What scares you?
All kinds of things.  Dolls, sharks and coming home alone to a dark, empty house with images of a scary movie playing in my mind.  I sometimes get so frightened that I’m scared stiff!  Completely self inflicted but very real at the same time.  

Can you remember the first time you felt afraid while watching a movie? 
I saw a LOT of late 70’s and 80’s horror when I was growing up.  Too much, too soon some might say but it has certainly given me a real appreciation for the genre as an adult.  I think my earliest memory of feeling terrified was about age 5 and watching Jaws on TV.  I was so disturbed that even the water in the toilet freaked me out for weeks!  Linda Blair, Freddy Krueger and that little punk Chucky all took turns at terrorising me over the years though.

Who are the people in the film industry that inspire you? 
People who just get out there and make films, tell stories and shake things up a bit.  I love Tarantino and Rodriguez.  Jonathan Levine (the writer/director behind a little film called The Wackness) and if I could mirror any acting career it would be the awesome Marisa Tomei’s career. 

What aspects of the Nazi mythos make it such good fodder for horror films?
The Nazi’s provoke such an extreme reaction in people, their obscene thirst for power and seriously skewed view of this world.   If you do a little research you read about the wacky fanatics that were all around Hitler.  People like Heinrich Himmler, a crazed chicken farmer completely obsessed with the occult and harnessing its power.  The whole thing is so gravely unsettling.  

In your new film you play the devil made manifest as a beautiful woman. What do you think it would be like to meet the devil?
I imagine the temperature would plummet and all the air would get sucked out of the room.  Evil, pure evil.
 
The devil is usually portrayed as a male character in both religious material and popular culture. As a female, what do you think you were able to bring to the role, and how is your portrayal different to those we’ve seen before?  
Women have the capacity to be much more evil, calculating and vengeful in my experience “Hell hath no fury.... etc etc”  I’m often cast as mean, maniacal characters which is a little worrying - think it has something to do with my black eyes!  In the lead up to filming we had decided to keep her very still and controlled when she was in true Demon form.  Paul Campion wanted something similar to The Queen Borg from Star Trek, extremely menacing and powerful in her stillness.  There is some serious talk of a Devil’s Rock sequel and we’ll have much more time and money to really explore that Demon character. Fingers crossed!

As an actress, do you think that fear is an easier response to provoke in an audience than other emotions? Is fear more straightforward to manipulate than say despair or joy, or is that a simplification of why we get scared?
I actually think it’s the complete opposite!  Joy, laughter, happiness and conversely despair are all more universal, simple and pure human emotions, while fear is far more multi faceted and quite unique to each individual.  Sure, there are stock standard scary things like ‘the dark’, an assailant and say spiders but to really scare someone, to leave behind an iconically scary movie scene I think is a much harder feat. 

New Zealand has an interesting horror pedigree with films such as Braindead and Black Sheep. What unique elements do you think New Zealanders bring to the genre? 
Braindead was actually the first horror film I watched over.... and over.... and over again. I loved it! New Zealanders are just cool, they’re a little bit kooky and they have a real sense of fun and commitment to a project.  Nothing is sacrosanct and this leads to a unique horror flavour.  It’s a great place to make a horror film with some seriously talented folk (Kiwi’s and foreigners alike) at Weta Workshop which is the real secret weapon.  Without doubt the crew on The Devil’s Rock was the best team I’ve had the opportunity to work with to date.  More Kiwi horror for me please.  

Paul Campion Interview

Paul Campion, director of The Devil’s Rock, is best known for his work on…. Well, just about any major film with special effects. From Avatar to Lord of the Rings, to Sin City and beyond, Paul has been killing it. This time around he’s created a film with Kiwi characters in it! At the height of WW2, in the days before the Normandy landings, two New Zealand SAS soldiers land on an island of the French coast to give the Germans some scares. When they arrive, they find a suspiciously low number of Germans and a LOT of scares.

What is the most horrifying scene in movie history?

For me it's actually a scene from Saving Private Ryan.  There are some shocking moments in the final act, but the one that gets me every time is the fight to the death between the German soldier and the American Private Mellish,  culminating in the German soldier slowly pushing a knife into Mellish's heart as he begs the German to stop.  It still makes me feel physically queasy – there's no blood, it's not gratuitous, just painfully slow to watch, and the whole scene is made worse by having the second American soldier listening to the fight only feet away on the stairs, but being so scared he's unable to save Mellish.  

Why did you choose World War 2 as a back drop to your film? Would it be as scary if say, terrorists were trying to unleash the same kind of evil into the modern world?

That would've been a completely different film – possibly similar to Frank Darabonts film of Steven King's The Mist, where the US military are conducting experiments and release monsters from another dimension.  Our film was always meant to be based around WW2, the German occupation of the Channel Islands, the German fortifications there and the Bad Books, which are genuine books of witchcraft which really exist in the Channel Islands – I found one 250year old version in a vault in a library in Guernsey.  That was the story we wanted to tell, weaving all those elements together.

You have worked in special effects for a lot of films that Weta have played a part in. Is it an easy transition to move from that and your work on short films in to creating, directing and producing a full blown feature?

For the technical side of filmmaking I think it was a fairly easy transition, as I'd spent 10 years working in post production, so I was already very familiar with the whole digital side of things, but it was a huge learning curve dealing with the live action side – particularly working with actors and learning how to work with the crew onset.  There's also the side that people don't think about, which is the business side of filmmaking.  You need to have a thorough understanding of the whole economics of filmmaking, how every decision you're making as a director will affect everything from raising the finance to where the money is spent making the film to how it's marketed and sold.   You're making a product that has to be sold in a very competitive marketplace and learning how that side of things works was a huge eye opener.

To what degree do you feel that horror movies are becoming clichéd, blockbuster, teenzploitation time waster? Do you feel that modern horror is a shadow of its former self?

There does seem to be a trend to turn out lots of 'pg13' style horror films that are aimed primarily at teenagers and also the increasing trend for remakes, because it's easier to remake a film that already has a brand name and the marketing built in than to create something original – it's simply the economics of filmmaking – it's a lot harder to convince the public to watch something they've never heard of.    The other issue though is it's just so much harder to come up with a new story these days – the horror genre more than any other has been thoroughly mined and audiences are so savvy now it's just so tough to tell a really original story.

I think perhaps the heyday was in the late 70's and 80's with Alien, Exorcist, The Thing American Werewolf in London, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead 1 & 2 , Hellraiser etc.  There have been very few horror films since then that have had the same impact.  I loved the whole Japanese horror movement – Ju-on, Ringu, Dark Water (all the originals, not the US remakes) – I think those have been the best thing to happen in horror films in the past couple of decades, but even then it's now been done and that bubble seems to have burst.  The best film I've seen recently is the original Let the Right One in, which I think is a masterpiece, horrific, beautiful, funny and very poignant – it's definitely up there as one of the great horror films for me.

A lot of excellent media has been released over the past thirty years involving Nazi occultism (Indiana Jones, Wolfenstein, Dead Snow). Is this a movie trope that is here to stay?

Yes, I don't think they're going to go away for a long time.  Everything has become so politically correct and it's harder and harder to find a group of bad guys that you can use as the enemy in a film without someone  somewhere getting offended – except for the Nazi's – no one is ever  going to get upset however badly they're portrayed.

Are Nazis inherently scary, even without all the supernatural aspects?

Absolutely frightening.  The origins of the Nazi party go back to secret occult societies and the belief in the mystical powers of a pure Aryan race.  To help prepare Matt Sunderland for his role as a Nazi occult expert in the film, I showed him some documentaries on YouTube about Nazi's and the occult and it's very frightening stuff –everything from Hitler's belief in finding mystical and religious artifacts that might help him win the war  to the creation of baby factories – specially selected young women picked to breed with pure Aryan young men to create a genetically pure and physically perfect babies that would be brought up in isolation and brainwashed to become the master race on earth.

Although you've just released this film, do you have any other movie ideas you can hint at?

I'm currently writing two scripts with Paul Finch, who co-wrote The Devil's Rock.  The first is called Scorpion Raiders, a WW2 true story about the Long Range Desert Group, a combined New Zealand and British special forces unit that operated in teams of heavily armed trucks deep behind enemy lines in the deserts of North Africa.  I learnt about this particular unit while doing research for the Devil's Rock and specifically New Zealand's involvement in the war.  This particular story is about a raid carried out by the Long Range Desert Group, who drove 2000kms across the most inhospitable desert on earth to attack and destroy an enemy airfield.  The raid itself was a success but the escape turned into a near disaster, with almost all their vehicles destroyed and they had to escape back across the desert on foot.  It's an incredible true story of bravery and heroism, very much Lawrence of Arabia meets Black Hawk Down.

The second project is called Dark Hollow, based on the novel by US horror author Brian Keene – it's a classic monster movie, about a satyr - a mythical half man half goat creature (like Mr Tumnus but evil and horny) that begins seducing and abducting the women of a small Pennsylvanian town and killing off the men who try to stop it. 

Lastly we've just started talking about making a sequel to The Devil's Rock, which will be a little more mainstream – less talking, more action, characters, action and more demons.

From the 1960s on, a mysterious black cat resembling a puma has been seen in and around south western Surrey in England. In 1963 a sighting by a policeman sparked further interest in the subject and one year later an ox was found mutilated by a large creature. Over 300 reports of the black cat were received by the police in one year alone. Speculation and interest dwindled again until another policeman caught the cat on film in the same year as a massive paw print was discovered.

9. Kaz II

In 2007, the 12-metre catamaran, the Kaz II, was discovered unmanned off the coast of Queensland, northeast Australia. The yacht, which had left harbour on Sunday 15 April, was spotted about 150km off Townsville on the following Wednesday. When boarded on Friday, the engine was running, a laptop was running, the radio and GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on board. All the sails were up but one was badly shredded, while three life jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on board. Investigators recovered a video recording that showed footage taken by the crew shortly before their disappearance. The footage showed nothing abnormal.

8. The Bloop

The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration several times during 1997. According to the NOAA, it “rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km.” According to scientists who have studied the phenomenon it matches the audio profile of a living creature but there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If the sound did come from an animal, it would reportedly have to be several times the size of the largest known animal on Earth.

7. Killer book

In 1948 the body of a man was found in Adelaide, Australia. The man was never identified. Police found a suitcase which they believed was but three items had their name tags removed.  A small note in a pocket said “taman shud” which is the last line of the book, ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’.  A man seeing the note on TV contacted police to say that the book had appeared in his unlocked car. It was the copy that had had the note removed. In the back of the book were coded markings which have yet to be deciphered.  A name in the front of the book led police to a woman who said she had given it to a man named Boxall during WWII. Upon seeing a plaster cast of the dead man she identified him as Boxall. This appeared to solve the mystery of who the man was, until Boxall was later discovered alive with his copy of the book undamaged. The death remains a mystery.

6. The Flying Dutchman

It was 1641 when Captain Hendrik van der Decken swore he would round the Cape of Good Hope if it took him till doomsday. The captain’s ship, known as The Flying Dutchman, has been seen frequently around the area, a phantom ship often so close the witnesses would say it nearly crashed into theirs, only to see it vanish. Such a sighting was witnessed by future King of England George V in 1881. Later that morning, the sailor who originally spotted the vessel fell to his death. It is always viewed as a bad omen to see the Dutchman.

5. A Previous Life

In 1930, aged 4, Shanti Deva from Delhi, India, told her parents that she had once lived in a place called Muttra, that she had been a mother of three, who died in childbirth, and that her previous name was Ludgi. Because the girl continually told the story, her parents investigated. It turned out there was a village called Muttra, and that a woman named Ludgi had recently died there. They took Shanti to the village where she began to speak the local dialect and recognized her previous-life husband and children. She even gave twenty four accurate statements matching confirmed facts about Ludgi’s life.

4. James Worson

In 1873, a man named James Worson had accepted a challenge to a race, from the town of Leamington to the town of Coventry.  Two friends, Hammerson Burns and Barham Wise, followed behind in a carriage and they brought along his late 19th century camera. Running down the centre of the track, Worson suddenly appeared to stumble and collapse, yelling out a short scream. Wise later said, “It was the most ghastly sound ether of us had ever heard.” But as Worson fell over, instead of just falling to the ground as would normally be the case, he completely and totally vanished in mid-fall, before ever hitting the ground. Wise took the pictures to prove it. The track showed proof in the dirt. Worson’s footprints led down the middle of the track, it looked as if he had stumbled, and then they disappeared. A search was called and the bloodhounds used in the search were strangely reluctant to approach the spot where Worson disappeared. He was never seen or heard from again.

3. The devil’s Footprints

The devil’s footprints were the name given to a phenomenon that occurred in Devon, England in February 1855. After a light snowfall, during the night, a series of hoof-like marks appeared in the snow. These footprints, continued throughout the countryside for a total of over 100 miles, and for the greater part of their course followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls which lay in the footprints’ path, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes smaller than four inches in diameter.

2. Rain man

In 1983 Donnie Decker was visiting his friend’s house when he abruptly went into a trance-like state. Immediately after, the ceiling began to drip water and a mist filled the room. Sometime later, Donnie was at a restaurant when rain started pouring down onto customer’s heads. Years later, due to a petty crime, Donnie was put in jail where he caused chaos when rain started to pour down in his cell. After angry inmates complained, Donnie explained that he could make it rain when he wanted to, and proved his point by dumping rain on the guards. Eventually, he was released from jail but his whereabouts is unknown – as is the cause of the mysterious rain.

1. SS Ourang Medan

In February, 1948, distress calls were picked up near Indonesia, from SS Ourang Medan. The chilling message was, “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” This message was followed by Morse code then one final grisly message… “I die.” When the first rescue vessel arrived on the scene, they tried to hail the Ourang Medan but there was no response. A boarding party was sent to the ship and what they found was a frightening sight. All the crew and officers of the Ourang Medan were dead, their eyes open, faces looking towards the sun, arms outstretched and a look of terror on their faces When nearing the bodies in the boiler room, the rescue crew felt a chill, though the temperature was near 40°C. The decision was made to tow the ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began rolling up from the hull. The rescue crew left the ship and barely had time to cut the tow lines before the Ourang Medan exploded and sank.

From the 1960s on, a mysterious black cat resembling a puma has been seen in and around south western Surrey in England. In 1963 a sighting by a policeman sparked further interest in the subject and one year later an ox was found mutilated by a large creature. Over 300 reports of the black cat were received by the police in one year alone. Speculation and interest dwindled again until another policeman caught the cat on film in the same year as a massive paw print was discovered.

9. Kaz II

In 2007, the 12-metre catamaran, the Kaz II, was discovered unmanned off the coast of Queensland, northeast Australia. The yacht, which had left harbour on Sunday 15 April, was spotted about 150km off Townsville on the following Wednesday. When boarded on Friday, the engine was running, a laptop was running, the radio and GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on board. All the sails were up but one was badly shredded, while three life jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on board. Investigators recovered a video recording that showed footage taken by the crew shortly before their disappearance. The footage showed nothing abnormal.

8. The Bloop

The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration several times during 1997. According to the NOAA, it “rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km.” According to scientists who have studied the phenomenon it matches the audio profile of a living creature but there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If the sound did come from an animal, it would reportedly have to be several times the size of the largest known animal on Earth.

7. Killer book

In 1948 the body of a man was found in Adelaide, Australia. The man was never identified. Police found a suitcase which they believed was but three items had their name tags removed.  A small note in a pocket said “taman shud” which is the last line of the book, ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’.  A man seeing the note on TV contacted police to say that the book had appeared in his unlocked car. It was the copy that had had the note removed. In the back of the book were coded markings which have yet to be deciphered.  A name in the front of the book led police to a woman who said she had given it to a man named Boxall during WWII. Upon seeing a plaster cast of the dead man she identified him as Boxall. This appeared to solve the mystery of who the man was, until Boxall was later discovered alive with his copy of the book undamaged. The death remains a mystery.

6. The Flying Dutchman

It was 1641 when Captain Hendrik van der Decken swore he would round the Cape of Good Hope if it took him till doomsday. The captain’s ship, known as The Flying Dutchman, has been seen frequently around the area, a phantom ship often so close the witnesses would say it nearly crashed into theirs, only to see it vanish. Such a sighting was witnessed by future King of England George V in 1881. Later that morning, the sailor who originally spotted the vessel fell to his death. It is always viewed as a bad omen to see the Dutchman.

5. A Previous Life

In 1930, aged 4, Shanti Deva from Delhi, India, told her parents that she had once lived in a place called Muttra, that she had been a mother of three, who died in childbirth, and that her previous name was Ludgi. Because the girl continually told the story, her parents investigated. It turned out there was a village called Muttra, and that a woman named Ludgi had recently died there. They took Shanti to the village where she began to speak the local dialect and recognized her previous-life husband and children. She even gave twenty four accurate statements matching confirmed facts about Ludgi’s life.

4. James Worson

In 1873, a man named James Worson had accepted a challenge to a race, from the town of Leamington to the town of Coventry.  Two friends, Hammerson Burns and Barham Wise, followed behind in a carriage and they brought along his late 19th century camera. Running down the centre of the track, Worson suddenly appeared to stumble and collapse, yelling out a short scream. Wise later said, “It was the most ghastly sound ether of us had ever heard.” But as Worson fell over, instead of just falling to the ground as would normally be the case, he completely and totally vanished in mid-fall, before ever hitting the ground. Wise took the pictures to prove it. The track showed proof in the dirt. Worson’s footprints led down the middle of the track, it looked as if he had stumbled, and then they disappeared. A search was called and the bloodhounds used in the search were strangely reluctant to approach the spot where Worson disappeared. He was never seen or heard from again.

3. The devil’s Footprints

The devil’s footprints were the name given to a phenomenon that occurred in Devon, England in February 1855. After a light snowfall, during the night, a series of hoof-like marks appeared in the snow. These footprints, continued throughout the countryside for a total of over 100 miles, and for the greater part of their course followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls which lay in the footprints’ path, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes smaller than four inches in diameter.

2. Rain man

In 1983 Donnie Decker was visiting his friend’s house when he abruptly went into a trance-like state. Immediately after, the ceiling began to drip water and a mist filled the room. Sometime later, Donnie was at a restaurant when rain started pouring down onto customer’s heads. Years later, due to a petty crime, Donnie was put in jail where he caused chaos when rain started to pour down in his cell. After angry inmates complained, Donnie explained that he could make it rain when he wanted to, and proved his point by dumping rain on the guards. Eventually, he was released from jail but his whereabouts is unknown – as is the cause of the mysterious rain.

1. SS Ourang Medan

In February, 1948, distress calls were picked up near Indonesia, from SS Ourang Medan. The chilling message was, “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” This message was followed by Morse code then one final grisly message… “I die.” When the first rescue vessel arrived on the scene, they tried to hail the Ourang Medan but there was no response. A boarding party was sent to the ship and what they found was a frightening sight. All the crew and officers of the Ourang Medan were dead, their eyes open, faces looking towards the sun, arms outstretched and a look of terror on their faces When nearing the bodies in the boiler room, the rescue crew felt a chill, though the temperature was near 40°C. The decision was made to tow the ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began rolling up from the hull. The rescue crew left the ship and barely had time to cut the tow lines before the Ourang Medan exploded and sank.

If you were in the Hood St fan zone a couple of weeks back (and you probably were, because everyone was), drinking beer and yelling patriotic things whilst the All Blacks lay the smackdown on Japan,  you probably, at some point, ran into the Roller Ghouls. The Hellmilton City Roller Ghouls. They probably gave you a flier about their upcoming home bout and, if you got one of those fliers, you probably should have gone. Because it was totally bad-ass.

There are few things more terrifying than seeing a bunch of corpse painted, death-mongers on wheels flying in circles at breakneck speeds in a concerted effort to trip, maim, and otherwise incapacitate each other. It’s awe inspiring, it’s roller derby, and it’s the latest greatest thing in sport - taking off in New Zealand almost as fast as a gal can skate. The number of roller derby leagues in NZ has swelled from only seven in 2010 to at least 24 at the moment, with leagues springing up in places like Waihi, Blenheim, Kawerau and Nelson - and the home team is growing steadily.  Miss Metal Militia started the Hamilton league in 2008 when she came over from Canada and decided the city lacked something.  “It was just eight people skating around, they didn’t really know what to do with themselves” explains Miss Crunchbull, skater extraordinaire, “Now there’s 35-40 of us and we almost have enough for two teams”.

Roller derby started as a kind of knock-out race in the states in the 1950s. It morphed into a pro-wrestling style cheese-fest in the 80s, which proved to be its decline, until it was revived by a group of skaters in Texas around 2001 as the legit sport it is now. The point is for most of the team  to help one of their members, the jammer, to lap the whole pack to score points, while stopping the opposing jammer from doing the same. As a full contact sport it gets pretty gnarly and the Ghouls have had their fair share of torn ligaments and broken bones. Not that it stops them; Hellmilton skater Anarchy Fetish just got up and kept scoring for the ghouls on a torn knee last Saturday in their bout against the Pirate City Cannon Brawlers. Derby girls are hardcore.

“I think it’s a kind of outlet” says Miss Crunchbull. “life can be frustrating and it’s nice to be able to go skating and smash each other up and then tell ‘em you love em and go for a beer. We smash each other to bits but the sport is really full of love”.She describes derby as a supportive sisterhood with women who are teachers, librarians, midwives and students off the track, but transform in to threatening alter egos when they don skates. ‘If you look scary, you’re less likely to get hit hard”. The tactics seem to be paying off for Ghouls. Miss Metal Militia, Boom Shakalaka and Poison Petal are all Hellmilton skaters selected for the NZ team of 17, destined for Toronto and the first ever Roller Derby World Cup.

Are you tempted yet? For those brave innocents who believe they’re destined for derby greatness, the Hellmilton Roller Ghouls have Fresh Meat intakes on the first Sunday of every month at the Melville skate rink from 1-3pm. Everyone is welcome to rock up, guys too can come learn to skate and train as officials. Be there or be square - Roller Derby: it’s cool.

Who are the Doppelgangers?
It’s Dick Dynamite, he plays double bass and sings and he writes quite a lot of the songs; I play guitar and yell sometimes, and then Chubby Chip, aka Chris, plays the drums. We play psychobilly music which is kind of a cross of rockabilly and horror themes.

The imagery in your songs and videos is pretty creepy, what influences that?
It’s the really creepy movies that Ricky watches. Like all these b-grade movies about murder and horror. He watches all those Troma movies. We figure if there are really trashy horrible
disgusting movies why can’t there be really terrible, trashy horrible music. There are b-grade movies - we wanted to be a b-grade band.

Your new video for Deviant is pretty horrific. Where did the concept come from?
Well, it started off we were thinking of ideas for the video for maybe seven months? We won the Band Experiments and then basically the next day we went in and started planning our video. We recorded the song and the start of it kinda sounded like the theme tune of that movie Halloween so we thought, “why not just make it like a slasher?”  So we did. Ricky and Chris moved away, so I had to plan most of it and that’s why we filmed basically in one location. We got lazy in trying to find places and the Black Dog furniture factory out in Matangi was really cool and really creepy anyway. I wasn’t meant to end up killing my own sister but no-one else wanted to be in it.

What do you think of Hamilton music at the moment?
Yeah, I do like the Hamilton music scene. It’s good because there's so many different bands that just do their own thing and they’re not influenced by and kind of particular scenes of music. There was that whole hardcore scene but now that’s gone and people just do their thing. It’ also cool cause if we were in a bigger city with more of a music scene, we’d be influenced by the other bands and they’d all end up being the same; but because it’s a small scene everyone’s doing their own thing and they’re listening  to bands from the other side of the world that they’ve never even seen play before and being influenced by so many different things - especially with the internet, you can be influenced by, like,  infinity bands.

So tell us about your new EP, Return of the Doppelgangers, and the new song, They Demand a Sacrifice.
Yeah, the new EP is the first one we didn’t produce ourselves. We got this guy, Dave, from Auckland with Puppy Killer Records, who’s played with bands like Missing Teeth. He did it all for us, so it’s a lot more produced.

Deviant was recorded at York St, so it was pretty well done and set the standard for the rest of it to sound good.  It’s a lot different to the album because it’s recorded well. It sounds more polished and more like and actual band. The last album was about six years worth of songwriting so we changed a lot in that time, but with this EP it’s all stuff that’s been recorded in the last six months so it makes a lot more sense- it’s coherent. The album was good, but I’m kinda sick of it already, his one is fresh and cool.

And what’s next for The Doppelgangers?
Well we’re releasing new CD in the next month and we have gigs in Wellington and Hamilton as release gigs and we're doing a tour with Gin Wigmore which goes from Christchurch up to the North Island. After that we’re going to Melbourne and releasing the CD there - we’re playing a gig with the guitarist from Mad Sin, who are a German psychobilly band. And then we're playing a festival called Punkabilly in Melbourne and that’s as far as we've got in planning things. Then, maybe, Europe.

Next Hamilton gig EP release party, 23rd Oct, Static, with the Thunderdykes.

I'm Blair Munro, and I know first-hand how important it is to have people to represent your interests as a student. From advocacy and a voice, to Nexus and sausage sizzles, I believe that the student union is a vital part of both the student culture and the education that you're at university to receive (even if you're just trying to get your parents off your back), and I want to do my best to make sure that the student union does its best for you. You should vote for someone who is approachable, someone who is going to fight for your rights, and someone who knows the value of the student union. You should vote for Blair Munro for WSU President.

Richard

I am Richard Rhee and I was the Presidential candidate who came as a runner-up for the Presidency and the Vice-President position with the platform of advocacy for student-well being and the rights of students last year.

This year, I wish to stand for student well-being and the rights of students as the candidate for the President.

Sapphire

Vote Sapphire for WSU President, and as a result vote for someone with the skills, experience and knowledge to lead our students’ union in 2012. As a current masters-level management student interested in the governance of not-for-profit organisations, and as someone who has volunteered at numerous WSU events, I believe I am someone who could be a positive force for change within WSU. Furthermore, given that I have worked for both the academic and administrative arms of the university, I also have a large number of networks that I can rely on to help make WSU’s transition to a voluntary environment a success in 2012.

Aaron

Hey everyone, my name is Aaron Letcher and I want to be your WSU President in 2012. I’m a Hamiltonian through and through, growing up on a local farm and attending two local high schools. I am now a third year student studying towards a conjoint Law and Social Sciences degree. I believe strongly in the principles of transparency, accountability and freedom of choice, and I think that the WSU should too. Students need to remember that WSU money is THEIR money and they should have a huge say in how it is spent, improving our campus experience.

Make sure you make your vote count in the WSU Elections

Coming up next week are the WSU Elections 2011, where we as students have the chance to elect our WSU representatives on the 2012 Waikato Students’ Union Board of Directors.

This year’s election days will be Monday October 3^rd, Tuesday October 4^th, and Wednesday October 5^th. You can vote on any of these days at a WSU polling booth.

Don’t know where to vote? Polling booths will be located in the Library Foyer, at Management School (MSB courtyard), in the School of Education café, outside the shops (Village Green), and in both campuses in Tauranga. You can also vote at the WSU reception or at the mobile polling booth that ventures across campus. To vote you need to take some form of photo ID (including student ID) and know what your student ID number is. Each polling booth is open from 10am-4pm.

Every WSU member (University of Waikato students) can vote: so make sure you go out and choose who you think are the best people for the job. You can vote for one candidate for President, one candidate for Vice-President, one candidate Vice-President Maori, and up to eight candidates for WSU Directors. If you have no idea who is running, then never fear! There is a booklet at each polling booth with a blurb and photo for each candidate. You can also read these now on the next few pages.

When making your vote, remember that the students elected to the Board of Directors are there to govern your students’ association – in effect, they represent you in making decisions on the best way forward for the WSU into the future. The Board of Directors plays a major role in deciding what the WSU should do on campus, figuring out how the WSU’s income can best be spent to achieve the organisation’s constitutional objectives, and developing the strategic direction for the future. As a result, if you have no idea to vote for, have a look at the candidates blurbs – and seek them out or email them if necessary – and think about whether they seem to want to take the WSU in a similar direction to where you think it should go.

Remember, the fate of the WSU Board 2012 is in your hands so make sure you go out and make your vote count!

Vice President – Vice President Maori

There is only one candidate for each of these positions.

Vice President Maori – Priscilla Ngatai

Ko Ngatokimatawhaorua toku waka

Ko Ngati Hine, ko Ngapuhi, ko Ngati Kahungunu toku iwi

Ko Motatau toku maunga

Ko Hikurangi toku awa

Ko Priscilla (Davis) Ngatai toku ingoa

Kia ora my name is Priscilla and I am BMS/BA student majoring in strategic management (honors), political science and screen & media studies. This year I have served on at WSU as a director in A semester and Vice-President Maori (interim) in B semester. I am also representing Maori students at university and look forward to another successful year in office.

Affiliations: Māori @ Waikato

Vice President –Sam Taylor

I’m Sam Taylor and I’d love to be your Vice President.

A good VP is someone who has experience, ideas and a voice. Someone who collaborates with students, is passionate, organised and works effectively with everyone. I am that person!

I want to be your VP because I believe that university is about more than books and booze; it’s also a time to critically engage with social and environmental issues. I want to be VP so WSU can enhance your student experience, expand your learning, and nurture the student culture of Waikato.

Make 2012 dreadfully good, vote Sam Taylor.

Affiliations: Greens On Campus, FairTrade Club and Amnesty On Campus

Campbell Weal

In my third year of a Communications degree, I am looking to possibly take up post-graduate study next year.  Ideally, I’d love to be a sports journalist in the future, as this is where my real passion lies.  I thoroughly enjoy the part I get to play in Waikato University’s weekly student magazine Nexus, writing Sports Thoughts and other related articles, and I see this magazine as an extremely important part of the Waikato campus.  In my spare time, I enjoy playing Cricket and Hockey, and I’m a devout fan of New Zealand’s NRL team The Warriors.

Murray Riches

I’m a 22 year old. Communications student majoring in Public Relations and Social Policy, and approaching my honours year in 2012. I’m a capable, dedicated and hard-working student and community activist, and I would like to have the chance to represent you next year. If you elect me to your board of representatives I will bring passion and energy to the board, and make sure the views of all students are herd and represented. I’m passionate about heaps of stuff, but I’m also good at listening and keen to hear what you guys want from WSU.

Affiliations: Greens On Campus, ASKEW and MCSA

Zane McCarthy

Hello. My name is Zane McCarthy and I am running for director.

I am choosing to stand because I want to make 2012 a fantastic year for the students of our university. I want to make sure that student’s rights are protected and that the university experience at Waikato is the best that it can be. Student culture is an integral part of the university and I wish to enhance it further.

Marc Gundesen

I believe I would be an excellent Director of the WSU because I thrive in both team environments and as an individual and am passionate about making a positive difference in all situations. I am outgoing individual with an interest in all aspects of university and would love to be given the opportunity to be a voice for the student body and Waikato uni as a whole.

Affiliations: Greens On Campus

Macaila Pescud

Hi there. Thank you for taking a second to read this—and then thank you for not having yet parted your eyes from the page in search of better entertainment. I’m Macaila – it’s pronounced Ma-kay-la - but you may say it however you wish, so long as you vote for me J I’m working my way through a bachelor of social sciences majoring in Environmental Planning and Japanese. I’m friendly and will represent you well, seriously well. 

Regan Johnston

Hi! I'm Regan, and I'm keen as to help direct YOUR student union in 2012!  I'm studying a conjoint law and bsocsci degree. So why vote for me?

I've already had experience with advocacy! I've played class rep for six classes over two years,  and with all affected students jumping me to represent their concerns,  I’ve gained a decent hold on speaking for people other than myself!  I'm fun to approach; sometimes witty; and want to substantively contribute to making university life mean as!

 A vote for me is a vote for you and many other catchy tag lines! Excellent!

Affiliations: Greens On Campus

Courtney Quinn

I am the best candidate to be a director on the Waikato Student Union Board as I am extremely enthusiastic and determined.

I have a willingness to learn, to contribute, to listen and also to put myself in odd, unique and public situations that most people would feel uncomfortable in.

I have a desire to help others and a passion to make this University well known as the most comfortable, encouraging and fun environment to study in, in all of New Zealand.

I know I can make a difference.

Sabrina van Saarloos

I don’t have an amazing list of achievements that’ll wow you into voting for me which is a shame seeing as everyone loves to hear people talk about themselves.  However, I usually sit/walk/linger around uni on my own, and I'm never surrounded by a wall of friends or have head phones glued in my ears. Also, being different is awesome; so whether you have green hair or have an idea you want heard that others may think is slightly crazy, it'd be my honour to put it forward. So get involved. VOTE (for me); this vote could make a big difference to how your voice is heard next year. There are around 13,000 students at this Uni...Imagine what we could do if even 10% of us stood up for something?

Affiliations: Greens On Campus and FairTrade Club

Amy Ninnes

Hi, I’m Amy Ninnes.  I am running to be a WSU director for 2012. 

I feel passionate that we have so many fantastic people of all walks of life on campus, and I think it’s important we celebrate that diversity. I care about equality, the environment and social justice, and am prepared to fight for student’s rights, and for everyone’s voices to be heard. This is a time that we can really unite as students and make a difference, and I want to provide opportunities for students to get involved, and to showcase the talent we have at this university.

Hannah Budenberg

Hey everyone, my name is Hannah Budenberg and I would love to be a WSU director for 2012, representing you – the students. I was born in Congo, raised in the UK, and went to high school at a local Hamilton school. I am now a 20 year old, third year student studying a conjoint degree in law and political science. If elected as a WSU director for 2012 I plan to work hard to make sure there is real transparency, accountability, and student culture on campus. Waikato students deserve the best experience possible during their time here.

Lana Weal

Being a fifth year, 21 year old student I know I have the abilities to serve the WSU well. I enjoy learning languages and meeting new people which I made the most of by being an exchange student through Waikato last year in both France and The Netherlands. I love to read and learn, and help other people learn new things too which has helped me in my current job as a tutor for Waikato Management School. I want to use my skills to work with the WSU to help continue to make the University a fun and interesting environment.

Danyell Summers

I believe that I will be beneficial to the Waikato Student Union Board of Directors, firstly because I love people and have a passion for this generation. I believe that every person has a purpose and holds a capacity to do great things, and that the key to unlocking this potential is in a culture change. I’m believing for a new culture that speaks positively, installs value and hope into the students of Waikato University, and produces a generation of leaders who vision; value for themselves and others, and a strong sense of identity.

Affiliations: Arise Church

Marie Brown

I am a second year PhD student running for the position of Director. I have returned to doctoral study after a few years in the workforce, working in local government enforcement and environmental policy. I am an active member of the university community being involved in Greens on Campus, Unicol Womens B, and Amnesty International. I am also a current Trustee of the National Wetland Trust, a member of Sustainable Waikato, Volunteer Support Worker for Refugee Services, and the President of the Waikato Natural History Society. The WSU is set to go through some potentially profound changes over the next couple of years as VSM is bedded-in. To ensure WSU’s ongoing resilience and ability to provide great service to the student body it needs a long term vision and strong effective leadership. I have lots of experience in project management, team work and policy-making and look forward to the opportunity to contribute.

Daniel Farrell

WSU needs a group of strong individuals who can come together as a strong group in order to get through Voluntary Student Membership. I strongly believe that the Waikato Students’ Union has every chance to get through this, as long as the right people are elected now. People with experience. People with a strong network. People with a strong link to campus culture. I believe I have all of these. Head to http://goo.gl/uNdVg for details on how I feel I meet these criteria. Vote for a strength in your WSU. Vote Daniel Farrell for Director.

Larissa Schumacher

I have been a student at Waikato University for three years, studying a Bachelor of Arts in English and History. During this time I have: been class representative for seven papers; been a member of the Waikato University Debating Society, the History Club, of which I was secretary for in 2010, and a member of the Golden Key Society; lived in Student Village for two years, in the first year I was co-president of the EXEC Committee, and in the second year I was employed as a Residential Assistant.

I have a great interest in the students of Waikato University and look forward to contributing towards future improvements.

Affiliations: Debating Society and History Club

David Mayall

I believe there needs to be greater student representation within the system and I plan to push greater transparency within the Union, for example all financial records will be published on the annual basis for university students to see. I will be pushing for a bar on campus in the new student centre under Bennetts; currently Waikato campus is the only university in New Zealand which does not have a bar on campus. I believe it is important to open a cheap healthy fast food (i.e. Subway) on campus. Oh and the changing of the music that plays outside Momento.

Aaron Gilgreen

Hi, my name is Aaron Gillgren. I am applying for the WSU because I believe that becoming a WSU Director is the best way for me to continue giving back to the University. I am currently studying for a conjoint BMS/BA degree majoring in International Management and Political Science and I am a member of the Golden Key Society. In 2010, I worked as a Residential Assistant, and then in 2011 I received the Bryant Residential Tutorship Scholarship. These positions have given me fundamental experience and skills, which I hope to put to good use as a WSU Director.

Melissa Tomu

My name is Melissa Tomu, and I am in my 2^nd year studying Tourism and Hospitality Management and I am running to be a Director again for 2012. Being a director for 2011 has been a real challenge, meetings, scheduling hours of when we are free to have meetings but it been really good having the opportunity to work in this environment and also meeting with so many new people within different cultures. It will be a new challenge next year, but I’m looking forward to that and will hope to carry on working here at WSU and also meet more new people along the way. So get your pens and start voting.

I ran out to my car, and as I argued with the tow truck driver I considered the questionable legality of car clamping and towing in New Zealand. The car was my property, what right did a private company have to hold my vehicle to ransom? How was towing really that different to car theft? I didn’t have anything to go on, other than it just didn’t seem right that this guy could demand $170 from me to release my car, when he hadn’t even moved it and I was right there, ready and willing to move it myself.

While I stood there, several passers-by tried to interdict on my behalf. One older gentleman urged me to hop in my car, as it would then have to be released without a fee. Claiming he was a lawyer, I immediately obeyed.

The truck driver however, was assuring me I had no choice but to pay up there and then, otherwise the car would be impounded and I would face extra fees. To make matters worse, a second tow truck had arrived and its driver had entered the kafuffle. Now in my car, he growled he was going to call the cops. At least if the cops arrived then I would know what my rights were, right?

Negative. The police are tasked with enforcing the law, they’re not legal experts. They sided with the tow company and repeated I had no choice but to pay. I asked what would happen if I didn’t get out of the car, they told me I’d be removed. It seemed I had no choice; I was parted with my money and everyone drove off.

I was still left wondering though, what is the law in New Zealand for the towing of vehicles from private property? It turns out I was right to be suspicious.

The law that justifies towing in New Zealand is very old and known as ‘distress damage feasant’.

"It is lawful for an occupier of land to seize any chattels which are unlawfully upon their land and have done or are doing damage there, and to detain them until payment of compensation for the damage is made."

Think of it like this: you’re a farmer, and a cow that doesn’t belong to you wanders onto your property and eats your crops. You’re hereby entitled to keep the cow until compensation for the damage has been paid.

So how does this apply to a car parked on private land? What damage is that vehicle doing?

If you get towed, the law sees you as a wayward cow and the parking space you’re occupying as some crops. Even though you haven’t damaged (chomped) any property (crops), the law sees the cost of removing you as being the damage done.

So, what are the codes that the land owners and towies must abide by?

The owner of private land must have possession of the land, you must have no permission to park there, there must be actual damage to the property (removal of the vehicle), and your car must still be on that land.

If you arrive back to your car as it’s getting hooked up to the tow truck, jump in your car and the meddling tower must release it. They’ll probably attempt to charge you, but just fight back with multi syllabic words and stand your ground.

Unfortunately, if there were no warning signs, your car can still be towed. There is no legal requirement for private property owners to display a warning that cars will be towed if parked illegally. 

There is no set fee that a towie will charge you, though the common price range is $100-$200.

Most of these codes apply for clamping, too. Much like towing, clamping is widely debated across the nation.

There is no specific legislation covering the legality of clamping vehicles in private car parks, so the courts rely on the adequacy, positioning, and content of relevant signage or notices outlining the terms and limitations of parking at the property.

Basically, if there is clear signage detailing the consequences for parking on private land, clamping is legal. If you remove the clamp, you will just be faced with more fees.

At the end of the day, clamping and towing are fickle and frustrating parts of daily life that should really be given the legal attention they deserve. Until then, know what vague rights you do have, and stick to public parking.

Everyone enjoys a conspiracy theory.

Dan Brown and Matthew Reilly have cashed in on this in a big way and we have gladly followed them to the depths of human paranoia.

Now, some of the things we’re covering here aren’t actually conspiracy theories. Cryptids, such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, aren’t conspiracies, they’re more like mysteries that could be solved by Scooby Doo and his stoner pals.

A cryptid is any animal which has a large number of sightings, but no solid evidence of its existence. Examples of cryptids include Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster and the Big Black Cat of Canterbury. 

This is a fun piece and if you’re going to get all up in arms and start screaming at us because we published some theories about America attacking itself, then you can go screw yourself. It’s just some theories.

So, while you’re reading this, you may find yourself looking at a conspiracy theory that you think is pretty offensive. Most likely it will be the September 11 conspiracy theories. That is fine, but remember to write a letter, rather than storming into the office and calling the editor a prick. We’re at university: use your words and the proper avenues of communication.

Roswell:

Perhaps the oldest and most “documented” conspiracy theory revolves around a crashed weather balloon in the New Mexico desert in 1947.

Few, if any, people in the Western world would not have heard the claims that the American military covered up a crashed alien spacecraft in the years after the Second World War. Everything from first contact to gruesome alien autopsies supposedly happened. Men in Black paid haunting visits to backroad yokels and journalists had their notes confiscated.

The problem with the theories surrounding Roswell and later Area 51 is that very few of them were mentioned before about 1980. In the late 1978, between Watergate and the Iran Contra Scandal, two UFO researchers announced that a former US officer had participated in several recovery missions of strange and unusual wreckage. In 1988, a man named Bob Lazar claimed to have worked on a reverse engineering program at Area 51, near Las Vegas.

Pretty much all of these claims are bullshit and made by known liars and sun-addled rednecks. We’re going to go ahead and say that no UFO crashed at Roswell.

If anything untoward was happening there in the late 1940s, you can be pretty sure it had something to do with Operation Paperclip, the real world plan which spirited Nazi scientists out of Europe and put them to work getting Americans to the moon. The Nazis were miles ahead of just about everyone in rocket and jet technology

Princess Di

We love you, we do. It’s too late to deny it now, after the public lined the streets in mourning. We’re on your side but we’re all curious as to what really went down.

I can understand why you stopped sleeping with Charles. He’s a creep. He wanted to be Camilla’s ‘tampon’. When you met him he was seeing your sister, advised to “sow his wild oats” before settling down.

Marriage however had to be a careful consideration. You fit the picture perfectly; aristocratic and Anglican, the virginal English rose. You were beautiful and caring, the ideal wife - but apparently not for Charles.

Within 5 years your marriage was falling apart. Camilla was constantly present and you were suitably jealous and resentful. You were deeply unhappy and we can sympathise.

You were the people’s princess, hounded by paparazzi and under a huge amount of royal pressure. You were never one for the confines of royal counsel or society. After you confessed in an interview to having loved James Hewitt, the Queen requested that yourself and Charles divorce.

One year after settlement it all came to an end. And it was looking so good for you Diana. A budding romance with Dodi Al-Fayed was a chance at love and happiness.

So what happened that fateful night of August 31 1997? Was it a faked death so that you and Dodi could live happily ever after? A failed fake death?

Surely driver Henri Paul wasn’t drunk by accident. Despite the fact that he wasn’t Al-Fayed’s usual driver, it seems a bit ridiculous for such high-profile people to be driven by a drunkard on any occasion. Rumour has it he received a large sum of money leading up to the accident. But you can’t believe everything you read.

The paparazzi were blamed by the public, held responsible for your death just as they were for portraying your royal life. Photographers caused Paul to drive at reported speeds of up to 200kmh, or did he swerve so as not to hit them? Unless you were going somewhere you really didn’t want people to know about, this sounds unrealistic.

Did the royal family and British secret service do it? Were they worried to have a Muslim influence so close to the heirs to the throne? Harry doesn’t even have blue blood. Or a soul. Prince Philip had years earlier threatened the life of poor ginger James Hewitt if he spoke out about the truth of his affair with Diana. It’s all about protecting the Monarchy.

That is the power the Crown holds. Prince Philip had already taunted you with taking away your title. Watch out for that conniving old bastard Kate, that’s how he rolls.

You did write a letter to Paul the Butler, suspecting someone was plotting your death. “Brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry.”

Camilla has nothing on you still, don’t worry.

September 11

The biggest and most in depth conspiracy theories in modern times are those which surround the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre.

From the get-go, there are conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks. There are elements in the conspiracy theory world who say that the attacks never happened and it was all a clever, media controlled event, computer generated and scripted.

Those people are obviously batshit insane.

Other circles in the conspiracy theory world claim that America knew about the attacks before hand and did nothing to stop then, hoping to use the attacks as justification to begin a war that cannot be won in order to make a lot of rich white people even richer and more white.

This may seem a little crazy, but it sure makes more sense than those who say the attacks never even happened.

At several points during 2001, intelligence officials from the UK, Jordan, Egypt, Italy and Israel all gave information about an impending, large scale attack on America. In August, George Bush received intel from the British that specified that planes were going to be used in the attacks. Also in August, the Israelis gave the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in America who were believed to be planning an attack.

Now, Condoleeza Rice, who was National Security Advisor at the time of the attacks, claimed that "the threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to time or place or manner of attack. Almost all the reports focused on al Qaeda activities outside the United States”.

On August the 6^th, however, a full month before the attacks, the daily briefing given to the President was even entitled “Bin Laden determined to Strike IN the US.”

Detractors from this theory say that the genuine shock of the Americans at this attack proves that they truly had no idea that such methods or targets were ever suggested or even considered.

We’re going to go ahead and call “bullshit” on that one.

In 1999, two years before the attacks, the American air defence guys (NORAD) planned a war-game which featured hijackers using airliners as missiles in attacks on targets in the United States. One aspect of the war-game, featuring a suicide attack by a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon, was scrapped for being “too unrealistic”.

On the day of the attacks, the Washington buildings of the National Reconnaissance Office were running an exercise simulating an aircraft attack on their headquarters.

All of these seem reasonably plausible, or at least more so than the more extreme end of the 9/11 conspiracy field. These people believe that, not only did America know it was going to happen, but that America attacked itself as a precursor to war with oil rich regions, coincidentally populated with people of the same ethnic and religious backgrounds as the attackers.

Now, we’re not going to say America DID attack itself, we’re just going to say what other people are saying and show you some of the evidence they use as proof.

The ‘big one’ in this theory is the idea that no plane hit the Pentagon.

The Pentagon, headquarters to America’s military, was hit by an aircraft, specifically a Boeing 757 and apparently, for the most part, vapourised due to the high temperatures being generated by the burning fuel. Despite this, enough human remains from the passengers were found to successfully identify them as passengers on the flight.

That in itself leaves a lot of questions, but the biggest one on the internet is this:

“How does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155 ft. long fit into a hole which is only 60 ft. across?”

Some people have claimed that the explosion and deaths in the Pentagon were caused by a missile, or perhaps even a fully loaded military aircraft being rammed into it. Again, the purpose of this, for those of you wondering “why would America attack itself derpa-derp”, would be as justification for a war which is still being fought a decade later. The “War on Terror” is such an interchangeable

People also claim that United 93, the aircraft which crashed in a field in Virginia was actually shot down, with the American’s knowing it was to be used in an attack on Washington D.C., rather than being heroically crashed into the ground after a storming of the cockpit by cabin crew and passengers.

This type of event is known as a “false flag operation”. The Germans and the Soviets both used it to justify wars with Poland and Finland respectively. In 1962, Operation Northwood was floated by the American Department of Defence. This operation, which thankfully never eventuated, included hijacking airliners in American airspace and terrorist attacks on American assets in Florida and at Guantanamo Bay. This is fact, not theory.

And that’s all I’m going to say on September 11.

Moose

This elusive creature is a cryptid.  Hallenstein’s launch their ‘Hunt for the NZ Moose’ competition, April 10.  Good quality photos of the Fiordland Moose can land a $100,000 bounty.  Conditions apply of course.

It seems we in New Zealand are just as delusional as those who see Sasquatch in Canada, Bigfoot in the remote wilderness of the North-western United States or Yeti in the Himalayas.  Every mountain range has its Abominable Snowman.  Except those are all humanoid and have no scientific facts.   Some people devote their lives to the pursuit of proof that these beings exist.  Take Nessie for example, the legend such a creature creates can overcome the curiosity of some people to the point of insanity.  Most people simply move on, embrace the ambiguity and leave cryptids to the crackpots. 

Here in Godzone we have the mysterious moose and other animals of which we have some evidence of their existence.  Enter science.  The New Zealand Wildlife Trust is conducting The Fiordland Moose study in order to track its ecology and history.  In 2000 a moose hair sample from Dusky Sound was identified by DNA.  Due to the moose being so good at hide and seek, sightings and traces are extremely rare.  It is difficult for any seasonal movement patterns or moose numbers to be determined.  The study aims to interview people with unpublished accounts of moose encounters.  Photographic evidence from self-triggering video and still cameras is being sought in order to gain public interest.  The Wildlife Trust is really just using it to drive their message about wilderness, wildlife and adventure, but thanks to Hallenstein’s, it’s working.

From 1886 to 1888, right here in the Waikato, numerous people recorded run-ins with a large lizard like creature, resembling a crocodile with shaggy hair.  Two boys described the animal which chased them from the creek and re-enacted its alligator amble.  The Waikato Times reported that “both boys are bright and intelligent, and there is nothing in their manner or appearance to justify a suspic­ion that they have made up a yarn”. 

Soon after this first sighting, the carcass of a sheep was found to have been taken from its hook in the slaughterhouse.  The bones were found clean, near a place where unknown animal tracks were discovered.  Earlier unreported incidents were called for but with mixed results.  A man recalled a massive eel eating a dead bullock, with the strength to shake the animal as a dog would a rat.  Mr James Benshaw shared his story of a great splashing in a nearby creek whilst pig hunting with a friend and three dogs; “The creature came straight towards us. The dogs were by this time growling in chorus, but I noticed that every hair on their bodies seemed to be standing on end.”  The dim description was of a long flat head and two fore feet which could have been paws.  Supposedly Benshaw’s company returned to the spot and lit a match revealing “two great glaring eyes, like balls of fire, and a great gaping mouth, with rows of saw-like teeth.” 

However the mystery became confused with a settler’s daughter sighting an animal likened to a tiger from her schoolbooks.  Do we have the character reference on her likeliness to spin us a yarn?

Similar to cryptids are the fossils and unbelievable, ancient reports of incredible creatures.  The now extinct Haast’s Eagle would be thought the stuff of myth and legend if not for the remains.  It is thought to have died out with its food source, the Moa.  Seriously.  We don’t care a whole lot for Moa information, but they were fucking huge.  Moa adapted to the conditions with an increased body size, in turn causing Haast’s Eagle to also evolve. 

Females were thought to weigh as much as 13kg and have a 3 metre wingspan.  According to nzbirds.com the Haast Eagle had the talons of a tiger and could kill a human.  I would say with joy.  However such instances were not recorded despite some bones being young enough for the bird to have been alive after the settlement of New Zealand. 

The discovery of new species is a transition from paranoia to proof, suspicion to science.  In many cases it does happen, with both alive and extinct animals.  People however, will always create inconsistencies, confusing what they know and have seen.  We all interpret things differently and some of us do fewer drugs.

Here’s a quick look at the smaller or larger conspiracies which didn’t grab our interest as much as the rest. Some, such as a belief that Lizard Men control all of Earth’s governments, are just fucking retarded. Others, such as Paul McCartney’s supposed death, are almost too much fun to be true.

The Lizard People:

WTF? David Icke, failed ex professional footballer for Coventry City and television personality, would have us believe that the central power structure of the world is dominated by inner earth reptilians. Yeah, you read that right. These inner earth reptilians are also referred to as Anunaki in the Babylonian creation story. Mr Icke believes they came from the Draco constellation and have the ability to appear as Human. You may be asking yourself why they are here, well much like early prospectors they have come for our gold. Specifically, according to Mr Icke,  monoatomic gold and other resources. What’s more is that they will stop at nothing to get it, cross breeding, starting wars, and leading our countries.

Why it is completely true: Turn on Parliamentary Question time 2pm, any  Wednesday and there is enough evidence to suggest that one or two members from both sides of the isle could be reptilian half-breed. Plus ever dated someone that was cold to the touch?

Why we call bullshit:  It’s two fold really:  On the one hand there is every chance Mr Icke and others just took LSD and watched Dino-riders and every other 80s Saturday morning cartoon, but the second reason is even more damning. A supporting researcher of Icke claimed that the now deceased queen mother was “seriously reptilian.” I mean Charles sure, hell Camilla, but the Queen Mum? She was like England’s Judy Bailey. Just a step too far.

K.K.K.F.C

WTF? It has been suggested that KFC was a secret front company set up by the KKK whose secret herbs and spices included a chemical that made men of African descent sterile.

Why it is completely true? It isn’t! And we found a way to justify lizard people.

Why we call bullshit:  Because we are capable of movement and speech. Our research also turned up a myth that KFC was “owned by a black man” as a de-bunking of the sterility rumour. Also untrue KFC is owned by Pepsi, which is owned by the lizard people.

The Moon Landing That Wasn’t

WTF? This one has been the subject of theories and speculation almost as much as the death of Kennedy. Was the moon landing faked by Nasa and the CIA to solidify American superiority in the increasingly tense cold war? One small step for man, one giant leap for the democratic ideology?

Why it is completely true? The flag was changing direction in a windless environment. The space race itself was hardly a race. The Russians had Sputnik, put Yuri Gagarin in the air and were already planning what the next small step would look like while JFK was making promises he couldn’t possibly keep. A classic example of fake it till you make it.

Why we call bullshit: The creation of a whole programme and billions spent both in the space race and since. The shear amount of images and technology we have seen as a result of the landing. Besides, after all this time, would Buzz Aldren still be happy sticking to the cover story. He was the second man on the moon.

He’s not the Walrus

WTF? In 1969 with the Beatles contemplating a split rumours began to circulate that Paul McCartney was dead and had been replaced by another man who had assumed his identity

Why it is completely true? The clues are there. Play a Revolver 45 backwards  and you may hear “turn on me dead man,” He’s the only one not wearing shoes as the band cross the road in the iconic abbey road cover. He’s dead alright, those sneaky Beatles.

Why we call bullshit:  Well…um…we can’t. Not definitively at least. This is one of those fun theories that must be bullshit, it has to be, but like virgin birth we don’t have the DNA tests to prove otherwise. One thing’s for sure the current Sir Paul hangs out with Presidents,  has a fashion designer for a daughter and allegedly still indulges in herbal remedies. If the original Paul was replaced they did a hell of a job re-casting because this one’s awesome.

Norman Kirk

WTF? Norman Kirk, bastion of liberal politics, the best liberal voice since Michael Joseph Savage and the man who inspired countless imitators. Norman Kirk assassinated?

Why it is completely true? Big Norm had a habit of pissing people off. It wasn’t his fault. He gave us a national identity, stopped the Boks from touring, stopped testing in the pacific, set up the Waitangi Tribunal, He even wanted to get the queen declared as the Queen of New Zealand. Someone must have wacked him

Why we call bullshit: Middle aged, over-weight, workaholic who liked the occasional drink and smoke. The defense rests.

The Birther’s and Secret Muslim guys

WTF? Over 50% of likely Republican voters in America believe Barrack Obama to be a secret Muslim.

Why it is completely true? Where is the birth certificate? They have seen a certificate of live birth but not a birth certificate. As to why he’s a secret Muslim, apparently it’s because his dad was a Muslim.

Why we call bullshit:  Ok. This is the last conspiracy theory I’m writing so listen up. If anyone believes this shit you’re a space cadet, a whack job, a complete nut case. First of all an advert was placed in the paper three days later by his family announcing his birth in Hawaii. That would have to be a hell of a long con, establish the birth and hope that in 50 years America would be in a place to finally elect a black man on the strength of the super-delegates so he can enact your secret agenda?

The bigger question is why people believe he has to be a secret Muslim. He could just convert to Islam. What’s the issue? Where is it written that presidents have to be a certain religion? Anyway: debunked.

Conspiracy theories are fun, they entertain us.  They should be covered by student media and wheeled out every now and then so that we can indulge in our favourite pastime; speculation.

The problem is that speculation has become a substitute for fact. The notion presented earlier that we use these theories to give us a bearing on what is crazy should be true but it isn’t, at least not anymore.

Since the Vietnam War there has been a growing movement to distrust and discredit the things that are presented to us as fact. The problem is that someone took that idea, invented the internet and all of a sudden a healthy distrust of authority morphed into a complete lack of credibility and content filters. The truth of the matter is that conspiracy theories are the tip of the iceberg that we are heading for.

Gone are the days of the news anchor, the radio  DJ and the reporter seeking out the truth and presenting a balanced argument . We no longer turn to only one source for things and instead open ourselves up to anyone with a believable interpretation of information.

The media can and should take some of the blame here. It’s like Paddy Chayefsky on steroids.  We created news channels and then sat idly by while they filled them with opinion. We made a rod for our own back and now we can’t possibly accept the news in the morning until we have heard what Petra Fucking Baghurst thinks about it.

America’s invading Lybia for Humanitarian reasons but don’t take CNN’s word for it, let’s consult google and find out what three guys living in their parent’s basement think the reason might be. Oil? Fuck yeah lets run with that if “Moby426” said it then it must be as credible as CNN with their many news bureaus and reporters. Was there a second gunman? Did the Royals kill Diana? Did the US know about the Towers? Or Pearl Harbour? We don’t know. We don’t know anything anymore.

Wikileaks released thousands of classified documents into the public under the guise of getting the truth out there. But Hank Moody was wrong. The truth isn’t out there. The truth is that truth is dead.

There is fact and there is news, with budgets and advertisers and a need to keep ratings high and I swear to god its turning us all into people wearing tinfoil hats. 

For every person who read these theories today and laughed at the absurdity of all of them there are thousands out there that believe 911 was an inside job caused by the reptile people who killed Princess Diana, Kennedy and Kirk, and when they are done sterilising your chicken they are coming for your gold and the secret Muslim foreign American President will hand it to them.  I don’t know about you but I’m ready to bury my head back in the sand and wait for the iceberg to hit.

We all do drugs. Perhaps a better name for this feature is “addictions”, but drugs caught your attention. Don’t say it didn’t, because it did. You want to read an interview with someone tripping balls on acid, or photos of people with syringes hanging out of their arms. We have no interest in writing a feature about something you can see in movies, on television and in books. We are not going to presume that any of you are about to try intravenous heroin for the first time and it is our mission to convince you of the dangers. Want to try heroin? Sure, we can’t stop you, but we think you should probably watch Requiem for a Dream first. Want to take some LSD? Cool story bro, but we aren’t interested in you.

As a student magazine, we are a prime target for complaints and legal action. We aren’t going to talk about anything illegal here, simply because Old Bastards read this magazine; a magazine which is clearly (we hope) for an audience of 18-24 year olds who have the same sense of humour (again; we hope) and sensibilities as our writing staff.

Earlier this year, Nexus received a letter of complaint from a local MP, in which they expressed their disgust at an advert for a prominent local bar, which featured a naked Anna Nicole Smith, pregnant and smoking. The same letter also addressed the dead baby “jokes” from two years ago which lost Nexus the sponsorship of Burger Fuel and became a front page spread in the Waikato Times. As we don’t want to be receiving complaint letters about this article two years from now, we aren’t going to look at illegal drugs and their effects on you. If you want to know about that stuff, go online and read it for your damn self.

In this particular look at ‘drugs’, we are going to look at legal highs. Sure, you may think we’re copping out, but we really can’t be bothered with the kind of bad press which still haunts the Nexus offices.

I asked a random student why P was bad. They replied “Because it’s illegal and keeps you up for days”.

Now these might seem like pretty basic answers, but they touch on the root cause of what is and what is not acceptable in drug culture: the law.

Alcohol causes more deaths than weed, but the law tells us that it’s alright. Caffeine can leave you awake and alert for short periods of time and is regularly harvested by child and slave labour, but the law says it’s OK. Cigarettes are a major cause of severe health problems and are slowly being banned in pubs, schools and workplaces and even some cafes and yet the government, after placing some delightfully horrific images on the packs, allows the sale of cigarettes in the same supermarkets where children go to purchase candy.

Arguably, caffeine is the most popular drug in the world.

Everyone drinks it. Some of us claim addiction to caffeine. I am yet to come across an after school special which tried to warn high school kids of the danger of coffee and Coca-Cola. I have never been robbed by people who needed to sell a VCR in order to get their next Starbucks fix. Caffeine is a socially, legally, acceptable drug.

They sell it in cafes, bars, restaurants, service stations and at sports games.  Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, after oil. Globally, 1.6 billion cups of the black stuff are drunk every day. We couldn’t find any figures on energy drinks such as Red Bull or V, but that figure is most likely far larger.

Yet, coffee (or more specifically, caffeine) is not good for you. It can cause excessive nervousness, diarrhoea and irregular heartbeats.

Tea drinkers might be reading this and thinking “Well, I’m off the hook”, but tea has caffeine in it too. Do you even know what goes into the creation of what it is that you put in your mouth? Also: tea is stupid and should only be drunk at lawn bowls clubs or when offered up by an elderly lady.

Coffee, as well as tea, was grown and harvested by slave labour and pretty much anyone who was keen to get paid little or nothing for extremely long hours. Slavery in the New World flourished when coffee plantations began to expand to feed the addiction of Europe and her colonies.

Even after European powers abolished slavery, children we (and still are) used as labourers, often being paid in food and accommodation.

Anyone who says that the coffee they drink is less morally objectionable than weed had better be damn sure that their coffee wasn’t plucked from its bush by the bleeding hands of a heavily pregnant teenager in the Third World. You can bet the skunk in your flatmates sock draw didn’t come into his possession via slave labour and is far more likely to have come from a friend of a friend’s uncle who grew it on his farm near Te Teko.

A lot of smokers enjoy a cigarette with their coffee. Well, a lot of smokers enjoy a coffee with their cigarette may be a more truthful representation of that statement. It’s hard to find a cafe where the attached sidewalk isn’t filled with people smoking their little hearts out. Each year, about 5 trillion cigarettes are smoked.

Why does the government allow cigarettes to be sold, when they are quite happy informing us of the immense cost, not only to your own health, but to the health of your children, the medical sector and your own finances?

Smoking can cause lung cancer, throat cancer and just about any other kind of cancer under the sun and taxes on cigarettes have been increased, with an end result of “Smokefree Aotearoa” being somewhere further down the track.

Many smokers start their habit while drinking. Often those who begin as “I only smoke while I drink” become a pack a day type before they get to thirty. I should know. I am one, and so are a lot of my friends.

Alcohol is a difficult discussion to have with anyone. No matter how many adverts we see on the television or at the start of our Youtube clips about drunks starting fights at parties, getting raped or driving a car loads of their mates into a ditch, we still drink and the government still allows it. Alcohol undoubtedly fuels more crime than marijuana, yet the statistics are skewed by the reality that marijuana is illegal, so any transactions involving weed are automatically “crime statistics”.

There is no doubt that alcohol causes more deaths than illegal substances; that’s all we’re going to say on booze. Booze and it’s place in New Zealand culture, particularly among people our age, is another feature by itself.

Video games, compared to the other legal addictions, are relatively new.

In Korea, video game addiction is profitable, to the point where it may not be called an addiction by many. And yet everyone has heard the tales of people who spend every waking minute completely submerged in World of Warcraft or something else from the Blizzard stable. In the world of digital addictions, Blizzard is the drug king pin. Only EA Games Call of Duty series has come anywhere near the kind of market saturation and player control exhibited by Blizzard. Everytime a new Warcraft title comes out, it shifts millions of units across the world, eating up hours upon hours of time. The clever way in which levelling and ranking systems are managed results in a false sense of satisfaction, a departure from reality and a cash eating habit, all things which feature in more popular drugs.

And yet video games are not illegal.

Sure, in Australia there are a lot of censored and banned games, and other nations have their own lists of black listed games. A lot of World War 2 games don’t even feature swastikas, instead displaying Teutonic crosses. These are hardly comparable to the other addictive substances. No one is going to get beheaded in Indonesia for importing a kilo of Xbox games.

Video games eat time, distract people from reality and can result in overweight, foul smelling basement dwellers. Of course, this is the cliche propagated by Hollywood and television. A lot of video gamers look, act and smell like the rest of us. They do well at university, or they don’t. They have girlfriends or they don’t. They drink or they don’t. Everyone, in this generation and every future one, has played some kind of video game. Whether or not you become addicted to it is as simple as whether or not you become an alcoholic, or a sex addict, or a caffeine junkie.

Video games also kill.

A woman in Florida murdered her baby, when said baby refused to stop crying and interrupting its mother’s Farmville empire. Two years ago, a 3-month old Korean girl died due to malnutrition. Her parents had been too busy raising a digital child online to feed their own daughter.  A sixteen year old boy from Philadelphia smashed his mother’s face in with a claw hammer, because she took away his PlayStation 3.

The Chinese government operates several clinics to treat those suffering from overuse of online games, chatting and web surfing. The Netherlands also has a clinic specifically for online game addiction.

Video game addiction is clearly no laughing matter.

Perhaps the strangest thing about drugs in this day and age is what you can buy (and quite legally so) from your dairy. We’re not talking about an overpriced bottle of wine and some cheap cigarettes here. We’re talking about products which seek to emulate the euphoric highs of illegal drugs.

Of particular note is a product called Kronic, one of a growing wave os “fake weed” products on the market. You see, it is the chemical aspect of Marijuana that makes it illegal, not the method in which it is smoked. A quick look around a sex shop or counter-culture store will show you that this much is true. Bongs and pipes wouldn’t be legal if we were making this shit up.

Kronic may not be the real deal for so-called discerning stoners out there, but it will kick your ass, regardless of how high you claim your tolerance to be.

While I’m on the topic; No one cares how high you got on the weekend of how creative you think you are while high. You’re buying a drug, not a grand piano. We don’t want you turning up to class stinking of weed and thinking that you’re the next Ginsberg or Kerouac. Get a life, you stupid, self aggrandising wannabe hippy. Also: wash your clothes, you smell like f*cking bong water.

Kronic is a product which shouldn’t be legal, simply because it is too much fun. It is cheaper per weight than actual marijuana and come premulled. You don’t have to spend a half hour pulling out stalks and dead bugs. You also don’t have to travel to Nawton or text fifty different people to get some. It’s available at most dairies around Hamilton and there are a wide variety of flavours. It is not even trying to pass itself off as “flaked incense”. There is a type called Skunk Blend and another one called Pineapple Express for crying out loud.

Much like the halcyon days of BZP pills, this new wave of over the counter good times is sure to come to a highly publicized end. Articles like this one, read by little old ladies who regularly write complaints to the BSA regarding Lynx adverts, help get these products banned.

Our Nexus test monkeys came together to test Kronic in the traditional Kiwi fashion of The Bucket. We aren’t going to explain what this is, because it’s more fun confusing elderly ladies with ambiguous sounding names. Also, most of you who have moved to a flat, or at least know a stoner, should know what one is. Perhaps this particular drug is more suited for the slow pace of pipe smoking, but a bucket was on hand, so a bucket is what was used.

Each of the test monkeys had at least one bucket, with others having anywhere up to five. As all had some experience with illegal drugs, it was assumed that a product sold over the counter by a pleasant Korean gentleman would have little or no effect on them.

Ten minutes after his third bucket, one of the test monkeys had begun sweating and felt a weird twisting feeling in his mind. He described it as ‘cerebral’. Those who only had one bucket were not affected very much at all.

The end result of this reasonably pointless test was that it is a fun time, but we’re not a science magazine and we don’t really care. We just wanted an excuse to try some of this legal stuff before it gets inevitably banned. Everyone who had more than two buckets was completely brain friend for an extremely long time.

The thing with drugs and other like products in New Zealand is that they are automatically legal.

New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell said chemists could easily adjust the chemical compounds contained in any product to get around the classification.

"The trouble with our drug laws is that they're 35 years old and the onus is on the Government to prove a new product is harmful, rather than a manufacturer to prove it is safe," he said.

This feature isn’t what a lot of you expected. You wanted the ins and outs of weed and LSD and more than ever you wanted the effects long term E use would have on you. Get online and read about that. All I can say is: it’s illegal. In saying that, however, far more powerful and dangerous things are completely legal. Go smoke some Illusion or Kronic. Go take some herbal pills. Go drink alcohol. Go play video games. That stuff will mess you up big time. You’ll be killing each other, fighting in the streets and driving cars into rivers before you know it.

We tried to come up with a hypothesis and some answers, but really we just ended up with some big questions: How is alcohol legal and marijuana is not? How do people get addicted to video games, to the point where death occurs? And, more than anything, how can people sit around drinking coffee, talking about how P-addicts are dreadful people?

Just have a think about what’s happening in your habits and ask yourself: Am I addicted to something which shouldn’t be legal?

With Assistance from Grumbly McGrumblseon

Sex.

Every year Nexus writes about sex and people pick up the issue and read the dirty stories and the funny observations and so on and so forth. When I told someone what I was writing on, they told me to “Get fucked” and “Come up with something original for a fucking change”.

And they’re right. Sex is a stupid fucking thing to write about. We do it every year. Most, if not all of the other student magazines do it as well. Every year we say “Put a condom on and play safe. Use lube. Don’t play with sluts” and every year you guys read it and get messed up in town and wake up with Chlamydia in their eye and gonorrhoea in their pants.

But screw it. We’re doing it. There’s plenty of other stuff in the magazine to read if you don’t like it.

So here we go, as we do every year: sex.

We have decided to do it differently than normal, not unlike our approach to the religion feature. Instead of sitting back and scrolling through the internet like previous writers have done at Nexus, we got up out of our comfort zone and asked some students to leave their comfort zones too. Everyone likes having sex, or they will one day, but not everyone is keen to talk about it. Luckily we managed to find a student who is married, a student who is keeping all sexual activity for his wife, a lesbian student and a gay male student.

We figured we could pretty much skip over those students who are from the category of “sexually active but selective enough not to be called a slut”, because you make up the majority of the campus and we figured you know everything there is to know about your own socio-sexual group.

It may be the reason a few of you have come to university. High school was OK for sex, but you lived with your parents and they weren’t exactly keen to see a parade of strange teenagers marching in and out of your bedroom. Also, sex was a scary and new place when you’re sixteen and “everyone” is doing it. You probably rushed out, got drunk and made some mistakes. We don’t blame you, as some of the Nexus staff did just that.

University is used (and quite rightfully so) by a lot of people as a new beginning. You meet new people, you lose touch with all the hicks in your tiny, backward hometown, and you start getting laid. The small rumour mills of rural New Zealand are subsumed in the mega-city we know as Hamilton. Your chances of having access to only one pool of people, in a single social group, are pretty slim in Hamilton. There’s more sex to be had here than ever before.

Nexus went and met a mature student, now doing post-graduate work on campus, who we shall call Keri. Keri had what we would call the classic student experience of university. She went to high school in Hamilton, but came to stay in the Halls, just to get away from her parents.

“In high school I pretty much only had one boyfriend, and it lasted for years. He was the first person I ever slept with, and the only person other than the guy I’m now married to.”

Keri’s boyfriend was at university in Auckland, while she stayed in College Hall and attended the University of Waikato.

“It was pretty crap, we didn’t see each other very often and when we did we’d get into fights. But at the time it seemed a whole lot easier than going through the drama of sleeping with the guys on the floor and trying to avoid them for the next 3 weeks“

“That thing ended at the end of first year it upset me and then I freaked out, because I had no idea about dating. I knew I didn’t want to do the thing where you go out, get drunk, make out with some guy in the Outback, go to bed with the guy, wake up and have a WTF moment. So I didn’t. I ended up going on dates with a few guys that year and most of them seemed pretty shocked that I had no intention of sleeping with them after the first date. Or the second. I only ended up sleeping with one of them, and he’s the guy I’m married to now.”

After we spoke to Keri, we found a guy we’ll call Richardson.

Sex and relationships are always going to a minefield for young people, whether they are students or not. Some students, for religious reasons or not, choose abstinence. We managed to find one, but he refused to give his name before we even asked him if he wanted it in this feature. We weren’t going to push him on this either. Being abstinent at university, when there are so many expectations on students to get out there and experiment, is both brave and commendable.

Richardson is a second year and wants a girlfriend. He had one at high school, but after she went to a different university, their relationship ended in the way most long distance relationships do: slowly and painfully. In response to this heart break, instead of getting out there, getting drunk and making some bad calls, Richardson chucked a little padlock around his precious parts.

“I guess a part of my decision was based on fear. Not just fear of STIs, but of heartbreak. It sounds cheesy. Who cares. My life man”, Richardson told me.

Don’t you feel you’re missing out though?

Richardson thought for a few moments on this. The silence started to get awkward when he blurted out: “Yeah, I do. Sex is everywhere and it’s impossible to avoid. TV, the internet, even going to town. It’s all sexy stuff. People know we’re vulnerable, horny and confused, and they take advantage of us. Then again, three girls on my floor in the halls got STIs, as did a few of my male friends. One of them told me he was pretty sure he’d given Chlamydia to a couple of girls before he even knew he had it”.

Richardson is a good looking guy and I was in no doubt that if he got out into the game, he wouldn’t be single for long.

“I don’t even want to risk STis, man. I don’t want to have to explain to my next girlfriend that I have had the Clap or the Gonz and that we can’t have kids because all my sperm is dead and powdery. I don’t want to lose a girl because I have herpes and she doesn’t want to participate in that aspect of my life”.

I was impressed with Richardson’s stand. He was absolutely right: sex is everywhere. The fact that he made this decision, without any nagging religious reasoning, makes him easily the most mature 20 year old I have ever met. At the forefront of sexuality are people in our age group. When Richardsone said that we are “vulnerable, horny and confused”, he displayed the kind of foresight normally reserved for people who have been there, done that and then had pus drip from their genitals. Richardson isn’t about to put his future relationships on the line for a night of cheap thrills, as fun as those thrills are. Good work Richardson. We wish you all the best.

Life as a student, trying to be as sexually active as possible, is incredibly tough. That much is common knowledge. Now, imagine that, but this time you’re gay.

I went and sat with a few of our awesome students at Askew, the “gay space” on campus. They’re all bright, switched on young people, with a great sense of humour and a cheery outlook on life.

Sex is hard though, even for the gays.

Being gay is still not easy, even with New Zealand as welcoming of difference as it is. At high school, the immaturity of students can make being openly gay a soul destroying ordeal. University life, however, with the level of freedom and the expectation that students have an open mind, is a far safer experience.

When I first met Susan B. Anthony (obviously not her real name) in 2010, she was a shy first year, still slightly cowed by her high school experience. A full twelve months later, her bubbly, effervescent nature has come to the fore.

“When people meet me, they often say that I can’t possibly be a lesbian. I do my best to assure them that I am”

Susan is a pretty girl, far from what we see in Hollywood films and American TV programming. She doesn’t have a shaved head and chains linking her ears and nose. Susan is perhaps more what people would expect to find in an adult film, falsely labelled as “lesbian porn”, when it’s target is quite clearly and unabashedly male viewers.

“Porn has a ridiculous portrayal of lesbian sex. But”, she says, “so is all porn I guess, gay or straight”.

One night, at the now gone Bahama Hut, Susan and a gay friend were approached by the kind of drunk, obnoxious first years we all know and love from our time in town. After making some awkward passes at the pair, and refusing to take no as an answer, Susan informed them of her preference for the fairer sex. It didn’t take long for the standard, unimaginative cat-calls of “dyke” and “lesbo” to be shouted over the din of the club.

Susan doesn’t go to student bars anymore.

“University is generally far more accepting of my sexuality than high school ever was. The big problem for me, as a gay female, is finding women with the same sexual orientation as me”

Doesn’t the Askew Club make it easy to meet new lesbians though?

“Well, I guess it’s ended up like that a few times, but you have to realise that gay women are a minority within a minority. There are more heterosexuals on the Earth than there are gay ones, and more gay men than gay women, and an even smaller number of these are ‘my type’. Askew is about having a safe place on campus where we can bring up concerns and have a network, without having to worry about people yelling things or giving us sould crushing looks”.

So where do lesbians meet girls?

“I know a few who use NZ Dating, but most people just go out to nightclubs, or meet each other through support works, like Askew, even though that’s not their primary purpose”.

Gregory Happenstance is a gay man. At 23, he is a second year, and did not come out until after high school. No one at his high school was very out and about with their sexuality.

“I have some gay relatives, so I’m a believer in the “gay is genetic” theory”, Gregory told me.

I went into this interview expecting to hear tales of bullying, random attacks and constant taunts. Gregory has managed to make his way through life without experiencing the worst aspects of bigotry.

“I guess a few of the grocery boys at the supermarket I worked at gave me a bit of a tough time, but I never felt endangered in those situations. The fact that I was on checkouts probably didn’t help though”.

Gregory has even hooked up with another man in the Outback, on a busy night, right in the middle of the dance floor. No one hassled him. Despite all the moral outrage that frequently boils from groups such as Family First or Destiny Church, Gregory hasn’t experienced persecution or judgement from religious types.

“I feel pretty blessed to have been born when and where I was. How would my life be if I was born fifty years before, in the American South. I don’t even really want to think about it”.

“Something that bothers me is the way people like to put gays into boxes. A gay man doesn’t have a lisp, great dress sense or immaculate personal grooming. He isn’t all about anal. He’s not a sexual deviant”.

But Gregory, I said, Hollywood has told me this!

“I know gay metal heads, gay DJs and more. There no more rhyme or reason to what a gay man is than there is for straight people. No one thinks all straight men like rugby, cars and Radio Hauraki, just because that’s how our parent’s generation were conditioned to think. It’s the 21^st Century.”

UniQ, an annual conference for GLBT university students, opened Gregory’s eyes to just how many gay young people there are in New Zealand, as well as the wide variety of support networks which are organised to step in and go to bat for youths like him.

I asked him if there was anything he wanted to get across to the greater university community.

“Don’t assume the people around you are thinking the same way as you. There are more gays out there than you think. Everyone likes to make jokes about gays, but often those jokes are being fed from something ”

A common misconception is that gays live in a fantasy world, where everyone has as much sex as they want. Footage, carefully selected and edited by news services, of the Hero Parade is just as much to blame as depictions of homosexuality from the Religious Right™.

Now, it is also important to note that New Zealand is very relaxed when it comes to legislation and acceptance in regards to our homosexual citizens. We have decriminalised homosexual activity, we have homosexual officers in our military branches and we have Civil Unions. A Civil Union is a form of pretend marriage, with some of the same legal benefits as heterosexual marriage, but not all of them.

“Were I in an accident and the only thing keeping me alive was technology, my civil union partner would have no say on the continuation of my life through artificial means. If my partner was a man and we were married, he would”, Susan told us.

Later in the year, Nexus will examine civil unions closer, but now is not the time.

So, there it is. Sex. We didn’t talk about STIs, because, after an hour long meeting with staff from the Student Health Centre, we figured that there is an independent feature on that aspect of sex.

Stay safe Hamilton.

Cameron Harper is treasurer of the University of Waikato Debating Society and a DJ on Contact FM. We at Nexus think he’s a champ, a fact we became more convinced of when he told us he was interviewing Winston peter’s on the air and that we could print that interview for those of us who haven’t yet tuned in ContactFM.

Winston Peter’s is a rock star in terms of New Zealand politics. Even a few brief words with him can convince you that he has more charisma, more speaking ability and a sharper wit than any other living politician in New Zealand.

Mr Peter’s was on campus during Orientation Week as part of what many people are calling his “Comeback Tour”, standing in front of a reasonably receptive crowd in the middle of the Village Green and fielding questions, as well as getting his message across: Winston’s back and he’s not here to f*ck spiders.

You are a man who has been deputy prime minister, treasurer, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Racing, Minister for Maori Affairs and a former member of the Auckland Maori rugby team. It’s been an illustrious career. What haven’t you done Mr Peters?

A lot of things actually, particularly those my enemies accuse me of. I have had an interesting career and am still having one.

What’s brought you to our campus?

Students have a vote just like everybody else, and that vote is worth the same amount as any other vote.

Students need representation. They are a very significant group, not that any other group is less significant, but they are a huge geographically-bound body, here for training and in other universities as well. New Zealand First think they should have a voice, not just on campus but a voice in the political system of this country and that’s why we’re on a campaign around New Zealand. We want to ensure that we have a New Zealand First presence, comprising of a student representing the party of New Zealand First at this campus and other campuses as well.

Tell us a bit about where you were brought up?

I was brought up right on the coast to the north-east of Whangarei. I’m an East Coaster, with an interesting family background of Scots Maori descent. I’m from a farming family and am one of eleven children. About eight or nine of us got to university and graduated. I got a degree in law.

How did your law training affect your career as a politician?

That’s an interesting question. If you look at many of the parliaments around the world there are a high percentage of members with a legal back ground. Take the United States for example, where about 80 percent of the representatives, congressmen and senators have a legal background.

I’m not advocating you run out and elect a whole lot of lawyers, but a legal background gives you a bit of a head start on how to read legislation and draft it or see what its potential pit falls are. I always thought it was valuable having a legal background. Because of the fact that there is so much about legislation in recent times that has been premature and I think we’ve learnt the hard way in regards to that sort of headstrong approach to drafting legislation.

You mentioned earlier you were from a Scots Maori background. What has been the role of the Maori heritage in shaping your life choices?

First of all I’m proud of being an New Zealander and I don’t believe in a hyphenated New Zealand.

I don’t want to hear people saying ‘I’m a Scots-New Zealander’ or ‘I’m a Maori-New Zealander’ or ‘Samoan-New Zealander’. I want them to say ‘I’m a New Zealander with a Samoan background or Samoan heritage’.

 In the end we’re trying to create one country, so I’ve been lucky that my background has shaped me to take the view that we belong to an emerging culture called New Zealand culture. We are never going to get there if we pick multi-culturalism, which is the tax payer funding of every separate culture, excepting our collective own culture.

If you look at those countries that have celebrated every single culture in their whole country and made the tax payer pay for it, then the outcome has being lawful disunity a lack of national values of shared understandings with respect to economic and social progress.

Parts of the world are filled with these examples and even though there are many aspects of the United States which we might find distasteful, one of the commendable things about the United States is that they are (whatever their background) united in the belief that they belong to the United States of America.

Do you personally put a high value on contribution back into the community; giving people a good start in life and an upbringing?

Do I believe in a hand up? Yes I do.

Do I believe in helping the deserving poor? I always have. That is the criteria however: they have to deserve. That is not having got to the circumstances they are in through their own cavalier mistakes. If you promote policy that supports the poor, regardless of personal responsibility, you end up building a cue that’s too long to finance.

As a student, do you see tertiary funding as long term investment in NZ?

Student funding is investment and education is not a hand out. It is a critical to have a capital investment in a commodity which is the most valuable commodity any country can have.

Look at Singapore, which does not have any oil; Singapore has no resources at all. Nor does Taiwan, but both those countries (which are new economies in a modern context) have invested hugely in eductation and have got a massive pay back from it

Do you support a universal student allowance?

New Zealand First announced it a long, long time ago in our policy manifesto of May 93. From the word go we have argued for a universal student allowance, but we could never persuade enough other members of other parties to go along with it. We’ve never ever had any other view in that regard: there should be a Universal Student Allowance.

What is your party line in regard to National’s recent announcement, essentially saying that they would pass emergency laws to remove working for families tax credits?

I’m not going to be wasting much time in the next six months talking about the National party’s failed policies. Now the Christchurch earthquake is being used as an excuse for every and all sort of policy measures which were announced long before the September 1^st earthquake or the February earthquake. Now it’s being shifted for political reasons as an excuse.  Working for Families is a Labour party idea as a result of the “Rogernomics experiment”, which was started by Labour. To compensate for the fall out and the collapse of family incomes, Douglas introduced Working for Families. Of course, in 2005, Labour massively increased it, so I’m not out to defend failed Rogernomics party policy anymore than a failed National party approach.

Speaking of recent, failed National party policies; what do you think of the recent policy of asset sales?

They are going back to the policy which they themselves believed, alongside Roger Douglas.

What do I think of that? Well, usually when you have a policy that massively fails, you analyse why that is. Mr Key says that ‘he doesn’t want to look backwards’. I don’t know why he doesn’t want to look backwards, because if he does, he will see the pitfalls of the fail plans of the National party in regards to sales in the past. He’s going to go back and try it all over again. It failed for Labour, and then it failed for National. Why would it work now?

It won’t work but it does have its benefit... if you’ve got a whole lot of rich mates financing your party.

As young people we are going to have to live with the environmental future that we are creating. Does New Zealand First have a policy for environmental stability?

New Zealand First has always believed in environmental satiability for a number of reasons, one of which is we’ve always had quite a strong Maori influence in our party.

It has always been the indigenous cultures who have because: if you don’t look after your food sources you will die, it’s that simple. New Zealand First has always believed in environmental stability, but based on fact proven science, and not some of the voodooism which I’m hearing today.

Our bent is more towards a pollution free society, as opposed to some of the ideas that you see promoted by some parties, internationally and in New Zealand. These are based on a belief that somehow New Zealand corrects the environmental degradation of the world, while our major trading partners do nothing. That’s not going to work.

It is of course election year; is there a substantial difference between National and Labour?

As sad as it is to say, on a lot of the big issues, there is no difference. Take for example the Reserve Bank Act. The Reserve Bank Act is a “dream time” piece of legislation, because it enables the financiers and the paper shufflers and the paper traders to run our economy.

Labour won’t change the legislation. That is the number one reason that I say they are far too similar. Now, they are less similar than they used to be, but on too many of the major things Labour has accepted parts of the right wing orthodoxy in a way that is not accepted in the better economies of Europe and Scandinavia. It is also no accepted in Singapore, or Taiwan, two of the best Asian economies. My answer to you is, sadly, “yes they are, and in being so they’re both wrong”.

Now, it might pay to keep in mind that this is all opinion. We’re not lying when we say we did or did not enjoy a bar. It’s just, like, our opinions man. We’re not lying when we say a bar wasn’t open. It actually wasn’t and that abr suffered heavily in the review as a result.

Naturally, there are some bars we have missed, due to constraints on time and space. Several of our reviewers didn’t even know Keystone existed, or that Mexico Mi Das was licensed. Whatever replaced Vespa was also a shock to the system. If the people in those bars want some coverage, flick us an e-mail to nexus@waikato.ac.nz and we’ll sneak some reviewers in for a stealthy peek.

Anyways, let’s get some verbal drinks down your gullet and start this bastard off with House Bar!

House

House has, by far, the best value beer in the city. You won’t get much in the way of Double Brown or Ranfurly and it may cost more than some of you want to spend, but the quality is unmatchable. A huge range of microbrewery beers lie in wait within House, all on tap and all delicious. Beer Club every Thursday has become wildly popular, bringing in a wide range of young and old and offering a new tap beer each week.

House has also recently started a Wednesday night “Skint Student Night”, with highly appealing offers such as $5 pizza and $5 beers, which are currently proving extremely popular. Our team went in during one of these and had such a good time that we bought a couple of tasting racks for a random table of students.

For just $16 dollars, a beer virgin can gather up a ‘tasting tray’, holding six of the tasty options. A mere $21 will get you a selection of the wines on offer.

The Bank

The Bank is a bit of a mystery to us. It has a huge location on prime real estate, but it was decidedly empty when we entered. The staff at the Bank were friendly, but not the creepy kind of friendly that some empty bar’s staff tend to have. It wasn’t like we’d walked into Children of the Corn.

We didn’t get the time to actually get INSIDE the Bank per se, as reviewing fourteen bars is a mammoth task and we simply ran out of time, so we’ll let the facebook page speak for them.

“The Bank has a great new after work special every week day of 2011. Come in Monday to Friday between 4.30pm and 6.30pm because all of our tap beer, house wine, Steinlager Pure and Corona is only $4.50. PLUS, if you book in advance you can also get a platter and your first drink free for any group of five or more people.”

Those prices are good in anyone’s books. We also have it on good authority that, for a bar that also serves meat, the Bank has the greatest selection for vegetarians.

Bar101

No Hamilton bar review would be complete without the fiercely good time that is Bar101. Since its launch a few years back, Bar101 has drawn a lot of flak for its policies on tattoos, age and door charges. As with most other bars, we say: TOUGH! If you don’t like it, there are plenty of other places to go for a drink. Don’t want to pay a minimal fee to have a good time? I’m sure Kahu, the whistling homeless guy on Victoria Street could use the company.

Bar101 has, and continues to have, a huge level of popularity among students due to competitive drinks prices and highly danceable music. It even won Best bar of the year for two years running. Art and the boys from Helena Road used to party hard there in 2008, and Johnjohn the Aussie still does.

A handle will cost about the $4 mark, with an RTD around the same price. Double Brown on tap is sure to catch the lad’s eyes, while Fuse is the vodka on offer from the fridge.

Wednesday nights also have the Bar101 Quiz Night, with bar tabs up for grabs for the sharp cookies out there.

Grand Central

Grand Central is Hamilton’s best kept secret. It can be found in the alleyway to the side of House Bar. As the name suggests, it’s a reasonably small bar, with zero dance floor. Grand Central isn’t about the music or the dancing, however, and rests its reputation firmly on the quality of cocktails it provides. Occasional musical acts, as well as conversational and skilled bar staff make Grand Central the perfect place if you feel like having a drink alone, or in a small group.

Outside seating gives you a good view up Alexandra Street and gives you the feeling of being in the centre of town without having to deal with all the foul smelling crowds found on Victoria Street. The prices are not so cheap (keeping in mind, as we are, that you are students, not millionaires), but the $14.50 you throw down for a cocktail is well worth it, especially if you’re on a mission to impress a new friend.

Now, we have it on good authority that Hugh Jackman’s cousin works behind the bar at grand Central. He won’t admit it, and they use candles instead of electric lighting to help hide his identity, but Alex is definitely the blood relative of Wolverine.

Gothenburg

It’s important to note that Gothenburg is not a student bar in any sense of the word. It’s not going to offer you a student deal or give you a lot of space to dance in, but that’s not what they’re about. Beers are the key to the drinks menu at Gothenburg, with Hofbrau Original and Hofbrau Munchner Weisse both there to satisfy even the snootiest of beer palates.

The alcohol menu at Gothenburg actually blew my mind. However, I feel the need to say this once again: Gothenburg is NOT a student bar. Gothenburg only got on this list due to the wide variety of beer on offer. If you are a beer nerd, check this joint out. You’ll pay top dollar, but no beer nerd thinks twice about price if the drop is nice. That’s a rhyme I just made up.

One thing which did make us think twice about Gothenburg was their description of themselves on their facebook page. We’re all for aggressive marketing, but this just makes them sound arrogant:

KGB

It is easy to forget KGB in the rush between larger bars. Billy, the owner-operator, is something of a Hamilton legend, always ready with a drink and a smile. He is been in the game for a long time, with KGB now in its third location and incarnation. Karaoke, still popular but growing dated, is the main draw to KGB, which sits on Victoria Street a few doors north of Bar 101. The microphones and screens come alive from 10pm. It doesn’t take much imagination to realise that you’ll be having a better time getting involved than not.

One thing which may put people off (but really shouldn’t) is the slot machines section of KGB. A lot of bars have them, but I don’t really notice them. The ‘G’ in KGB stands for gaming, so one shouldn’t be surprised to see them. The fact they take up a large portion of an already small locale may put some of you morally up-right types off.

A delicious range of shots starts from $3, with some pretty interesting concoctions. The one which caught my eye was called Black Samurai; sake and soy sauce. It may have caught my eye, but I’m not going to put it anywhere near my mouth. Go and try it and let us know how you’re feeling.

Coyotes

Coyote seemed to be working hard to not impress the review team, as the sign on the door listed “Wednesday - 7PM” as the opening hours. We strolled by at getting on 8pm and there didn’t appear to be anyone inside, let alone an open bar.

Coyotes has received unwanted media attention in the past, with Sione Lauaki lashing out at bar-goers he suspected of stealing his drinks last year. Here’s the replay for those of you who missed the Waikato Times’ series of articles about Sione’s fun times in town: “When Lauaki's drink went missing he asked the man if he took it. When the man denied taking it, Laukai punched him in the mouth. The man denied taking the drink a second time, so Lauaki punched him in the mouth again.”

As with all the other bars, however, we shouldn’t let a few bad incidents colour our view of them. The bar should speak for itself. As previously stated, Coyotes was not open at the time advertised on the door. That’s not a good start.

Coyotes has a very small smoking area, separated from the sidewalk by only a rope fence. A huge bar takes up the middle stretch of Coyotes is a good design feature, meaning you can get at the service whenever you want. Booths along the wall give tired feet a chance to rest and give a slight privacy.

We would recommend Coyotes for people who don’t give a fuck. There simply are a lot of bars out there that offer a similar, only better, product.

Agenda

Another of the recent additions to Hamilton’s nightlife, Agenda impressed our review team straight off the bat. A staff member behind the bar welcomed us in, while another came up to us and asked us if we wanted a table, or a drinks menu. I would expect this from a business struggling for customers, but when we entered the joint was humming. Three groups, including a young family were eating dinner, while we and another two groups were there for the drink selection.

Agenda is quite popular as a night club venue, along with the dinner and post work drinks crowd. It is in a prime location for it, sitting directly at the mouth to the Outback alleyway.

A beer from Agenda will cost you around $7.50, but they are all high class drops. The range of cocktails and shakers is also nothing to sneeze at. We got a Pimm’s drink for about $13, because we’re old and wanted to get nostalgic about dead grandparents. If you haven’t had a Pimm’s drink before, get to Agenda and give one a jam. They do it well.

Route 66

Route 66 is in a prime location and has apparently wasted no time in getting their crowd pumping. A lot of people told us it was a strip bar. This is not the case. If you have seen the brilliant piece of cinema Coyote Ugly, then you’re already halfway to understanding how Route 66 works. Beautiful women dance on the bar top, clothes stay on, everyone leaves slightly aroused.

Route 66 was not open mid-evening on Wednesday, but I can’t imagine there being much of a market for mid-week, after work bar-top entertainment. We can only imagine how much fun it must be, both to work there and drink there.

A quick look on their facebook page told us all we need to know. We’ll let their info page speak for them: “Our Hot Girls are experienced BarTop Dancers. Our Music consists of Rock, Hip Hop, Dubstep, Dance etc so there is something for everyone! Body Shots, Controlled Chaos! come visit our bar!”

So, as you can see, Route 66 doesn’t care about grammar and punctuation, but they definitely care about you having a good time. Go check it out, simply because it’s something different.

 Furnace

Furnace is perhaps more of a food location, rather than a night club. It won the Best Restaurant category in 2009, as voted for by Waikato Times readers. While we are sure that it goes off at night (because several friends of Nexus regularly go there in the hope of hearing the Grease medley one.... more... time....), we went through with the dinner crowd. The staff seemed rushed, but didn’t cut back on the welcoming nature we’ve come to experience from John Lawrenson’s bar staff.

On a quick side note, while there, the Nexus bar review team saw the “Bar Baron” himself, rushing food between his various establishments. Not his staff. Not some catering firm. John Lawreson himself. Say what you will about him, but you can’t deny he doesn’t work hard.

Furnace is open 7 days a week and is a great location for a date, without breaking the bank or losing out on quality service.

Altitude/Gravity:

The review team agreed on one thing before we even got into Altitude: too many stairs. It could not be called Altitude, however, if it was on the side walk though, so up we went.

Some of the older guys in our review team have a lot of time for Altitude. Mobile Stud Unit, Shihad, Blindspott and many more live bands have played sell out shows to capacity crowds at Altitude. It hosted Club Classics during Soundscape and went off. Altitude always has things going on.

During the Field Days, which happen out at Mystery Creek in June, they run a Wet T-Shirt competition. Need we say more?

Drink deals can have you paying as little as $5 for a beer or an RTD, while $4 Happy hours on Friday and Saturday (unless something big is going down) will see you coming in.

Gravity is the bar below Altitude, which played host to Sexy House and the wonderful Angela Fisken. The also play host to regular DJ sets, including one coming up on the 26^th with Fevah FM and Cheeky Chicks.

So, there’s another bunch of bars. As we said earlier, this IS NOT ALL OF THE BARS IN TOWN. We simply did not have enough time to cover them all, so we went with the big ones, the crazy ones and the beautifully small ones.

Remember: plan before you party. If you’re in town and shit is falling apart and you see one of the Nexus team around, give us a shout. You guys are our favourite people in the whole world. NEXUS BLOODY SAYS SO.

For those of you who don’t know, when you live on or around campus, you are in the Hamilton East electorate. As 2011 is an election year, you’re going to be hearing a lot from our politicians, both incumbent and wanna-be, both on and off campus. Some of you might get bored with these elements in the magazine, but most of you will be eager to hear what all the different parties have to say and what they can offer you – the students.

David Bennett is up for a third term, representing our little slice of Heaven, down in Wellington. He’s young, studied at Victoria and has got a bit of farming under his belt. He’s also a former Saint John’s boy. They’re those little buggers who sneak over here from school to try and get us to buy cigarettes for them

David Bennett doesn’t want us to buy him cigarettes.

Nexus got David Bennett for an entire hour, in which time we asked him the basics and chucked a few sticky questions in there as well. We feel he did well.

Nexus: Just for the benefit of the students who are new to your electorate, how did you get into Politics?

David Bennett: I originally went to St John’s. When you see boys walking around the Uni at lunchtime, which was me a few years back. Then I went to Victoria to do law and commerce there, before working for KPMG for a couple of years. I probably wasn’t the best employee they ever had, but it did teach me a lot about being in your own business and things like that, which then lead to me wanting to go into the business of farming.

Dairy farming is where we make a lot of our foreign exchange, so I went into that and loved it. I then was fortunate to get the nomination for Hamilton East. In the time I was farming, National took a really bad hit at one election and we had do reform the party and everything. We set up a board structure which was different from how it had been in the past, where it had been “do your twenty years and you move up in the system”.

I stood up and said that we need to change direction, we need to be a bit more centre, rather than too right wing, and it worked.

From there we re-invented the party, we re-branded it essentially, Steven Joyce was a big part of that, he was the CEO at the time and so we turned the message around and then we turned around the profile of the party. We didn’t win the next election but we got close and we won the one after that.

Nexus: How’s your second term going?

David Bennett: Very Good. In the first term National was the opposition, so that was a little bit difficult. 

The big win we got was the Waikato Express Way, which is the $2 billion roading project. National got that when we were in opposition and when we got into government we actually put it into the works and are doing it now. 

In opposition you get the ability to get some winnings for your region, because that’s when your political party puts the most out there to go try and win the election. When you’re in government things change a little bit, in that you’ve probably got a little bit more of a defensive model, in the sense that you’re promoting the policies of the day rather than advocating for change just for the sake of change.

That’s the focus and that’s also being tempered by the fact that we’ve had the recession and some major natural disasters. The Canterbury Earthquakes have complicated things, in the sense that economically we’re in a very difficult situation (as many countries around the world are) and we’ve really got to promote growth to get out of this situation. There is not a lot of leeway for having a lot of wild promises about new things, because basically we’ve got a quite a few costs to meet, what with the current situation.

Nexus: It is looking like a $10 billion bill for Christchurch, right?

David Bennett: I think it’s 15 plus. That’s something no one expected. We had expected growth in Christchurch, especially the rebuilding from the September earthquake, to be starting to come through around about now. This would have given the the economy a much needed boost. On top of that, we would have actually had a strong economy for this year. The re-building is now being put back about nine months. That boost is perceived to come around at the end of 2011, early next year for re-building rather than now so the nature of that is basically it’s a country that’ll take about a year in that economical development process through having a natural disaster like that.

Nexus: What are the big accomplishments that National has made?

David Bennett: Well we’re at difficult times, but I think the first thing is that our economic management has been the best you could get, in the sense that we have maintained a stable economic environment where we haven’t cut services or anything like that. We have kept away from the austerity measures, which you can see happening in Europe.

Instead we’ve tried to set a direction were we can see the investment in savings and the support for savings and investment. There’s a re-balancing of the economy to be a productive, tradable export economy that’s a big part of what we’re doing and there’s also the continuation of social spending. This is because we realize that there are not a lot of opportunities out there at the moment and we need to grow those.

We need to a keep level playing field while we’re doing that. That’s a difficult balance when you’re in a recession, so we’ve had to borrow heavily as a government. The natural disasters in Christchurch have meant that we’ve had to borrow even more to continue that process. I think it’s the right decision to make.

Your only other options are to cut staff or increase taxes. If you increase taxes you’re going to kill the economy, while if you cut staff you’re going to cause a lot of pain in the community, so either way that doesn’t work. I think the balance we’ve got is about right.

Nexus: Lets step back a moment to your initial election. The front page picture in the Waikato Times was Dianne Yates not wanting to shake your hand. Is there a lot of that?

David Bennett: It’s very rare. I don’t really say much about that night, but it’s one of those things that happen. It’s not really for me to comment on, but I don’t find it’s something you really find in politics a lot.

Most people can get on pretty well and there’s no need for that, in the sense that it the end of the day you do have an understanding of what a politician goes through once you’re in there. It may be that they’re in a different colour of political party and they have different points of view which you just don’t agree with and you can’t see how anyone would agree with them, but at the end of the day they do, and they do the same stuff that you do and they have to put their message out there. We have a healthy respect for each other, so I wouldn’t see that as being the norm. The norm is that people are pretty respectful, just like after a rugby game when everyone shakes hands. They still want to win, but they all know what it takes to play on the field and work hard.

Nexus: The VSM Bill was opposed by numbers in the high 90s, in terms of percentages. Despite this, it has still gone through to its third reading.

David Bennett: The Act party put the bill up. We don’t have a situation where one party gets 50% of the vote. That doesn’t happen and you don’t see that happening, so it’s lot of coalition governments and therefore you have a lot of give and take.

The second thing is that through a lot of those submission processes, not just on this bill but on most bills, you often find that while there’s a vast majority of submissions against something (for example, the alcohol law), the consequences and the arguments about it aren’t fully explained and it’s very difficult to change some of those mind sets.

In a lot of submission processes you do find a skewing of the submissions, one way or the other. I think in this case you have got to take into account that MMP environment we have and also the number of submissions will be generally from those parties that will be most interested in it will be submitting their point of view.

 You’ve got one of the best student unions in the country right here at Waikato. They deliver a lot of good services and they’re not overcharging on their fees. I would like to encourage students to become voluntary members of the Waikato Students’ Union because they will get value for money. It’s worthwhile for students. It’s quite a good tension to have in an organisation, as it make sure the WSU is delivering value for money.

So there you have it. Our MP, Mr David Bennett is not only a local boy and a Kiwi bloke, but also a big fan of your student union. Our next interview is WINSTON BLOODY PETERS! We’re not even kidding! Our buddy Cam from DebSoc sorted it out and it’ll be here, in print, next week.

Religious violence shatters the rebuilding effort in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Ireland is still divided by political and class struggles, all traceable to the religious history of that nation. Religion has destroyed works of art, science and even architecture. Entire civilisations have been ground into the dust of history in the name of religion.

So, with all this shitty history to religion, why is it still going on? Why is there an explosion of Christian youth churches in the United States of America and even here in New Zealand? Why is Islam still so popular after all the bad press? Why, when science is so clinically clear cut, does God still find a place in the hearts of men and women the world over?

So, Nexus hit the campus.

Through the Waikato Student’s Union, there are a whole lot of clubs for students of a variety of faiths. There are the “Latter-Day Saints Students Association” (Mormons, for those of you who don’t like book learning), the “Waikato Uni Muslim Club” and the “Eastside Church Young Adults” among others.

“Arise Church in Hamilton” is the newest of these clubs and is based around Arise Church (a Christian church) members on campus. They meet in the Academy of Performing Arts every Sunday night and volunteer for WSU events. By far the most visible of the religious clubs on campus, they’re made from an interesting hodgepodge of people, from Pastor Steve Jefares all the way down to my own flatmate.

Christianity is the quickest growing faith in the world. Missionaries trek through distant jungles, fly to villages in the middle of deserts and even smuggle themselves into warzones, all in order to get God’s word into the hands of everyone on the Earth. American politicians thank God, as do sportsmen the world over. Perhaps one of the most fractious religions on the Earth today, Christianity, as with almost every other religion here, has gotten a bad rap. When George Bush prayed to his Christian God before the invasion of Iraq, people saw this as one in a long line of points through history, where God has been asked to bless a destructive force.

Tom Biesly goes to Arise church. I have personally known Tom for about 8 years. A fan of tough guy music (Stretch Armstrong, Sick of it All and even Hatebreed), it would be easy to mistake Tom for your regular Kiwi nerd-bogan hybrid. Tom is anything but run of the mill, however.

Tom believes, as do almost all Christians, that Jesus Christ died for his sins and is all that allows man to have a relationship with God. Without Jesus, we’re just groping in the dark.

“I grew up going to church. I was made to go to church, essentially. I didn’t really exercise my faith until I got to university, however.”

Tom is active in the Arise Church family

“Toward the start to halfway last year, I really clicked that being part of the local church community was part of what it’s all about. We are a part of the answer, in a really practical way. I wanted to do as much as I could, just to show people love”.

“If more people who called themselves Christians actively became a part of the answer”, he continued, “so many areas of society that are falling apart would just be a whole lot better.

I ask Tom if it’s a do-or-die-commitment to Christ that he’s made and he can’t agree that it is fast enough. “My faith impacts most of my day to day decisions, hugely, 100%. God can’t factor into a small part of your life. It’s not a ‘church on Sundays’ thing for me.”

“I think having some kind of faith is 100% important, even in this day and age. Faith is at the core of human life, even if it’s faith in God, faith in you, or faith that there is no God.  Faith in this day and age is just as important as it ever was”.

Someone once told me that religion is all about the exit strategy, so I asked Tom what will happen when he dies.

“Heaven. Some people have pretty interesting concepts of heaven. The best description I’ve ever heard is ‘Heaven is just like this, without sin’. That’s the best description, without a doubt”.

After interviewing Tom, I was given a lollipop by a new student called Michelle.

Like Tom, Michelle was on campus to get the word out about a church. Link City Church meets in the Gallagher Hub at Wintec. Michelle studies at the School of Education. She is also unashamedly a Christian.

Her parents are both pastors in New Plymouth, but it wasn’t until she was around 18 years old that she decided to go all in.

“I live it and I breathe it”, she told me, as we sat under the Link City Church tent on the Village Green. “Everyone has faith in something. People have faith in things even if they don’t call it faith”.

Like Tom, Michelle believes that when she dies, she’ll enter the presence of God and stay there for the rest of eternity.

Michele doesn’t like the term ‘religious’, just like the rest of the people I met. “If ‘law’ imposes on your relationship with God, you’ll have a religious spirit. What I have is faith, not religion”.

The more people I spoke to, the more I realised that ‘religion’ has become an ugly word.

Wicca is perhaps the oldest religion. Taking its roots from the animistic beliefs of the earliest men and women on Earth, Wicca is another religion that gets a bad rap. When someone flies the Wicca flag, others are quick to jump on them with other labels – witch, Huffle Puff and Hermione, according to Courteney, a science student at the University of Waikato.

By far the most interesting person I talked to. This was partly because she was named after Courteney Cox, but also because she has beliefs I knew nothing about, bar the odd misconception. An ‘atheistic Wiccan’ or ‘scientific Wiccan’ is how Courteney describes herself.

“I don’t believe in a sentient deity. I don’t believe anyone created the universe. Wicca is pretty open, pretty free. Wicca is about nature. The sun and the moon are the “gods”. They get personified as the Maiden Mother and Crone, but I don’t really follow the personifications so much.

When people think of Wicca, they often think of covens and witches. Courteney is aware of several of each.

“Nature makes the world go round and that’s what Wicca is about for me; sitting outside in the forest, looking at the moon, enjoying a lake.”

“When I was about 8, I got into Christianity. There’s a lot of peer pressure to swear to God.  When I got a little older, I realised it didn’t make sense. There were questions that weren’t being answered. One day I was at the library and in the section on religion there were books about witchcraft and Wicca. Being 11, I was like ‘That sounds awesome, what’s that?’ I read some stuff and it made a lot more sense to me, that nature is central.”

It was Courteney’s choice to become a Wiccan. There was no set text, nor any Wiccan youth groups to egg her on in her journey to what she believes.

“There are a couple of central ideas”, Courteney says. “The main one is the threefold rule: everything you do to others happens back to you three times over. I returned someone’s wallet once and have since had my wallet returned twice, with nothing missing either time”.

Science definitely plays a part in Courteney’s beliefs though. When Christchurch was hit by earthquakes and people asked themselves “What have we done to piss of God”, Courteney says “You did nothing. It is tectonic plates. It sucks, but shit happens”

“We also believe that numbers and colours have significances. Different stones and different trees also feature”

“Wiccans cast spells, but you can’t do harm to anyone else. It’s more about the ritual, setting yourself to something. It is the act of prayer that is important, rather than the results of prayer.

Here’s where my ears pricked up. This is the standard concept of what Wicca is to outsiders like me: Magic.

Courteney opened a book she’d brought with her, which had rituals for new couples, for finding love (NOT making someone fall in love with you) and all sorts of other things.

“If I were to cast a luck and protection spell, I would use red. A red candle, red shoes, something like that. The number five is also for luck. It’s even a mental thing – I’ve given myself this piece of luck, so I will feel it”.

Spells are no guarantee; Courteney is quick to point this out. Just like Christians who pray for things which don’t unfold the way they want them to, Wiccan prayer is not a sure thing.

“Religion is probably a misnomer for what I believe”, Courteney admits. “When people ask me what my religion is, I say Wicca. I got given shit for it in high school, but you can expect that. My group of friends at school was pretty well split between agnostics, humanists, hardcore Christians and all sorts and we generally got along”.

“I took Wiccan off my facebook profile, because people have misconceptions and it caused trouble”.

Other faiths, such as Voodoo, are often lumped together with Wicca, I was told. Courteney does not enjoy that.

“Voodoo is about doing harm to people. Wicca is not about harm”.

“When I die, the screen will go blank and I’ll decompose”, Courteney said, the science student in her coming to the fore. “Other Wiccans might believe in reincarnation or moving to a higher level, but I think people die. New shit grows from old shit dying. Circle of life. There is a lot of variation in what Wiccans believe”.

I don’t know about you readers, but that sure opened my eyes to what Wicca is all about.

There are a billion Catholics on the Earth. One in every six people sees the Pope, an elderly Austrian. Over the years they’ve gotten a bad rap, due to the behaviour of the few, rather than the many.

Sexual abuse charges, as well as doctrine that bans condoms and helps the spread of AIDS in the Third World, haven’t done a lot of favours for the image of the Catholic Church.

Most of the Catholics I know are, in fact, lapsed. Several of my friends at high school had attended Catholic primary schools, and then slowly worked their way out of the church on their own. Others I met at university. Few of them had different tales.

Kevin Pryor went down the path of atheism.

Atheism is not really a religion at all, but you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. There are atheists, just as there are Christians, Muslims and Jews, who will shove their belief down other people’s throats. Kevin, who writes the book reviews for the Nexus Magazine, is a self-confessed atheist, but he’s yet to shove it down anyone’s throat in my presence.

When I asked Kevin what it was he believed, or more specifically what he defined his belief system as, I got quite the answer.

“I believe in what's in front of my face really, so I guess it's an absence of belief in what's not there. I trust in reality, what I can touch, feel, see. I guess you could call me a materialist, I believe in material things. I think people in general have vivid imaginations (which I think is a good thing; I prefer fiction to non-fiction for example) but God is just one of those imaginary things, like the Easter Bunny or Father Christmas, to make people feel better.”

In case you’ve got a full blown case of the herpa-derp, that means he thinks religions are full of it.

Raised in a ‘strict Catholic family’, Kevin can remember thinking that the goings on in church were quite odd. Transubstantiation, the Catholic belief that the bread and wine of the communion table transforms into the body and blood of Christ upon entering your body, is one of the things which he found inconceivable.

“When I got older I started reading the likes of Nietzsche and Sartre who pretty much gave validity to my early gut instincts”

Kevin doesn’t even like the term ‘religion’. It makes him ‘froth at the mouth.

Faith only factors into Kevin’s life in sports: “Faith is very important, if you’re a supporter of the Black Caps. What else would keep you watching the Cricket World Cup?”

When I asked Kevin about what would happen to him when he died, he wistfully replied: “Hopefully my children will have enough money to bury me in a crypt. I would love that! To be buried in a big ostentatious tomb as a monument to my materialistic beliefs. The best way I’ve heard death described is this: The Big Sleep. Now that doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

Maria Wysocki (not her real name, for fear of being excommunicated) was also raised a Catholic, but opted for a path slightly off the beaten track.

“I call myself a Catholic Atheist”.

A student at the University of Waikato, Maria lives her life “full of pragmatism, but engages in Catholic rituals just in case you were wrong about there being no God”.

“I will be excommunicated for writing this, but it’s okay. I will wear a wig and sneak back in.”

“I love incense and robes – Catholics really understand really understand stand how to satisfy all the senses. Except for the sexual ones. I wish the songs were more old-fashioned. I really hate that they’re trying to make it all jazzy and evangelical sounding.”

Maria observes the festivals of the Catholic Church, particularly Lent, which happens just before Easter.

“We observe Lent, because I think some form of fasting or sacrifice nicely reflects the anti-consumerist views that our family holds.”

“I believe in science. I engage in religion”.

“When I die, I will be dead. And I can never know the rest. And that, my friend, is okay”

Carl, another student at Waikato, is a Humanist. By far the heaviest interview I had during the research for this feature, I left it with a heavy feeling and actually thought a lot about my own beliefs.

“For me, Humanism is that idea that man, in his state of nature, before society, religion, all those things which put us into a box, we have everything that we need. We can work things out ourselves. It’s basically

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Genevan philosopher, is key to the modern form of Humanism.

Is Humanism simply a fancy name for atheism then?

“Yeah, there’s nothing like [gods]. There’s nothing. Humanism doesn’t even give it consideration. It’s not that I don’t believe in God, it’s just that I don’t believe in anything like that”.

Carl experimented with other faiths in his teenage years, or at least as best he could in a small New Zealand town. “It’s a very natural tendency. You say ‘I believe in this thing’, then you ask yourself; ‘Why do I believe in this thing?’.

When he was 21, Carl was in a car crash which sent him through a car windscreen. The loss of control, with a car doing nothing he wanted it to, left Carl with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“It was in that moment, in that darkness, in that violence, that I went: I’m going to die and there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else after this moment. I had no qualms with that at all. This was it. The lights are going to go out. This is it”.

“I had a complete sense of loneliness. I am in this car and any moment, I am going to be snuffed out. I am totally alone here. Just before I hit the windscreen I said ‘this is it’.”

“Because I considered myself a Christian at this time, I tried to write a rationalisation to my friend. I couldn’t do it. My idea of God was God as ‘energy’. That energy could be called God, could be called Allah, whatever you want.”

After the accident, Carl began to study the different religions, to see if there was a place for him in the religious spectrum.

“I started getting more Buddhism. It’s a short step from Buddhism to Humanism. The only way out of my morass, out of suffering, is through knowledge of myself and through trying to mitigate the effects of suffering for me and other individuals. I can’t stop anyone’s suffering by praying, because that’s not going to do anything. Prayer isn’t going to do anything for that person”.

Humanism is where Carl ended up.

Islam is one of three religions closely linked; through geography, mythology and god. The others, again for those of you who don’t like book learning, are Christianity and Judaism. Coming out of what is now Saudi Arabia around 610 AD, Islam spread across the world, from southern Spain to Indonesia in less than a thousand years. Islam has also had a bad rap in the last thirty years or so, pretty much since the Iranian decided that they wanted an Islamic theocracy over an American backed dictatorship. Since then, terrorists (who just happened to be Muslims as well) and Muslim dictators have done a lot of damage to the West’s view of Islam.

We sent a few emails out, and did some shout outs on Facebook, but we never managed to get our hands on a Muslim student for this article. If you’re reading this and ARE a Muslim student, practising or simply raised in Islam, then send us an email. We are more than happy to talk with you and there WILL be another religious feature later, this time covering everyone we missed.

Ups! – With Remus

Why should you travel?

I don't believe there’s any point discussing where you should go on a trip. The destination is entirely up to your tastes. What I hope to argue is that travel is something done as a means to improve your character, not just a way to destroy your liver in different time-zones. (Although that's pretty fun too)

To start with there’s the satisfaction of surviving. It’s not quite on par with hunting down and cooking a wild animal, but you do get a chuffed feeling when you manage to negotiate streets and menus when nothing is in English, and then end up with something that’s pretty edible. You have triumphed outside the safety zone, and so the barriers of your safety zone grow outward a little; the world has become just that little bit less daunting. This sounds like not much to be proud of, but you gotta give yourself props for these little victories. Every success makes other successes easier to come by. 

I feel a big part of life is coming to terms with your own limits and accepting them. I struggle with being perceived as incapable. Maybe it’s a short man syndrome? But then I used to reflect and think 'no, maybe in this case I don't know what I'm doing' and so would suffer a bit of condescension in order to learn. But after a while that gives me the shits and so I would flip between quiet listener and arrogant brat. But I've come to realise that not being able to do something, doesn't mean that you can't do something else. Forget about what you can't do, focus on what you can. The trouble with that is you don't always know what these things are. And that’s where travel comes in, or the mindset of being a traveler anyway. Attempt many different things, and do not be afraid to fail.

I also thoroughly promote the freedom that comes from travel. Removing the trappings of daily life. There’s no need to explain yourself. Travel helps to remove the tyranny of explanation, the tyranny of the familar. To me, sometimes social connections can be a weight. The 'me' that I present is not always the ‘me’ that I am in my heart. I am not a person of one particular genre or category. I see people who devote themselves to becoming a genre; a cliché. I think it’s because it offers safety and acceptance. It offers identity which can be a tricky thing to grasp. But are you really going to find out who you are by following the paths that other people have already walked down. When people lay their maps out in front of you, it’s not so you can find who you are, it’s just directions to become them. I think maybe its a deep seated need to see themselves replicated in others because it's a measure of their success in this world. What higher accomplishment can there be than the fact that others want to emulate you? But I hate it when people tell me how I should be. Whenever people ask me what I want to be, I have no good answer. But out of fear of not sounding aimless (and a desire to avoid their advice) I conjure up weak ideas of careers. I know I'm trying to convince myself as much as them of what I'm saying. I just want to be free.

You don't have to be in motion to be a traveler either. It would be a bit unfair to say that 'personal satisfaction can only come through having money to travel'. That'd be a bit shit considering this is in a student magazine. I believe that being open to change is just as effective. The best place to start is not holding others back. Don't criticise your friend if they want to be different. Don't mock their choice of clothes, or what music they like. Allowing others to be free is the first step in allowing yourself to be free. Travel also brings out the easy come easy go in me. I never do get terribly attached to my belongings. I'm forgetful of the mundane, and can never keep track of where exactly I've left my keys etc. It doesn't worry me. When I travelled and I was unsure of my destination, I would just say to myself, 'well, there’s money in my pocket and food in my tummy. The weather is warm; what is there to worry about?'

People often say it’s not the destination, but the journey that matters. True enough, but a journey to a far off or quite different place is generally more exciting than a trip to Auckland or something. Plus there'd probably be less Aucklanders.

Not travelling because it’s safer is a fool’s logic. To say "I won't get on a plane because it may crash" is silly. You can extend that argument until you aren't leaving the house, because you may get run over. A life lived with too much fear is not worth living I feel. Playing it safe, you will get by, and you will most likely live a long life. But a life lived for what purpose? One day, you will die. There is no point in denying that. Everything you do on this Earth will one day be reduced to dust, so it is of the utmost importance that you decide what is that you are living for. And if you die on the way to your goals, then you die. But you will die having lived exactly how you wanted too. Travel is a part of accepting your mortality. About seeing and experiencing the world through the eyes of someone who appreciates that none of this wonder will last. So you must make the most of it.

Downs! – With Fernando

Travel is one of the most dangerous things to do.

Never mind ones fear of flight, nor the statistics involved in ones safety en route to the airport. It is the destination which gives concern.

“But Remus”, you cry. “You do not know where it is I shall travel to”

“Ah”, I reply. “It does not matter”.

You see, anywhere outside of New Zealand is more dangerous than New Zealand.

You may laugh, but think about it for a moment. Overseas is where news happens. News has been, in our lifetimes, a steady stream of doom and gloom. Wars, famines, diseases and animal attacks all take pole position on the nightly broadcasts of every major network.

Pirates patrol the waters off the coast of Africa, pirates shoot national heroes on the waters of South America and pirates kidnap and behead foreigners throughout the Middle East. Well, they’re not pirates exactly, but they’re close enough.

New Zealand has no pirates. The most risky thing you can do on the oceans off our coast is to not wear a lifejacket. No one is going to roll in from stage left, kidnap you and your wife from your yacht or dinghy and hold you for millions of dollars of ransom.

We are a four hour plane ride from our closest neighbour. This might seem like a disadvantage to some of you wishing to travel and seeing your expenses stack up. To me, however, and our forefathers in the First and Second World Wars, our remoteness has been a blessing.

There are wars blooming across Southeast Asia, through Africa, the Middle East again and, from time to time, in Eastern Europe whenever Russia feels the need to test out their latest technology. Even our neighbour and cousin, Australia, has experienced war when, in the Second World War, several air raids were thrown at Darwin.

New Zealand, on the other hand, has never been invaded. A German submarine supposedly sat off the East Coast and allegedly stole milk from a farm near Gisborne. In the 1850s, we were terrified that Russia would send soldiers to our shores and it never happened. We are simply too far and too well defended by fact of distance to be a viable, or even easy, target.

Sure, our army wouldn’t last a heartbeat against a modern, well-funded force, but that’s why we have an excellent history of diplomatic answers in lieu of military blustering. New Zealand played key parts in the organisation of the League of Nations and the United Nations. We are all about having buddies around the world, not about picking fights with our neighbours.       

Now, it is true that there are countries with our same outlook on the world; Belgium or Holland for instance. They play nice with their neighbours, haven’t invaded anyone for a century or more (with the exceptions of colonial wars in Africa and Asia) and a generally well liked all over the world. The only difference between New Zealand and Belgium and the Netherlands is that New Zealand is not firmly situated in Germany’s way not once, but twice in the last hundred years. While our grandparents were either sitting at home in front of the wireless or fighting in the Mediterranean, the older generations of the Low Countries were forced into labour battalions and starvation level rationing schemes by the dreaded Hun.

New Zealand, by virtue of being so far away from anything, is better than close together countries, such as in Europe, Africa and Asia. Our pest problems come, for the most part, from the 19^th Century, before the imposition of strict controls on our ports and trade. Our record for pandemics is equally sparse of modern incidents: influenza ripped through New Zealand directly after the First World War, but on a global level as well.

New Zealand has no dangerous animals. We don’t have deadly spiders, snakes or man-eating reptiles and mammals. All of those horrid things are overseas, where the danger is. OK, hold up a moment: we have Redback spiders and the Katipo spider. When was the last time you saw either? When was the last time you heard of anyone dying from contact with one of these creatures? It is highly likely you haven’t seen one in your entire life.

We have a coastline and that’s pretty scary. Sometimes a shark will be spotted in the Bay of Plenty or in northland, but we don’t have a summer spent pulling pieces of people’s bodies out of the water. We have a lot of drowning, but they’re not caused by hippos and crocodiles upsetting your canoe. We have giant squid off the coast of the South island, but they’re not pulling sailors to their deaths.

So yes, we are far away and travel is expensive, especially if you want to see people living in completely alien ways, but it’s all good. We have tourists and exchange students, as well as refugees and immigrants, and they give you a look at the world without having to go out into it.

Do not travel: other places will kill you.

What can be said about a man that inspired so many of his students by passing on his passion for a subject such as labour studies? As I write this, I struggle to comprehend that this man is no longer a part of the lives who he inspired.  I’m talking about Dr Paul Harris who passed away the week before Christmas 2010.

When I came to uni, I was like a lot of you, here because I didn’t know what I wanted to do but knew I didn’t want to work at a supermarket for the rest of my life. So I signed up for a degree in the Social Sciences and went to classes.  I first came into contact with Paul Harris when I took a labour studies LBST101 the nature of work where we had a guest lecture from Paul. In front of the lecture room was a man with his shirt hanging out, and a grin that made him look as if he’d been in a bar fight or two in his time, not the image of anyone  I expected to know anything about how to give a lecture on labour studies. When Paul first opened his mouth I couldn’t understand what he said.  His accent and my half hung-over state didn’t really gel.

Fortunately, he repeated himself: “I’m Paul Harris, I support Bolton Wanderers FC. Every other FC is shit especially Manchester United”.  I can’t remember what the hell the lecture was about, but I do still remember how he introduced himself.  In my second year I was lucky enough to have Paul as a lecturer for the LBST201 Employment Relations paper. Throughout the time spent in Paul’s paper he would constantly make reference to his exes at last count I think there were at least four (found out there were only two in the end)

Paul had a way of turning the most boring topics into ones that anyone could connect with, rather than throwing the information at you and not caring whether you understood. Paul was one of those lecturers that made the learning side of university fun and would often talk about having a beer of two at Momento before class.

Paul got sick in the last year of my undergraduate and was going to retire at the end of 2010. His final lot of students counted themselves lucky that he was there to see them through their undergraduate degree; that he showed up on days to take class when a normal lecturer would claim sickness showed how he cared greatly for those that he was teaching. 

Dr Paul Harris was not just an academic and a lecturer; instead he was and forever will remain a mentor and friend to all who knew him.                                

As written by Mr Ryan Clark 

 

Jan Maree has also been described as a chauvinist’s nightmare and the thinking man’s wet dream as she proved most recently when seen ‘surviving’ on TV2’s Island Wars. A one-girl whirlwind looking for somewhere to happen, Jan’s quick wit and energy make her a most talented MC and live event host. A regular MC at Auckland’s Classic Comedy and Bar, Jan also tours small town NZ earning her a living as she is firmly in the premier ranks of kiwi comedy.

Residing minutes from Waikato’s beach haven Raglan, with Rick and her wonder-dogs Flash, Titch and Spark, Jan fills her days writing, op-shopping for old china tea sets and looking for the next big challenge…and making cups of tea.

Some dirty questions and answers with Jan Maree, as asked by the Waikato Fist:

Do comedians get a lot of action, from your experience?

Depends on the gender... Funny blokes get laid plenty, chicks dig funny blokes. At first sight a lady in the crowd might actually think the guy is a hose beast, until the very moment the bloke opens his mouth and the funny comes out. Funny chicks, well, we have been told we can be intimidating to menfolk in audiences. The odd time a comedian of the female persuasion gets attention 'of that kind' from an audience member it will likely be from the sociopath in the corner who only wants to take you out to prove to you that he is in fact funnier than you in real life (snore). That's why I guess a fair few chick comedians end up in relationships with male comedians. It takes a fairly strong man with a personality of heavy gauge steel to handle the intimidating female comedian's ways. Evil Rick (my boyfriend of two years, I know, two years!) is just that, steely. If I was him I probably would have ditched me long ago!

Which New Zealander would you most like to give a huge wedgie to, on the proviso that you would not be punished in any way for giving said wedgie?

John Key. Because he appears to be a good humoured bloke. Giving the Prime Minister a wedgie would be hilarious. He could handle a wedgie. In my view, he'd laugh it off and the buy the next round because "Janny, you got me good!" Do I think he deserves a wedgie? No. Hone Harawira DESERVES a wedgie that makes his bum crack bleed. But there is NO way he would let me get away with it. He would put an utu on me. Stink buzz.

Why is Rodney Hide always so cross?

You'd be cross too if you woke up every morning to the same wardrobe full of appallingly unfashionable blazer jackets. But the real reason I believe he is cross: Rodney Hide has no soul. His tanning bed stole it. It's hard to be happy when you got no soul.

Best thing you’ve ever found at the dump?

Can I just start by saying that I LOVE THE DUMP SHOP!Whenever I come into town I pop in there and fossick for bargains. Man, I have found some superb stuff at the dump. Hard to name just one thing, so here are a few. My British made black leather competition boot (roller) skates were a $10 find. But so were my knee high black leather fuck-me boots, hand tooled for (kiwi style guru) Paula Ryan's footwear label, and they were $5 well spent. But so was my dark green wool dress...my 'funeral frock', it was only $3. I have MOUNTAINS of dollar-a-piece Crown Lynn china that has come from the dump, and I consider it all to be some of the best things I've ever stumbled over. FYI: the town dump shop is good, but the Te Hutiwai dump shop in Raglan is the bombdiggity.

Do you think men should wax their pubes or leave them feral?

Waxing them is a bit harsh, I'm not sure I have ever met a man who was happy to have hot wax that close to his wanger. Feral pubes however are NOT the go. Grooming is the way forward. As it is written in the secret scrolls, "Keep thee trim and tidy and ye shall receive a lady's good manners".

The top ten athletes and teams that have come back from the jaws of defeat.

10.

Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls – Retiring in 1993 following his father’s murder and winning 3 straight NBA titles, Jordan returned to the NBA from a stint in minor league baseball in 1995. In the 3 years Jordan came back to play for the Bulls he went on to capture 2 more MVP’s, 2 All Star game MVP’s, 3 more scoring titles, 3 All Star appearances, 3 All-NBA first team selections, 3 All-Defensive first team selections, and 3 more NBA titles while winning the finals MVP in each one cementing himself as the greatest player of all time.

9.

Australia v South Africa, 1999 Cricket World Cup Semi Final – One of the greatest Cricket World Cup games of all time. The match is most remembered for the disastrous run out between South Africa’s, Allan “forgot to run” Donald and Lance Klusener that ended the game in a tie. The Australians had been bundled out for a miserable 213 in the first innings and the South Africans began the run chase strong but Shane Warne spun some magic with four key wickets to keep the game tight. With one run needed from the last two balls and only one wicket in hand Australia completed the remarkable comeback as they ran out the headless Donald. Australia would advance to the final because of a higher net run rate of 0.0015 where they would beat Pakistan.

8.

Muhammad Ali, The Rumble in the Jungle – After being drafted by the U.S Armed forces in 1967, to fight in the Vietnam War, Ali refused to serve and was subsequently arrested and stripped of his boxing licence and Heavyweight Championship title. In 1971 the Supreme Court reversed his conviction and allowed him to fight again allowing Ali to met Joe Frazier in the “Fight of the Century”, however Frazier retained his title in a unanimous decision.  This time Ali fought George Forman, who had beaten Frazier for the title, in the Republic of Congo. In one of the greatest upsets and fights of all time Ali knocked out Foreman in the 8^th round regaining the Heavyweight Championship.

7.

Liverpool F.C in the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final – At half time Liverpool was down 3-0 to A.C Milan with what seemed like a resounding defeat. Liverpool however had an incredible second half surge to score three goals in 6mins and send the game to overtime where they would eventually win a penalty shootout 3-2.

6.

France v New Zealand, 1999 Rugby World Cup Semi Final - France was never given a chance in the build-up against an All Blacks side that were everyone's favourite to lift the William Webb Ellis Trophy. After being down 24-10 the game seemed like a comfortable win to the All Blacks but the French added 33 points to just seven from the All Blacks for a sensational victory. A game that still haunts All Blacks fans to this day.

5.

New York Jets v Miami Dolphins on NFL’s Monday Night Football, 2000 – Known as the Monday Night Miracle the Jets were down 30-7 going into the final quarter. Jets broadcaster Howard David famously said, "And with a whole quarter to go, this game is over." The game however was not over as the Jets staged a furious rally to level the score at 30 all. The Dolphins retook the lead but the Jets came back to level the score at 37 and force the game into overtime where they kicked the game winning field goal.

4.

Lance Armstrong, Tour de France – In 1996 at age 25 Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer, the cancer spread to his lungs, abdomen and brain. Armstrong came back in 1998 and went on to become the greatest road cyclist of all time. He won his first Tour de France in 1999 by 7min 37 seconds and went on to claim 7 straight Tour de France titles and 22 individual stages.

3.

Boston Red Sox in the 2004 American League Championship Series – At the time the Red Sox had not won a World Series title in 86 years, many felt that 2004 could be the year but after they went down 3-0 to their hated rivals, the New York Yankees, in a best of seven series all seemed to be lost. Boston would become the first team in MLB history to come back from a 3-0 series deficit, after winning game 4 and 5 in extra innings, Curt Schilling winning game 6, on a torn tendon in his right ankle, “the bloody sock game”, and then finally blowing out the Yankees in the decisive game 7. Boston would go on to win its first World Series title in 86 years by sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals.

 2.

Niki Lauda, 1977 Formula One world champion - Maybe the bravest comeback of all. Heading for his second world championship, a rear suspension failure forced Lauda off the track. His Ferrari hit an embankment, rolled back, and collided with Brett Lunger’s Surtees-Ford. Lauda’s car shot up in flames with Lauda trapped inside. Despite the efforts of the officials and his fellow drivers he could not be removed from the wreckage until he’d already suffered severe burns, and had inhaled huge amounts of toxic gas. Amazingly when they did get him out, he was able to walk away but he later collapsed into a coma. Less than two months later Lauda was back racing. In his first race he managed a credible fourth, but had too much ground to make up in the world championship, and he lost it by one point. The following year he came back and won the championship for the second time.

1.

Lasse Viren, 10,000m final 1972 Olympics - In his first Olympics at the age of 23, Lasse Viren went into the 1972 10,000m final little more than a rank outsider. When he and Mohamed Gammoudi fell over halfway through the race it was Gammoudi, the 1968 Olympic Champion, who garnered the attention. Yet while Gammoudi dropped out two laps later, Viren had already caught up with the leading group and went on to win the gold in a world record 27:38:40. His achievement was crowned just ten days later when he added the 5000m title.

You may have seen them, on the Green or in the trees, determined warriors with a penchant for death.  Their swords may be foam but the fire in their bellies burns like the breath of a thousand fiery demons.  In cultural hour, 1-2pm Wednesdays, they emerge from the deepest, darkest caves of society and flaunt their passion for all to see.

As I watched I was intrigued, perplexed even and then the sky opened up and a beam of light came down upon me: it’s gridiron with swords!  Only the ball is a skull and helmets are optional.  Orcball is a merger between American football and a game by the name of Bloodbowl.  This speaks for itself.  As the wait for a live action role playing game became too much to bear, inventive and outgoing gamers forged the sport from their own sweat and tears.  

The aim of the game is to enter the designated end zone, skull in hand, not to kill each other – that’s a bonus.  Two teams of eight, amidst a war for territory, try to take each other out.  Off the ball gridiron tackling becomes a mass of sword battles as the slain fall to the ground.  A valid hit is below the neck but above the knees, while hands are an extension of the weapon. 

The field of play can be anywhere, though trees are particularly appealing.  As organiser and robed referee Alistar put it, both teams are equally disadvantaged.  The rough terrain makes for an interesting game, the slope and loose ground build excitement, but also injuries.  I saw firsthand what makes this a legitimate sport, well that and the fact that they have a black dude.   

They’re an eclectic bunch and don’t care about race, gender or sexuality.  Around 30-40 regular players have teams playing alternately, including a kickass all girls team.  As I watched there was only one girl in the game but she could hold her sword amongst men and beasts.  Anybody’s welcome and if you don’t know how to swing a sword, fear not, someone will be all too eager to teach you.

The game is hectic.  It looks and sounds like a lot of fun, with relentless yelling and laughing Orcball is a playing field for both athleticism and wit.  The time and score keeper stands by, a picture of composure as play begins to a cry of “KILL ‘EM ALL!”  I was enthralled by more action than the Rugby World Cup, even witness to a breakaway full field touchdown. I spoke to Henry, who plays for something to do during the basketball off season and, for an out of season sports girl, I see the appeal.  “There’s some corpses over there!”

Hagar, captain of the Sexy Vikings describes his attraction to the game as stemming from pacifist warfare saying “aggression is a natural human emotion, it’s about the way you take it out”.  The light contact sport is an outlet for anger.  As an anonymous orcballer said; “I went to Boy’s High where everyone liked rugby. This was my way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the board of trustees”.  Another said “a lot of nerds are reluctant to pick up a sport.  This is a bunch of idiots running around with foam swords”.  And it is.  

“It’s not even about the ball anymore is it?”  No, it isn’t.  Not at all.

Nexus got the low down on some of the madness seen from behind the bars in the Rugby World Cup Fanzone. We found neither violence nor discrimination. What we did find was a handful of bars welcoming a large number of tourists with warm arms, Welshmen drinking and singing, and one bar not too bothered by a decline in business.

The Rugby World Cup Fanzone in Hamilton is L-shaped, and takes in the south end of Alexandra St and a block of Hood St to Victoria St. The success of bar owners nestled in the Fanzone and the well behaved nature of the crowd has been applauded throughout various newspapers, with the New Zealand Herald and Waikato Times commenting on the positive vibes and good spirits amongst punters.

Diggers proprietor Craig Williamson said the bar had seen a definite increase in numbers, calling the event “a great patronage from locals and tourists, similar to the V8’s.”

What sets the RWC apart from the V8’s is culture.

At a full capacity House Bar, culture was said to be dripping from the seams, glazed in a humble layer of sweet intoxication and comradeship.

Bar owner Nathan Sweetman commented on the Welsh bringing their green, kindly ruckus.

“The Welsh are easily the best and most fun crowd to accommodate. They tend to provide their own fun. Various times on Saturday and Sunday they were singing hymns and rugby songs and Tom Jones tracks. Hearing over 300 people singing Land of Our Fathers is just electric. “

Sweetman spoke of various times where the televisions were turned off, allowing the Welsh to let their lungs loose, while Tonga was also noted on presenting their culture in the form of a war dance prior the Wales-Samoa game.

House even got a glimpse of NZ top dog John Key, who made his mark on House Bar as just another punter. The Prime Minister stayed away from the spotlight, choosing to avoid a political speech and instead spent two hours shaking hands and drinking beer.

In terms of business, it’s safe to say that House is pretty darned happy.

“The Friday, Saturday and Sunday just gone (16^th – 18^th), was ridiculous. We can only hold so many people, and are usually full for 3-4 hours on Saturday, which is our busiest. We had the same business 10-12 hours in a row all three days. We were packed from 11am on Saturday to 2am on Sunday, that’s 15 hours right there.”

Over in the CBD Corner Pub, a similar environment and record numbers of punters gave employees some of the biggest nights of the year.

“It was huge! Heaps of Welsh people – obviously - since they’re big drinkers. Even mid-week before the New Zealand vs Japan game, we had people coming in for lunches”, recalls one of the duty managers.

The overcrowding issues that Auckland complained about were easily dealt with. CBD did have to hold off people, but as the alternative was the street Fanzone, no aggravation was encountered.

Contrasted with CBD and House is the “left of centre” bar Static, which specialises in a constant stream of live music rather than sports coverage, which director Graham says has seen a decrease in punter numbers and sales since two weeks before the RWC, but asserts he isn’t too worried.

“We don’t really want the footy heads in here. We want to create a unique, safe environment for people that are a bit left of centre and don’t fit in at other bars”, says Graham.

The targeted Static crowd, which aren’t necessarily rugby fans, are avoiding the bar because of it’s positioning in the Fanzone, while the rugby enthusiasts are avoiding due to the left of centre environment it provides, tells Graham

“They (rugby enthusiasts) wouldn’t have fun here anyway. They’d be standing here wanting ‘Hey Soul Sister’ played, and they’ll get none of that.”

He says allowing rugby fans entrance would turn the management of Static into hypocrites, and completely go against their targeted audience. Graham is looking forward to the end of the RWC.

So the Fanzone is a success. With the Wales and Fiji game this Sunday, the increase in sales for CBD, House and Diggers are expected, more chanting from the Welsh is anticipated, while bands performing at Static are hoped to bring their natives back \m/.

The world’s third largest sporting event is now in full swing and its right in our backyard!

If you haven’t already enjoyed some of the festivities on offer you really do need to get amongst it. Even if rugby isn’t your thing there is something for everyone, and for a student with little money to spend on anything but a good time, it’s perfect.

I have embraced the festival atmosphere and have looked to take advantage of every World Cup event I can find. Being down on the Auckland waterfront during the opening ceremony was both chaotic and exhilarating. Besides the highly scrutinised public transport debacle (which was mostly in part to a few clever people setting off fire extinguishers and pressing the emergency buttons of the trains) the opening night and atmosphere was magnificent and has continued through to the games. Perhaps I was naïve, but I did not expect the sheer number of people to be there and neither did the Auckland City Council in their conventional wisdom.

Let this be a lesson to us all; when 3000 Tongans turn up to welcome their team at the airport, expect ten times as many to watch them actually play the game.

For those of you who did see the opening ceremony, I’m sure you would agree it was magnificent. If you were not one of the lucky few to actually be there, the best place to watch it was Auckland’s waterfront, where you had a front row seat to New Zealand’s largest ever fireworks display. For about 20mins Waitemata Harbour was set alight with colour and fire reminiscent of Sydney’s display for the 2000 Olympics. When I finally managed to get onto Queens Wharf, “Party Central”, it was Sunday but there were still hordes of people and a colourful atmosphere from the thousands of foreign supporters watching the games on the big screens. Of all the things on Queens Wharf the must sees are the giant screen at the water’s edge, that proves to be the best place to watch the games if you aren’t there, and for those that get a bit thirsty screaming for your team there’s the Heineken Bar, which perhaps has a direct beer line to the Heineken brewery and what must be 1000 TV’s so you never miss any footy. The giant rugby ball that has travelled the world showcasing New Zealand and all its beauty is also a must see. By the way it’s not just a giant ball as it might first appear and if you get a chance to experience it you should definitely go.

I bought a ticket to the Samoa vs. Namibia game and it could quite possibly be the best game I’ve seen live since the British and Irish Lions toured NZ in 2005. As a neutral supporter I could cheer for whatever team I thought deserved my humble support, this time Namibia took the honours, as I took in the atmosphere of being at my first World Cup game. Mingling with the fanatical Samoan supports and the Namibians, who were just happy to be there, showed me what events like the World Cup are all about.

Now to last weekend’s games, where Hamilton had a chance to shine. The AB’s played Japan on Friday at Waikato Stadium to kick things off and made quick work of the much smaller Japanese players. I’d hope that the majority of you ventured into town and if not for the rugby for the great atmosphere that was generated in Hamilton’s version of “Party Central” on Hood St. This atmosphere seemed somewhat muted however when it came to Sunday, as the vocal Welsh rolled into town to play Samoa and created an atmosphere to rival that found in Cardiff, Dublin or Edinburgh before a big Six Nations test.

The Welsh, who will also play Fiji in Hamilton early next month, brought their traveling fans who went about creating a giant sea of red that spilled into the streets, parted only by large groups of Samoans proudly waving blue out of their cars and windows. This day however belonged to the red dragon as Wales won 17-10. But the game I picked and makes me say I told you so to every Australian and self-doubting New Zealander was Ireland’s domination of Australia at Eden Park. These Aussies aren’t so great, not when great men like Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O’Gara steer the oldest team in the competition around the paddock for a resounding win. This makes me wonder whether the All Blacks should have a veteran backup flyhalf….bring back Tony Brown!

So if you’re not going to any games get amongst the festivities and take a small road trip to Auckland’s waterfront in the coming weekends and experience “Party Central” for yourself, otherwise as George Gregan famously told us: “It’s four more years, four more years.”

Nexus got a few minutes with Karl Steven from The Drab Doo Riffs ahead of their nation tour in support of recent E.P. ‘A Fistfull ofDoo-Riffs’.

Your music sounds like nothing else in NZ, was it an intention to stray so far from the contemporary norm?
Nah, we just kinda do what we do and what we like. I guess we’re just a bunch of people that do our own thing, and are influenced by music that could be from anywhere in the world right now.

The current E.P. sounds like it was influenced by a sci-fi western flick. Did you guys actively look to films for inspiration?
Yeah, well we are all great consumers of popular culture. Films are as much of our culture as music is. Also we saw ‘The Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ at the time of recording.

It’s very, very energetic, how do you guys keep up the pace?
(Laughs) We just burn the candle at both ends. The live show is always the dominant one in some way, as opposed to recording.  Although I feel the more we record as a group, the stronger our live show becomes.

Is it difficult juggling the Supergroove shows with DDR?
I thought it was going to be hard, but it’s fine. It’s just a different group of people. I’ve found the Drab Doo Riffs has been really cool after Supergroove, which got way too huge at the end. I’m not so much of a lean machine anymore, ya know. I have a much clearer sense of what we were like (back then), because I was a teenager and just wanted us to be as massive as possible. With the DDR thing, we can travel around and play shows that don’t need to be at the massive venues.

So you prefer small venues to big venues?
Well we’re a Rock n’ Roll band; small venues are where we come from. We’d much rather play to a smaller group of people in a tiny, crowded place as opposed to the bigger venues (not saying we could play them), where people may feel a bit self-conscious. We just want that party vibe, like everyone’s crowded in the kitchen, so they can lose their inhibitions. On those big venues, they don’t have the same sort of atmospheres. The small venues have more personality. The big venues are kinda generic.

What can punters expect from your show at Static?
We’re playing with the Raw Nerves, another Auckland band that play a bit of 60’s punky sort of stuff. Mainly just the high-energy/danceable/punk thing. There’s always a lot of intensity, but it’s never really agro, just a lot of fun.

You can catch The Drab Doo Riff’s at Static Bar this Friday September 30^th!

With Lee (president of Askew)

Hamilton Pride Week (17^th-25^th) comes around again! It’s time to embrace it and get amongst all the festivities! It’s the time of the year where those of us who identify ourselves in the GLITTQFAB* community as well as our supporters get together and celebrate the diversity of having a pride week and celebrating the diverse uniqueness of our journeys through life and where we have come so far. It is a reflection of ourselves and the hardships we may or may not have gone through to get to where we are today.

My name is Lee and I am a living, breathing testimony of the hardships and challenges I faced within the last year and I must say that since ‘coming out’ to my Whanau and friends in 2010, though it was a hard, several months – I am glad that I am able to share my article with you. Being a Pacific Island student and ‘coming out’ to my family last year was a HUGE milestone for me as well as a big stress for my family. Cultural-wise, the topic of Homosexuality is a major taboo where it’s not really talked about unless someone has something bad to say about it and it hurt me hearing all the awful responses and comments towards me by some of my family members. However, that was one leaf, and I turned over a new one. Things, surprisingly enough are definitely a lot better!

My relationship with dad has been awesome as always and my relationship with my mother has most definitely improved and I am glad that things have turned out fine. It took some time for my parents, especially my mother to come around, she still hasn’t quite got there yet, but she’s getting there and she will get there in time.

Since being elected President of ASKEW last year, I have learnt so much as a leader as well as an individual. I’ve learnt so many things about working together, team work and encouragement as well as motivation to get tasks done. I have met so many amazing people who aspire to want to change the world somehow and make some sort of difference in order to get to equality. People have grown so much courage to talk to me about issues such as homophobia and the like, asking me questions about how it is working and contributing to the life of the GLBT community and it’s just beautiful.

As President, I have most definitely learnt so much about myself and where I sit in a community full of diversity and exchanging of new, fresh and different ideas.

Last year’s pride week enabled me to accept myself as I am and I think that was an awesome pride week and I am definitely grateful to have been involved. It also helped me to discover more about myself and the community of which I felt more comfortable in. For those of you who are new to the scene or who just want to support your friends and or family members, get amongst it and check out some of the awesome workshops this week. It doesn’t hurt to gain new knowledge and understanding of why we have a Pride week... J

Reflecting on my year as a president and a year since my first pride week, I am very happy to be where I am right now. Obviously my life had a few rollercoaster’s which I thought was over bearing and which required a lot of energy, but I’m very thankful for the support from good people in my life who definitely continue to keep me going, even today. The past year has most definitely been an excruciating yet rewarding one and celebrating pride week again for a second year is most definitely exciting! I am excited for what was and am excited for what is to come.

Happy, Happy Pride week, everyone!

*(Gay, Lesbian, Intersex, Transgender, Takatapui, Queer, Fa’afafine, Asexual, Bisexual)

Why Pride Week?

With Emma

Let me begin by saying that as vice-president of Askew, Pride Week 2011 brings with it excitement about the events themselves, but much less enthusiasm towards the letters that will no doubt be sent to Nexus in the following week. The question is always the same – why do the gays get a week? If they get one, why don’t the straight people get one too? There’s a very simple answer to that. Every week is straight pride week. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m not trying to be hetero-hating, after all the biggest complaints about last year’s Pride Week did not come from a straight person.

So why do we get a week? It’s a chance to get out there and be an active part of the community. We’re lucky to live in a country where being gay is becoming more and more acceptable – in my experience anyway. There are places in the world where being gay and out is literally a death sentence. Can you imagine living with the knowledge that to be who you are, you would be risking your life? So in a way, we’re celebrating. We’re also trying to educate people or just inform anybody who’s willing to listen. 

It’s also about having fun, and Hamilton Pride has come up with some fantastic entertainment: The Pride Party at Shine Nightclub is always a huge hit, and events like the Safe Sex Workshop/Sex Toy Party serve as informative evenings as well as a great night out. Askew’s very own fashion designer Tim Swart is also putting on a fashion show, not to be missed. There are many more events too, keep an eye out for the posters and flyers around Hamilton and on campus.

 So now that I have attempted to explain the reasoning behind the week’s events, I’ll leave you with a few thoughts on the subject: Pride Week isn’t hurting anybody. If you’re offended by gay people, that’s fine by me. You’re entitled to your opinion and if it makes you uncomfortable, just keep on living your life. Walk on past the posters. Ripping them down doesn’t make you cool, it makes you immature.

If you’re totally accepting of gays then I salute you for being so awesome, and I hope that the rainbow flag brightens up your day a little.

If you’re a homosexual person who’s not ‘out’, I hope that seeing the Askew club members and other gays in the community ‘out and about’ will help give you courage to be proud of who you are.

So from all of Askew, have a great Pride Week, and we hope to see you getting involved.

With the Trilby Project

Nexus sent DJs Egbert and Strider on a road trip to Wellington, a trip every student should make at least once in their time at the University of Waikato. Here’s PART ONE of their exploits, with more to follow soon.

Day One

It’s 9 am on a Monday morning and the sun is shining. Clouds roll lazily through the sky, the road fades away into the horizon. Twelve hours from now, I (along with my travelling companion JT, and trusty steed Maplehoof) will be five hundred kilometers away, in our nation’s capital. On this day, Nexus goes to Wellington!

We make our way towards Cambridge, before losing our place in the four pages of directions, like the intrepid explorers we are. We’re currently less than twenty minutes into a journey that will carry us through to the setting of the sun, and we no longer have a concrete idea of where we are or which direction we want to go. It is at this point where we decide to experiment with “creative navigation.”

In the words of the great Bill O’Reilly, “We’ll do it live! Fuck it, we’ll do it live!”

As Maplehoof bears us towards Rotorua, a thick fog sets in, as does a great sense of unease. Tensions mount as visibility plummets, and the car begins to shrink, slowly choked by the dense grey of the landscape. This morning is what horror films and ghost stories are made of. Lesser men might have turned back, but not us.

Around this point, a bright light, a miracle if you will, presents itself. Like the star that led the wise men to Bethlehem, like Florence Nightingale’s lamp, like the exact opposite of what happened to the Titanic, a sign pierces the fog. With a firm grasp on our bearings, we begin our trek towards Tirau.

What a mistake this turned out to be. I’m afraid that I have to break the narrative at this point, to detail precisely how big a mistake it was to drive through Tirau. If you’ve never made the long and arduous journey to Wellington by car, tread very carefully. Tirau is the corrugated iron capital of the world. Everything in this town seems to be made of corrugated iron. Not only are there buildings in the shape of animals, there are sculptures and artworks made of corrugated iron. This town could not be more “quaint” if your grandmother crocheted a blanket to cover the place, and I could not put more venom into the word “quaint” if I tried. I cannot hope to convey the depth of my contempt for both Tirau and corrugated iron as an institution.

Every other town on our journey was incredible by comparison; even Lichfield. I will get to Lichfield later.

Believe it or not, the corrugated atrocities continued well past the town border, causing our otherwise jovial and amicable conversation to rapidly degenerate into a lengthy tirade of abuse. Our delightful travels were beset upon by a great, yet momentary darkness that brought with it a blind, all-consuming fury. We beheld a rider on a pale horse, and he that sat upon him was named Corrugated Iron.

About ten minutes south of Tirau sits a small town by the name of Lichfield. I’m using the term town very loosely. You see, the sign that tells you you’ve entered Lichfield also contains an advertisement for sheepskin and pottery. An advertisement that happens to be written in the same size and font, as a matter of fact. Lichfield, like so many other small settlements along the road to Wellington, is little more than a collection of houses adjoining the highway. If not for the distinct lack of corrugated iron, you might think you’re still in Tirau.

A further ten minutes south, we hit Tokoroa. Suffice it to say, everything you have ever heard about Tokoroa is probably true. As we make our first stop of the trip, in the birthplace of Brian Tamaki, we begin to realise how a man with such a promising future could become such a horrible, horrible person. The place is little more than a hole, where kids groomed for gang life roam the street. Coloured bandannas flash from the pockets of low-slung jeans, and the steel of knife blades glint from the loose sleeves of hooded sweatshirts. Cars with broken windows sit in parking lots, a testament to the broken dreams and shattered childhoods of the fifteen thousand people who reside within its borders.

Unfortunately, our attempt to leave this fair city was hindered by the efforts of one cantankerous, belligerent town-planner. The road network in and out of Tokoroa is horrendous. Those who stop in Tokoroa for too long may never find their way free (which would explain the stability of the population size between 1996 and 2006, according the New Zealand Census). Our trusty mount Maplehoof found herself caught in a veritable mire of twisting avenues and winding streets. It wasn’t until we’d committed ourselves to throwing the car over a curb and driving through a gap between trees that we eventually found an exit.

Shortly after our harrowing escape, as we travel further south, we pass Kinleith Mill. Civilians that we are, we wouldn’t have known what to look for, were it not for the sheets of stench wafting through the air on our approach. Be wary, bold vagabonds, for this is a low point of the journey. The air is thick and pungent, each breath stale and choking. This portion of the trip was punctuated with nightmarish visions, brief glimpses into a dark hell which will leave those with a weak constitution scarred and troubled. If the sight of Tokoroa was purgatory, then the smell of Kinleith Mill is most certainly the Inferno.

Noon draws near, and there is still frost thick upon the grass beneath the trees. The view along these stretches of highway is truly phenomenal. Pale blue skies, lush green forests stand guard at the roadside, faint smudges of clouds hovering above the skyline. The air here is cold and clean, the landscape at last is free from the marring effects of civilization. There is no corrugated iron to be found. We’re the only car on the road, and for the briefest of moments, nature has painted an oil canvas fit to hang in any museum gallery you care to imagine.

Make no mistake, true believer; the trip to Wellington is worth it for the views alone. Here, where the splendour of nature is unfolding before us, we haven’t even left the Waikato region. There are still ten hours on the road ahead.

From there, it was a straight shot through to Taupo, which was essentially deserted. For those who have never visited Taupo, it seems a lot smaller than it is. With very few high-rise buildings, the town-dressed-as-a-city doesn’t have the same cramped urgency of Hamilton or Auckland. Bordering the beautiful Lake Taupo, it exists as little more than a pit-stop between major centres; a series of small stores and cafés catering to the kind of people who not only like to travel to do their shopping, but who can afford to. Taupo as a settlement is likely kept afloat by the custom of middle-aged women, because the appeal to students isn’t immediately obvious.

Further south, the houses become sparse, as we enter the stretch of highway that drives through a series of small townships. Many of these settlements are so small that it’s a wonder that they’re signposted at all. We drive on, catching glimpses of houses hidden behind trees growing at the roadside, spying signs of life beyond the borders of civilization. Boards proclaim our passing in bold white letters, greeting us as we arrive, wishing us well as we leave.

There is hardly room to stop the car, let alone much of a reason to. At any point, we’re at least half an hour from a petrol station or supermarket, which tells you that nobody chooses to live in these towns for the convenience. The peace and quiet on these rather silent streets is an enticing prospect.

Passing around the edge of Lake Taupo, in the shadow of sheer cliffs, which can be an intense experience for those unfamiliar with the roads, we nearly threw the car off the road when I saw a reflection of my hand in the windscreen after seeing a warning for falling rocks. For all of the white-knuckle, clenched-jaw, feather-light driving, the landscape outside the windows was truly beautiful. The afternoon sun shimmering on the surface of the lake, and a light breeze rustling through the grass make this the perfect place to put a gypsy graveyard.

Motutere Bay is a parking area filled to bursting with caravans, because the one thing that people do when they find a good thing is tell everyone. As is the accepted convention, the quality and value of an idea is inversely proportional to the number of people who share it. On this long road, there are colonies where holiday makers pack their caravans together, hoping to obtain for their children small scraps of a tiny beach. Little slices of a natural paradise marred by mobile shanty towns. A garden overgrown by weeds that sleep a family of four.

Further along this stretch of the journey, about forty minutes out from Motutere Bay, with Turangi just behind us, the desert highway beckons.

As we begin this most treacherous climb, our tears singing a silent lamentation for the absence of snow chains, some aggressive fellow in a van cuts us off on a dangerous road that neither JT nor I are familiar with. That commonly accepted theory that drivers become more courteous the further south you go? Turns out this may not be the case. Our altitude approaching eight hundred metres above sea level, we carry on at a snail’s pace, as the clouds begin to anger above us.

Rain begins to fall slowly, as we enter Waiouru. A small town with an army museum, much like Tirau with military hardware. Replace the tanks around the town with sheds shaped like sheep, swap these silent sentinels for corrugated iron replicas, and you’d hardly know you were in a different place. Shortly after leaving, as we drive through Taihape, the mind is suddenly dragged back to Tirau, as we are assaulted on both sides by images of a corrugated iron gumboot. Taihape is another of the many small towns on the journey that appears little more than a tourist stop, with more motels in the town centre than houses.

Half an hour out of Taihape, we make the first petrol stop of the journey. Three hundred and fifty kilometers, and six and a half hours from Hamilton, we find ourselves in Hunterville, where the petrol is expensive, but the girls are cheap. Well, technically, there weren’t actually any girls there, save for the ladies working at the general store. That’s right. Hunterville’s “petrol station” is a general store with a pair of petrol pumps slapped on the front. And when I say general store, I mean it. The sign above the door said so. I could have sworn that if I’d looked behind the shelves, I’d have been able to buy the Lost Ark of the Covenant.

Incidentally, while parked in Hunterville, refueling our beloved Maplehoof, a man stepped out of a van and began apologizing profusely for cutting us off as we entered the desert highway. Turns out that some drivers are courteous after all.

The next leg of the journey was a quiet one, as our trusty steed carried us through Bulls. Bulls is noteworthy for one reason. Only in Bulls would you see a lady standing on a bridge two-fisting beer while dressed in purple spandex, as planes fly in formation overhead. Take a moment to let that sink in, be overcome by sensations of nausea and wonderment, revel in the beauty of everywhere that is not Bulls.

I am not making this up. I couldn’t. Though the trenches of darkness within my mind are deep, I could not hope to conjure a horror like the image of a Bizarro Vicky Pollard. Seriously, picture in your mind a bridge overlooking a vast harbour, wide waters stretching far off into the distance. Then imagine that Grimace is standing on this bridge with a Heineken in each hand, his thick purple fingers clutching the necks. Finally, picture this all on the set of Top Gun.

This eldritch terror was unable to be photographed, as the files were found to be corrupted. It comes as no surprise, really.

Shortly after passing a dozen different exits to Feilding (at which the English scholar inside me snapped), we have concluded that Feilding is the Rome of the North Island. All of the roads lead to it. All of them. Luckily, if all roads lead to Feilding, all roads must lead from it as well. The rain continues to fall, as we barrel towards Palmerston North.

In Palmerston North, we picked up a travelling companion named Pauline, a good friend who agreed to put us up for the duration of our stay. As the sun sets on the first of our four-day trip, headlights dimly illuminating the road ahead of us, we drive on towards Wellington. The nation’s capital is full of countless delights, and plenty of trouble to be a part of, but after a long day on the road, a bit of recuperation is in order.

Stay tuned Nexus readers: the best is yet to come!

Nexus spoke briefly to Nick Atkinson, the guy behind the sax/keys/backing vocals of Supergroove, about New Zealand music. He said some pretty cool stuff.

New Zealand music sometimes attacked for its apparent mediocrity and tiny music industry. Atkinson, however, is an optimistic supporter of the crop of artists we nurture down here, and suggests that the pros somewhat outweigh the cons of our small music scene.

”The music industry is very accessible here. If you wanna do a gig, you just call the venues, if you wanna release a record, go to an independent one. In other parts of the world, it’s all sown up, ya know, you gotta have agents and so on. So while we may be isolated, we do have a great, very loyal audience.”

Using the recent Glastonbury performance of the Naked and Famous, he says, along with other musicians, the bar is being set quite high in terms of musical substance and output.

“I’m a really big fan of bands like The Veils and MC’s like Scribe, and I feel they do set the bar quite high. I mean, look at what the Naked and Famous are doing! I’d say the state of NZ Music is very healthy!”

Performing alongside Shihad, Opshop and Kids of 88 this Friday at Claudelands Events Centre as a one off, it is the bonds shared between fellow bands, and the interest in the Rock Quest held beforehand, that attracted Supergroove to the gig.

“It’s just so much fun to play with all these bands. I’m especially keen to see the crop of Rockquesters. A lot of great bands have come through there; Nesian Mystic, Die! Die! Die!, Electric Confectionaries.”

Drawing on the “nasty” breakup Supergroove went through, Atkinson encourages musicians to make the most of their youth and set their sights globally.

“Forming a band is always challenging, though it’s much easier when you’re young. Supergroove had a pretty nasty breakup, but when we got back to play music, it was the best thing ever. Don’t say we wanna play a gig in Auckland, say we wanna tour the world!”

Supergroove are playing with Shihad, Kids of 88 and Opshop as part of Kiwi Cream at Claudelands Arena Saturday 17^th September. Tickets are $55 from Ticketek.

Nexus got the opportunity to have a quick chat to Jeremy Grasso, one half of Los Angeles dance outfit Liberty. Here we go!

Liberty’s sound roams somewhere between glitchy classical synth, heavy 80’s key-guitar and melodic breakdowns. However, the diversity and creativity of their music is not just a reflection of their native Los Angeles music circuit, but also their own audio education, says Jeremy.

“Yeah, it’s a bit of both. We have to have that mainstream influence and feel, but then we’ll throw in some Danger or even some Mozart or Bach. I love that stuff, I’ve been playing it since I was a kid.”

With their New Zealand tour coming before European and Puerto Rico shows, Liberty are making rapid progress up the ranks of worldwide dance music, even infiltrating the Beatport top 10 with their original track ‘Thunderfist’.

“We’re actually in the works of two E.P.’s at the moment. One is coming out on Oh My God It’s Techno Music which is a really big label in Germany. And another on Tuff Em Up in Australia. We pretty much just wanna spread our music to the world, so what’s better than to get releases on the bigger world labels.”

Liberty started out almost a year ago, after a drunk Jeremy met a DJ-ing Dan at a club. “I went up and told him I loved his set”, says Jeremy, “His manager was there and said we should all talk, and I said I was a producer and sent him my stuff.”

From then on they got signed to LA based label Selfage Records, and set out to tour with a sound inspired by the likes of French heavy bangers Danger and Canadian Electro-duo MSTRKRFT.

 Funnily enough, Jeremy says its easier getting gigs overseas than it is in America. “We actually have an easier time getting gigs overseas then in America. But that’s okay, there’s nothing else better than getting a call from someone else on the other side of the world saying they want us there.”

Touring New Zealand for the first time, all they’re expecting is a lot of love from the crowd. “We just want the crowd to go crazy!”

How crazy, you may ask? He alluded to a show they played in Colorado. 

“It wasn’t a big turnout, but these kids just went crazy! I mean it sounded like there were a thousand people there even though there was only a handful. They were shouting, jumping, taking their clothes off; after the gig was over they wanted to keep partying! “

Liberty are playing this Thursday September 15^th at Flow Bar. $5 on the door. Doors open at 9pm! 

By Jimmy Manning

Nexus sent Jimmy out to work a night at Hamilton’s biggest and most popular club – The Outback Inn – to experience Hamilton’s jam-packed nightlife on the frontline.

Bouncing is all about attitude. It's a line of work that will make you the most famous bloke in the nightlife. Of course, there will be some that despise you, some that swear at you, some that throw fists and drunken slurs at you. But if you have the right attitude, if you treat the drunkards in a humble manner, treat them like people; you'll be respected.

My night on the front ranks of The Outback Inn showed me a different side of the fence. In my weekly intoxicated adventures from club to club, I feared the bouncer. My thought process when lining up outside the club follows the path of - straighten up, don't slur, look him in the eye, smile, not too creepy, remember your birthday, don’t shake his hand: he doesn't fucking like you. And then they give you that stare, like they see through you, like it’s the gates of heaven and the final judgement. Then they flick their head, and with a deep sigh of relief, you’re granted entry. Most of the time anyway.

Bouncers though, are just everyday normal people, working the grind and making their way through life. Most Bouncers are students. My guide on the door had been with the Outback for 4 years and studies law at Waikato; others study everything from political science to economics. They work nocturnal hours from Wednesday to Saturday, and are witness to the sometimes dark humanity of Hamilton city.

So, why does one become a bouncer? Well, according to bouncer folklore, there are 7 reasons: The girls, the money, the comradeship, the ego, you like to fight, you spend too much money in town or you’re very social.

My guide does not like fighting, and says the best bouncers are those that prefer handling people justly as opposed to fighting. “I have a hero complex, I just love being everyone’s best friend, being the person you can rely upon for help. We just make sure everyone is safe and is having a good time.”

He describes the majority of Hamilton bouncers as being very sociable, though admits that there are still ways to improve. “We need more bouncers that know how to be humble, that know how to handle people. Hamilton’s attitude needs to slightly change I think. Bouncers need to respect the patrons more, and the patrons need to respect the bouncers more.”

Each week anywhere between 2 and 20 I.D.’s are confiscated and delivered to the police. The way the bouncers get you is really not too tricky at all; it’s just common sense and social etiquette. No matter how drastically a person attempts to alter their appearance, bone structure and drunken fear do not lie. Once the bouncer doubts the legitimacy of the card (one particular girl had died her hair to match the person on the drivers licence), the patron is required to write their signature three times, and if it fails to match signature on the I.D. card, it is taken away. One young lady, refused to do so, and instead decided to call the bouncer a “fucking dick”.

Now, if that wasn’t proof on its own, their body language spoke volumes of their ineligibility to be in a bar. When confronted with this ugly truth, they are like a rabbit caught in headlights: The pupils became dilated, the breath speeds and slows in quick bursts, the lip quivers, the stutter grabs control, and you can almost see the heart spring out of the chest.

Those that actually are of age, but are too intoxicated to enter, go to greater lengths to enter. Over the course of the night numerous bar-hoppers denied for whatever reason (too drunk, incorrect shoes, swearing at others in the doorway), offered various sums of money to enter. At one point a male pulled out a crisp 50 and pleaded to enter. Forms of aggression are often displayed from the patron’s part, but are often seen shaking hands with the bouncer by the end of it. Manners and social skills get you a long way in this job.

Violence and Bouncing goes hand in hand. Although fighting is a rare occurrence, it is expected as a bouncer that you’d have to bring a degree of physicality to the job. Interestingly enough, most fights are caused by girls. Perhaps not directly, but the cause always lies within the depths of estrogen. A girl denies a guy, the guy gets mad, starts shouting, and another guy jumps in to defend. Fight. A girl acts out of line, swears at a guy, guy gets angry, guy friend of girl jumps in. Fight.

Of course, alcohol must take on some responsibility for the misjudged actions of bar-goers. Posted in the back of the bar is a poster listing 'The 7 Drunks': Clumsy, Blurry, Sleepy, Moneybags, Nasty, Forgetful and Messy. As you buy drinks, socialise and dance, you’re being categorised so the staff can handle you with easier care. The darker side of bouncing comes as they bear witness to Hamilton at its worst.

On a secret Nexus page, bouncers were invited to share stories of the stupidity they’d seen club-goers participate in, and the response was quite shocking. One bouncer shared tales of people having sex in the toilets, getting blow jobs on the dance floor, people throwing up on the dance floor, pissing in the plants and under tables, sneaking in shots and downing them in the presence of bouncers, and people snorting drugs in front of bouncers.

“A funny one was a guy who was off his face after taking some pills [and] dancing with the wall and stroking [it], saying how soft it was... The things sober people see.”

Another bouncer we spoke to worked at the Outback almost a decade ago, and recalls it being a great time. He describes the heart of the job similarly as the other bouncers have; to just be yourself and have a good attitude. “Just be yourself, have fun and try to make a comfortable environment for everyone.”

Bouncing for 3 years, he spent most of his time on The Outback dance floor, keeping a close eye on any disruptive or abusive behaviour. "I started out on the exits for experience, then moved into the dance area, ‘cause that’s where all the trouble used to happen. Once it got real busy we’d have to stand on our posts, but we'd never stand there all staunch, we'd usually have fun and make fun of people with crazy dancing."

The dance floor is a different game to the front door. Once the punters have passed the entrance test, the bouncers monitor the crowd, looking past the strobe lights and blasting speakers for any threat against the safety of bar-goers.

Although violence rarely did occur, he says it usually evolved from two scenarios: a complaint is made about a certain person, or a fight broke out in the midst of the dance floor.  If a complaint is made by a person in the club, the bouncer's job is to monitor said disrupter, though if a complaint is made by a worker of the bar, the bouncer has the right to kick them out immediately.

"If a complaint is filed by a bartender, you just go up to them and tell them a complaint has been made, and ask them to have a talk outside. If they wouldn't leave the bar, you’d just guide them, and if that didn’t work, you’d say you’re gonna have to physically restrain them, then usually they’d try and wack your hand away. It’s just an easy headlock from there. You’re sober, they’re drunk; you can see it coming."

Working on the exits too, he recalls time’s where people would jump the fence, and says it's in these instances that shame is your strongest weapon. "If we saw someone jump the fence, we'd go get them and bring them outside... Usually you’d just make them go through the exit, but I’d make them climb back over the fence. You jump the fence, you fucking jump back over the fence."

His tales on the exit are laden with many confrontations, with one night in particular introducing him to a severely intoxicated Misfits of Science. The one hit wonders of 'Fools Love' fame were harassing girls while leaving the bar. The bouncer told them to leave the girls alone, and it erupted into a brawl.

"One of the people with the Misfits punched another of the bouncers with me, so he decked him and we put them up against the wall and chucked them down the steps. We definitely weren’t allowed to punch people [and] we did get in a bit of trouble for throwing them down the steps. We’d get a talking to, [but] we’d try keep it a secret."

The comradeship my guide spoke of seems to be a historical code amongst bouncers. A decade ago bouncers of differing bars shared a comradeship stronger than the contract of their employment. "We weren’t allowed to go stop a fight outside the Outback courtyard, because it wasn’t our responsibility. But we did. My good friends were bouncers at the other bars, so if you see them fighting, you’re obviously going to jump in."

At the heart of The Bouncer are really just the morals and values moulded into you as children.

They're enforced with an all seeing eye. They see us at our worse, when we're stumbling over drunk, slurring our words, lighting our noses instead of our cigarettes, vomiting, missing our mouths when eating chips, dropping drinks all over dresses, and mistaking our EFTPOS cards for I.D. cards. Like they said, they’re there to provide a safe and comfortable environment for us.

about in three minutes or less.

The Waikato student’s research question is “Do we sacrifice justice for democracy?” She’s the first

to admit there is no simple answer, but her investigations have taken her to South Africa, Chile and

Brazil as she endeavours to find out how negotiation processes work and how decisions are made to

grant amnesty and impunity for crimes committed by the state, or against the state.

A Waikato Thesis in 3 finalist last year, Debrin’s ability to explain her research clearly and concisely

scored her a meeting with the first democratically elected president of Chile following two decades

of military dictatorship.

“I was on a plane travelling to Chile from Brazil when I heard people in the seats behind me

discussing Chilean politics. I hadn’t been able to set up many interviews in Chile, so I started talking

to these people thinking they may be involved in politics.” They weren’t, they were grocers. “But

when I gave them my three-minute run down about justice and amnesty issues, they put me onto

someone who put me onto someone and before I knew it I had an interview with 92 year old Patricio

Aylwin.”

The most interesting thing the President said during the hour long interview was that his conscience

was clear.

“He said his government had done the best that they could in the situation, anything more and he

feared the military would have staged another coup.”

It no doubt helps when doing her research that Debrin speaks Spanish, German and Italian and some

Portuguese. The former Melville High School student studied languages, political science and history

for her two bachelor’s degrees at Waikato, took up the University’s study abroad opportunities

attending Osnabruck University in Germany then completed a masters degree in journalism at the

University of Missouri before returning to Waikato 16 months ago to begin her PhD.

“I became interested in this whole issue of justice after a visit to Sri Lanka. I started to wonder if the

truth and reconciliation process could be applied there and what justice, a really basic human need,

means in the long run and on a national level.”

She chose to study South Africa, Brazil and Chile because they had all dealt with the question of

justice after the transition so differently. “In South Africa for example, the Truth and Reconciliation

Committee uses the concept of public forgiveness after admitting guilt, and people are often willing

to give up justice for the greater good.

“Chile acknowledged its victims but never named its perpetrators. Brazil had no truth commission

but one is now being discussed. The need for communal justice is very, very, strong.”

Debrin interviewed a variety of people in each country. They included human rights lawyers,

politicians, activists, academics and journalists.

She is now transcribing her interviews. Her official end date is February 2013, though she would like

to get her thesis done a little earlier. She has a University of Waikato doctoral scholarship to help

cover her study costs and her Thesis in 3 experience also helped secure a Zonta scholarship after she

presented an outline of her thesis to that organisation.

“I’m going to enter Thesis in 3 again. This time because it’s fun. And I think I have an interesting

subject – full of blood and guts and lawyers! I know some students say the competition is extra

work, but it’s worth it. I didn’t win, but if I hadn’t been able to present my work on a plane in a

concise and non-academic way, then I would never have got the interviews I did in Chile. I don’t

think I’d have received the Zonta scholarship either.”

Debrin is not sure of her future post-PhD. She’s applying for post-doctoral fellowships but she’d also

like to work for a non-governmental organisation such as the UN.

*****

Th3sis in 3 heats begin in early October – seven in all with the final, sponsored by Prior Blackburn

accountants, taking place at the Clarence St Theatre on Wednesday 26 October at 7pm. Entries will

be accepted from Monday 22 August at www.waikato.ac.nz/sasd/postgraduate/ and close Friday 16

September with a workshop in early September to provide more information for participants.

Throughout October, the University of Waikato’s Postgraduate Research Month, there’ll be a

series of workshops for doctoral students, different faculty will hold their annual student research

conferences and social events, and on Thursday 13 October there’s a quiz night being held at The

Station, which is open to everyone – all staff and students.

Pre season training for New Zealand’s only basketball team in the Australian National Basketball League might be a little quiet at the moment.  Veterans Dillon Boucher and CJ Bruton are the only Breakers players free to start, as the majority of players that make up the defending champion side are currently away on international duty.  With the Tall Blacks warming up in Europe for their Olympic qualifier versus the Australian Boomers, and the New Zealand University team competing for international glory at the World University Games, it’s still practice as usual for Boucher despite the empty gym.

With the Breakers becoming the first senior New Zealand team to win an Australian competition through their heroics last year, the moment capped a unique experience for Boucher, as he was one of the original players during the club’s inception back in the 03/04 season.  Seven years later, Boucher says finally winning the championship was “very rewarding for all the hard work we’d put in over the years , to know it had finally paid off.” 

The title has seen the Breakers pull in a new major sponsor in Sky city, with Vector Arena opening its 12,000 capacity doors to the team for several games this season.  With basketball’s popularity undoubtedly rising, Boucher is under no illusion as to how to attract more people to the game.  “A lot of the popularity stems from the success of both the Breakers and Tall Blacks, and with the Tall Blacks having success as well that helps kids want to become Tall Blacks or Breakers.  A lot of our popularity will depend on results and exposure, so the more we're on television, the more kids see us playing, the more they want to be involved in the sport."

The Breakers begin their defence of the ANBL title on the 7^th of October against the Gold Coast Blaze, yet Boucher admits that it’s “tough preparation when building into a season when most of the players are playing in other teams.”  Add to that talisman Kirk Penney leaving New Zealand’s shores to play in Spain, and Breakers fans might be worrying about where the big points are going to come from.  Boucher rattles off CJ Bruton, Corey Webster and Thomas Abercrombie as players capable of hitting clutch threes, but admits Penney leaves a big hole in the side.  “It’ll be up to everyone else to step up into those shoes and contribute as much as they can’ he says.

One thing is for sure though, with plenty of young players filtering through both the Breakers and Tall Blacks ranks, they are in good hands alongside Boucher.  The veteran Tall Blacks player was well known for his defensive capabilities, credited as being a steal maestro, complete with hustle that wouldn’t have gone wrong on the streets of Baltimore.  Boucher retired from international Basketball in 2008, having tasted success with the team in 2002 after they finished fourth at the world champs.  He credits this moment and a bunch of other games as huge experiences, but says he’s still learning to this day.  “Every year you gain different things you can use on the court and off the court as well, and I’m still at the stage of learning every time; learning better ways of making the team more successful and ultimately helping teammates become better players as well.” 

His retirement from international Basketball was “purely a body decision”, with the workload over a 5 year period without a holiday having taken its toll.  What started off as a month’s break became a permanent decision, yet to this day Boucher is still a class above the rest, having won the ANBL’s best defensive player accolade as recent as 2010.  Boucher maintains the Tall Blacks have a bright future, naming up and coming players like Isaac Fotu, Steve Adams and Rob Lowe, mixing in with the more experienced Lindsay Tait and Mika Vukona.  For Boucher though, his next assignment after the upcoming Breakers season lies with the Auckland Pirates.  After that, he says it’s a case of “reassessing everything, seeing how [the] body is and whether I want to continue playing, or if my body’s had enough that I need to find a new job.” 

So it would seem that Boucher believes both the Breakers and Tall Blacks stand in good stead to replicate their successes and continue building Basketball’s popularity in New Zealand.  After a professional playing career that has brought him the record of most NZNBL titles, and an admirable confidence one can only have to rep the ponytail, it’s nice to know Boucher still has a sense of humour when I bring up the time he got in Yao Ming’s face during a Tall Blacks game versus China, and ended up on his bum.  He laughs recalling the incident and admits he’d have forgotten about it if there wasn’t a Youtube video capturing the moment.  “There was a method to my madness.  Yao was on four fouls and was really hurting us, so I tried to get under his skin hoping he’d push me and get us a foul.  It backfired because I didn’t get the foul.  We talked about it after the game, have played against each other several times since that day, and we always reflect on that and have a laugh.  We’ve become good mates.” 

NB: for those that wish to view the video, search Youtube for “sean marks dunks on yao ming”