Cover art by Janina Osinsao.
Many readers will hate this week’s edition. It takes aim at Labor-favourite Daniel Andrews (p. 9-10), the “activist-industrial” complex (p. 12), kinks (p. 2) and one particularly-out-of-touch Oxbridge student (p. 19). Readers may not share the sociological interest we have in some of our readers’ increasingly unhinged letters (p. 3), or appreciate our endorsement of several SRC tickets (p. 23). Some may disagree with our criticisms of this year’s crop of election candidates (p. 6-8). Others will not enjoy our tasteful tribute to the late-Ruth Bader Ginsburg (posted to our Facebook page on 21 September). Readers might realise that none of the news is even real, we made it all up. We just photoshopped police repression under Pinochet’s Chile onto campus situations, which at the time felt poignant but now we acknowledge is just plain silly (p. 5). The news piece about continuing voluntary redundancies as the University sees an increase in student fee revenue is obviously satirical (p. 4) — but at a level of absurdity that completely undermines its effect. We know that SAlt will disapprove of developments in our Harry Styles fanfic saga (p. 3). There is also, we now realise, no solution to the Word Path puzzle (p. 22).
This was leading up to a big “but” to justify this, but now having written this I’m not quite sure what we were thinking. We were pretty tired last night, and to be honest, we forgot we had an edition this week and wrote everything at 2am under different pseudonyms (I mean what sort of name is “Georgia Mantle”). Now, in the cold light of day we’re confused, bewildered and a little afraid.
I had planned to offer my thanks to my fellow editors, and begin to reminisce about our slowly ending term at Honi. Maybe I would have mentioned that I’m already beginning to miss Chuyi’s obscure music references, Lara saying “spiralling” so frequently it’s nonsensical, Maddy’s fake references to Townsville (she’s never lived there and we know she knows we know that), Ranuka’s alcoholism, Angad‘s insistence we refer to him as “guvnah”, Robbie’s pet abuse, Matt’s far-right turn, Iris’ disappearance in late-March and Murphy’s increasingly violent threats to the SRC President when he submits his reports late. But now I realise those are all very negative characteristics, and I am deeply concerned to share an office with these freaks.
So I can only offer our humble apologies, dear reader. Perhaps it’s best if you quickly recycle and / or compost this edition. I’m really not quite sure what happened, but I’m very very sorry for it.
Yours, in deepest regrets,
Nina Dillon Britton