Pelican Edition 1 Volume 84

PELICAN

Mess Ed. 1 Vol. 84

Contents

regulars

MESS

SECTIONS

4 credits

10 nurdle murder

22 politics

5 editorials

12 yank mess

26 film

6 what’s up on campus

13 hipster halal

31 music

7 advice corner

14 cleaning tips for deviants

34 culture

8 messcellaneous

16 pollution is cool

38 arts

21 classifieds

17 dumpster diving

43 books

46 jerk circle

18 razorback pig 19 freshers, beware 20 tulip bubble

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CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS Marnie Allen Alex Griffin Advertising Alex Pond Design Jennifer Breeden SECTION EDITORS Books - Zoe Kilbourn Culture - Simon Donnes Politics – Richard Ferguson Music – Connor Weightman Arts- Kat Gillespie Film – Wade McCagh SUBEDITORS Josh Chiat Anna Curry Simon Donnes Sarah Dunstan Richard Ferguson Wade McCagh Ed Taylor

CONTRIBUTORS *- words ^- images Marnie Allen*^ Dylan Caporn* Kevin Chiat* Anna Curry* Liam Dixon* Simon Donnes* Yutika Donohue^ Richard Ferguson* Furious George* Kat Gillespie* Alex Griffin*^ Brad Griffin* Victoria Hann^ Hamish Hobbs* Blair Hurley* Zoe Kilbourn*^ Beau Livingston* Snoop Lion* Shaughn McCagh* Wade McCagh* Alice Mepham* Alice Palmer*^ Kate Prendergast*^ Emily Purvis* Sandra Raub* Darcy Rowe* Yashi Renoir^ Tom Reynolds* Eva Sharpe-Finlayson* Lexington Steel* Edward Taylor* Elisa Thompson* Thea Walton* Connor Weightman* Alex Wolman*^ Natasha Woodcock*

PIZZA AD? CONTACT PELICAN Like what you see in these pages? Hate everything? Want to get involved? Talk to us! You can either find us on facebook, send us mail at pelican@guild.uwa.edu.au, or come into the office on the first floor of the Guild building- there’s always room on our broom.

As your student rag, we’re always looking for new contributors and new ideas, and we’d love to hear from you. Our next meeting is on the 28th of February at 4:30pm at the Guild Council Meeting Roomcome down and yell at us!

The views expressed within are not the opinions of the UWA Student Guild or the Pelican editorial staff, but belong to the individuals writers and artists. We’re all pretty big on foxhunting though.

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PREZITORIAL Hi everyone!

My name’s Cam, and I’m the President of the UWA Student Guild. Many freshers (or even returning students) might be wondering what on earth a Guild is. According to dictionary.com, a Guild is defined as:

• A medieval association of craftsmen or merchants, often having considerable power.

• An association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of a common goal.

If you’ve seen the Medieval Society stall on O-Day, you could be forgiven for thinking we’re the first one. Alas, the UWA Student Guild is a large organisation run by students in the pursuit of student rights, a vibrant campus social life, good food and a strong safety net of academic and financial support.

Just like in Medieval times, life as a student can be really messy. We might not have open sewers, but we do have to balance a large number of commitments with the pressures of becoming more independent. All of your assessments might fall on the same week, or you might have to skip classes so you can pay rent. Throw in a desire to do volunteer work and have an active social life, and your diary will start looking messier than a food fight with engineering students.

Thankfully, the Guild is here to help with whatever you need, from financial assistance to get through the month or special consideration on an assignment. We’re here for you. Plus, we can give you plenty of opportunities to get involved in life on and off campus through clubs and volunteering. So far this year, we’ve already managed to get library fines reduced, bring in new food options and increase skilled volunteering opportunities. So, feel free to think of me as your Janitor-In-Chief. If you are dealing with a messy situation, I’ll always be here to help you out.

Cam Barnes

MARNITORIAL Mess puts us all in compromising positions from time to time, whether it be falling asleep with a texta in your bed and waking up with scribbled ink all over your body, having a party and realizing that someone smeared cake into the ceiling above your bed, or completing a ballet examination with a tiny mullet because you never brush your hair and your mother had to cut one matted chunk of tangled locks from the back of your scalp. But mess can also be your friend. Think about it! Trash can be treasure! Stains, scrapes or rubbish can be a relic of a good ol’-fashioned PRTY or home invasion! We all know what a fustercluck cooking pancakes can be, but pancakes are neat-o. I’m going to cook some tonight, and serve them with candy salad (see page 16). Mess is a big part of our credo here at Pelican.

We want new and returning students to know that it’s ok to cock-up in your tutorials, to spill wine on the rug, or to drop out of law and spend most of your degree playing balcony-bocce in the Pelican office. So if you ever feel a bit overwhelmed, or just need a fresh pair of shorts, drop by the Pelican office and get involved with your University magazine. If you’re going to make a mess of your life, you may as well be getting published! Love, Marnie xoxoxo

GRIFFITORIAL Trying to start the new year off on a clean slate is noble, but pretty doomed. You can talk about your eczema in the past tense as much as you like, but there’s always going to be something in disarray, no matter how good you are at writing a list or using a dishwasher. Embrace it, yo! Like how your immune system only improves after you hack your arm open on a rusty fence, you only learn from those moments when it feels as though everything has drifted just a little out of control. Pelican is a place for these moments. Over the years that I’ve been involved with the ol’ bird, there’s been heaps of gloriously messy situations, be it scaling unfinished buildings, being drenched in liters of milk or drying beer out of a printer at 3am trying to make a deadline. It’s not just dairy, alcoholism and petty crime here, though; at Pelican, people with nothing in common (except a desire to create and share stuff) come together to talk, argue, open up their cluttered minds and glean out a joke, a thought or a bit of wisdom. Maybe someone reading what we come up with will walk away feeling like the world became just a bit clearer; others might be wondering afresh just where their SSAF is going. Regardless, we’re all excited to fling this first edition at you, and hope that you’ll tolerate it enough to give the March edition a good solid glance.

Luv Griff

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What’s up on campus ASIAN STUDENTS IN AUSTRALIA (A.S.I.A.) Run by students for students, we organise great social events throughout the year, like our Fresher BBQ, A.S.I.A. Silent Disco, and our crazy huge A.S.I.A. Cocktail at Metro City!

Everyone’s welcome to come down, chat with us, chill with us, party with us and get rowdy with us! Get on it if you haven’t already!

Check us out at facebook.com/ASIA-AsianStudents-In-Australia

UWA FRENCH CLUB Bonjour mes amis, The UWA French Club is a collection of both students of French and people interested in French language and culture. You don’t have to speak or learn French at UWA to become a member! The UWA French Club run several events each year, including film nights [with English subtitles!], French patisserie stalls on oak lawn, a French play, cooking demonstrations and conversation nights. We are about fun language learning and socialising while embracing French events and culture.

We are very open to new people, particularly Freshers :) facebook.com/pages/UWA-French-Club AIESEC AIESEC is an international non-profit organization that provides students with leadership, volunteer and internship opportunities worldwide.

AIESEC sends over 20,000 students and graduates on International exchanges yearly and is supported by over 8,000 partner organizations around the globe. AIESEC is the only student-run organisation recognised by the UN. * Develop professional skills in one of our portfolios: • Marketing and Communications • University Relations • International Relations • Finance and Governance • Business Development • Talent Management • Attend local, national and international conferences.

• Meet like-minded people who share your global perspective!

Applications to join AIESEC UWA close 24th Feb. http://tinyurl.com/aiesecmemberapplication facebook.com/AIESECUWA

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UWANIME If you’re a fan of anime, or curious and want to learn more, UWAnime is the club for you! Our first event of the year is the Fresher Welcome, which will be held in Acorn Cafe on Friday, the 1st of March, from 1pm to 5pm. There will be free pizza! This is a members only event. To join, drop by the UWAnime Clubroom, which is located on the second floor of Cameron Hall. For more information, please visit www.uwanime.org. Hope to see you there!

OAKTREE FOUNDATION From May 6th-10th, join thousands of Australians taking the challenge to eat on just $2 a day for 5 days the equivalent of the extreme poverty line. It’s a worthwhile experience that gives you a window into the day-to-day lives of people living in poverty. Sign up at livebelowtheline.com.au

UNIVERSITY BUDDHIST YOUTH CLUB This year, the University Buddhist Youth Club (UBYC) is re-establishing, aiming to provide opportunities for young students to explore Buddhism and its teachings, as well as meeting new people in a friendly environment. To kickstart the rebirth of UBYC, we will be having a stall at O-day to promote UBYC and recruit members. Next up, we will be holding ‘Zen and Pizza’ where all members are invited for pizzas and drinks while bonding with other members.

Our main activities for this semester will be Dharma Discussions held weekly on various topics bound to interest, inform and entertain you.

For more information, do visit our stall during O-day, or contact Fiona at 21009568@student. uwa.edu.au.

STUDENTS FOR CHRIST UWA Hey freshers! We’d love to welcome you to our uni. Come join us for our Week One lunchtime hangouts @ 1pm on Oak Lawn, Mon-Fri (opposite the Ref in the Guild village). Bring your own lunch. Look out for our group marked with red and white balloons. We are a Pentecostal Christian tertiary student ministry affiliated with the Australian Christian Churches and Youth Alive. Our

mission is to reach students & staff of tertiary institutions for Christ and mobilise them for generational impact across the world. Weekly meetings Thursdays 1-2pm at Weatherburn Lecture Theatre. www.facebook.com/ StudentsforChristUWA

UNIVERSITY WRITERS CLUB The University Writers Club supports and promotes creative writing and reading at UWA. We hold weekly meetings for discussions and inspiration. Whether you love to read or write, are looking for some friendly peer review or are seeking a splash of inspiration, this is the club for you. Like us on Facebook or contact us on universitywritersclub@gmail.com. Meetings TBC.

UNIVERSITY BICYCLE CLUB The University Bicycle Club (UBC) holds group rides almost every weekend during semester, as well as many other specialty rides during the year. This year, we’ll be adding rides to the hills, participation in charity events and the introduction of mountain biking to our calendar. If that wasn’t enough, 2013 will also see us holding our first social events ever!

For general information regarding events like us at Facebook.com/UBCuwa, and for all the information about group rides, join our “UBC Group Riders” Facebook group!

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Radical History of UWA: Campus Tour From draft dodgers during the Vietnam War to rallies for refugee rights, UWA students have a radical history. Come along to see where it all happened. Friday 22nd February (O-Day). Meet 2:30pm at Socialist Alternative stall.

Marxism 2013: Ideas to Challenge the System Marxism is the biggest left-wing conference in Australia with speakers including Black Panther Billy X Jennings and investigative journalist John Pilger. Over 70 sessions covering the Russian revolution, women’s liberation, radical Australian history and more.

March 28th-31st at Melbourne University. Check out http://www.marxismconference.org for full program. Hosted by Socialist Alternative.

Pelican Advice Corner Penning responses from his villa on the coast of Barcelona, Esteban Valeiho (toreador, seducer and master flamenco guitarist) provides advice for Pelican readers this edition. If you have questions that need answering, drop us a line.

Hi Esteban, My girlfriend keeps getting messages on Facebook from an old flame from high school. I want to knock his teeth in but she insists nothing is going on.

What do?

-Andrew Buenos Dias, Ask yourself this Andrew – would you message a woman from your past life without intent of a most seductive nature? I know I would not. I would not message her without similar intent either. Violence is not the answer, compadre. The lover fights with his heart, his fingers, tongue and manhood - not his fists. You must out do the suitor with your own doubly renewed efforts. Enjoy a honeymoon of the soul as you venture forth with your lady friend to untouched and secluded locales. Away from the bustles of life and phone reception, treat her to all the lavishes you can muster; the moonlit bathe in the ocean, the sumptuous foot massage, and the rose clad serenade. Let her be reminded of why she and her loyalties lay with you, and that she is treasured in her position as your Senorita.

Adios, Esteban

Dear Esteban,

Dear Esteban,

There is a girl on my bus that I catch every day. She looks out the window and listens to her iPod, watching the world go by. I’m desperately smitten with her, but we’ve never spoken a word.

I had a few too many drinks on the weekend and ended up in a filthy bathroom with some guy from a club. Turns out he was equally dirty – I’m itching all over.

What would you suggest?

Help! - M.M

- Jess

Hola,

Greetings,

M, what mystical key unlocks the most gilded of all vaults, the heart? The answer, my friend, is another heart. Use the power of your heart’s song, take up your guitar and serenade her with the songs of your affections. Your experience or practise matters not, it is the sincerity and fire of your desire which will conquer all. You must not stop at the song of love, however. You must be prepared for the whirlwind of her heart’s embrace. She will insist on immediate union. Gratify her. There will come a point where you must do more, however.

The serenade will become powerless and she will hunger for more from you in her subconscious. You will be powerless, M, but to accept this calling.

I am deeply saddened to hear of your predicament, Jessica. Truly it is a travesty when such a desert flower as yourself is sullied. As always though, Esteban, he has the solution. Look to your larder and find the following ingredients: A pound of peyote, three red capsicums, two whole lemons and a bottle of the cheapest Spanish rum you can find. Mix and leave to intensify during your supple, sweet afternoon siesta. Consume and admit yourself to the local all night clinic – there’s only so much my magic hands can do.

Forever, Esteban.

Dear Esteban,

You must leave behind all that you know, M, and you must take up on a pilgrimage.

What to and how, you must find for yourself.

Climbing a mountain, building a village or liberating a nation, it does not matter. You must do it for her, and she must know this.

This will bring an unspoken power to the music of your serenade. It is this mystical energy, channelled through your guitar, that will ensure that this romance triumphs the ages. Do not leave her in the night after passion’s embrace; but calmly explain post nirvana the nature and cause of your upcoming journey. Her heart will swell at the news, and the immediate second coming of fulfilment is likely.

You can do this, amigo, I believe in you. Put your trust in the serenade and it will reward you.

Farewell, Esteban.

The police are coming for me. They know about the bodies.

- Anon My dearest Anon, There comes a time in the life of a toreador when he has been bested. Taking life by the horns has its dangers, and he is aware of this. There will come a conflict where he is condemned. He knows his fate, as does his foe and dancing partner – the bull. It is imperative, that even in the eye of defeat, the smell of death and the mouth of oblivion that he save face. His final words are the ones that are remembered, and are a true test of his bravery. To step forth into the unknown with fear and doubt is cowardice. To step forth without thought is foolishness. To step forth with passion, is beauty.

Be strong, amigo, and face your bull with passion.

- Esteban.

Over the course of 2010 in Spain, a husband killed his wife every five days 7

picture: Kate Prendergast

Messcellaneous

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Edymology

by Edward Taylor mess, n.

of a coincidence in the fact that it’s harder to think of a bigger mess than the Catholic Church.

To us, “mess” or “a mess” usually refers to an untidy, disorderly, or even unsanitary state of affairs; either physically realised or otherwise. However, its origins could hardly be further from this recently developed usage, as it originally derives from the Latin word ‘mittere,’ meaning ‘to send’ or ‘give out.’ By the late 4th Century AD, this term had been corrupted to the masculine and feminine nouns ‘missus’ and ‘missa’ respectively. The latter, ‘missa,’ formed the origin for the words ‘mass’ and ‘mission.’ To the discerning punster, there is something

Back on topic, the masculine term ‘missus’ came to refer to the portion of food sent to each diner at a meal and this meaning found its way into Old French and so Middle English. As was often the case in Middle English, a bizarre assortment of spellings were used, but the one with an ‘e’ and two ‘s’s eventually became the sticky ‘mess.’

The application of this word to describe a building in which one might partake of a portion of food (say, a ‘mess hall’) was obviously a natural evolution; the nominal shortening to one word is also hardly an

unusual development in colloquial English.

Therefore, while there is no immediate evidence to suggest it, it is most likely that the term was used to compare situations firstly to the disorderly state of a kitchen’s running and secondly to its uncleanly state during operation. This development occurred in the mid 19th Century and was solidified in journalism and literature over the following decades.

So, next time you’re in a restaurant’s lavatory, you may feel a little better about making a poo-joke when you marvel at the lexical coincidence that you are engaged in making a mess to return the mess that you received from the restaurant. Just be sure to clean it up.

UWA-isms: A Glossary Business School: located four thousand kilometres from the nearest sign of sentient life, the UWA business school was first discovered by the French in 1827. Unmoved by the lack of an ATM and frustrated by the long journey, they dropped out of their commerce degrees and began to drive buses for a living.

three years that clapping your hands over your ears and yelling “vote pepsi” over and over usually sends a clear signal that yes, I have already voted.

Parking fines: blow.

Professor David van Mill: Miss America 2013.

Peacocks: I don’t care if you think it’s a joke when people say don’t touch the peacocks DON’T TOUCH THE PEACOCKS

Guild election week: For a week in semester two, the walkways of campus are dominated by the hopeful, enthusiastic forms of student rep candidates. If you’re involved in elections, best of luck, and I hope that if the week doesn’t kill you, the afterparty doesn’t either. If you’re not, I’ve found over the last

PROSH: Most Perth residents will be familiar with Prosh, and new UWA students may be fearful, excited or both about that fateful day in April when students swarm the streets of Perth in costume selling a satirical newspaper in between chants of ‘tits out

for the children’ and goon sculls. Prosh is something everyone should do at least once, and if getting up at 4am to ‘rave’ under the trees on oak lawn with your friends and fellow students isn’t enough of an incentive, then be a good sport and do it for charity.

Zombies vs Humans: For some, this event enables one to finally act out that fantasy of being inside HALO 3. For everyone else, it means dodging overeager dudes who reek of Red Bull, crashing at full pace into doorways. If you’re not playing, you don’t get any points or anything if you hit them, but it’ll feel good.

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The Pacific Trash Vortex words and images by Kate Prendergast The lonely graveyard of mass consumption, where plastic goes to never die.

Great Pacific Vortex: The Mystical Oozy Isle For a while now, I’ve been under the impression that the Pacific Trash Vortex— also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch— was this vast island of waste, glued together by the decomposing juices of dead marine life and barnacles. In my mind, it represented a mystical isle of conglomerated filth atop which one could physically walk. As such, it was being surveyed and assessed by

Tony Abbott scouts as a potential transitional harbour and/or permanent residence for “encroaching terrorist scum”. Refugee crisis over! All matter drawn towards the eye of the vortex would undergo intense compression and time-space fracturing, so that it would condense horribly, scramble and finally lodge itself in Spam containers lining supermarket shelves in 1954. The accretion disc spiralling about the centre would be made of a congealed slurry of shifting polystyrene scaffolds stuffed with coke bottles, soggy tea bags, amputee dolls and ragged tyres; an ugly, putrescent, shivering carcass of modern-age excess.

I like to think that these were all understandable assumptions, given the deceptive, conspiring theatrics of the two names that the great oceanic garbage dump goes by. Whilst it’s true that the PTV ranks as the largest landfill site in the world, it is not, in fact, an island. This is a myth. Judging by the number of scientists wearily labouring this point, it seems to be a myth that our background assumptions don’t really want to relinquish. It’s like a putrid kind of Avalon; only the Lady of the Lake is a diseased mermaid-crone with bottle-top eyes, and Excalibur is a skewer-sized needle a heroin addict tossed in a sewer.

Clarifying Filth Rather than the floating equivalent of an Indian slum, the PTV is more like a swirling grainy soup of plastic particulate stock, with the occasional large crouton of Styrofoam and haphazard ropy garnish swimming on top. Incidentally, these plastic particles are also known as “nurdles” or, more romantically, “mermaid’s tears”. Predicted in the 1980s and officially discovered in 1997, the site covers an indeterminate area, and is actually comprised of two rotating “garbage patches”— one to the east of Hawaii, one to the west. Some claim the PTV to be the size of Texas; others believe it is more proportionally on par with the whole United States.

Whatever the figure, the PTV still holds the title of the world’s biggest landfill, into which millions of tons of trash makes its way every

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year – 90% of which is plastic. Greenpeace estimates that of the 100 million tons of plastic produced annually, 10% ends up in the ocean. Most of the trash has its origins on land, migrating to the ocean through sewers and streams. The rest comes from ocean liners and oil platforms. Making up these shuddered-off dry skin-cells of consumerism includes everything from kayaks to Lego blocks to carrier bags to...volleyballs.

WIIILLLLSOOOOOOONNNNNNNN!!!

Oceanic gyres— slow-moving, circular ocean currents— sweep all this detritus into their centre. Whilst you can find nurdles pretty much anywhere in the sea, suspended in the upper water column, these churning vortices gather ‘em up in much higher concentrations.

In some regions, it is estimated that there is eight times as much plastic as plankton.

Significantly, the Pacific Trash Vortex isn’t the only trash-carousel— it’s only the biggest. All major oceans have gyres, and all have their own accumulation zones.

Toxic Nurdles and Gagging Pelicans The commercially best and environmentally worst thing about plastic is its stubborn durability. Under normal conditions, the oily polymer can take centuries to biodegrade.

It does, however, “photodegrade”, and it is this process of ongoing fragmentation which creates the “nurdles”— plastic’s most basic building blocks. Though relatively innocuous in themselves, nurdles act as sponges to waterborne chemicals such as pesticides, dioxins and PCBs. These chemical-coated particles are taken up by filter feeders, becoming more concentrated in the tissues of high-order predators as they make their way up the food chain. And if you’re an indifferent bastard that visits abattoirs for titillation, here’s something that may give you pause: humans, being insanely omnivorous— whose guts are so ridiculously accommodating and tastes are so experimental that we can happily consume bird saliva, cat-poo coffee and corn fungus— eat an enormous variety of marine life.

There is hence an entirely valid possibility of our becoming affected by those pernicious nurdles ourselves.

On a more familiar, but invariably depressing note, marine mammals and invertebrates are also prone to getting fatally entangled or trapped in the waste. Many ingest chunkier plastic flotsam or cough it up for their young, mistaking it for food. Not only does this risk blocking off air and gut passages, but it can create the problem of “false satiation”— that is, the animal doesn’t feel hungry because its stomach is full of rubbishy bits. Scores of seabirds— albatross in particular— have been

found to have starved to death. When their poor little bellies are zipped open, syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes spill out. I wish I was making that bit up. All this represents a profound destabilization of the marine ecosystem and a threat to biodiversity.

End Notes As with almost every environmental quandary besetting modern civilisation, results are pending as to the extent of the problem. But no doubt we’ll blearily and horribly wake up to how much we’re fucked when it’s all too late to do anything much about it. Hooray!

With jovial vigour, oceanographer Dr.

Boxhall offers these words on our expanding translucent wastelands: “There is nothing we can do,” he says. “It’s too big. It’s here to stay.

It’s like nuclear waste. Even an oil spillage, disastrous as it is, eventually breaks down.

Plastic doesn’t. We’ve simply got to become better about how we dispose of waste.”

Conventional structuring demands I now lecture you to recycle, and use your green canvas bags, and avoid buying foods which use so much packaging they may as well have a separate little baggy for each pepper grain.

But I’m not going to. Go and work out ethical lifestyle habits and practices for your own bloody selves.

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Mess On an American Campus

by Thea Walton Having spent six months of exchange here at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn*), I figured it would be pretty easy to rant a bit about how “mess” manifests itself on an American university campus. For one, it seems a pretty acceptable thing to eat wherever you want on campus. I’m not just talking about eating while you’re walking down the street, or nibbling on something in your bedroom as you sob quietly watching the credits of the final episode of Gossip Girl roll slowly off the screen. I’m talking about in the library, in your lectures or just casually while you’re having a one-on-one with your Pulitzer Prize-winning Teacher’s Assistant. My initial reaction towards this was horror, most likely a reflection of my time spent working as a casual at Reid Library on a constant quest to stop that dickhead from eating Chilliz by the thirdfloor computers. However, this gradually transformed over the weeks into mild admiration as I saw, and heard of, students managing to eat the smelliest of foods in the most inappropriate of places.

Still on the food as mess theme, though; if you were ever curious as to how much waste a veritable fuck-tonne of hungry university students manage to create during a single meal, just head over to one of Penn’s exquisite dining hall establishments on a Sunday night. Sometimes the meat dish for that day is labeled as just that: “meat.” The pizza is so oily you can do that thing from The Simpsons where Homer manages to fool a pigeon into thinking a wall can be flown through simply by rubbing his oil-soaked Krustyburger against the wall until it goes see-through. The pigeon dies, by the way.

Yet despite all this, most students (myself included) manage to fill up their plates at least three times in one sitting. This partly because the food servers take your polite requests of ‘just a little bit please’ as a personal attack on their ability to serve and thus feel the need to assert their dominance

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in the form of extra mashed-potatoes. However, it’s also hard not to feel compelled to eat as much as possible when you’re paying sixteen dollars each time you eat at one of these fine establishments. As such, the meal usually ends with a guilt-laden trip to the industrial-sized conveyor belt that judges you as you scrape your giant piles of greasy left-overs into the bin, and place your cutlery onto its disapproving shelves.

Furthermore, you can’t have a discussion on experiences of mess at a U.S. university without at least mentioning the physically and emotionally traumatic experience that is

a frat party. “Fuck, that was a messy night” usually doesn’t begin to cover it. I will be brief on this issue because I think my frat anecdotes will probably damage most of my chances of being employed in the next two to three years. Basically, what you need to understand about frat parties is that they are physical manifestations of everything that is fucked-up about our generation. Each Friday and Saturday night UPenn’s campus is transformed as underaged drinkers stumble around vomiting wherever they can find the space, and every Sunday morning piles of trash bags filled with roofie-laced (true story) red solo cups line the avenues of Frat houses.

However, as I think more about how mess manifests itself on UPenn’s campus, I realize that the campus itself is actually incredibly clean. Despite the fact that everyone eats everywhere, eats too much of it and then voms it all up, there is some higher power (that is, underpaid immigrant and AfricanAmerican workers) taking everyone’s overprivileged-rich-kid-student trash and putting it somewhere else. Most likely, it ends up over the street in West Philadelphia, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighbourhoods in America. On reflection, I shouldn’t have been looking at how mess manifests itself, but instead asking “Where does it all go?”

Not to sound like a total wanker, but in a way, the way UPenn’s sterile campus sits against the backdrop of the streets of West Philly could be seen as a striking visual metaphor for the incredible income disparities that exist in America today.

I guess sometimes mess can actually make things clearer. *A poncy Ivy League school situated in the middle of Philadelphia. It is not to be confused with Pennsylvania State University, aka “The one with that football scandal” that is situated in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere nearby some Amish barn.

Over 43 million tonnes of edible food go to landfill in America every year.

Hipster Halal

by Elisa Thompson before the process begins. This seems like a fairly natural adaptation to modern consumer demands, but considering one of the central religious components of the process has been compromised, it’s worthwhile pondering what other shortcuts are being taken.

Perhaps the more demand there is for halal, and the more competitive the market gets, the higher the risk of the slaughter process becoming just as inhumane as those in commercial abattoirs.

Employees, under the pressure of having to complete a certain amount of work, may make mistakes or take less care with their actions to satisfy the increasing pressure. Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (VIVA) put together a report on commercial halal in England, which included a number of incredibly harrowing recordings of animal slaughter. In one such a video, a bullock’s throat is sliced 13 times, back and forth, and the animal does not collapse until after the filming ends.

When it comes to environmental and animal rights issues, most human beings are fairly willing to admit we’ve made a bit of a mess of things. However, of late, these issues have become more and more ingrained in the public consciousness, even filtering through to the trendiest circles of young people. Caring about things is becoming fashionable – great! But while our ‘cool kids’ might be starting to look like a new wave of flower children and demonstrators, on the inside many are still the same unthinking adolescents of old. Even in an age of wikipedia and snopes.com, we’re still surrounded by hipsters who – with the very best of intentions and the weakest of information sources – are willing to latch on to the latest do-gooder trend, ask no questions, and sometimes contribute to an even larger mess than the one they were trying to avoid.

Non-Muslim young people have increasingly been taking up the Islamic religious practice of consuming halal meat; in some circles, it’s even the new favourite alternative to eating animals killed in mainstream abattoirs. Halal (meaning ‘permissible’, and acceptable to eat according to Islamic law) slaughters are said to be carried out with respect and care to the animal in mind. For meat to be halal, the animal must be killed using the Dhabihah method, which means it must be unharmed prior to its death and killed by one swift knife incision to the neck preceded by an

invocation of God. When you compare that to mainstream Australian abattoirs, where animals are restrained and stunned using a bolt gun or electric shock before being slaughtered, it’s easy to see why halal is winning over people concerned about animal rights.

Halal butchers argue that the deaths of these animals are quick; the large arteries in the neck, as well as the oesophagus and vertebrae trachea are severed in one movement, rendering the animal unconscious almost immediately.

However a study conducted by New Zealand’s Massey University concluded that this was not always the case. During their experiments, calves were anaesthetised before having their throats cut using the Dhabihah method. At the same time, their pain responses were recorded.

In most cases the calves were rendered unconscious after 10 to 30 seconds, but pain responses were still detected up to two minutes after the original cut.

Since halal meat has been gaining popularity amongst the non-Islamic public, many halal abattoirs have expanded to meet demand and to compete against other butchers. As the production of this meat becomes more commercial, certain corners – as it has been noted by strict Muslims – have been cut. For example, where halal states that an Islamic prayer must be spoken as each animal is killed, it has become more common that only one prayer is said over the entire slaughter floor

Keeping in mind the agendas of organisations like VIVA, one may still argue that halal methods are still preferable next to the brutal processes involved in mainstream meat production.

Animal comfort is deemed important in halal slaughter, as a damaged animal (one that has been physically abused in any way) is no longer considered to be halal. Traditionally, it’s even necessary for the knife to be hidden from the animal before the actual incision in order to lessen the amount of stress the animal suffers.

A number of restaurants are beginning to latch on to the surge in popularity of halal and provide a halal option for their patrons; even some fast food restaurants like Jus Burgers and some Nando’s stores feature halal on their menus. However, when asked what ‘halal meat’ meant, many of these stores pointed to the fact that their meat was cooked on a different grill to everything else – as to whether or not this meat is slaughtered by halal butchers, many were unsure.

It seems that the difference between halal and mainstream meat, in terms of the animal’s experience, is not hugely significant. Halal is essentially a religious term involved with specific religious practices, and its usage, while of great importance to Muslim people, can be a source of confusion and misdirection when it comes to the non-Muslim public, whatever their intentions regarding animal welfare. While abattoirs in general may still be criticised for their treatment of animals, halal may not be the answer that young animal rights advocates are looking for.

For a buffalo to be halal, Islamic scholars recommend a 24 inch knife.

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Cleaning tips for deviants words and images by Alice Palmer

Tip #1 How to clean a bed up FAST If you’re really stuck for time, as you realize that another car is pulling into the garage, don’t change those messy sheets! Spritz the area with perfume and the funk of another man will quickly dissipate. It’s also a good idea to push any mess into a handy chest or wardrobe.

Tip #2 Lipstick traces?

Just noticed some errant lipstick stains on the collar of your shirt? Or perhaps those nasty snagged in greedy tooth marks along your neck? A great solution is rubbing the stain gently with any kind of alcohol- and heck, you smell like it anyway. Another neat trick is hairspray, if you’ve got it. Just spray liberally and let sit. Soon all that will remain is that strange taste in your mouth.

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Tip #3 Quick-change nightmares If there’s no space for extra wardrobe pieces, think vertically! You’d be surprised how much stuff you can hide away when you think creatively. Don’t forget low and high spaces, like under the bed or hung up on the wall!

Tip #4 Wine stain woes Wine stains are notoriously hard to remove, but depending on what surface you’re working with, it can be a breeze! Wow, you got it on the wall too? How far did you throw that thing? Don’t rub it into the carpet- make sure to dab it with a stain remover. Another great tip is to cover the area with baking soda, leave for 2-3 minutes and rinse.

Tip #5 Vengeance wrecks carpets!

Oh no! Blood everywhere! It’s important not to use hot water with stubborn bloodstains; simply sprinkle over salt, and dab gently with a mix of hot water and detergent.

Luckily there’s no pause of remorse, as time is of the essence with all stains, human or otherwise.

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WHY POLLUTION IS COOL As an incurably uncool human being, I feel entitled to a relatively high degree of authority in a discussion of what is cool. Just as they say with painting, the further away you are, the more you can see. Over the years, while inhaling Ventolin through a Nebulizer, or wearing an eyepatch to correct my lazy eye, or going through a brief ‘wigga’ phase during which I declared to a friend that I would never date a white man, I have watched from the sidelines as trends fall in and out of fashion. Some of them seem to stick around longer than others, but pretty much everything has an expiry date. However, there seems to be one style that has never been out of vogue, which has undercut almost every trend as it has weaved its way through decade after decade. This, of course, is the culture of being bad.

Bafflingly though, the marketing appeal of this timelessly alluring trait seems to have slipped through the fingers of certain corners in the global environmentalism movement. In an era in which the conservation of precious resources and controlling the damage to our planet are of extremely high priority, it seems logical to tap into the extraordinary power of the badass. While it may not sit comfortably with Greenpeace to recruit aggressive hip-hop artists or members of the mafia to join their marketing team, sometimes the ends justify the means.

Let’s take a moment to consider some of the current poster-boys of environmentalism. George Clooney. Bono. Brad Pitt. Leonardo DiCaprio.

Michael Moore.

All rich. All annoying. All smug.

Our lasting fascination with rebellion and villainy is hard to pinpoint, but it might spring from the thrill of diabolical scheming, or the casual and stylish handling of weaponry performed by yakuza bosses and evil henchmen alike. But I think we are also attracted to the attitudes that this culture upholds; villains make us feel free to abandon morals and values that seem oppressive or difficult to uphold. Of course, I am not the first to notice this. Advertising, films, television, photography, music, fine art, video games; they’re all swarming with badass iconography.

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Rather than inspiring people to start veganic gardening and trade our cars in for hybrid low emission wind powered hatchbacks, these celebrity ‘greenies’ can irritate one to the point of rowing into the middle of the ocean with a couple of jerry cans and laughing hysterically as they pour petrol into the sea. It’s all very well for G-Cloon and Bono to build solar-efficient mini mansions with rainwater tanks and throw compost parties, but the average person can find it extremely difficult to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle. Instead of endorsing celebrities with oodles of dolla and somewhat alarming levels of self-satisfaction, foundations such as Greenpeace and WWF should do a complete marketing overhaul and get ex-cons and dapper neo-noir underworld figures on board.

Instead of guilt tripping everyone who forgets their green bag or doesn’t have a solar panel, the bad guys and girls would sit in leather armchairs with a plate of ribs and a cigarette resting between their fingers, and tell us that their first step to helping out good old planet earth is to change all their light bulbs to those swirly energy efficient ones. After taking a drag and biting off a hunk of meat, they’d tell you how they ended up in prison, or how many times they’d been shot.

Then they’d put the plate down and say that they were thinking of buying free range meat, and maybe separating their recycling from ordinary rubbish. Seeing Crips or Bloods, or a pudgy, cynical comedian, or even an infamous dictator taking steps towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly lifestyle would probably be far more inspiring than a sanctimonious A-Lister whose intentions are marred by the involvement of a PR representative.

Fostering relationships with the wealthy and powerful certainly allows for fundraising opportunities that are necessary to keep environmental organizations active, and able to invest in sustainable developments. However, when it comes to influencing the everyday people who find sustainable living overwhelming, perhaps combining the powers of an intimidating yet charismatic semi-villain with a realistic and unpretentious marketing campaign would encourage more people to start making changes for the sake of the planet. I learnt from failing as a vegetarian once and then trying again successfully a few years later that you can’t think of it as all or nothing. Just doing a little bit can make a difference, and it’s a huge jump from doing nothing. And once you’ve made one change and maintained it, it’s far easier to continue making other small changes. So next time you get the Enjo jingle stuck in your head, or a Greenpeace-commissioned urchin hovering outside a train station harasses you so much that you want to strangle them with their lanyard, don’t go and turn the sprinklers on when it ISN’T YOUR ALLOCATED DAY. Just imagine Snoop Lion rolling a fat one while he reluctantly trades his cadi for a smart car (or when science permits, a flying carpet weaved with hemp and organic bamboo cotton!) and kick things off by buying free-range eggs, or picking up the odd piece of litter. Then you can roll down the streets sippin’ on some fair-trade gin and freshly squeezed organic juice; laid back.

Dumpster Diving for the Desperado

by Emily Purvis One of the few really great things about economic depressions would be the truly waste-not, want-not attitude it cultivates in people towards the disposal of consumable food stuffs. I’ve heard many a story of a starving individual shifting through the scraps to locate an edible morsel, and hey! Maybe we students can learn something from them.

When the smell of Mi-Goreng finally makes you want to simultaneously throw your guts up and punch your boss in the face, dumpster diving is the thing for you. If you don’t mind shifting through a myriad of refuse to get to the rejected selection of groceries that the supermarkets refuse to array, you might just score yourself some free lunch. Just be wary: if it looks like mould, it is probably mould.

However, some took their outrage an estimable step forward. There was a little old lady with sunken eyes and the worst coffee-breath you’ve ever experienced that used to annoy the hell out of my co-workers and I. This ‘crazy bitch bin-lady’ (as someone named her) used to rummage through our day old dumpster bread like she had some kind of fetish for discarded wheat. Her scrounging soon caught on though, as not long after she started, we had a habitual gathering of well-to-do dumpster-divers who all but fought to the death over the last squished chia and fruit loaf. There’s a lesson in this; if rich, pompous Western suburbanites can get their children hyped up enough to jump in the trash, so can you! It doesn’t have to be just

bread, either. Fruits, veggies, toiletries and even meat (for those with the hardier immune systems) are all regularly disposed of by the supermarket giants, ripe for the picking at the bins in the parking lot. Just make sure you go to the Western suburbs; anyone who says socio-economic demographics aren’t a factor in product display is in league with Jenny Macklin, since the ideal, saleable loaf of bread in Armadale is a distant cousin from the one that makes it onto the rack in Nedlands. Happy diving!

Where to dumpster dive: Behind Nedlands IGA Claremont Quarter Waste Area Mosman Park (Just anywhere)

picture: yashi renoir

I once worked for a bakery around the corner from my house, which throws out all of its bread at the end of each business day. Now, I know what you’re thinking – “what a waste!”

The ten to fifteen other people we used to get in a day asking us what it is we do with all the left over bread thought that as well.

Not only is dumpster diving great for saving food and feeding the homeless, it’s also the second most common method of identity theft!

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Boris the Pig

you become, there could be no stronger case in point.

by Alex Wolman “A gigantic wild boar terrorizing the Australian outback, killing and devouring people.” Does that sound like an excellent film plot? That’s because it is. Released in 1984, Razorback (A New Breed of Terror) is a ridiculous Australian film directed by Russell Mulcahy, who would later go on to make the first two of the Highlander films. Aesthetic achievements aside, what is so amazing about this film is its prophetic quality. In his garbled and strangely sensational way, Mulcahy (like William Blake before him) rendered a vision of existence so strange and otherworldly that few took notice. Like Blake, only the diehard few took anything Mulcahy prophesised seriously. But unlike Blake, Mulcahy’s vision has become a reality.

Right now there is a razorback pig on a warpath. But he isn’t OUT THERE, in the Australian outback. He is near where you study, catch up with friends, attend lectures, maybe even where you eat and sleep. He is in Nedlands. And while he isn’t literally devouring people, he is devouring their souls, well-being and general mental health.

A little while ago, my brother’s friend’s Mum brought a teacup pig home with her. It was elegant, delicate, soft and very cute. It genuinely looked like a little fawn. She could have named the pig Bambi and no one would have batted an eye. But she called him Boris.

And if names have anything to do with who

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Teacup pigs are not a new species or dwarf variation. They simply come from breeding runts with runts, so if you don’t restrict their diet they can become just as big and monstrous as normal pigs. They didn’t restrict Boris’ diet. The once cute fawn-like piglet transformed into a ravenous and territorial boar who weighs more than a fullygrown man. He is hyper aggressive, extremely strong and doesn’t like people at all. He is even rumoured to have sprouted a pair of tusks.

This boar is now running rampant in an affluent double story Nedlands house. And by ‘in’, I mean ‘in’. This pig would not accept being defined as a backyard razorback pig and as such, has full indoor privileges. Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if Boris behaved. But he really doesn’t. He runs wild through the house, smashing things up intentionally and unintentionally. Unlike a cat who might weave its way through chair legs to reach where it wants to go, Boris will just take the whole chair with him. Boris also chews through everything. You can’t leave anything out in the open because he will put it in his mouth and munch on it.

Damaging inanimate objects is one thing, but targeting people is another. Boris’ owners are on the verge of wearing shin-guards around the house because the pig loves to

ram into their legs. He loves it more than anything. Whenever the front door opens his hairy ears prick up and within seconds he is ready for business. He lines up his target and attacks. Boris is quite swift for a pig; hooves scampering along indoor tiles are an ominous sound for the residents of his house. Then when he is about to hit he lowers his head so that the hardest part of his skull crashes against their shinbone. And it’s not just the front door. He rams them when they wake up.

He rams them when they are going to sleep.

He even rams them when they are coming out of the shower. It’s an absolute reign of terror.

Inappropriate domestic pets like Boris can be extremely high maintenance, but they do have their benefits. Like the Capybara! They are essentially just enormous guinea pigs from the Amazon rainforest, around the same size as a sheep. They usually weigh between thirty-five and sixty-six kilograms. And people do actually keep them as pets…in the US of course. They’re pretty cool because they love swimming in backyard pools, and you can pretend that you’re tiny and the Capybara is just a standard guinea pig. Even Boris has a sweet side. My brother’s friend’s Mum and Dad sincerely love him. He is gentle and affectionate with them and sometimes even sleeps in their bed. And while the kids do find him insanely annoying most of the time, they do have a good time dressing him up in gangster clothes or pretending to spoon him while he sleeps. I think I’ll always be a cat person though.

Prior to shooting Razorback, Russell Mulcahy was offered the director’s chair for the sequel to Flashdance. He refused.

FRESHERS, BEWARE

by Darcy Rowe After failing a university unit for the first time at the end of last year, I came to the startling and horrifying realisation that the jig was finally up. My poorly structured essays with generous amounts of double spacing, reduced margins and Wikipediaesque referencing had finally failed me, as had my policy of starting them 24 hours before the due date. After five years of maliciously shanking the system at every possible opportunity, cutting every corner and being inundated with blissful screams of joy as the mark result of “51%” rolls across my filthy computer screen, I had to find a reason to explain why my system couldn’t cut it anymore.

At first, I was in denial. It couldn’t happen to me; anyone who dodges every kind of academic obligation for five years at university without bailing or failing has to be exceptionally skilled at slacking off.

Yet, somehow, my scheme of dodging failure while treating university as a halfdecade long Ferris Bueller-style Day Off had sprung a leak. It had to be my process.

My methodology had become flawed, and it needed an overhaul. Wading through the deep ocean of discarded coffee cups, cans of energy drink and liquid meals that made up the floor of my study space, I tried to pinpoint where I had gone wrong. Had I not left enough time to write? 20 hours was normally sufficient. Was I too tired? Had I not read enough Wikipedia articles?

Then it came to me. I don’t really care about academia, and the skills that I’ve gained at university are apt in reflecting that. I care about beating the system. Do I really know anything about linguistic functionality, the French Revolution, austrolopithecus afarensis, the budget deficit in the States or how trade relations in 17th century Asia worked? No, not really. But BOY DO I KNOW HOW to dress up things to sound like I know what I’m talking about, to hastily put together a professional looking document that makes it look like at least half the time I know what I’m talking about, and to fill it with references to people who wrote articles that I never read. Rather than honing my memory of Chinese characters to build an extensive vocabulary, I learned to cut corners

and only remember a few dozen all-purpose phrases (我不明白 has been an all-round winner). Instead of learning the correct bibliography protocol for each new unit, I just use a google app to auto-format the entirety of the document. I made myself into the best at doing the least.

So to those new-comers at UWA who have picked up the Pelican mistaking it for literary content, I offer you three handy tips to avoid failure from my years of dodging, bludging and generally being the messiest student to ever grace our peacock laden campus.

Had I not read enough Wikipedia articles?

1) For the love of various sky deities go to your lectures You cannot ask questions through Lectopia.

If you don’t go to your lecture, you can’t ask the person sitting next to you for help with notes, and in all likelihood you will MISS OUT on the hints and tips that lecturers have to offer (HINT: they turn the microphone off if they’re going to say something about exams).

If you skip a lecture, don’t try telling yourself you’ll watch it later. You won’t. With endless amounts of porn, free music, link-by-link youtube surfing and social networking to drown in on the net, you will do absolutely everything during your study break that is not study related. I guarantee it. Go to the fucking lecture. I mean, you owe thousands of dollars for these things.

3) Nothing you write in one day in one sitting will ever be good. Ever. Mostly.

There’s always that one person who will brag about their academic masterpiece they tapped out in twenty minutes that either gained them some form of unbelievable sexual gratification or a mark in the 90+ zone. In both cases, you should viciously beat that person into some form of physical deformity with an inanimate object because they’re either lying or too lucky to be allowed to continue to exist. Like Rome wasn’t built in a day, it’s impossible for a jumbled mess of a paper to become a glowing wonder of genius over the course of a lone night’s effort stuck staring at a computer screen alternately spent trying to research and whining about the deadline on facebook. Be realistic: tutors have been dealing with people like me for long enough to KNOW when you’re trying to pass off shit for diamonds.

At the end of the day, rather than digging yourself into a hole, it might be worthwhile trying to learn the stuff that you’ve signed up for rather than wasting thousands of dollars to fail. Whilst my skills as a professional academic bludge may lead me to a questionable employment position after uni (i.e. no job ever), the skills you develop as a person who actually DOES SOMETHING may lead to something better.

2) Read the unit outline and think about the stuff you have to do You know those horribly laid out reams of paper with a tacky picture on the front that your tutor/lecturer gave you? Read it and ask questions. If you read only one thing during the unit, make it the unit outline. Knowing why you failed is almost as good as not failing. Sort of.

Around a third of university students in 2010 were considering dropping out. The main reason cited was boredom.

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GRIFFONOMICS The Tulip Bubble

by Alex Griffin Unlike bath bubbles, economic bubbles are pretty messy when they explode.

Speedboats get pawned, flights to Tahiti are booked, and sidewalks are splattered with suicidal stockbrokers. A ‘bubble’ is basically what happens when people, caught up in greed, enthusiasm and ignorance, lose sight of the actual value of a commodity they’re trading, to the extent that they inflate the price well beyond what it is worth. The best recent example would be the insanely unrealistic prices attached to American sub-prime (i.e. dodgy) real estate that ended up leading to the GFC. However, the very first bubble of all in saw an entire country hinge on something no one has been as foolhardy to put their trust in since: tulips.

cause of the massive price bubble. During the lull in the market that occurred during the remainder of the year, merchants started trading the rights to buy rare, freaky tulips months before they sprouted through a futures contract. Not only would this contract guarantee they had one, it also meant they could get in before prices rose any further, as they would by the new sprouting season.

Problem is, as tulips rose and rose in price,

Now, Holland (tulips? who else could it be) in the early 17th century was a bit of a perfect storm for an economic bubble.

They were newly independent, had a rising middle class, and their recent, ugly conquest of Indonesia meant that they could sell off that colony’s natural resources as quickly as they could steal them. For the new wealthy merchant class who suddenly had incredible amounts of ca$h at their disposal, a well kept and colorful front garden was an important symbol of status, and the weirder and more exotic the flowers, the better. Enter the tulip. Having been introduced to the Netherlands via Turkey only as recently as 1593, the tulip had huge novelty value.

When you add to that the strange, mosaiclike profusions of colour that well-bred tulips displayed, they were irresistible as a show of wealth and taste.

However, while demand was rapidly increasing for these flowers amongst the nouveau riche, supply wasn’t. New tulips only bloom for a week in spring, and can only be transported without getting damaged between July and September, meaning moving, buying and selling was limited to this window of time. This limited supply would have meant that prices would have inevitably risen at least somewhat as people got more excited about having them in their gardens, but there was another

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some spied an opportunity to make a quick buck by buying and selling futures contracts back and forth. Say, if you’d bought a tulip contract in November for 500 guilders, and someone offered you 1500 guilders for it in January since demand had risen for that

particular kind of tulip, you’d be tripling your money without having to do as much as milk the cow in the morning. If you hung onto the contract ‘til February, the price might have tripled again, and the tulip hadn’t even sprouted yet.

This process of trading around futures contracts started off slowly among the true connoisseurs, but the practice spread and prices soon went berserk. By the mid 1630s, a decent speculator could make a craftsman’s annual income ten times over without having to work a sweat. Entire estates were swapped for a bulb, and swapped again. The windmills were neglected. In a single month, prices rose by two thousand percent. The Dutch had a lovely word for this process of speculationwindhandel, or literally ‘trading on the wind’, and they were right. The idea of owning a tulip became pretty abstract.

For a long time, tulips seemed like a natural, permanent part of the economy, like armchairs or orphans; it seemed like the price would go up forever. However, what came up came down hard. Once the government had twigged that some unscrupulous types were ripping others off, they started regulating the market. Worried, speculators started to long for the certainty of cash, and dropped out of the market.

This worry became a panic in February 1637, as the price fell ninety percent in six weeks. Entire fortunes were lost overnight.

Since they were locked into their futures contracts, people who had bought in when the market was still rising were committed to exchanging a dozen windmills and a dairy for a very worthless little flower, which is about as depressing as finding out your parents left the house to the dog in their will. The Dutch economy stalled for decades, and the only people who came out with their clogs still on their feet were those who got out when the going was good. All of that wealth, based on enthusiasm and greed, proved to be baseless, and melted into air. Funny as the stories of bankrupt families having to eat their once priceless tulips to survive are, the lessons of the Dutch tulip bubble are permanent: get a job!

CLASSIFIEDS FOR

SALE

Magic wok.

Grants know from.

wishes. where

I

don’t

it

came

Non-stick.

$5

Authentic Rick Ardon mousemats, featuring his famous quotes:

“Back to you, Susannah”, “Rape in Mirrabooka”, “I’m Rick Ardon.” Can make new to order. $15 Completely original hand designed set of playing cardsall new cards, all new games.

Scrook the jazzer! Five pair of ninths! Snacko! Comes w/ instruction CD-ROM. $45 Need a balcony? I have hundreds.

Make an offer. Barry’s Bargain Balconies Basement.

Balcatta.

94936178

Seven really angry paintings.

I did them after watching Supernatural all night and texting my ex-boyfriend. Spit on cornflakes and glitter.

Will trade for Walking Dead boxset.

0414518738

Group of pissed French e x c h a n g e s t u d e n t s .

Keep Anglais” Ensuite 0 4 5

saying “pauvre and rattling a tin. bathroom o.n.o.

2 5 0 0 0 4 3

MISSED CONNECTIONS We were both at the cricket in Crème Egg costumes.

You winked at me and said “there’s got to be a good yolk in this.” I loved you instantly. flamingvengeance@ g m a i l . c o m

W A N T E D

Lost

virginity.

Help me. Science Library, fourth floor. I have three legs and a working Tesla coil

New Mum. Mine pisses up the stairs. Don’t know how she does it.

Will trade for Dad w/ good phone manner.

4000 Zinger burgers.

Discreet.

Non smoker preferred. PO Box 4523 Perth

Do birds suddenly appear everytime you’re near?

Attack the source. Bird self-defence classes.

Ancient techniques. Don’t be meek; hack the beak.

Couples classes available.

THOMPSON KAI SHIN SELF DEFENCE, GOSNELLS

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P ERS O N ALS Sa/m, B.A., mmf3, N/S. MC? Dtf? Dtf. WAA. HIV-/+? 0452500043

SER V I C ES Will ‘vintagify’ any form of bike- gear removal, flower arranging, chrome decals. Fixie? We’ll fix you. Will also make ANY vehicle a fixie- vans, cars, hovercrafts. Dan’s Vintage Workshop, Wolf Lane.

One (1) Prof. Dan Brown.

Last seen in arts building, w/ forelock. We miss you Danny.

Looking to Buy, Sell, Meet, Find or Touch?

Put your Ad in the Pelican Classifieds. pelican@guild.uwa. edu.au or the box on our office door. “put in

your our

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21

The Empire Strikes Back: The WA State Election Being the dedicated reporter he is, Dylan Caporn has gone to the trouble of travelling into the future to ensure you get the full results and reactions of WA Election 2013! Here is rolling coverage on the morning after the fateful election, live from a time warp in the Reid Library toilets.

Perth, WA 08:00

Good morning and welcome to our postelection live feed, the morning after the dramatic re-election of the Barnett Government in Western Australia The gravelly voice of Barrie Cassidy rips through the television speakers as Young Labor hacks nurse hangovers brought on by the realization of dead dreams. Young Liberals wake in no better state after yelling at the top of their lungs “Four more years! Four more years!” to a man with the charisma of a garden gnome.

Perth, WA 08:00

All over the state, the winning candidates are waking up and starting to consider what life as a new MP will be like. The losing candidates are curled up in the foetal position, thinking about what a waste of time the last three months have been.

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Pilbara, WA 08:15

Brendon Grylls opens his raw, red eyes and realizes that it wasn’t a dream. He lost in the Pilbara. “Fuck.” He is no longer leader of the party that he has tried so desperately to modernize. “Fuck.” Terry Waldron is going to be leader. “Fuck.”

Grylls picks up his phone and sees 10 missed calls from a blocked number. Someone had been prank calling him throughout the night, just laughing at him. Reports suggest it might have been Vince Catania. He can be quite cruel when he’s pissed.

Subiaco, WA 09:02

Former Channel 7 news reporter Rhys Whitby leaps out of bed, belting out show tunes, much to the chagrin of his wife. After two elections he can finally say with pride that he is the Member for Morley, marred only by the realization that he has to live there for at least the next four years.

Rockingham, WA 09:25

Mark McGowan steps out of his Rockingham home, faced with television cameras and a pack of tired, cranky media hounds desperately waiting for him to quit, or even better, cry. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he stands there smugly, standing by what he said the night before. “I will remain leader”, he declares, knowing that he won’t last twelve months. McGowan retreats inside to see an email from the Prime Minister. “Can’t afford phone call.

Sorry for loss. Please don’t campaign with me in September. END TRANSMISSION”

Perth CBD, WA 9:46

In the dark, shadowy offices of the ALP, several faceless men have adorned cloaks in order to discuss 2017. There is deep laughter, as an effigy of Colin Barnett burns.

West Perth, WA 10:04

At Menzies House, the Liberal Party headquarters, Liberal powerbrokers are starting to throw together a deal to make to the National Party.

Reports say it involves a lot of porkbarrelling for regional areas such as multi story car parks for train stations in Joondalup.

Churchlands, WA 10:17

Janet Woollard, one of the Independent MPs who lost her seat, is currently sitting in her office with the lights off. Her hands are grasping around an almost empty bottle of Vodka as she belts out “All By Myself” by Eric Carmen. She has just stood up, suddenly inspired. “I should be on a boat.”

Nedlands, WA 10:22

Adele Carles rolls over to see Troy Buswell staring intently into her face. “Fuck, should’ve got a taxi.” But then she remembers the $9 surcharge, and that she’s lying next to the man who introduced it.

Cottesloe, WA 10:38

Colin Barnett wakes up on his couch.

Another fight with Lyn about air-conditioning spoiled last night’s celebrations, but he can’t remember much after that schooner.

Actually wait. Those prank calls to Grylls were definitely a highlight. Good times.

Cottesloe, WA 10:42

The Queensland President Campbell Newman is currently on the line, congratulating our dear Emperor on his “win”. Newman says that until Barnett reduces Labor to 5 seats he can’t join Newman’s and O’Farrell’s club. He’ll have to continue sitting with Ballieu during COAG. Barnett sighs.

But sources say Barnett is disappointed. No congratulations from the Palace. Not even an email. Looks like the waterfront will go back to its original name of “Colin’s Fantastic Waterworld”.

Maylands, WA 11:00

Former Education Minister Liz Constable has woken up at 11am. The sleep in was a good idea. She has realized that she’s no longer a Member of the WA Parliament.

“Thank fuck,” she cries.

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NO JOHN! NO PRESIDENT! words and pictures by Zoe Kilbourn It can be hard for an obroni visitor to gauge what things mean in Ghana. The fingersnapping handshake you thought was an office in-joke turns out to be a pan-West African phenomenon; the taxi fare you gladly paid as half its Australian equivalent turns out to be an absurdly high quote. Is the tro (Ed: taxi) slogan “Trust No One” a warning or a wisecrack? Do mourners honestly order coffins shaped like bottles of Club? Were the people who named their grocery store “KissMe Hardy” serious?

sellers, percussion ensembles, show bikers, masked and belled dancers.

Ghana has a proudly (but questionably) social democratic party in power and a history of socialisme sans, and avec, doctrine. Dr Kwame Nkrumah established the new state on the Marxist socialist principles aligned with his vision of pan-Africanism. Ft. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings founded the currently ruling (and first party elected under the 1991 constitution) National Democratic Congress in the same vein. Even the New Patriotic Party,

I approached the presidential inauguration of John Mahama as I did many other commonplace things in Ghana - with the ignorant tourist’s enthusiastic bewilderment.

I’d anticipated a solemn sword-passing ceremony (due to Atta Mills’ sudden death).

Instead, I was swept up in a street party spilling out from Independence Square into the Accra roads.

Accra and its neighbouring suburbs form a loosely bound coagulation of sanguinity and disrepair. Caught in a constant flux of deand reconstruction, tin and wood buildings in yellow, red, and lime spring up around their fixed brick counterparts. Speakers, sewers, and spot bars overflow with mess and noise. That same anarchic cheerfulness characterises the city’s unofficially regulated traffic streams, transport systems, and work schedules. Ordered chaos, Accra lifeblood, exemplified the unhurried jostling and casual business opportunism of NDC festivities.

We nudged our way past hundreds of vuvuzelas, flags and headscarves printed with the eagle-headed umbrella. Tinny band music struggled to assert some formality from a pitifully outdated P.A. system. Periwigged judges milled about on mounted screens, muted by cheering, singing, blasts from air horns, and distant drumming ensembles.

Mahama, appearing in a white agbada robe, was buried by even more uproar. Shouting became even more feverish as clouds of smoke rose up with the cracks of a 21-gun salute, obscured by crowds and Accra smog, and two fighter jets shot across the stadium sky. As the day progressed, the surrealism mounted: I saw a python-bearer, armed officers taking Samsung selfies, croissant

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the NDC’s liberal conservative opposition, instituted an attempt at a free healthcare scheme for minors and campaigned fiercely last year for a more accessible education system - admittedly, focused more on secondary and tertiary levels than primary schooling. Universality, via its cousin virtue accessibility, was one of Mahama’s main candidacy platforms and set the tone for the inauguration - from the grinning military officials flashing camera phones to the traditionally dress Volta women’s representative filing through the street.

For all the seediness of coastal hangouts and rap crews like FOKN Bois, there is a strong

vein of religiosity running through Accra.

The most professional signs advertise ambitious Pentecostal prophets. Spots, chop bars and minibuses everywhere are personalised with devotional aphorisms (“God is God”; “Allah is My Only Helper”; “Sexual Traps: There is No Escape”). Most modern politicians tend towards messianic campaigning such as “It’s Time” and“Yes We Can.” It’s clear to see Mahama’s electioneering is informed by the vogue for charismatic Christianity. “Fulfilling God’s Wish,” one poster reads near Danquah Circle; “Working for a Better Ghana”. In a personal note in his downloadable manifesto, he appeals to continuity: “The Peace and Stability bestowed on us by our recently departed father, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, guided the preparation of this Manifesto; and God’s spirit in him has already blessed it”.

Underlying the pride taken in the one-touch vote and the passionate partisan politics, there seems to be a slight undertone of fatalism. Ghana is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most successfully democratic states, and is well aware of its less liberal surroundings. Leaving the stadium, we passed one of those trickily ambiguous slogans: “No John No President”, a reference to the successive elections of Jerry John Rawlings, John Kufuor, and John Atta Mills. Even the Ghanaian Times, Ghana’s “most authoritative” government-owned paper, ran the opinion piece “Are ‘Johns’ Destined to be President?” A commentator in the same paper argued against partisan politics altogether, suggesting that politics would be far more peaceful under a single authoritarian ruler.

With its garbage trucks chiming 8-bit tunes, Lucozade-shaped coffins, and simultaneous celebrations of chastity and promiscuity, Ghana strikes a weird balance between apparent antitheses. Mahama too, walks a tightrope: conflicting promises of continuity and change, the pairing of traditionally radical socialism and religious conservatism, the embrace of indigenous multiculturalism and pan-Ghanaianism. Not that I hope to even come close to mastering Accra nuance – as your standard obroni, I’ll be busy snapping tourist photos and standing in front of boats that don’t belong to me.

After every election since 1992, the Ghanaian opposition NPP party has called a press conference to claim electoral fraud before going on to sue the electoral commission. They haven’t won a case yet.

A FEW NEWS WEBSITES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

by Richard Ferguson As much as we all love Perth Now, it can sometimes be hard for the average pseudointellectual to find a new source befitting their I.Q. Pelican Politics would like to make your quest for news easier by presenting you with some of the best news and current affairs websites you may have missed.

CHARLIE ROSE (www.charlierose.com) American journalist Charlie Rose may well have interviewed every person that has mattered in the world over the past thirty years, from Hunter S Thompson to Barack Obama. The time and detail put into his interviews bring out the very best in his subjects and give you all the information you could wish for and more. The Charlie Rose Show’s website contains all of his interviews back to 1994. It is a master class on how news and current affairs should be covered.

LATE NIGHT LIVE (http://www.abc.net.au/ radionational/programs/latenightlive) No other programme in Australia covers a wider breadth of topics or in a deeper detail than Late Night Live, ABC Radio National’s flagship current affairs show. Hosted by left-wing firebrand Phillip Adams, Late Night Live has gone from Edinburgh to Gaza to discuss the affairs and history of the human race. Only on LNL could you hear a discussion of the Syrian Civil War followed by one on the history of English mills.

The website is a wonderful archive of the show’s past twenty years.

FOREIGN POLICY (www.foreignpolicy.com) The quintessential foreign affairs publication, Foreign Policy is a website that combines an intellectual sensibility and an everyday readerfriendly presentation. Combining long-form journalistic essays with more digestible short pieces and guides, Foreign Policy is a perfect

example of how the intricacies and complexities of foreign affairs can be packaged in a way that is both informative and entertaining. If you want to know anything about the Arab Spring, or the latest Chinese political machinations, this is the place to go.

THE GLOBAL MAIL (www.theglobalmail.org) Entrepreneur Graeme Wood and ABC journalist Monica Attard launched The Global Mail with much fanfare. It is a not-for-profit space for independent journalism on a philanthropic funding model. Much has changed since the site debuted in 2011 but it really does provide some of the best long-form journalism out there from some of Australia’s most reputable journalists.

It’s not perfect but it provides some sensible analysis to Australian politics you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

picture: Margriff

PELITOON

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CAGE MATCH

By Wade McCagh and Shaughn McCagh

An In-Depth Discussion and Debate on the Cinematic Oeuvre of Nicolas Cage Wade: Where do you begin with Nicolas Cage? We’re talking about a man who sold his Bavarian castle to pay the IRS, is so obsessed with comic books that he named his son KalEl and somehow got into a bidding war with Leonardo Di Caprio over a dinosaur skull (Nic won it for a cool $276,000). Even Sean Penn drew the line with the guy, declaring in 1999 that he was “no longer an actor.” I believe that years from now, our progeny will look back in confused

bewilderment at the career of Nic Cage and wonder just how that happened. Countless episodes of his career make no sense by themselves, but when you try to reconcile everything that Nic Cage has done, there is no possible way that you can reach any sort of satisfying conclusion.

Shaughn: Ah, Nicolas Cage: the Hollywood paradox. A man with eyes that can convey the strongest of emotions, matched with a dull, mesmerizing voice that’s capable of bringing life to a scene in a way no one else can quite match. At the same time, he’s a weird-looking dude who has made arguably some of the worst films of the past 10 years. The confusion that surrounds Cage is pretty universal, and it mainly stems from his complete lack of hesitation to play flat, one-dimensional characters caught up in slow, convoluted action films.

However, Cage has had a long career, and for (almost) every terrible performance he’s given, there’s another both powerful and moving in its delivery. This is the question we’ve been trying to answer for decades now; is Nicolas Cage actually brilliant or just completely insane?

Wade: Anyone who has a problem with Nic Cage should take it up with Francis Ford Coppola, because if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have Nic Cage, Nic being his nephew and all. Family nepotism aside, you cannot deny FFC has given us some of the better films in

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cinema history, and so the man has some authority on talent. And while you may blame him for Sofia Coppola ruining Godfather III, any damage done to his name is repaid tenfold by giving Nic Cage a chance to blossom.

Shaughn: You know how you know you’re looking at Nic Cage? It’s that feeling you get that says there’s something inherently wrong about this man being in a movie. Though he’s done the conventional Hollywood narrative arc (small time cult actor to action hero, serious Oscar nominated film star to all out nutcase) he somehow maintains this aura of mystery; Cage is an outcast from a world he theoretically should fit right into. He walks amongst the Hollywood stars and comes from Hollywood royalty, yet you can never identify him as a part of that crowd. He’s a walking contradiction.

Wade: Yeah, there’s something about Nic Cage that has just never quite worked in the traditional sense. Which is interesting, because I would argue that from 1996 to 2002, in the period I like to call “The Golden Cage”, he delivered a series of great acting performances in serious dramatic films in tandem with nailing his roles in some of the best action films of that period. Even his mediocre, forgettable films from that period were still relatively good compared to a lot of stuff coming out around that time.

Shaughn: It’s really easy to forget that once upon a time Cage was a solid action movie hero. His ’96 – ’97 trilogy of blockbusters The Rock, Con Air and John Woo’s cinematic masterpiece Face/Off (my personal favourite, by the way) are all testaments to his ability as a leading man. While all three were arguably traditional action films, each demonstrated a different side to his acting ability, bringing depth to characters that, in mediocre hands, could have been completely one-dimensional.

The Rock tested waters by giving Cage room to swing as a leading man, backed up by the chops of Connery and Harris. Con Air allowed him to fully embrace the role of the badass hero, his take on the “right guy in the wrong place at the wrong time” character up there with the likes of Die Hard’s John McClane.

Face/Off just took batshit fucking crazy to a level of brilliance that makes everything

“For his role in Leaving Las Vegas, Cage researched by binge drinking in Dublin for two weeks and had a friend videotape him so he could study his speech. He also visited hospitalized career alcoholics. He said “it was one of the most enjoyable pieces of research I’ve ever had to do for a part.”

about it goddamn awesome, Cage’s performance included. Point is, despite his inherent weirdness, people can still get behind Nic Cage as a believable hero.

Wade: On the other side of the coin, after a largely forgettable filmography of quirky roles before 1995 (I doubt many people can name more than three films from that period that aren’t Raising Arizona), it’s like Cage woke up and said, “OK, time to get serious.” Leading off with Leaving Las Vegas, an incredibly sad, dark tale that could have easily fallen into cliché if not for the astounding performances from the leads, Nic Cage would go on to claim the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance, then promptly decide to become the action hero of the mid-1990s with his next three films. Just think about that: you’ve been hailed as the best actor in the industry, opening the door to every project in Hollywood you could want, and you decide to become the new Bruce Willis? That takes cojones, my friend, and it really is an early insight into the decision making process of Mr Cage.

Shaughn: Yeah, you can’t deny the man’s… audacity.

Wade: He’d go to do some mediocre but solid enough films after his action binge, such as 8mm and Snake Eyes, and basically lull everyone back into a false sense of security that he was just a guy who got lucky once and was fast becoming another homogenous actor. But every now and again, he’d do a film like Bringing out the Dead or Adaptation and remind everyone that he won that Best Actor Oscar for a reason.

Bringing Out The Dead is a surreal nightmare of a film that may not necessarily be for everyone, but I struggle to think of an actor that could have given Scorsese a performance to make that film work as well as it did, while Adaptation was just a brilliant piece of work from all involved, and proved that Cage could well and truly hack it on the same level as the Empress of the Oscars, Meryl Streep.

Shaughn: You have to admit (great performances aside) that the aura of strangeness Cage exudes has always been there, and as his career has gone on, it has become a lot more noticeable. Part of this can be attributed to his decision to play characters that are completely

fucking stupid. 2006’s The Wicker Man sees Cage play “a sheriff investigating the disappearance of a young girl from a small island” whose chief investigation tactic seems to be straight up punching women in the face. It ends with what is probably the most iconic bee torture scene in film.

2007’s Next sees Cage play “a Las Vegas magician who can see two minutes into the future, pursued

by FBI agents seeking to use his abilities to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack”. It was exactly as fucking stupid as it sounds.

Wade: Fact: Since winning his Oscar in 2002 for Training Day, Denzel Washington has done a bunch of bad movies with scripts that completely belittle his amazing abilities. But Denzel keeps making films, and the studios keep handing him massive budgeted films. Why? Because people love Denzel Washington. People fucking love to watch Denzel Washington, because he goes all out and never just mails it in. This is why Nic Cage should get the respect he deserves. Unlike De Niro or Pacino, who seem to just be sleepwalking in everything these days to the point of making everyone under 20 forget they were once the greatest actors on the planet, Cage goes all out in every film he does, no matter how comical the script.

Shaughn: Nic Cage is not dead. It may seem like he’ll just take any script thrown at him, but that doesn’t mean he’s finished being a

serious actor. He just doesn’t restrict himself to safe roles.

While not conventional, you have to respect a man with such a reckless approach towards acting. And who’s to say it doesn’t sometimes work? 2010’s Kick-Ass saw Cage play a mentally deluded ex-cop who takes to superhero vigilantism with his combat trained 12-year old daughter on a revenge quest to destroy the mob-boss that ruined his life. And it was fucking great! A younger generation used to seeing Cage in confusing action plots and mundane dramas suddenly caught a glimpse of the man’s former glory, as an actor that can take a dead-pan expression, a deep nasal accent and terrible, terrible hair and make it fit perfectly into a character. That’s the actor studios want to believe in. It’s the reason they keep throwing money at his movies. They want to believe in a Nicolas Cage that produces the same zany, madcap performances that have made him such an iconic face in film today. It’s the Nicolas Cage we need to believe in too. How else will Face/Off 2 become a reality?

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FILM REVIEWS Hitchcock Director: Sacha Gervasi Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson

Les Misérables Director: Tom Hooper Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway

Wade McCagh

Richard Ferguson

For those who haven’t seen Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece Psycho, go watch it right now. It still holds up today as a chilling, macabre piece of horror gold, and it makes you think of showers the same way Jaws makes you think of beaches. This film is about the immense struggles that Hitchcock and his wife Alma undertook in order to make the film, which was considered obscene and pornographic back in the day.

The film’s production makes a fascinating story, and fans of Hitchcock and cinema history will enjoy the many references and behind the scenes insights into the shrewd manoeuvres needed to get this film made.

All the performances are solid, particularly that of Anthony Hopkins, who overcomes a weak physical resemblance with superb depth and timing. Though the script gets bogged down in focusing on the strained relationship between Hitchcock and Alma, it keeps the plot moving.

The film makes up for any weaker moments with a well-assembled supporting cast and some excellent moments; in particular the film’s premiere where Hitchcock stands in the lobby, faux-conducting the audience’s screams during the infamous shower scene. This is Gervasi’s first fiction film, and he delivers an admirable and solid effort.

Django Unchained Director: Quentin Tarantino Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington Alice Mepham A brutal tale of redemption set just before the Civil War, Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino’s latest excursion into historical revisionism and violent revenge fantasy. Instead of Nazis, we witness antebellum slave owners receive a long overdue ass-whooping at the hands of the oppressed. As one would expect, it’s a darn-tootin’ enjoyable settling of the scores.

The cast is in fine form. Waltz’s gun-slinging hero is the complete antithesis to the Jew Hunter of Inglourious Basterds; a change in direction he obviously relishes. Foxx embodies the titular role with a smooth swagger, and DiCaprio delivers one of his greatest performances yet in depicting the highly contemptible slave-owner, Calvin Candie. Perhaps problematically, Samuel L. Jackson takes the Uncle Tom stereotype to new heights with his callous representation of head house slave, Stephen.

It’s a bold claim to make, but Django might just be Tarantino’s funniest film to date.

One scene involving a certain group of white supremacists almost puts Blazing Saddles to shame (almost). Moreover, as much as Django is a homage to the Westerns of Leone and Corbucci and the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, it also pays its respects to Australian new wave cinema - keep your eyes and ears peeled for a few distinctly Antipodean moments. Remember, the ‘D’ is silent!

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Adapted from the 1985 stage musical, Les Misérables tells Victor Hugo’s story of the redeemed thief Jean Valjean, set against the darkest days of the 1832 French Revolution.

While flawed in many ways, such a musical epic has not been seen on the big screen since the genre’s Golden Age in the 1950s.

Jackman makes a fine leading man as the tortured hero Valjean, while Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter add some much needed comic relief as the villainous Therandiers. However, armed with an angel’s voice and well-trained tear ducts, Anne Hathaway steals the show as the heartbreaking, troubled Fantine. However, her early departure makes the rest of the film disappointing fare.

Unfortunately, Russell Crowe is appalling as Valjean’s nemesis Inspector Javert; as well as being completely tone-deaf, he has the emotional range of a carrot. The cinematography is also disappointing considering Hooper’s earlier films, as CGI is employed in pretty terrible fashion throughout in creating the Parisian environment. However, his decision to film all of the singing live instead of lip-syncing it with later recordings lends the film a great sense of authenticity. Musicalhaters should avoid this film, but those of you who love the genre will embrace Les Misérables, bombast and all.

Lincoln Director: Steven Spielberg Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field Wade McCagh It’s hard to watch Lincoln without drawing parallels to the current state of discord in US politics – a fact not lost on Spielberg, who deliberately delayed the theatrical release of this film till after the 2012 Presidential election. Lincoln’s enemies think of him as a tyrannical king, his allies as a “capitulating compromiser,” and as we watch the epic battle Lincoln faces to pass the 13th amendment through a hostile Congress, it all feels pretty familiar.

Spielberg has done a masterful job creating a rich, urgent representation of Lincoln’s last months in office, shedding the hero-worship of the many depictions gone by. The script is dense yet engaging, inundating the screen with a multitude of characters that all have a role to play in Lincoln’s success, whilst creating an energy and enthusiasm for the complex procedures of Congressional politics.

Spielberg wisely avoids descending into the overtly emotional, staying focused on the passage of the amendment as the main story. This allows Day-Lewis’s perfectly cast Lincoln to convey a weary and isolated man bearing the toll of a long, bloody war, while not ignoring the ruthless nature of the politics at play. The result is an intellectually stimulating and genuinely entertaining feast of history and superb storytelling.

Zero Dark Thirty Director: Kathryn Bigelow Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton and Kyle Chandler

by Kevin Chiat Zero Dark Thirty is the most politically controversial film in recent memory. The US Senate has objected to it, with the possibility of congressional hearings being conducted into the level of access granted to the filmmakers. The left has decried it as protorture, and the right was worried that it would be propaganda for the Obama Administration.

However, the film is more complicated than either side of the argument allows for; it’s a revenge thriller steeped in moral ambiguity, grafting the American national response to 9/11 onto its lone wolf protagonist.

To look at its aesthetic qualities, the film is nearly flawless. Stunningly photographed, the cinematography approaches the feeling of a documentary without relying heavily on handheld camerawork. Bigelow is a master at creating tense, exciting cinema, turning a decade long search into an engrossing procedural drama. The script feels journalistic in its structure, guiding the audience through a complex web of information and events as the evidence piles up and points to Bin Laden’s location.

Chastain gives a remarkable performance as Maya (who is based on a real CIA agent who can’t be named). She’s a caustic, tenacious character who pisses everyone else in the CIA off but is proven right. You can always see the gears moving in her head as she puts

There are a lot of Tarantino die-hards that brush off Jackie Brown as a small blip on an otherwise spectacular filmography. I mean, where’s the head-spinning non-chronological script, the dramatic twists and reveals? Where is Harvey Keitel?! But like every artist doomed by his own success, Jackie Brown is an underappreciated work of film that actually still has all those great Tarantino elements combined with something foreign from his other works: restraint. So, why does Jackie Brown deserve more respect from you? Well, let’s examine the great ‘Tarantino Movie-Making Checklist’ to see how it stacks up.

Firstly, is this film clearly influenced heavily by (and paying homage to) a niche genre from the past? Most certainly! This film clearly draws from the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, and

Straight away, the film exposes the realities of the torture used by the CIA during the Bush administration. It’s horrific, inhumane and ultimately ineffective. The raid on Abbottabad is an amazing sequence, demonstrating the professionalism of the Seal Team Six raid but also the grim reality of it. It’s clear that it was always kill; capture wasn’t an option.

The film is bound to become a dominant voice in the cultural understanding of the hunt for Bin Laden. For that reason, certain inaccuracies are disappointing moves on the filmmakers’ part.

The film ends on a question: where do you go now once you’ve had your revenge? Was it worth it? Everything is left up in the air for debate and examination, which is a sign of the film’s effectiveness.

Zero Dark Thirty is the follow-up from The Hurt Locker team of writer Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow. It follows the decade long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden through the eyes of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA operative who single-mindedly follows the clues which lead to Bin Laden’s assassination.

Be Kind Rewind: A Retrospective Review of Hard-Done By Films that Deserve a Second Consideration Film: Jackie Brown (1997)

by Beau Livingston

together the clues. Jason Clarke plays Dan, a CIA agent and torturer who manages to be both dangerous and affable. The film has a deep bench of talented actors, using film and TV vets to fill out minor roles. Parks and Recreation fans will have a strange sense of dissonance at seeing lovable goof Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) as a Marine.

while it doesn’t necessary try to be such a film, the influence is always felt. From the moment we open to Bobby Womack’s 1972 soulful funk masterpiece ‘Across 110th Street’, following possibly the greatest Blaxploitation actress of all time Pam Grier through LAX, it perfectly captures the spirit and style of the genre,.

Speaking of which, is the soundtrack up to the incredible standard of a Tarantino film?

You betcha. Bobby Womack, Bill Withers, The Delfonics, The Brothers Johnson, Johnny Cash, the list goes on. Nobody uses licensed music like Tarantino, and unlike so many directors who’ll blast a song to lazily establish the era (see Ridley Scott’s American Gangster as a prime example of great music clumsily used), every song adds to the rhythm and pacing of the film, making the soundtrack become a character in itself.

Jackie Brown failed to get the love it deserved from the public because we all saw it with Pulp Fiction glasses on. It’s a shame, because Jackie Brown is possibly Tarantino’s most confident and accomplished work, free from the overreliance on script devices, genre tribute and over-zealous indulgence. It’s a tight, intelligent crime flick with great performances and wellwritten characters. It’s quite possible that had we given it more love then, we wouldn’t have pushed QT into that hyper-homage fest that has defined his work over the last decade. I’m not criticising what he did produce after Jackie Brown, but it does make you wonder how things might have been different.

That trademark dialogue? Every conversation Samuel L Jackson delivers the goods. Sure, it isn’t at the level of 100% quotable like Pulp Fiction, but the dialogue is sharp, darkly comic and there are plenty of cherries, like Jackson’s monologue to De Niro professing his love of the AK-47. The scene with Chris Tucker is immensely entertaining for a number of reasons, not least its ending.

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TECH WARS: A reflection on technology and the battle raging for cinema’s soul

By Wade McCagh

I searched deep into my soul for the culprit behind this strange apathy in the weeks before watching the film. Was it the studio’s obvious money grab decision to stretch a short book out to three films, rather than the originally planned two? Was it my fanboy rage that Guillermo del Toro was all set to direct this before having to remove himself due to MGM’s ongoing financial troubles persistently delaying production? Was it hobbit fatigue?

I’ll admit all those things played a part, but the truth is the main source of my apprehension was the massive critical backlash the film received in advanced screenings. While reviews varied about the other elements of the film, there was almost universal negativity from the press on Jackson’s decision to shoot the film using a new high definition digital camera that captures images at 48 frames per second (FPS) rather than the traditional 24 FPS which has pretty much been the standard since, well, the beginning of cinema.

Critics tend to hate on new technology, but the response to this film seem to take the vitriol to a whole new level; one particularly unimpressed critic said The Hobbit “looked like the Teletubbies.” Matt Ryan summed up the general reaction well, arguing that “48 FPS gives an incredibly clear picture, which is part of the problem… it’s possible for an image to look so clear that it no longer looks real, or so real that it takes you out of the film. As in: that film set looks like … a film set. The picture is so clear that in one scene I could see Ian McKellen’s contact lenses.”

The anger around The Hobbit is a great example of a battle that has torn the film world apart for over twenty years now, and one that is perhaps reaching its endgame: the

role and merit of integrating new technology into film. Though the world has advanced technologically at an incredible pace over that time, the film industry has resisted the digital revolution pretty fiercely.

Keanu Reeves (an actor who arguably owes his entire career to technology and special effects) recently made a documentary called Side by Side about the opposing schools of thought on technology. From the broad opinions of experienced editors, directors and cinematographers, the main argument comes out as whether shooting on film or shooting digitally is superior, and if the latter is changing the artistic quality of films for better or worse.

What’s the big deal about the difference in technology, though? Well, let’s look at the facts. Traditionally, movies were shot on large rolls of physical film, and as you may expect, this has its limitations. One roll of film lasts just under 10 minutes; whenever this is used up, filming has to stop and reset, so filming a scene can be a very stop/start process which places pressure on the crew to capture a scene right. At the same time, you can’t actually see what you just filmed, so essentially the cinematographer is the only one who has any idea about how the footage will turn out and everyone else (director included) has to wait until the next day when they can review the footage at review sessions know as ‘dailies.’ Besides, film is expensive, so hundreds of minutes of footage add up pretty fast.

by the studios. Case in point: Avatar. Avatar made studio executives that 3D was the future, raking in over 2.7 billion for what was basically Dances With Wolves in space. The tide of action movies in 3D since has been unstoppable. Thinking that the difficult and expensive 3D effects would be more than compensated by the strong demand for 3D movies, the studios ended up with a string of visually stimulating, but ultimately hollow failures. As James Cameron says to Keanu, “Not every film needs 3D.” I found my personal opinion on the subject to be reinforced by two great directors who feature in Reeves’ documentary, Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese. Both shoot on film, but still use digital effects and shooting only when it enhanced their movies. Scorsese perhaps sums it up best: “How do you use it and how do you use it to tell a story? It’s up to the filmmaker.” At the end of the day, filmmakers who restrict themselves exclusively to one format or the other only limit their ability to create something special.

So, I don’t damn digital effects, 3D or 48 FPS to the shadows, but look forward to them enhancing the films of tomorrow. But I did go see The Hobbit in regular ol’ fashioned 24 frame 2D. As I learned from Keanu, old habits die hard.

In contrast, digital offers an economical, non-stop and immediately visible playback alternative to film. These benefits make digital incredibly attractive to low-budget projects and auteurs, which simultaneously removes the barriers of entry to make movies and unleashes a tsunami of films being made, many of which are of questionable quality. Overall, I think we can agree it’s a good thing; surely the great films that do come of this wave atone for all the garbage made on the cheap, so I think we can chalk that rebuttal up to insecure old timers.

But another, more important downside to this is an overreliance on technological effects

Keanu means “cool breeze over the mountains” in Hawaiian.

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picture: alice palmer

Like everyone else over the holidays, I bought a ticket to Middle-Earth and went to see Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. However, I did so with great trepidation. Despite the positive signs of it smashing all opening weekend records and the strength of my love for Jackson’s work on the LOTR trilogy, I hadn’t been able to manufacture the excitement that I had assumed I would naturally feel.

Marxelmore

by Alex Griffin Wherever you find a flag being repurposed as a cape on Australia Day, you can count on the Hottest 100 blaring nearby. This year, to little surprise, it was Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop’ booming out coast to coast as the nation’s favourite song of the year. For many, Mac is the model of a new kind of rapper; gay positive, nonviolent, and equally serious about social issues as he is when it comes to partyin’ down. There was a muted fanfare about it being the first hip-hawp song to scale the lofty heights of the chart, but it’s worth considering why (juicy sax hooks aside) ‘Thrift Shop’ was the one that broke through; after all, Kanye, Jay-Z and even the much-luvved Hilltop Hoods have all tried and failed.

As a middle-class white guy, Macklemore has an unspoken credibility gap to make up when it comes to being regarded as a legitimate rapper. In a genre that lionises stories of struggle and graft, his colour itself could be regarded as a hurdle, but growing up comfortable means he hasn’t got the stories of hard grind that other white rappers (say, Eminem) have successfully traded on.

His rags to riches journey is left at “got an iTunes check/shit I’m paying rent,” and bad times begin and end with him getting a below average grade on his SATs. He covers himself though, emphasising stuff like celebrating good times and persevering against adversityit’s not his problems he focuses on, but other people’s. Empathy rap, right? Dude has recorded a song called ‘White Privilege’, after all. He wants to make it clear that he has opinions on issues. As such, his fans are likely to say that regardless of what haters say about his tunes, he sticks up for gays, minorities and the downtrodden, and is therefore a Top Bloke¬, so one can happily focus on his tunes instead of his ideas. All in all, his success is pitched as universal, since his music is all about letting the haters hate, because eventually doing your $wag thing will pay off.

As such, he’s the least threatening rapper to white middle class listeners since 2 Rappin’ Rabbis, and by far the most widely successful.

Unfortunately, if you look closely at what he’s saying, he’s not helping anybody else out, and at worst, he’s just making things worse.

Take “Thrift Shop”, which reduces the entire complex issue of charity welfare into, well, looking awesome. From experience, having to travel everywhere from Armadale to Belmont because nothing fits you and you can’t afford

stuff from, y’know, real stores isn’t awesome.

At the same time that he’s trying to protest against people who spend big ca$h on Big Evil Brands, he’s buying into materialism in a big way, and when you buy into the whole framework that keeps poor people poor, you’re not doing anything for them. By framing an op shop as a place to competitively consume stuff he’s effectively competing people who actually need those clothes not just out of the market, but out of the conversation. Flipping charity stores a few bucks so you can amplify your chances of getting laid isn’t anywhere near giving a fuck about real problems.

Celebrating cheap clothes in a post-GFC world is something people can readily empathise with, but compassionate it ain’t.

The Heist, his debut LP, gets more troubling the deeper you go. On ‘Cadillac’ he wants to “live/inside my Cadillac/bitch” because it makes him feel wealthy and powerful, before going on to talk about how it impresses the ladies. It’s hard to take a dude seriously on capital-i Issues when he claims women will suck his penis because of the car he drives.

The only time Mac mentions a concrete way of helping people (as opposed to talking about how much he is helping them by rapping about their problems) is when he mentions Rick Ross giving a gold chain to a homeless dude. That comes in a song which sums up the solution to every problems as having ca$h and lots of it (‘Gold’). Macklemore, despite setting himself up as a learned commentator, isn’t a rebel or a protestor; more a dude who starts a conversation with you by saying he’s a great listener, then agreeing with everything you say. Sure, a whole lot of rappers do a whole lot less (and much worse), but this is inane as hell.

gonna lose any skin over trying to change things, since problems are eventually still just things that just happen to other people.

When he makes a play at talking about how he’s going out on a limb talking about race on ‘A Wake’ since he’ll get criticised for it, it’s hard to see him as the bold messenger he sees himself as. Being criticized as insincere is the only risk he’s taking, which is sort of like Mandela pacing back and forth in his prison cell worrying about the harm he might have given in offending supporters of apartheid. By the way, that’s pretty much the only time he brings up race on the album, so it doesn’t feel like he lost too much sleep over it.

Ultimately, just kinda referencing a problem like gay marriage or poverty is great, sure, but it doesn’t actually do anything, and pretending a problem has been addressed just spreads complacency. In Mac’s world, money is good and makes happiness, haters are bad, and driving Cadillacs is great. Boy it would be great if everyone could get along, but parties are great and so is looking awesome. Despite all his talk, Macklemore is pretty much still all about keeping the status quo, but hey- why wouldn’t he? It’s got him this far.

REAL TALK PROTEST MUSICIANS: The Ex, Woody Guthrie, The Pop Group, Public Enemy

Against this background, ‘Same Love’ feels less like a triumphant pro-gay marriage anthem and more like a token nod at someone else’s feelings. After all, the lyrics aren’t exactly shaking with anger on the topic (“damn right I support it”) – Mac is happy to agree with people, but he’s not

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ALBUM REVIEWS Broadcast 8.0 Berberian Sound Studio Warp Alex Griffin The 17th of every month is a big deal in my family. Dad puts on a suit, Mum her old wedding dress, and we all crouch over a flowerbed in the backyard, furiously chanting spells that’ll bring my dead sister back to life for the rest of the evening.

For several years, we did this listening to the sounds of ‘Bad Moon Rising’- sister insisted she arise to the sounds of it lest she haunt us like a bitch all year long- but it didn’t sit right with the rest of us. We wanted something that gelled with the whole supernatural jive that is lifting a machete victim from the afterlife for a couple of games of Scrabble. Besides, whenever Dad tuned into Classic FM and heard Creedence Clearwater Revival, he’d break down in tears. This month, we put on Berberian Sound Studio, and it was perfect. We chanted and thudded the earth to the sounds of rattling drones, the abrupt shattering of glass and random snatches of an Italian man cackling insanely. It was the most masterfully creepy album we’d ever heard, and my sister was so happy as she rose from the dark grey dirt, bleeding from the neck as she floated weightlessly overhead.

Benjamin Dauer 6.5 The Pace of Which Twice Removed

atmosphere with a hint of the uncanny.

As with all trips, this one has its ups and downs. As I played the album in our bedroom my boyfriend took off his headphones, looked around him and asked where the music was coming from.

He noted the overwhelmingly pervasive nature of Dauer’s sounds. At times – and particularly if listened to one after another – the tracks err on the side of white noise in a manner that borders on irritating.

If you enjoy Dauer’s direction but don’t dig the substance, give this album a miss and check out his (more interesting) collaboration project with poet Michelle Seaman, The Dwindlers.

Scissor Lock Churn EP Independent

7.5

Connor Weightman The last time Marcus Whale released a record as Scissor Lock (2010’s vocal-sample only Broken English), I was banned from listening to it in the presence of a certain ex, such was the abrasiveness. This EP might do a little better on that litmus test, but only just: my lasting impression of Churn is akin to chewing a huge wad of gum and continually adding to it until monstrous jaw pain ensues. Opening track ‘Outer Space’ is a fantastic composition though, itself all the instant gratification needed to justify the zero dollars and two left-clicks it takes to save to your hard drive. The rest may grow and pop as it pleases.

Elisa Thompson Benjamin Dauer’s solo album, The Pace of Which, is a drug hit in sound. Each of the six tracks has the ‘down the rabbit hole’ quality of a DMT trip (think of the four minute sequence in Gaspar Noe’s 2009 film Enter the Void). Predominantly ambience, with hints of drone, the songs are fuzzy around the edges and their sounds morph into one another. Any familiar rhythm soon blurs and changes seamlessly into something else, creating a mesmeric

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Various Artists 8.0 Yellow Loveless High Fader Records Simon Donnes A dreamy, emotion charged haze of sound, Yellow Loveless is a tribute / cover album of My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 shoegaze masterpiece Loveless. Yellow takes on an intimidating task- it’s Loveless envisioned

by a bunch of Japanese artists, a different one performing each track- but it’s not the first to attempt the task of going toe-to-toe with one of the best albums of the ‘90s.

Blue Loveless, the South Korean rendition, landed in March last year, and some are still claiming that it outdid the original. 2007 saw the Japancakes take the whole tribute album on solo. The response was more mixed, but a still respectable effort. Yellow has stiff competition to stand up to from all sides.

What’s perhaps most interesting about Yellow is that, not only is each song given a unique spin or interpretation by the artists, but almost all of them have these eclectic influences that pervade into the work. From the lo-fi bro-step seeped second half of ‘Touched’ (Don’t worry, it’s fucking glorious), to the Wish-you-were-here era Floyd influences all through ‘Sometimes’, Yellow is like an extended family tree of shoegaze, written in ancient tongues and scrawled across a bar mat during a big night out. There’s hints of Soviet broadcast tunes, Gregorian chants, Sonic the Hedgehog and even the “holocaust of sound” Kevin Shields experimented with on the Loveless tour.

It’s this glorious, aural mess – this wall of sound filled with cracks that suck you in and reveal more and more on repeat listens.

It’s not as risky or engrossing as Blue, but it’s a solid experience that showcases a bucket-load of talent.

Corners Afterlife on Earth Independent

7.0

Natasha Woodcock I hate summer. I hate how long it takes to get to sleep and I hate waking up in a sweaty mess. I especially hate how quickly my bread goes stale. Throw in my demon mood and it’s a recipe for disaster, but: hurrah! There is a new Corners album to save my soul.

This 8-track album is like a soothing after-sun lotion. Gareth Edward’s beautiful lulling-yet-slightly-husky voice sinks deep into the skin and allows the mind to cool down to a mellow pace.

Most of the tracks feature a lightly-tapped drum and a sublime-sounding acoustic guitar, but its ‘Brendale’ which brings a change of musical scenery and marks the albums standout point. It begins instead with a keyboard, crafting a tingly romantic mood before an electric guitar shyly makes its presence known in the mix, giving the song (and indeed the album) an unexpectedyet-welcome rougher edge.

My only criticism of Afterlife on Earth is that the songs do tend to drag on a little too long. It did leave me with a peaceful frame of mind though, and that definitely makes up for my stale bread.

Adam Green and Binki Shapiro 4.5 S/T Decca Alex Griffin Do you remember when Juno was a thing?

For a little while, everyone believed in true love, acoustic guitars and drinking entire bottles of orange juice, and for some people, that never ended. Whenever you have a chance, reflect on the fact that for every star in the sky, there’s a boy in a room somewhere, carefully scrawling out song titles on a page ripped from a notebook to make a mix CD for a girl who smells like almonds and blinks nervously when she giggles. These are the most boring people in the world.

Akio Suzuki & 6.5 Lawrence English Boombana Echoes Winds Measure Recordings

Moreover, criticising his music seems cheap when you learn about how doctors used leeches on him as a child in the late 1960s.

Leeches.

Connor Weightman

That is until you actually listen to how asexual Passione is. It’s like having every edge on your body sanded off by bottles of cleanskin wine. Does your mother sit down and watch the whole way through whenever there’s an ad for Il Divo breaking up new episodes of The Young and the Restless?

Then this is for her. Remember that this album exists to be a sex aid for people who were alive when the Berlin Wall went up: use this knowledge carefully.

You awake in a swamp, or at least the text-based adventure rendition of a swamp.

You are wearing a tattered dressing gown for some reason. It is cold, and it is dark, or it is mushroom purple, or somehow both. The trees are leafless and of course, you are being watched but you don’t know by who or what. You are walking along a rickety boardwalk. You can hear them coming for you. They scream like angry gumnut monsters. It would be less scary if you could see them, of course, because that is how these things always go in these stories. The wind clicks like audio-tape borrowed from the local library during your childhood. This is the end, the end, the end.

You are now standing by the book-stand in an airport departure lounge. Do you wish to play again?

Andrea Bocelli Passione Verve

2.0

Alex Griffin Valentine’s Day is the time for chocolates, flowers and contrived sexual situations, so Andrea Bocelli picked the right moment to drop another collection of polite love songs.

Now, I’m generally opposed to these albums as a rule since they are kinda tied to the mental image of a middle-aged man lifting up his belly overhang up so he can undo his belt before the pill wears off and the wife complains, but it’s hard to get angry at these old, suave dudes unloading their charm-sacs into the microphone. Tom Jones has a weird, swarthy charm about him, and no one can possibly take Ronan Keating seriously. Besides, Andrea Bocelli is blind AND has a girl’s name, so giving him a free pass to release as much cynical moneymaking rubbish as he likes seems only fair.

Yo La Tengo Fade Matador

8.5

Natasha Woodcock Yo La Tengo are like a good bottle of red: nice enough while young, but better with age. Their 13th album, Fade, is another instrumentally-varied mix-bag of delights, anchored by the contrasting voices of Ira (deep and neutral) and Georgia (sweetly soft). It begins with the shoegazey guitar and vocals of ‘Ohm’ and ends like a symphony with violins, trombones, saxophones, cello and baritone in ‘Before We Run’, treading a lot of different ground along the way.

‘Stupid Things’ demonstrates the band’s unsurpassed ability to grab clashing sounds and unify them flawlessly. It begins like a war between two siblings – one a soft guitar riff, the other a rocking bit of drum noise.

It should never work, but they mesh into a genius resolution so seamlessly that it makes you feel guilty for ever doubting it.

If you have yet to please your ears with Yo La Tengo, this is as good a place to start as any.

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MESSED-UP CLASSICS: How to be a hot mess

by Eva Sharpe Finlayson Mess is an art form. Whether it’s filthy hair, ripped jeans, dirt smeared on a cheek or even the perfect amount of clothes on your floor, mess can be carefully balanced to create a look that falls right between “I don’t try too hard but I still look smokin’” and “I haven’t showered in a while”. Here are a few messy trends that will keep your style tantalisingly close to hobo while remaining chic.

Trend number one: Prints: For a year or so now, variations of block dressing have been consistently seen on and off the catwalk. Starting with Gucci in 2010, the trend has demonstrated consistent popularity. A new take on block dressing is the use of prints. Mary Katrantzou made everyday objects printed onto garments popular by using patterns such as flowers, art products and bank notes to decorate her beautifully structured pieces. Prints let the imagination wander, while giving it a direction to travel. Dion Lee’s designs are another example; creating garments printed with Rorschach-style inkblots, while Prada’s Men’s and Women’s fall winter collection ’12 drew upon the psychedelic prints of the 70s.

The different images displayed in one outfit can portray a myriad of emotions and ideas, but like the inkblots in a Rorschach test, the meaning of clothes you wear will change depending on the viewer. Prints draw attention to changes in our emotional state; mismatching or corresponding prints can be likened to mood swings. Prints that herald past times create nostalgia, as they invite us to consider where they are situated historically. Wearing prints is fun; you can mix colours, shapes, or match them together.

Whether it’s geometric and stripes, all in one paisley or a flower-bomb costume, when it comes to prints, let yourself go and get loopy!

clothing, recycled fabrics and deconstructed garments all have value, and are beautiful in a dishevelled way. In Comme Des Garcon’s Women’s s\s ’12 collection, the designer placed squashed tin cans (made in collaboration with artist Graham Hudson) on his model’s heads, making them look like deconstructed Christmas trees. Revamping and taking apart fashion items is a beautiful midway point in design. It demonstrates how a garment can disintegrate or change while giving insight to the initial building process; through pulling it apart, you can envisage how it was put together. Second hand clothing shows decay, age and use that gives clothing a well-worn character that is difficult to recreate brand new. Hardier fabrics such as leather, denim, and silk age beautifully, revealing stress lines and holes that are signs of familiarity. Unstitching hemlines or fraying adds texture to fabric and creates new dimensions to ‘dated’ clothes. Buy second hand or deconstruct something you already have. Appreciate the beauty in the break down and save some moolah while you are at it.

Trend number three: Trend number 3: Deconstruct and recycle: The word ‘new’ is contentious in the world of fashion. Clothes aren’t always new, since even if they have just been sewn, they are frequently revamped versions of earlier garments or styles. As such, secondhand

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White: Nothing is messier than white. While this ‘non’ colour alludes to a fresh aesthetic, youth and a carefree attitude (think Picnic at Hanging Rock), such romantic notions of white garments do not last long among the mess and tumble of the real world; an element that perhaps only enhances the

romanticism and delicacy of the colour.

The innocence attributed to white garments makes ill doers all the more eager to mess you up! Ask yourself: would you ever wear white when eating spaghetti Bolognese, on a first date, rock climbing, with dark nipples, or to a game of laser tag? Unless you find a way to secrete Napisan from your glands, white is not the best colour to wear to the above events. That is, if you want your garments to stay white. Once you admit defeat, a whole new attitude can be embraced. Allow yourself to be a stained mess: intentionally rub dirt on a brand new pair of converse chucks, embrace the cheerful beer stains on a silk blouse and don’t let the ends of blonde hair turning green from chlorine bother you.

Trend number four: The ‘I just woke up’ look: This one is the simplest. If you can pull it off, you’ll save a significant amount of time and can be as slovenly as you please. To achieve this grungy, nonchalant style, follow these simple steps. Firstly, wake up. Roll over. Give a cursory glance to the floordrobe beneath you, and grab whatever is nearest. Sniff your selection to ensure it smells better than your little brother’s bedroom, and check that your bum and chest are covered. DO NOT BRUSH YOUR HAIR. If it’s cold outside, choose some extra layers at random. Shoes are optional.

However you decide to go about making yourself a hot mess, go hard; and remember, it always comes out in the wash.

In 2010, the Guinness book of World Records removed the category for longest dreadlock. The official statement described the difficulty in measuring the authenticity of the locks because of the possibility of expert re-attachment and extension of individual locks.

BC+Y UNWG1157 CRICOS Provider Code 00126G

Welcome to our Centenary celebrations.

What would you like to achieve?

2013 is a great time to be a student at the State’s World Top 100 university because we’re celebrating all year long.

This year we will showcase our proud history and share our vision for the next century.

We invite you, our students and the heart of our University, to join in the celebrations and help make UWA’s 100th birthday one to remember.

From the reimagined Orientation experience, to Centenary-themed public lectures, to one of the biggest Open Days we’ve planned, the list of activities is always growing.

UWA will also be spending more time in regional WA, giving back to the communities that we have been connected with over much of our history. And your Guild has many exciting events and exhibitions planned for 2013 as well.

We hope you enjoy being a part of our Centenary and will contribute to making it an unforgettable year. For details visit centenary.uwa.edu.au

BEST DYSFUNCTIONAL ANIMATED FAMILIES

by Alex Griffin Hey Arnold!

Nickelodeon 1996-2004 Arnold Footballhead’s parents vanished on an expedition, leaving him with his grandparents in a boarding house in downtown Brooklyn.

His grandparents are pretty strange (Grandpa beat up Hitler and Grandma is totes down for late night turtle rescue missions), but the people rooming in their tenement who form the rest of Arnold’s ‘family’ take the cake. There’s an insane Irish chubbychaser explosives expert, a Vietnamese immigrant who works in a Spanish restaurant (Senor Chang, anyone?), a completely fish out of water Single Female Lawyer, and Mr. Smith, who is never seen. Last but not least, there’s Oskar Kokoshka, the illiterate, Czech con artist who makes maybe the best case against going to Eastern Europe since Chernobyl.

Despite a heap of animosity and bickering, there’s a lot of love; when Grandpa wants to sell the boarding house to buy a condo,

they all band together to change his mind, and they manage to win a quiz show against a nuclear family. One lesson you get from Hey Arnold goes along the lines of family being what you make it, but there’s also a lot about how diversity isn’t something you just tolerate or accept: it’s also fun as hell.

Archer FX 2009There are no lessons in Archer. Dysfunction is bad in most places, but at the top of this spy agency, it usually ends up in stitched-up penises and home movies called Terms of Enrampagement. For Mallory, the secret to running ISIS is the same as it is for parenting: “negative reinforcement.” So, her son Sterling has to take a baby to a murder and speculate about whether his father is the head of the KGB or Gene Krupka. She also liked him better when he had cancer. Unsurprisingly, Sterling is a bit damaged – his skirt-chasing makes the fellas of Mad Men look like starchy bores they really, truly are. I hate Mad Men.

Angry Beavers Nickelodeon 1998-2001 Forced to move out of their folks’ since a new pair of beaver twins have arrived, they strike out by themselves while constantly striking out at eachother. Dag is an moronic, hyperactive flibbertigibbet who tries to blow up the beaver equivalent of Woodstock, while Norb is such a know-it-all spoilsport he breaks the news to Dag that they’re actually cartoons (we don’t know how that turns out because the episode never aired. Must have been a real bummer.) The trials they endure are manifold – Norb has a substance abuse problem (chocolate), they lose their fur, suffer damnesia. There are good times too, though, like meeting their wrestler hero El Grapadura. If, like me, you’ve ever been a twin brother, Angry Beavers hits on the blend of love, frustration and cruelty of the experience perfectly; check the episode where Dag realizes Norb is taller than he is and you might explode.

A SHORT MUSING ON THE CUMSHOT

by Lexington Steel The ‘cumshot’ is as much an icon of modern pornography as the Southern Cross tattoo of the quintessential bogan; both of them occur on odd places, both of them say unflattering things about the recipient, and both of them are accompanied by the same overdramatised clichés every time one casts their eyes on them. While the recipient of a cum-shot is usually massaging the ego of a virginal pre-teen viewer using their father’s laptop, the recipient of a Southern Cross tattoo will usually be pontificating from their Centrelink-funded high horse about just how full Australia is. Unfortunately, Australia is yet to see porn stars riot in Cronulla.

This, however, is tangential to the crux of the problem, as people who rely on cumshots and tattoos both represent the worst of their

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respective sectors. Every porn director on the face of the planet seems to feel the need to include the cum-shot to ‘legitimise’ their porno, no matter how inexplicable or pointless it is.

Even Little Lucy who just passed her driving test by giving the examiner a blowjob in a very public carpark still wants it all over her face for her parents to see.

Cum-shots have developed from being groundbreaking acts of impotent, revenge-driven female subjugation performed as one-fingered salutes to second-wave feminists, to now being much akin to a Samuel L. Jackson role in an action movie. Having originally been a scared, territorial response to a changing world and its implications for the porn industry, the use of the cum-shot is now a culturally outdated artefact that, like still-in-use segregated toilets in the deep south, has unfortunate insinuations that make it awkward for everyone.

The cumshot is simply so overused and out of place as a closing scene in mainstream pornography, that not only does it not even make sense for it to be there, it simply isn’t satisfying to watch. Which leaves those of us tired with the cum-shot no alternatives but lesbian porn, putting up with it, or writing articles in university newspapers attempting to instigate change in an industry that will shape our children if it hasn’t already shaped us.

The cumshot has a place, but only if we stop treating it as a given and instead find ways to revel in its bizarre cultural context and its disgusting, hilarious result. So gentlemen, next time you don the handy-cam or GoPro and opt for a bit of exhibitionism, go the extra mile.

A face perched inches from the shaft is not a difficult target. Hitting that same face from a room away? Now we’re talking.

2012 VIDEO GAMES IN REVIEW Katawa Shoujo Snoop Lion Independent PC/Mac

Hotline Miami Furious George Devolver Digital PC

I was apprehensive when a friend suggested I try Katawa Shoujo – it sounded like some cartoon bullshit, developed by people from 4chan about seducing crippled anime girls. I only took him up on it when he physically came and installed it onto my computer. Playing it was a unique experience, although not necessarily a good one.

The level structure of Hotline Miami is notable for how easy it is to follow: you enter a nondescript house, confront the murderous gang-members that inhabit it, and then proceed to mercilessly butcher every one of them. Then you leave. There is more going on, if you look for it, and there is always a sense that not everything is as it seems; unreliable narrators, madness, paranoia and alternate timelines mean that it’s never possible to have the game completely figured out. This allows for some interesting commentary (if you feel like listening) on common views toward violence and narratives that either do or don’t justify it.

Katawa Shoujo is more like a visual novel than a game in the traditional sense. A hybrid between book and video game, you decide at key moments how the otherwise linear story will progress.

Playing an angsty high school student with a heart problem shipped to a school for the disabled, opportunities arise for relationships with your disabled classmates. Sure, it can feel like a creepy premise, but it’s offset by deeply fleshed out characters and the fact that, deep down, we’re all the same.

This is what makes the experience worth it – the art is well done, the music is excellent and the writing is mostly stellar. Be warned though: this game has the ability to make you feel like absolute shit once you’ve finished. It’s an experience that you won’t soon forget, and will likely leave you feeling empty for a few days.

The game plays from a top-down, floor-plan perspective, rendered in a gloriously colourful, pixelated form that’s reminiscent of the games you could find on the SNES back in the 90s. The action is fast, desperate and satisfying to a worrying degree. Matching the visuals, the game has one of the best soundtracks ever made, full of pounding synth beats bringing feelings of sickness and paranoia, and that make you lose track of time whilst performing your gruesome massacre.

Though Hotline Miami only lasts a few hours, I guarantee that it will be an experience that will intrigue you while you play it, and stick in your mind once you are finished.

Spec Ops: The Line Blair Hurley 2K Games PC/PS3/ XBOX360

Mass Effect 3 Simon Donnes EA PC/PS3/XBOX360/WiiU Back in the saddle for a fistful of cash, Mass Effect 3 is a godawful mess. A far cry from the series origins as a launch title Bioware RPG for the 360, this third outing is more akin to a 60s space themed dancefloor than the “thrilling conclusion” that was promised.

Marred by an ADD design philosophy and the removal of any sense that one’s choices in the past had meant anything, ME3 re-wrote the book on what it means to shit on the dinnerplate of your childhood friend and serve the walk-in off the street foie gras.

The ending deserves its own mention. For a series where the selling point has always been: “Your choices in situations matter and have an effect on the world IN SPACE”, this could barely be done worse. I won’t spoil it, because most who are reading this will have already played it and not want to be reminded of it. On the off chance that you missed ME3, know that it is a clusterfuck of canon-violations and deus ex machina, and that you should avoid it at all costs.

Possibly one of the most overrated games ever.

Many seemed to treat this title—one of the first, lately, it seems—as some sort of breath of fresh air from the endless, mindless, success of first person shooters from which we seem to be suffering. The gameplay is mediocre, and, against what the press would have you believe, the game’s ‘war is hell’ message is delivered embarrassingly unambiguously. There have been better theme-driven first person shooters.

Spelunky Blair Hurley Independent PC/XBOX Arcade A throwback to the good old 8-bit era (Spelunker), this game is a platforming dungeon-crawler with randomly generated levels. The magic of Derek Yu’s game is how it rejects hitherto universally accepted video game logic: for example, we’ve all been trained to think an item surrounded by a great number of enemies equates to something of great reward, but with Spelunky, that’s not necessarily the case. The adaptation you undergo to cope with the counter-intuitiveness of this game is immensely gratifying.

The fact that Yu has managed to so successfully tailor the chaos of Spelunky’s random level generation is testament to this guy’s genius.

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Unveiled at WA Museum

by Kat Gillespie The first thing that occurs to me as I enter the museum is that I’ve never even been to a wedding. I’m almost as unqualified to write about weddings as I am to write about fashion, and yet I am about to view and then write about 65 elaborate historical wedding dresses and accessories. This is not my game.

Even worse is that I’ve decided to brave the whole thing alone, quickly finding myself the only person in the room not surrounded by a gaggle of champagne swigging female friends making Sex and the City references.

My mind begins to cloud up with doubt. Am I into this? Is anyone? As I am swept into a room filled with sepia photographs of unsmiling Italian proxy brides, it seems too late to reconsider. A staff member cheerfully informs me that the exhibition has its own iPhone app. This is all too much. I yearn for the taxidermic animals on the ground floor.

Unveiled, currently showing at the Western Australian Museum, is a collection of wedding fashions sourced from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. With wedding outfits from the nineteenth century to present day, it promises to ‘relive 200 years of romance and glamour.’ My bus route has driven past a billboard advertising the exhibition for the past six months, so in my mind it has received a lot of hype.

The part wedding expo, part museum exhibit vibe seems odd at first; odd, and a little unappealing. I’m certainly unenthused by the optional $60 ‘high tea package’, where museum goers can enjoy petit fours and sparkling wine before examining some 19th century wedding dresses and watching footage of Kate Middleton and Prince William kissing on a balcony. This has clearly been marketed as an all-girls day out.

The collection itself shoots a little higher though, aiming to take the viewer on a wedding fashion journey through time with a focus on how the design of a wedding garment is often a good reflection of its wider historical context. The collection is all about the clothes themselves, with only vague information given about their wearer.

The journey begins with garments worn by 19th century brides – many of them simple colourful Sunday church dresses designed to be re-used. Post Queen Victoria, dresses slowly become more and more critical to the wedding ceremony. By the time we hit the

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late twentieth century, they have become an expensive and elaborate focal point. The early twenty first century then throws some wedding curveballs – to illustrate this, the exhibition showcases two designer suits worn in a civil union marriage, a wedding dress worn by an actress in a popular television advertisement for a car brand, and a few celebrity wedding frocks.

It’s the comparison drawn between historical and modern day weddings that makes the exhibition fascinating. The curators have put effort into depicting a gradual shift towards more extravagant but also more disposable wedding culture over time. A definite hallmark of this is the gorgeous violet Vivienne Westwood gown worn by Dita Von Teese for her wedding to Marilyn Manson. Von Teese’s dress is a stunning piece - it is however depressing to recall that its staying power has been far greater

their historical context in a way one might not think possible of an item of clothing.

Students are perhaps unlikely to be into wedding planning or wedding culture in general, but you might still find it interesting to contemplate whether just as a 1940s dress made out of curtain fabric reflects wartime austerity, or a 1960s minidress reflects female emancipation, a 2005 designer dress worn by a celebrity burlesque performer at her wedding to a gothic rock star might reflect something about your own culture. If that kind of thing is your jam, I recommend this exhibition.

“Am I into this? Is anyone?”

than that of the relationship whose marriage ceremony it was designed for (Ms Teese and Manson lasted about a year - the Westwood is still going strong).

If you want to boil it down, Unveiled is a museum exhibition featuring wedding dresses worn by Sarah Jessica Parker and Gwen Stefani. This, combined with some fairly outrageous ticket prices and the whole champagne and cupcakes atmosphere, makes the whole thing rather easy to get cynical about. Yet the spectacle of Western wedding culture is undoubtedly deserving of the detailed study undertaken to curate this collection. Aside from the fact that many of these dresses are beautiful artworks, they also reflect

picture: yutika donohue

MONAing about my holiday

by Simon Donnes “Oh, and you’re going to want to check out the digestive system he has there. It poos every day at 2.”’ Georgia paused to sip her tea. “‘It’s kept nice and regular, you see.” The chocolate brownie I was holding suddenly became far less appealing.

I’d been in Tasmania three days and was thoroughly unimpressed. One can only see so many pristine, untapped nature reserves on a family holiday before you start pining for a chainsaw and some smog. A promised land of culinary delights, Tasmania had so far resembled a slightly larger Margaret River, which, while not bad in itself, paled kinda in comparison to the metropolitan bustle Melbourne. Tasmania had some explaining to do.

However, one landmark had caught my eyethe Museum of Old and New Art, or MONA for short. A privately owned gallery/museum with rave reviews from anyone who’d been and a cryptic, indecipherable website, MONA promised to be a lot more interesting than any carbon neutral vineyard.

Georgia, a long lost family friend, had caught up with us to play tour guide. She gleefully explained the background of the facility and the man behind it. Owned by David Walsh, a local who had made his fortune betting on the ponies, MONA stands as a sort of middle finger to, well, everything. Self described as being both self-loving and self-hating, Walsh has a reputation and an air of mystery to rival Willy Wonka.

Built on a reasonably sized outcrop-cumisland in the poorer suburbs of outer Hobart, MONA’s very location is stickin’ it to the man – convention would dictate such an expensive gallery be surrounded by only the most prestigious fellow buildings. Georgia tells me it’s where it is because David didn’t want to make everyone else happy.

Not all of this is fact, however. Georgia has never met David Walsh. Most of what I hear about him is less fact and more ‘word about town’. The sheer mystery that surrounds him extends into his wild and wonderful building as well.

“He’s got this system where you tell the exhibit if you liked it or not on the little iPods they give you. When something gets too liked, he takes it out. [He] Doesn’t like people being too comfortable.”

Given how the rest of my time in Tasmania had gone, I was suspicious of a hype-beast with no claws. However, MONA is everything it’s made out to be and more. I spent my time there viewing Dark Chocolate castings of suicide bombers and pig skins tattooed with murals of Osama Bin Laden alongside Basquiats and Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagi. The electronic guide system gives you a ton of background info, everything flows well and it’s generally a damn enjoyable experience.

At least one part of Walsh’s legend is true: he doesn’t care for the popular. Rather than fill the space with the most fashionable names his vast fortune would allow, he obtains works that grab him. It’s an interesting, if not widely

subscribed to concept that makes MONA as unpredictable as it is original.

The unsung aspect of the museum/gallery is the space itself. The entrance is a seemingly endless descent away from the world and into a dark, cold grotto. The use of lighting is masterful; sometimes, it’s almost completely black, and I often had to tentatively test the ground in the room ahead for floor space lest I fall into oblivion. It seems foolish in writing, but when Walsh describes MONA as a “twisted, adult Disneyland” he’s not far from the mark.

Hemingway wrote in his memoirs of hunger sharpening the senses, noting that he best appreciated the artwork in Parisian galleries at his most famished. While hunger didn’t once cross my mind at MONA, the pain in my feet certainly did. Shoes of no particular discomfort proved to be agony in the long concrete halls, the gaze grabbing power of so many works holding me in place for long periods. The sheer precision of everything else in this place has me wonder if the physical discomfort patrons experience is not very much intended. How much of the David Walsh legend is true, remains to be seen.

“He has these little tabs called ‘Art wank’ with a little picture of a penis, you click on them and they’ll say something like ‘this is shit but I bought it because it cost a lot of money.’” One of Georgia’s statements echoes in my mind as I hand over $80 for an exhibition book in the gift shop.

I know people who have flown to Tasmania just for MONA. I can thoroughly recommend you do the same.

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So, ummm, what is this?

by Hamish Hobbs

Duchamp’s Garbage and the Mess of Contemporary Art Maybe the most alienating experience I have faced in the joyously pretentious world of student art appreciation occurred as I walked happily around a little Perth gallery.

I was still feeling a lingering glow from the fact that it was cold enough outside to justify wearing a winter coat, and I could safely pretend I was a European connoisseur checking out the local edgy boutiques instead of a guy who had twenty minutes to kill in Perth and wanted to spend it somewhere warm. As I walked softly through the dimly lit gallery, approaching the first piece in this exhibition, my eyes widened and my imagination flared. Hands folded and feet apart, I prepared myself ready to weather the waves of emotion I knew would wash over me as I basked in the presence of Art. As my gaze fell on this piece, somehow the great waves of passion failed to materialise. I was looking at hair on a stick.

Not a photograph, painting, or sculpture, just to clarify. Just a very standard twiglet with a long strand of hair hanging from it, jutting out at me from its wall fastening and daring me to question it. “What you lookin’ at?” it seemed to say. “Go on, you just try and call me out. Everyone will see just how lame you are.” The twiglets dotting the near empty room stared me down, making me feel ashamed for ever questioning their artistic virtue. Before I was caught out as the artistic imposter that I was, I quickly bowed my head and gallery shuffled my way out of the room.

I’m going to be honest. I still don’t get it. I don’t know why it was there. I don’t even remember the artist’s name. It may well be that the artist had some deep personal connection to that twiglet, or that it was a nuanced modern commentary on race relations in a post-globalist world. All I know is that all I felt when I saw the twiglet was a potent combination of disappointment and inadequacy. Was I just too dumb or uncultured to get it? Quite possibly. Perhaps I would have felt the same thing seeing Marcel Duchamp’s upturned urinal when it was first unveiled, or Felix Gonzalles-Torres’ unstructured pile of candy. Both are not exactly what we are programmed to think

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Marcel Duchamp had a female alter ego: Rrose Selavy. The name was a pun on ‘eros, c’est la vie’, or ‘sex, such is life)’. At first, the Catholic Duchamp wanted to adopt a Jewish identity, but he found that changing gender was easier.

of as art. The biggest difference, as far as I can see, between my liking of Torres’ and Duchamp’s work and the quiet tide of selfloathing and dislike which washes over me when I confront this twiglet, is the fact that I have been taught how to understand the toilet and the candy.

Thanks to good old VISA1000 – a first year visual arts unit here at UWA – I already had a bit of an idea what I was meant to be seeing in those pieces before I actually came across them. Particularly with Torres’ work, the backstory was the only thing which made me understand what was going on. Torres’ piece itself is just a fairly lost looking pile of multicoloured wrapped candies piled in a corner of the Chicago Art Institute’s floor, which viewers are invited to take and eat. However, it was actually designed as a portrait to Torres’ lover, who died of AIDS related illness. At the start of the day, candies are refilled to match Torres’ lovers exact ideal body weight. Throughout the course of the day the gradually shrinking pile represents his weight loss as he fought with his illness.

The refilling of the candies every day is supposed to grant his dead lover with a form of metaphorical eternal life. Perhaps it is the soppy gay man in me, but once I knew all of this I found myself looking at the candies in a whole new light. No such luck with the twiglet, however. Unnamed and undescribed, I was left to my own perplexed devices with that unhelpful bit of timber. To this day I am haunted by that single hair waving at me, tauntingly.

This is what I think is the problem with a lot of contemporary art. More specifically, I’m talking about the art that many people, or at least I, most strongly associate with contemporary art, particularly contemporary sculptures; art that draws its inspiration and builds from the 20th century modernist movements of minimalism and abstract expressionism. Both of these movements rely on nonrepresentational techniques; minimalism attempts to achieve a purity of form through simplification, and abstract expressionism a purity of emotion through abstraction. In many cases this art has become so derivative that you are unlikely to understand where it came from without a detailed map, because they work in systems of references that may not relate at all to the world as we see it. These works try and

break down artistic convention in an effort to get at pure forms or emotions and connect directly and strongly with the viewer. Of course, these are perfectly valid pursuits, but if you don’t know what the piece is doing or why, you’re stuck. You don’t know if you’re meant to be just appreciating the pretty shapes or nodding sagely at the witty pop culture reference. You end up balls deep in cheeky twiglets, lost and confused. And this is where I feel that many people are at with contemporary art. It is sometimes beautiful, but often alienating. Yet we continue to fund massive projects for public works, without making much effort to make them accessible to the public at large.

Some of the most famous works have sometimes had to fight for their place outside of the trashcan. In one particularly prominent scandal in London a new work by Damien Hirst, the prominent member of the 90’s Young British Artists, was ‘cleaned up’ by an unknowing cleaner, ending up in the gallery dustbins awaiting garbage collection.

The piece had been designed on the spur of the moment at a launch party for the new exhibition the night before, and consisted of a collection of used ashtrays, newspapers, empty beer bottles and paint tins that were strewn around the gallery and designed to replicate a messy artist’s studio. Perhaps unsurprisingly Emmanuel Asare, the gallery cleaner, saw the new ‘artwork’ and was filled with despair at all the mess, promptly clearing it away into large black bin bags.

Similarly at the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund a cleaner mistook the deliberate puddle of paint on Martin Kippenberger’s When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling as a nasty stain and dutifully scrubbed it away, arguably removing tens of thousands of dollars of value from the million dollar piece. On the same note, here in Australia just a few years ago an original Banksy was whitewashed by some unsuspecting council cleaners instructed to clean all of the unwanted graffiti from the streetscape, painting over what was believed to be Melbourne’s last remaining Banksy original.

These incidents raise some important questions for contemporary art. You can very easily go down one road and suggest that this art is being mistaken for rubbish for the very simple reason that it is rubbish. You can look at the Masterpieces of Michelangelo

and Rodin and wonder why Hirst or Kippenberger didn’t just sculpt something beautiful or sublime. Alternatively, you can suggest that these works are mistaken for rubbish because of the sad ignorance of the general public, their tragic dismissal and lack of engagement with contemporary art.

But both of these roads leave something to be desired. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these incidents is the fact that they don’t lie outside of the artistic world.

Asare’s belief that Hirst’s work was more trash than art was a legitimate artistic opinion, but he was forced to exercise it unknowingly and embarrassingly because he wasn’t an insider from last night’s gallery party. The Hirst scandal caused a flurry of critical responses in the media, and while many critics lamented the ignorance of Emmanuel Asare, numerous others praised his clearing away of the work as a legitimate artistic judgement of the work as a piece of junk. Ever since Duchamp’s Fountain, one of the central motifs of contemporary art has been a playful pushing at the boundaries of what can be called art, and at some point we are allowed to draw a line for ourselves.

There is even an entire artistic movement called Stuckism centred upon the rejection of Postmodernist works such as those of Damien Hirst as legitimate art. Everyone can be a part of this artistic dialogue.

It’s not unusual to hear a vaguely new age feeling counterargument suggesting you shouldn’t box people in by telling them what they are supposed to think about an artwork. I can understand that. Somehow, though, I feel like we need to at least erect a little placard which says “We don’t want to box you in, but dude, let this artwork make you feel however you want to feel”. Then at least people will know that there isn’t some hidden context they are just too vanilla to understand. Then as people walk past the Perth Cactus and feel nonplussed or maybe even ecstatic, they will at least know that they aren’t alone in not completely getting it and have the satisfaction of an informed opinion. Just one little placard or pamphlet could have freed me from the evil gaze of my hairy twiglet. I don’t feel like art needs to be an insider’s world where prior knowledge is assumed and we uninitiated are set adrift to fend for themselves. But then again, I probably just don’t get it.

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by Kat Gillespie First up, it’s important to remember that you have enrolled at a small tertiary institution in a large mining town. Be a tad realistic with your expectations. The arts scene here has to be sought out, and even doing an actual Arts degree won’t help you as much as you’d think. The general atmosphere around the Arts building (generally reeking of academic apathy, hunger for a Broadway kebab, and vague interest in the band Pavement) is not one particularly conducive to a thriving arts community. UWA itself is somewhat to blame for this. If you’re interested in the arts, or studying them, expect the university to treat you as one would the weird cousin at a family Christmas dinner – the one who is necessarily indulged rather than excommunicated entirely.

All of this can be worked to your advantage.

Don’t get too attached to your units or even your major – they’re pretty likely to get cut, anyway. Instead, dedicate yourself to making friends who share your interests. Join a theatre club, spontaneously start a slam poetry competition on the Oak Lawn, or visit an art gallery exhibition between tutorials.

If you are prepared to look around campus, there are plenty of avenues for creative expression. Here are some of them.

PANTOMIME SOCIETY Affectionately known as ‘panto’, this lovable troupe of campus personalities puts on pantomimes every semester. Panto is low on budget and high on internet inspired humour – if you enjoy hashtagging your words out loud, this may be the society for you. Panto productions, at their best, are low brow and hilarious and emphasis audience participation and heckling.

Sign up if: you lack confidence in your pantomimic abilities - everyone who auditions for panto gets a part Avoid if: you are in any way affiliated with the University Dramatic Society (hashtag rivalry) UNIVERSITY DRAMATIC SOCIETY UDS is a theatre company run by students, offering a space for actors, dancers, singers and writers to help put on large scale productions. There is also opportunity to work behind the scenes, with props and costume management, or in promotion. The

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society has been the home of UWA’s theatre geeks since 1917, and at the very least signing up for membership will get you discounted tickets to the shows.

Sign up if: you got excited when you saw the Dolphin Theatre for the first time Avoid if: you have a penchant for pantomime PELICAN It is entirely possible that you see room for improvement within these very pages. You could complain to a Guild politician about it, shake your head and continue browsing news.com, or perhaps get involved with the paper yourself. Take us down from the inside! The Pelican office is a hotbed of pseudo-intellectual debate, good times and great music. You could get involved for these reasons as well. Writer’s nights are held every month – look for dates in G-News.

Sign up if: you like getting free tickets to things Avoid if: you were considered popular and well adjusted in high school TROVE Trove is an online creative writing publication edited and written by students, under the guidance of the school of social and cultural studies. If you have any interest in creative writing, or in editing and publishing, this may be the gig for you. The online nature of the journal means submitted works can range from poetry and prose to multimedia performance works, which makes for a unique interactive reading experience. Submissions are accepted year round.

Sign up if: you have a Microsoft word file saved under the title ‘firstnovel.docx’ Avoid if: you’re ‘not really into’ reading books

Sign up if: you like free booze and sushi Avoid if: you’re not prepared to fake just a little bit of art world knowledge in order to impress the person standing next to you

LAWRENCE WILSON ART GALLERY Walking around an art gallery is a perfect way to spend those awkward one hour breaks between classes. Bring a friend or prospective lover and enjoy the varied series of exhibitions the gallery puts on through the year. A highlight is the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, Australia’s largest specialist collection of women’s art. Look out on facebook for regular exhibition openings and ‘art night’ events .

OTHER CLUBS AND SOCIETIES There are many smaller clubs at UWA catering to a variety of niche interests. Some of these include the University Writer’s Club, Dance UWA, the UWA Film Society, UWA Juggling Club, Philosophy Club, Photography Club and the UWA Society for Creative Anachronism.

If you can’t find the specific group of misfits you’re looking for, why not form your own guild affiliated club? The UWA Blanket Weaving Collective is yours for the founding.

Randolph Stow wrote two novels before he graduated from UWA at the age of 21. He was also a law dropout!

picture: victoria hann

THE ARTS AT UWA: A FRESHER GUIDE

BOOK REVIEWS J.K. Rowling: The Casual Vacancy Anna Curry Now, this is definitely for adults. We get our first “f**k” and “c**t” after 15 pages, and from there Rowling delves into heroin addiction, teenaged sex, domestic violence, self-harm and poverty. Despite the content, it is clear that Rowling is aiming for realism not sensationalism, and she undeniably achieves this.

Unlike the Harry Potters, this novel is engaging by virtue of its verisimilitude, not its extraordinariness.

The death of Barry Fairbrother is the catalyst for a series of feuds, dramas and intrigues which rattle the sleepy village of Pagford. The first chapter rapidly introduces an immensely complex web of characters, relationships and interactions that are all linked somehow to the late Mr. Fairbrother. The ease with which Rowling shifts her omniscient narration between these characters is a testament to her skill as a writer, and her insight into the truisms of human reactions, thoughts and feelings is quite extraordinary.

Rowling’s writing style is very easy to read, and was a delight for someone like me who gets a kick out of correct grammar usage. For Rowling’s only publication wholly divorced from the HP series, she’s done a pretty damn good job. Even if the subject matter doesn’t appeal to you, the maturity of the writing makes it worth a read.

Hannu Rajaniemi: The Fractal Prince Liam Dixon Hannu Rajaniemi is a Finnish physicist and mathematician who has turned to writing sci-fi in English. He writes with finesse in his second language, often employing the charming, unusual choice of phrases common to ESL authors, making his work lovely and markedly different to read. That is, if you can follow what he’s talking about: Hannu’s work falls solidly into the sub-category of ‘hard’ science fiction, and can be tough reading.

The Fractal Prince concerns the machinations of gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur, who travels the solar system pulling off heists and slowly attempting to appropriate the power of the Sobornost; a council of entities that, once human, now duplicate copies of their minds endlessly into robotic bodies, dealing in the downloaded and enslaved minds of those unlucky enough to get caught by them.

Hannu employs his knowledge as a physicist to go beyond hand-waving-science-words, and endeavours to make the fictional world seem plausible to anyone who cares to read the relevant wiki pages. This naturally makes the work less accessible, and the focus on exploring ideas in science fiction means less time is spent on the inner lives of his characters. Still, if you’re up for a bit of a mind-expanding experience, The Fractal Prince is an excellent book.

7.5/10

Best bit: The feeling of being in the hands of an author who really knows what she’s doing.

Worst bit: It’s not Harry Potter; without magic to spice it up, the novel can get a little dull in parts.

Read with: An English accent, for authenticity.

9/10 Best bit: Hannu is clearly well read and fiercely intelligent, and his work draws widely from classical literature, philosophy and modern science fiction.

Worst bit: Hannu’s use of rapid, unmarked POV changes, which can be confusing.

Read it with: The hardest stimulants at your disposal.

Nikki Stern: Not Your Ordinary Housewife Brad Griffin If you want to read about lots and lots of sex, this is the book for you. Even if you don’t, you should give it a go. Not Your Ordinary Housewife details the descent of a well-to-do girl from suburban Melbourne into the world of pornography, all at her lover’s urging. From the first chapter you get a sense of Stein’s young, naïve nature, but by the end, you can see how she evolved into a confident, assertive sexual deviant who is certain that with the skills at her disposal, she can titillate a nation.

My first thought about a porn star writing a memoir was that it would be all fluff – something akin to Paris Hilton producing her autobiography – but what Stein has produced is something far more telling and revealing. She manages to engross you in her world and engages you to sympathize with her plights.

The detail she pours in is staggering. It feels as if the horny housewife herself is right there next to you, whispering sweet nothings into your ear.

However, her constant flashbacks to snippets of conversation tend to jar and confuse the flow of the narrative. That aside, this is a well-written memoir by a truly unique Australian woman.

Grace Sumners: Grace Grows Elisa Thompson Grace Grows is a surprisingly pleasant read. We follow Grace, a highly-strung and all around ‘safe’ girl. In true chick lit form, her life is one of mediocrity; dependable boyfriend, steady office job, quirky friends and a healthy dose of daddy issues. Enter Tyler, a new to town boy/man with a budding music career. While Grace clings to her stable life, her encounters with this party-boy leave her reeling, and in a situation that is just so not part of her plan.

Sumners allows herself ample opportunity to fall into the Twilight-transparency of mediocre fiction: Grace has an editing job, a gay best friend, and the plain features of the ‘every girl’. But while Sumners boarders on too-familiar plot points and sickly sweet moments, she never pushes it too far. Instead, Grace’s story is rife with surprisingly believable misunderstandings and characters who could easily become caricatures but just don’t.

7.5/10 Best bit – Stein’s justification of her involvement in the porn industry as just something to pay the bills.

Worst bit - the explanation of Australian laws that barred certain types of media in different states it detracted from the pace.

Read it with - an open mind. It includes many very detailed scenes involving explicit sexual acts that may not be for the faint of heart.

7/10 Best bit: Effortlessly effective tear-jerking moments – I cried. Twice.

Worst bit: Sumner’s use of a Mary Sue word-enthusiast as her main character.

Read it with: Chocolate and tea – what else?

Grace Grows isn’t going to change your life. It offers no epiphanies or shockingly apt relationship advice. Rather, it is full of characters who made me smile, uncomfortable encounters that made me squirm and moments of sweetness that I (hardened, modern woman that I am) just couldn’t bring myself to hate.

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Getting to know the Perth Writers FesTIval

1. What’s the deal with Benjamin Law? He’s eye candy, can write a real page-turner, and delivers bon mots like blowjobs at a truck stop restroom. Law’s writing is recognizable for its clarity, intelligence, filthy humour, and eccentric anecdotes. While he sometimes flirts with navel-gazing, Law writes with a progressive earnestness and a well-developed instinct for story telling.

1. What’s the deal with Kate Grenville?

Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most and my high school’s least respected contemporary authors. She’s won the Orange and Man Booker prizes, and had the dubious honour of being added to the WACE text list. The theatre adaptation ofThe Secret River will be featured at Perth International Arts Festival this month.

Hugh Jackman wanted the film rights.

2. Hot mess or messed up?

Law is burning hot – he recently released his debut novel, is a television regular, released his second novel in quick succession and has just finished working on a TV adaptation of his first novel…

2. Hot mess or messed up?

My sixteen-year-old self would say, emphatically, no. The nation says yes.

3. Messiest career moment?

As a young, inner-city residing, lactoseintolerant, Twitter-using, Frankie-writing, homosensual, Law once had to publically debate Bob Katter, Australia’s own adaptation of Foghorn Leghorn.

3. Messiest career moment?

Getting in a tiff with angsty academicians for her “step-ladder” comment on the History Wars 4. Signature cocktail?

Dirty martini with gin and river water, muddled, frosted with strychnine

Zoe Kilbourn 4. Signature cocktail?

Cocktails? Bitch, please, let’s just do tequila body slams. They’re messy, slightly smutty, and will doubtlessly end in a hilarious, awkward or projectile-orientated conclusion.

Tom Reynolds

1. What’s the deal with Margaret Atwood?

Cards on the table: I don’t really know much about Margaret Atwood. But I read The Handmaid’s Tale for high school English Lit and, as a combination of feminist thought and dystopic theocratic science fiction, it was everything I’ve ever wanted in a novel. Atwood has been writing about kick-ass ladies and their struggles against the patriarchy in a staggering variety of styles since the late sixties, and in 1987 won the Arthur C. Clarke award for Handmaid (a pretty big deal).

2. Hot Mess or Messed Up? Did I mention feminism + dystopia? Hot mess.

Hot hot mess.

3. Messiest Career Moment?

Throughout her career Atwood has tried to distance herself from the ‘Science Fiction’ moniker, instead identifying her works as ‘Speculative Fiction’. She has referred to sci-fi as “talking squids in outer space” and her position reeks of the kind of elitism that motivates the divide between ‘graphic novels’ and ‘comics’, a desperate need to be considered serious literature and escape the connotations of poor craftsmanship and pulpiness associated with Science Fiction. Don’t go hating on sci-fi after being given the Arthur C. Clarke award, Margaret. Messy.

4. Signature Cocktail?

One part Grey Goose Vodka (for elitism) to two parts Homebrew Beer (for fightin’ the patriarchy via subversion of gender norms) finished with a dash of Maple Syrup (for being really really really Canadian). Best drunk whilst reading The Handmaid’s Tale, listening to The Thermals’ The Body, The Blood, The Machine, a sci-fi concept album about a similar theocratic dystopia and thinking ‘this shit is totally sci-fi, what are you on about Marge’.

Hugh Manning

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1. What’s the deal with Michelle de Kretser?

Originally from Sri Lanka, Michelle de Kretser moved to Australia at the age of 14. She was educated in both Melbourne and Paris and has written four novels in her lifetime. She’s won several awards for her work, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her writing infuses life with a certain classic romance normally unparalleled by contemporary fiction.

1. Whats the deal with Andy Griffiths?

Author. Rockstar. Saviour of the Planet. If you’re the average Pelican reader, you grew up reading Griffiths’, you have three arms and half an arts degree. Responsible for the Just series, the Bad Books and The Day My Bum Went Psycho trilogy, Griffiths makes his living writing about the hijinks of his youth, with a healthy dose of artistic license.

2. Hot mess or messed up?

Dude, Griffiths is the bomb. One of the early Just books had him posing as a Roman clad in toga while that scoundrel Terry Denton caricatured him punching out Mike Tyson in the inside cover. Alpha as Fuck.

3. Messiest career moment?

Not like I’m bragging or anything, but this particular Pelicano had Griffiths sit in his year 5 classroom chair when he came to my school to shoot the shit. Best day ever.

4. Signature cocktail?

Double Vodka, straight up, no ice. A timeless drink displaying both taste and a knowledge of the most cost effective way to get messed up.

2. Hot mess or messed up?

Her first novel, The Rose Grower, is an endless stream of emotive imagery describing the mess that is first love and politics - very hot.

3. Messiest career moment?

De Kretser’s idealism strongly contrasts some of the historical events she has decided to write about (like the French revolution) - this can work for some while leaving others behind with a mess of impressions.

4. Signature cocktail?

De Kretser is like a glass of red wine: internationally appreciated and perfect for a mild summer evening.

Sandra Raub

1. What is the deal with David Marr?

David Marr is Australian journalism’s Renaissance Man. Through a 30 year career, he has glided from investigative reporter to newspaper editor to famed biographer. Most famous as the former host of ABC’S Media Watch and as an author of several controversial books such as Dark Victory and Panic!

2. Hot mess or messed up?

Hot mess. While some see him as a poster boy for leftist elitism, few journalists are as respected as Marr.

3. Messiest career moment.

Marr’s Power Trip: the Political Journey of Kevin Rudd was a key factor in the former PM’s downfall.

4. The David Marr cocktail 1 ounce of Woodford Reserve Bourbon, 1 ounce of coffee, combine in a highball glass and serve.

Richard Ferguson

Simon Donnes

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