UniLife Magazine Issue 20.06 by Verse Magazine

MAGAZINE

Issue 20.06 October 2012 | www.unilifemagazine.com.au

Editorial

s much as it pains us to say, that’s all folks. Seeing as though it’s our final issue, we would like to bid you farewell. We’re not going to give you a huge spiel, just a few parting words from all of us.

Catherine Moore (Head Editor): My role has meant that contributors did not know me as well as the others but I was there lurking, promoting and fixing up the cracks. The UniLife staff and board, and all the businesses associated with us knew me better so I have a few words; UniLife: pay the mag team A LOT better next year; NewStyle Printing (Luke): you’re a champion among champions; and to everyone else: thank you. Also to my team, you’ve been awesome. Tom Angley (Chief of Staff ): Aaaand it’s gone. My reign of terror as Chief of Uni(Life Magazine) has come to an abrupt, violent end. To my fans, rest assured I shall return one day – bigger and better than ever. To my enemies, well…suck my ticket. My ticket to SUCCESS! Don’t cry for me, I’m already dead. Sam Smith (Web Editor): Goodbye cruel UniLife world. As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end; my time as the random guy who doesn’t really have a role but is part of the team anyway included. With my final, heart-wrenchingly tragic last breath, I’d just like to thank all of our contributors and readers this year. Give yourselves a well deserved caress. RIP Samuel Smith. Sean Courtney (Graphic Designer): Sean’s inability to articulate (he’s a visual kinda guy) meant I – the Chief – have offered to summarise his year that was in a few short words: he had fun. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wondering what to do with your life now that our final issue has been released? Why not keep the dream alive and apply for the 2013 UniLife Magazine team? Please send your resume (and a few sentences about yourself and why you’re awesome) to Catherine.Moore@unisa.edu.au by Friday, October 26. Hey man, but like, I don’t ‘write’. I represent myself visually. No problem – we need a graphic designer. Send YOUR resume to the above email by Friday, November 2. Three positions are only available to ongoing students. Good luck!

Contents

Apocalypse Soon? 02 Doctor, Doctor 05 UniLife Referendum 06 A Graduate’s 15 Parting Tips

On the Outside, Looking Inward

Fifty Shades of Submission

Fifty Shelves of Shady

Calendar 16 Tackling Hecklers 18 Lost in the Darkness 20 The Secret Diary of a Call Girl’s Chauffeur

You, Me, and Alcohol 26 Hipster Hate 28 The Seacret Controversy 30

Cover art by Rohan Cheong Thanks to our sub-editors Lucy Ahern and Laura Pietrobon Visit www.unilifemagazine.com.au Follow us on Facebook or Twitter @unilifemagazine UniLife Magazine is an affiliate of UniLife Inc. Published 15/10/2012

Apocalypse Soon?

Writer: Lucy Ahern Artist: Nicky Irvine

’m going to be in Mexico City on the 21st of December 2012. For those of you who don’t know (bless your cotton socks), that’s when the apocalypse is happening. That’s right, kids – you’ve only got three months to build a shelter in your backyard and stockpile the SPC spaghetti. My proximity to the apocalypse epicentre is freaking me out a bit. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but there is a part of me asking: “What happens if the crazies are right? What if the world does go all Apocalypto? And what if I’VE WASTED MY LIFE?” (Although seeing my friend Claire drunk and going at a piñata in a sombrero might make it worthwhile, who knows?) Plus I’m going to be pretty pissed if Machu Picchu gets all exploded before I get to see it. Basically, this entire doomsday drama is grounded in the Maya calendar, hence my geographical trepidation. The Mayans were astronomy whizzes, and created a ‘Long Count’ calendar which measured time in five, 125 year cycles. Apparently our current cycle began in 3114 BC, meaning that it’s due to end (and the next one begin) on December 21. This belief is based on a translation of hieroglyphs found on a Mexican monument, apparently saying on that day “there will occur blackness and the descent of the Bolon Yookte’ god to the red.”

So there are a fair few theories on the exact course of events that’ll take place on the 21st.

December (and right before Christmas, think of all that pudding wasted).

And while I’m still inclined to think this is going to end up like the Y2K bug (hoarders buying bulk UHT milk and canned cocktail frankfurts – my mother included), let’s give them a bit of column space anyway:

Four ‘believing’ families have recently been featured on a US (where else?) show called Livin’ for the Apocalypse, which chronicles their lead-up to the big day.

- The earth will align with the approximate centre of the Milky Way (clearly, the Mayans knew their stuff ). This has led to theories of alien invasion, and also allegations that the Mayans themselves were interplanetary visitors. - What I’m going to call the ‘Cusack effect’ – the earth will suffer disastrous environmental consequences. It will spontaneously crack open, Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue will crumble and fireballs will rain from the sky (and if the plot of 2012 is to be believed, these will miraculously miss your car, despite their relative sizes).

One family of nine has built an entire bunker complete with greenhouse, full size kitchen and well-stocked artillery. Plus all the bulk soup you can poke a firearm at. There’s also a couple who, with their son, make a game out of putting on survival gear in their living room, complete with gasmasks. Yep, these people exist. But back to the real concerns. The US Homeland Security Department recently delivered a public health announcement urging citizens to prepare for the zombie-pocalypse.

- It’s not going to happen! Some critics believe that the hieroglyphs were actually mistranslated, and others have found reference to dates far into the future – some almost 8,000 years from now.

Yes, it may have been a tongue-in-cheek exercise to help Americans prepare for ‘real’ disasters (what is more real than the flesheating undead, Obama?), but come December they could be eating their words. Or brains.

But here comes my favourite: ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. I’m really hoping I survive just so I can go on a big adventure with Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and that guy from The Social Network. We’ll search for Twinkies, hang out in amusement parks and hopefully meet Bill Murray.

I’m going to take this as the perfect excuse to celebrate on December 21 by getting really drunk with friends and listening to R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ on repeat. And I suggest you do the same*.

My gun-toting, zombie-slaying fantasies aside, some people do actually believe the world as we know it will come to an end this

*In the event of a non-pocalypse, the writer takes no responsibility for hangovers or noise complaints incurred as a result of this article’s recommendations.

Writer: Catherine Moore

Doctor, Doctor

any of you are counting down the days till semester ends, eager to sit back and enjoy the sunshine before uni resumes in March 2013. Others will be agonising over their last assignment, resisting the intense urge to title it something obscene and congratulatory. For those graduating soon, the panic of ‘What now?’ has likely settled in as you wonder if you’re really ready to be a little fish in a big sea. So have you ever thought of prolonging that huge dive and doing a PhD? Professor Salman Sayyid from the Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, known for their research and initiatives in bridging the gap between these respective communities, offers some sound advice. “I would encourage people to do PhDs in fields that they are passionate in,” he said. “To do a PhD you have to love the thing you’re doing it on, or don’t do it because it’s three years and at the end of it you’ll bore everyone else if you don’t love it.

in North Terrace with the trees in South Terrace. Just because there is a gap doesn’t mean it’s worth writing about. “This is why finding a question is far more important than the gap. Questions will not always be answered finally and fully. “So I think something that bothers you, something that doesn’t make sense to you, is a much better way of building a path to a PhD.” Salman likens PhD research to a creative endeavour, similar to writing a novel or making a movie. “There needs to be an inner conviction of what you want to do. If you don’t have that conviction then you need to push yourself hard enough to find that conviction,” he said. To see what opportunities are available, contact your Program Director or Campus Central for more information.

“The second thing is you have to have a question. A PhD without a question; you won’t have an argument.” However, Salman stresses that basing your PhD on a gap in the literature is not ideal. “The only reason there is a gap in the literature is because someone overlooked it,” he said. “For example, I can probably say to you no one has done a PhD examining the trees

UniLife Referendum

ate last year, your current UniLife student reps held a meeting to discuss changes to our university’s constitution. Nine months and fourteen redrafts later, the board unanimously passed numerous constitutional amendments, and on August 20 a list of these proposed changes were released to students. UniLife members could choose to adopt or dismiss the new constitution by voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ respectively in a referendum held between August 27-September 3. The result? 2,287 votes cast; 1,788 (78 per cent) yay, 499 (22 per cent) nay. Not all students were happy with the outcome. A ‘Vote No’ campaign, run by former UniLife Director, attracted widespread media attention – and despite the referendum passing, concerns over particular amendments remain. I sat down with a current UniLife Board member to grill him further on the changes. Below is an edited transcript of our chat: What does the result mean for students? It means that representation on the board has increased, (there’s) one more position which is going to be specifically for international students. It also means that (UniLife) is in line with federal legislation. The Student Services Amenities Fee (SSAF) came out recently, and there are very specific criteria as to what a university can spend the money on.

Was there much consultation with students outside the UniLife board? The way (UniLife) endeavoured to take on the (amendments) process was that it was each student representative’s responsibility to gauge the wants and needs of their constituency…and we did that through our meetings. Could all 37,000 UniSA students vote in the referendum? The old constitution was designed so that students had to opt in to becoming a UniLife member…to vote. The new constitution, which passed, allows for all students to be instant members of UniLife (and vote). Were you surprised that only 11.02 per cent of UniLife’s then-20,745 members bothered voting? No. Even if you take a look at Adelaide, Flinders, or (other) universities throughout the country, election results and subsequently referendum results often stagnate around that marker and they hardly move. Unfortunately…a lot of people are apathetic; a lot of people don’t care. But I don’t think it’s a small result. If you compare us to the referendum that Adelaide just had recently, they’re very similar. Adelaide has less students than what UniSA does, but the (political) culture that Adelaide has is very different. How can UniLife encourage more student participation? You offered voters the chance to win an iPad… We incentivised the process for the single reason that it is online voting. You don’t have the same thing at Adelaide where people push you in and say ‘Vote for this, vote for me, I’ll offer you the world’.

Writer: Tom Angley

When (students) log onto their email and they see assignments due tomorrow, and (our email) just says ‘UniLife referendum – please vote’, unfortunately it gets lost amongst all the other types of pressures. Without incentivisation not a lot of people would vote, and the people who would vote are your special interest groups that might dictate what happens for everyone. But do you think incentives undermine the democratic process? There are a lot of people who are very ideologically minded and don’t believe that democracy should be incentivised, and I agree with them 100 per cent. But unfortunately this is the environment that we have to work in and we have two options: we either stick to a 100 per cent ideological basis and just watch everything we do fail around us, or we play to the environmental factors. What about the referendum poster’s tagline ‘Democracy kicks ass!’ Is that an “environmental factor” in appealing to the masses? (Laughs) I think it’s just something that gives a bit of punch to it. Admittedly I saw it and had a bit of a chuckle to myself because democracy does kick ass! There have been concerns with just how democratic the new referendum is, though. For example, Section 11.3.1 states the “number and nature of all Club Committees is determined by the General Manager or their delegate” – how will this affect students? [L]et’s say a club is planning to do something bad. They want to, I don’t know, blow up a police building.

It is then the General Manager’s (GM’s) responsibility to cease that affiliation of that club to UniLife…and UniSA. The main reason behind (the amendment) is…so he (the GM) doesn’t have to create a special meeting of (the student representative) board just to deal with one club. If that happens, we have to bring down the Whyalla rep, we bring down the Mount Gambier rep; it’s a costly exercise. The thing that you have to realise is that the General Manager is ultimately responsible to board; the supremacy of board cannot be taken away, and clubs are sub-committees of the board. So if he (the GM) was to go particularly crazy and start slashing and burning, which he’s not going to do because he’s not going to put his job on the line, there is an appeals process in which the club can come up to the board and ask for it to be repealed. What’s your message to those critical of the referendum process? If people felt particularly disenfranchised by the process and feel as if it can be improved in the future, then there’s nothing to stop them from getting in contact with an elected representative to sit down over a coffee and have a chat about it.

A Graduate’s 15 Parting Tips

aving just graduated with a degree in International Relations, I am qualified to do absolutely nothing except to give you 15 tips about uni: 1. Your GPA counts. Gone are the days when just having a degree was all that mattered. Your GPA is critical for everything – scholarships, exchanges, graduate program offers and even finding a job. 2. Be realistic about your degree. Media students, unless Daddy pays for everything or you are happy to work at McDonalds for the rest of your life, you may want to consider a double degree. Also, make sure you love what you’re studying. Motivation is hard to find if you hate your own course. 3. Make friends. Talk to the people in your tutorials, and join clubs and societies (UniLife offers heaps: surfing, cosplay and flash mobs to name just a few). 4. This isn’t high school. Don’t brag about how you had 20 Pulses at HQ on Saturday (this has actually happened in my presence). 5. Join Global Experience; it’s one of the best things about UniSA. The program helps you stand out when you finally have

Writer: Jessica Lim

to enter the dark and scary ‘real world’. They encourage exchanges (which you should totally do) and generally make your time at uni more enjoyable. 6. No one cares about your blog. 7. Or your indie band. 8. Do internships/work experience. Even if they’re not a part of your course, do them anyway. They will make your CV look amazing, and you’ll have a much better idea of your ideal career and workplace upon graduation. 9. Don’t sign up for the 9am class on a Monday. You won’t go and you’ll fail. 10. You’re not the first person to go to university. Everything you do/say/think has been done/said/ thought before. Uni will be far easier if you remember you are not the first or only person to go through this. 11. Don’t ask your law student friend how uni is going. Without fail, they will rant about how hard their life is, blathering on about torts, contracts and other stuff. Yawn. 12. Summer school is the best thing ever. They offer some great classes (I highly recommend Public

Relations 1 and Issues in South East Asia), and it means you can take fewer classes during your normal study period (or in some cases even graduate early – yay!). Thanks to summer school, I only had to be at uni for 2 hours a week in my final semester. 13. Find the right balance between uni, work and your social life. I’ve seen people fail because they’ve partied too much, and I’ve seen people become completely miserable because all they do is study and work. 14. If you’re studying to be a glorified babysitter, can you please be quiet? The whole campus doesn’t need to hear your conversations. 15. Enjoy it. If things aren’t working out, find out why and fix it. It should be fun; remember, #YOLO. I loved my time at university and I will look back at it as one of the best experiences of my life. I had many ups and downs (thankfully more ups) and I learned a lot about myself in the process. I hope you all have just as great of an experience, and when you come and join me in the real world, may the odds be ever in your favour.

On the Outside, Looking Inward

o make a necessary generalisation, I think it would be fair to call nerds and geeks a community of people who are fond of looking forward, or elsewhere. The interest in high technology, the investment in ideal realms, other times, other places – many people in these communities spend a lot of time attempting to conceptualise progress (either technological or social) and how it affects people. Thus, many ’nerds’ and ‘geeks’ will hold socially progressive views with pride, looking back at a history of ideas and literature that championed egalitarian values, looking forward to a world where people are only judged on their character (Star Trek would be the most obvious example, but a quick glance over most of the popular intellectual properties within geekdom would detail many works which have a similar ethos). And indeed, I’m sure if you were to ask most nerds and geeks how they feel about ideas such as equal rights, respect for women, etc, they’d probably at least generally agree that these are ideals worth adhering too. However, for a good portion of the existence of such communities, membership has been made up of middle-to-lower class white males. This is not a bad thing, of course, but as more and more people from varied and diverse backgrounds have started to take an interest in geeky and nerdy hobbies, numerous problematic ideas and myths within geek and nerd cultures have become more obvious. Geeks and nerds are no longer just outsiders who’ve been clumped together because of their communal ostracism and interests. They’ve become a brand, a specific sphere of public interest. And like any formally niche or underground movement that is suddenly pushed outside into the blazing daylight of public scrutiny, there are people who will resent the attention, promoting nostalgic ideas about the good ol’ days when they were allowed to do as they wished in full confidence of the support of most of their peers. This, I think, has led to a kind of backlash – a communal identity crisis of sorts. After all, the nerd/geek community was (and still is) a haven to those victimised, ostracised and bullied because of their interests. To the bullied, video games, comic books and science fiction become more than a simple hobby; they become an identity – a show of communal strength, and a display of contempt for the social idioms that rejected them. Certainly, this was the landscape of the nerd world throughout the 90s. Prior to the social communication boom, communities were often cell-like entities; little clumps scattered through the suburbs who might convene weekly for a game of Dungeons & Dragons, swap comics and video games, view the latest bootleg anime (fan-subbed, of course), or visit annual sci-fiction conventions. Through these kinds of interactions a communal identity formed, and by and large, these were middle class white men.

Writer: Brendan Whittaker Artist: Lisa Davidson

Naturally, there were always the odd exceptions to the rule, but this was where the community was born and these kinds of friendly, relaxed interactions were where identity was calcified. But as it does time and time again, the internet shifted this paradigm. Though geeks and nerds were certainly heavily invested in the internet before it really took off, it was only when everyone else got interested in the online phenomena that nerds and geeks stopped being communities of social pariahs. The internet brought with it a degree of social acceptance that had previously not been experienced – but with this acceptance came a new wave of interest, and this is where trouble started. In a community that had spent a couple of decades being largely white, male and middle class, certain tropes had become calcified. Though many works of fiction that were enjoyed by the community would extoll the virtues of egalitarianism and diversity, when the community started to shift beyond its original base, resentment began to form – resentment against feminism, against political correctness, against any form of language or ideology attempting to address the exclusionary practices that had become so codified in these communities. And that’s where we’ve ended up. You can see it in the choruses of moans that erupt whenever gender issues are engaged in regards to geek and nerd attitudes, whenever someone tries to make a case for inclusion-ism and accessibility (both of interface and thematically), whenever someone tries to examine just what these kinds of media engagements are actually doing to people. There are sizable portions of the community who find these kinds of discussions intrusive. In a sense, many long-held social myths amongst nerds and geeks are not holding up in the light of day very well. So what to take away from all this? I’d rather not present this as a condemnation of nerd and geek communities as being particularly conservative or exclusionary – despite being a community created by outsiders who were either removed from the common social order, or removed themselves from it, nerds and geeks have not disconnected themselves entirely from the forces that shaped their original exclusion. There is no such thing as ‘outside’ society as long as there are still other people to engage with. And if nerds and geeks wish to truly live up to many of the socially progressive ideals that they would like to extoll, they have to perform the same kind of critical engagement within their communities as people have been doing in mainstream society for decades.

Fifty Shades of Submission

i, my name is Sammie and I’m a sexual submissive. Unfortunately, if everything you know about Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism (BDSM) comes from EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, then you’re probably assuming I spend most of my time fluttering around my dominate, immediately fulfilling his every sexual whim and excluding everything else.

But being submissive is only one part of who I am. I’m a 25-year-old microbiologist, bad movie aficionado, occasional writer and card-carrying feminist. You see, despite what you might have read to the contrary, my sexual urges do not overshadow every other aspect of my life. So why do I submit, you ask? The first thing you need to know is that I’m not broken. I grew up in a nice suburban middle class home. There’s no past deep-seated trauma that has created my love of being degraded. I don’t use drugs or drink excessively and I have no medical issues, psychological or physical, that might offer an explanation for my sexuality. To answer some of the other troublesome stereotypes: I am neither a doormat nor a simpleton. I know that human CST complex is a terminator of telomerase activity. (Microbiologist, remember?) I don’t yearn to spend my day in the kitchen while someone hunts and gathers for me, which is just as well as I’m not that great a cook. I understand some schools of feminist thought are going to have problems with submission as a concept. One of my frustrations with Fifty Shades of Grey’s success is so much of the story’s main

Writer: Samm Blackmore

relationship plays into the misconception that any sexual relationship based around BDSM is an abusive one. Despite what I like to do in bed, I consider myself a feminist. I find it very depressing that because of my informed sexual choices, there are women who’d want to wave “Down with this sort of thing!” placards in my direction. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that what I enjoy is – in a different context – potentially another woman’s worst nightmare. It’s not something everyone might indulge in. But within safe, sane and consensual circumstances and in privacy with my trusted partner, I don’t see why anybody should tell me I can’t or I shouldn’t. Things do go wrong occasionally, as Fifty Shades of Grey alludes to. I’ve been bitten so hard I’ve bled, and I’ve had some of my hair yanked out. I’ve pulled muscles and I’ve gotten friction burns, and on one memorable occasion I’ve had to scream my safe word when a knot slipped and threatened to drop me face-first onto a tiled floor. An important thing for you to realise, though, is these are short-term and purely physical dangers which I accept as a part of my play. I do not allow the sexual aspect of my relationship to influence other aspects of my life. I am in control of my finances, my reproductive health, my career, my social life and all the other things that feminism has fought for. I genuinely believe it’s the fundamental misunderstanding of what BDSM is that contributes a lot to feminists’ opposition of dominant/submissive relationships.

For me, Fifty Shades of Grey is far more a fetishisation of capitalism as it is a dissertation on BDSM. Christian Grey offers Anastasia Steele vast provisions of wealth – designer labels, helicopters and expensive gifts – to encourage our virginal heroine to stick with him, endure his peccadilloes and to keep trying to change him. As well-known feminist and submissive Sophie Morgan writes, “It’s very much focused on ending up married and settled and financially secure – Mills & Boon with butt plugs.” BDSM should be harmless. Except much of what happens in the main relationship of Fifty Shades of Grey is domestic abuse, both physical and emotional. For people whose entire understanding of BDSM now comes from the novel, this is a dangerous misconception to encourage. It comes back to the nature of consent; the fact that I am enjoying, not enduring, what my partner and I are doing, and that power fundamentally remains with me. I decide who to submit to, how much control to give them and what my limits are. If I use my safe word, it stops – immediately. Feeling challenged, even feeling demeaned within this sexual context is different to domestic abuse. Submission is all about temporarily relinquishing control in exchange for a sexual high. That’s why so many socially empowered, sexually confident women, and men, enjoy it so much.

Fifty Shelves of Shady

our grandmother is reading porn. And she probably bought it from me. It’s all the rage these days, didn’t you know? Crack open some softcore while waiting for the G10, thumb through a paddling scene, leaf past a headjob and maybe skim over a bit of cheeky feather play, you tease. You could be sneaky – order online, read on a Kindle, illegally download erotic reading packages from The Pirate Bay – but some traditionalists need the silky feel of a page in their hand to get in the mood. Last year, I finished working at a bookstore in the height of the paranormal fiction boom (cheers, Twilight). Now, in a new year, in a new bookstore, a new fad is making its inky mark on the world: erotica. Not the steamy bodice-rippers of yore – when Lady Jane succumbed to her overwhelming desire for the young stablehand, Gunther – but whip-n-chain spectaculars with the added spice of accidental pregnancy. The sexy novel is hardly new. Mills & Boon have been regurgitating one per fortnight since 1908. All the godlike guys and sassy seductresses you can shake a stick at, embraced in a sweaty knot of writhing limbs. Erotic literature has been around since the actual Greek Gods were the worshipful flavour of the month, and even Shakespeare had a crack. But EL James’ Fifty Shades of Grey is a phenomenon unlike the others. One fanfiction (cheers, Twilight) was all it took.

Take that one exploration into creative licensing, chop it into three volumes, edit it lightly – so as not to damage the charm of the original, of course – et voilà. Pop culture at your leather-gloved fingertips. At its peak, Fiddy was bringing James £1 million a week, and gossip about movie deals was coffee table chatter around the world. Since then, novels detailing semiabusive sexual relationships have just been coming, one after another. A real life account of sexual masochism can be found in Sophie Morgan’s Diary of a Submissive: A Modern True Tale of Sexual Awakening.

Writer: Ilona Wallace

Like James, Marina Anderson provides a Haven of Obedience in three desirable volumes.

So Fiddy normalised sexual exploration, reinvigorated an understated genre of literature and sold a metric fuckton of books.

Anaïs Nin’s classic sensual literature has been reprinted and Nikki Gemmell, semi-anonymous author of the semiautobiographical The Bride Stripped Bare, has published a sequel.

But, in the immortal words of Shannon Noll*, what about me?

For every Irvine Welsh sold, two dozen Fiddies galloped off the shelves. Only two poetry anthologies have passed under my scanner (to the same customer) while I’ve worked at the store, compared to the hundreds of crinkled blue books that didn’t even have enough time to dry before the printer rushed them to market.

We, who work in the noble and selfobsessive trade of bookselling, have been demoted to glorified purveyors of pornography. We recommend where readers should go after dipping their toe in the scalding pool of sexlit. We guide them through the shallows and release them into the deep black water of explicit desires.

Even though droves of customers waltzed into our store claiming “not to know” what Fiddy was about, many more came back giddy, panting for the next naughty volume.

Really, all it means for us is that The People have taken back The Book. And the book the people want is SEX. Not artful representations of the act, nor metaphoric floral descriptions, but the sticky slam of a pelvis on pelvis in 300 pages or less.

And they aren’t being bought up by perverts in gimp masks (to each their own). A friend told me her mother is keen to lend her a copy, “just as soon as your father and I are finished with it.”

All it means for us is that word-hogging wankers will have to find a second-hand corner to cry in.

Oversharing parents are joined by an army of grannies, school girls, studious boyfriends and dutiful husbands, all clamouring to get a copy of the Little Blue Book.

*who plagiarised said immortal words from Moving Pictures

Poplit is the (sexy, sexy) king.

Women are embracing their kinks and exploring other peoples’ with a freedom of sexy expression that has been on decline since Madonna’s fitness regime turned her from a lithe sexbomb into Terminator 5.

September / October 2012 M.

LOL

Does anyone actually read c

calendars?

LOL

Tackling Hecklers

here’s a saying in comedy: it’s not a matter of ‘if ’ you get heckled, but ‘when’. I recently was involved in this sacred, sacred initiation right at a gig in Adelaide’s delightful northern suburbs. After seeing some members of the audience and hearing their reactions to some of the other performers’ jokes, I realised very quickly I would need to dumb down the language that I was using. I should point out I wasn’t exactly trying to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity; it was a banal piece about the idiots I have had to serve at various retail jobs. It was some new stuff intertwined with some old stuff that I knew would please the crowd. This was my first mistake. All of my gigs bar one have been in proper comedy venues, full of

people ready and wanting to laugh. This particular venue was the foyer of the Playford Civic Centre, and the scant audience was filled with people who apparently didn’t mind the odd semi-racist joke. My jokes would do very well at the Rhino Room in the CBD; the Lizbef Locals would prove to be less understanding of my attempts at humour. The first heckle was less of a witty remark and more of a drunken vocalisation. I didn’t quite hear it or understand it, but I pushed on despite the interruption to my routine. At this point I stopped caring about the reaction from the crowd. They weren’t really there to laugh and I wasn’t going to come down to their level. There were four main tables in the front row, two were polite and laughed when appropriate, and two

Writer: Nick O’Connell

had drunk enough Jack Daniel’s to support Tennessee’s economy for the next 300 years. It was these two tables that gave the comedians the most trouble. The people on these tables paid $25 for a night of comedy just to ruin it with stupid comments that only their fellow idiots found funny. I don’t understand why people would heckle a comedian and ruin the night not only for the rest of the audience, but for themselves. The second heckle came as I was wrapping up my set, but this time it was more understandable and a little intimidating. I gradually got angrier and angrier, then paused and straightened myself up. It was during this pause that the same woman who had heckled at me before yelled,

“I can’t wait to heckle you mate.” I promptly decided to say goodnight and left the stage. It wasn’t exactly my best gig, but it provided me with some valuable experience. I’m now a little more prepared if an audience member pipes up during my set, and I also learnt that audiences differ depending on the venue. I may have been heckled, I may not have got as many laughs as I had wanted, but instead of dimming my passion for comedy, it has only motivated me. Follow Nick on Twitter @nd_oconnell, or hit up his blog ‘Witty, Pithy And None Of The Above’ wpanota.wordpress.com.

Lost in the Darkness

lose your eyes. Sit back. Imagine. The time for a renaissance is here, at least according to some people.

And no, it’s no form of religion, social progress or some new elaborate law picking up steam within the streets; the change is ear. A niche social event called ‘In the Dark’ is bringing sound back, and in fact it already has, with the debut event at Format tickling Adelaide’s eardrums on September 6. In the Dark is the creation of a ‘sound space’, where groups of people sit in pitchblack darkness and listen to radio through documentaries, features and soundscapes. The founder of the event in Adelaide, Chris Brunner, promises a complete visceral, emulous experience, targeting your ears and your ears only.

“This is going to be overstimulating. We’re going to stimulate the hell out of you, but it’s going to go right through your ears and nowhere else,” Chris said. “You turn the lights out and it becomes an immersive experience by focusing on one medium. You just engage with radio for just over an hour in total.” Chris has no reservations into luring people into the dark for the sake of sound. “People don’t always listen to sound as deeply as they should…by doing that with the lights out, you get so much more out of it…you can hear more.” He said In the Dark aims to bring sound out of its shell for people to get in tune with their inner ear, so to speak. “People go to short film festivals all the time, and that kind of thing is in popular culture, but sound isn’t at the moment,” Chris said.

Writer: Wade Stephens Photo: Uncanny Media

“(Listening to sound) would usually be an individual experience. You would usually do that in your car or at home by yourself. “In the Dark is not just a place where you do it together, it’s also place where we make sure you have no distractions.”

soundscape or a locally produced documentary, listeners were transported everywhere from drowning in the ocean, to sitting in a kitchen listening to a small child beg for pocket money.

For me, the September debut is hard to describe…because you didn’t really see anything.

The regressive, community-centred opening night paints an interesting picture for In the Dark’s next venture in November, as Chris wants some of the audience to begin producing their own audio experiences.

I recall Chris making a final introduction to a jam-packed room, before the lights were suddenly put out and darkness veiled our anticipation. Switching off the light-seeking, visually-oriented side of your brain isn’t the easiest thing to do.

“What I hope will happen from here is that the collective will start creating the content (for In the Dark) from their own material, so we (not only) provide a space for people to play the material, but also give a reason for people to make it,” Chris said.

Initially it’s a scramble for your own territory and space on the ground, away from the distraction of your fellow listeners’ random kicks and headbutts. Once comfortable, a second challenge arises: a tiny blue aura saturates the corner of your eye as the speaker’s light (that Chris hadn’t noticed in the setup) dampens the illusion of complete isolation.

“You’ve got this cycle going on – there are producers who can have their own mini festivals to put their work towards rather than just a single broadcast or podcasting it.

But once you get over your childlike, easily distractible contemplations to stop and listen, the darkness absorbs you, and the experience takes hold.

Chris insists it’s radio’s time to shine, so if you’re up for producing compelling soundscapes or just simply wish to swing by and have a listen, have no fear, the darkness will return.

“It’s a chance to really engage, be there and get lost in the moment,” Chris said. “You get immersed in it, you see everything, you sit in complete darkness* but it’s all there.”

“You can sit there, get feedback from the audience. You can be present while a room responds to your work, which I think for a radio producer is kind of priceless.”

*well, mostly Is radio your thing? Search ‘South Australian Radio Collective’ on Facebook, and keep an eye (and ear) out for their next event.

The debut night presented from all over the world; whether it was an American 21

The Secret Diary of a Call Girl’s Chauffeur

hat do you do for a bit of coin? Scan groceries, perhaps? Deliver pizzas? Answer phone calls? In the encyclopaedia of casual work, there aren’t many things which stand out. But what about driving prostitutes? Well, that’s how far Jack (not his real name) went to support himself. Having spent most of his recent years doing typical retail and hospitality work, Jack became frustrated with the lack of shifts at his regular job. And along came a family friend with a new career opportunity. “He was going away for a few weeks, and wanted to know if I fancied earning some easy money doing some ‘driving’ work,” Jack said. “I was pretty broke at the time…I’ll admit I was more thinking of the money before I accepted the offer, I had a lot of free time to kill and thought why not? “I tried to ignore the nature of the work. From what I was told I’d spend most of my time just sitting around, or driving to and from places, which isn’t hard.” However, the hours involved in Jack’s new job – and the sheer monotony of them – were a different story. Frankly, they make nightfilling at your local supermarket look like an evening yoga class. “A typical weekday shift would be 6pm-2am, but you’d be required to pick people up to get them to work on time, which could easily mean leaving 3 hours earlier,” Jack explained. “Most days would really end up being easily 12 hours long.” He did that four nights a week. And weekend shifts put paid to Jack’s social life; Fridays and Saturdays ran until 6am. Jack’s maiden shift wasn’t so predictable though, thanks to a visit from the vice squad. “I had no idea there was a police unit which would actually go around checking these places to ensure people were being treated right, so I thought it was a surprise raid,” he said. “Luckily it wasn’t anything serious and nothing happened.” Sometimes Jack would also attract police patrols while waiting in car parks between jobs, but he never had a “bad encounter” with the law. In fact, whenever he wasn’t driving, Jack spent his time waiting.

Writer: Nicholas Pipe Artist: Alexandra Stjepovic-burgess

“I’d stay in a secluded lounge room where the receptionist worked, mostly playing around on one of the laptops or occasionally playing Uno with a few people,” he said. “Though a lot of people wouldn’t think it, most of the time the job was really pretty boring. I definitely enjoyed getting big wads of cash every night though!” I asked Jack if he could recall any awkward moments; he immediately described “the whole experience” as one. “Sometimes I’d come back to reality and realise where I was, and what I was actually doing or who I was actually talking to, and feel pretty put off...there were moments I’d feel uncomfortable or angry,” Jack said. “I think the moment I was most annoyed was whilst dropping a receptionist home – she decided to start lighting up joints when there was a police breathalyser check up ahead.” One particular colleague got up Jack’s nose on a regular basis. “There was a worker who lived in a house full of cats – I knew this because whenever I picked her up she stank the car out with the stench of cat piss, to the point where I had to casually crank the window down on a three degree night,” he said. “I’d wince whenever she wanted to use the bloody heater because the car would be humming for days and I’d need to leave the doors and windows open when I got home for a while.” Jack also endured some scarier in-car episodes. “One of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve experienced in my life was dropping a girl home who was completely whacked out on meth,” he recalled. “She was having several conversations with herself at once about how ‘the string isn’t right because her friends from the past wouldn’t be okay without using the right shoes and need to hydrate themselves with Starburst lollies’.” Overall, though, Jack is happy with how he managed relationships on the job. “I got along with everybody fine with no dramas, thankfully,” he said. “Some of the workers were pretty overfriendly, but not in an awkward or suspicious way, more like an ‘I need friends’ way. I sat quietly and just drove when I was told to, pretty much agreeing with whoever I was with, and whatever was being said…even if it was about the string not being right.” As soon as his brief but bizarre stint as a driver had fulfilled its financial purpose, Jack left. “I rushed out of it a bit earlier than I was meant to,” he said. And even though he proudly served the world’s oldest profession – can you blame him? 21

You, Me, and Alcohol

t the beginning of the year I drove to the bottle-o to pick up some wine. Aware of the mature aged cashier’s prominent “I’m judging you buddy, I know you know nothing about wine and just want to get smashed” glare, I bought a $25 dollar bottle of white which was apparently made in France, or Italy…or some classy European place. “2011, good year,” snarled the judgemental cashier. “Haha yeah I’ve heard good things!” I replied over enthusiastically, a bead of sweat forming on my brow then trickling down my face. “Big night tonight?” he continued. “Haha yeah no, oh not really just a couple of…friends…coming over for… um…drinking,” I replied. This was a mistake. I had blown it. The rest of the transaction was completed in silence. I casually walked back to my car, drove out of the car park, stopped at a traffic light, opened the bottle and began drinking from it. Then I froze. Had I really just done that? To make matters worse, I lied to the cashier. I wasn’t even having friends over, I just felt like a bottle of wine. I pulled over and had a long, hard think.

What was my life? How had I reached this stage? What was my future? Was I an alcoholic? I didn’t start drinking till I was 18. Yes, I was one of those people. Before the big one-eight, I somehow survived without the social crutch that is alcohol. For most of my high school life, I – Sensible Samuel Smith – remained sober while my friends lolled around in alcoholic stupors at house parties, special occasions and random gatherings. “I don’t need alcohol to have fun,” I told myself. But as I got older, the pressure to drink increased. I realised I had made a name for myself as ”that weird sober guy”, so halfway through year 12, teen Sam decided that the time had come. In order to fit in, he needed to drink. My first alcoholic endeavor ended badly. I vomited in a friend of a friend’s sink. Their parents were home, and heard. Pre-vomit, I (apparently) pretended to be a cat for around an hour and crawled around the house, purring and meowing. But after regaining my dignity, it wasn’t long before I was drinking with the rest of ‘em. This carried on till school finished and my group of high school chums disbanded. People got jobs, found ‘love’, moved away and got pregnant. Drinking was no longer a priority, and for almost half a year, I went without.

Writer: Samuel Smith

But as soon as I made friends at uni, sensible Samuel was no more. Driven by my “I need to drink to be invited to things and have fun, cause that’s what everyone does, right?” complex, I knocked ‘em back like never before. Embarrassing alcohol-fuelled memories include: going on a (very tame) hike with a group of 60-year-old women and vomiting in the bushes because I was so incredibly hungover and out of shape, deciding to walk home from the city at 4am (I live at Glenelg. It took three hours. I ended up crying), going to the gym drunk and dropping a weight on my head, and finally, witnessing the looks on my classmates’ faces when a flask fell out of my bag mid way through an oral presentation at uni. I kept going this way for another half a year, until I received some worrying news. Without going into too many details, a medical crisis occurred and for a few months I gave up drinking (again). I focused on uni and hardly went out. I figured if I wasn’t consuming alcohol, there wasn’t much point going to parties and pubs. I wasn’t unhappy by any means, but I did miss the social life I had before. Eventually my medical issue was sorted. The doctor called me into his office and gave me the good news. “You’ll be happy to know you can drink again! Why not celebrate

with your mates tonight?” he eagerly suggested. So with a wink and a nudge, our trusty family GP sent me off into the world of alcohol once again. “If the doctor condones it, it must be okay!” I thought to myself, and immediately resumed my old habits. This time though, something wasn’t the same. Absinthe didn’t have the same kick, Vodka made me tired, wine made me sick and beer made me feel like I’d eaten an entire meal. I also started noticing how much people rely on alcohol for…well…everything. Hell, my doctor spoke about it as if it was the greatest thing on earth. I decided then that I’d go a month without drinking, but this time I’d actually make an effort to go to parties, go to pubs and do everything I would have done before, minus the grog. Ignoring suggestions to “just take drugs instead”, I stayed sober (and drug free…). At first it was hard, but then something clicked. I was the one with the power. I could say whatever I wanted, I could act however I wanted and no one would care. Being the ‘sober’ guy was really not such a bad thing at all. I’d love to say that since my revelation I haven’t touched liquor, but that would be a lie. I still drink; I still get drunk, but after realising how heavily people depend on alcohol, I can no longer view it in the same light.

‘Aerosol Art’, photography by Jayson Clifford (first year Visual Arts student).

Hipster Hate

egular readers of UniLife Magazine may find themselves occasionally pondering whether the hipster undertones of many articles within are reflective of campus culture. Said readers may even paint themselves with an ironically sepia-toned hipster brush. There may be other readers belonging to the hipster-hating crowd who are left shaking their head at what they read. Yours truly, who would probably be accurately classed by the hipster crowd as a wog, bogan, or better yet, wogan, has never really understood the fascination with being a hipster. The beard-sporting, vintage-clad subculture was, incredibly, a complete unknown to me until I went from public school kid to journalism and international relations uni student. In my first weeks at uni, the fights and footballs of high school were replaced with a bunch of bad sweaters, glasses without lenses and shrill voices of great social conscience. “Who do these people think they are?” I thought to myself. Time Magazine writer Dan Fletcher said in 2009 that “hipsters manage to attract a loathing unique in its intensity”, but does such sentiment also exist on campus? UniSA student Alex Smith once prowled the Magill campus regularly, and he has subsequently developed a deep dislike of the hipster breed. To his dismay, Alex has found more hipsters at City West and Mawson Lakes where he now studies. “Well, it’s not exactly new but hipsters are annoying, to be polite,” Alex replied when asked of his impressions of hipsters on campus. “They are douchebags; fake,” he added, the politeness quickly disappearing. Alex, who had not encountered a hipster before arriving at university, said hipsters draw this resentment because their seeming quest to be unique usually results in them merely “joining the flock of sheep”. “It just seems like it’s a lack of originality,” he said.

Writer: Chris Testa Artist: Rohan Cheong

But the secondary education student believes being a hipster is not necessarily a lifelong calling for those wearing their grandpa’s old jumper. “It seems the same people who embrace every new trend that comes along are now hipsters.” “They aren’t being individual by following the herd.” A 2010 article published by The Guardian looks at the trend of hipster bashing and describes the disliked hipster as “a tiresome sort of trendy, ostentatious in their perceived rebellion, yet strangely conformist; meticulous in their tastes, yet also strangely limited.” Matteo Gagliardi is another UniSA student whose balls are regularly broken by hipsters. He feels that hipster hatred is fuelled by the superiority complex many of them have. “It is conceited and elitist how they go about judging people on the way they talk, act and dress,” he said. Matteo points to the ‘Stop Kony’ fad of 2012 as highlighting the problem with the subculture. “If you want to see the epitome of how vapid and smug hipsters can get, look at how they lapped up the chance to sit on their high horses after watching the viral campaign to end the injustices of an African dictator unknown to most of the West, and definitely unknown to most of them.” “And yet, true to form, they ended up doing little, if not nothing at all, to help the situation.” Alex too does not appreciate hipster complacency, particularly in a university environment where group work calls for unity and effort. “I try and avoid having hipsters in my group because I feel they are unreliable,” he said. Despite his aversion to hipsters, Alex moved to suggest there are a select few he counts as friends. “People can be exceptions to the rule on a personal level.”

The Seacret Controversy

rom stalls in shopping malls around Adelaide, cosmetic company Seacret distributes skin and spa products. Seacret’s website claims that their products are “extracted from the ancient, and some say mystical, salts and minerals found only in one place on earth, – the Dead Sea.” “We believe everything we do must embody honesty and reflect purity,” says Seacret. Australian Friends of Palestine (AFOPA) executive member Margaret Cassar, however, thinks Seacret’s sleek marketing does not tell the whole story behind their products. Her organisation holds a weekly picket outside the Rundle Mall Seacret stall, located in the Myer Centre. Last year, Ms Cassar told Mondoweiss.net that these pickets are “tapping into a growing disquiet among Australians about the human rights abuses in Palestine, and the complicity

of our government in supporting a military occupation that causes so much suffering.” Since 1967, the West Bank of the Jordan River and East Jerusalem has been recognised by the UN as subject to Israeli occupation. This area had previously been designated as the site of a future Palestinian state under UN General Assembly Resolution 181(II). However, the Israeli government does not recognise that it is in contravention of international law. Last July, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported a government panel, headed by former Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy, dismissed the claim that Israel’s presence in the territory is considered an occupying force. Not only has this conclusion been rejected previously by the International Court of Justice, the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, but even the Israeli High Court has ruled Israel’s presence in the West Bank constitutes a “belligerent occupation”.

Writer: Ryan Mallett-Outtrim

Amnesty International’s 2012 report on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is telling. It reveals continued widespread human rights abuses resulting from the ongoing occupation. In an effort to cut off the international support base of the occupation, in 2005, Palestinian civil society issued a call for a campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. AFOPA’s website states that BDS “target products and companies (Israeli and international) that profit from the violation of Palestinian rights.” According to AFOPA, Seacret has been targeted because its products are made from resources extracted from the occupied western shores of the Dead Sea. Whether or not this violates international law is questionable. A report issued by the Palestinian human rights organisation al-Haq last month stated that Israeli cosmetic companies are violating Article 47 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention by “pillaging” the Dead Sea. In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry told the UK’s Guardian that under the Oslo Accords, Israel can legally “license a company to excavate mud in that area (the West Bank) if it chose to do so.” Although the report singles out cosmetics firm Ahava, it raises legal and humanitarian concerns relevant to any Israeli business that extracts resources from the West Bank, including Seacret. While both the Seacret national distributor and the proprietor of the Rundle Mall store declined to comment on this story, the movement

has drawn a number of vocal opponents in Australia, particularly since the arrest of 19 BDS activists in Melbourne last July. The activists were involved in a picket of the Max Brenner chocolate store, which had been targeted because of its close ties to parent company, the Strauss Group, and the Israeli military. The Australian’s article ‘Prominent Australians fight anti-Semitism with hot chocolate’ claimed that Australian Workers Union Secretary Paul Howes described BDS activists as “mimicking the behaviour of the Nazi thugs.” Following another BDS protest that erupted in Brisbane on August 25 this year, Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies president Jason Steinberg told the Australian Jewish News that pickets targeting businesses like Seacret are “unacceptable”. He said: “[E]veryone’s entitled to be able to voice their views, but the moment they incite any form of racial vilification or hatred, that’s where we need to step in.” Adelaide University’s ‘Justice for Palestine’ club supports the pickets, though president Sean Robinson strongly denies any racial motivation. He argues that BDS “is founded on the recognition that the Israeli military occupation and colonisation of the Palestinian territories is the main reason the... conflict continues.” “The pickets target...(Seacret because it) profits from the...occupation,” he said. Despite intensifying opposition, AFOPA picketers celebrated their 100th week of protest on August 24. Their weekly pickets continue. 31

Thank You & Goodbye. (and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget to apply!)

Drawings by Carrie Sprod.