister pines for this love of her life named Ian who’s this creation by the two of them. It’s a really cruel fantasy.

I’m noticing you like to play with the idea of reality and fantasy. Is that intentional?

You know what? I realised that every single play I write is basically about people playing pretend in different ways. I guess that’s because that’s what my life is. I’m trying really hard to join reality.

Why’s that?

I’m turning 30 at the end of this year, and I guess it’s natural that everybody panics and assess their life. I’m always in a constant state of panic that I’m not doing as much as I should be doing, or that my career’s over. I’ve never really planned for the future though. I’m just constantly trying on new identities, which is just the same as playing pretend. So really I’m not doing anything that different. There’s part of me that always wants to instinctively turn everything into this play pretend thing of people trying on identities.

What sort of involvement do you have in your shows?

I’ll just do whatever needs to be done: tickets at the door, clean up the theatre, look after the actors. I kind of live for that. You spend so much time alone, writing, and making stuff up, so it’s wonderful to be back at rehearsals with people and bouncing stuff off each other and fighting and making stuff up and inspiring each other. I haven’t done that for a while, so I’m missing it.

Has writing always been your thing?

Theatre has. I’ve always been involved in theatre. I’ve always been around the theatre. I really got into it when I went to Phillip College and I had two drama teachers, Maria and Richard, and they were just the greatest teachers. They put their whole hearts and souls into the drama classes and the school productions. And so I was always really involved in that. And they started getting me to write plays for the school and I’d act in them as well so I was just there all the time. That’s what I knew about theatre. You did whatever had to be done. I’ve spent the last 12 years in different theatres, which is sort of why I think I’ve lost reality a

The Eistedfodd is playing at The Street Theatre, April 16 - May 3 44

flavours @ Canberra Glassworks

little bit.

How would you describe your writing style?

It depends on what I’m working on. I guess I see words as ingredients to a recipe or a spell; you put them all together and they become something else. I guess my writing style’s usually surreal and dark. If I’m left to do my own thing it ends up being really strange to other people.

Tell us about your earlier plays.

Unfortunately I’ve lost a lot of them. I took my old computer to get repaired and forgot to pick it up. Oh well. It’s funny, I can see the seeds, and how those same ideas and characters are still in my work now, but just woven in in different ways, or changed in the way that I’ve changed. Characters have stayed with me for all these years, which is quite nice, even though some of them are really nasty. And I always have animals in plays, but just as people. I’ve got this character now called the Apocalypse Bear who just kind of hangs out at times of personal apocalypse. He’s sort of sarcastic and laid back. Then there’s his nemesis, the Hope Dolphin. You know how everyone had the dolphin tattoos and jewellery in the ‘90s? He’s like that, but he doesn’t really talk. He just comes out of the Spout of Eternity and makes everything good. I’m really obsessed with them at the moment.

How do you respond to critics?

I get a real mixture of reviews. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get upset about bad reviews. When I was younger it used to destroy me. Like six months later I’d still be really upset. I’d really wear them. A show I had in Melbourne last year called Criminology, which was set in Canberra as well, got really divided reviews. Half of them were really angry and quite scathing. There are

two things that hurt about bad reviews. One is that if you read it and you go, “Oh, that’s not right. They got it wrong and missed the point.” But I guess the thing that can hurt more is if you read it and go, “Oh, I see where they’re coming from.” It’s part of the game, really. You can’t get angry because you’re putting yourself out there. Sure, it shakes me up, but usually when I get a really bad review I call everyone I know and say, “Yeah, I don’t care anyway.” But I care. A lot.

Did you have a backup plan?

I’ve never had any kind of backup plan, and I never want one. Whenever I’ve had a job that could be sustainable in some way I’ve always quit it. I don’t want to fall into not living my dreams. I’ve just always known that I wanted to be a writer. When I was younger I wanted to be an actor too, but I wasn’t taking into account that I wasn’t any good.

If I wasn’t talking to you now, what would you be doing? Do you ‘go to work’?

This year I’ve gone a bit mad. I think it’s because I’m trying to be really normal. Last year I had so much work on that all I really did was write. And I kind of went into a zone; my friends would call me and I’d just want to get off the phone. I pretty much just exercised and wrote. I was really burnt out. I just didn’t care. I hated my characters. My characters hated me. I just wasn’t interested in their world. And I sort of had a bit of a meltdown, and decided that maybe I should just have a little bit of time off. But then I changed my mind, and then I just started obsessively baking.

So for the past 6 months I’ve done hardly any work.

I’ve got all this stuff due, but I just bake. If I wasn’t talking to you right now I’d probably just be making cornbread.

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The psychopath

by Jamie Swann

“Did you see that arsehole cut me off? He must be going 120 at least!

That guy’s a bloody psycho!”

Have you ever called someone a psychopath? What does the word mean? If we turn to film, we find images of a chainsaw-wielding Christian Bale running naked through an apartment building in American Psycho, or Robert Englund in his sensitive and thoughtprovoking portrayal of a man’s struggle to murder teenagers in Nightmare on Elm Street. In popular media the word is commonly associated with serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer, whose gruesome hobbies pad out many a non ratings period with TV specials detailing their exploits. Dahmer in particular had the charming habit of eating his victims and even creating sculptures from their skeletal remains. This is all very dramatic, but how do these depictions relate to the guy who cut you off in traffic this morning, or your supervisor at work who seems to get an odd pleasure out of holding you back and making you miserable? Although presumably not the chainsaw-wielding type, the reckless moron and your callous supervisor may still fit the description of a psychopath.

ORIGINS AND A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY The actual word ‘psychopath’ has Greek origins, as all good words do (souvlaki, dolmades, tzatziki, Greek salad) and derives from the words psyche, meaning mind or soul, and pathos, meaning to suffer.

A key figure in the development of the concept of the psychopath was Philippe Pinel, author of the seminal text A Treatise on Insanity and a visionary in the field of psychiatric treatment. Following the French 46

Revolution in the late 1700s, Pinel advocated the humane and moral treatment of asylum inmates, and got many people out of dank dungeons and into sunlight—much to their benefit. Pinel recounts the tale of one particular inmate who was liberated from his imprisonment in the Bicetre asylum following his impassioned and articulate plea for his freedom. This lucky fellow was led out to the waiting crowd, which cheered in delight, only to witness him flip out, seize a bayonet from one of his liberators and start slashing throats indiscriminately.

Pinel termed this ‘mania without delirium’, which described seemingly intelligent, sociable people who would fly into unpredictable bouts of energetic and unexplained fury and violence. The idea that otherwise reasonable, articulate and even charming human beings could behave in such atrocious ways was key in the formation of the modern concept of psychopathy.

There are a number of common misconceptions associated with the word ‘psychopath’. Firstly, it is not the same thing as being psychotic, which means simply to lose contact with reality. Psychosis is a mental state (as opposed to a personality disorder), which takes the form of hallucinations or delusions, and is more common in disorders such as schizophrenia or psychotic depression. In contrast, psychopaths usually have a clear perception of reality, but simply lack culturally appropriate or socially desirable morals. Psychopaths may become psychotic, but this happens primarily when they suffer from secondary disorders.

Charles Manson, for example, who was thought to be schizophrenic, thought he heard messages in Beatles records. Some of these messages suggested that he and his followers should kill people. In this case, psychopathy and schizophrenia became a deadly combination. Secondly, psychopathy is not simply anger. Even people with severe anger management problems that may lead them to do terrible things while in a rage may still have a capacity to understand how their actions affect other people.

THE PSYCHOPATH EMERGES Key personality characteristics of the psychopath, as outlined by American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckly in his landmark book, The Mask of Sanity, include superficial charm and intelligence contrasted with a callous disregard for the rights and feelings of others. Other characteristics of the psychopath include 47

lack of insight into exactly how they have hurt people, egocentricity (for instance, the ability to pull almost any conversation back around to themselves), incapacity for love and meaningful interpersonal relationships (seeing people more as instruments of their own self interest), lack of self-control (which may result in violent outbursts from some people), and a general lack of a life plan. Psychopaths also have a general disregard for their own well-being, and their destructive behaviour may end up affecting themselves as much as it does others.

The ability to be an engaging, pleasant, but thoroughly cold and calculating is the most interesting paradox of the psychopath. In his book The Emptied Soul, Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig (an unfortunate first name for an expert on psychopaths) theorises that the lack of emotion and empathy common in psychopaths maybe an asset in social situations, as they are free from the social anxieties and trepedations experienced by many. In addition, because they have little regard to the consequences of being exposed, psychopaths are easily able to tell lies or take on false personas in their quest to be liked. Ted Bundy used confidence and deceit to catch his victims by pretending to be either an injured man in need of assistance or an authority figure. All of this is great for those

Despite the exaggerated depictions in film and media, in reality, we’re all probably more likely to come across a corporate psychopath than the skin wearing kind. Professor Robert Hare, from the University of British Columbia, describes the concept of a ‘corporate psychopath’ as someone who toys with the fate of unfortunate subordinates or colleagues for their own financial or social gain. In his text Without Conscience, Hare notes that by taking on the exaggerated view of all psychopaths as murderers, we ignore the fact that psychopaths are able to negatively affect our lives in a non-violent manner. In most workplaces, especially offices, outright aggression is looked down upon. For instance, you probably would not expect your colleague who is going for the same promotion as you to publicly challenge you to a fist-fight down at the canteen. In contrast to this, the psychopath can maintain an outer veneer of being friendly, professional and calm, while he undermines you to other people, takes credit for your work or does whatever else it takes to secure his gains.

Hare speculates that certain jobs (especially those where a distinct lack of empathy may be an advantage) may attract psychopaths. Managers and people in some leadership roles or other positions of influence such as politicians and lawyers spring to mind here (this is not to suggest that all, many or even any people in these professions are necessarily psychopaths—don’t forget the Bob Browns and Julian Burnsides of the world either, whose careers have been characterised by selfless actions to the benefit of greater society). Examples of behaviours that may benefit, say, a manager, while having damaging psychological and even physiological effect include workplace bullying, theft of intellectual property, rumour mongering and unfair and excessive workloads. Scarily enough, any one of these behaviours can be done in such a way so as not to be blatantly obvious to the onlooker. Worse still, the organisation may not have appropriate means in place for reporting and acting on such problems, preferring to turn a blind eye when productivity is at stake.

of us who seek to lure potential victims into our evil murder-basement, but not so great when it becomes necessary to show emotion and empathy for another person, such as in the context of any substantial human relationship.

Not surprisingly, psychopaths often have difficulty forming stable emotional bonds with lovers, friends and family. This is because any affection they display is often conditional on them getting what they want. This obviously contrasts with what many of us want in a friendship or romance, that is, some level of unconditional love and admiration.

PSYCHOPATHS AT WORK Did any of the above sound familiar—superficial charm and a callous disregard for the needs of others? Egocentricity and a poor ability to form meaning personal relationships? If this does strike a chord with you, there is a chance you may be thinking of someone from your workplace. Indeed, whereas many psychopaths end up incarcerated due to their antisocial behaviour, others hold positions of seniority and influence in society, especially in fields where a lack of empathy may serve as an advantage.

HOW TO SPOT A PSYCHOPATH AT 20 PACES (or more, if required) So how do you know if you are working with a psychopath? According to Hare, look out for someone with a charming persona, who’s capable of 48

turning all conversations around to themselves. Then watch to see if they discredit others behind their back, lie to their faces, and demonstrate a very low regard for anyone they think they’ve outsmarted. They will show little regret for things they have done, and may have a carefully planned network within the organisation, which they use to exert their influence.

If confronted, the psychopath may not even have a good memory or understanding of exactly what they did wrong. They will tend to view the person affected by their actions as being defective, and may even contort the situation so as to portray themselves as the actual victim.

HOW MANY PSYCHOLOGISTS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A PSYCHOTIC LIGHT BULB? Based on previous unsuccessful attempts, many psychologists remain pessimistic about treating psychopathy. It is one thing to recognise a psychopath, but treating one is a different problem altogether. As most modern psychological treatments rely on a client wanting to affect change, changing the personality of a psychopath is difficult, as, from their point of view, there is nothing wrong. So in other words, only one psychologist is needed to change a light bulb, but the light bulb has to be ready to change. Recent attempts at treatment have acknowledged the inability of psychopaths to learn empathy for others or be coerced through threat of punishment, and have focused rather on appealing to their self-interest, teaching psychopaths that they can still get their own way without harming others.

As for what you can do, your best protection lies in educating yourself on the nature of the psychopath, which may in turn allow you to keep out of the way of their relentless self-interest. Also, it’s important to know your own weaknesses, and how these may be used against you. Are you easily swayed by compliments? Are you overly trusting? Are you a teenage camp counsellor having illicit sex on the night of Friday the 13th? Do take care.

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Jamie Swann is an Intern Psychologist and closet Nightmare on Elm Street fan.

classic books

If you could have a look at a photograph of Superman’s great-great grandpa, you’d do it, right? Well, that’s what classics are. The beginnings of all the stories growing around you today. They’re also top entertainment (with some notable exceptions…coughJohannWysscough…). You see, classic English literature is not just for college distinction students and elderly librarians. Case in point: me. I’m well hip—according to my Mum—and I love classics. So read on, children of the internet age, and prepare to meet three of your cultural ancestors…

Johann Wyss Swiss Family Robinson Most Crap Book To End Up With The ‘Classic’ Tag award goes to Swiss Family Robinson.

Seriously. It’s racist. It’s sexist. It’s geographically and biologically impossible and it promotes the worst excesses of Europe’s early empirebuilding God complex. It also employs dubious (and horrendous) plot devices such as randomly shooting any animal that any of the characters come across, randomly shooting any other humans that any of the characters comes across, and randomly just blowing shit up for no apparent reason. The book opens with what is practically a list of reasons why you shouldn’t keep reading, and goes downhill from there.

So, basically there’s a family in the tropics on a boat that gets wrecked in a storm. Survival shenanigans commence. To summarise: after randomly shooting some things and blowing other things up, the family’s first actions on their

ship-wrecked paradise are to have a good pray, make a kitchen to put the woman in, arm their children with guns and proceed to introduce the local fauna to bullets. After having mowed down a good half of the animal population and come up with a few novel ways of destroying the environment, the teenager gets a bit horny and conveniently finds an attractive young European woman washed up on some rocks. After putting her in the kitchen with the other woman, the men have a stoush with some nasty, darkish people, see a ship, and encounter their first (and last) great dilemma—should they stay on the island and continue living the feudal dream amongst the animal carcasses and remaining jungle, or return to civilisation? Who stays, who goes, who cares? How Swiss Family Robinson ever came to be tenderly placed alongside the other awesome books I’ve reviewed here today in the ‘classics’ section of our literary consciousness is a complete mystery.

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Baroness Emmunska Orczy The Scarlet Pimpernel Most people would have heard the words ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ and have some vague idea that they’re connected to History and People Being Dashing and whatnot. But most people wouldn’t really know what it’s all about. And sadly, this means lots of people don’t get the meaning of references to the Pimpernel, leading to a less than full appreciation of the wit of modern masterpieces ranging from Blackadder to Tenacious D. Those same people would also fail to appreciate the true evolution of heroes such as Zorro and Superman.

For example, the granddaddy of the superhero’s secret identity, one of the most significant plot devices in modern superhero land, is the Scarlet Pimpernel himself. He’s brave, he’s clever, he’s resourceful, he’s pals with princes and feared by the French. But who is he?

The French revolutionaries, busy executing

by Sarah Hart

anyone remotely connected with the overthrown aristocracy, don’t know. The French aristocrats whom the Pimpernel rescues from the chopping block and spirits out of France to kindly England don’t know. England itself, though inordinately proud of its homegrown hero, doesn’t know.

Even French actress Marguerite, torn between love for her brother, trapped in France; duty to her irritating English husband and a secret crush on the Pimpernel himself, doesn’t know.

Well, actually, it’ll be obvious to every idiot who the Scarlet Pimpernel really is within pages of starting the book, but that minor detail doesn’t take away from a rollicking good read. Wenches are rescued, nobility is disguised, betrayal is key and midnight escapes are rampant. So go on and read it, because what’s not to enjoy? Plus, as foreshadowed, you’ll become more connected to the world around you, and next time you hear Black Sabbath launching into Scarlet Pimpernel your brain will make an actual connection,

instead of just sitting there like a lump of meat.

Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre There are very few stories that leave you wishing quite desperately that you were a short, ugly orphan with a god fixation and a blind, ugly, baggage-laden love interest. In fact, I feel pretty comfortable putting it out there that Jane Eyre would be the only one.

Most of you will be grudgingly familiar with Jane Eyre only through forced study at college or university. And you’ll probably recall the basic plot points: Jane Eyre, quiet and hard done by, goes to live as governess to Mr Rochester’s ward. Jane and Mr Rochester fall in love.

Problem—crazy wife still living in attic. Misery ensues. House burns down, wife dies, Jane and Rochester free to bring novel to satisfyingly happy conclusion. I’m a massive nerd for gothic 19th century love stories, so these bare bones 51

alone would be enough to send me bolting off to the bookshelf, but I can understand normal people being a bit more sceptical. Let me see if I can’t pique at least a little interest...

For starters, there’s a top bit at the start about Jane having a povvo time at school. If bread and water, typhus and humiliation, ice and endless slog turn you on, prepare to be sizzled. Then there’s the part of the novel that most people tend to forget, and screen adaptations skim over, which is really very disturbing and surreal. St John, Jane’s cousin, attempts to lure Jane off to die in an Indian missionary by appealing to her strong religious conscience. How Jane comes to reconcile her love with her faith is one of the greatest internal struggles in literary history. And if all that’s not enough, there’s a lunatic, a fake gypsy, a French love child, an inheritance, footsteps in the night, telepathy and two (two!) moving deathbed scenes. Feminist Byronic fabulosity at its very best.

Get into it.

starring Mark Russell

A Woo, two Shaws and o long Tarantinne wet dream o

The Hong Kong film industry provides action and style en masse.

Choreographed brutality, trigger-happy bloodbaths and a recent migration to Hollywood; these are the guilty pleasures of films found in the ‘art-house’ section of your local Blockbuster.

The most iconic of Hong Kong film styles are the old school kung-fu flicks from the ‘50s through to the late ‘80s. ‘Your style can never defeat my style’, ‘My fist will avenge the death of my master/father/Labrador’, ‘I have mastered the dancing cockroach kick’—these early chop-sockies inspired film geeks everywhere to don angry white pyjamas and practise fly kicking their parentss hydrangeas.

Throughout this period, the genre’s indisputable masters were the Shaw Brothers. As well as inspiring many a Wutang Clan song, The Shaw Brothers’ studio produced wave after wave of quality arse-kicking epics. Perhaps most famous of all was The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, a seminal classic that made a cult icon of its star, Gordon Liu. The 36th Chamber fits perfectly into the mould of a morally-centred kung-fu odyssey. The central character San Te (Liu) is rescued from a wayward life and becomes purified by his training, eventually using martial arts to fight oppression.

This powerful righteousness of the hero’s journey became typical of Liu’s characters, so he needed an equally powerful nemesis to lock horns with on a regular basis. Enter Pai Mei, based on Bak Mei, the infamous traitor of the Shaolin temple. A popular legend lays blame for the destruction of the temple on the whiteeyebrowed monk, who was bought off by the Qing Government. The reward for this treachery? Bak Mei had his film persona beaten black and blue by a selection of fictional heroes. We can only imagine the exquisite fan-boy pleasure Quentin Tarantino experienced at the irony of having Gordon Liu play Pai Mei in his Shaw Brothers homage, Kill Bill 2.

The other mainstay of the Hong Kong industry is the triad versus police shootem-up—if you can’t fight ‘em, shoot ‘em... a lot. The man with his blood-red stamp on this style is Mr John Woo. Two guns per person, a lit cigarette in every mouth, and more bullets than both world wars; Woo owns it all. With films like Hard-Boiled, A Better Tomorrow and the endlessly imitated The Killer, he’s not happy unless he’s got 52

film a destructive anti-hero and a whole lot of explosions.

John Woo also helped to pioneer the crossover of Hong Kong style and film-making techniques into the Western mainstream. His hyper-violence and stunt-work in Broken Arrow, Face Off and Mission Impossible II helped kick off a surge of Hong Kong style action in mid-to-late-nineties Hollywood. Reservoir Dogs, Desperado and The Transporter all borrow from Hong Kong and Woo. But as interest in seeing mountains of empty shell casings waned, Hollywood turned to another talent to add Oriental flavour—fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping. Wo-Ping’s violent artistry has helped launch the international careers of some of Hong Kong’s best martial arts stars.

Gwai loh* everywhere salivated over the spectacular wire-fu in Once Upon a Time in China (Jet Li), Iron Monkey (Donnie Yen) and Drunken Master (Jackie Chan). His rigs of wires and pulleys allowed them to perform incredible feats of gravity-mockery and we turned up in droves. Consequently, Wo-Ping was brought in to lend his considerable skills to The Matrix franchise, both of the Kill Bill movies and (ahem) Charlie’s Angels.

But the most obvious example of industry cross over in recent times is Academy Award winning film, The Departed. Martin Scorsese took great source material in the plot of Infernal Affairs, a Hong Kong film by Andrew Lau, then made an adaptation that is faithful to the original story, and at the same time original in its own right. The argument can go round in unending circles regarding the debt Scorsese owes Andrew Lau’s film, weighed against the debt Hong Kong action as a genre owes Scorsese. At the end of the day they are both brilliant films, and a great way to understand how the industries differ from each other. The Departed is all slow burn story, dialogue wordplay, and characters built from the ground up, while Infernal Affairs is slick and stylish, with very strong action, and characters that start as interesting caricatures then develop into rounded personalities. It’s also a mark of Hong Kong’s rapid production schedules that a sequel and prequel of Infernal Affairs have already been released.

If you like bang for your buck, Hong Kong films give pure action satisfaction. And it’s comforting in this age of prima donna star treatment and CGI to know that the little guy who just went through a brick wall probably wasn’t wearing any padding. *Kung Fu speak for “ skinny-white-boy-pocket-protector-wearing foreigner types” 53

live stuff

Didn’t get along to see anything good this summer? Sucks to be you.

Here’s Charlie Big’s totally biased opinions of a couple of things you might’ve missed.

Lior @ Tilley’s What is it about Tilley’s that makes it such a great venue? The seating is average—it is, after all, a café. The acoustics aren’t perfect—again, café. Yet it offers the perfect intimacy for an artist like Lior, who tells the audience that he’s celebrating the launch of his new CD, Corner of an Endless Road, by playing at his favourite venue in Australia; and you can tell that he’s completely genuine about it.

He opens the show exactly how you’d hope; a man, his guitar, and one of the sweetest voices you’ve ever heard. This is my idea of perfection. He keeps the crowd happy with some favourites; Diego and the Village Girl gets me pumped, while Bedouin Song leaves me in tears. Throwing in a number of new tracks, Lior offers up an interesting Beatles-esque sound with Sleeping in the Rain, and rocks out in full force with Heal Me, the first single off the album.

Capable of great versatility, Lior’s broad range, diverse dynamics and exquisite falsetto are just one element of what makes this passionate musician so special.

I know this is one of the best gigs I’ll ever see.

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Angels in America @ ANU Arts Centre Before going to see this production, I know less about this epic play than I do about German porn. However, like the aforementioned, once I start watching, I’m strangely drawn into it, regardless of the shit being thrown at the people involved.

Being a hardcore thespian, I’ve opted for the weekend show, presented in one day, two parts, three intervals, four score and five hours.

This is a major ask of my mind, attention span and bladder. At first I’m not quite sure whether I should be laughing with the actors, at them, or even at all. Before too long, I relax into it, at least as much as one can while watching a story that focuses quite heavily on AIDS, gays and Mormons.

However—and mock me if you will—by immersing myself into this world in such a manner, after a while, instead of being at the theatre, I really start to feel like I’m involved in these people’s lives.

The small cast of eight shows versatility, each playing a number of characters. But this begins to work against them, asking for a certain suspension of disbelief from the audience—I realise I’m at the theatre, and that none of this is real, but I just don’t think I should be reminded of it by having the principal actors playing multiple roles. In saying this, however, the cast has definitely risen to the challenge of presenting a grand piece. From the gazillions of lines of effortlessly delivered dialogue to the convincing portrayal of homosexual characters by straight actors, I’m about as impressed as a guy who’s been to see a really good show (man, I must really be running out of analogies).

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the sounds of summer 07/08 with Charlie Big

Radiohead In Rainbows

So by now you’ve heard about Radiohead’s latest release, In Rainbows. You know, the whole hoopla surrounding the album available for download at a price determined by the listener. Yes, hoopla. Well, here’s where it gets even more interesting. This album is now available for purchase (at full price) in stores. The same album I can legally acquire online for only a dollar. Ridiculous. Yet I, the consumer, still buy my copy from the store, because I don’t know any better. Or because Today Tonight has warned me against using my credit card on the internet. Or because I like to have a copy of the CD with the stickers that come with it, like that somehow enhances the listening experience. Well it doesn’t.

And you’re all jerks for buying this 56

album and supporting the music industry.

PS—New album... friggin sweet.

Natalie Gauci The Winner’s Journey

Like many hysterical teenage girls across the country, I too wanted Matt Corby to win Australian Idol 2007. But that doesn’t make me love Natalie Gauci any less. Ok, maybe just a little.

Here’s my problem with Idol winners: I don’t like their music.

Granted, many talented artists have emerged from the reality hit, yet when it comes time to the winner’s album, it’s always some boringas-shit pop release with a bloody single about angels.

Now Natalie is definitely one talented gal, yet this ‘album’ is basically a collection of the songs she performed on Idol, which

means there’s no uniformity to this compilation of random covers.

But when the songs are good, they’re exceptional. Take her arrangement of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy. Awesome! This isn’t just some chick singing karaoke. It’s a talented musician re-working a hit into a new song that you can fall in love with again.

Then Natalie tackles Orange Coloured Sky, How High the Moon and Feeling Good, proving she’s got some major vocal skills in the jazz department (located on level one next to classical).

Weighing this album down are songs like Apologize and Umbrella, which appeal to a younger audience who will listen to just about any pop song with a drum track, too many vocal gymnastics and high production value.

Overall, The Winner’s Journey is a bit of a jumble, but still the best release from any Idol to date. Now Matt Corby. There’s an idol I’d date.

Bobby Flynn Out Front

You hear it all the time; people describing musicians as ‘unique’. Of course they’re unique. Everybody’s bloody unique in some way. Unless of course you’re talking about Bobby Flynn, in which case you

can totally get away with it—that Bobby’s one unique son-of-a-bitch.

Since giving hope to musicians that Australian Idol wasn’t just for the popstar or the pretty-boy or the girl with the big notes, Bobby’s fans have been anticipating this album like crazy. And now that it’s finally here, it’s a real relief to say that it was well worth the wait.

than ks JB H to the g i-Fi W u oden ys at

Rufus Wainwright Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall

Dear Rufus, I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time now. But what’s this I hear about you performing Judy Garland’s famous 1961 concert?

I mean, I don’t mind her music, but I’m a little disappointed that a musician as talented as you would choose to perform these classics practically verbatim to the originals.

Take a look at Harry Connick Jr’s Songs I Heard, where he composed some of the most brilliant arrangements of classic songs from his favourite childhood films. And I know you’re capable of the same greatness, so why the boring tribute album?

I’m sorry, please don’t take this personally. I’m sure that fans of Judy’s will appreciate this album.

And it’s not like it’s bad. It’s just not the masterpiece that I’ve come to expect from you. So, if it’s okay with

you, I’m just going to forget this ever happened and wait for your next release. No hard feelings?

Faithfully yours, Charlie.

Newton Faulkner Hand Built by Robots

Imagine Jamie Cullum crossed with The Tea Party crossed with Hanson.

Well, Newton Fualkner sounds nothing like this, but how cool would that be? My point—while slightly obscure—is this: people 57

are most probably going to make comparisons about Newton, saying he sounds like John Butler had a love-child with Jason Mraz during a jam session with Snow Patrol on the beach with Jack Johnson while listening to Xavier Rudd. But this 23year-old British lad has a sound of his own, from his percussive guitar method to his interesting picking techniques. And it sounds good.

End of story.

celebrity chef

,

Gerald Gaiman, Canberra’s newest, brightest star, already has a reputation for being difficult in interviews. After what seems like minutes of negotiations, twenty600 is able to secure interview time with the up-and-coming up-and-comer. We are to meet, at his insistence, at the Manuka Starbucks.

Gerald is wearing a pink polo shirt with the collar turned up and a white sweater tied around his shoulders. His hair resting listlessly on the upturned collar of the Lacoste shirt, Gerald sits his Oroton man-bag on the table and parks his size zero rear on the sofa. All is not well in camp gSquared; his erstwhile minder, Charles M Big, stands nervously at the counter ordering drinks for all of us, while Gerald himself is on the phone—it appears that he is frantically text messaging someone.

*Rising soufflés, rising star*

by Gerald Gaiman

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twenty600: So, Gerald…

GG: G-diddy. twenty600: Sorry?

GG: G-diddy, it’s what I’m known as now. I think of it sort of as a tribute. Like in the Middle Ages. twenty600: …

At this point the drinks arrive. Big has ordered everyone a ‘virgin latté’, which turns out to be frothed milk in a plastic cup. twenty600: So you began your career in modelling?

GG: What I really want to do is direct. twenty600: You’re interested in film then?

GG: No, movies. twenty600: Right… so, who are your influences in, uh, movies?

GG: Yeah, I guess you could say that. twenty600: Sorry?

With a digitised explosion, it becomes apparent that Gerald’s

G-pav v y ‘text messaging’, which has continued throughout the interview, is in fact a mobile phone game, possibly Lemmings. twenty600: The Canberra film industry has a small but very productive group of professionals and enthusiasts.

Where do you see yourself fitting into that?

GG: I like to think of myself as a bit of an otter. twenty600: Sorry?

GG: An otter. Charlie looked it up for me. A director who exercises creative control over his or her works and has a strong personal style. twenty600: …an auteur?

GG: What? twenty600: Do you see your movie and cooking interests coinciding?

GG: They did once, but the camera stopped working after the third egg. I was fairly miffed that the warranty didn’t cover accidental schnitzel-ing. twenty600: I wonder if Jamie Oliver ever has that problem. Speaking of Mr Oliver, most celebrity chefs are celebrities due to their culinary arts. You seem to have taken a different road, and come to cooking through your burgeoning status as a local celebrity.

How have you dealt with this unconventional path?

GG: I try to believe that I can fly. twenty600: … twenty600: So, uh, do you have a recipe for our readers?

GG: This is my recipe for Pavlova, which, as everyone knows, was named after the late, great, Third Tenor.

************* - 4 egg clears - 1 ½ cups casting sugar (an actor’s favourite) - 1 teaspoon corn flower - 1 teaspoon of the juice of 1 lemon - 1 teaspoon vanilla essence (don’t drink too much!)

Fruits and/or vegetables (for a savoury option) of your choice (you’ll need enough to cover the top, use a measuring tape).

Preheat oven to 150°c. Beat egg clears on a high speed until fluffy (they are now ‘egg whites’).

Beating slowly, add casting sugar until the mixture is thick with a stiff peak. Beat in the corn flower, lemon juice and vanilla.

Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Now, this is where the magic is. Dollop your white goop onto the baking tray. Hollow out the centre to form a nest.

You can now make two types of Pav: - If you like a Pav centre that’s marshmallow, pile the meringue up high, rather than flattening it out.

- If you like a crispy Pav, keep it thin and flat.

Bake the Pavlova for 50 minutes until quite firm, then turn the oven off but leave the Pav in it to cool completely.

Just before you serve it, cut up your fruit (or vegetables) and put it on the top. Now you too can be sad that an opera singer died.

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Oot and aboot in Nova Scotia

by Brooke Davis

I don’t know about you, but before I went to Canada, my knowledge of it extended to whatever was on Degrassi Junior High. I knew they said ‘oot and aboot, eh?’, played (badly) in bands called Zit Remedy and tended to get a bit violent with hockey sticks. What I didn’t know was anything about Canada’s Ocean Playground, the province of Nova Scotia. Located on the east coast, jutting out into the North Atlantic like a giant lobster, the country’s second smallest province packs a punch. Its list of historical influences—Mi’kmaq First Nations, Scottish, German, British, Irish, African and French—is like a roll call at a UN meeting. Theoretically, you can—if you’re nuts—kayak, surf, bike, golf, whale-watch, hike, ski and rock-climb all in one day. Not to mention the music: traditional or contemporary, Nova Scotians live for it.

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Where should you go?

On Cape Breton Island you’ll find the Cabot Trail (is it pronounced ‘Cab-oh’ or ‘Cab-ut’?

Either way you say it the Canadians will laugh at you), a 298 km road winding itself around an am-I-on-the-edge-of-the-world? coastline, through forests, mountains and quaint towns.

Drop by Meat Cove, worth it for the campsite that teeters on the edge of a cliff. Absolutely positively don’t miss some live traditional music; and believe me, it will be hard to avoid, as all the locals seem to have musical notes

travel

printed on their DNA. Curiously, Cape Breton’s town of Sydney is home to the World’s Largest Illuminated Fiddle—a towering ten tonne violin that faces the harbour.

Unfortunately, there are no enormous fiddles in the capital city of Halifax, but there is the International Buskers’ Festival, and it makes the place vibrate during summer. It’s also home to the Alexander Keith Brewery (the oldest working brewery in North America, I’ll have you know) and the world’s only traffic light inside a graveyard.

On the eastern shore of Nova Scotia you’ll find Peggy’s Cove, part of the Lighthouse Trail scenic drive. It’s a lighthouse perched on massive granite rocks, backing onto a cute fishing village.

Steer clear if being swallowed up by a mob of tourists isn’t your thing. The Bay of Fundy is home to the world’s largest tides, which rise and fall some 16 m a day. In fact, twice a day, 200 billion tonnes of water enters and leaves the bay, an amount equal to all the rivers on Earth.

What should you do?

Ask about the Bluenose. Kind of like our Pharlap, watch as the Nova Scotians get all misty eyed explaining it was some kind of really fast boat.

Actually, launched in the 1920s, it was the fastest commercial fishing schooner for 30 years, which is—apparently—unheard of. It was built in Lunenberg, which is itself a UNESCO World Heritage site chock full of cool old-school architecture.

And don’t forget to eat a donair, aka a heart-

attack-inducing kebab; watch Trailer Park Boys, a cult tellie show from Halifax about, well, trailer park boys, and order a triple triple coffee from adored donut chain Tim Hortons (say: ‘Why do you need three things of two things in one thing?’).

When did stuff happen there?

December 6, 1917: the day of the Halifax Explosion. A French munitions ship collides with a Norwegian freighter, detonating 2.5 million kilos of explosives, killing 2000 in one of the most powerful non-atomic man-made blasts in history.

A tsunami obliterates the city, as does a pressure wave of air that snaps trees and bends iron rails. The explosion is felt as far away as Prince Edward Island, about 215 kms north, and a heap of people are left blind from flying glass after watching the initial fire through their windows.

February 9, 1848: Nova Scotia becomes the first British colony to obtain responsible government under much revered champion of free speech, Joseph Howe.

1755: In the Great Expulsion, thousands of Acadians are deported because they refuse to align themselves with the fighting French or English. Homes are set alight; families are split up. They return later, and in 2005, the Government of Canada proclaims July 28 to be a day of acknowledgement.

Who is from there?

Maud Lewis, a folk artist who lived in a one61

room shack and suffered from childhood polio painted simply and vibrantly about Canadian life.

Her colourful little house is on display in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Thomas Haliburton was a dude who was into politics, satire and being a judge. He also coined terms like: ‘Raining cats and dogs’, ‘Every dog has his day’ and ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’. Recent can-do-no-wrong star of Juno Ellen Page hails from Halifax, as does the Paul Kelly of Nova Scotia, much-loved cult singer/songwriter Joel Plaskett. The phone guy, Alexander Graham Bell, called Cape Breton Island his home. And don’t forget The Bog Road Man, who stands on a bridge in the Annapolis Valley every morning at peak hour and waves cheerfully at traffic.

How do you get there?

There are ferries, buses, trains, planes and horses (well, the horses bit is a lie, but all the rest are true) coming in and out of the place, but it’s not a transport hub, so you need to plan ahead. The public transport system is non-existent on Cape Breton Island, so hire a car, join a tour or ride a bike.

Why should you go there?

Rugged coastlines. Wild weather. An eclectic history and brand of music. Stories of shipwrecks and pirates. Friendly, relaxed people and way of life. The possibility of being eaten by a bear/ trampled by a moose/impaled by an elk. Oh and, just quietly, it’s effing beautiful.

mov ove

oveover lanetm aptainp oveover Move over Captain Planet

by Sarah Hart

It’s sickeningly like the movies, but honestly, the best way to start this story is in a rubber raft, floating down Tasmania’s Franklin River in early 1976. Dr Bob Brown and his mate, Paul Smith, had just spent the last few years failing to save Lake Pedder, flooded in 1973, and so were naturally feeling deeply peeved. As the Franklin alternately rushed and drifted through a pristine, ancient wilderness unlike anywhere else on the planet, Bob and Paul saw with the clarity of recent failure the utter madness of the Tasmanian government’s plan to flood the area. They formed a resolve – this time, success was the only option. Shortly after, at Bob’s home in Liffey, the Tasmanian Wilderness Society was formed.

Now, I could say here, ‘...and the rest is history’, except I’m not convinced everyone is as au fait with Australia’s most fascinating environmental crusader as they could be. For a start, I’m not convinced everyone can name the only Australian politician who stepped out of gaol and into State parliament in less than 24 hours, who’s openly gay, who gave up being a doctor to coordinate the greatest response to a national environmental emergency in the country’s history, who went on to lead a major political party and who is responsible for drawing attention to, and then effectively saving from destruction, 1,383,640 hectares of the most fragile, most precious and most beautiful

photo by Cyclone

62

ve erc

rcaptai moveov planet rcaptai country in the world. Although the opening paragraph should’ve given you a big fat hint.

Anyway, prepare to be educated and enthralled, because the story of Bob Brown and the Franklin-Gordon Rivers is quite simply one of the most dramatic and moving episodes in Australian political and environmental history.

Back to the late ‘70s. The Tasmanian Labor government was gung-ho for the Franklin dam scheme, mostly because it was being leant on

by HEC, Tasmania’s water and energy authority (which had, at that time, a bigger budget than the government itself). But after the Tasmanian Wilderness Society spent a couple of years running a highly successful public information campaign, the government began to get cold feet. Well, slightly colder, anyway. In 1981 it decided to try and placate the populace by holding a referendum on the subject. This failed miserably and only succeeded in enraging everyone because it gave voters a choice between two types of Franklin-Gordon dam, not a choice between a dam and no dam.

The Tasmanian government then proceeded to implode; several MPs quit the Labor party and the Liberals gained power in a no-confidence election on May 15, 1982. The new premier, Robin Grey, waved the bulldozers in later that year.

But he reckoned without Bob Brown and the Tasmanian Wilderness Society. Bob had been busy touring the mainland, raising awareness of what we were about to lose and stirring dissent.

The Franklin-Gordon butchery had struck a

national chord. On December 14, 1982, the same day as the World Heritage Protection Bill was passed in the Senate, several thousand protestors formed themselves into the Franklin Blockade behind Bob Brown.

Tasmanian gaols were then filled up with people whose crime was wanting to protect something they owned as a nation, something that was valuable, irreplaceable and threatened.

An incredible 1400 people were arrested. Bob Brown was among the gaoled. Not for nothing though—sympathetic Democrat politician Dr Norm Sanders was so disgusted by the whole situation that he resigned from the Tasmanian parliament, and on a recount his seat went to Bob Brown. So out of gaol and into Parliament for Bob. In early 1983, Bob Hawke and the ALP won the Federal election on a No Dam platform and decreed the dam would not go ahead (unlike the previous government, who said it was a State issue and sat on its arse). Premier Grey decided to give Hawke the political finger and continued to bulldoze a road toward the Franklin. Hawke passed legislation to ban the dam. Grey and his idiot twin, QLD’s Joh Bjelke-Petersen, responded by appealing the legislation to the High Court.

On June 1, 1983, the Franklin-Gordon Rivers were officially saved. By a majority of four votes to three, the High Court decided that the Commonwealth did have the power to stop the dam. It was an amazing, earth-movingly important decision, and one that’s gone on to save the Daintree, as well as other parts of the Tasmanian 63

environment

wilderness.

Bob Brown went on to nationalise the Tasmanian Wilderness Society (now simply know as The Wilderness Society), resigning in 1984 to head up the Tasmanian Greens, and later, Australia’s environmental conscience, the Australian Greens.

These days Bob Brown is busy leading the Greens charge in the Senate. At the recent federal election the Greens attracted around a quarter of a million more primary votes than they did in 2004—not enough to get them the balance of power in the Senate, but enough to make the major parties sit up, and enough to establish the Greens as a mainstream political alternative.

Bob’s a beacon for those who like their leaders to embody integrity instead of just talk about it. And the trees, whales, civil rights supporters, Gunns’ lawsuit victims and those who think a 2008 round of unnecessary Howard-era tax cuts is a dumb idea (just to name a few) are rallying round.

It’s difficult to say whether the FranklinGordon victory gave us Bob Brown, or whether Bob Brown gave us the Franklin-Gordon, but either way, Australia should be inordinately proud of both, and should be shouting its pride from the rooftops. I cannot overstate the importance of what Bob Brown has achieved, of what he embodies as a politician and an Australian, and of what he has given us. So tuck this story away in your mind for next time you get screwed over by someone in power and are about to give up on society—there is extraordinary good in the world yet.

beyond 2600

It ,s war, but not as we know it

by Nick Ellis In April 2007, the Estonian government moved a Soviet-era statue honouring the war fallen and exhumed and reburied the remains of 12 Soviet soldiers. These actions provoked riots by ethnic Russians in Estonia, and the blockade of the Estonian embassy in Moscow. Then, on April 27, internet sites in Estonia started to go down…

The internet can go down for many reasons, most of them benign. Those that aren’t—basically, those that are the result of deliberate or malicious actions—are known as ‘cyber attacks’.

Cyber attacks fall into a couple of categories.

Websites can be vandalised or simply shut down, data can be gathered from networks attached to the internet (‘worms’ and ‘trojans’ are usually programs designed to gather information stored on computers, such as your credit card details) or, as happened recently in the Middle East, cables can be cut (at the time of publication it is uncertain if the Middle East submarine cables were cut by design or accident).

The simplest of cyber-attacks is to create a program that constantly accesses and refreshes a site, giving it more traffic than it can handle. In February 2000, a 15-year-old boy from Montreal, under the name MafiaBoy, launched a series of these distributed denial of service (DDS) attacks on high profile US websites, such as Dell and Yahoo. An in-court estimate of economic damages came to $7.5 million Canadian; however, some reports put the figure much higher.

So what does all this have to do with Estonia?

Estonia is a small, eastern-European country that was occupied by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Estonia gained independence from Russia in 1991. Since then the Estonian government and private sector have embraced electronic communications at one of the highest rates in the world. The Estonian government claims to be almost paper free, and in February 2007, Estonia was the first country in the world to allow internet based voting.

Estonians are also required to carry an electronic ID card which, as well as containing the usual identification details, is attached to a permanent, official email address that stays with the user their entire life. Software for using the cards is freely available. The cards and their online transactions are now used to authorise banking transactions and contracts, tax declarations, official information requests from the government and to access healthcare. So when internet sites across the country started failing, it caused concern.

The attacks themselves tended to not be particularly sophisticated, taking the shape of distributed denial of service attacks. The most effective way of dealing with these was shutting off connections outside Estonia and for the next two weeks, which is precisely what IT professionals did. The real worry, however, was what Estonia’s Defence Minister did: he pointed the finger of blame squarely at Russia and considered invoking 64

NATO Article 5. This would have obliged all NATO nations, including the US and UK, to respond to the cyber-attacks as an armed invasion.

The Kremlin and Russian military strongly deny any connection to the attacks. It is entirely possible that the attacks were carried out completely by unaffiliated hackers (as of January 24, an ethnic Russian living in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, has been found guilty of launching some attacks against Estonian government systems).

Therefore, the possibility of a NATO Article 5 movement becomes all the more worrying—how can you justify armed action against a country, against people, if you cannot be sure that country is responsible for the attack?

Parallels can be drawn between September 11 and subsequent US action in Afghanistan, however the World Trade Centre attacks resulted in massive loss of life. In Estonia, though the cyber-attacks were economically significant, not one person died.

There are many possible lessons from Estonia: not to rely solely on electronic communication, not to assume that any communication system is infallible, not to anger your big angry neighbours.

But the most sobering lesson to be taken is that we now live in a world where the actions of computer hackers could result in an actual war. A world where the line between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred, and not always for the better.

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