Pelican Edition 5 - odyssey

odyssey

B o o l a d a r l u n g | E d i t i o n 5 | Vo l u m e 9 1 | 2 0 2 0 | E s t . 1 9 2 9

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guild elections

POLLING & VOTING INFO MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT!

Polling for Guild Elections will be held on the week starting Monday 14th September. For students not able to attend polling booths, Postal Vote applications are now available on our website.

DON’T DELAY! APPLY FOR YOUR POSTAL VOTE NOW: www.uwastudentguild.com/elections

and allow enough time to receive & return your ballot papers by the deadline.

Postal Vote applications must be received by the Returning Officer, Mary Petrou, by 4pm, Friday 11th September.

Ballot papers will be mailed out to approved applicants and completed ballot papers must be received by the Returning Officer by 5pm, Thursday 24th September 2020.

Visit our website www.uwastudentguild.com/elections for more information on the positions available and the election process or contact elections@guild.uwa.edu.au.

CONTENTS EDITION 5 - ODYSSEY PAGE SEVEN: CAMPUS NEWS ‘Campus Story’ by Nicholas Warrand PAGES EIGHT AND NINE: CAMPUS NEWS ‘Campus Updates’ by Courtney Withers PAGES TEN AND ELEVEN: TECHNOLOGY AND GAMING ‘Social Media: Past, Present & Future’ by Kyle Pauletto PAGES TWELVE AND THIRTEEN: LIFESTYLE ‘Shocking Travel Stories!’ curated by Francesca De Nuccio PAGES FOURTEEN AND FIFTEEN: SPORT ‘Compassion and Cash; or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AFL’s Schedule’ by Campbell Williamson PAGES SIXTEEN AND SEVENTEEN: MUSIC ‘Ticket to Ride: A Japanese Beatles Odyssey’ by Susannah Wong PAGES EIGHTEEN AND NINETEEN: COMEDY ‘Letters to the Editors’ by various PAGE TWENTY: ARTS AND DESIGN ‘An Odyssey of the (He)art: Interview with Jennifer Comrie’ by Abigail Macleod PAGE TWENTY-ONE: ART Untitled by Jennifer Comrie PAGE TWENTY-TWO: ART ‘Farm’ by Hnin Ei ‘Hidden Forest’ by Hnin Ei PAGE TWENTY-THREE: ART Untitled by Pauline Wong PAGE TWENTY-FOUR: ART ‘The Painter’ by Mia Davis PAGE TWENTY-FIVE: ART, LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING Untitled by Felix King ‘Peregrination’ by Ellie Fisher PAGE TWENTY-SIX: ART Untitled by Calvin Thoo

PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT: ART, LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING ‘First Flight’ by Elaine Hanlon ‘Metamorphosis’ by Anonymous PAGE TWENTY-NINE: FILM ‘The Way’ by Amy Papasergio PAGES THIRTY AND THIRTY-ONE: POLITICS ‘Clive Palmer: The Shifting Fortunes of a Billionaire Politician’ by Jack Logan PAGES THIRTY-TWO AND THIRTY-THREE: ECONOMICS AND FINANCE ‘The Graduate and the Odyssey: Ending Job Insecurity through Modern Monetary Theory’ by Charles Fedor PAGES THIRTY-FOUR AND THIRTY-FIVE: LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING ‘An Ode to the Corporate Ladder’ by Jasmine Peart PAGES THIRTY-SIX AND THIRTY-SEVEN: LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING ‘Community: An Iteration of the Hero’s Journey for the Meta Era’ by Kale Armstrong PAGES THIRTY-EIGHT AND THIRTY-NINE: POLITICS ‘John Lewis and getting in good, necessary trouble’

by Ian Tan PAGES FORTY AND FORTY-ONE: ARTS AND DESIGN ‘The Journey Towards Global Art Theory’ by Amy Neville PAGES FORTY-TWO AND FORTY-THREE: FILM ‘A Fawn and A Zebu Lie Down in the Dust: The Nomads of Djibril Diop Mambéty and Jim Jarmusch’

by Lachlan Serventy PAGES FORTY-FOUR AND FORTY-FIVE: ECONOMICS AND FINANCE ‘Day in The Life of a Worker in Lockdown’ by Brian Khoo PAGES FORTY-SIX AND FORTY-SEVEN: LIFESTYLE ‘Which Greek Deity Are You?’ by Cameron Carr and El Finnie

PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN: ART Untitled by Calvin Thoo

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CONTRIBUTORS EDITION 5 - ODYSSEY

Abigail Macleod's last brain cell is ignoring travel regulations, and has taken off on vacation.

Amy Neville is studying Art History and Fines Arts, with passions for ethics, books, and sword-fighting.

Amy Papasergio is buried under all the books she has to read for Literature.

Brian Khoo displays extreme passion for many interests, and enjoys sharing his views with others.

Calvin Thoo says "With great soy, comes great tofu" (@Sloppy_Tofu_).

Cameron Carr enjoys long romantic walks across the oval to avoid OGC candidates.

Campbell Williamson, not to be confused with William Campbellson, I hate that guy.

Cate Tweedie doesn’t even go here.

Charles Fedor changed to a Commerce major upon realising the employment prospects of Politics.

Courtney Withers cannot comprehend how there could possibly be a Kissing Booth 3.

Ei Hnin almost out of ideas, but not quite.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh El Finnie R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Elaine Hanlon loves watching hairy caterpillars leave a trail on a rainy day.

Ellie Fisher is well-travelled in her imagination; in reality, she has never left Australia.

For Felix King, house plants, the 4WD, and his photos are the whole personality.

Francesca De Nuccio will never talk to those who eat pineapple on pizza.

Holly Carter-Turner: I lost the game.

Hugo Hardisty is quick yet mellow.

Ian Tan is a firm believer in the importance of Humanities.

Jack Logan is the secret heir to a multibillion-dollar mining fortune.

Jasmine Peart doesn’t care about your European holiday. Wear your Birkenstocks to Aldi instead.

Jennifer Comrie loves Wosh (look it up). Also, she thanks you for viewing her art.

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Jonathan Sweeney is slow yet angered.

Kale Armstrong just wants you all to have a great day.

Kyle Pauletto did a real-life interview for this article. I’m like a legit journalist, you guys.

Max Silbert is a ranga but makes everyone call him a strawberry blonde.

Mia Davis is studying a BA and is currently hooked on crochet.

Megan Rundle is releasing an EP with all the songs boys have written about her.

Nicholas Warrand is running out of time to write h Pauline Wong is studying Dentistry and is currently addicted to Roy Orbison.

Rupert Williamson is the founder of 'Imprison David Schwimmer!' A non-profit which seeks to hold David Schwimmer accountable.

Susannah Wong is on a three-year Subway boycott.

Xander SInclair is starting to lose his patience with Bayley’s photoshopping.

SUB - EDITORS ARTS AND DESIGN: Riva-Jean Lander and Abigail Macleod CAMPUS NEWS: Courtney Withers COMEDY (he calls it ‘HUMOUR’): Rupert Williamson DIVERSITY: Elanor Leman ECONOMICS AND FINANCE: Millie Muroi and Brook Lewis FILM: Lachlan Serventy and Amy Papasergio LIFESTYLE: Cameron Carr and Francesca De Nuccio LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING: Elena Perse and Isabelle Yuen MUSIC: Ella Fox-Martens and Susannah Wong POLITICS: Christine Chen SCIENCE: Paris Javid and Deni Campbell SPORTS: Campbell Williamson TECHNOLOGY AND GAMING: Caleb Cheng and Kyle Pauletto

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ODYSSEY PRESITORIAL BAYLITORIAL STIRLITORIAL

I’m sure for a lot of us 2020 has felt less like an Odyssey and more like an old kids train ride spluttering and stuttering its way to the finish line.

Few of us have had the enlightening firsts that university has to offer these last six months and now as we drawn past the midway point many of you may finally get the chance to throw caution to the wind and experience the beauty of UWA. Just look at that sandstone, am I right?

We here at the Guild want to make sure this year doesn’t end as a footnote but instead is the beginning of your own blossoming odyssey, minus the nymphs and cyclops of course, we’ve got our annual Guild Ball. Finally what good odyssey is without a battle for what’s right and fair, we’re committed to making sure your education opportunities are equitable and students aren’t priced out of their future aspirations. Help us help you get the best education by emailing me your feedback: president@guild.uwa.edu.au.

Super Mario Odyssey is my favourite game I’ve never completed.

As much as I enjoyed my time journeying around the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond, something about it just never clicked with me.

Okay, now that the losers have stopped reading, I’m officially inviting you all to my belated birthday party! Mum said she was going to make fairy bread and party pies for lunch, they are my favourite! We can only have two people on the trampoline at once after because Trent got double bounced and hit his face on the springs last time.

For presents I want money, because I want to buy a spy kit, and I’ve almost got enough pocket money to get it. Remember to bring extra controllers so we can play Smash Bros, but if Daniel starts playing, we have to team up on him.

RSVP to my Dad, see you there!

Bayley

Bre Shanahan 107th Guild President

Please stop making me take photos of myself. This is my twelve-yearold dog. He is called Hunter.

I heard some very good advice recently, from the wonderful Martha J. McKinley.

Between pints of apple cider and cold chips, she said that when she plans a project, she thinks about what she would do if she had endless time, money, and brainpower. Then she takes that idea, and rebuilds it to fit the realities of her resources.

There were things I wanted to do differently with this cover, but they were beyond the scope of what was feasible for this magazine right now.

You can probably recognise that this is a pastiche of a very famous Friedrich painting – but tilted with a Perthian context, shot at Lesmurdie Falls.

Process is important. Myself and the subject travelled far (in a car, then the hillside) to shoot this. That’s about the extent of my odyssey, right now, with the closure of state borders.

One must rebuild their projects to fit the realities of their resources.

Stirling

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CAMPUS STORY AN ODYSSEY OF UWA

BY NICHOLAS WARRAND

My first thoughts when considering the combination of the words UWA and odyssey was… nothing, actually. Nothing much sprang to mind. I had no great journeys home with friends after an EMAS party, nor had I any funny stories of being lost on campus (many thanks to the app Lost on Campus).

Did I live a nomadic life? Was I a med student?

Was I a recluse who refused to take part in campus culture? Well, I don’t like to think so, but I’ll leave that for you to figure out. Maybe in the grand scheme of things, I really am (well, not the med student part, that’s for sure).

In fact, my odyssey has come from everything outside of UWA, despite me undertaking a degree here. Every skipped lecture to go to the beach; every night out with some friends made through a club or class; every evening having postponed my essays to go do something else. Everything but UWA. It feels wrong to say that my favourite part of being at uni is being away from it. But when I leave, the places away from campus are probably where I will have made my most cherished memories. And that’s okay, I think.

Leave.

Get out. Run. Just go. The more time you spend outside of uni, with people, doing things, any sort of thing - the greater the time spent. Uni is a place of study, and grades, and deadlines - don’t let it hold you, and dictate your every being.

Stay away.

Leaving is only as good as what you do with that time, so invest it in something. Not just work, or your career, but something you love. Pour your love into everything but uni work - it doesn’t deserve it.

So, that’s it. That’s my odyssey. The journey of realising that the beauty of being at uni is the ability and opportunity to experience things away from campus. Sure, I’ve had some great times being on campus, and maybe I could have spread some more ‘campus spirit’, but that’s just the way it goes.

It might not be as poetic and epic as Homer might have hoped, but that guy’s been dead for years, and never went here - so what does he know?

What, then, from these trips and escapes, have I learnt the most? What ‘grand wisdom’ will I pass onto the next generation of smiling hopefuls? Well, I don’t know how comprehensive my advice will be, but here goes…

Get out as much as possible.

Yes, maintaining grades and getting your degree is important - but so is the beach. And so is lying on the grass for the brief moment of sunlight in the cold winter months. So is, for some reason, regrettable nights out in the city, or some guy’s basement party.

Join anything.

Okay, so, I guess this one goes against my whole “uni sucks, everything else rules” kinda mentality.

But trust me: this is the stepping stone to the most fantastic adventures ahead.

And, hey, maybe they will actually be on the UWA campus! For me, this is where I have made lifelong friends (and enemies), and created some incredible memories.

FROM WHERE I_D RATHER BE... BY NICHOLAS WARRAND

The University has made plans to tear down ALVA and replace it with a refuge for homeless pigeons, citing this as a “better use of funding”.

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CAMPUS UPDATES

BY COURTNEY WITHERS

2020. What a weird and eventful voyage it has been so far. I can’t say we’ve taken the scenic route, like our good friend Odysseus, and his epic journey through Mediterranean seas. But we have reached a destination. Much like Odysseus, it does feel like we’ve been gone for ten years, struggling to return home after the Trojan War… As you can see, I quite enjoy being dramatic for no apparent reason. But as Campus News Editor, I do feel obliged to add a bit of ‘spice to that’. Obviously, we haven’t been through a war like Odysseus, but it has been a while since we’ve been physically on campus.

With the semester one having featured online learning, exams, and events, it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything close to normal. But we’re back on campus this semester with a mix of online and face-to-face learning, and we’re on track to completing semester two!

CHANGE ON THE HORIZON This new journey into the rest of the year is being captained by a new Vice-Chancellor, Amit Chakma, who is casting the sails for a positive experience in semester two. In order for this ship to stay on track, though, we need to adjust to some more changes to life on campus.

With Phase Three of UWA’s Recovery Management Team’s plan having been completed on July 20, seeing an increased return to campus, the prospect of more restrictions being eased in Phase Four seems likely.

In order to access all UWA buildings, students will need their campus card. This requirement will continue to ensure that health and safety measures are followed, in the event of contact tracing being required.

GETTIN’ BUSY (AND PENELOPE KIND)

THE

ODYSSEUS-

We had the successful Virtual Open Day for 2020 on Sunday 2 August, which was unlike any other. Whilst traditionally held on campus, the Open Day was an online-only event, due to the “…rapidly developing COVID-19 situation”, according to the University’s website.

Despite this unusual format, the event was a huge success, having featured virtual campus tours, course advisory sessions, and testimonies from current students, academics, graduates, and industry partners.

We were welcomed back to campus in Week One with Ed Week, which was run by the Education Council, featuring events from various faculty societies.

We also had our successful Club Carnival on Tuesday August 4, which was a great opportunity for UWA students to not only be welcomed back to campus, but feel that sense of campus culture and community - whether that was from signing-up to more clubs, or buying tickets to some upcoming events.

A big part of our odyssey at UWA is our ability to help others in need, and make a difference. In Week Three, UWA was involved with the National Student Volunteer Week for 2020, which ran from the 10 16th August.

The purpose of the week was to not only acknowledge the incredible impact that student volunteers make through their work, but to highlight how volunteering work is invaluable to student experience at UWA.

In more uplifting news, the SOC Group has also announced that events will be back on campus for semester two, which is so very exciting!

Although we are in new territory in terms of planning events this semester – needing to ensure we adhere to all COVID-19 restrictions - just like poor Odyssey, we can solider on and make the most of things.

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NOT

Blue Boathouse? More like Xi Jinping’s secret summer getaway!

CAMPUS UPDATES

THE SIRENS ARE COMING What other exciting things are coming up, you may be asking? Well, the journey this semester is going to be quite the ride. Something that will set this ship well on its path for the rest of this semester and into 2021 are the upcoming Guild Elections.

The Elections will take place in September of this year, their purpose being to elect the official Office Bearers and Ordinary Guild Councilors for 2021, and the National Union of Students (NUS) representatives to the NUS National Conference (basically a big, rowdy, national meeting for student unions).

Nominations opened on Monday 3 August, and closed on Friday 14 August. Polling booths will be open around campus from Monday 14 September, and close on Thursday 17 September.

For students that are not able to attend one of the polling locations on any of those four dates, there is the option of postal voting. To apply for this option, head to The Guild’s website.

For us to shape our campus odyssey, we need to elect a strong team. I strongly encourage everyone to get out to one of the polling booths during Election Week, and exercise your right to have a say in who will represent you and your interests as a student next year.

Life is all about the journey, and I know we can continue to have a memorable and worthwhile semester. So make the most of everything you can this semester, and enjoy the epic wanderings and adventures before this ship docks.

- Courtney

Your housemate studies pure mathematics and still doesn’t know how to take the bins out.

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SOCIAL MEDIA:

PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

BY KYLE PAULETTO

From e-mail to instant messaging, from chatrooms to top eight friends: online platforms for social connection have been evolving and integrating themselves deeper into our lives with every passing year.

While it started on a small scale - a morally-bankrupt platform for ranking the physical appeal of Mark Zuckerberg’s female classmates - the last decade has seen Facebook and platforms like it become almost essential for the day-to-day functioning of a modern citizen. It is now a vital resource for artists to find their audience; students to interact with their peers; small businesses connecting with their customers; and multinational corporations to further exploit their consumers through targeted advertising. And while Facebook grows, and its power to influence world events increases, it seems that the only constant within their business model is the lack of a genuine moral compass.

Early in the social media timeline, the system was easy to grasp, and mutually beneficial for all parties.

The platform provided a service to users, which created an audience for advertisers, that then provided the platform with revenue. As Michael Scott famously said, it’s a “real win-win-win”. The platform was the service, the users were simply users, and the advertisers were the source of profit.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the pressure of constant growth pushed the platforms to find new methods of extracting money from their service. This is when social media platforms found the potential for endless growth was in the ability to collect and sell user data - and

THIS WAS THE MOMENT THAT OUR ROLE WITHIN THE SYSTEM DEFINITIVELY CHANGED FROM USER, TO PRODUCT. This has become an extremely profitable venture for digital media companies. So much so that in 2017, The Economist claimed user data had surpassed oil as the most valuable resource on the planet, and it has facilitated some of the most terrifyingly exploitative

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companies utilising social media to convince users to think, buy, act and vote in whichever way the highest bidder desires.

Despite a decade of bad publicity regarding privacy breaches, and a CEO whose energy can best be described as a salamander in a suit, Facebook remains a staple in our lives. Even after the Netflix documentary The Great Hack (2019) became one of the most-watched documentaries on the streaming service, exposing Facebook and Cambridge Analytica as essential tools in ensuring the Brexit decision was passed, neither the public nor advertisers chose to opt-out of the service. It was beginning to feel like Facebook was indestructible.

That was until the tragic events of May 25th, when George Floyd’s death sparked worldwide outrage and protests that are still active months later.

Although Facebook failing to implement sufficient fact-checking systems into their algorithms is nothing new (a conversation which COVID-19 had already begun creating), facilitating the spread of hate speech and racist propaganda reached a tipping point for the public and advertisers when it concerned an issue that was as widespread and fastpaced as George Floyd’s death. This launched the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign, which has resulted in seven-hundred and fifty (and counting) major advertisers halting their contracts with Facebook - seeing Facebook lose an estimate of $7.5 Billion.

While this loss is equivalent to most of us losing the lint in our pockets, it has sent a message to the social media giants, and energized conversations of change among the public.

This has sparked the need for alternatives to services such as Facebook messaging, particularly since they bought out what was once the alternative, WhatsApp. For the past two years, the open-source encrypted messaging service Signal has been the go-to choice for those of us desperate to escape the prying eyes of Zuckerberg. But the social and community side of Facebook is still missing among alternatives. With 2020 bringing a number of new challenges and forced adjustment, perhaps it’s the

I want the confidence of Nikki Webster performing at the 2000 Olympics.

time for social media to begin a new stage of its evolutionary journey. And it could come sooner, and from a place much closer to home than you think.

Having officially launched in May of this year, Perthbased social media startup LITT believes they could be a major player in the future of social media. While their plans for launch parties and physical events have been hindered by the COVID-19 lockdowns, their mission continues. With a focus on local community networking, an in-app wallet, and rewards system, and visions of an augmented reality future, LITT hopes to build a platform based on mutual trust and beneficial relationships between the platform, the users, and local vendors.

“We’re a pretty small fish in a large pond of a few monopolistic companies that control the top social media platforms on the planet, and we don’t expect people to pick up LITT and drop all their other profiles”, says LITT co-founder Peter Salmon.

While they can’t see the world instantly jumping ship from household names like Facebook, they are confident in the appeal of features exclusive to LITT. That is because, along with the social elements that are expected of a modern social media platform, LITT offers unique opportunities for retailers and their customers.

“It’s a social media platform that has a strong community base to it, bringing communities and vendors together locally. Other platforms focus on online shopping but at the moment we have a strong focus on physical stores, bringing people back to

going into their community retailers and shopping local”, says co-founder Brent Thompson.

LITT gives store owners the freedom to offer discounts and giveaways to customers using the platform, taking the partnership model of companies such as Afterpay, where it is mutually beneficial for vendors and customers to have the option of LITTpay in stores. Between commissions from inapp sales and their advertising partners, revenue is generated free from user exploitation. They call it a circular system, and say it ensures they have no need to sell user data.

“Because we have that circular community-based advertising and gifting, we generate revenue from multiple ways”, Thompson says. “We’ve already signed the contracts that say we will not be selling your data”.

Companies like LITT show that there is room within the social media industry for platforms that refuse to exploit their users, whilst still being able to turn a profit.

NECESSITY BREEDS INNOVATION, AND IT HAS NEVER BEEN MORE NECESSARY FOR US TO BE LEAVING PREDATORY PLATFORMS LIKE FACEBOOK BEHIND US. With great alternatives in the works, there is hope for a brighter, less intrusive, more inclusive future for social media. All we have to do is seek those alternatives out.

Jesus loves you.

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SHOCKING TRAVEL STORIES!

BY VARIOUS

Francesca De Nuccio: Travel can open us up to many new experiences.

A thrilling adventure that places you in a foreign place, essentially forcing you out of your comfort zone. Sometimes travelling just doesn’t go to plan; we may be faced with obstacles, however, often, these hurdles become the moments that make your holiday…

AN ODE TO OVERNIGHT BUS TRIPS

BY ELLENOR SIBON

“And you’ve got your essential oils? Travel documents? You’ll write when you get there?”

piercing dumps her bag on the seat beside mine.

“Is here free?”

“Yes Oma”.

I grimace, “Yes”.

I plant a kiss on her cheek, and step onto the bus to find my seat. It’s half an hour late, and I am beyond relieved it has arrived. The transport system in Germany is notoriously unreliable, which is strangely paradoxical, given the highly efficient and überpunctual nature of all my German relatives.

This particular bus company is especially bad. Last time, I waited from 5pm until 8pm at a dingy station run by a group of hostile Russian travel agents. The office closed at 7.30pm, the agents left, and the most sympathetic to my plight were a homeless couple and their six-year-old daughter collecting plastic bottles – who, unfortunately, spoke neither German or English. I waddled, panic-stricken, through the darkening back-streets of Mannheim, with my luggage strapped to my back, hunting free Wi-Fi. The bus didn’t arrive until 2am, by which time I’d almost had a nervous breakdown.

Alas, funds are low, and Flixbus is cheap. This trip, which cost me exactly fifty euros, would take me across three countries, to London, in twenty-three hours.

I wedge my smaller backpack between my feet, and place a jacket on the seat beside me. The rows around me are empty, too. I smile in a self-satisfied way. The golden rule of economy travel - the more seats, the better.

At a stop in Cologne, the peace is disrupted. A girl clad in a black, knee-length jumper with an eyebrow

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“Cool.” She turns around: “Oi Willie! Here’s free!”

A group of about ten students, dressed in various shades of black, make their way over, and drop their things on the seats around mine. The air around me thickens as I’m hit by the stench of sweat and cigarettes. I suppress a cough and start rummaging in my backpack for gum.

“Jana, did you have to smoke before you came in?”

“Good for the nerves.” A square-faced girl in a red bandana grins. “Hey, Achim, stick your head back inside, we’re about to go!”

“Jonas, where’d you put your shoes?”

“They’re prisons for your feet.” A bare-chested guy in grotty shorts sticks his finger into his ear. “Did we bring the vegan chips?”

“Your feet are filthy, man. What are we going to do with all this foot smell?” A guy with a hemp bum-bag squeezes past and wrinkles his nose.

Jonas opens his arms wide: “My friends, stinking is part of the revolution!”

There are cheers and laughter as I sink further into my seat, clutching my essential oils. This is going to be a very, very long trip.

Yes, you already told me how great your Doc Martens are.

NEED FOR SPEED (PLEASE)

BY ABIGAIL MACLEOD

Back in the day, when I had some money, and we all had our freedom, I lived in sunny Singapore. Being the racing car nerd, and poor time-manager I am, I had booked to watch the Formula One night race the evening before jetting off for a week travelling in Thailand – and this, as I’d soon find out, was definitely not a good idea.

I watched the cars, had a beer, partied with a Dutch who’d come all the way to Singapore to get sunburned and yell about Max Verstappen, and then headed home for an early night. A nap, for three hours. Awake at 4am for a 7:50am flight? No problems at all.

Or so I thought.

Ninety texts, forty missed calls, and twenty-three Facebook messages later, I open my bleary eyes to meet 6:32am staring back at me. My apartment was forty minutes from Changi Airport, and if my stress levels were any higher, I’d transcend to the next astral plane. I grab the bag that my singular brain cell had the foresight to pack, pull on my Formula One jumper, and sprint through my apartment complex, somehow managing to call a cab in the process. I get into the cab, and the driver - a sweet Singaporean

granddad - asks me what was wrong. I croak out through my tears, ‘flight…at…7:50,’ and he nods in the rear-view mirror.

Cue the most incredible drive of my life.

This man must study the Fast and the Furious in his spare time. Forget Lightning McQueen - this man is speed. He drifts his blue Prius taxi through Singapore’s morning traffic, the pinnacle of finesse and master of the roads, and gets me to the airport in twenty-five minutes. No words necessary, this man is the hero I never expected to meet, but absolutely needed.

A quick scan of my passport and I’m through immigration, and into the waiting hugs of my friends.

Half an hour later, I’m on my plane to Thailand – but not before tipping my cab driver as much as I could.

Don’t Formula One and travel, folks.

I haven’t washed any of my clothes since moving out of home because I don’t know what washing detergent looks like.

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COMPASSION AND CASH; OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE AFL’S SCHEDULE

BY CAMPBELL WILLIAMSON

In case you hadn’t heard, the AFL is playing thirtythree games over the course of twenty action-packed days. In a sport that has historically clumped its games around the weekend - like so many barnacles around the proverbial jetty - the AFL’s invasion of your weeknight is sort of a big deal. At the very least, it’s worth considering just why they even bothered.

Why, indeed? The most touted reason was to help alleviate some of the stress currently placed on players.

Over the course of the 2020 season, AFL players have been quarantined in ‘hubs’, where many have been separated from home and family. This setup clearly has the potential to harm players’ mental health, and while the AFL have tried their best to provide necessary support, you can imagine that the whole ordeal would still be a tad anxiety-inducing.

And the hub experience would only be more taxing if the season were to drag on. Therefore, a more intensive fixture would help minimise time spent in the hub, and hopefully minimise any possible harm to players.

This is a good thing, but the moral good of this outcome may have also been used to obscure the financial benefits that the AFL stands to reap.

Along with everyone else, the AFL has sustained considerable financial losses over season 2020. To ensure the sport’s long-term prosperity, the game’s administrative bodies would surely be focused on finding different ways to raise revenue.

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One way they can do this is by minimising financial competition from other sporting codes.

The AFL lost a couple of months at the start of the year when this whole “Co-vid” thing took off, and if the season were to continue to play out as normal, the AFL might start to bump shins with the cricket season (and those other sports played over Summer, ew).

This sport bumpathon (or bumpfest, take your pick,) might conceivably split the attention of the footy going public, and consequently, revenue would suffer in the land of AFL. By changing the schedule, the AFL ensures that they limit any possible intercode competition.

Additionally, by spreading out the games across the week, the AFL should be able to capture a wider TV audience.

Commercial TV broadcast ratings have been exceptionally strong during the 2020 AFL season, especially on Thursday nights. These strong weeknight ratings would imply that by scheduling more games on weeknights (when there’s less competition from other TV programs, other AFL games, and other weekend activities), the AFL can capitalise financially.

It also seems like there’s less pressure to maintain much of the weekend fixture, because a lot of fans can’t attend games in person anyway. This means that the previous incentive for the AFL to keep weekend games (i.e. so that fans can easily enjoy a carefree night out at the football) no longer applies.

Half of Pelican is comprised of UDS members and I’m starting to get worried.

Therefore, by broadcasting throughout the week, the AFL stands to maximise TV ratings and minimise fan backlash. More good news for revenue!

Finally, there is perhaps a cultural argument for the fixture fandangle. While the AFL has seen strong TV ratings, I would argue that the game might still suffer somewhat from a perception that it is superfluous or beside the point in our current climate.

The intensive scheduling will mean that AFL can be watched on almost any given night, meaning that it will fast become part of our collective day-to-day and immediately seem less superfluous. This same tactic was used to great effect by the Big Bash, where daily cricket games have engraved the sport into many Australians’ summers (the similarities between these strategies become all the more striking when you compare the marketing for each, side by side.)

The cynic in me says that this renewed relevance can then be leveraged to raise revenue.

IT’S GOOD BUSINESS, AND IT MAY HAVE A LASTING IMPACT. If nothing else, such scheduling shenanigans might open the door for other more ‘innovative’ and ‘agile’ fixtures in the future. This is especially possible when one considers the number of players who have previously advocated for a shortened season. Given this, it’s not unfathomable that we might see this intensive game scheduling again, sometime soon.

No one buys the jelly cups from Quobba Gnarning.

15

TICKET TO RIDE: A JAPANESE BEATLES ODYSSEY

BY SUSANNAH WONG

In an age before COVID-19 doomed us all and obliterated the international travel industry, I was lucky enough to fulfil a lifelong dream of travelling around Japan, squeezing it in right before the pandemic came to public attention. But with my inner nerd overly excited by the prospect of visiting anime mecca, there were a lot of things I came to see that I never really anticipated.

Whilst these things included seeing the actual trains used in Thomas the Tank Engine (yes, really); a full scale golden toilet in a popular department store (yes, really); and a chopstick holder shaped like a bodybuilder doing sit-ups (yes, really), something I really didn’t expect was the nation’s continuing and inexplicable obsession with The Beatles – and, indeed, with rock in general.

WHILST THE BAND IS STILL REGARDED WITH A SORT OF REVERENCE IN THE WESTERN WORLD, IT’S NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT I WOULD SEE IN THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN. My Japanese Beatles odyssey began at a small Italian restaurant tucked into the corner of a Tokyo station. After a long day on the train, my family and I stopped for a quick dinner, before calling it a night in our latest accommodation. Going around a foreign country, you tend not to expect anything familiar over sound systems. But, slowly, the background music became more and more recognisable – it was an early Beatles track. A very welcome but unexpected surprise.

While most eating establishments tend to play a bit of everything, this particular place did things differently, with track after track of the Fab Four.

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If you didn’t like the Beatles, too bad; you would know half their back catalogue before the night was over. Slowly, I became more concerned with quietly mumbling along to Beatles songs than actually eating the surprisingly good Japanese ‘Western’ food in front of me. On my way out, I spit out some garbled Japanese in gratitude to an audibly amused waitress, and left the restaurant perplexed, but happy. Surely, this was an isolated incident of Beatlemania.

Turns out, that was nothing. Things really kicked up a notch when we arrived in Hiroshima, and hit a local shopping strip. In the distance, I spotted a weird kind of bootleg Abbey Road billboard, and as we approached, it turned out to be mural advertising a double story coffee shop underneath it. The café, called Yesterday - after the ubiquitous song of the same name - is a small but astonishing little place, sandwiched between a diamond dealership, and a traditional Japanese restaurant. It was a cave of wonders for Beatle fans such as myself.

Crammed in its two stories is one of the most impressive memorabilia collections I’ve ever seen.

Album covers lined the walls and staircase; movie posters, figurines and vintage badges sat under the counter; and pair of John Lennon Converse lie on the path to the smoking floor upstairs. And, like the Italian restaurant before it, they play only one band all day. They also did a pretty good hot dog.

Japan’s love of the Beatles had me completely stumped.

It seemed like wherever we went, the Beatles followed. I saw a pink ‘girls’ version of McCartney’s violin bass at a music store in Osaka. Shelves were

No one understand me like Butters the Campus Corgi

filled with various pressings of the band’s records in an HMV in Shibuya. A steak restaurant blasted the band’s back catalogue outside their premises in Sapporo to attract passers-by.

I suppose it makes a kind of sense. Unlike in the West, Japan never really ‘replaced’ rock music; instead, the genre continues to thrive in the hands of the next generation. Bands like Babymetal, RADWIMPS, ONE OK ROCK and The Yellow Monkey perpetually top the nation’s Oricon charts; and music stores that stock a plethora of records, CDs, and more guitars than I’ve ever seen in my life are sprawled around every city.

When you boil down to it, The Beatles were really the start of all that. Sure, there were other bands before them - but no other group was as influential, widespread, or successful in bring rock to the rest of the world. J-Rock began when kids of the 1960s saw the British Invasion, and were inspired to start their own groups; Japan is now the second largest music economy in the world. In the end, I’d like to think Japan’s ongoing obsession with The Beatles is their way of paying tribute to the band that kicked it all off - and I can’t wait to go back.

I lost 20 kilos in three weeks! My secret? The lift at the library stopped working.

17

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

BY VARIOUS

Dear Editor,

Dear Editor,

People are still talking on the third floor. Maybe build a fourth?

As it has been a very long time since we have been on campus, I no longer know how to act in a library. In preparation for this return, I have spent hours scrolling through Reddit, Google, and FutureStudents.wa.edu. au, but all I could find were stock images of people with books in front of them, and their head in their hands. I’m not sure when this became the universal image for a library, but it’s damn confusing. How can one possibly read the text of a book, with their head in their hands?

As per my last email, Amy

Dear Julie Andrews, If for some reason you’ve managed to pick up this student magazine, I want you to know that I would literally cut off all of my fingers if you came and performed that song from the Princess Diaries 2 at my 21st. I’m seriously not joking. Abbie’s boyfriend sang her some bitch ass Ed Sheeran song at her party and I need something that will top it. It’s in May next year at my place. The theme is pimps and hoes.

Can’t wait to see you there!

Yours truly, Confused Library Goer

Dear Me, Stop throwing the peace sign up in photos. It’s not quirky, it’s fucking lame.

Love, Regards, M Me

Dear Future Guild President,

Dear Stan the Duck,

Firstly, thank you for Guild Elections, that was a great idea. Second, there are way too many freshers at UWA these days. Something must be done about this or I’m not voting come September.

Happy birthday! You are one-hundred years old and must be very wise for a duck, I left my offering to you by the moat today (as per your demands) and have been encouraging others to do the same lest we incur your wrath.

Yours Sincerely, Sincerely, A Patriot Your humble servant.

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Clive Palmer’s a bit of an ass isn’t he?

Dr Mr/Mrs Editor,

To whom it may concern,

I haven’t been able to sleep. A global pandemic, racial tensions higher than ever, our country on the brink of collapse, and now Dominic Toretto’s brother is coming for the familia. We’ve seen the familia grow and face impossible odds, but even I think that this one might be too much to handle. Jakob Toretto is stronger, faster, taller AND has the backing of Cipher.

The series is about looking out for your familia, but what if the familia is coming for you? Even with Han back, I fear he will not be here for long. I can’t watch him die again, I can’t. I won’t.

Last weekend I had a party. You weren’t invited so it’s not your business. Some items have gone missing, I’ve posted on the event that you aren’t a part of but here they are just in case:

I hope the crew will live through this and be able to share a Corona under the sun together.

1. Collector’s edition replica of the Yoda puppet from The Empire Strikes Back its been modified into a Bong, (inhale from the ear and pack into his belly button) 2. All of my fucking Easy Mac… 3. Mother’s Ashes (I get them every second week, my sister is asking questions) If you have these items or an unwanted plain white urn (preferably already full) let me know.

Salude.

Yours, D.K (Drift King) Brantley Schadenfreude

Deer Editor, I know you’re only pretending to be a person.

Sincerely Craig C McKeen, Emeritus Professor of Bad Wordplay

CONTRIBUTIONS MADE BY CAMPBELL WILLIAMSON, COURTNEY WITHERS, HUGO HARDISTY, JONATHAN SWEENEY, MAX SILBERT, MEGAN RUNDLE, AND RUPERT WILLIAMSON.

CAPTION CONTEST – ODYSSEY

CARTOON ARTIST: HOLLY CARTER-TURNER

“HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS 3: MEDITERRANEAN FRUSTRATION, COMING TO A CINEMA NEAR YOU!” CAPTION BY CATE TWEEDIE

Please can the government ban TikTok already I am addicted and I can’t afford therapy.

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AN ODYSSEY OF THE (HE)ART:

INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER COMRIE Student and Perth-based artist Jennifer Comrie talked to Arts and Design Editor Abigail Macleod about her physical journeys around the world, and metaphorical ones through art.

Abigail Macleod: Hi Jennifer, it’s so nice to be talking to you. Tell us a little about yourself and your art.

AM: Do you believe that viewing art can take you on a journey?

Jennifer Comrie: Thank you for the opportunity!

I’m a third-year student here at UWA, and I’ve been drawing since I can remember. A lot of my family members are quite artistically inclined, so, growing up, it was easy for me to create in such an encouraging environment.

JC: Of course! The same way they say you can learn a lot about someone by what they photograph, you can also learn a lot about someone from the art that they create and the stories behind their pieces.

You’re going on a journey into someone else’s world.

I predominantly sketch, pencil to paper, but in recent years I’ve started to draw digitally. In terms of subject, however, my approach hasn’t changed even after ten years has passed. It’s always been about people, particularly faces for me. I couldn’t tell you why exactly, but in a few words, it’s probably just because I find people fascinating.

AM: How has your art taken you on a personal journey?

JC: Art’s always been a reprieve for me. It brings me joy and a sense of calm. I think creating art has helped me figure out a lot about myself, because I’ve been doing it for such a long time. It’s taught me patience and persistence- not everything can be perfect after the first try. In the journey of my life, it’s a significant part that can’t be removed.

AM: How have your own experiences of travel and adventure affected the art that you produce?

JC: I’ve travelled a lot ever since I was really little.

Without the experiences I’ve had, and the people I’ve met because of that, I don’t know if I’d still be the same person. Travelling opened up my world, literally and figuratively, and that has to have affected my art, although I couldn’t give you any specific examples of how.

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AM: The world has changed very quickly, and very intensely. How do you find inspiration now, in this current situation?

JC: I get inspiration for my drawings from people in TV shows, music videos etc. In the current world situation, being stuck at home has allowed me to interact with such things a lot more, so I guess I’ve had more opportunities for inspiration to hit. Getting to the actual drawing after the inspiration comes, though... that’s the hard part. Ugh. AM: Do you have any advice for anyone looking to try new ways of creating?

JC: Inspiration is subjective, so this is a little hard to answer. If your usual routes for finding it aren’t working, then it seems too pretentious of me just to say, ‘try something different!’ Perhaps just let yourself relax, and don’t put too much pressure on yourself when things don’t work out and inspiration doesn’t come.️ AM: And finally, what’s your go-to music to play while you’re feeling good in your creative space?

JC: I don’t really listen to music when drawing.

Instead, I have the TV on in the background. At the moment, I’ve been revisiting The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, so if the intro song for that counts, then we’re good.

Bayley doesn’t edit Pelican anymore, he’s too busy analysing basketball games as a replacement for human contact.

UNTITLED BY JENNIFER COMRIE

FARM BY EI HNIN (@HNIN_EI96)

HIDDEN FOREST BY EI HNIN (@HNIN_EI96)

UNTITLED BY PAULINE WONG (@PAULINE.WONG.10)

THE PAINTER BY MIA DAVIS (@MIADAV1S)

PEREGRINATION I am alone here in my own mind.

There is no map and there is no road.

ANNE SEXTON

Solitary, subdued. Vicariously, precipitously, the cadences of movement are stilled, echoed out of bones and muscles.

Quicksilver light travels over eyelids. Lucid whites, darkened irises, pupils accurate as viewfinders. Deep Prussian sway of sea, the almost viridescent sky tending to a lowering phase. This is the landscape of the interior, the internal odyssey. The wind cuts tracks, sharp and precise as powerlines. Compass-magnetised, wings crest through air, slash through the pellucid void. The celluloid burns across, lightning-bright. The snare of the ordinary, the never-dying pulse of adrenaline flinching from the wires. You recoil. You dream of the drum of transit, long for the thrill that steadies the brain, sets the nerves in motion, frees your restlessness.

Restriction, constriction. A gesture of frustration. The pale mask of dulled deceit descends, the jejune clouds collect across your soul.

For now, you are Eliot’s still point, Frost’s less travelled road.

Yet even this will be transient.

ELLIE FISHER

UNTITLED BY FELIX KING (@FELIXKINGPHOTOGRAPHY)

UNTITLED BY CALVIN THOO (@SLOPPY_TOFU_)

UNTITLED BY CALVIN THOO (@SLOPPY_TOFU_)

UNTITLED BY ZAHINA SHAH (@LOVELY_LITERATURE7)

METAMORPHOSIS

BY ANONYMOUS

I write these lines whilst train-side, having seen In passing glass and plastic that strange sight That is a reflection distorted, blight On perception and yet; what does it mean That as I step within the worm a keen And lingering sense of something that just might Be joy pervades this vehicle in flight, As if myself I saw in metal sheen.

Inside the carriage, dull and smeary glass Now shows the self that I take pains to hide, But for a moment, whilst out there I saw The brief reflection of a girl go past; A someone I could be, just if I tried, A suggestion that I could still be more.

FIRST FLIGHT BY ELAINE HANLON (@ELAINEHANLONART)

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THE WAY

BY AMY PAPASERGIO

When I was younger, I remember watching a film called The Way. This 2010 film follows Thomas Avery (Martin Sheen) who travels to France after the death of his son, Daniel (Emilio Estevez), killed during a storm whilst walking the Camino de Santiago. In a homage to his son, Thomas proceeds to walk the Camino with Daniel’s ashes. Along the pilgrimage route, he encounters beautiful scenery, other pilgrims, and, later, friends from around the world.

The Camino de Santiago, known as the English Way of James, is a network of Christian pilgrimages which end at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. Whilst initially a spiritual retreat, the routes are now undertaken by hikers, cyclists and travellers. And whilst ‘The Way’ is a little stylised in its interpretation of the pilgrimage, opting for a more desolate journey, it still captures the essence of the trek. The light comedy and picturesque scenery shots balance well against the intense dramatic scenes.

This film brought out my desire to walk the pilgrimage. Sadly, however, this journey will have to wait until international travel is possible again. Whilst I have no odyssey to share with you, I decided to do the next best thing, and interview someone who has.

Mr Garry McGrath eloquently shared his Camino De Santiago odyssey with me, which he completed twice, in both 2016 and 2017.

“Walking the Camino de Santiago is a journey of the soul and spirit. Drawing people today as it has drawn millions of people for more than a thousand years…

The pleasing rhythm of your walking poles hitting the ground, the pathway unfolding before you in the rain washed landscape of Galicia, footstep after footstep, village after village, you marvel at the timelessness of your journey.”

film displaying the breathtaking yet vast landscape of Galicia, as well as a strong sense of comradery between the main cast, which Mr McGrath stated was also present between the pilgrims on his journey.

Every year, thousands of pilgrims make the walk - a tradition which first began in the middle ages - to the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, where Saint James is buried.

Mr McGrath shared that “the history of the pilgrimage is fascinating. It is a rich tapestry of recorded facts, myths and legends…

THE PILGRIMAGE TODAY STILL FOLLOWS VERY SIMILAR RITUALS AS FROM THE MEDIEVAL DAYS. THE CLOTHING AND QUALITY OF THE ACCOMMODATION MAY BE DIFFERENT, BUT THE RHYTHM AND ESSENCE ARE STILL THE SAME.” The film provides an emotional and thoughtprovoking viewing experience, for those both religious and non-religious, with Martin Sheen carrying the viewer seamlessly though a landscape that never ceases to amaze.

“There will always be some unexpected site on the horizon, some encounter that refreshes the human spirit and causes us to pause and contemplate the simple antiquity of our quest.”

For the first time ever, the Camino de Santiago has become as desolate as the film portrays, with COVID-19 closing the borders which are typically transgressed during the pilgrimage. In the meantime, I implore you to watch this amazing film, and hope for the necessary freedom of travel in the future, so that a new generation can tackle this momentous odyssey.

This description is reflected in The Way, with the

I play Catan every Friday night. No, I have never had sex.

29

CLIVE PALMER:

THE SHIFTING FORTUNES OF A BILLIONAIRE POLITICIAN

BY JACK LOGAN

On July 17 of this year, Clive Palmer was charged with fraud and corporate misconduct, with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) alleging that the businessman-turned-politician had dishonestly diverted at least ten million dollars to the 2013 political campaign that propelled him into Federal Parliament.

It’s only the latest blow to the outspoken billionaire, who also claimed responsibility for Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party success at last year’s federal election - despite his United Australia Party (UAP) not winning a single seat. In the election’s aftermath, deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek railed against the “cashed-up scare campaign from the UAP,” while Liberal MP Andrew Wallace argued that the UAP’s electoral advertising, valued at $83 million, had a negligible effect.

Can we refute the power of billionaires in our democracy, when such a campaign fails to earn its front-man a seat in Parliament - or did one man buy an election for the Liberal Party? Is Clive Palmer a one-time MP destined for the dustbin of history, or are there serious questions to ask about the role of big money in Australian politics?

It has been a curious odyssey for one of Australia’s most colourful personalities, from proposing widelyderided concepts such as building the Titanic II and Palmersaurus - a real-life Jurassic Park - on the Sunshine Coast, to today making headlines for a series of court dates, marketing a controversial cure for COVID-19, and loudly challenging any lockdown measures that may threaten his business interests.

Palmer’s political activities, however, can be traced all the way back to the mid-1980s. After significant financial success in real estate, he worked in the Queensland division of the National Party, helping

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the highly conservative Bjelke-Peterson government to remain in power for the remainder of the decade.

It was after this foray into state politics that Palmer would make his second fortune by founding several mining companies, including Mineralogy, in 1984.

When the Pilbara-based company found itself in a prolonged legal dispute with a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, Palmer found his political voice again; even today, visitors to Mineralogy’s website are immediately greeted with a video titled “The truth about Labor, Mark McGowan, and China.” When the Gillard government introduced the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, colloquially known as the ‘mining tax’, in July 2012, Palmer was one of its most vocal opponents. He was in good company - fellow mining billionaires Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest also opposed the policy.

Rinehart, for her part, has wasted little time spending her political capital elsewhere. Affirming that she is “yet to hear scientific evidence to satisfy [her] that if the very, very small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was increased [it could] lead to significant global warming,” she has sponsored visiting climate sceptics; donated millions to rightwing think tanks; and thrown her weight against ecofriendly measures, such as the 2010 Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

Forrest, too, opposed this measure, despite the revelation in 2011 that his Fortescue Metals Group had never paid any company tax. After both the mining tax and CPRS were repealed and withdrawn, respectively, it was clear that billionaire lobbying power was as strong as ever.

No longer content with influencing such outcomes from the private sector, Palmer announced in April 2012 his intention to run as a Liberal Party candidate

No one should ever wear tight fitting pants that match their skin tone.

WHEN PALMER DONATED $83 MILLION TO THE UAP VIA MINERALOGY, IT WAS BY FAR THE BIGGEST DONATION IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL HISTORY.

against then-Treasurer Wayne Swan. After heated disputes with Queensland Liberal Party officials, however, Palmer was expelled from the party.

The billionaire, then valued at $1.1 billion, ultimately created his own party, the Palmer United Party (PUP), in April 2013 - just in time for the federal election five months later. Here, as in 2019, Palmer’s party failed to win a seat; yet Palmer considered the 2013 federal election a great success. He saw off the Labor government that had, for so long, threatened his business interests; and won the Queensland seat of Fairfax in Parliament’s lower house, while two PUP members were elsewhere elected to the Senate.

A year later, Palmer’s massive campaign spending made headlines during the WA Senate race - PUP spent at least $477,000 on advertising, amounting to more than the combined spendings of the Liberals ($53,000), Labor ($68,000), and the Greens ($114,000) - even drawing the ire of ideological allies such as then-PM Tony Abbott.

After railing against the two-party system and bragging of his national fame in his opening speech to Parliament, ‘Palmer the Industrial Lobbyist’ seemed to have completed his transition to ‘Palmer the Politician.’ This success would not last. The PUP was undermined by the resignation of two of its three senators, and by Palmer’s own apparent lack of interest: missing 64% of Parliamentary sitting days in 2014, he was absent more than any other MP.

In May 2016, Clive Palmer announced he would not seek re-election. His company, Queensland Nickel a donor of more than $5 million to the PUP during the 2014-15 financial year - had entered voluntary administration only months earlier.

Palmer’s time in the wilderness, largely spent involved in legal proceedings surrounding Queensland Nickel’s string of debts, lasted only two years. In June 2018, he revived his party as the UAP, and set his sights on the May 2019 federal election.

Thus, I return to my original question: did Clive Palmer buy an election?

When Palmer donated $83 million to the UAP via Mineralogy, it was by far the biggest donation in Australian political history. It funded an inescapable advertising campaign that outspent Coles, Toyota, McDonalds, and even the banks. While Coalition ads labelled their Labor opponent, Bill Shorten, as “the Bill Australia can’t afford,” the UAP camp worked in tandem, warning the voting public of “Shifty Shorten.”

When the dust had settled, the UAP had not won a single seat in Parliament. Far from being disappointed, Palmer remarked that he was “very, very elated.” Perhaps he was right to be. He had helped crush one Labor campaign in 2013, and now he’d done it again.

I miss the Wii from BJ Marshall Library.

31

THE GRADUATE AND THE ODYSSEY: ENDING JOB INSECURITY THROUGH MODERN MONETARY THEORY

BY CHARLES FEDOR

There are many odysseys we go on in our life, such as pursuing love, or achieving self-actualisation. These odysseys are amorphous, and, generally speaking, have a largely inconsequential outcome, even when left incomplete.

Unfortunately, there is an odyssey in which missteps can have catastrophic effects. I am, of course, talking about your ‘career path’. This will be one of the longest and most quantifiable journeys you will experience, littered with considerable anxieties, and (hopefully) punctuated with a few high notes.

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‘wait there was an exam today’ kind of anxious. In a 2019 study, 54% of Generation Z (1997 onwards) workers indicated job anxiety. This is an unheard-of level of job anxiety that can be causally linked to the implementation of neoliberal policies. These policies have included the gradual erosion of the welfare state (look at Newstart without a global pandemic) and the impotency of our tax system. These policies have directly contributed to considerable economic anxiety amongst our generation.

This journey arguably bleeds into your life more than you realise. As students, we go to university for jobs; we volunteer to build our curriculum vitae; and we consistently worry about making sure we are ‘job ready’. As novice economists, let’s examine the foundations of why this is the case, and hopefully answer the question: “can our generation bring this anxiety-ridden odyssey to a halt for future generations?”

This underscores, in draconian terms, the absolute necessity of having a job that is considered productive. If you are unfortunate enough to lose your job, you must take the Newstart allowance, which is one-hundred and thirty dollars below the national poverty line - not to mention the very real and acute demonisation by the press and society as a ‘dole-bludger’. Combined with a potent economic and emotional cocktail, and an emergent class system, and you have a recipe for hopelessness and generational malaise.

Firstly, let’s do a quick socio-economic snapshot of the current situation we are in. I will try to provide pre-COVID-19 statistics, so that we can get a truly representative view of the economy. The first thing to note is that our generation is anxious. Not in the ‘give me my results already’ way - more like a

For an egalitarian country, Australia is displaying frightening levels of class immobility. As identified by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), it will take four generations to transition from low socio-economic status to approaching the average wage. For younger people

You didn’t think you’d need an umbrella today, but you were fucking wrong about that weren’t you?

in the fifteen to twenty-four age range, real incomes continue to decline 1.6% per annum. This can be attributed to an economic system that is falling well below the expectations we set ourselves as Australians, and as human beings.

It is important to note that recent developments in economics can provide a long-term solution to these issues. This comes in the form of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). I will flag right now that it will be impossible for me to explain MMT in such a short article. However, I will give you a peek behind the curtain to what I would say is an economic theory that could truly end the employment odyssey we seem to have been unwillingly placed.

Firstly, MMT views the government as the monopolist of its currency. This essentially means it can control the supply and demand of its currency at will. This is not too different from the theories of traditional economists. It does, however, imply a very different view on the concept of taxes and government spending. Taxes are not used to pay the government, but, rather as an instrument to force demand of the currency. Our taxes must be paid in Australian dollars rather than in Bitcoin or Dogecoin. As a result, as long as taxes are levied, there is a guaranteed demand of Australian dollars to satisfy these obligations. This is crucial, as MMT directly challenges the notion of ‘household’ economics.

Household economics seems to analogise the economy and government to a household in which you need to balance the books and avoid deficits.

According to MMT, this is incorrect: households do not have control over the money that they use to pay their bills. The government is in a unique position in which it can simply print more money out of thin air (quantitative easing). To handle the inevitable inflation spike associated with deficit spending, MMT argues for using the tax system aggressively, to reduce demand-pull inflation.

Unlike other economic systems, MMT can get away with these large deficits by maximising people’s dependence on the domestic currency. To do this, MMT argues that every citizen should have the right to work a minimum-wage job through the government or a not-for-profit. This system would be used to keep wages from creating an inflation spiral and also ensure that excessive taxation does not cause job losses and lost economic growth.

Despite the COVID-19 pall that seems to have fallen across the world, MMT may provide us with an economically rational, long-term solution to job insecurity.

As good as Guy Sebastian is, Shannon Noll deserved to win Australian Idol.

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AN ODE TO THE CORPORATE LADDER

BY JASMINE PEART

It’s a dire island, the sky dark from factory smoke, and a constant grey downpour that obscures your vision. Waves crash at your feet, trying desperately to drag you down into the dark abyss. In front of you are golden glittering steps spiralling towards a beautiful marble castle. Like a fleeting smile from a girl in an elevator, the castle is beautiful in a way that makes you question if you can trust your own eyes.

Around you, thousands of other young hopefuls each have their own golden staircase to the glittering castle. Your head constantly throbs, as a chorus of Adam Smith’s famous words echoes from every direction. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor.

You want to be the one very rich man.

The higher up the staircase you go, the more of your soul you must gamble to the game of capitalism.

Toss the dice to see how many spaces up the corporate ladder you can climb, but for each throw of the dice you must first succumb to the wishes of the dice owners. For the first roll you must pose for a photo. The second, hug him. Cornered at a party in exchange for the third.

A warm yellow flame, slow metallic classical music, a beautiful pink dress. Your father reading you fairy tales in different voices. Think about your past to numb the pain.

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The Coronavirus pandemic has been traced back to the consumption of UWA ducks.

By your tenth turn you realise that to win the game of capitalism you must become The Little Mermaid herself. Beautiful, with a convincing nod of agreement. Sworn to absolute silence. You brush off the joke about his dick size – roll the dice. You don’t tell anyone about the sexual allegations against your co-workers – roll the dice. You don’t question him for hitting on someone because they “look like you” – roll the dice. Trade your voice for another roll of the dice.

But in this version of The Little Mermaid there is no loving Price Eric waiting in the castle to return your voice. You can give all your love to capitalism but capitalism will never love you back. It’s a thankless game. Instead you are left, forever voiceless, desperately clawing your way up the slippery golden steps.

A dark room, bodies pulsing to music. A tingle up your neck, hair standing on edge. Heart palpitations.

He moves in closer. Shortness of breath. Dry retching, hyperventilation. You’re going to lose your boyfriend.

Trembling. Tears.

From the ocean, the slippery tentacles of sexual harassment rise. You are powerless against their strength. All it takes to dispel the tentacles would simply be to point a single finger of blame, sending them sinking slowly beneath the dark unforgiving water. But you know, you would be dragged along with them. Ascending the golden stairs is far more important than the ever-swirling ocean of your past.

Speaking up, after giving your silence to the cause of career progression, is the new snazzy way to sign a resignation letter. Erase the years of struggling up the golden steps.

So instead, you must stand on the ugly island you have worked so hard to be on. Crabs nip at your feet, ask whether you are faithful. Corner you and ask if you will play by the rules when your boyfriend isn’t in town. Crawl into the bathroom while you shower.

And if you focus on the crabs you lose sight of what you value most – the beautiful little castle that is everything the corporate ladder promised.

So you endure the crabs as you wonder: how much silence is the beautiful castle worth?

I think Will.I.Am got it the wrong way around when he said he would mix my ‘milk’ with his ‘Coco Puffs.’

35

COMMUNITY:

AN ITERATION OF THE HERO’S JOURNEY FOR THE META ERA

BY KALE ARMSTRONG

In 1949 Joseph Campbell coined the term “The Hero’s Journey”, providing a name to a millenniaold storytelling methodology. The Hero’s Journey suggests that to create a satisfying story, flawed characters must be emotionally and morally challenged throughout their journey, in order to become better people. The concept is famous even outside of writers’ circles thanks to writer and showrunner Dan Harmon, who established his concept of the “Story Circle”: a simplification of “The Hero’s Journey” into eight simple steps. This model led to the success of Harmon’s most recent project, Rick and Morty (2013 – present). But arguably his best application of “The Story Circle” was in his series Community (2009 – 2015).

Community followed seven students studying at Greendale Community College with the hope of getting their lives back on track – a simple and not unfamiliar story concept. However, Harmon’s strict utilisation of “The Story Circle” distinguishes this show, and its effect on character development, experimentation and audience appeal is what makes Community one of the most interesting applications of Campbell’s method.

The success of “The Hero’s Journey” relies on the fact that characters (and people) are flawed and must develop morally and psychologically along their journey. Harmon’s “Greendale Seven” all possess psychological flaws that influence their decisions and encourage viewers to connect with their stories.

For example: the main protagonist, ex-lawyer Jeff Winger, whose selfishness and egoism stem from childhood trauma. Jeff’s selfishness is the driving force of most episodes, but his arc of learning the value and importance of others, friendship, and compassion progress the overall plot of the series. In seeing him change and develop into the best version of himself, we experience catharsis.

This is also seen in the arcs of other protagonists, including Annie Edison overcoming her selfdestructive obsessive perfectionism, and Troy Barnes shedding his high school immaturity and learning what it means to be a responsible adult. It

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is from these flaws that Community’s characters can develop and change, while also remaining grounded, genuine human characters.

COMMUNITY’S UNIQUE APPROACH COMBINES FLAWED CHARACTERS, WITH STORYLINES THAT PLAY WITH GENRE TROPES, WITH META HUMOUR. IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT THE JOURNEY THAT AN EPISODE WILL FOLLOW. A prime example of this is season one’s: “Modern Warfare”, where the entire campus becomes the set of a melodramatic paintball war that utilises action and adventure tropes inspired by Die Hard (1988), Spaghetti Western films, and Star Wars (1977). In “Modern Warfare”, we can see how these outrageous episodes still function successfully, using elements of Harmon’s condensed version of the Hero’s Journey.

1.

Comfort: Jeff is in a place of comfort until the Dean informs the group of a small paintball battle taking place at lunch with a secret special prize.

2. Need: After waking up to a post-apocalyptic campus, Jeff learns that the prize of winning is total control of his timetable for next semester.

3. Unfamiliar Situation: He enters the paintball war with Abed and Troy.

4. Adaptation: Jeff adapts and forms an alliance with the study group, and it appears that they might be some of the last survivors. Shirley mentions her desire to spend more time with her kids.

5. Get What They Want…: Britta and Jeff are the last survivors; they are confronted by Senior Chang, who attempts to shoot them on instruction from the Dean.

6. …But Pay a Price: Jeff learns that priority registration is not real and confronts the Dean.

7. Return to Comfort: Jeff wins the priority registration for himself.

8. Change: After the events of the paintball war, Jeff gives the registration to Shirley so she can see her kids.

But the whole point of the show is that everybody DOESN’T love Raymond?

IMAGE CREDIT TO WALLPAPERACCESS.

Although the concepts and ideas in these episodes are completely out of the realms of the standard sitcom, they all maintain the structure of “The Hero’s Journey”. The protagonist involved in this episode still goes through the process of seeking something out, and ultimately changing because of what they learnt along the way.

Despite Community’s high concept meta humour, references, and love of all things pop culture, the primary reason for its success comes down to the characters’ journeys themselves. The establishment and maintenance of flawed characters encourages the audience to love these protagonists - but there’s more to it.

Our investment in them again comes from the incorporation of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. We, as an audience, need to see growth and development to be truly emotionally engaged and invested. This is why the journey works, and is why Campbell saw it as so crucially important - not just to characters, but to people themselves.

We know “The Heroes Journey” because we have all experienced it. Campbell even described it as a “fundamental experience that everyone must undergo”. Watching characters grow and develop naturally brings heart and rewards audience investment, as we too desire and proceed to grow. It is through this journey that our emotional investment in these characters is heightened - our care for their outcome becomes linked to our own desires.

Despite its short run, Community’s utilisation of “The Hero’s Journey” is a phenomenal example of how to go about implementing character development, experimentation, and audience engagement. Its continued popularity and ever-growing fan base demonstrate that its utilisation of deeper themes and literary understandings are paramount to creating an engaging program.

Whether it be through selfish lawyer Jeff becoming a teacher, obsessive and controlling Annie going to work for the F.B.I., or immature Troy leaving to sail solo around the world, it is this process of entering into unfamiliar situations that challenge our beliefs and flaws that we too are offered the opportunity to change.

Caesar code of 4: Asa csy egxyeppc wtirx xmqi hsmrk xlmw csy jygomrk rivh.

37

JOHN LEWIS AND GETTING IN GOOD, NECESSARY TROUBLE

BY IAN TAN

The story of John Lewis is one of courage, persistence, and an indomitable spirit. From an early age until his passing - aged eighty, and on 17 July of this year - Lewis dedicated his life towards fighting against injustice - from the frontlines of protests, to the counter-tops of lunch bars, to the halls of the United States Congress. Indeed, his story is one of great inspiration, especially for the activists of today - who are engaging in what Lewis himself called “… good trouble, necessary trouble”.

John Robert Lewis was born in 1940, the third child of sharecroppers from rural Alabama. He was raised in humble circumstances, often recounting the hard work of picking cotton, corn, and peanuts on his family’s farm as a child. It was a trip to desegregated New York that opened Lewis’ eyes to the segregated world in which he lived - where race dictated which school you attended, which water fountain you drank from, or where you sat in the bus. He began to question the segregationist system after seeing white children seated in the lower level of a movie theatre, and black children shepherded to the balcony. The advice from his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were clear: “That’s the way it is. Don’t get in the way. Don’t get in trouble.”

At fifteen, he heard the message of Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) for the first time, and the story of how Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white man. Inspired and emboldened, a year later, he alongside a couple of his siblings - went to their local library to try and get a library card to borrow books.

He knew they were going to be rejected, but he did it nonetheless - because an injustice existed, and he was going to get in the way.

This captures the type of person Lewis was. Having experienced discrimination and segregation in his youth, Lewis was determined that no person should ever experience the same. He dedicated his life towards building a fairer, more just society, using non-violent activism, declaring in the wake of George Floyd’s death in May that “History has proved time and again that non-violent peaceful protest is the way to achieve the justice and equality that we all deserve.”

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Across his time fighting for civil rights in the sixties, Lewis would be arrested forty times. In a speech to graduating students at Bates University, Maine, in 2016, Lewis dispensed advice which exemplified the code he lived by: “You must find a way to get in the way and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. … You have a moral obligation, a mission and a mandate, when you leave here, to go out and seek justice for all. You can do it. You must do it.”

Lewis spent his formative years in the civil rights movement in Nashville, Tennessee, learning the language of activism - lessons he dubbed the “way of peace, the way of love, the way of non-violence”. In 1960, he helped lead the movement to desegregate Nashville’s lunch bars by occupying seats at the counter, and ordering food. They were denied service, and were often ridiculed, assaulted, and arrested. Continued sit-ins over many months would lead towards Nashville becoming the first Southern city to begin desegregating public facilities, and a model for future non-violent demonstrations against segregation.

A year later, Lewis was one of the original Freedom Riders, a movement of white and black activists which aimed to highlight the lack of enforcement over a Supreme Court mandate to desegregate public buses. Riding on scheduled bus services, the Freedom Rides were, on the whole, brutal - with buses burnt and riders assaulted by segregationists.

The first participant injured was Lewis himself, who was set upon as he attempted to enter a whiteonly waiting room in South Carolina. His face was battered, his ribs were kicked, and he was left for dead. Yet, two weeks later, in a show of Lewis’ indomitable spirit, he was back on another Freedom Ride bus.

By twenty-three, Lewis was addressing crowds of over 250,000 who had gathered in Washington DC to demand civil and political rights for AfricanAmericans, as part of the 1963 March on Washington.

By that time, he had cemented his name as one of the “Big Six” - the leading organisers of the civil rights movement, which also included his mentor, friend and inspiration, MLK. Lewis spoke just before MLK delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech,

If Kanye wins the 2020 Presidential election, I will cut off my arms and feed them to the snakes at the Agriculture School.

urging those in attendance to “get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes.”

And this is what Lewis did on 7 March, 1965, when he walked down the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on a march towards Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, demanding voting rights. After ordering the crowd to disperse, police began to attack the marchers with clubs and tear gas. Lewis himself was beaten unconscious by police - his skull fractured with scars forever visible. The display of brutality on that fateful day, now known as Bloody Sunday, was instrumental in galvanising support for the Voting Rights Act to outlaw practices which disenfranchised African-Americans from voting.

Lewis’ work did not end there. He was elected to Congress in 1987, where he continued his life’s work.

He was arrested a further five times as a member of Congress, such as when he protested South African apartheid, the Darfur Genocide, and at a sitin demanding comprehensive immigration reform.

Lewis never forgot his roots, as a fierce champion of the rights of all, including LGBTQIA+ rights, women’s rights, and voting rights - an issue close to his heart.

He was also unafraid to cultivate relationships with his Republican counterparts, leading a bipartisan delegation of political leaders back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge every year to share his story and reenact the march.

Getting in good trouble was never far from his mind: he led a sit-in of Democrat Congresspeople on the floor of the House of Representatives, demanding Republican leadership schedule a vote on gun control. In 2011, the first African-American president, Barack Obama, awarded the civil rights icon with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the closing months of his life, Lewis continued to strive for justice, re-visiting Edmund Pettus Bridge on the fifty-fifth anniversary of the march earlier this year. In June, he joined Obama in a virtual town-

hall on racial injustice. Days later, he made his last public appearance, visiting the Black Lives Matter mural painted just outside the White House. It was a powerful moment – a passing of a symbolic baton from Lewis, to a new generation of activists to continue on his life’s work of building a fairer, more just world. His visit connected the old to the new, highlighting the work still ahead to achieve full equality for all, no matter the progress which he had already help achieve.

According to Lewis’ sister, his favourite poem was Invictus, by English poet William Ernest Henley. A source of inspiration throughout his life, the second stanza reads:

IN THE FELL CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE, I HAVE NOT WINCED NOR CRIED ALOUD. UNDER THE BLUDGEONINGS OF CHANCE MY HEAD IS BLOODY, BUT UNBOWED. His leadership in the civil rights movement saw Lewis’ head bloodied more than once. But through it all, his head never bowed. He never ceased or yielded.

When he could have walked away, he chose to get in the way, and to engage in good, necessary trouble because he knew that progress can only be achieved if people were willing to enter the arena. This was a message and a legacy which a new generation of activists are now carrying in their own quest to build a fairer and more just world.

John Lewis was a towering figure, a moral giant, an American hero. But most of all, his story is one of incredible inspiration.

Save money by drinking your shower water.

39

THE JOURNEY TOWARDS GLOBAL ART THEORY

BY AMY NEVILLE

The art canon, intended to be the guide to the greatest artists and artworks, is notoriously a Western, maledominated collection. This impenetrable structure is the foundation of art history and fine arts - the great masters that are meant to inspire us. The art world exists as an ever-continuing journey, where the canon is simply the record of previous stops along the way.

But some new theorists are aspiring to start a new journey to worlds under-explored and incorrectly mapped. This is global art theory.

In simpler terms, this is the theory that the art world needs to expand beyond the Euro-centricities of the past, and acknowledge works from nonWestern artists. In the current UWA curriculum for Art History, there are seventeen general art history classes, another fourteen based in Europe, and only four based elsewhere.

Every student chooses which areas they would like specialise in, but all must take the course ‘Great Moments in Art’, which intends to introduce students to the art canon. This unit establishes the basic knowledge that art historians, and indeed, all art enthusiasts, should know. The key movements of Modernism, the Renaissance, Surrealism, and Romanticism are encompassed, along with artists like Michelangelo, Andy Warhol, and J.M.W. Turner.

Here, a pattern emerges: one that exclusively involves white, male artists, mostly from western Europe. Only two or three weeks are spent on nonWestern artworks. What this establishes to young art historians is that art is fundamentally Western. The

40

creation, the terminology, the foundational artworks, and the key players - all white, western figures.

Some might find this frustrating; others may not notice the missing pages of our history. Our art galleries and museums only serve to reinforce this divide, relegating the entire continents of Africa and Asia to single rooms, whilst gleefully displaying wings full of Florentine masters. Some would claim this is due to the accessibility of European artworks, but the theft and destruction of African and Southern American art and culture suggests otherwise. The art canon has been adapted to create a hierarchy, an aesthetic system by which we value artworks.

Things such as realism, contrast, details, perspective, and composition are prized, and a common feature amongst the canon. These traits, whilst common in European art, are far rarer in non-Western works, leading to artworks suffering within a system they were never meant to exist within. But recent research has suggested a deeper problem within the art history discipline.

The terms ‘art history’ and ‘fine arts’ evoke images of grand galleries, oil paintings, and ancient catalogues featuring the grand masters. This discipline is inherently a research-based academic department, with small classes and incredible niche topics - some covering merely twenty years of a single artist’s work. But the discipline itself, outside of Europe and North America, is underfunded and understudied, with North America possessing more art history departments alone than the entirety of Africa. How then, could an African scholar study their own art history, when the very terminology, the foundational

Being LGBTQIA+ can be a leading personality trait.

teachings, and even the majority of the artifacts, reside elsewhere? Great galleries in England, here unnamed to deny them exposure they certainly don’t deserve, may claim their collection of African artworks is best situated for greater exposure to a wider audience. But how could it, at the cost of denying these works to their cultural owners?

deformed into the strict box of ‘acceptable art’ to be recognised in this canonical structure.

There is, however, a growing hope, a new world cresting over the horizon, of a community abandoning the canon, leaving it into the past and stepping forwards on this journey together towards a new – and global – art theory.

Furthermore, are all of these ‘artworks’ even intended to be art? In our Western traditions, we ascribe the labels of ‘art’ or ‘artifact’ based on an object’s aesthetic values, and how these match to existing art and artifacts. But this creates the problem wherein objects with a purpose, intention and function beyond aesthetics, are robbed of it, and displayed as art - and art objects not meeting this unyielding aesthetic are delegated as artifacts, often with the tag ‘for unknown purposes’.

The art canon, the language by which we define an artwork, and the traditions by which these gallery spaces function, were never designed to accommodate non-Western artworks. Even if an artwork should, by some chance, be correctly identified as an artwork, it will more often than not be seen as a ‘primitive’ and lesser-step in the evolution of art for failing to adhere to an aesthetic standard it was never meant to meet.

How then, can the art canon continue to function with such a fundamental flaw? The short answer is – it can’t. Many artists have tried, with few successes, to slip into the canon, hiding under the covers of a familiar aesthetic. But it is not enough – it cannot be enough – for artist to have to be forced and

I don’t know why my underwear was flying on the UWA flagpole, and you need to stop asking.

41

A FAWN AND A ZEBU LIE DOWN IN THE DUST: THE NOMADS OF DJIBRIL DIOP MAMBÉTY AND JIM JARMUSCH

BY LACHLAN SERVENTY

Senegal, 1970: ten years after the end of French control, and the beginning of independence. Senegal, still filled with tradition, yet marked by one hundred and ten years of colonialism, and rapidly modernising.

Two lovers, Mory and Anta, disinterested in the lives they have in Senegal and dreaming of Paris, set out on the back of a scrambler motorcycle, adorned with Zebu horns. They need money to pay for passage to Paris.

Machine, almost a hundred years earlier. A small town on the American frontier. William Blake - a young, naïve accountant - is shot by the jealous lover of a woman he meets in a saloon. He is informed

by Nobody, a Cayuga man, that the bullet is lodged near his heart. Blake is a walking dead man. Nobody decides to lead Blake on a journey through the American frontier, back to “where the spirits came from”.

What do these two stories, set in different centuries and on opposite ends of the world, have in common?

Both take place in a time of transition, of violent rebirth. Despite the differences these stories have, they are both essentially a narrative of those

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dispossessed by rapidly changing times, and the choices they must make in response. Either to live in a new world, distant from the one they’ve always known, or to allow themselves to be passed by, a lost vestige of an existence that will be no more.

The journeys they take are final tours of the dying world, and the first travels through the new. The choice between what has been and what might be is alien to us in the modern Western world. We do a fairly decent job of allowing the cumulative small changes the world around us makes, to pass by relatively unnoticed. The only thing that has always been is change, so there’s nothing to cling onto.

Nothing to travel through, or mourn, or celebrate.

However, the two stories, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973) and Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), tell of those who cannot help but notice this change around them. The coal-dust barbarism and isolation of the American West shifting into an iron-clad industrial age. The subaltern and colonised Senegal realising itself on its own terms, yet still not able to shake the marks that the French had left behind.

Anyone got a spare ticket to the EMAS event? Send inquiries directly to the Pelican inbox.

“THE JOURNEYS THEY TAKE ARE FINAL TOURS OF THE DYING WORLD, AND THE FIRST TRAVELS THROUGH THE NEW.”

For Anta and Mory, up until the very end of the film, the answer lies in leaving behind any choice, and instead becoming part of the culture that had once ruled their native Senegal. Yet the traditions of their own people and their colonisers run deep. The choices they face reveal the double world they live in. At every point in their journey, they are reminded of this.

To face the alienation of the two worlds, these journeys are necessary. Any chance of a place in the new world must be earned, whether wanted or not. When Mory, at the end of Touki Bouki, decides that despite the promises of Paris, he must stay in Senegal, his hand has been forced. There is no third option. The adventure is over, Ithaca is reached. Now the suitors must be slain.

It’s much the same in Dead Man. The journey takes William Blake and Nobody through outlaw camps, trading posts owned by a racist proselytiser, and the last vestiges of displaced Indigenous tribes. From the old world through to the new, and back again, often only a day between them.

We may never face the choices of nomads. Their stories however, from Homer to Mambéty and Jarmusch, will always draw us in to the journeys of those alienated by a world that never stops.

Despite the geographic and temporal distance between these two stories, the feeling of nomadism is ever-present. These travelers must, as a rite of passage - whether to Paris or the afterlife - drift through the hottest points of friction between the old and the new. Like Odysseus, they must face and slay their myths, endure dangers, and offer their sacrifices.

You didn’t take your contraceptive pill today.

43

DAY IN THE LIFE OF A WORKER IN LOCKDOWN

BY BRIAN KHOO

The journal entry of a hypothetical office worker, whose career has shifted from the office to the bedroom during the lockdown.

Monday, 13 April 2020 For the fifth time in two weeks, I had forgotten to set my alarm clock. Thankfully, I was probably not the only one to have done that.

Amongst other sources of good news, I did not have to change out of my pyjamas, nor did I really have to take my morning shower. In fact, I hopped straight onto the computer at nine, whilst munching a bowl of cereal.

Working from home during the pandemic made every day feel like a weekend, and I was struggling to find any motivation to stay productive. This was my fourth week of running a home office, and I had not felt this unmotivated since high school.

Last Friday, I took an extra hour of lunch to fit in a nap, and spent another forty minutes scrolling through Twitter. In my defence, however, I was waiting for some invoices to be emailed to me by one of my colleagues (who later confessed to spending a third of his work day in the kitchen, trying to bake a cake).

I needed to get my act together for this week.

Caught in the mood of lockdown, it took me fortyfive minutes to get out of bed and prepare some breakfast, making it 9:50AM when I finally was able to log on my computer. Thankfully, half the team still had an ‘away’ status displayed next to their names.

I thought that I should take advantage of this by running over to the kitchen to make myself an iced coffee. That was short-lived, however, as I soon realised that the milk in the fridge had gone sour – a consequence of spreading your shopping days as far apart as possible to avoid going out. It took another ten minutes before I decided to just settle for some black tea instead.

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A recent survey suggests that 34% of students use campus coffee as an anti-freeze alternative. We’re not sure if this says more about the coffee, or the students.

The Zoom meeting at 1:30PM was awkward, as I was the first to enter the boss’ call. Whilst he was able to display the wine glass cabinet in his living room behind him, I had to settle for an artificial background of a Hawaiian beach, given the current disastrous state of my bedroom.

The most embarrassing part was reserved for my pyjamas, however, which I still had not changed out of. Of course, those who had missed out on the mandatory meeting played the ‘failed technology card’, claiming that they were facing troubles connecting to the internet at that time.

Nevertheless, the meeting soon adjourned, and with nostalgia kicking in, I decided to play reruns of Friends in the background, whilst trying to fill out an important work paper. The worst thing that could have happened then was subconsciously filling out the client’s name as Smelly Cat. At five in the evening, I let out a sigh of relief, for I was able to stay productive till the working day’s end. I thought I would take that morning shower now, but the pyjamas could probably stay on for another night.

Much to my surprise (and annoyance), the phone rang at six, as one of the managers called me up and requested that I look through the work of one of the graduates, who had failed to receive substantial face-to-face training after having only joined the team in February. The reality of office life was that it was no longer a nine-to-five thing. We logged on at ten, took two-hour breaks, and so had to deal with late night meetings.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so guilty for my low productivity last week. I will look through the graduate’s work, but that can wait until tomorrow, when I start my day off at ten in the morning.

The best part of being a barista is telling people you are a barista

45

WHICH GREEK DEITY ARE YOU?

BY CAMERON CARR AND EL FINNIE

There are literally thousands of Greek gods - but which one are you? Select the answer that best describes you, and prepare to have our oracles give you a reading.

You come across a still stream in which you can clearly see your reflection:

How many ships could your face launch?

A) Admire your own face for so long you turn into a flower.

B) Probably a few. You have a pretty strong headbutt.

A) Only a thousand? Try one million.

B) The river has stolen your face! Destroy it!

C) You can’t launch a ship with a face, that makes no sense.

C) Consider the way in which the light is refracted by the water.

D) No mortal visage can compare to the beauty of the Earth.

D) Bask in the beauty of this picturesque scene.

E) If you launch the ship with a face, that means you can save the champagne for drinking!

E) The water makes you thirsty - time for a pint.

F) Stare into the darkness behind your eyes.

You’re sailing on the Mediterranean Sea when you hear beautiful singing in the distance: A) You’re so much more beautiful than whatever this song is.

B) Whatever it is, you can probably beat it up.

C) Block the ears of everyone onboard, and continue sailing.

D) However nice the singing is, it cannot compare to the natural beauty of the ocean.

E) The more the merrier – invite them onboard for a party!

F) Beauty is meaningless. Life is meaningless.

F) There’s no point. No matter how far you travel, you can’t escape the void.

You’re trapped in a labyrinth, being hunted by a Minotaur!

A) Flirt with the Minotaur, and persuade it to show you the way out.

B) Head towards the Minotaur. Fight it. Easier than directions.

C) You left a trail of string behind as you came in, because you’re not an impulsive idiot.

D) The beast is as much a child of nature as you.

Together, you shall tear down this prison of man.

E) Try and remember how you got here. You vaguely remember gin being involved.

F) Sit down and accept your fate.

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Some people at social netball take the games WAY too seriously.

Whilst on a stroll, you encounter old mate Heracles attempting to clean horse shit in a stable: A) Ew, gross, hope you can get the smell out of your clothes.

B) Move aside, Heracles - I can do a way better job.

C) Suggest diverting a river to clean out the stable.

D) Great, this dung will make great compost.

E) This looks boring. Fancy a pint, Herc ol’ chum?

F) He probably doesn’t need your help.

A jealous God challenges you to an epic loom battle: A) You’ve never had to use your hands for manual labour before.

B) Challenge them to a real duel!

C) You win - you basically invented this shit.

D) What a great opportunity for a new colourful sweater!

E) Try suggesting a drinking contest instead.

F) Why bother? Looms are stupid.

You can’t resist, and decide to open Pandora’s box (or jar, for you ancient history nerds): A) You find a selfie stick.

B) There’s a chilled can of Monster inside.

C) A mint-condition CASIO Classpad (in-box) lies within.

D) It’s filled with fresh fruit.

E) A Tav voucher!

Mostly As: Aphrodite - Goddess of Beauty You’re hot - like, really hot - and god, do you know it. You’ve definitely gotten away with things that a less aesthetically-blessed person would have been in serious hot water for. You thrive as the centre of attention, and it’s a rare moment that nobody’s paying attention to you. This is a reminder for you to delete some photos from your phone - you definitely don’t need a whole 2GB of selfies.

Mostly Bs: Ares - God of War “Calm down,” people tell you. “There’s no need to get violent,” they say. Bullshit. You’ve yet to come across a situation where a show of physical prowess isn’t the correct course of action. If something isn’t working for you, you hit it until it does. You should probably look at picking up a punching bag, because hitting all those walls can’t be good for your hands - or the people who keep having to pay for repairs.

Mostly Cs: Athena - Goddess of Wisdom If there’s one thing you like, it’s being right - because, let’s be honest, you always are. You approach every situation analytically, and only make decisions when you know all the facts. If someone has a problem, they’d be well-served to ask you for a solution. You’re on track to finish your degree in two and half years, thanks to taking extra units during the summer, while everyone else was “partying” and “having fun”.

Mostly Ds: Demeter – Goddess of the Harvest You’re at one both with the world, and all the plants and creatures lucky enough to live alongside your enlightened spirit. Sipping your green goddess juice from your proverbial high horse, you’re the epitome of ethical superiority. Most likely studying some pseudo-science degree that’s vaguely environmental.

F) There’s nothing.

Mostly Es: Dionysus – God of Wine The life of the party, you thrive in a toga any night of the week. Always happy to supply the BYO alcohol, you’re a cheerful soul who isn’t always the most sensible drinker. Unfortunately, being the life of the party leaves your studies neglected, and while P’s make degrees, they don’t necessarily make jobs. But hey, at least some of your in-class tests might be online.

Mostly Fs: Hades – God of the Dead ‘Hello darkness, my old friend’ might be something people have said to you - if you actually made an effort to be nice once in a while, that is. Your eternal pessimism and love for heavy metal can be pretty alienating. You’ve got much more successful older siblings, which often makes you feel like you’re living in their shadow. Try wearing a cheerful jumper once in a while.

I keep the scurvy at bay by spritzing fresh lemon into my vodka soda.

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ISSUE SIX

EXPOSE

UNTITLED BY NASA

SUBMISSIONS DUE BY THE 25TH OF SEPTEMBER E-MAIL PELICAN@GUILD.UWA.EDU.AU FOR MORE INFORMATION